The Book of Duels Read online

  blood red as Sunset, as cherries

  my world upended—rat kills cat—

  I shall never follow another—

  what use: world, water, fire, wind, void?

  Yet still gull cries beyond me

  Yet still pages set before me

  Dusk comes, steals away our light—sun sets—

  Darkness, moon has failed us—

  what is left to do but weep?

  Shall I now seek revenge for him?

  Shall I suicide or use my pen?

  First-Called Quits: Pelham v. Vanderhosen

  In a Whip Fight for Honor near Lynchburg, Virginia,

  June 24, 1798

  Josiah Pelham, 49,

  Owner of Pelham’s Acres

  Returned my boy, Brossie, all bloody and beaten, his back sprung open like a deep-bit plum, stains on the split muslin of his shirt, which I bought for him not two months ago—had gall enough to say to me, Your boy wouldn’t work, so I put the whip to his hide and you ought to as well, God’s truth be known—like that was that and he’d drop the whole affair—had he hurt one of my younguns, I’d have shot him down, dog dead, and dared any man find me guilty, but Brossie is a slave who will be beaten again, yet he is a good boy—groomed and behaved, understands what I teach, and owns manners and looks to make a white man proud—I knew his mother too, gone now a dozen years, whom I’d have set free if the law had allowed—because this man had not driven his own workers—the tobacco flowers were starting to bloom, their seeds like sand soon to drop and so to sully the soil for next year’s crop—he came begging my help, so I sent him Brossie to top the tobacco—loaned him for free, no less—this simpleton thrashed the child for not working fast enough, insulting me two fold—harming my property and then my pride—so it has come to this: our left wrists bound each to each by hemp, a seven-foot length of leather in our rights, and I look him hard right square in his eyes and they drop to the dirt where I intend to bury this whelp like I would any man who’d split my mule’s frog or burned down my damn barn.

  My ears go a-ringing like funeral bells as the overseer calls the rules, though come swinging time I’ll pop his hide and tear it clean from the muscle, like scraping a scalded hog, and no matter the rules, I’ll not call quits nor hear them neither until I am satisfied.

  Luke Vanderhosen, 34,

  Foreman on the Welcome Home Plantation

  Darkie wouldn’t work, so damn straight I lashed him, same as I would any brute beast of the field and now comes riding up this great puff of smoke, nostrils flared like a thrusting bull in rut—him with his long coat in this hot heat to hide his pistol I suppose; him who’s fathered a slew of slave bastards; him come to slap my face and challenge me to a fight of first-called quits, like I ain’t never been beat before—Daddy was twice the man he is and he whipped me right as rain. There and then in front of the other foremen and slaves I answered him true—clenched my jaw and hacked and spat between his leather boots, pulled my hair back in a twist tail, stuck my hand forward, and let Overseer Reagan tie us off like you’d do any horse lathered at a drinking trough, and I gripped the bullwhip’s handle, rocked its tip dancing back and forth—its etched handle branding my palm and my knuckles a burning white—I seen in his eyes then that same hell-bent horror of the mama cow that run me down when I was but a child and me trying to doctor her sickly calf—that heifer I later shot out of spite and Daddy beat hell out of me then too—Reagan’s steady talking but all I recall is that bawling cow and the crush of her hooves against my ribs and the first release of my seed as I thought I had died, unable to breathe—of a sudden, I whiff the sweet wang of skunk spray on the wind—Lord God, I hope that ain’t the last thing I smell on Your green earth—and my damp nape goes cold.

  Pelham punches my throat and I spin and gasp and fall to a knee—flame spreads across my back and I try to scream but nothing comes—he beats my calves and he beats my neck and I can’t muster the breath to call quits, and turning, I see in his eyes that it does not matter if I ever do.

  Brossie, 14,

  Slave on Pelham’s Acres

  Standing behind Mr. Reagan, yellow stains on his white-collar shirt, I hold horse reins and move dirt with my toe till the iron and ’bacco rise up to my nose but Marse say, Don’t look away, boy, this is justice, and just this morning as I limp past him, Marse wretch down and catch my arm and heft me up on back of his horse and we thunder off—wind dries the tears and sweat from my fresh-scab skin—we get to the Welcome Home and straightaway I point out that bully foreman, and Marse, he hop down and slap fire from bully’s thin lips, and they tie theyselves with a rope long enough to bind you to a tree as they take your mama away while you cry her name on New Year’s Day—next I know that bully chokes, noise like spurs been put to his side—and when Marse steps back and lashes that whip, something deep below my belly rises—again that whip sings through the air and his shirt dances off his back and he makes a face like some catfish come ashore, with just his eyes Mr. Reagan holds back the other foremen—the black men, all funky from the fields, don’t dare watch but they listen and hunch each time that whip snaps, as if it was a snake in a tree, striking—I’ve never seen a white man beat but just then, holding them reins jelly-jar tight, my palms start to itch to hold that thicker leather, to hear it creak against my fingers, but who I got to beat—the foremen, those slaves, this bully? Myself, I reckon this thrashing’s a thing Marse gotta do but not on me—he ain’t belt me but once and even then like a father might a son—now bully’s shirt come off his skin in sopped rags—white cloth and white skin gone to a boiling red—he lay flat to the ground, still as a rock, save the skin on his back that opens like a wild weeping flower.

  I know if he could live long enough, the scars would heal like great stalks of lightning come frayed and burnt beneath his skin, but he will not survive, so the foremen start to yell the slaves back to work and they obey but tonight they will dance and sing—Mr. Reagan, silent as an undertaker, puts his hand on Marse’s sweaty shoulder, who stares at me like some raging bull, breath heaving, and me staring right back with aching palms and desires I can’t yet name.

  Founding Fathers: Hamilton v. Burr

  Settling an Old Score, Weehawken, New Jersey,

  July 11, 1804

  General Alexander Hamilton, 49,

  Former Secretary of the US Treasury

  On the walls of Fame I have penned my name in a hand indelible and swift—the Federalist Papers, the Bank of New York, the US Mint—for all the good I’ve given to Country, I have been persecuted from all sides—my boots sink in the sludge of this loose shore and we slog our way up the hill to where I shall engage Burr—the ignominy of Adams’s rebuffs, that rascal Jefferson’s uphiked nose, and even my own Federalists, pitching their tents with this devil who awaits me today, patient as a spider—I must admit, I choked his bid for governor, but now as I achieve the trail head, sweat beading on my hairline, I see him again—the burr in my side, the thorn in my eye—I fear our nation will fall asunder, capitulated by shortsighted men such as this Burr and the weakboys who’d willingly give Napoleon back his Louisiana—what’s next, the whole of our country?—foreign armies sit to both the west and south and we have no standing force to fight—I shake Burr’s hand and accept the pistol offered, which is heavier than I’d presumed, and I’ll say this much for him: he’s the only man in my life as reliable as George, my Washington, who never disappointed me save when he refused to be our king, and when I’d lift my chin to see up into his blue eyes, I’d become a child again, an orphan in the West Indies whose father had abandoned him, a boy whose mother succumbed to fever, and I would stand on the cliffs of St. Croix, the water lashing far below me, shouting straight into the wind between my cupped hands, Daddy, Daddy, and the wind would blow my words to shreds and dry the tears on my boyhood cheeks—

  Now I’ve accepted Jesus Christ into my heart, though He comes and goes—so much on His mind, I suppose one cannot blame Him—how to concentra
te on any single one thing—still, He’s filled my heart and I will waste my first shot but thereafter I am Christ-bound to defend myself—standing twenty-five feet from this filthy Catiline, I burrow my feet in the pebbles and I slip and the hair trigger goes off and I’m not afforded the dignity of delope—has the Lord forsaken me too?—Burr fires his ball and a full lifetime ticks by before it burrs into my body, and in that eternity, I realize that we are a two-sided coin flipped by Fate and here I land facedown and forlorn and I forgive him everything.

  Colonel Aaron Burr, 48,

  Vice President of the United States

  Last night before a hardwood fire, shivering with ague beneath a mound of blankets and scarves, I wrote letters of address to my loved ones, none more so than sweet Theodosia, You are a diamond of the first water, my dear—poor half orphan these last ten years, I regret betrothing you to that planter, but we will need his votes when I ascend, though if I die first, please flee, hie away from those men who bring themselves low by pressing slaves to service—I penned my will only to realize I am broke, in debt to my waistcoat—all those books for my daughter and wine for myself and glorious Richmond Hill—I see Hamilton level his pistol and so too do I and I should have killed this Creole thirty years ago, this scamp who has cast aspersions before my Honor—alas, he has crossed me once too often and now it has appeared in print that he has called me despicable, then had gall enough to describe its nuanced meanings as if I’m not his equal in the world of ideas: he is a coward at heart and I demanded his explanation, because one way or the other I must be done with him, and so we’ve come to this jag of land where we stand in plain sight of The City and on the precipice of violating a law I’m duty-sworn to uphold or become this nation’s bona fide Bonaparte, which I, American aristocrat, was born to be—I have liver and stones enough to make this land mine, the whole damned country, and since Jefferson’s dropped me from the ticket and New York has dropped me as well, I will have to take it, one bullet at a time, and the first will come from this well-oiled .544—my hand holds steady the heavy handle while the wind whips my coat and my ears ring and the fog is burned away and my man says, Ready, and that rascal fires first—

  His shot flies high, by Theodosia, and I know I’ll send him to his long home now—my sole regret that I was born a decade too late to be Father of this State and so will have to win my Fame by might to assure my place in History, to be the man whom everyone recalls by name, and leave as inheritance to my adoring Theodosia—Theodosia, my princess, oh Theodosia—the United States of Burr.

  Dr. David Hosack, 34,

  Noted Physician & Chronicler

  In predawn darkness, a knock on my front door pulls me from a dream in which I am staring at myself in the mirror—stark white surgeon’s gown and a head enwrapped with thick layers of gauze—my eyes the lone feature—I begin to unwrap the dressing layer upon layer and it grows pink and red and redder yet, bunching up in the wash basin before me like an aborted foetus—what will my face be beneath, will it even be there—the blood is thick on my hands and tacky as sap and on my gown as well—and now: the blank face behind the lit lamp of the man who beat upon my door and we are off in a skiff across the Hudson, bobbing about, the wind splishing water over my boots, a young boy bailing with a molasses bucket, until we ground ashore beneath the sheer wall of the Palisades, and the world is violently come into focus—two gunshots at dawn and I am already halfway up the path when I spy a man hidden by umbrella scuttling by me like a cat chased from a rubbish bin—am I to feign ignorance the reason I’ve been summoned; am I not to recognize my friend when he passes four feet from me; am I not to recall that this same stretch of land is where I doctored General Hamilton’s son when he lost his life three years before in a duel with pistols; or that this is where I bandaged that Canadian’s arm when the Stewart boy cut it during a sword fight last year—Burr too has fought here before, with old Church, from whom he walked away with a mere hole in his topcoat, and he fought another with Senator Jackson, they say, but I’d wager that’s apocryphal—still Jackson did kill the lieutenant governor of Georgia, so it is possible—last year, the editor Coleman killed the New York harbormaster, who was dropped to die on my doorstoop: all this killing in the name of Honor and yet they scurry and hide and lie like rats afterward.

  I crest the path, heaving, sleep still crusted in my eye, to see General Hamilton himself—of course it’s him—I kneel by his bloody side and see where the bullet has entered and clipped his spine and liver and my lips tremble, Your Honor, it is mortal, and his eyes roll back and he mutters, Death to this disease, Democracy, and his man says, You did not hear him, doctor, and I nod, holding the hand of this man who might have been king in any other country, in any other time, but here is just become one corpse more, and as we carry him to the boat, I recall how Hamilton tirelessly endeavored to undo Burr’s career—and now, with the cost of his own life, perhaps he has succeeded at last.

  A Scalping: Thompson v. Asi-yahola

  Outside of Fort King, Big Swamp, Florida,

  December 28, 1835

  “General” Wiley Thompson, 53,

  Former Congressman & Current Indian Agent

  Nostalgic this morning for my wife’s milk gravy thick with loose sausage slathered in a heap on her fluffy white biscuits and me in my robe with little else to cover my modesty—coffee percolating in the fire and bacon popping in the skillet and she is happy and breaks two eggs to sizzle in the fat and the sunlight comes through her lace curtains and she is glowing and humming a tune I do not know, something from the hymnal I suppose, and this is the life we always promised one another—soon as the children were grown and gone, I came home from DC and the madness of the House—we were both surrounded by babies—but my pipes stood cold in the pewter tray and the bourbon canter was empty as she demanded it be so at first chance I cut out for this detail. What would you have me do, dear? The heathen ambuscade the white farmers, snipe them as they try to put order into that wild earth and master it through will and toil and sweat. It is my Christian duty, I lied—so I repaired to this land, where even after Christmas it is boggy as hell, the bugs ambitious about my eyes and ears, but at least here I can smoke in peace—Erastus keeps his store chock-full of my cigars, and when Jackson makes me general for crushing this Osceola and his band of savages, I will keep a team of islanders to roll them for me at my leisure—and too my wife got me going to church where, despite my best raiments, I never felt comfort—here I am sated and sweating in my wool uniform, the stink of four days’ worth of rye rising into my nostrils—my belly full from the cracklin’ cornbread and venison and beans—yet I hum her tune and think how good tobacco always tasted right after a good morning romp in the—

  A crazed screech splits the air and the scrub brush comes alive with a rush of the ungodly red devils—they are everywhere, like ants, over the ramparts of the fort and into the general store—poor Erastus and all my cigars—I spy Osceola across the field—he stands tall with that rifle Jackson gave me, and I reach for my pistols but only too late: ah, the wasted time, the indecision, the bargains and compromises, and the pains in this life too brief.

  Asi-yahola (a.k.a. Osceola; born Billy Powell), 31,

  Seminole Warrior

  We came to you naked singing the hawk-tail song and offered you the white feather and the black drink and you shackled me, friend, caught me in chains like one of your dark slaves and held me in a cage where I bared my teeth and growled like the wolf until my cunning spirit said to you, In five days’ time I shall bring to you the men of my band, and you stroked my spine, made a great present of this Spanish rifle whose stock is well oiled and holds the weight of the deer shank, and now I aim it at your head as you waddle from the same fort where you told me what the Great Father demands—you do not know, friend, that on a cool night when the stars crackled in the black sky of my boyhood, the Great Father you serve, General Jackson, led an army of whites and traitorous reds, thick as the summertime locust, to kill a
nd drive us from our homes and we fled into this flat wet country—now that same man threatens that if we do not go to the far side of Mother River to live among the false and faithless Creeks he will send another storm to roll over us—but I will tell every living man this: I am no longer a young blade of grass bending in the big wind, I am now the hard cypress standing strong in swamp water—so bring your thunder and rain, friend, but I will not be swayed and you will not have our land and you will not have our rivers or swamps or sward and you will not have our dignity, which the Breathmaker gives us from his very mouth, and neither will you have our Negroes—not our slaves or Maroons and not my wife and my son, the one you call half-breed, the same as you called me the day you bade me sign the Great Father’s treaty, the one I stabbed with my scalping knife as my signature as well as my promise: my white half hates you, friend, and my Muskogee half will make your skull red and leave it to blacken in the sun while your body is devoured by the vulture and the rat—

  I cry my war whoop and we step into the open and you can see I am true to my word: I have delivered all of my men—sixty hadjo, each in battle dress singing the death-scalp song and running straight at you—but do not fear, dear friend, for they will drive past you and on into the fort—no, I alone will stop and wait for you to arm yourself before I kill you and share your scalp with all.

  Bloody Hands, 16 & 54,

  Muskogee Artist & Alleged Witness to the Duel