The Man Game (47 page)

Presently, a strange puppet-like grimace overtook Daggett's face. With eyes unblinking and glassed, his mouth thinned and spread from ear to ear. He said: Fucking if wives didn't want some childs I might change my mind. But she wants a family. I'm telling you you don't want a family. Fucking you know what a family is? You want some freedom to—Jesus Christ, do a damn job wherever, whenever,
with
whoever you damn well please. What's the point a wives?

Daggett threw a pinecone into the fire and watched it crackle and explode, and said: I'll tell you. None.

Campbell shook his head and spat into a flame to hear it hiss. You're a godawful sonofabitch, you know that, don't you?

I might be, Daggett said, straightening his back, but you're the one who likes taking orders from everybody all his life.

There's no comparing us, said Campbell.

No one moved. Daggett was slow to respond. How you know that? he asked.

What, in the span of fortunes, was the difference between the two? Added up, Campbell was dozy and incomplete. His boss Daggett was fierce and patient. The two of them were equals in every way. They may have stared at each other like a world of difference had landed them together in this forest, but that was mere pride. Life had subjected them to the same worsening. The shades of their personalities were no more constant than the play of light on the leaves of the trees or the fire in the pit.

I believed wrongly that to the alien eye there'd be no comparing Cedric and me. When it came to Minna, his warring tactics were no match for my funny conversations, but she seemed to like him just as much. Every so often Cedric looped one of those hands of his around her waist, or her shoulder. She giggled and squirmed away … Oh, it wasn't so much that I hated him per s
e
. In school we were taught to respect all creatures on earth, even the lower primates. His fingers without any nails truly sickened me, I confess, but so did the expression on the face of a baboon.

So you two aren't …? Cedric asked me in semi-private, … bunkmates?

No, I said.

Then, turning to face Minna, Are you …?, he said with impolite ellipsis, implications galore.

Minna slouched on her heels. Cedric, she said and slapped his bare, reddish pimplish shoulder, I told you, I'm not and we're not.

Cedric open-mouthed a smirk and said to us all in a quiet, spiritual voice: So this is what it sounds like when doves cry.

Ha ha, well who do
you
go out with? Minna asked Cedric. I can't even imagine who'd think so little a themselves.

Me? Cedric asked. I can make a flower bloom in winter, you hear?

I'm feeling allergic, Minna said.

Don't get me wrong, Cedric said. I'm still interested in hooking up for some c
a
sual.

Haw-haw, Minna said.

They began to talk about the man game again, and I, exhausted by jealousy, tuned out.

You know I'm just fucking with you, right? Cedric nudged me.

Yeah, yeah, I said, being nudged. I know that.

Everything in this basement has something to do with the man game, said Ken, on his knees in front of a stack of ledger books. I just don't know what yet. When I started looking I didn't know what I would find. I found some pretty weird shit down here, too. Ken turned to Silas and said: After we found the book with all the drawings of the moves, that's when we sort of realized what was going on.

Silas turned to Cedric and said: Ken wanted to figure out why his grandparents had all this stuff before we threw it away. To keep the important stuff. Turns out—

Cedric turned to Minna and said: It was an intergenerational search for nothing in particular.

Kat, Silas said to me, you should really see this book a drawings upstairs. We use these drawings all the time, hundreds a moves drawn by a pastry chef using a brush pen. We use these drawings in this book to learn new moves. There's so many. Some we can't figure out yet. There are like hundreds a drawings a man game moves, all glued into this yellow leather scrapbook.

Sounds great, I said, instantly regretting it. I'd love to see it, I said.

Where's the book? said Minna, yawning. My heart danced at her boredom. She covered her seductive mouth with her hand. A tear glazed along her eye. We'll go home soon, I thought to myself.

Silas said: It's upstairs. It's definitely a great book for inspiration. We look at it every day. I think after we looked through it the first time we realized right away that we wanted to revive it, didn't we? All these pictures on this old paper.

I wasn't so concerned aboot getting naked as you were, said Ken.

No …

But I was afraid a getting hurt.

Yeah, me too, said Silas. Ha ha ha, I was not comfortable with the—. And I didn't want to get hurt, either.

Why aren't you in the man game? Minna asked Cedric.

Silas said: It's not aboot showing my … It wasn't aboot showing at first. I think if just
I
was, had to, and you guys didn't have to, I would have been comfortable. But it was, ha ha, you have to make the comparison.

You have to make the comparison, agreed Ken. So be it.

Right, but.

Even though like …

Yeah, I mean, said Silas, a course I don't
care
care. What the fuck do I care what you look like? But it was not going to be easy, I knew that when we saw the moves …

Ken patted his fist into his palm, said: We weren't ready to touch.

Uh, no.

Cedric said: I was ready to touch right away.

You
were.

Seriously, Cedric said, these guys were
so
lame aboot it.

We were.

Afraid to be buck, afraid to be hurt. I had to slap it out a them.

You're way bigger than either of us, said Silas. It was intimidating.

Yeah, said Cedric in an unfamiliar voice, now you beat me almost every game.

Only recently, said Silas.

Only recently does not bode well for King Cedric.

We'll see.

So you
do
play the man game? Minna said, getting even more excited.

As a way to excuse myself from a conversation I was already not a part of, I began to rub away the ink from an old newspaper's headline. Mummified yellow paper from February 14, 1887's edition of the
Sunday Advertiser:
PREPARE FOR 1500 CHINESE TO LAND ON VANCOUVER THIS MONTH.

ELEVEN

I felt then, I feel now, that it was not the impropriety of my discovery but its explosiveness that disconcerted him, and that he had, in my absence, joined the ranks of those new men who feel that truth is no longer usable in solving our dilemmas.

–
JOHN CHEEVER

February already; and yet, still only February. She kissed her husband goodbye for the umpteenth time, and then, with an actor's confidence, Molly swept up her skirts and promised to be home for dinner.

And how does the thing go? he asked. Is it developing as you'd like it to?

You don't really want to know, do you?

A course I do.

Well, I can't tell you. It's a secret surprise.

A secret surprise?

Yes.

Tell me you won't see the hanging today, Sammy said. At the least, please don't include yourself in that pitiless business.

No, she said, pouring herself and finishing a quick glass of water from a sweating glass jug on the table. No, I won't. That hanging, it's a pity indeed.

But isn't
your
sport … well, is it so violent …?

It's not. It is an imit
a
tion, an extraordinary imitation. You'll see.

Well, at least tell me where you're going.

Why?

For the fun a it.

All right, I'm going to visit John Clough.

Why ever Clough?

A thought.

It pertains?

It does, she said, and he read in the wet flicker of her eyes that she was covering up an emotion she didn't like. Apparently, your foolish boss RH Meddling Alexander has seen to it that the po-lice put the word out that anyone caught playing the man game will be fined and jailed.

First I've heard, said Sammy.

Hm, yes … And now, she said, no one plays. My hope is we find more players.

Po-lice you say?

Nothing to be alarmed …, said Molly, as if his concern over
criminality
was beside the point. Your boss sees the entire world as his factory, she said.

Yes, I've noticed, said Sammy.

Klahowya, my love, she said in the penumbra of earshot.

Klahowya, Chinooky, he called back, straining to see her in the fog before Toronto wheeled him back inside.

Not only days had passed, but most of a year had passed, and he was still unable to use anything below his mouth. It was February for a quadraplegic. And Molly was still as unfettered as a bird.

Anger, aimed mostly at himself, had sweated away to admiration for her. Jealousy over her new friends had faded to a sick fascination. Molly was the rare breed. He was not. It struck him that if he wasn't paralyzed he might still have stayed home today, watched her from the porch as she blew him a last kiss before doe-stepping along the raised sidewalk to meet other men. She had an appointment with other men.

And then Toronto wheeled him back indoors where his life was of no consequence. The day had hardly started and he was already exhausted. His morning cup of coffee had yet to make its powers known. The sun, if it existed at all, was somewhere above an opaque white void.

I got message from post officer aboot your brother, said Toronto.

When did you get a message?

Toronto blinked. Little while ago, he said, when I—.

Fine, then, Sammy said, suddenly very irritated with Toronto's slowness and constant anxiety. Have it your way, you always do. Don't explain anything, just read the damn letter.

Y-Yes. It say: Brother arrive home on deathbed stop your loving father stop.

Well then, what does that mean? What a strange message. Well, he must have contracted something while he was here, but how could he have done that? He couldn't have been in town much longer than the night I saw him or he surely would a tried to come back here. Deathbed, it says. How ominous.

I heard your brother stay at Wood's, Toronto told Sammy.

Sammy didn't know what Wood's was. What do you mean, man? he cried. Please, you drive me mad. Simply mad. If I had use a my arms right now, man, why, I'd—I'd, why, oh. Panting now, out of breath, Sammy continued on just as strenuously. Ah, Toronto, he said. You always do this. You leave me so confused. I try to tell you what I want, what I need to survive this way, and you never listen. You never listen. What do I have to do? Now, you come to me with news, and you say you know something, but how the fuck am I supposed to know what Wood's is?

Wood's.

Wood's. Yes. That's what I heard you say … and then Sammy thought about it a little more, and quickly fell into a deep silence.

Toronto, wisely, said nothing.

Why Wood's?

First all the pieces fell into place, then Sammy had to look at them to make out the picture, and then he had to find what was missing.

Toronto chose this moment to speak. I think brother Erwagen visit Whore No Face.

A whore no— Whatever do you mean?

Very special. What she do, her love take away. No man live. All the Whitemans become a devil after her.

A devil?

Brother a devil now, eh? He not living on earth no more, no, no more.

I see, said Sammy, too stunned, too crestfallen to correct grammar. He said to Toronto: Molly and I never spoke aboot what I should do with Dunbar, since he was bound to tell everyone back in Toronto aboot my infirmity.

Why not tell Erwagen family aboot life?

Well, I don't know that I wanted him to go home and spread his malicious gossip around, and yes, I don't want him to talk to my mother and
fa
ther aboot my—. Dunbar is an unreliable witness. Dunbar is obsessed with Dunbar. Sammy's eyes shut. Not for tears, for his emotions were too conflicted.