The Man Game (41 page)

Calabi's commentary: Molly once told Litz to strangle Pisk upside-down. This move requires the strangler to maintain his balance while the victim must complete an entire tai chi routine. In the event that both players complete the part in the Sausage Links, no points are awarded.

That's
p
oint, said Litz to the fat, dumb dude on his back, and kicked a clod of dirt in his face. Litz walked away and asked the audience: Who got d
u
sted, eh?

Wa.

We're way ahead a schedule, Litz said.

But I don't want no break, said Pisk. Now Meier, come here you little prick-eater. I got something special I want to try. Better be ready. You're number three, Meier, and we haven't seen nothing.

I'm ready, said Meier. I'm so fucking ready. I'm ready I'm ready.

Ready for this? Pisk swung a testing left. Meier dodged it with ease. Hoisted a fist to the right. Meier ducked it. Popped another. Meier had to narrowly jive around it in order to keep his balance. Shit, said Meier. One more, said Pisk aloud, and almost punched him in the gut—
hoip
—if Meier hadn't bent over on one foot just in time, though altogether too late
{see
fig. 9.7
}
.

Hear that? Pisk asked his opponent. It was the sound of fingers snapping and one fak you. He punched Meier in the gut as hard as he could, doubled him over the fist itself, felled him to the side like only a logger knows how. He let Meier puke his eyes out like a stuck pig while he trotted around the crowd saluting folk. It wasn't all rehearsed theatrics. Some of it was improvised. Some of it was real. Meier's broken ribs were real.

FIGURE 9.7
The Litz, side angle view,
winning punch

See Calabi's commentary on
p. 145
.

You see that? said a spectator.

I saw it. He did some fine work on him.

Yep.

Yep. How aboot that? Three punches earlier just like you heard me suggest.

I like the fact Litz did a Pisk and Pisk did a Litz.

That's true.

An ol' timer hollered: It's the Litz. It's the Litz. His voice had the sound of bad plumbing. He was waving his arms to gather attention to his plea. His body a flea-bitten edifice, a bony shambles with a memory like a hollow tree, amen. It's the Litz, Pisk did the Litz.

The Litz, cried all the woodsmen as they clapped their hands and spun their hats above their heads, hooting, hollering, kykying and chucking each other. The cliques of coolies giggled among themselves, discussed the play in their own language with frantic, joyous gestures.

Wa, cried the lurking Indians, not to be mistaken for nesting herons, unable to conceal their rejoicing.

Call it the Litz then, said Pisk. He nodded his approval and saluted.

Litz brushed his shoulders off and he and Pisk bowed a little to the sustained applause. With that in mind he walked handsomely over to Pisk where they had a laugh and clapped chests and patted each other on the back. But when Litz touched Pisk and almost stuck to his frost, he knew something was wrong.

What's wrong, man? You're ice.

Could be I just need a cup a tea.

Get us a cup a tea, said Litz to a circle of men sharing a pipe of Campbell River weed. One of them tipped his hat and split, went off to find some Lipton's.

I'm freezing, said Pisk.

Can you feel your toes?

Wasn't sure I still got them, he said, when from the corner of his eye he saw a familiar beard. Don't look now, he said to Litz, but Furry and Daggett are behind you.

Litz swung his head around and Pisk rolled his eyes: Jesus Christ, man. I just told you not to look.

You fuck with our men, stated Daggett from the other end of the field. You fuck with me, he clarified.

He was naked. So was Furry. They stood stock-still on the pitch with plumes of steam rising from their nostrils. They were as filthy and pale-skinned as two tusks pulled from the mouth of a giant mastodon. In the flamelight Daggett's eyes were corn-yellow. His partner Furry kept his chin up, pointed his thick, mossy beard at his opponents. Each man seemed to carry an extra fist hanging off an extra arm hanging down from a gnarly forest of oily pubes.

It's time for me and Furry to take you down. Pisk, you hoodlum, you common criminal, come here and take me on. Argh, I'll tear you apart like a dead timber. Daggett beat his hairful chest and strangled the sky between his clenched hands. Let's play your fucking man game, he said.

Furry stood behind and to his side, arms crossed, and said nothing. Definitely he was the more dangerous of the two.

What a they want? Pisk said.

They want to play the man game.

Now?

I think so.

What are you talking aboot over there, screamed Daggett. I just challenged you goddammit.

I heard you, said Litz.

Well let's fucking—

Shut the fuck up, Daggett.

What the fuck—

I said shut the fuck up. We heard you. Hold your horses, eh?

Hey, asshole, I don't think—

We just finished buggering
four
a your mink pals, Litz reminded him, so you can wait your motherfucking
turn
.

I don't care who the fuck, fuck I'm going to—

Will somebody shut him the fuck up for once? asked Litz.

Okay, said Daggett. What?

Litz said: We got to take care a something before we do any man game with you guys. Pisk here's been out in the cold like
this
for a long time, longer than any a you ever been. He's freezing. We sent for tea, all right, and once he's had some a that we'll see. In the meantime—, (already the Chinamen looked antsy to place bets)—In the meantime, Litz said louder, we need some blankets over here right now.

Whatever, how the fuck—, said Daggett.

Feeling in his hot-faced drunkenness to be an instrumental player in the survival of the man game, Clough staggered forward to learn more about Pisk's condition. Now what in the fuck's going on here, eh? There's folks with plenty a pay on these games. Don't tell me you all are cowarding out on us.

Shut your gob, Clough, said Litz. We don't need your opinions. Leave us be.

Why, if you let me know the situation, I can pass around the information to the crowds is all.

Leave us. Can't you see he's blue as ice?

Shit-bird. Only trying to help, said Clough, backing away, muttering and pulling at the linty emptiness of his evaginated pants pockets. I got an interest in this same as you.

He walked back to Furry and Daggett's crew and quietly conversated with the men in a private circle. Campbell didn't even want to listen to Clough talk. He indulged in his dejection, leaning against a plank wall that snaked around the construction site, smoked his cigarette and spat, didn't even care if some of it stayed in his beard. He looked between the slats of the wall where a big pit was to become the basement for the Hudson's Bay. It was a moist cube-shape three storeys deep into wet grey earth, held from collapse by a tight apron of wood scaffolding. A puddle on the ruddy floor of the pit wasn't reflecting anything.

Ma. Ma. I might been more a this. I miss you, Ma. I might be more, Ma. Ma, if you let me. If Ma let me, said Pisk through bluing lips.

What?

Here, drink this, said the baker Calabi, coming to their side with a cork thermos, handing Litz a tinful of tea, who took it and rested the warm liquid against Pisk's mouth and drained it down his numb throat.

Oh, Ma, he said, after coughing the tea up. D'you love me, Ma? I wrote you letters. Did you read them, Ma? I try hard. Did you know?

Keep quiet, said Litz.

D'you still love me? Ma?

Keep drinking your tea, said Litz.

I can't hear you, Ma.

Pisk, Jesus, hush, he said, looking to and fro to make sure no one else heard.

I can't hear you, Ma.

Pisk's ice delirium began. The teeth-chattering started in earnest after his first long sip of the steamy tea.

Exhausted, frightened, and humiliated by everything he'd seen at the man game, RH had suggested to the snakehead a nice place he knew. And now, not far away, concealed behind the better establishments, past the liveries and hotels, deeper into the Chinese ghetto, beyond a set of greasy doors, through the kitchen of a dim sum restaurant, up a flight of stairs, down the hallway past all the rooms stacked full of coffins as beds, down four flights of stairs to an unlit dirt basement with a cave dugout of the earth extending in three directions, following the left fork of the moist tunnel, up a yellow ladder and into a mystic room imported straight from a thug's dreams of Beijing, RH Apparition was entertaining his business associate. The grave realization that his life was in danger, that the snakehead might finish him off as fast as a mushroom, had meant coming straight to the opium den for a restive. He should never forget that his associate was a murderer and slave
owner, slithered up from California, presently enjoying the transmundane effects of the Afghani poppy delivered to him with great delicacy by a spicy-smelling girl named Ling from the province of Sze-Yap, a place where his reputation thoroughly preceded him, where arid farms and impoverished villages feared him, the all-gold teeth in his smile, the white knife-scar straight across his neck like a second, evil smile, gem-inlaid snakes on the ivory handled .38 Specials that never left their holsters on the belts across his heart unless they were used to kill, a born alone die alone man who made his fortune selling heads.

The mud was of exquisite quality: it smoked evenly, tasted like coca, and its high lasted into the astral plasma. Only the finest, to ensure the prolonged pleasure of everyone's worst debtor. Ling knelt on one knee beside him, head bowed and concentrating on keeping the pipe's bowl warm while he inhaled, exhaled, the guns tied to his chest, one hand on her breast as he rocked his hips and laughed out a sweet brown fog.

However many worlds later, the proprietor invited them to smoke another and another.

RH was basically asleep. He hadn't slept properly the whole week the snakehead was in town. Lucky he was leaving soon. Tonight had been the worst night yet. Negotiations were nothing compared to this. Oh, but what a run-in earlier in the evening, thought RH. Of all the places to take the snakehead. To watch as the men he'd fired for immolating the city used construction sites to gather mobs of his mill employees, Chinamen among them, to watch that? To watch them wrestle naked? It was not at all what RH had in mind. Without being seen, RH had followed as the snakehead circled around the audience, had listened with growing anxiety as the spectators discussed anti-social strategies. Or was that all a dream? He delighted in the lack of restrictions at the border between memory and invention. He took another deep inhale off the pipe and let the smoke circle his organs. Had the snakehead actually said, as they departed the man game after Pisk's
collapse: Your Whitemen damage my property, my imports, I make sure you pay personally, with a life a your own, sir. If you kumtuks? Yes?

Please be a dream, thought RH, exhaling … please let that threat be a dream. And this intimate experience, an opium high, shared with a man who had just threatened to—, and—, have mercy—, this harpy from the underworld, this San Francisco snakehead wanted to frighten him.

The snakehead on the cot beside him put his hands on Ling's cheeks. A tiny pulse of shock ran through her and she quickly bowed to him. He didn't take his eyes off RH as he gently told her to leave. She scurried out and once the door was closed again and it was only the two men, the snakehead continued the conversation they'd begun in the woods that RH had spent the last five seconds trying desperately to deny was any more than a dissolute fantasy.

That's right, said the snakehead, we share investment of my Chinese. Do you understand, sir, why I expect you make sure that, in my absence, our investment is protected to best a your ability?

I do understand that.

And yet you tell me Whitemen will turn out to be
my
problem, my cost.