The Man Game (8 page)

Yes, the injured.

Yes
, he snapped, yes, the
in
jured. A lot a them
my
men.

Well, she kissed him once on the cheek. This can't end here, she said, and dabbed her finger in the gummy crud in the corners of the tin to get any extra that she could into her mouth. It can't end here, she said.

RED
& ROSY'S GENERAL STORE IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS AGAIN SINCE GREAT FIRE
. In the months after the Fire, Vancouver subsisted almost entirely on the generosity of Women's Temperance Leagues in New Westminster, Victoria, and Nanaimo for the necessities of life, food, water, clothes, and carpenters. Only recently were the stores beginning to reopen.

It was September, and Molly, a young bride with plenty of energy, ideas, and necessities, had already begun to show signs of impatience. She wanted to go in to town and visit the stores. Sammy made her promise to be careful, and she said she would, so there was no other choice but to let her go. After all, it was only Red & Rosy's, what trouble could she come across there? Sammy preferred to stay at home. The incapacitant was not prepared for an outing. He preferred to focus on his work for the mill.

There was no accounting for the surds of love, thought Sammy Erwagen. How could any man tally a woman? There was no counting—if she wanted, a woman might have a dozen fingers on each hand, and all of them proactively nimble. And if he wanted, a man might have the presence of two minds when the time comes to love.

But the moment she left, a sudden wave of horror hit him, in which the stony surface of his thoughts fell away to reveal the raw, terrible murk below. The day of the accident appeared before his eyes as though it was happening all over again. En route through Alberta again, train-travelling through fields of wheat, eager to see their new home, darting off in the afternoon for lovemaking sessions in their private cabin. Yes, lovemaking. And with boundless joy in each other's limbs, in the smell and taste of each other. In the explosions
of each other. This newly married couple, primal numbers ajar of each other, on a train for two more days before they'd arrive in Vancouver. What a luxury to spend so long locomotively, pushing into the future. Yes, thought Sammy, a train was indeed a love machine.

Later, while she sponged, he sat in the half-full restaurant cabin milking a cup of tea, watched scenery squiggle by at the pace of a rabbit run, and behaved as best he could like a gentleman who wasn't elated. He stirred the teabag around in his single-serving pot.

Less than two days to go before Vancouver. He was too impatient to stay in his seat. He passed from car to car until he was back with his wife: I'm madly in love with you, he reiterated.

And here we are on a train, she responded curiously.

Yes, he said, here we are on a train.

Another quaint pause. A kiss. They glanced out the window of their berth and marvelled together at late-afternoon Alberta. The mountains painted pink. Molly and Sammy looked at this light and these Albertan fields spread under it and refell in love. He kissed her on the forehead and then twice on her neck. That feels like warm ice, she said, and you smell so wonderful. Keep doing that, she said. He kissed her twice more on her neck and once on her cheek.

Sammy said: I really would like to meet the conductor. I'm so curious as to what kind of man he is.

Well, why don't we? she said.

And yes, he thought, why don't we? It was as easy as that.

The engine car was a steel belly full of nocks and plugs and pegs and pedals the conductor occasionally luxated or uncorked or tightened. The conductor was grease-stained, thick-skinned, and wiry, and his eyes were as white as chalk.

Sometimes I do imagine I'm inside some kind a big ugly demon, said the conductor. I like to think aboot myself as a tiny angel cleaning the grit from inside a devil, sticking my fingers in his tubes, eh. But my job's never done. The devil keeps on making grit.

What eloquence, Sammy said, nodding to his wife.

She scolded him in coded gestures for his condescension.

I got a lot a time to read, said the conductor.

Is that so? Molly asked. What do you read?

What? said the conductor, wincing over the engine's screams and hisses as the train rounded a corner. Oh, well,
screed
mostly, he said in answer to her question.

Hm, said Molly.

You know, I can stop the train any time I want, he said. I'm ahead a schedule. They made them times up back when nobody knowed how to ride the Rockies.

Look how close the trees come to the rails, said Sammy.

Heck, he said. See how close the trees come? You want to ride the cowcatcher?
Then
you'll see how close they darn well do. Don't worry, it's safe. It's a big enough apron there for you to stand on. The Queen a England rode on it, why shouldn't you? It won't fit two, actually, safely I mean, but you could ride it one at a time.

How delightful, said Molly.

Steady now, said the conductor as he manoeuvred the train to a halt.

When Molly was seated properly atop the cowcatcher the train urged forward again with her there in front as its beacon. Molly, the sharp point of this megaton conveyance.

Wee, she cried.

Inside the engine, the conductor faced Sammy with one eye raised irretrievably, and said: Your wife?

Yes? said Sammy.

Finest lady I seen.

Sammy paused to think. He scratched his Adam's apple (oh, to have itches again). Another pause. Separated by blinks. Is that right? Sammy finally decided was the thing to say.

A magnificent woman.

I'll make sure to tell her you said so.

No, no, said the conductor. You mustn't. A lady goes too vain when she hears a man's compliments. Keep it a secret between yourself and I.

Indeed I will then.

Two miles on it was Sammy's turn. Oh, Sammy, she said as she hopped off the cowcatcher and pet flat her hairstyle, now dishevelled from the wind, it's the most wonderful feeling ever. They embraced on the gravel embankment overlooking the Rockies. I'm so excited for you to try it.

I am too, he said.

Take off your hat, she said, and lifted his bowler from his head. The wind might blow it away.

He leaned in for a kiss and whispered: Mind the conductor, will you? He seems to have a bit a interest in you.

She grinned: Ah-ha, a gentleman admirer?

Indeed, he said, smiling. But maybe do that collar button up.

She rolled her eyes, pecked him on the chin, and danced away back to the conductor, leaving him there on the cowcatcher.

Sammy was more uneasy with the situation than he preferred to admit. But as the engine hissed to a start and the train rolled forward with the ground only inches from Sammy's shoes, every other thought simply left his mind. He forgot all about the conductor. The silly thrill of riding like this swept away his concerns. Watching the ground scroll along below his feet and vanish ever faster under the train behind him. He held fast to the bars in a fairly cowardly grip, but who would criticize him for that? The train jostled onward in its wiggle of segments. Sammy's feet were wedged between the iron bars extending up behind his back. He was excited by the approach of a turn in the rails, shrouded by an arboreal hood of deciduous leaves almost dark green enough to feel blue. Beyond the graceful bend, the trees on either side of the tracks gave way to immense hacked walls of granite.

Are you having fun oot there? he heard his wife say.

It's fantastic, he replied. It's so fantastic.

Quartz and black crisps of mica tinselled in his eyes as the sun beamed against the rockface. How pretty were the ingredients of a mountain, he thought, the likes of which we
never really knew before dynamite. These profound beginnings of earth were now available to the naked eye after so many eons of silence and invisibility and more silence. If he could lean out and touch the rock he'd be touching time itself, the igneous shadow of God.

You want to get off? called out the conductor.

Oh, cried out Sammy, I want to go through the tunnel up ahead. Can I go through the tunnel?

I suppose you can, said the conductor. After that then, I'll stop the train.

This will really be something, he told himself, thrilled by the oncoming blackness of the tunnel. Holy smoke, he said.

The mountain the train was about to slip through extended beyond view, its peak somewhere high and inside clouds. The many slopes were all thick with trees. It was a mountain made of other mountains. He wished he saw however briefly the movement of wildlife, but couldn't.

He was an inch off the ground with vertigo. He swooned. The soles of his feet tingled fiercely.

He was being pushed by the powerful force of the locomotive through a door into darkness.

The wind scooped across his face. The lamp atop the engine car shone against the rockwall and along the silvered lips of the track in front of him. He would go around the dark bend. The exit was only suggested by blueless sunlight on the wall around a curve.

He was really in love, finally, and for the rest of his life.

Arms outraised, like a winged man, he cried out for his love, Molly: I love you, I love you, I love you.

And she returned the call with one of her own. You fool, she said. I love you, too.

He lost his balance. With frantic agility he avoided plunging straight forward onto the tracks where the train would have instantly crushed him. Instead he reeled sideways and managed to bounce off the cowcatcher and into the narrow gutter between the train and the wall. The floor was all rock, big and small, sharp and blunt—dynamite debris.

He came to in the arms of his wife, looking up at her wet face. The train was well on its way again. Sammy had lost six hours unconscious; the conductor had lost one and a half to the emergency, and was behind schedule now and furious at himself.

He was completely paralyzed below the neck. Not only paralyzed, he'd lost all feeling. The flesh below his chin was nothing more than a sack his head was tied to. For many hours he lay there under the close supervision of his wife, who, despite her youth, remained calm and optimistic. He tried to make the most out of his last hours on earth. If he couldn't move, if not even a muscle would respond, then at least he would taste what he could, listen with all his strength, and try not to weep. One can't waste one's last precious hours blinded by tears. He looked out the window at whatever useless acre of nature the train passed through, and honestly figured he might as well die now. Why wait. What was that that passed by the window? He was still jarred whenever he thought to raise an arm or bend a knee, to get up or change his view, and nothing happened, nothing moved. He thought he was fated to die in Alberta.

Among the cabin and crew and the good Christian travellers aboard the train, everyone prayed anxiously for Sammy to recover. They sat on their stained maple benches, wobbling in unison as the country rolled under them on the tracks hammered in by Chinamen, praying into their hats for the speedy recovery of their dear crippled son,
poor
thing.

FURRY & DAGGETT'S LOGGING CONCERN REQUIRES ABLE MEN; BUCKERS, SWAMPERS, AXEMEN ∼
$1 P/D
…

Daggett read his own sign, tore it off the maple tree, and chucked it aside. Positions filled. Now that Litz and Pisk were gone, Furry & Daggett remained the only major company of lumberjacks in town. Together they might employ fifty men at a stretch. All year round they employed four of the strongest
men in the area. These folks were probably drinking, and that's where Furry & Daggett wanted to be.

Furry stood on the shaded street corner in the same clothes he'd stood in for the last five months. His dungarees were tattered and personally patched and mended to a point where perhaps nothing of the original denims remained. Same went for his shirts and plaid jacket. He stank like spoiled meat. He was dirty, covered in biting lice, and tired. Every muscle was stiff and nothing but drinking and whoring was going to ease his temper. And that was a goddamn fucking fact. He stared down passersby while Daggett leaned against the alley wall and pissed into a greasy crumple of yesterday's
Daily Advertiser
used a second time as sausage wrap and discarded, where it now dissolved under the moonshine pressure of Daggett's noontime stream. He raised his head to the sky for the inspiration to clinch another jetting sprinkle on the news.