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  Praise for The Man Game

  “Phenomenally ambitious and artful … with Henderson’s technical bravado as enviable as his wit, intelligence and heart … [The] interplay of fact, fiction and fantasy lends the historical passages a timeless quality, and also speaks to the novel’s larger ideas … The sort of sprawling, innovative, exhilarating yet quintessentially Canadian novel many of us have been waiting for … An absolute triumph.”—The Globe and Mail

  “One of the most entertaining, rollicking and original Canadian novels I’ve ever read … A loose, baggy monster of a novel, and it’s raw and rough in all the right ways. It has a confident use of vernacular that destroys the convention of polite historical novels and animates its characters with a Rabelaisian earthiness … It’s bright and clear, yet mysterious and dark … Once this novel draws you in, it keeps hold of you till the end.”—Toronto Star

  “Henderson’s prose has a propulsive rhythm as well as a rococo vocabulary. Bravo.”—National Post

  “Remarkable … Henderson is the real deal. The language of The Man Game is colourful, at turns crass and refined. Full enjoyment of Henderson’s great skill as a wordsmith requires a hunger for new words, a good dictionary and a chortling delight in inventive vulgarity. As a work of speculative historical fiction, as a study in the nature of unrequited love, as a song of praise to the power the objects of our affections wield, The Man Game becomes more than a ripping good yarn; it’s a stunning achievement.—Winnipeg Free Press

  “One of the strangest, strongest and most fascinating pieces of fiction to come around in some time … Totally captivating and terrifically different, this is a novel filled with action, tension and magic.”—The Sun Times (Owen Sound)

  “An audacious, inventive, genre-bending debut novel … Defies description.”—The Chronicle Herald

  “Inventively visual, high-flying prose, which uses historical diction but is also thoroughly contemporary, suggests Thomas Pynchon.”—Georgia Straight

  “As brilliant and twisted as a funhouse mirror, and Henderson is a wildly seductive ringmaster.”—Quill & Quire

  “[A] wondrous debut novel from Lee Henderson … Beautifully written, with unlikely amounts of poetry scattered amidst waves and waves of cursing.”—See Magazine

  “A historical novel like no other—a curious, challenging blend of tongue-twisting Pynchon and warped Canadian pastoralia. The language is a rowdy mix of anachronistic English and rap lyrics … Its skewering of historical fiction … is so bizarre, hilarious and satirical, it reads like an assassination … Vancouver is … a character of brooding, wheezing intensity … Grand, kaleidoscopic scope.”—FFWD

  “Henderson’s extraordinarily vivid prose engages your imagination.”—2Magazine

  PENGUIN CANADA

  THE MAN GAME

  LEE HENDERSON is the author of the 2002 short story collection The Broken Record Technique. He is a contributing editor of visual art magazines Border Crossings and Contemporary. He lives in Vancouver.

  themangame.org

  ALSO BY LEE HENDERSON

  The Broken Record Technique

  THE MAN GAME

  Lee Henderson

  PENGUIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),

  a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2008

  Published in this edition, 2009

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

  Copyright © Lee Henderson, 2008

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,

  no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

  or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner

  and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

  product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living

  or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in Canada.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Henderson, Lee, 1974-

  The man game / Lee Henderson.

  ISBN 978-0-14-100570-6

  I. Title.

  PS8565.E56165M35 2009 C813’.6 C2009-902204-4

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition

  that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise

  circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other

  than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition

  being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

  Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see

  www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 477 or 474

  FOR JP SAWATSKY

  THE CAST

  Kat, our narrator

  Minna, a close friend

  Cedric, a threat

  Ken, a new homeowner

  Silas, a freeloader

  Molly Erwagen, the mind

  Sammy Erwagen, the Hastings Mill bookkeeper

  Toronto, a ward

  Pisk, first man

  Litz, a loyal ally

  Furry & Daggett’s Logging Concern, a crew of lumberjacks

  including:

  Furry

  Daggett

  Campbell, at five foot even, early witness to the man game

  Meier, seven-and-a-half foot

  Boyd, with monobrow

  Smith, a silent Thor

  John Clough, a one-armed rummy, prison guard,

  lamplighter, & poundkeeper

  RH Alexander, manager of Hastings Mill

  Mrs. Alexander, a wife

  Mrs. Litz, a young bride

  Constable Miller, the po-lice

  Peggy, a whorehouse madam

  Bud Hoss, a contrarian & bookie

  Moe Dee, a loudmouth woodsman

  The snakehead from San Francisco, a business associate

  RD Pitt, a cowboy shit disturber

  The Knights of Labour, a pro-union activist group

  Calabi and Yau, bakers

  The Whore Without A Face

  Miguel Calderón, proprietor of the portable Bar Rústico

  Joe Fortes, a bartender & swimming coach

  He that wrestles with us
strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

  – EDMUND BURKE, REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION

  ONE

  The basis of ethics is man’s right to play the games of his choice.

  –ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

  We weren’t meant for each other but for a long time we were never apart. That’s how it was for Minna and me, even if it can’t be the same ever again. If you called her on the phone and suggested you pick her up in your car, a Chrysler Dynasty in my case, she wasn’t the kind of girl who asked: Where are we going? She was the kind who asked: When are we going? No, I don’t think she much cared where. There was a flippancy to her that was partly confidence, partly generosity, and nested inside that was her flawless inhibition.

  It felt to me like we were leaving the city, but according to the unfolded map we were headed only for the far east, where I’d heard about something called a man game that was about to take place. I heard about the man game at a provincial wrestling tournament my cousin was competing in. These two teenage guys sitting behind me in the bleachers talked about it like it was going to be the most amazing thing ever. Purely word of mouth. No flyers, no ads. According to the teenager the sport was very hush-hush on the downlow. Worth the effort, the kid said, to go so far east in the city. And this kid then says how the man game was going to be way better than what we were watching, which happened to be my cousin getting the shit kicked out of him.

  This was back in January. The trees were barebones along the road where we parked. We were so far east that nothing was recognizable. Not the streets, which sloped and undulated. Not the shapes of the houses, which all looked like miniature churches set up one beside the other. They’re called Vancouver Specials because there’s so many of them, charmingly ubiquitous split-levels, red and orange brick on the bottom, white stucco or panelling on the top floor, and a peaked A-frame roof. Each house was like an arrowhead or a mountain peak garnished with electric bulbs strung along the rooftop gutters, around the windows, and above the motorized garage door. I was unfamiliar with the style of the yards, which were two concrete slabs with a beach table and some chairs, surrounded by a white-painted iron-wrought fence with more arrowheads at the top of each post and bulbous avocado sculptures at each corner facing the street. The picture windows on the top floors reflected the image of their neighbours opposite. I no longer felt we were in the Vancouver I identified with. Even just stepping out of my Dynasty it felt as though the area was governed by a quite different set of habits. The sun shone weakly behind its white curtain. No rain today, but still, you could never tell. In Vancouver, rain could happen all at once.

  I was hungry and nervous, always the case when I was with Minna. She never stopped thinking about food and I permanently worried about life.

  I saw people head down a mulched alley between two blue houses with lawns stewing with fertilizer. Presumably these folks were aimed in the same direction we wanted, so we followed. To me the neighbourhood felt downcast and quiet; the houses seemed to sulk, the landscape was neutered.

  A long-nosed boy sat in a corner of the yard beside a tree, one hand inside a black silk top hat, no pants on. That kind of neighbourhood. Poor magic. I watched a man at work on the pickets of his half-crushed fence, and he didn’t look too amused, nor did his wife, leaning out the window, pulling at the ropes of her crowded laundry line.

  Our footfalls matching, heads lowered, we concentrated on the two slips of dry tread along the alleyway that led towards a puckered cul-de-sac—more post-war bungalows and Vancouver Specials—where individuals from all rotten walks of life gathered to await a spectacle.

  A thick crowd of people milled between a fence and a house with pink vinyl siding as they gradually squeezed their way into the backyard. We assumed this was where we wanted to be too. The thing about the house, which was otherwise pleasant and well-maintained, was how it had caved into its own foundation. Along the front corner opposite the garage the house sank a good two or three feet below the lawn. There was a basement window diagonally halved by ground-level topsoil and sod, looked clogged on the inside, too. Somehow Minna and I, and this troubled and hesitant love we shared, had ended up here at this weird beat-up house with the sag of a broken jaw.

  I think we’re going to enjoy this, I said.

  This is the kind a thing you only ever hear aboot, said Minna, but you never actually get to see it or witness it.

  Whatever it is we’re aboot to see or witness, I said.

  Exactly, she said.

  We walked a little on. The cold Canadian sun shone on us.

  I can’t remember, Minna said. Does your guy’s apartment have an elevator?

  No, I said. After this we’d scheduled a trip to buy me a bed through Minna’s quote unquote Chinese connection, a paranoid couple living on Knight Street who sold mattresses, frames, bedsprings, the whole bit out of a corrugated aluminum shanty in their backyard. Two days ago I’d moved into an apartment with a new roommate and I needed a bed, and though it’s true I prefer to dress ready for business, I don’t actually make much money, so this is how a man like me gets a boxspring.

  Lopsided house on an obscure cul-de-sac. Indivisible from the throng, we proceeded into the grassy canyon between the fence and the house, flowing as a mob into the backyard. The vinyl siding quivered from the muffled noise of a living room stereo at full volume busting out a glitchy woof of something violent.

  I heard a guy say: They make it hard to be over there for longer than three months unless you’re a citizen, so you can’t get a job, unless, you know, you work under the table, you don’t have the right to proper health care, can’t go to the dentist, you can’t even rent an apartment—it’s ridiculous. I hadda work under the table, get another guy in my squat to pull out my fucking rotted tooth ’cause I didn’t have health care.

  Like Minna and me, people seemed to arrive in pairs or groups. But we were the only ones who looked unacquainted with the day’s event. A lot of people were screaming for the sheer hell of it. Over by the remnant of a tree, four overweight and juvenile men wearing deranged ballcaps leaned against their girlfriends. Petite little wet T-shirted chorus girls. Their boyfriends were teeth, hair, groins, in that order.

  I considered the possibility that we should definitely leave, but I didn’t want to look timid in front of Minna. I despise crowds, and she knows.

  Man, lots a people here, I said.

  Just enjoy this, she said. Can’t you just enjoy us being together?

  We could be anywhere, I said.

  Uh-huh. And we’re here because a something you overheard a teenager say at a wrestling match?

  I have my own connections, yes.

  The cheers and whoops from the audience around us only made me feel less enthusiastic. People kept putting their hands in the air and waving them like they didn’t care if they looked like imbeciles. We were all young, but I was the only one wearing a tie, never mind leather shoes. The rest had shirts that might as well have been branded garbage bags. I wanted to scream if not for the fact that it would only make me fit in more.

  Relax a bit, said Minna, rubbing my lower back. Her hand rubbed up my shoulder blades, then across my stiff spine. I smiled carefully for her. I was enjoying the attention on the inside. She appeared, as always, patient. I’m not. But Minna didn’t call for me to amuse her, much as I endeavoured. Daily life was all the amusement necessary; she didn’t need me, at least not the way I needed her. She was hot and serene. Nothing fazed her, not even me.

  At last the music began to die away, and after a brief round of spastic hollering the crowd succumbed to silence, prepared for the true event drawing ever closer to go-time. We waited for it.

  Upon this cue of quiet, those with a porch view nudged to squish on either side to make a path to the door. I tried to get a look into the window, but shadow blacked out everything.

  A figure emerged, followed by another. They passed without incident through the canal of spect
ators and totally ignored the extended palms demanding high and down-low fives. Two young men walked onto the killed grass of the backyard.

  The players stood on the pitch side by side, then split up to find a dry corner opposite each other, where the taller, hairier of the two proceeded to undress completely. Off came The Bay’s tricoloured boxer briefs. Minna and I shot each other hesitant but inquisitive glances, and although I watched her lips part and one black eyebrow cock up, she chose to say nothing.

  A spectator’s gleeful whoop soared into the air and a baritone voice called out, All right. There was sustained applause.

  You going to get down to it? said the naked man to his still boxered opponent.

  The guy shook his head while he looked to the ground, a No gesture, and all at once the audience erupted in hisses and catcalling. They stamped up and down and swatted insults at him. Get outta the yard; Go home; Go back to wherever you came from; Take your sorry self back to that shameful place.

  After all this stress from the mob, the player finally agreed to take off the boxers. The crowd loved this. The crowd noise was embarrassing as he pulled the folding holes down over his ankles and left the elasticized underwear in the dirt of his corner. He stood, gently rocking on the balls of his feet, under the steaming gaze of some hundred or so people.

  They’re naked, said Minna. Kat, you didn’t say anything aboot buck.

  I had no idea. I wouldn’t have brought you if I’d known.

  They got great bodies, said Minna.

  I had no comment. A little younger than me, but they still looked as physically fresh as if they’d come straight from the high school gymnasium. All those endurance runs and flexed arm-hangs, push-ups, and basketball had left a good imprint.

  I’m a little confused what’s happening, she said.

  This definitely isn’t what I pictured.

  We watched as the two men warmed up. The stocky guy with the long curly hair greased back did a one-armed handstand. He made it look like the kind of thing a person just does. I checked my wrist for a watch, for something else to do instead of gaping at the naked men while they limbered from the necks on down. It was a big show of loosening various flattoned street muscles along their arms, backs, chests, legs, and necks. I ignored it. Not to be outdone, the taller, more heavily built and unshaven one did a backflip, landed on a single foot. Deep breaths and neck cracks led to flippering wrists and more heaving breaths. They danced on their toes and dodged left and right. I wasn’t paying attention. After both guys relaxed to a neutral position and shared a moment of staring stillness, they walked to the centre of the yard and shook hands.