The Book of Duels (17 page)

Dannyelle Louise Sellers, 32,

Former Beauty Queen, Current Housewife, & Mother of One

 

W
hen Billy was president of the Chamber of Commerce and I was on stage in my Aldo heels and Naired legs and a swimsuit so white that my torso glowed at the center of my dark limbs, I was the object of his desire but now he doesn’t even look at me—I know it’s not his fault that he’s never been able to truly see me because, though I was in that pageant, I was not really even there—how could I have been?—I stood on that stage a prancing six-year-old in front of my mother’s armoire, running my hands over the hanging cashmere and rayon and jersey denim dresses and over her sweaters and skirts, the grays and beiges and taupes, and in her bureau drawers among her bras and her panties, frilled and laced, and the black silky slip that I’d put over my towhead locks and let flow down my back like long black hair, and in which I’d swish and sway and say,
Oh Captain Smith, save poor pitiful me from this life of a savage
—her hard crenellated vibrator came to life in my tiny electric hands with pink-painted nails just as Mother walked into her bedroom—she put both her hands to her mouth as if to stop a smile but she did not smile—
Just what do you think you are doing, young lady
, she asked—
I’m being you, Mom
—and she slapped my face to burning—
The hell you are
—her face was hard and severe and I stammered,
I guess, I guess, I’m being Pocahontas?
—she slapped me again but harder—
You think I’m some kind of goddamn Indian whore? You are nothing but a—

He calls me
beautiful
and I call him a liar and shift in this microfiber chair, the backs of my legs sweating even in the
artificial cold of this office, because who is beneath this layer of powder and rouge, this four-layering eye shadow, this gloss and lipstick and lip liner, this bobbed blond hair and these earrings, I don’t know—peel back this mask and who is there—in that Motel 6 in Grand Rapids you promised me the Ms. Corn crown but all I really wanted was someone to see who I truly am and to tell me, though the only way I know how to ask it is by smiling broad, Vaseline smeared across my teeth.

William Sellers, 42,

Jeweler, Father, & Unfaithful Husband

 

S
ix Saturdays in a row, D’s dragged me here to listen to this so-called doctor talk about trust issues and acceptance and respect but I am not the one who closed the door on this marriage, clamped it tight as a chastity belt, and for all the money this doctor charges you’d think she’d offer me a scotch or at least an orange juice freshly squeezed between the knees of a sixteen-year-old Filipino girl and the doctor asks why am I smiling and I say, whimsical-like,
She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known
, which is true, or at least was true, especially when we’d walk along the summertime banks of the Mississippi, her long legs drawing every man’s eye, and I was not middle-aged then and there was not the pressure of employee health insurance and a child and retirement and savings, just our hand-holding strolls—that was back before D let herself go, and suddenly she says,
You’re such a liar
, and my face flushes and before me I see Peggy through the small window of my office—she is standing at the counter showing earrings to a customer, Peggy’s narrow hips and long waist, and she looks back over her shoulder and I am caught, but she winks, blows a pink bubble with her gum, and smiles with the dark shade ringed around her ruby lips and I’m a fool sitting at my bench re-sizing some heifer’s wedding ring and now there is hail raining against Peggy’s metal window awnings, the sound ringing in our afterglow, the window unit in her double-wide hums, and her panties ring her ankle, one shoe still clings to that pale foot, the salt smell cologned about us—my own wedding ring in the glove box of my new Boxster—the ring around the tub
where we made love all last winter and Henry the dachshund runs rings around the playpen and
Tiny Toons
is on the TV even though her kid passed away two years ago and she told me yesterday that I said I’d leave D but I don’t remember ever saying so, or even believing that, though I can see my marriage is dead as dead can lie, ring around the rosies dead, but I am not willing to lose little Louise or half my things, like my fine jewelry or my red convertible that wooed Peggy to me in the first place—pudging and balding, skin loose about my jaw—and D says,
Damnit, I want out of this life
, and I repeat her,
You want me out of your life
, and she says,
No, I want out of this life
, and I say,
That’s what I said
, and we start to argue again and yell and we both see the light of freedom yet neither of us is willing to let go of this darkness.

PART III:
SATISFACTION

Delivered into His Hands: David v. Goliath

In the Valley of Elah,

1025 BC

David, 16,

Eighth Son of Jesse, Bethelemite Shepherd, Poet, & Musician

 

I
was in the southern pasture among my lambs and fertile fields, chanting dirges to the dead, when an angel of the Lord, white and ethereal, came upon me and said,
Behold, David, King of the Israelites
, and I shivered and my heart was quickened and I said,
I only want to sing songs to my living Lord, psalms of devotion, psalms of praise
, but it said unto me that the Lord had chosen me even before I was born—there was indeed no choice to be had—I laid out my harp alongside my staff and took up my sling to the field of war—I do not fear for I have already smote a bear and also a lion—as if the angel could read my very mind, it said unto me,
His holy aim was true even then and shall remain steadfast unto this day, young king, and He will protect thy flesh also from harm
, and I went into the brook banked by cedar and by juniper and the water was cool about my feet and ankles like the cold compress Mother laid upon my forehead as I raged feverish and demented in bed, thinking surely this was death but it was not death—instead it was the first time the angel came before me and spoke and I could see the light of the Lord even as I shivered and raged and when the angel left my side, the burning left my flesh as well—now I run my fingers across the smooth stones of the brook bed and pluck them as if they were strings upon my harp and I hear a music that shakes my bones, and though I am little, my wrists and ankles are large, my feet and hands are large—I take up five rocks and deliver them from the brook bed, as I have delivered the lamb from the bear and
also the lamb from the lion, and I put them each one by one into my pouch and my body is covered in sweat and I dip my head into the cool water and it plays over my hair and into my scalp and rolls down my neck and spine and I stand straight and say,
Lord, show me the way
.

Goliath, 39,

Twelfth Son of Abimelek, Half Giant, & Philistine Warrior of Gath

 

N
o man like me, no man like me
, I overturn your temples, uproot your largest tree, I thump my breast covered in bronze and it resounds with a gong and the armies behind me answered after this, chanting,
No man like you, no man like you
—I pace before the very army of Israelites and I am bereft of arms, only my hands calloused from long hours of grappling these runts—
Which man among you will yield himself to me, will have the sincere audacity to stand before and not wither like the dry vine, the grains of time slipped through the hour glass?
They are sore afraid and dismayed and I am elated because my ribs still ache from the blows I took last time I saved my puny men from certain death—our gods of iron have left us in this waged war, hidden, not to be found—I cannot fight them all for I am but half giant, not the full-flung fury of my father and half brothers—alas, I am but ten feet tall, my uncut mansword a mere cubit by my hand’s measure—I am tired and I will not be able to save us again—I shout them down to scare them away,
Let’s have him quick and be done so I may return to the fun of sleeping with your wives and eating your children
, and then he comes:

A mere boy in a loincloth, comely and soft—his armored brethren deride him as did my own half brothers me—full giants, they used to jeer and kick at me as they held my wrists and made me slap of my own face and said,
Why are you hitting yourself, Goliath? Why are you hitting yourself?
And I’d cry and try to hit them back but they’d palm my forehead, their arms impossibly long, I could never reach them with my fists even
as I’d swing and swing and swing—I called after the boy in this manner, saying,
Come to me and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field
, and in turn I hear him say,
I come naked save for my Lord of Hosts who shall deliver thee unto my hands
, and he begins winding his sling above his head, each time it passes it appears as some god’s winking eye, and then he grunts and lets it fly.