The Man Game (71 page)

Now you're with Litz and Pisk, too, is that it? said Campbell.

Corr-ect, said Moe Dee.

Well, fuck a duck, said Daggett. You cheats.

You really this afraid a me, Litz? said Campbell.

If you're so keen to play Litz, said Moe Dee, why you so afraid to play me?

Didn't say that, said Campbell. Did I look fearful a your useless knees when I gave you that lesson a week ago?

No need for me to introduce Moe Dee, said Litz to the crowd, you already know he plays the man game for us. He's our second.

A real man don't fake his injury so as to make a guy compete versus a bohunk, said Campbell, referring to Pisk.

I could beat you if I were legless, said Pisk in his formidable voice, king of the bohunks. A great rallying cheer proved he was still known as the first man of the man game.

Don't want to waste my talents on this bohunk, said Campbell.

I'm no bohunk, said Moe Dee. Enough talk, let's settle a score.

Make your bets, cried Clough.

The neurotic surds of wagering began, grew fierce, as passionate as first love, then more tense as time elapsed, the rush of last-moment bets skewing everything until the bookies closed the tables with the most odds on Campbell for a change. Doubtless the results shocked and pleased those men who believed they knew better than to bet on Campbell. In their minds what the results really showed was how many here today had never seen a game.

The competitors shook hands.

Let's settle this, shouted Campbell, who darted in a leftright zigzag meant to confuse Dee. His flesh remained taut at all angles. Not a ripple of flab on his entire body when he ran. Within spitting distance, he assumed the gestures to begin a private milonga, and that's when Dee clipped him in the mouth with his elbow. One of those famous slabs. Came out of nowhere and knocked him off his feet. Campbell wailed and threw his hands up in the air, lost his balance, and slammed to the ground, nursing his face
{see
fig. 16.5
}
.

FIGURE 16.5
The Bookend

Calabi's commentary: Interrupts any thought, kills any plans. Your opponent expects more from you but reaches a dead stop.

Do that again, Moe Dee said as he brushed his elbow off.

Ten Commandments, someone in the crowd yalped, sounding well and sloshed.

From then on Campbell got nowhere with acrobatics. The flexible impressiveness of his style had the audience on his side, at least in their sympathy if not their bets. He was putting so much into every single gesture he made. Whatever was said about the man, it's agreed among Ken, Silas, and Cedric that Campbell introduced big style to the game. The philosophy behind Campbell's approach was that the man game, at its root, was a solo sport; that sparring was pretext and individual style was its most important element. Even within Furry & Daggett's crew, his ostentation was not always tolerated. Eventually though, swagger would become the norm. Men who favoured Campbell in every match, who were loyal to his style, believed he was directly responsible for the separate strain of man game that appeared around the turn of the twentieth century. In this form, a player did not score a point by forcing his opponent through a move. Instead, a series of face-offs, solo moves where players repeat and advance each other's tricks, moves, styles, and intimidations, constituted the basis of competition. This Campbellian form was derided by traditionalists, but most players around that time were capable of both. Meanwhile, on that day back in February 1887, Dee just elbowed Campbell in the face or straight cold-cocked him every time he built up some momentum. The audience was easily seduced by Campbell's baroque movements and sheer flexibility, but Dee was nonplussed. His idea of a man game was a lot closer to the brawls he got into on a regular basis but with a stronger veneer of respectability, the chance for quick money, and a definite sense of personal glory that he never experienced after a night of brawls. If there'd been a rule against shit-kicking Campbell he probably wouldn't have been naked there on that day in front of so many fools. He liked the man game because it forced him to invent new ways to hurt someone. So when Campbell thought he'd finally succeeded in pulling Dee through a running finish on a double-fast Spanish Layover but ended up losing his footing and going assback on the ground instead, Dee stood up and stepped on his belly, heel first,
to grind in the fact that Moe Dee was a serious contender
{see
fig. 16.6
}
.

Oof, said Campbell, losing five-one in as many minutes. Easy come, easy go.

The audience was so big and so loud that RH was by this point satisfied that he'd properly fomented the makings of a riot that required serious help—unaware still of the real threat a few blocks south—, so he took his leave of the mill store's front porch, where he stood side by side with his nearly deported ex-employee Pisk, and proceeded back into his office where he wired the po-lice in Victoria.

An anarchist uprising? cabled back the Victoria po-lice.

Correct, cabled RH.

Reckon?

Thousands.

Minutes later, RH received a cable that the Victoria po-lice would arrive on the next ferry.

So it was arranged. RH checked his visage in the mirror, a grand, fulminating white brow over glacially blue eyes, omnipotent moustache, stone for a jaw, corded neck. Age had not been kind. His deportment in check, he returned to the street and watched the man games awhile longer before heading to the Carter House to reserve enough rooms for Victoria's entire force.

Now where's Alexander off to? said Sammy, still watching from above.

Drum up more publicity for my work, assuredly, said his wife, dragging on her third Stars & Stripes of the hour.

He laughed; she was probably right. But was she on edge?

FIGURE 16.6
The Point and Click, early sketch

What rattling was she hoping to quell by her many cigarettes? He did not ask, regretting it later. For isn't acknowledgment half the solution?

Moe Dee took Campbell five-one, a huge turnaround from his spectacular loss a week ago. Then he moved on to Boyd. Boyd got two points on him early and then Dee took the next three. In his second point, part stranglehold, Moe Dee made Boyd faint straight away. When Boyd awoke, his skin was lavender. There was blood in his nose. He lost five-two. Then Dee took down Smith five-three. Moe Dee was flabbergasting everyone.

How's he learned to do all this? said a fellow at the Bar Rústico.

Must be a natural, said Miguel, with a crick in his neck that made washing cups a chore, still smarting from the memory of his turn as executioner.

Dee's final move of the night was to grab and twist one of Smith's pectorals with enough strength to actually flip his opponent off his feet, send him spinning through the air to land doubled over in pain. Moves like these were quickly making Dee the most loved and feared character in the man game
{see
fig. 16.7
}
.

FIGURE 16.7
The Totoosh Twister

Calabi's commentary: A variation on the Point and Click that prefers a clench to a punch. A move like this turns opponents into enemies.

A lot of bettors made their disappointment in Furry & Daggett's team known. That's what you get, believed Vancouver men, when you trust a one-armed coach. One after the other Dee felled their crew. Daggett cursed every chance he got. His partner Furry punched a horse to the ground when he saw Boyd lose.

What's the holdup, Clough? cried those among the crowd who felt swindled and snookered. Whatever the final result, Dee was the big winner of the night. Having dealt with three men, he stood to pocket in the neighbourhood of a hundred dollars.

By the time Meier came out of his clothes and onto the pitch, Dee must have been tired. A ghastly sight was Meier, whose loyalty to his fellows at this moment was truly murderous. With teeth and fists held tight as caskets he seethed and hissed at Dee in his fury, standing in his own shadow, ominously, as if he carried a pestilent aura.

Dee swallowed his acid reflux.

Shaking hands, Dee got his start the old-fashioned way, turning his body right around and backflipping onto Meier's shoulders, taking the initiative for a Gone Fishin
{see
fig. 16.8
}
, at which point, contrary to tendency, Meier ran straight forward (not falling back) and tossed Dee into the crowd, who launched him back into the circle where Meier decked him so hard across the face that Dee completed a three-sixty whirling through the air, his fall broken by Meier's knee catching him on his stomach,
winding him so completely that his grovelling around on the dirt looked like death throes.

FIGURE
16.8
Gone Fishin, alternative sketch;
the ascent before the leap

Meier received the point, and the move was later named Knuckles on the Bar {no illustration yet found}.

At the time, Dee argued that because no one had ever done it before it couldn't be a move, but Pisk said it was good, awarded Meier the point, and aimed to try that one himself sometime.

Meier was unlikely to be in good shape for his next fight, against Litz. Dee and Meier were two serious bruisers, and both were whipped top to bottom by the time it was over. Even still, Meier beat Dee by only one point using a Somersaulting Carpenter.