The Man Game (34 page)

If an actor is cut, he bleeds just like you and me.

Silas came up beside Ken and put his arm around his neck and helped carry him inside while we all clapped to see them out. They were gone. The show was over. For the first time, I realized where I was, and just like everyone around me, didn't quite feel ready to leave yet.

I'm impressed, I said.

Make a donation if you like it so much, Cedric said, running his pink eyes up and down Minna's body, all the way from flip-flops on up to her seasonally thick, long, naturally tousled brown hair with salon sunlights.

The guys are good, I said. It looks like an insane amount a practice.

Like all day every day, Cedric said.

They made this up or someone else? I asked.

No, man, said Cedric. Someone else. Long time ago. Fuck, said Cedric through clenched teeth, never taking his pink eyes off Minna or the game.

So that's it, I said. When's the next?

Patience, child. We go inside and discuss matters. Plays. We break down the plays. We conversate. We digress.

Who's this
we
? Minna said. I'm ready to call it a day.

I said: Do you think anyone here is packing heat?

Don't whisper in my ear, she said, it tickles.

The middle of January was as cold and crisp as a single handclap. The city was already humming a different tune. Behind the cedars, firs, and anomalous arbutuses, away from the prying eyes of eastern civilization, Vancouver men were safe to grow their hair out, live and die on instinct alone.

Litz and Pisk met for their regular lesson with Molly in the forest clearing on Doyle's land where black bears lived. When they arrived Molly was already waiting for them, sitting on her Hudson's Bay blanket with the bulk picnic goods. Over the months this once grassy patch of open land had become a mudpacked floor. Her first order of business was to inspect Pisk's hands and toes. Sure enough, the palms and soles were splotchy red along their sides, the fingers and toes rich pink at the top.

All numb with needle tingles, said Pisk.

You don't have a problem with the cold, Litz?

Nope, said Litz. He sat naked cross-legged beside them with his face leaning on his knuckles, elbows on his knees. I can feel the cold on my lips and my ears, he said, but my chest feels warm and my arms and legs are usually hot by the end.

Molly said: Men on the street are enjoying the man game, aren't they? I feel that.

Yeah, said Pisk.

It's too early to come out a hiding …

Oh, a course, Litz, said Molly. Yes, I don't believe your exile is over yet. You shouldn't dwell on that. Exile is not an
article of clothing you wear then take off. It is more like a burn. You live with it always. But I agree. If you bought a house in town tomorrow you'd be dead. But the man game has won some hearts, I do say. There is no arguing that as you play, no one will trouble you. I doubt that even Furry and Daggett themselves would stop you now.

Scratching his neck, Litz asked: Does anyone else know aboot you?

The secret remains safe among our trusted accomplices, said Molly, grinning at the pleasure of collusion.

Who shall remain nameless, said Pisk.

Who shall remain nameless outside this circle, yes, said Molly.

Pisk shook his head.

What's wrong? said Molly.

Nothing, said Pisk. I'm just tiring a the secrecy. You still like it, he said, nose pointed at Molly. All the secrets. I don't see the fun. Alls I know is we got to make some real chickamin and we got to get out a the hideout.

Soon. Soon, Pisk. Have patience.

Litz didn't know what to say. Whenever he opened his mouth it dried up. Should he admit he'd let slip the secret to Clough on New Year's Eve, or hope that the one-armed man had been drunk enough to forget it? That seemed impossible. Clough remembered everything, especially gossip. Drunkennness had no effect on his memory for secrets. He collected information like stray dogs.

Peggy knows, said Molly, for the safety a everyone. Calabi and Yau know aboot me. My husband, a course. Four other than the three a us. A total a seven, which I like. Seven's a beautiful number. She kicked up her legs as she sat, as if to make of herself the number.

People are damn curious to know who's our coach, said Pisk, sitting down next to her on the Bay blanket, naked. I can hear it.

Litz stammered, then fell silent, walking a few steps back and facing the treeline.

What is it? Molly said.

Nothing, he said, flushing red from the neck up.

Really, what is it?

Nothing, he said, now fingering shy circles on the Bay blanket.

Pisk rolled his eyes. Instead of one-upping Litz's flirtations, he kept it strictly business. What's your take on that imp Campbell showing up at every game?

She shrugged. Very promising. If there was a risk in his presence, we would have encountered it already.

Do you think he's telling Furry and Daggett?

No. He deceives himself to excuse his behaviour. Campbell, the child, he believes he's playing spy.

Spying on our scene.

But in fact, he is fascinated, said Molly. When Furry and Daggett are eventually confronted with the popularity of the game, Campbell also hopes this will give him an advantage over his colleagues.

Ha ha, he must be sore always biting his tongue like that, said Litz.

It's true, said Molly, touching Litz's hairy, red-spotted shoulder. With Furry and Daggett he can't talk aboot us, and at our games, he can't discuss why he's there.

Y-yes, said Litz, drymouthed.

These winter months are the most ruinously boring for the working man, Molly said, choosing to ignore Litz's blatantly sudden change in mood. Our matches are bound to start getting more and more attention. And if we take enough bets, the gamblers will protect you from anyone who wants to disrupt.

I can protect myself, said Pisk.

I know you can, she said, picking up and massaging his giant hands. Oh, they're as cold and hard as ice. We need to pay more attention to how you use your hands and feet. You shouldn't be this cold. Well, she added after concentrating on his hands for a while, squeezing the thick muscle between his thumb and forefinger, perhaps we'll finally meet some new competitors. Let's
send word out that you'll perform a man game tomorrow and see who comes out a the woodwork, shall we?

Tomorrow night? said Pisk, quietly and happily, a bit blissed-out from the hand massage.

Expect Furry and Daggett will hear aboot it, said Litz.

How's ten?

Ten works for me, said Litz.

Fine by me, Pisk said.

The next day there came from the train station in New Westminster a surprise New Year's guest to the Erwagen house. Toronto was charged with escorting a man from the train station back to Vancouver, just as he'd done for the Erwagens themselves. Seven moons. Two and a half seasons.

Truth be told the trip back and forth from New West' to Vancouver was becoming more than a little burdensome for the Indian. Whenever he set off, it was with a cramp. He rode every time in a little more pain. If he were asked to locate this pain for a doctor he could only have dropped his hand between his legs and pointed up. Collecting the mail was one thing. Meet the postal clerk at the mail car when the train pulled up, take the sacks from him, hitch them to his dray, and be on his way. But Toronto had begun to notice that every time he was charged with meeting someone at the train, that person brought some new evil. It was as if they'd brought along a hidden set of matches and, once in Vancouver, dropped them on the ground, alighting it, transforming his home again and again. His home. Every time he brought guests to his home, it burned away a little more. Soon it would vanish completely and some new crystallized aberration would appear, the way blood, after soaking the earth, dries to a dark, cracked stained glass.

Last Sunday Toronto had found a Chinaman businessman from San Francisco waiting for him at the postal drop-off in New West' wanting a guide to Vancouver. The Chinaman
was something to look at. Inside his fat smile, his dentistry was all gold nuggets. His eyes were blood-misted. He dressed like a Mexican banker, complete with the black and yellow fingernails and six-shooters holstered across his chest. Their ivory handles were inlaid with jade cobras. He wore Shanghai boots. Along the way they witnessed the sight of three men beside a disembowelled grizzly at the side of the road. A fourth man was inside the animal, dumping out the intestines. Whitemen, gone mad. When the men saw Toronto and the Chinamen, they all took to their feet. The one man inside the guts lurched out and, wielding a cleaver, chased them down the road for miles, his naked erection covered in bear blood. When they were safely out of sight the Chinaman looked furious enough to cock the hammers and leave Toronto's corpse behind.

Around the Vancouver settlement the woods were high risk. Toronto felt it his responsibility to duly warn a visitor, such as this one today, a cleanly dressed and barbered Whiteman from the American west, that Vancouver was a known destination for Wanted types.

Thank you, boy, said the guest, I already heard plenty. I spent last night in a New West' hotel and saloon eating verminous pies and listening to slanderous and libellous talk. According to what I hear, Vancouver's infrastructure is gripped by a confederacy a whores.

True, said Toronto.

Tell me, I heard a strange story last night aboot the Hastings Mill. Why, I heard the bookkeeper there's a man with
no
body.

No
body
? said Toronto. Impossible.

Wife pushes his face around in a wheeled chair, so the gossip went, said the visitor, riding a lively adolescent horse next to his guide on his aging wildebeest.

Toronto fell silent. He was weighed down with a week's worth of letters, plus a paper box of sweet-smelling, cooled but freshly baked blackberry Calabi&Yaus that he ate while riding, not even so much as offering his visitor a peek let alone a taste.

Even from the underbrush, where a mugger might hide for extended bouts of mugging, Toronto's pastries smelled like cream heaven, pacifying any urge to strike out with the blade.

How much longer? the guest asked.

Toronto, looking ahead, speculated three hours. They'd been on the road ten minutes. The trees began to close in on all sides, especially above him where the canopy had blocked out most of the sunlight. Toronto kept pulling the fragrant pastries from the well-folded box and eating them all himself, a bite and a half at a time. It made the guest's stomach complain. Eventually, after non-stop staring, Toronto did pass one over, but only once he'd eaten ten of them by the visitor's own count.

The pastry was quite doughy, with a slightly sticky, crisp surface of sugary brown. It was heavier than he expected, owing to what he soon realized was an inner cache of blackberries. Perplexing shape. What had seemed a straightforward brocade knot of ribbonny dough turned out to be a puzzle. On closer study, the pastry seemed to refract its own surface, as if it were a jewel and not a pastry at all. From nearly every angle it appeared to be as flat as a cookie, and yet its own knotwork and interwovenness changed as he turned it in his hand. It was like a multitude of curls in a bow, capable of maintaining from all angles the illusion of being as flat as a disc. By the time the visitor felt it was ludicrous to inspect the pastry any longer and just break down and eat the mystifying thing, Toronto had already eaten two more, making it a baker's dozen, of which this precious example was his only taste. The Indian reflattened the paper box and flicked it into the ditch, where a mugger was perfectly hidden and got whanged right between the eyes with the flying blade-edge of the Calabi & Yau box.

They clopped on down the street with too much left unsaid. For one, the visitor's impression of the taste of the Calabi&Yau was so profound that it made the relatively long trip seem like a minute. Secondly, the visitor didn't want to admit to the Indian that his wallet had gone missing since before he went to bed the night before. His wallet stolen, he accepted it. He couldn't recall the men at the New West' bar,
only their punk stink, their policy of bear hugs, shoulder punches, and spontaneous chanties. His throat was sore at the thought.