The Man Game by Lee W. Henderson

boardwalk.
    I said I’m not going to fight you, said Pisk at a safe distance from Daggett, his arms raised in a defiant or imploring gesture. With both men now on the street, the crowd formed a Y-shape with Daggett in the bowl of it as they waited for Pisk to come away from the rim so they could wrap around and shut the men in.
    Think I’m just going to let you walk away, you fucking arsonist?
    It was you and Furry who burned us all down. Don’t pin this on us.
    Get the preacher, said Daggett to his audience. Make the man confess. Your guys’ territory. Everyone here knows we never log that area. We always been logging south past the Snauq reserve and you know it. You boys always log those soft spars north a us, burning all your dead stumps.
    All your lies don’t stack up to no truth.
    I got friends who saw you up there with your goddamn donkey engine dragging them logs up to be burned.
    Friends. Don’t feed me that, said Pisk, spitting. When was the last time you kept to your area? You’re a liar, a thief—.
    The verbal battle raged for a few more spittled minutes.
    The audience sought to shape itself moblike in the street, surrounding the fighters. The smoke haze blended indelicately with the sea air off Coal Harbour. Joe Fortes came out, threw a towel over his shoulder, leaned against a glossily painted balustrade along the boardwalk, and saw Molly wheel her husband to the edge of the walk.
    Ah, I should a guessed the men here love to gamble, said Molly.
    Sammy studied her face, looking for a sign of her thoughts. Her complexion, normally so silken, looked sapped, and her eyes were fixed in a tighter jaded mien as she gazed down on the street brawl. He turned his attention to the scene on the road. The men below had forgotten all about him and Molly.
    Using his thumbs, Fortes untwisted his pair of old greying black suspenders hooked to the cedar buttons on his trousers, patted his moist bald head, and gave Sammy a kind of bemused but charitable eyeballing, which was, all told, a better expression than people usually mustered in his presence.
    Be better you folks stay up here for safety, said Fortes. Mrs. Erwagen, he added.
    Yes?
    Please stand back, won’t you, ma’am.
    Sounds wise, Molly, said Sammy.
    Molly demurred with a bow of her head to Fortes and stepped back from the rail, her eyes a rare green flash against the white banister. Her expression dropped below Fortes’s sightline. In return, Fortes gave her the radiant grin he used on children, whose hearts unavoidably melted, like biscuits on the ocean, for one of his smiles. She didn’t see it though, a minor disappointment to him, as if he’d extended his hand to shake hers and she hadn’t responded. So to save face, he morphed the smile into a grimace, then used it on the crowd of idiots below.
    He might be able to win an arm wrestle, but there’s noway he’s winning this, eh, said Clough, one-arming his way through the crowd to get a better view.
    Tell you what, Daggett’s got the worst slowest left I ever seen, said Bud Hoss, the young fat sprout who worked for Daggett and Furry as handlogger, rigger, and driver.
    Pisk is fast, he’s all fast, said Moe Dee, an older, hairier, leaner man who was loyal to his pursestring and none other. He don’t look so fast, but Pisk’s fast. And it’s aboot his fastness, that’s what will help him here, eh.
    Pisk can’t take a punch, said Clough.
    Sure as fuck he can.
    Daggett is drunk. I don’t know what that means. What a you think?
    Aboot him being drunk?
    Yeah.
    Pisk is a fucking China doll compared, said Clough. One good ka-nocking he’s down.
    Daggett is slow, said Hoss. It’s his slowness he’s got to think aboot now.
    He’s huge, eh.
    He is a mammoth, eh.
    Only bohunk around here bigger than Pisk has got to be Daggett.
    Someone whispered: I tell you it don’t matter if you’re slow or fast, if you killed