The Man Game (16 page)

Over bottles of whisky Daggett laid it out for Hoss, as he said, in plain English: You walk off my job it's mutiny. I bury rats and mutineers. Every coward costs me chickamin. You quit when I say it's quitting time. Walk off a job, consider me and Furry your enemies. Run, hide if you see us. I will cut both your ears off.

Cheers, said Hoss, who summoned the courage to survive the job from the hair tonic bottle he raised in a toast, then drank from the potato moonshine inside.

After a few months working hard and losing some of his baby fat—he was still only eighteen—Hoss had grown to
sympathize with Daggett, much as the mutt will obey his owner even if that owner is a penniless lunatic. Furry scared Hoss same as always. After the Shanghai boot was found, he feared them both again even more. Bud Hoss was the middle man on a shared mattress with six others, Furry and Daggett at either side. He hardly slept. When he did he had nightmares where he was falling to his death from atop a tall tall spar, the tallest whitest fir in the woods.

Few were as eager as Furry & Daggett to shave this coastline. Their ambition helped them net boastworthy contracts with government and private business. Men determined to work as hard as they usually came with prized recommendations, and Furry & Daggett awarded these men decent salaries and some respect. Hoss had gotten little to no respect thus far, never mind his impressive coordination, perfectly choreographed slash and burns, and noticeably dramatic fire control. The older men, Campbell, Meier, Boyd, and Smith—their reputations were well established. Older meaning they ranged from twenty-one to thirty-one. Each was known for his strength, his beard, his foul breath, and his violent temper. Other facets of their physique, disposition, and height better highlighted their differences, and yet for all they argued and disagreed with one another, to a stranger they would seem as one. Furry & Daggett's Logging Concern. The fact that they were all older than Hoss was an issue, and he supposed they each had histories, along with more scars and more problems. He was a natural. They didn't like that.

Boyd you would recognize a block away just from that thick black caterpillar of a monobrow wiggling above his tiny brown eyeballs. Smith was a balding blonde with a flat face like a red brick. Meier was close to seven-and-a-half feet tall. Campbell was five foot even, the goat. You couldn't knock Campbell off his balance with a mallet, but it was said that Furry could take him down with a slap. It was also said that Furry could knock out a charging ox with a single blow. Hoss hadn't seen either feat with his own eyes yet. He could testify to the fact that what took the average man six chops took Daggett no more than three.

Daggett had a saying that he shared over lunch with new day-labourers like Hoss: This is war. Trees want to kill us. We're here to kill every one a them. Are you with me? Do I hear your Yep?

Yep, said all.

Yep, said Hoss.

The bigger the tree, the more I hate it. More I want to kill it. Slaughter all his family. Whether it's sap or syrup or sawdust, I want to see some
blood
on the floor a the forest at the end a the day, eh? You seen me do it, men, I spit on their stumps when work's done for the day.

Hoss learned fairly quickly how the day went: you woke before dawn in the bed you shared with the other men, five-six men in a bed. Every last one of you in a set of stinking, sweaty calico drawers, and you got up one by one, scratching your nuts, expectorating and flatulating, dressed right on top over your calicos in your filthy monkeyjackets and dungarees, aimed your kerosene lamp out of your lean-to, and went out to the steaming cold dark to meet the other men from the camp at the mess tent.

Hoss sat down on a bench and didn't say a word, lest he annoy another man's hangover. He ate a breakfast of fried eggs, cornbread and butter, side bacon and coffee, and then took a long pull of opium before going to work. Unlike when he smoked it in the basements in Chinatown and felt the quick sinkage of self, like a stone into a swamp, out in the open and with an axe over his shoulder the drug left Hoss feeling painlessly alert and courageous. There was something in the clean fresh air and in the mental and physical concentration it took to strip a timber of its limbs. Taking each branch down one at a time as he slowly climbed its trunk, tossing limbs spinning and crashing to the ground as he hung there in mid-air. Busy birds' nests, eggs and all, squirrels' acorn stashes—it all fell along with the branches. He climbed higher into the sky along the thinning tree. It got so that Hoss could arrive at the top of a tree having no memory of how he'd cleaned the whole trunk to get there. Looking at the ground
a hundred seventy feet below, he saw nothing but the carrion of torn leaves and splintered wood he'd created. And Hoss would look out over the feathery haze, over the untouched glory of the northern forests, the mountains' crests and furrows, the bluing islands in the ocean, the marble grey ocean … It made him want to stay this high forever, perfectly unaware of his own solitude and wanting for nothing.

Noontime was the same, only more opium and more meat in the food. Evenings came when the sun went down and then it was always more opium, and devouring food, itching for sweet things of every variety—Calabi&Yaus by the dozen daily—to the point of intestinal lockdown. Huge shanks of lamb, mashed potatoes and corncobs, chicken livers, raw salmon, beef burgers and hot cross buns, and butter. So much butter. And inevitably, when it felt to Hoss like he couldn't stand upright a minute longer, he was simply going to pass out from exhaustion, that's when all the others took to sitting around the campfire smoking the mud and listening to Daggett.

Anyone who valued their job was at the campfire. Boyd looked walrus-like in the flickering dark with his black monobrow ruling the top half of his head and the moustache taking the lower half. And like an animal he could neither read nor write nor brush his teeth. Whereas beside him, Meier had the same demeanour as an axeblade. He liked to cut people down to size. He spent his days slaughtering trees and spelling
tough
aloud as many ways as possible: tuff toff tough taughf tawf tuf touf … in his loudest voice, every letter, as many combinations as you doubt possible, on and on for hours, so you knew what he expected from you.

While he talked, Furry, the silent partner, paid attention to the men, watching for rats and treason.

Hoss sat down on a log and tried to make himself comfortable enough to fall asleep there.

… And speaking a competition, said Daggett, I'm only going to say this once. Fucking don't want to hear any a you say Litz or Pisk's name unless it's to curse their beings to
Hell's lowest level. Got that? Anyone so much as hears rumour where they are and don't come straight to me … serious flogging. Fucking
swear
on my mother's untimely grave that if I ever see them again I'll kill them
both
with my bare hands. Anyone got objections they can fuck off this job. Otherwise, those're willing to help me get revenge, say Yep.

Yep, said all, campfire rippling, plumes of woodsmoke in their faces.

Yep, said Hoss, eyes shut to Furry's gaze.

Fucking I came here same as alls you guys, started doing some clearing work, Daggett said, rousing up a choir of sparks with a black-tipped log, ascendant and vanishing among the stars. That's all I was good for in my early days. Maybe I was eleven-twelve. You get older, you single out a couple a people you can work with and label yourself so you can separate yourself from the rest. With Furry, and myself, we worked with a crew called BLO. In the seventies. Stood for Best Loggers Out. He took his turn on the pipe going around, then continued his story. But on BLO, he said, this was when I introduced myself to Furry. I didn't know him from paint. And he was just another nut like me looking for work clearing. Long time ago. Way before your time. This was more than fifteen years ago, eh. Back then there weren't so many Chinamen. Now, you can't get these jobs because they hire the Chinamen. They cut off these jobs from boys like yourself and
then
how does a Canadian get a start, eh? Fucking used to be you got your experience that way, now I don't know what you do. All them Indians and Chinamen take these jobs. I know some poor folk and I know'd some real Whitemen who're tycoons at the same time, that's for fucking sure. I know'd some gents got beaver fur-coats, come up here from Toronto, speculating. Some days it'd be like a man come into town, take everything around you and the ground you're standing on, put it in his pocket, eh, and take it back with him to Toronto, sell little bits here and there to littler tycoons, and then these goddamn littler tycoons would all come out here and try and sell it back to you. And there's always enough bohunks around here
interested in real estate with no fucking idea in their heads. None a them to figure they were turning more little tycoons into big tycoons, and all a them living in Toronto. Railroad goes west and drives every cent back east.

Bud Hoss sucked the last of the dried beanbroth from dinner off his thumb and index, and swirled his tin cup (now spotless clean) around it, and said: Well, 'night everybody, I'm off to bed.

No one else said a word. Hoss nodded his hat to his bosses and stood to leave.

We're having a conversation here, said Daggett. Why don't you sit down and take another puff and listen for a change?

Hoss swept off his pants. That's all right, Mr. Daggett, you continue on withoot me, I'm tuckered.

Still no one else spoke, but Hoss could tell he shouldn't just turn and leave for the cabin. Furry stood up from his log on the other side of the bloody glow of the campfire and all the men watched him but Daggett, who continued to stare at Hoss. Hoss shifted his weight, lowered his shoulders. Furry put his hands on his belt and said to Hoss: Why don't you sit the fuck back down?

Hoss pointed at the cabin and said politely, weakly to Furry: It's just that I'm beat, and want to get some sleep and—

Furry leaped straight over the fire, his belt freed of the loops on his dungarees and swinging through the air. The buckle whipped Hoss right across the face and he quailed and took another whipping across the hands, and then he fell to the ground. Furry held him down with one hand and beltwhipped him mercilessly while the whole camp watched. That's for mutiny, screamed Furry, whipping him hard.

That's for insubordination. That's for disrespect. That's for contempt. This one's for insolence. That's for your own good. This one's for your fucking mother-dog for birthing you. And the curses went on and on in his roaring voice as he whipped Hoss. This one's telling you go pack your shit. This one's telling you you're officially fired. And
that's
to get the fuck out a here.

Hoss howled and staggered off immediately, tripping dazedly as he made his way through the nightwoods towards civilization. Swollen from the savage belt-whipping, he limped off to Wood's, the salubrious bordello on Dupont Street, where he took a hot bath and a woman of great expertise. She nursed his head gashes, the burst lip, the broken flesh on his back where blood drenched his clothes. And no one would know if he cried into the bosom of that girl, sobbed and sobbed, and she might not even hear him if he whispered for help, and love, and more. She might only feel his wet breath on her warm chest. She might even confuse his tears for kisses.

Sammy lay in bed watching her sleep like a pool of cream in bed beside him, rippling in the breeze. He wanted to lap her up. He could feel her warmth and hear her heartbeat.

Earlier that night over dinner Molly had explained her plans. He calmly accepted what she had to say. After their meal he chose to sit by the fire and feign reading while she practised acrobatics on the staircase. Then they proceeded to bed.

He wasn't tired. He thought she was very cunning when she wanted to be. But now under the warm covers, looking at her face in profile, he began to agonize. She had told him over beets that she wanted to create a sport. She hoped to enlist two exiled lumberjacks to begin with. Was he losing her already? He hated himself for this injury. He hated himself for loving her so much, for needing her so badly. Now what? Was it her eyes or her mouth that he loved more? He thought about it in bed. He thought about Molly's eyes and mouth.

She woke with no warning, quickly blinking away the sticky dust of sleep, and was unperturbed to see him looking back at her, wide and awake.

What are you doing? she asked.

He fought back his tears. Why do you want to spend time with these fools, these imbeciles? I don't understand it.

She touched his hair as if removing the worry itself from his follicles. And then she mussed it again by saying: There was a time when I wanted to feel completely overwhelmed by a man. I love how a man can make the rest a the world shrink to his feet.

You're being insensitive.

Don't you see that you still have that influence over me, more than ever?

I'd like to agree.