The Man Game (63 page)

No, Toronto shook his head, smiling. In fact, he had to be off, he had to go. He called out goodbye to Fortes, and Fortes stood with his fists on his hips, keeping his balance in the tide, and bid Toronto a perplexed goodbye.

You just gonna leave me out here alone? Come on, a swim be good for ever one.

Toronto was deep in the trees again. The jungle of Indian skookum. He knew it well. His path turned north at a mammoth red cyprus tree uprooted many years ago by shifting sand. From the darkened base where a cavernous muck formed inside the trunk and its tangled root system spoked out in every direction there were already two strong new saplings four feet high, green as can be and aimed for the sky. One of Toronto's relatives once told him that when an old tree falls, Salish go look for petrified elk dung underneath its tentaculate roots. This old tree's roots were cinder black, sashed with bright moss. The elk were no myth. No Whitemans ever saw elk, but Indians had lived here for three thousand years and still occasionally unearthed petrified elk antlers, even centuries after they'd been hunted to extinction.

He walked through the sloping dark trails towards the squatters town near Lost Lagoon where Clough lived. He'd never been to Clough's place before, so it was going to take him a moment to locate the right lean-to. He picked his way through, eyeing the driftwood abodes with sheet metal roofs and the great variety of indigent who pimpled this landscape. Sore faces, dug deep with scars and troubles, great sacks full of defeat slung below their eyes. Men sat on flipped-over buckets and smoked pipes and watched Toronto, slow-cooking skewers of grey squirrel over the smoking coals of a campfire. Hooch bottles were strewn everywhere.

Got any chickamin? begged one guy, too drowsy to even raise his hand.

Naw, sir, said Toronto. He knew he'd figure out where Clough lived if he followed the smell of all the animals.
Clough's makeshift poundkeep. The manure smell. Mildewed oat smell. The mutts barking. Clough's shack was the only one that had a fence around it. He slipped, muddied his hands, got up, studied and sniffed, wiped the mud-only grub on his legs, and when he came to knock on the door to Clough's shack, he cleaned them one last time.

Inside Clough's hut they heard Toronto's tentative rap and everyone turned their head to the door to look, except for Molly, who kept her eyes on Furry, and Furry, who kept his eyes on Molly.

Daggett, Clough, Campbell, Smith, Boyd, and Meier stared at the door until Daggett barked: Well, don't just stand agape—somebody answer it.

Too early? asked Toronto when he stepped inside.

No, right on time, Molly said, and rose from her seat. Furry and Daggett and then Clough rose from their seats, each following Furry's lead and putting on airs. Each and every man tipped his hat in respect for her. She was too pretty. None of them had spoken from their proper mouths. In the presence of a real lady, they'd been reduced to teary-eyed stupefied Duh.

She said: We have a deal?

Furry smiled. One brown tooth showed. He said: Yeah, I guess we do.

Why, just listen here, Mrs. Erwagen, said Clough. If nobody else's going to speak from the gut right now, then let me be the first to spleen a little. I got more than competition on the line here. All these men, their respectability among their fellows. You put it all in danger with your plans. You know that don't you? Comprehend one thing, Mrs. Erwagen. These men play along because we kumtuks what's to benefit. Long run, short run. We see opportunity. So don't expect we just lay down and let you rub our bellies like dogs. When it comes to the man game, we intend to never get beat. So this better not be some trick.

Isn't, said Molly. How could it be? We'll see you Sunday, then.

Sunday, said Furry.

Toronto was as keen to know what she'd said to Furry & Daggett as she was to know what happened to him in the longhouse. He tried with body language, but she remained stoic and introspective and didn't notice his head-bobbing, just as he had consciously ignored her head-bobbing after the longhouse. They retrieved the canoe and began the portage home along Coal Harbour. He was in the back using his paddle to steer while she thrust with great strength up at the front, cutting the waves and stirring up phosphorescent algae below. Three in the afternoon, the clouds so thick it was nighttime already. He faced her back, within the wind of her berry scent.

Soon she said: Sammy told me aboot your family problems. Aboot your death … had I known, Toronto … this, we could a solved this so simply and easily long ago. You see that I'm quite resourceful. I only wish you felt more trust. Toronto, there is so much a the world, a huge incalculably vast world, and yet this Earth is nothing but a speck in the infinite. You're reunited with your family. In the eyes a your people, you are reborn.

Yes, ma'am, said Toronto as he paddled.

Does it feel like so, like a rebirth?

Mrs. Erwagen, yes, ma'am.

Yes, I can feel you have a much stronger presence behind me right now even as I paddle. Yes, I almost don't need to turn around to see you. I
can
see you. Look, your face is the reflection a the moon on the water. Toronto, it may not seem as though I think aboot you, but I am beside myself to know how much you suffered in my presence. And without my full knowledge. And to deliver you back to your world, your soul. Oh, Toronto. How does it feel?

No way I can explain how.

Toronto, I simply must know, you simply must tell me what made you all laugh so much in the longhouse.

She approached the question with her usual grace and sensitivity. The waves lapping at the birchbark sides, the masculine freshness of the night air, the shattered clusters of stars above them, and her back to him. She was right to say she didn't need to face him to see him. His soul
was
back. The ache and wonder and colour of a soul in all its moods. In the rhythm they shared paddling the canoe he felt comfortable enough to explain one final humiliation on his path to recovery, on his path to what amounted to a Snauq's rebirth.

Toronto explained to her with his halting tongue how inside the longhouse Chief Chip had recited an old ghost story aboot the Snauq. The story was about how a Snauq boy who lived many generations ago died tragically. When the men went to hunt one morning at dawn for rabbits, the boy followed his father and his uncles into the woods, hoping to prove that he was as good a hunter as his father. The young boy crept soundlessly under the arms of the slouching ferns to wait for his prey. His father crouched with a spear in a similar position hidden in a great thicket of moist foliage. In the same instant his father heard a rabbit leap into the green grass clearing, his son was just pouncing to surprise the soft light creature as well, and as the rabbit's ears pricked up and the frightened thing scuttled off, his father stabbed the boy clear through his ribs, fixing his chest to the ground. Father and son looked at each other with terrible shock and remorse. He held on to his father's spear bored through him with bloodied hands. Everything in his heart quickly soaked the earth under his father's feet. Later, the son's body was wrapped in ten of his father's blankets and laid on the island of smamchuze out of reach of night's wolves. At the first break of dawn after the boy was laid to rest, the father was awoken from a fitful, grieving sleep by a noise he recognized only too well. He was in his bed along with the others in the longhouse, and there was the sound of the embers crackling in the firepit, but this was different, this sound was much
closer to his bed. And he distinctly heard what sounded like the breaking of plant stems and kindling. The exact noises he heard before he drove the spear into his son's back. And then, before his eyes, he saw his son. His son was standing in front of him. My son, he cried. You've come back. He reached out his arm to touch his son's chest, which had begun to bleed. My son, he said, and there no was time for the man to react except in horror, as he saw his touch once again transform his son into a gruesome, bruised shadow. Its formless shape dropped over him, baring its slobbering yellow teeth, and strangled the father to death in his bed.

Then, said Toronto, Indian man behind me grip his fingers around my neck. Strangle me.

Strangle
you
? said Molly.

I tried scream, said Toronto, but, Chief said, man's grip impossible. Ghost who talk to Snauq, we kill one more time.

Toronto's face had turned purple then green, his toes had started to twitch. His eyes gushed tears. His gums bled. His tongue fattened and dried. When finally the fingers let go of his neck, Toronto fell to the ground gasping and huffing dust. Then the Chief asked Toronto to show him the problem, and in a daze he proceeded to lower his britches and show the Chief the danglers in front of the community. At first only the Chief laughed, then everyone joined in. Toronto was lying on his stomach on the dirt floor of the longhouse with his pants around his ankles.

Is that how you died, too? said Molly. Were you killed by a hunter?

No, said Toronto. I killed by coho.

A salmon?

Brother schwack me over face with dead coho. Fall my head on rock, eh. Died that way. Waked up later in blankets up a tree, way out on island. I climbed down. When family sees me, Snauqs shrink away. Call me ghost. To Snauq, I was ghost. A ghost talks to Snauq must be killed one more time.

We three are all secretly ghosts, said Molly. Me, you, and Sammy. Perhaps Sammy most a all, eh, wouldn't you agree.

Yes, ma'am, said Toronto.

They were almost home. They docked the canoe and came up the shore, walking down the street towards their house, their footfalls illuminated by flickering gaslamps all along the way.

Exiled, said Molly, and especially my husband. As they took the steps to the verandah, she reached over to touch Toronto.

He still felt her hand on his forehead, where she petted him with great sympathy there on the verandah. And as he instinctively leaned towards her, she embraced him, smoothed his hair, and whispered: Oh, I love you so, Toronto. I trust you'll continue to stay with us? We'd be heartbroken if you left us now.

And he said this was where he belonged.

You're too late, said Daggett. He hadn't even changed positions. He was still seated in the same chair as when Molly had come to visit an hour ago. Most of his crew were outside smoking and practising with Clough. Daggett didn't even properly look at RD Pitt; he was the kind of guy who was hard to look at. The way the cowboy dressed, talked, walked, and thought was all wrong, and to look at it straight would be like a concession. We just set up a man game for that very day, Daggett said, and thumped his fist gently on the table like a gavel.

A man game? Why mess with that? I thought you
hated
Litz and Pisk.

We sure as hell do.

Then why have truck for their fools' parade? It's a damn shame, too. We could use your strength to rid this city a the Yellow Peril. Besides, you owe me a favour.

What's that?

Alls I done for the labour movement in this town? You'd be out a job if t'weren't for me. I expected you all at this meeting, goddammit, show this town is
unified
behind the goal.