The Man Game Read Free Page B

she was going to give the wrong answer.
    I’ll never leave you, she said and flipped her head over on his unfeeling lap to look him in the eyes. You sweet fool, she said.
    New friend, may I ask what’s your name? Molly called out to the Indian astride the feeble ass. This sorry pair was supposed to take them on a three-hour trip due north, though Sammy doubted greatly the mule’s strength to live out the next four steps.
    Toronto, was the Indian’s answer.
    How peculiar, Sammy said, that’s our old home.
    Whitemans name me Toronto.
    What an awful tag, thought Sammy.
    No good in Vancouver come from Toronto, so say Salish peoples, said Toronto.
    I see, said Sammy unhappily. His wife sopped his sweaty hair with a kerchief.

    They stood about three feet apart, taking and blocking with only the hands’ heels, palms flat and the heel of each hand used to bat and thwart. Ken kept advancing. Silas was constantly on the back up. Their elbows swung out and down, over and in. Silas had to manoeuvre such that he didn’t get trapped into a corner.
    Rook Takes Pawn
{see fig. 1.2 }
, a spectator shouted out, and I assumed correctly that it was the name of a move. The cry sparked a moment of applause. The force of their attacks, so stern and unsympathetic, was too quick to fake. Ken, with the stronger arms, connected, and Silas’s head whiplashed back. Was it a point for Ken? Was it even a game of points? I couldn’t tell. The audience went silent. Someone was going to get tripped or hit on the head or both at once. The players were mustardy smelling in sweat. The furious beat and rhythm of their hands had them in a lather.
    FIGURE 1.2
Rook Takes Pawn

    Calabi’s commentary: A great dance of angled slaps, pivots, slaps, twists, and slaps, and no matter how violent the attacks, the players remain in step to a common rhythm.
    Sun glowered off their bodies.
    In the background I noticed for the first time something not unlike music, sound but without true music in it. A rev. A revving noise going on underneath the sounds of the guys’ palms and wrists colliding in swift, jabbing thrusts, parries, and psychs. Now and then Ken’s left palm would connect: swivel up and clap.

    What Sammy Erwagen needed was a safe home and an end to this miserable journey.
    Should we have stayed where we were? he said to his wife. Have I made a grave mistake bringing you out west? Look at me. I’m a wretch, a burden, a cripple.
    Shh, said Molly. Don’t worry, it’ll be so wonderful once we’re settled.
    Their Indian guide Toronto made a sound, an atonal sound, a mutter under his breath while the donkey clopped unsteadily and made his own defeated noises, sad snorfling equine noises. And the air made its own moan through the forest in such a chorus—a tenor for every tree.
    To no one in particular Toronto said: Pretty loud for wind.
    Douglas firs towered on all sides, some of them seventy feet around at the base, their enormous roots knuckling out of the topsoil, gripped to the earth, their trunks extending into the white vapour of space, swaying in the breeze. The trees cracked and wheezed without end, tossing back and forth at their peaks while down below the air merely fanned by to keep the heat from feeling unbearable.
    Curly bits of char floated through the heat, carrying a few embers towards them, not enough to startle Molly and Sammy, but enough to make them curious. At first they thought it was rain—it
sounded
like rain—until one peck landed on their cover and didn’t seem moist. It didn’t dissolve. What it did was singe straight through the deerskin and land on Sammy’s hand.
    He didn’t notice
where
it fell, but Molly leaned over. She too had seen it fall, and bent forward to identify. There it was on his hand, this little red ember making a welt in his palm. He felt nothing, no sensation of it cooking there. Before she had a chance to flick it off, the welt in