The Man Game (11 page)

Furry and Daggett sat in the corner where they always sat, looking brutal.

One thing I like since that damn Fire, said Daggett, is that I don't have to put up with looking across the Sunnyside at them ugly faces, Litz and Pisk.

I'll toast to that, said Furry. Furry rarely needed to say much more. His partner did the talking. Furry simply stood his ground, immutable minotaur at the centre of this forest labyrinth.

Furry & Daggett's Logging Concern toasted along with their bosses. Meier, Boyd, Smith, and Campbell, heavy drinkers, each a stumbling god, each with a unique beard and hairstyle.

Near the entrance, a logger named Moe Dee was being interviewed by a green boss over tall shots of whisky, and Dee finally came out and said: You want to drive that schooner, well, that's your business, mister. You couldn't pay me enough to take that wasp's nest on open waters. I knowed that boat
before you did. I knowed the owner who had it way before you. I worked for him, eh? This is way before you even went and bought it. Back
then
it was a no good boat. Thing is made a spit, man. Are you crazy? Forget it. Your mistake, not mine.

The wee boss fell silent. He tapped his fingers on the table. It's a generous contract, Dee, he said.

Generous like shit. Should a spent your chickamin on a better boat. Nice to meet you.

Hey, now, what the?—aargh …

I got better business requiring my attention. Moe Dee bottomed up, rubbed his chin, took to his feet, stomach out, prattling to himself with gastronomic satisfaction, directing himself through the tablesful of muddy faces on his way to the commode. The door bounced on its hinges when he shut it, and though he wasn't drunk he rested his left arm on the facing wall as he stared down the hole in the floor to the sloshing waves below while his arcing piss-stream flew off unevenly in the wind, reaching the ocean in single drops.

He spat down the hole. Straightened up and went back to the bar.

Now tell me, Mr. Erwagen, bellowed Fortes from behind the bar. Towelling off wet tureens he asked, How is Mister
Alexander?

Why did he ask? Sammy wondered. Drawing all the attention to him. A bar full of men waited to hear his answer, say something anything from that mouth. He was dumbstruck. Sammy's face and ears burned. At full height he was six foot even, a shy and modest man, a cityman, a bookkeeper. Finally, gathering his wits, he called out to Fortes: Robust as ever.

Fortes shook his head, and, absently wiping the shining counter, said: Well, I see your boss Mister Alexander, hoo-ee, him and his wife be decked out head to toe in ee-na. That's right. Man, that's a stunny fur. We never seen fur so fine as Canada be having, not down in my islands. Put that against your skin. Canada is famous for een-a. Hats, long coats, shoe-tops. Look good on them both, I tell you. I like to get
me
some ee-na.

As would I, said Sammy amicably.

Mr. Alexander sure work
hard
, don't he?

Naturally. But then, who doesn't?

Ha ha. That's the truth. Who don't. So how in the Lord good graces he get so rich while I'm so broke-ass?

The men in the room started to repay attention to their own business now that they heard Sammy talk with a kind of banality they recognized. There were fewer and fewer sidelong glances at the spectacular oddity of the Erwagens. And guys pretty much gave up on catching a smile from the wife, or, barring that, a glimpse of her bosom. Molly was not seen to smile, and her stiff collar was fashionably high. In public she was not a smiler, yet with nothing of her skin to see but her face, a smile was a man's only chance at seeing her intimate side. Demure. Seraphic. Men spoke of her smile on their own terms inside the solitude of their hearts.

She lifted his glass of beer to just below her bottom lip and like a kiss blew the froth off, then brought the mug to Sammy's face and let him take a sip of his pale ale.

The one-armed fellow in the corner booth with four glasses of beer in front of him in various states of undress rose from his bench and courageously made his way over to where the Erwagens sat. He smoothed down his nicotine-stained beard with a hand, and smiled a gold incisor.

He offered his hat over his buttons, and said with dusty grace: Pardon me. I just thought, why, I hope I'm not bothering no
doby
, but, I wanted to—why, I'd like to introdush myself. Clough's the name. I helped build your house you're living in.

How interesting to meet you, said Molly, not serving him the back of her hand to peck, though she tilted her head down so the brim of her straw hat covered the tender blued lids of her eyes as they shut respectfully.

Oh, you're welcome, stammered Clough, looking around to see who was looking at him. Why, once you get to know me, he said, I'm always glad to lend a hand.

Molly nodded.

Sammy gave him an expression.

Anywa
ys
, said Clough, who was used to being the worst cripple in a room and stood in front of his rival as stump-still as an old bollard. Clough wavered there in growing unease, a blink or two more of puttering indecision, speechless as Sammy gaped, and then, like clouds parting, Molly opened her buoyant lips to show the glinting tip of her pink tongue and the suggestion of the hollow of her throat. She said: Clough, would you mind terribly moving to the side?

Pardon?

It's only that—, she said, and pointed to the scene behind Clough's back.

Mr. Erwagen's jaw was still dropped.

What's this? said Clough, swinging around to see two figures partly silhouetted by the papery light through the door to the saloon, boots clomping across the hardwood, a waft of old sap off their clothes, hard to tell who it was. Clough put his hand to his eyes to shade the backlight.

The first man was Pisk. Acknowledging no one and keeping his eyes below his hatbrim, he found an empty table while the other—and it was Litz—stood in the doorway and scanned the faces around the bar, friends or foes. Namely, Daggett and Furry at the far end of the bar, whose jaws ground down tight.

They got an empty table underneath the cobwebby moose head that had eightballs in its eye sockets.

After collecting his first pints from Fortes at the bar, Pisk sat down at the table with Litz, swept an indelicate litter of breadcrumbs and beer driblets off the surface with his jacket sleeve, leaned back in the canewood chair, and took a deep breath.

First to shake their hands was Moe Dee.

Well I'll be damned if a bolt a lighting didn't just strike twice in the same place, said Clough. Where the hell you boys been hiding?

Pisk called out: Fortes, let's say a round for the house.

Fortes said: Good to set eyes on you, boys.

Same here.

Clough nudged his way through the busy bar, sat down on an empty stool at a poker game one table over and, facing the two exiles, said: Tell me one good reason not to torch you both.

Pisk said: I'd keep my eyes on the future if I was you, Clough.

What's that supposed to mean?

Means, who the fuck cares what you think?

Can't believe you all even got the sand to step in here, said Daggett, rubbing his thick beard, eyeing Pisk.

Why wouldn't we? said Pisk.

Litz raised his boots onto an empty chair, decidedly unworried, a man with a basic moustache and slow, philosophizing eyes, silently twitching his muttonchops. Litz was the kind of man who liked to take up two or three chairs.

After alls you done, you shouldn't be allowed to drink in New Westminster let alone Vancouver, said Daggett.

After all
we
done? Pisk looked to his partner. We didn't do nothing.

That so?

Pisk said: Damn right it's so. You got some fucking nerve. What you been up to this summer? I seen how clumsy you two old navvies are with a slash and burn. Might a been
you
.

You
burned this city down, Pisk, you. And you know it.

Come over here and say that again, you mink.

I come over there and you going to tell me different? Now Daggett smiled without pleasure, but didn't stand up yet. Nevertheless, conversation in the Sunnyside had levelled off. The argument between these rival woodsmen occupied everyone's attention. And even with no one else's talking to contend with, neither man had lowered his voice.

Daggett said: I could snap your arm in ten seconds.

How? With your halitosis? Pisk said calmly, leaning back to sit again but not yet sitting.

Ten seconds. I break your arm in ten seconds.

You can't break nobody's arm in ten seconds.

Ten seconds.

What you want me to do? said Pisk, Just stick it out and let you crack it across your whore-mother's knee?

A good round of laughter from the halfwits paying attention assured Pisk he had at least a couple of friends among the foes.

Joe Fortes leaned across the bar to demonstrate he was aware of what was escalating.

Sammy noted how far he was from the door, and how many tables now seemed to completely block any clear path to safety. It seemed undeniable that all these dirty slouching giants were moments from jumping to their feet to start a real brawl.

I'm sorry, dear, we should never have come—

She had her eyes on the men by the door. Remember those two? she asked her husband.

Who?

The ones getting all the attention, this Litz and Pisk.

Remember them from when?

We saw them fighting the day a the Fire, remember?

Oh, said Sammy.

You don't remember, do you?

No. It was quite a day.

When he looked at his wife, she seemed as delicate as a vase on the edge of a table. But he knew just how durable she was. A childhood in vaudeville and the Yiddish theatre had acquainted her with more than he cared to imagine, a mind and memory able to heal quickly after the sight of violence, a body that needed to stay limber and totally conscious in order to leap the fence or worm through a tunnel, all these frightful European burlesques, one look into her eyes and it was obvious to Sammy. Just from her unfazed reaction to the escalating hostility. She was more familiar with the signs than Sammy, who was raised on crème de menthe and saw the world through curtains and pane-glass windows. He knew nothing of how to survive. He knew only numbers. Even in her calmness, which no one but Sammy would mistake for anything but innocence, he could see that her fastidious movements, preparing her gloves, his necktie, their belongings, signalled danger, she wanted them to leave, she didn't like what she was seeing.

I'll fucking cut you down, said Daggett. I'll shiver your arm down, five pieces in ten blinks.

Enough already, said Pisk, and returned to his mug of beer, quarrel over.

Who here thinks I can break his arm in ten seconds?

Furry spoke up. Pisk, he said, arm wrestle my man Daggett here. We win, you go. We never see you again. That's the deal.

Who do you figure you are, eh? You're not my boss. I'm not giving my arm to this poltroon for nothing, said Pisk. We don't got to win back our right to live here.

Yeah, you do, said Furry.

Alls he wants to do is break it anyway.

No, said Daggett. No, okay. Let's arm wrestle.

You fat moose, I don't want to arm wrestle you. I don't even want to touch you.

From a seat along the wall beneath a framed Ontario plantation diorama, complete with hunched Negroes, a lowly chinless navvy perked up and said: A dollar on Pisk.

A fucking
do
llar on
Pisk?
roared Daggett. You call out a fucking dollar? I'm going to shove that silver so far up your rear you'll use it for a cap on your buck tooth, you rabbit-shit.

I say Pisk takes you, the navvy said.

Why do you pipe up? said Pisk. Who asked you?

Silence in a bar full of men—fifty-seven men, by Sammy's count—meant only trouble. Sweat trickled down Sammy's sideburns. It purled along the waxed maze of his ear, trickling towards the centre of his brain where it puddled and cooled. He looked at his wife. His amazed expression went unnoticed. Sammy had been trying for a while now to impart to his wife a sense of his anxiety. Watery eyes and a forced smile. But she didn't seem to notice. Finally he broke down and whispered: Dear, isn't it aboot time we be off?

She leaned over and gave him a faint peck on the cheek, whispered: Mustn't make a scene. I'm concerned if we move you … what if we interrupt them … it will break their concentration.

You prefer to stay, he said.

If you don't mind.

Live through everything only to die here, god.

Shhh, put your pity aside for the moment. Let us watch and learn.

Daggett came over to Pisk's side of the bar and sat down across from him, put his elbow on the table, his arm up. Wrestle, he said. Arm wrestle me. Do it.

Get out a my face.

Daggett faced the bar. Who's taking bets? I'll beat this mink fair and square.

You can trust me to hold the money, said a fat axeman named Bud Hoss.

I'll bet a dollar you take him, said local cowboy RD Pitt, holding his betting money in his hand. He was a plastered bachelor, a member of the Knights of Labour. Pitt liked to think of himself as their leader.

Here we go, said Daggett, waving a hand at Pitt. A good man stands among us.

Pisk spat on the floor. You got your own employee Bud Hoss holding the chickamin. I don't like that.

You can trust me, said Hoss again.

I agree to this only so long as Fortes holds our elbows on the table.

I can do that, said Fortes, slapping his towel down on the counter.

The two sat down. Daggett composed himself, rotated his head, cracked his spine, loosened the wingspan of his shoulders. He put his arm out. Pisk wedged his hand inside Daggett's.

Watch his arm, said Daggett. Watch his fucking arm. Let's have a go. He's moving his arm. I saw him move his fucking arm. And straighten your wrist. I'm not going to wrestle you like that with your wrist bent forward on mine like that. I'm not going to wrestle this asshole if he keeps moving and shifting his fucking arm.