The Book of Duels (3 page)

Sasaki Kojiro, 27,

Samurai & Founder of the
Kenjutsu
School

 

T
he heavy rain has soaked my robes and it weighs down my body and my blood is leaving me and so I sit in the moist sand and watch my footprints fill with water, my life being erased one drop at a time, and when I am gone who will remember the things I’ve seen—as a child in my father’s orchard, an albino fox in the branches of a cherry tree, its pink blossoms hiding all but his eyes and we stared at each other motionless till the sun quit the sky; in a still body of water, two snakes gripping a carp in their mouths, one by its tail and one by its head, the three joined into a new self-devouring creature; in Master Toda Seigen’s dojo, him tossing, like a sumo, a handful of purifying salt and catching each grain on the flat blade of his
nodachi
—and I know I will die now on this island and I try to stay calm, relax my mind, and let my spirit leave this crude vessel, but we all in our folly think we will live more years—even an old man on his deathbed can believe he has ten more—but my days are through and only my foolish pride, and the many years preceding this very last day, have allowed me to believe that tomorrow was ever offered, because there is, of course, no tomorrow—there is only this moment—I recline to my elbow and, with my last strength, lower myself flat and cross my hands over my chest, listen to my own breath become the crashing waves, open my mouth to catch one last drop of this world, acknowledge the weak and thankless sun, a dull white hole burned in the gray sky, and close my eyes forever.

Master Lee, 23,

Tanka Poet & Disciple of Sasaki Kojiro (with apologies for the poor translation)

 

     
C
herry blossoms in full bloom—

Sunrise above water burns high—

man and fruit to fall too soon

at Noon, pale sun sits on high—

challenge! duel!—both day and we await

near Sunset he arrives, disheveled, late, insulting—

I say not his name—

look: wind in robes like dragon wings

mad, my master overplays his hand—

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

 

R
eturned 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

 

D
arkie 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

 

S
tanding 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