The Man Game (4 page)

I'm not safe here, he said.

I know. We'll get us to safety.

Before he could reply she was gone. He had time to think but could not decide what to think about.

She came back. Trees are falling, she said.

The fire is moving east?

It's
spreading
east.

Go, he said. Leave me here.

He could tell she was thinking about his situation. When she passed her eyes over his benumbed body it made her features go from tense and riled to flat, blank, neutral, completely undisturbed, until she had to vigorously swallow to regain a sense of time.

You don't feel a thing? she said in an unfamiliar voice.

No, he responded.

There's fire everywhere out there.

I can feel it on my face, Chinook.

To help cool him down she undid the buttons of his shirt, fanned him with an envelope addressed to Sammy on the Hastings Mill letterhead, to give his chest air. He felt his head chill off a bit. She loosened her own collar by two buttons to reveal the damp overlay on the skin of her breastbone. The heat was unbearable.

She lit a cigarette and tipped her head to one side to look out one of the six burn-holes in the hide. She said: The air is trembling with heat.

Why are you smiling at me like that?

Smoking at a time like this. I love you.

Ah, she returned her eye to the hole. What's the difference?

A girl your age. You're not scared are you?

She shook her head while taking a big drag. I've seen things like this, she said. She pointed the coal of her cigarette against the freckled dermal tarp and another sizzling aperture appeared just big enough for her to see through towards the scorched and claustrophobic skyscape.

Don't stop loving me just because a this or that, she said. We'll survive this strange miracle just as we did your accident.

The northern cup of the sky lay all black and reamed with
fire at the horizon. Sammy could see the giant flakes before they slipped up his nostril and exploded into choking carbon nets. Already in the east the smoke was sometimes as low as two feet from the ground. The fire raged in oven blasts across the stumped slash. They passed by streams that ran with currents of blood clogged by burnt and disgorged carcasses of domesticated animals that floated down the bubbling current.

A dot-by-dot bombardment of little fires landed on the carriage and everything started to light up. A tree some hundred yards away had burst into flames without warning. There wasn't even any fire near the tree; just the heat of the air itself was enough. Bits of the tree exploded into the air straight at them like ammunition, cindering skyward. They just barely got Sammy out of the carriage before the thing was in flames. Left with no choice, they tied Sammy to the donkey's back and continued to trudge on foot. The creature was covered in a sweat like scrubbed dentifrice. Occasionally Toronto patted his mule and wiped the sweat away from its deadpan lonely pony eyes. The heat was devastating. Molly complained of loss of breath. They were scared and unprepared to discover what lay ahead.

Have you seen fires like this, Toronto? Sammy asked assback, forced to stare up into five-storey flames.

There's lot a forest, Toronto said. Lot a fires. This one, I believe, made by Whitemans.

Sammy saw something dance from a copse of trees and disappear down a smoke-cleaned valley. What was that? he asked.

A deer go hide in river.

Poor frightened thing.

Then three more deer darted out of the bush and followed the first one towards the creek.

Those are the first animals I've seen since I believe Manitoba.

Many more where them from.

I understand there's a lot a salmon.

Ha ha, said the Indian.

It was so hot, it hurt to see. The donkey breathed hard. It
made these monophthongal pleas:
Uuu
-u-
u;
vowelly desperate sounds.

I'm too heavy, Sammy said. I'm going to kill the old chap.

No, no, said Toronto, who fed his donkey from a withered canteen and delivered handfuls of dried and salted corn. The long equine tongue curled up to meet the stream of water and also pull back the nuggets.

Continuing west they saw up ahead two lumberjacks with raised fists. Around them most everything was black and smoking. One had a beard and the other had a moustache. The bearded man took off his hat. It appeared they were getting ready to fight. They didn't take notice as the travellers approached. The men squared off.

You don't spit at me, said the bald bearded man. What I ever do to
you
except make us money?

In a boxer's stance, fists raised, they started making a tight semicircle along the ground, heads bobbing, expecting a fist to come out. The flint in their eyes and the methodical way they semicircled in preparation to box and the fact that they were down to their calico underclothes made for a troubling sight. With flames lashing out in every direction.

Whatever's the matter? whispered Sammy.

Shhh, let's watch, replied his wife.

The lumberjacks were in that silent prelude of sussing out and buying time before coming to blows, neither man quite yet ready to get punched in the face. No one really wants to get punched in the face. Fists raised and kind of dancing, but no punches had yet been swung. Inevitably they would punch each other in the face.

The Indian, donkey, and Erwagens continued to approach. The men continued to bob and weave, still no punches thrown. Smoke clouds accumulated around them, turbulent plumes of black ash. Lips stretched into strange snarling curls, errant canine tooth showing. Huge varieties of swear words were
exchanged. They were so close to all-out battle and they knew it. This was how they'd settle the argument, toe to toe. Swearing and flinching and tense and sweaty. Bohunk. Poltroon. Mewler. The swearing was all about building up steam, goading and picking at the other. Piebutt. Minkhole. Then all of a sudden the two men were at it. There were fists and elbows and knees and the clack of jaws and the snapple of gutpunches, shinkicks, and broken noses.

Oof, said the moustached one, and there was dirt in his mouth. He was on the ground now. The bearded one watched him get up. Gathering to form a whole man. Legs first and then after a shudder his spine carried his arms and head up and he was standing. They could see the bruises appearing on his face after he wiped off the dirt and blood. The lumberjacks were beating each other senseless, not holding back at all. They were hunched over with fists in front of their faces. Wallop by wallop, the punches increased in force. After two merciless blows the other man went sailing to the ground like a snipped marionette and then with insane tenacity dredged himself back up again and proceeded to push the other man to the ground.

Sammy could feel his wife's fingers gripped to his cheeks. Extraordinary, she said. Who
are
these men? she asked their Indian guide Toronto. Do you know them?

Yup, said Toronto. Logging partners, woodsmen. Names Litz and Pisk.

Litz and Pisk, said Molly. We should try to stop them.

Fighting is everyday thing here, said Toronto.

A violent January, or that was how I would come to remember the month that Minna and I first discovered the man game. These two guys in this backyard performing mad versions of old familiar dances and other steps that weren't so familiar, and never without a particularly sporting twist to it. A polonaise, a shamming mongrel version of that Polish dance involving chin attacks—chin pushing chin, while
stepping in time despite all the kicks and skipping to dodge kicks and shin parries. At one point the men reared up like mountain goats, forehead to forehead
{see
fig. 1.3
}
. They were on their toes, foreheads aimed, bodies ready for a violent plunge. They took a couple quick paces each, and I heard Minna gasp into her upheld hands right at the moment of collision. As she covered her eyes, I saw the pain ripple down their faces when their two hairlines met with an audible crack. Ken's neck tendons were stretched out. Silas gritted his teeth and let loose a wild shofaric sound, deep and loud, that seemed to rush straight up from his bowels and out his mouth. It was unreal. The men staggered but remained locked at the forehead. Silas and Ken pushed so hard forehead to forehead that their feet were digging back into the dirt. The strain was visible over their entire bodies. Perspiration ran down their faces and fell from their elbows. Time elapsed.

One of them might crack open, Minna said, holding her forehead. Her hair was up, scooped inside a paisley bandana. Her forehead was smooth. I'd have liked to put my hand there.

A swatch of mossy earth collapsed into a burnt-out hollow in the ground and all that fresh oxygen ignited, shooting antheridia into the sky as an array of squirming sparks.

FIGURE 1.3
Banger

Calabi's commentary: A cocksure move on the part a both players, who unwisely confuse the hardness a the brainpan with the durability a the flesh.

Molly, Sammy, and their guide Toronto trod cautiously towards the centre of town. They looked into the flame ahead knowing they must stop. It was incredibly hot, too hot. They were fools. What drew them so close? Moth ecstasy? To the east, black smoke rose in gargantuan plumes, to the west, the fires still raged. They stood there wondering what not to do next when the windows of a three-storey manse exploded and the walls fell inward against a shivering tumult of fire. A man came running towards them, maybe fifty or sixty feet away when he threw off his hat. No sooner did they see him than the man vanished inside a huge lick of orange flame. Sammy saw him take one last step before he went off into the air as separate black flakes inside a vast cremator.

Molly threw her Stars & Stripes to the ground and stubbed it out in anger. Dry pine needles crackled under her leather boot. I can hardly breathe, she said.

They passed a smoking body, a man or woman no one could tell for sure, a headless figure twisted like black driftwood. The legs were twisted underneath the body. When a cyclone blew across the earth, an arm crumbled off and black blood dribbled out. All the while the neck whistled like a kettle, still boiling up the blood inside the chest.