The Book of Duels (21 page)

Garland Croquere, 59,

Maitres d’armes
, Mulatto, FMC

 

S
tanding in the mud of the street, I study the grease tracks from rats’ backs smeared along the foundations of this city’s homes, when Emile and his coterie pour out the Orleans Theatre, where I am barred because of the brown in my skin—though I am lighter than the proud mothers who auction their daughters in there—I knew a challenge had been made, knew in my heart it was Emile’s own doing because he is rash and he is foolish—why his mother has paid me to protect his life—it is too late for me to intercede, the weapons and site already agreed upon while I was out here, ankle-deep in the stinking sludge of the street that the blacks have named Croquere in my honor, the same dignity bestowed me by the whites in Paris, where I would escort every color of woman known in this world and we went anywhere we chose and I killed four whites in duels and an Algerian too and the people and papers begged me to stay but I came home to this city where no white will honor me even with barrel or blade—instead I must stand near wooden gutters that smell of garbage and night soil, yet if Emile loses this fight, as his teacher, I too am insulted but without means of redress.

My pulse slows as Emile draws first blood from the brute, and heedless to our rules, the Kaintock presses his lip to his shoulder and curses and crouches and takes up a bowie knife, and though I am, as second, expected to aid my man, I hesitate and let him draw the blade across Emile’s thin neck and the tiniest wound smiles there, then yawns, and the blood
breaks black down his shirtfront and Emile falls, gagging and dying, yet my heart springs full and my fingertips tingle as I draw my rapier and prepare to run this white man through and what true soul among us would dare question my rights now.

Pistols at Twenty Paces: Lacroix v. Thigpen

On the Last Recorded Duel in Hancock County, Mississippi,

April 23, 1866

Philip Lacroix, 51,

Colonel, CSA

 

H
e robbed me more grossly than Grant, more deeply than Lincoln, and these twenty paces pale compared to the one thousand miles and more I walked from that captured officers’ camp in Illinois where snow seeped through shoe soles so cold I cut felt from my hat to patch them warm and dry and back home the courthouse burned down—damn that Gen’ral Butler, I’d hang him were I the governor—and with it went all the county records—deeds and land titles and all—my slaves were freed and stole what all they could carry and after I’d taken such good care of them as God set forth for me in dominion, so this traitor and coward and former friend, who ate of my lunch Sundays after church, could take my lawful owned cattle and claim them for his own, after I branded their hides while my darkies held them still. The smell of torched flesh in my hair and nose, that odor so like a battlefield, while a persistent wind, like this one, blows brittle leaves and cools the sweat burning on my skin and the judge hollers,
Fire
.

I turn and squeeze the stiff trigger—I know I am right in this course and God will prove me true with the aim of my bullet: hot sulfur smell, thick smoke in sunlight, and a snarl of flame like the hell we’re both bound for.

Etiene Thigpen, 46,

Veteran, US Artillery Division

 

H
e come home a fool-headed war hero to judge and insult me—we walked down to the lower field of fresh-turned earth—iron and onion and scat—where he accused me of stealing his cows which I had bought clear, got a cash ticket for proof, and now I’m sorry I ever prayed for his sorry-ass soul—sure I ran some hooch out to the blockade, but that don’t make me no damn traitor, just a trader with them boys in blue who gave me coffee—the same chic’ry then as what coats my tongue now—and more, I suffered the hardships of war, boiling seawater to get at the salt to keep my food, and done fought my war too—took a bullet in Mexico with Robert E. Lee and now my sweat-clammy palms wrap ’round this pistol butt, smell horse lather and oil on this iron piece, see them mildewed Spanish moss tendrils come ribboning off oaks slashed by sunbeams—accuse me of stealing and lying to boot, I refute his claim same as I did old Thibideaux’s back in ’53, may God rest his soul in smoke and flame eternal,
Fire
.

I turn and my hand blooms a white cloud of smoke as though I’m holding a fistful of baby’s breath: good gracious, boys, I’m hit and done; please say sweet things of me to Mary.

Mrs. Etiene Thigpen

(née Mary Annette Cuevas), 18, Watching Her Husband Duel

 

F
rom where I crouch behind the pleached crosshatching of azalea branches, I see the two men standing back to back like stuck twins and wonder how they can be that close and not kill each other now—Etiene’s face flushed, his shoes, as always, thick with mud, and that preening blowhard, Philip, just as calm as Sunday afternoon, his clothes pressed and his boots polished and shined, prepared for death or murder one, yet it’s my hands that rattle these petals from the branches—beyond them the gulf catches the sunlight in little spinning coins, like the bright dimples in the cheeks of the Kaintock man who touched my wrist at the Saint Stanislaus social and who, in that moment, bade me run away with him to New Orleans—to stroll along the banquettes arm in arm under the ironworked balconies and to eat almond truffles or pralines brought ’round by Creole women wearing bright-colored tignons and hoop earrings that brush their bare shoulders like I wish I could wear mine—we’d attend the Conde Street balls, dancing and sweating under the flambeaux, where we’d glide through the measures of the contredanse or sip wine in the American cabarets until I’d retire to his arms and bed and he could take my ankles and toes in his mouth and I’d take him in mine and he’d not smell like cattle and night soil—I yearn to leave this backwood outhouse, these backward outhouse men, whose petty wars and self-puffery leave me hungry as the war ever did, when I had to parch corn to make coffee
till my guts were pulled like the dead girl from my womb, whom I buried in secret while Etiene was off making whiskey or God knows what, to walk away as these men here have walked away, one from the other, but without sense enough between them to know it better to continue to walk and never to turn around as they have turned now—
Fire
.

A twin roaring, two great clouds of smoke, and a scream—I have prayed for this bittersweet moment—the taking of Etiene away from me—in my dreams I am not his little Mary Annette, hiding behind a bush, heart pounding so hard it makes my hands shake, but rather, I am the bullet squeezed from the burning steady barrel, freed.

Check, Mate: Johnson v. Rasputin

Nine Months after Johnson Was Sentenced to Prison for Breaking the 1910 Mann Act for a Crime He Allegedly Committed in 1909, Staying in a Royal Apartment, St. Petersburg, Russia,

March 3, 1914