The Man Game (73 page)

Vicars was talking his mouth off.

Pisk, the crippled eidolon, prime number among the real fractions, leaned down and said to Vicars: Listen, brother, I never seen you before in my life, but let me put a bug in your ear, eh. Listen, I know you like what you see. But there's things you missed in those moves. You didn't see it all. It happens too
fast. That's Litz's style. He's the fastest man game player you'll ever see. If you saw all he did you wouldn't be talking right now, you'd be shut the fuck up.

When Furry motioned that he'd play next, the gamblers started their exchanges. Litz's preference would have been Daggett, but it wasn't his decision. Daggett, like Pisk, was their first. Furry cracked his knuckles and shadowboxed while Clough and Daggett remained in a tight huddle speaking in fast suggestions. Furry came over to them now and again and agreed with everything they said, then went back to his preparations.

Clough said: Don't even think a yourself as a man when you're oot there, eh. Think a yourself as a predator. You're a fucking bear. You're a grizzly bear.

I'm a grizzly bear, said Furry.

You're no human. You're the fiercest maddest most dangerous beast around. You're Furry. You know who you are?

I'm Furry.

You remember when we just started out in this forest, and we ran upon a lone wolf, half-starved, wanting us for a meal?

Yeah, I remember.

Remember how when he lunged at you, you hacked that wolf's head right off his neck?

Yeah.

With your bare hands, man?

Yeah.

Well, that's what you're going to do to Litz
right now
.

Yeah
.

Where're the Chinamen getting all their money for betting on? said a dusty gambler in the line to make a bet. The men around him turned their attention to the Chinamen and their money piling up in Calabi's leather bellysack. The Chinamen bet with a kind of melancholic addiction to the act itself, the transaction. Addicted to the point of purchase. They revered the moment of delivering their money into the hands of Fate. They did so quietly, with unequivocal manners and inordinate subservience. I'm not letting some Chinee outbet me, the dusty guy said, shaking his changepocket. When he got to Langis and
asked how much the Chinamen had bet, Langis told him they usually started at a dollar. A dollar, eh, said the bohunk, fidgeting his money. Well, gully-gee, where the fuck they getting all their blankets from, eh? That's a lot a chickamin.

Are you making a bet or what? I got a line goes twenty deep behind you, sonny, said Dr. Langis.

Yeah, yeah, okay, sorry, he said. Fuck, make it a dollar and a nickel on Litz.

Show it. The kid gave Langis his money and Langis wrote it up in his book. All right, next, said Langis.

Litz didn't acknowledge he even had a competitor until Furry was out of his clothes. This was Vancouver's first chance to evaluate Furry's physique. Litz's gaze was especially prudent. He looked Furry over bottom to top. The man was seven-eight feet tall by all accounts. His shoulders fit an ox's yoke. He was an even huger version of Litz, also long-armed. His knuckles were freshly scabbed. The mouth on his face was turned down with an almost sickened expression, as if he'd just swallowed all the blood from a fat mosquito in his mouth, and he regarded Litz with genuine unhappiness in his eyes. A man born for disobedience, for the woods of British Columbia. The look in his eyes had that hideous directness, like a bear's eyes, of pure intelligent blood instinct.

Ever heard a bear-baiting? Litz asked. Ever heard a when they stick a bear until the old boy bleeds to death? That's what I'm going to do to you, you fat
Furry
bear. I'm going to bleed you dry, you bear-faced bohunk.

Furry said nothing. Furry was staring down his nose at him.

Forget your talk, Litz, said Daggett from the sidelines. We're not afraid a you. Furry's up there at Wood's knocking on your wife the day you married her, and what a you do aboot it, cry? Sure, and then you
get
. Go hide out in the skookum and keep your wife locked up to keep her away from our door.

That so?

True, I remember Litz's wife, said Furry in his dry dog voice, I went at her for aboot a week there just before she left Wood's. Yeah, we got something in common, me and you, Litz.
Your wife. Guh, I thought there was s
ome
thing, but then next week … naw, it was n
o
thing.

You cross a line here, said Litz. Don't cross that line.

Already did, said Furry. I left it wet for you.

The crowd's mouths were open. No one spoke. It was Sunday. It felt like Sunday in the silence, like just before the Messiah comes to strike them all down. The silence even grander with the mill shut down. Indian silence. Litz's reaction: He didn't have a word of comeback, didn't even curse. All his swaggering talk ended there. This man game was going to be on different grounds, and Litz was already feeling it. Eventually his eyes cooled. He walked to the centre of the pitch and they shook hands, two shakes, and began to make their cautious circles. Furry stood bent at the knees, crabbing to the side as Litz repositioned himself step by step, breathing through his teeth, his hands clenching and splaying. Then he was on Furry with knees and knuckles. He could move at windspeed, a sensation that got Furry ducking in an uncontrolled and precarious way, like a man at the barrel end of a pistol, giving Litz the opportunity to switch it up, change tacks, deke him out, and land beside him. To save his landing he took Furry's wrists and yanked him into a series of bouncing twists like a jig, put him in a headlock, and drove his face into the ground. The first point went to Litz {
see
fig. 16.11
}. Clough was outraged. He shook his fist and spat
and swore to God. It happened too quickly. No one was sure but Furry, who respectfully conceded it.

FIGURE 16.11
The Corker

Calabi's commentary: If your opponent isn't perceptive enough to stall you with a Bookend, this move transfers all your travel speed onto the unmoving target, whose entire body screws around to compensate, and all you must do is guide the head towards the ground to score.

Over the woodsmen's pandemonium, their gobsmacked shouting, Sammy realized he could account for it all. He saw these naked men in a new light. Instead of brutes, suddenly they were professionals, accountants of their own charts, artists without canvas, just as the lion tamer is an artist, the strongman, or the singing Jew in greasepaint and straw hat—all artists, or at least, entertainers.

At last he saw the man game as she meant for him to see it. Instead of competing with it for her affections, he realized he was somehow at the centre of the game, a missing centre. The man game had been created for his amusement, all for him. A gift from his wife. Could it be true, he wondered, that all this time I've misunderstood?

I really am enjoying myself. Immensely, said Sammy. Why, I can even feel a smile appearing on my face.

Oh, how wonderful, said Molly. Do you really mean it?

Yes, I do. I think I may smile.

I don't see it yet.

It's coming. Be patient. I might need to watch another few moves.

It's been so long since I've seen you smile, said Molly. If you do, I think I'll cry.

Can't promise anything, but I do feel more joy today than ever since the accident.

I love you so dearly, said Molly, kissing him. I only ever want to entertain you, Chinook.

You have, he said.

No one but you can understand the man game properly, she said. I made it for you. Whatever you kumtuks now, then that's the truth.

Campbell said: It were the hugest upset in the history a the man game so far. Never seen nothing like it. A spectacle
unparalleled. There might a been a good many men who put his money on Furry but he hardly could expect to see his gamble's fruits. No one seen Furry play before. I mean, I saw him learn these moves, but. I mean, and everybody knows how I play the man game. It's a matter a education to bet on me. But Furry? Furry, he's my boss, but he was an unknown integer to the town. And here's Litz, you should a seen him. Lean. Leaner than a creek in the heat a summer. Nothing but stones. Is that my beer or your beer?

The bar was filled past capacity with keg drinkers. The siphon tubes streamed and foamed endlessly into mug after greasy mug as the night wore on. Fortes collected on old tabs and totted up new ones. The player piano went
a-rinky-dadinky-dink-dink-da-rink
, and the Irish sang along. Beer dripped off beards. The only women in the crowd were tattoos, excepting Molly of course (muse of all tattoos), who accompanied her crippled husband Mr. Erwagen, feeding him beer. They sat happily in the corner, laughing along with the stories, lies, and gaffs of the night's scandal. She had an erotic way of tipping the mug to Sammy's mouth then turning her bamboo wrist to daub the foam off his lip. Her ministrations were nurselike, and her remedy was the best beer in the world. Sunnyside delight.

At another table near where Campbell was grousing on to almost anyone who'd listen with stories of that Sunday a week ago when Litz beat Furry, other men argued over details of the day.

I'm
Meier
, said Meier, stressing not the pronunciation but the importance of his name. 'The fuck you know aboot me? Matter fact don't say shit. Tired a hearing bohunks talking not make sense. Fucking tell you how it went, eh. I was robbed, and Furry was robbed. That's how it went. Pure robbery. Litz, he's no better than that damn Indian we strung up. If Litz played straight? That match would a been ours for the taking. He used the hovering technique and
that
is illegal. Starts off they meet, shake hands, and Litz is instantly trying to box him, shooting left jabs and hooks, and Furry's putting
up with it somewhat. Takes one swipe and you can tell Litz is trying to get him to do the Daggett, eh. He's frustrated Furry's not going for it. 'Course Furry knows Litz is trying to insult him. Trying to act tough swiping fists a hair from Furry's nose. He's trying to make
Furry
do the Daggett, eh. Not funny. Well, he dodged low and went in for the Hatched Back, scooping Furry up onto his back, spinning him around … and besides Campbell already did a Hatched Back, and
better
.

I declare a rematch in order, said Terry Berry.

And I second that, said Vicars.

Wa, said all.

Meanwhile, over near the back of the bar, a black shade partly lifted in Sammy's world. Though he was still as ever trapped in his wheeled chair and unable to move below the neck, Sammy sat in the bar with a different face. It was as if in the space of a week—a week since seeing the man game dedicated to him, from his wife—the spectrum of his identity had grown dramatically more arrayed.

Shall there be more discoveries, he asked aloud, his wife listening with affection. Shall I ever walk again? Or will I live out my days as a mind poised against the physical dimension? Or will this enlightenment bode well for my impediments? God has taken care a me thus far, Molly, despite my own worst intentions. I should like to imagine that if I am given the right motivation, He would send me to my feet again.

Sammy was an old man. He was another generation older than everyone around him. The men in the Sunnyside saloon were seventeen, eighteen. Bright faces, tanned by labour. They had fisherman's hands, pink and big enough to touch thumb to fingers when fisting a beer pitcher. A trapper's education, on their knees in the forest smelling yesterday's turd. Portaging across Manitoba at the age of fifteen, weighted down by rabbit pelts, dreaming of mother's milk. Scared and alone, far from their families, they became dangerous men. Half-wild from a lack of civilization, they looked upon the streets with a cougar's suspicion. They
had a cougar's smarts. They had bear's eyes, bear's claws, bear's hair.

If there's any one event that Ken, Silas, and Cedric all agree was a catalyst for the man game to proceed from its original players of 1887 to a citywide phenomenon by 1900, with teams, leagues, divisions, and an economy, it was taking place this very moment, as the next generation of players listened to Furry & Daggett's crew tell their official histories. The men not only listened, they planned their own comeups. Their own secret plans were already starting to hatch. To prove themselves, these men would go out and create their own moves, and strip to challenge the very men they once hoped to befriend.