The Man Game (20 page)

She walked alone under the shade of the forest. Molly in the breeze. The cool sun was above the clouds and beyond reckoning. It was the sun from a northern perspective, bright but not warm, concluded by chilly shadows. Two hundred feet in the air a peregrine falcon circled the airstream, its vision fierce enough to spot mice on the forest floor. The falcon saw Molly as she kept looking at her hand-drawn map and changing directions. Hearing the bird's high-pitched cry, she looked up and saw the falcon on a fleet-winged course, his swift pinions carrying him over earth's darkness and bringing him in contact with the infinite, gliding along the airstream in a descent from Heaven.

The falcon spotted Litz and Pisk, too, and no less than thirty yards in front of them, Furry and Daggett—then suddenly the swift bird was taken upon by two crows whose wings and talons nicked at its feathers, turning and wrestling in mid-air, the falcon using its greater strength to keep the crows at bay. Yet their trickster strategies prevailed, the crows forcing the falcon to sweep low across the sky and nest for a minute in the parched limbs of an old fir tree dozing in the
wind, poised between the two packs of men walking towards each other on the forest floor.

Litz and Pisk were careful around the dry needles of a shedding fir. Besides the tricky path itself, the men stopped at even the smallest sound. If a single stick broke it was cause for alarm. The rule was to stop, stand still, then make a fast duck behind safe cover. Now having done that, they lay hiding in the roots of a monolithic cedar, watching the forest, expecting to see a deer's head turn in the shadows, or worse, a Vancouverite.

Ah, hell, it was nothing, said Furry, and stood up from a blend of foliage. It was them birds, he added, seeing the crows swooping above them trying to dive in at the peregrine.

Holy fuck, thought Litz and Pisk simultaneously. A hideous smile pulled across Litz's face, and Pisk's teeth were heard to grit.

Both men thought of the survivor's credo: Silence, stillness, stealth, and sightlines.

Daggett hoisted himself up from the ground and looked around. His axeblade flashed in Pisk's eyes. He was ten paces from where Litz and Pisk hid in the tree's muddy, tangled roots. This was what they were up against. The trees were speckled with yellow and white lichen, the floor was waves of fern blades. For the moment, Daggett and Furry didn't see Litz or Pisk in the overload of greenery and penumbra.

We're out a time, said Furry, pinching the bridge of his nose.

This is supposed to be the place, eh. Gave me good details. Said near them fucking old chutes on ol' Fraser's camp down by Bell's Island.

Furry coughed. They'd spent the last hour circling Doyle's land, hunting for the hideout.

Daggett took a deep breath, spat, and said: Oh, I can smell them sweating. They're so close I can feel it. I can feel their beings here. This is the place, I fucking feel it, eh.

Daggett's spittle was practically on their faces. It was humiliating. Pisk looked at Litz with overboiling irritation, irrationally blaming him, and Litz looked back at him as if to say,
What a you expect us to do? Neither was known to hide from rivals. It was
not
ordinary for a lumberjack to avoid a fist fight. It was downright yellow. Snaking into an inguinal cranny between the kneecapped talons of an ancient tree did not feel right. It felt to Pisk that he'd reached the lowest a man agreed to stoop to collaborate with a woman. Silence. Stillness. They were cowards for her love. Litz didn't look much more impressed with their predicament. Still, he made it clear by his expression that he'd never forgive Pisk if he stood up. The time would come, patience, patience, the time will come.

Stealth. Sightlines. Oh, Pisk was grinning with mischief, barely able to suppress his desire to leap to his feet and break Daggett in two.

Litz mouthed the four S's … and Pisk winced in anger, for he knew better than to need a reminder. It was hard to contain himself and follow his own good advice. Litz did not take an eye off his partner, ready to pull him back if he so much as flinched.

Fuck it, said Furry. Fuck these woods. We won't find nothing in here. It's dark as a bronze eye.

Can't find any tracks for all the fucking ferns, neither, said Daggett. If my nose weren't plugged I bet you I'd smell those dick-biters from here. I bet you I would. Came oot all this ways just for nothing. Really chaps my ass. Those dudes are getting my wrath when the time comes, eh.

Sure, said Furry.

They finally gave up, walked off northwest, Daggett yakking to Furry the whole time, cursing everything that ever lived, axehandles at rest over their shoulders. For a few minutes more, Litz and Pisk lay in hiding as their rivals muttered and crashed into the great overwhelming cave of the wilderness, quieter and quieter until gone, good riddance. If it weren't for Molly they might have left town altogether and not been hiding here like crickets against the earth. When the coast was clear Litz and Pisk got up from the tree roots, brushed the wet crud from their dungarees, and checked both ways.

A sound, nothing more than an embittered eagle taking flight from a dry hemlock, gave them pause, listening for what smacked of human among the forest's whispers, just in case. Once the coast was well and truly clear, they proceeded on without discussion. It was a sorry day for their partnership and they knew it.

I don't like hiding from, Pisk said. It's a fucking splinter in my sock.

What a you think a Furry?

The brains.

Definitely the brains. But how much?

I want to bludgeon them both.

I want to beat them with their own bones.

We'll mulch them bohunks, said Pisk.

Damn straight, said Litz.

This lady better know what she's doing.

She does. I can smell it.

Oh, man, said Pisk. You greedy.

What aboot you, eh? Come on. She can bend you with her pinky finger.

At least I don't got marriage shackled on me.

Walking through intermittent rain, Litz felt it like a cold frost on his bare neck. It was a falling freezing mist. The rust-coloured bark of the cedars was spaced at chaotic intervals across a slanted floor of dried coniferous needles, spongy black mulch, and a brilliant array of green and yellow lichen. All of it was soaked through by rainfall. Giant splashes fell to the ground or exploded on Pisk's bald scalp. They were on Horne's land now, a secluded, bear-infested stake in the coniferous forests.

She sat on a Hudson's Bay blanket as if on a picnic. She even had a wicker basket stocked with
not quite
picnic items. No one in history ever brought, for instance, a bag of flour, two quarts of milk, a dozen beef sausages, and three dozen raw
eggs on a picnic. Still, it was food. She smoked a cigarette. They waited in the shadows, peeping her like Toms. No denying her inner beauty. She had what in these parts of the world they called nice
totoosh lackles
. That was Chinook for holy bosoms. Her fashionable smock was made of imported cotton. She was spotless.

A wild rabbit peaked its brown-white ears above the long grass, then leaped to hide again.

She don't look frightened to be here all alone, whispered Litz.

Pisk regarded her. I don't think she'd care if we never showed up, he said.

They gazed at her. There was a certain infinite placidity to her smile. She never got a bored look. She sat with her knees bent to one side, her ten toes stacked single file up her bare feet. The bare feet was her one show of intimacy.

Man
, said Pisk under his breath.

What? said Litz.

Her back was to them, but as she turned her neck they saw her face in profile. She tucked the cigarette between her lips and sucked with plush inhalation, then let the burly cloud exhale once it had seen what it was like inside her. Her brand of tobacco smelled like the best tobacco. By some miracle it had stopped raining, and where she sat the grass seemed to be as dry as a cat's tongue; even the sun was willing to make an appearance. There was no easy way for Pisk to express how golden her skin looked in the sunlight without sounding weak. He wasn't like Litz, all syrup the minute he laid eyes on a beauty. Her complexion looked as if a thin protection of glass was set over European paint. She caressed her blanket as she waited. Absently, she unfurled the balding wool, mashed it into a spongy wad of Hudson's Bay colours— red, yellow, and green on a cream background—, and then, noticing what she'd done, tried to press the wool back into the weave to no avail. She was looking in the opposite direction. All they saw was her back, her black hair, and a
thin horn of the moon that was her face. Not even one corner of her lip was in view. Her hair was pinned up in two swooping chignons. Her ears were as white as marble pedestals in contrast to her hair's stormy voluptuousness. Her white nape was shadowcrested. Ah, she said, there you are.

Klahowya, said Pisk, instantly climbing up out of the foliage to greet her, followed closely behind by Litz, who was blushing and kept his eyes lowered, not wanting her to see by the look on his face that they'd been watching her for some time now, enough time to long for more.

She greeted her men with handshakes, her wrist bent ever so slightly. She smelled like the spray off a northern waterfall. They forgot all about their brush with Furry and Daggett in the forest a moment ago and found themselves concentrating on her green eyes. Molly stood up gaily without bending her knees, skipped over to her woodsmen and asked: Tell me how you balance on the logs out on the water like that. She mimicked a logroll, laughing, and jumped away with a balletic jeté.

Litz said: It's balance. Plus we got steel spikes on our boots. Takes practice.

I'd like to try something today, she said. Might not work. Are you ready? She craned her neck and flicked away the dragonfly hovering next to her. We'll start with clothes on, she said.

Fuck it, said Pisk. Let's go.

No, no, she said. Stay clothed. Put on your dungarees, Pisk. Please. For the time being you'll practise with me.

All the more reason, Pisk said. I'm not going to shame myself for nothing. He stood there with a shirt on and his hands on his bare hips, waiting for a better reason to put his pants back on.

Molly grunted. It was a girl's grunt, adorable. Fine, you keep your pants off, but only if you slap me.

Slap you?

Tell your partner to try to slap me, Molly said to Litz.

In reply, Litz licked all around his mouth, a weird loner's expression of embarrassment and confusion, and then he looked at the ground where something knucklehard needed to be bunted away.

Don't be afraid a me, said Pisk, just 'cause I got no pants on. Come on.

Put your pants on if you don't have the guts to slap me. Or let this be your first test. Molly threw her Stars & Stripes on a gravel patch, and Litz, moving a step closer, politely pressed it out with the toe of his leather boot. Call it a dare, she said. I bet if you tried, you'd miss.

I'd miss, how would I miss?

A course you'll miss. If you slap me, I show you how to pavane with your clothes off. If you miss, we do things my way.

He swung his palm out half-heartedly and she shifted her weight and swatted his arm out of the air so forcefully that he had to laugh when he stumbled.

Try again.

He swung his hand out a bit more forcefully and this time she stepped aside. Okay, I get it, he said.

You hardly tried at all. You want to put your pants back on, is that it?

What a you mean?

Is that how you slap a
man
? No wonder you wouldn't fight Daggett.

You want me to slap you?

Hard as you can.

He shook his head. I don't find this funny.

That's your problem, she said. I'm a very funny girl.

This time he really let her have it. He came down on her with the back of his hand fast enough to split a fenceboard. When he connected it was with his face to the earth. How she did it he wasn't sure. She dodged him by a hair's breadth. He could feel the air off his swing buff her cheek. How she was able to lunge and kick him off his balance while knocking his hand out of the sky with her arm, he didn't know. In a fell swoop she levelled him and he was
down on the ground with his legs splayed awkwardly and a mouthful of grass. She was still standing.

He spat out dirt. How the fuck—?

Put your pants on so we can get started.

He rethought his hopes. Molly was too extraordinary for his domestic visions. Pisk had trouble doing up his fly buttons. He said: What was that supposed to be, a lesson? How'd you pull that?

I can teach you how to do that, too. For now, get your pants on and let's pavane.