The Man Game (55 page)

Some souls are doomed to be deaf their entire lives, said Clough, bemoaning.

What a you mean by that? Hm, then I'll give you some advice. The sooner this man game ends the better. This town can only tolerate so much anarchy. You don't want trouble, eh? Tell me who. Tell me who and we'll go buy you a drink. You look like you could use it. We don't want to have to put it on the books we nabbed you for this … how's it supposed to look, you, mixed up in all this illegality?

He leaned over on his cot and faced the po-lice. Who's to say you don't turn a blind eye? Must you uphold every idea the mayor gets in his head? Why, it's croquet, eh, totally harmless. It's no bare-knuckle event. And it sure ain't some damn union meeting or worse, or worse yet, those men the Knights a Labour. It's a sport, not some rabble-rousers from the Klu—

That's their political right to do so. You're no friend a the Chinaman, said the po-lice warily.

You know me better. Clough was getting riled. But you know who I'm really no friend a? I've said it before, eh. I'm no friend a the cowboy RD Pitt.

Yeah, well … let's just say I hear you, but at least he's obeying the law.

Now how's that for laws, eh? Neither'm I a friend a folks like McDougall there, or RH Alexander. These are both a type a Whitemen, you see? You can count them on your fingers. RH Alexander, Mayor McLean, Oppenheimer, and John McDougall who brought this latest batch over, and all those other starched shirts in the CPR for hiring them yellow slaves in the first place. Why do you think they're swarming over here if not for those Whitemen? But both a these sides get your protection.

So long's they obey the law.

If they do, is how they obey the law worth protecting, while what these boys do with this sport hurts nobody and deceives nobody? Is my question to you.

They want to turn our country into more a their big Chinaman's dynasty, said the po-lice, targeting his main interest from among all that Clough had said and discussing that. They aren't aboot to be our slaves.

Might as well be.

We'll be their slaves soon if we don't watch out, said the po-lice. You can't assimilate them. Believe me, I tried.

After everyone was long gone, the cowboy RD Pitt and his colleagues in the Knights of Labour returned to the scene of
the man game. Here was an opportunity to pay a visit to this new pestilent shantytown with little expectation of po-lice intervention. Pitt and five others, his usual entourage of halitosical greybeards with starched collars, with the usual speeches and rants and logorrhea about the rights of the peasant, outweighed the twenty Chinamen, shanties included. They surrounded and intimidated them. They hectored them in English about the unsanitary conditions of the shanties. They uprooted canisters of waste and slapped the Chinamen in the chests for all the mess. They tore the door flaps off the shacklets and kicked over soup pots, cut the laundry lines. The Chinamen tried to keep at a distance, protecting the feeble. They were real peasants, real starving peasants. Back home in Sze-Yap it was much worse than this. China was death, cold death. Escape from China was the only solution. And any inhumane treatment could not be worse than the only foreseeable fate back home. While China imported Vancouver's lumber, Vancouver imported China's people. This was easy to see, and not, in RD Pitt's estimation, a fair trade.

We can't allow you, said Pitt. Mongols on our beaches, said Pitt. You kumtuks? Get out a here. Get.

No one else was around. It was just the Knights of Labour and the Chinamen, and there seemed to be no other intelligent choice for the Chinamen but to suffer one deep indignity so as to avoid a more permanently disabling outcome. They chose to accept a living fate, and peaceably followed their escorts to the ferry dock and waited with them in chilly silence to be taken back to Vancouver Island. Bamboo bindles across their shoulders were weighed down by heavy sacks tied to each end. Each Chinaman was loaded up with his portion of the basics. That one boulder of the spine at the base of the neck was stretched against their skin while their chins were pressed to their chests. Pigtails were about to fall out of fashion among John Chinamen. They barely spoke. The Whitemen continued to insult them as they brought up the rear, lashing belts at the slower ones. They moved in bursts of running followed by
unhesitating steps followed by swift queues of Chinamen heel-to-toe down the gutter. They were barked at if they talked in their own language.

No slave's eating my bread, taking chickamin out a
my
pocket, hollered RD Pitt. They wished the Chinamen off with good riddances, waved their hats at the ferryload destined for Victoria, with sounds of great cheer that echoed over the waters of their half-mooned evening departure. The celebration marched back into town for rounds of bragging at the Sunnyside, from where the news travelled fast: the Knights of Labour had taken matters into their own hands.

Furry, who was present in the Sunnyside along with the rest of his famed crew, stood from his seat, came walking across the bar. At every step he caught the eye of another drinker, until by the time he got to RD Pitt's table most of the men were watching him with half their attention. The orange-pulsing candlelight chandeliers reflected abstractedly in the mirrored blackness of the windowpanes. Smoke hung purplish throughout the room. Furry stood above Pitt's group and put out his hand to shake theirs. He said: Good work, brothers.

Today the Knights a Labour shipped a whole fresh batch a Chinamen off our shores. Let me tell you, we're not finished till every Chinaman's gone. To celebrate this historic occasion, Pitt said, addressing Joe Fortes behind the counter, how's aboot a round a drinks for the entire Sunnyside?

And no one pretended he wasn't listening. The roars of approval rang across the room.

THIRTEEN

All that matters is what you said, not what you meant.

–
MICHAEL IGNATIEFF

Where you going? No, not now, are you crazy? I don't know your excuses, Litz. You can't go. I can't take care Pisk alone. Why go now? Please wait. I need you. He need help. Look his feet, terrible. Wa, she cried.

If I don't get us some more wood the stove's going to go out. We need the …

Please, no. I can't be alone.

Let him go, Pisk said to Litz's wife. He was lying in bed twisting feverishly, red swollen eyes and waxy skin dripping with milky sweat, a beard lathered in days of dry soapy perspiration. His feet were loaves of bandage.

Should I bring back the doc? Litz asked his partner.

No, said Pisk, pausing to inhale wheezily, so that Litz couldn't be certain Pisk knew what he was talking about. Finally he got enough oxygen into his shivering frame. I don't want to see that damn doctor again so long's I live.

You promise to take me to my sister, cried Mrs. Litz. You keep me here with Pisk. I don't know what you do.

He scratched at his greasy hair under his hat, brushed the dirt from his beard, and left the shack.

Pisk's feet were slathered in fresh aloe and rebandaged twice daily. When Litz's wife unravelled the gauze now to get a good look, they saw that one foot was still the colour of salmon meat. The other was a lump of bleeding coal. The toes were gone. The headache was getting worse; the shriek of angels between his ears, it was almost time to meet them.

To think he was once a boy who liked to throw snowballs into the frosty Okanagan Lake and go home to watch his mother do the mending while his grandfather kept himself occupied. Gramps never smoked a pipe like most men his age, rocking in a chair. Instead he rolled tobacco and played guitar, hummed and tapped his foot to keep himself company. When Pisk grew up, which was fast, he was more of a cigarette man, too. What a short childhood it was, a day or two, then his gramps had to take a job and died doing it, and his mother was older by the minute, and before he could bat his eyelids he was out working, not a moment of rest to look back on it all until now.

Wa, wa, Pisk, why you cry? Mrs. Litz said. No, no, no cry, Pisk. Me promise, me save you, no worry. All good. No worry, please, Pisk. Me hold you. Me hold you. Hold me, Pisk. Please, no cry, no cry. Hold me, Pisk. Wa, is terrible, and Litz gone. Why he go? You answer why Litz go? Face, what happen? Why feet this way? What happen?

She asked if they could meet at the hollow tree near the Whoi-Whoi village. From their hideout, Litz had a long way to portage. Two miles at least, he thought, with at least two long walks. There were plenty of creeks where you could travel quite a distance before needing to cross land. Still, he expected the trip would take him the better part of an hour at the very least.

With the canoe over his head, he stepped tracelessly over the forest floor. His concentration was solidly on Molly, on her radiant beauty most especially. He made his way down the course of old streams, the sweat of emotion already upon his skin. A dread trembling overwhelmed him, and feeling paler than slush, he almost suffocated in the sudden avalanche of madness. The hollow tree was big enough to hide him completely from view; no one, not even an animal happening to traipse by, would detect his presence. Raindrops pattered
around him on the ground inside the trunk; its bark, long deceased, had turned an ashen grey, and wrought as the skin of Moses, its massive wrinkles buckled and bent open to form a mouth. He was cold, and scared to feel unloved. Scared to go another day without love. His wife, he knew, had turned on him. Every night as he slept he could feel her beside him, her hate pressing down on him like shovelfuls of burning earth.

Molly entered the hollow. She looked at him seriously, and said: How is he? Do you think he'll recover?

Oh, sure. Guy'll probably grow himself a whole other set a toes.

She looked better to hear this news, so, hoping to weaken her, he continued: The right foot's a bloody mess. And the left foot's all black and flaky. He'll be okay though. But, Molly—

I'm so relieved, she said. You don't realize how worried I was all this time. Oh, and you won't believe what I saw today down by the shanties—

He tried to kiss her. She flinched, he moved closer, she raised her arms to fend him off, and he held her in a form of capture that was also an embrace. She was young enough to be thin and not wasting away, light on her feet and a rigorous squirmer. Please, she said. Sweet Litz, you're feeling emotions.

What a you mean? He let her go. She flattened the creases at her hips.

What I said. It's emotions. It's been a difficult month for all a us.

Well, said Litz angrily. I can't stay long.

It seemed to upset her that time was brief. I know that, she said, and chewed her wetted lip. Don't tell me aboot the rigours a time.

I loves her, Litz thought, but she's married to the paralyzed bookkeeper, so.

Come on, cheer up, she said, and pushed him on the shoulder. He laughed and recovered his footing, scratched his neck and pretended to brush away his foolish bloody desires. She laughed, too, as if the matter were concluded, while he searched in vain for the right words to stop his heart's wild
hammers. He stared at his own footprints on the ground. Didn't she realize? Standing beside her, rapt at her sight, he felt so high he was a peer to God. He seemed the happiest man, but inside he was aflame. For all the pleasure she took in her own gently laughing voice, he was even more blissed to hear that sweetness.