The Man Game (51 page)

The whore said: Boys, boys, don't waste all your
ener
gies.

You crazy mink, said Pitt, touching himself. Come sit your mouth on my lap, eh?

How can you talk like that? Where's your mind? You a Christian or a heathen? cried Hoss.

Pitt pounded his fist on his table. I'm Christian, he screamed.

Look at this, said Bud Hoss, hoisting himself to a standing position. It's not even the PM and already you got my scrotum up. I'm sick a coming in here to listen as you jaw on forever aboot one thing or another. If it's not your hated Chinee it's your sore loins. You aboot as useful to me as a wood tick.

Pitt mustered all his fury and leaped from his seat, reached for Hoss, and a table fell on its side. Pitt stumbled, his fists swinging full simian. Bud Hoss looked ready to pounce. Fortes tossed his towel over his shoulder and slammed a closed fist on the counter so hard that the chandelier wobbled its candles. He bellowed: That's enough out a both a you.

Pitt turned and said to Fortes: Nobody asked you.

Fortes started around the counter.

Hoss said: Step outside and settle this like a man, Pitt, or's a cowboy afraid to fuck with something besides a heifer?

They tumbled out the doors onto the street and everyone inside followed, including Fortes, a small crowd forming around Hoss and Pitt on the road.

Huuorking
a loogie in one direction, Pitt spun his hat to the other side where it rolled to a stop at the feet of Moe Dee. He rolled up his sleeves, adjusted his belt, wiped his hair out of his eyes, and put up his fists. He waved his fists in the air. He stood like that for a moment waiting for Hoss to get ready; then, reluctantly, he lowered his fists to his sides and straightened his posture, looking at Hoss with disdain.

'The fuck are you doing?

'The fuck does it look like I'm doing?

Hoss was undressing. His hat was on a nest of shirts, denims, and woollies. He tried not to seem troubled by the cold mud on his bare feet and the jagged little stones he endured. His body was pale and undefined like heavy dough. Nutsack the only tight skin on his body. His giant pink fists were unnerving on this soft ball of a man. He was young enough to be grinning, but with a seriousness, to show he wasn't fazed by his own nakedness, which he was. All eyes were on him, sussing up his ability. Based on what, mind you, he thought. The gut's deceiving, Hoss knew. He was a force to be reckoned with.

If you think I'm going to play the man game you got another thing coming.

You better meet me at the circle and shake my hand, Hoss said, pointing to the middle of the ring. He appealed to the informal circle of men for support. Come on, men. Let's hear it for the man game. I knew you were a p
o
ltroon, Hoss said.

A what?

A
cow
ard, you illiterate fuck, said Hoss.

No. Sorry, Bud. You can't threaten me. I try to get a punch in now you're going to make a fool a me, forget it. I know how this works. I seen the man game.

Then play.

C'mon, whined Pitt, loosening his boxer stance. No way.

C'mon.

Fuck you.

Moe Dee putted a clod of dirt.

Whatever argument Hoss pressed on him, Pitt held his ground. As the conversation dragged on the other men grew impatient and Hoss felt the blood in his head start to burn the rims of his ears. Whenever he thought Pitt failed to give him his complete attention, he'd lunge to push him in the chest or slap him across the face. RD Pitt took the shoves without losing his balance. He dodged the slaps and didn't fight back, and meanwhile remained stubbornly clothed. When he had a chance he even went over to the boardwalk and picked up his hat. The nerve on this guy. He frisked the bowl of his hat, and no matter what kind of threat or insult Hoss shot at him, Pitt dusted it off.

The way things were going, Hoss was a naked man in the middle of the street with people around him. It wasn't even dark out. Luckily people weren't drunk enough to make a scene. It was quiet for the birds. The light was bright enough through the clouds to make Hoss feel like people could see him too well. The flab of his hairless arms. There were sore pimple clusters on each of his shoulder blades and they never went away. Upper lip notwithstanding, he was a young man still.

I said I'm not going to fight you, Pitt said. I don't like games.

Why're
you
whining? I'm the one in the buck. Get stripped or I'll do it for you.

Listen, kid, Pitt said, take wisdom from the wise: not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey.

Hoss lunged chest-first and bellowed: Let's fucking showtime.

Pitt stepped back to avoid getting physical. The crowd didn't approve of Pitt's cowardice, to the point of booing.

A guy in spectacles said: Let's see you play, and Pitt snapped at him, almost hit the guy upside the face.

Who the fuck asked you? Pitt said. Holding his temples, the guy cowered away, stumbling on a chicken neck as he went.

And then Hoss spotted Mrs. Erwagen in the middle distance. Molly. She was standing at a half turn, just past the door to GG Allin's Boots & Saddles. Her skin was shaded, her head was at rest on the stalk of her parasol.

Oh no, Hoss mouthed and blushed tip to toe.

Pitt checked to see what—and quickly, automatically pulled off his hat again and held it over his heart.

The rest of the crowd of derelicts turned to look, and repeated Pitt's gesture one after the other, in guileless deference to the finest lady ever known. In his cowboy way he apologized, trying to find the words to express what he thought might elevate him from the situation in which he was a central figure.

Please continue, she said, causing jaws to drop.

W-what? said Pitt.

Hoss, blushing from wrinkled scalp to toenails, was closer to her than he knew. His nudity mortified him, but little did he know what she really saw.

The delicate expression on her face; she was the kind of lady you toiled for. Her figure in profile was as beautifully curved as the ƒ-hole on a violin. The box hat atop her head was aglow with a yellow flower. Beneath her pleated skirt and fur-trimmed coat the sharp tips of her leather boots were as sensual as entire legs. There's no way any man would guess that such a dainty creature made of silk and honey and mothers was responsible for
the man game. With her kid gloves whiter than snow on her almond arms, the fragile plumskin of her lips, the glimmering jade visculent green eyes, the slipperiness of her licorice hair, she looked to be the nourishing opposite of the man game. But she was the man game. And if she was its invisible centre, its boiling lava, he was its crust.

Those fresh green pools. She looked Hoss straight in the eye. Later, he would realize his good fortune. At the moment, his shame was thorough. She was an impossible ideal and he was gutter reality, an ineligible bachelor living in a shack. She was a pearl and he was a geoduck, a formless slime to her perfection.

He was no more than a young Canadian boy. He didn't know what else to say to her so he apologized too. I'm sorry, he said. I'm sorry.

The young Chinaman translator said to his host Mr. Erwagen: The doctor, he want to—, then paused at his loss for the English, used the Chinook word: three
bath paseesie
, please?

Sammy immediately saw to it that a Chinaman servant retrieve some towels from the closet. He brought them back and spread them out over the sofa as the doctor ordered. This wasn't precisely what he expected the towels were for, but it was too late for correction; with the language barrier and the urgency of the call, the deed was done, and if Toronto ruined the sofa, it was beneath him to fret. Whereas if it was his brother Dunbar, the sofa might come first. Priorities. The doctor swept his finger across the room for Toronto to follow. It was an all-meaning finger. It drew a picture of Toronto removing his dungarees leg by leg and lying on the sofa, stomach down. As Toronto reluctantly began the doctor studied his kit, where all variety of glass phials clinked in their felted leather holsters. Each of their corks was graced with a Chinese character that named what was inside, from bear this, to tiger that: the doctor was well stocked in the remedies of
the day. Toronto looked to Sammy for reassurance, and Sammy duly blinked. To see Toronto shaking and sweating even as he unhooked his suspenders and rumpled down his pants and undergarments to the floor was not the kind of equity Sammy had in mind. Money was enough. He was sad to see the daily chore of their friendship reversed, with poor ailing Toronto the one ashamed.

Oh, you
are
sick, said Sammy, dry-mouthed when he saw the problem.

Toronto was a mess.

Why he no see Whiteman doctor? asked the translator as per the herbalist, who muttered in timpani as he administered.

I am bad luck to Whitemans, said Toronto feebly. As the translator explained, the doctor cocked an eye at Sammy. Bad luck to Whitemans. He looked Sammy up and down with a queer expression. It was malice or annoyance that flexed the doctor's lips just so. His hands were on the bloody danglers.

Why he no see Salish doctor?

Toronto didn't answer right away. To Salish people I am dead. I am ghost. They will take no care a me now. Ghost, bad luck.

Just as the translator spoke, Sammy interrupted, said: The Indians, your
fa
mily, they won't help you even in a serious case such as this?

No, said Toronto. Sammy knew the story, and it was not one Toronto liked to share. The doctor, for helping him, was going to hear it. Three year ago I went very sick, said Toronto. In sick days I went into deep state a sweat. Then, I was convert to Jesus Christ. For outside world, I look as dead. Up the cedars near Snauq village, my family make a burial. I lay for many days up there. Many blankets, much respect for my family. I was strong boy at potlatch. Many blankets still owed to me. I remember trees blow to and fro. One day I wake from dead. Very weak. I open blankets. Put me in high up tree. Great cedar. I know I am alive. I know what happen to me. But I hope Snauq believe me. Return to Snauq, families screamed and afraid a me, they ran. And elders came out with gun and
yell. I am ghost. I am never touching on Snauq ground again. They scared a me till I die again. Never speak to me or help me. I am a ghost to my own peoples. Wa!

The translator's face sank through the holes in his skull. The cold room felt a long pause while this superstitious man recuperated his professional skin. After a glass of water, he told the doctor what the Indian said.

Ba, said the Chinaman herbalist, who got down to work. While the translator watched, the doctor removed a pestle and mortar from his case. From one phial he drew out a darkly gangrenous claw and broke a knuckle off. Toronto recognized it. It was the licorice root that climbed from the earth by gripping the bark of maple trees. The sap improved its flavour. The doctor added five or ten aging grapes that oozed from their thick skins. He left the remaining shrivelled grape cluster on the Erwagens' table. A more foreign and hairy item was ground into the unsavoury gunk. When Toronto saw him add the witchhazel bark, he got the bad feeling he was going to have to open his mouth.

Doctor say to ingest tincture twice daily with water, said the unhappy translator. When Toronto got a whiff it smelled like muskrat.

The doctor also lay a small jar of
long-life mud
on the table. The translator said: Very good. Highest quality. No expensive for Indian.

Anything if it will help Toronto.

The doctor set to work preparing a new set of ingredients for his mortar. As he ground down the peony and sulphur the pestle dully clucked against the bowl. Toronto lay there, bum up, the clucking sound of stone on stone a calming medicine of its own. The phials in the doctor's pack were nearly empty, and the cream in the mortar had a powdery metallic finish. It was made with more than just St. John's wort, a mound of flaxseed, and the dried rhizome of butcher's broom, but those ingredients alone were enough for Toronto to know he wasn't going to eat this cold paste.

Doctor say apply to dangling chilblains two time every day. Must be sanitary at
point
before, yes?

Everyone understood what he meant.

The doctor will bring back more each remedy tomorrow, yes?

Yes, absolutely. In fact, tell the good doctor I will have a man pick up the remedy from his office.

Ha ha, the doctor thanks you, Mr. Erwagen. Before we leave, may the doctor inquire to your own health, sir?

My health? Well, ha ha. Under the circumstances I'm doing very well, thanks. Toronto is a godsend. He is more than just my ward. He is a friend. I hope he recovers quickly and that I do, too.

The doctor say he may examine you?

Oh, no, thank you. That's quite all right. I have a fine doctor, another doctor, I already have a doctor. I'm well cared for. Thank you for the offer, doctor.

He say there is old Chinese remedy might cure you.

Oh, said Sammy, what's that then?

It is not medicine as Whiteman know. There are no phials, no pestles. Nothing is for ingest or apply. Doctor use, you see, very light pins, to your skin.