Free The Book of Duels by Michael Garriga

reins in one hand, a saber in the other, a pheasant plume tucked in his hat, looking every bit the president at the birth of a new nation, circling the men who do his bidding, and as if they were cattle, he drives them on but they trickle by like blackstrap bound for rum—so this then is our revolt in all its sluggish progress, gone now our African speed and grace—beyond him, in the offing, Unbada rises from the earth like the dead thing he is, a Negro Lazarus, a hole the size of an urn’s base blasted from his body—no longer is he driven by the cocaine to work the fields, now some other drug possesses him—Unbada cracks his teeth into the white man’s skull and smoke and screams are all about me and Unbada laps at the slaver’s brains like a dog in a ditch and I bite my lip knowing our flesh is just as weak and just as strong as Christ’s—I can no longer resist: I heel my horse in a hell of a charge and Unbada eyes me withthat same dull, lustful look—chunks of flesh falling out his open lips—I run my sword through his brain and Moses has come behind me with his horde of lurching dead and they tug at my feet and my horse rears, all slashing hooves and maniacal, and I club two in their relentless heads yet they yank and yank at my ankles until I finally fall, horse and all, and they are on me, moans in their throats, and though I flail about, I pray for the patience to wait till I too will rise, as I know we all eventually will.

A Black Night in the South: Ackers v. McCarthy Sr.
    An Abolitionist Struggle in Kansas City, Missouri,
    December, 19, 1859

Ezekiel Ackers, 56,
    Abolitionist Minister at the Sacred Duty Church
     
    H e had gall enough to curse John Brown’s grave name on the day he was hanged—I’d follow that man to hell, go willing as Jesus, where we’d burn in bliss for the sins of this land and these men and, too, would rise three days hence, righteous as ever and tested true by God’s own counsel—before my fold I decried him and his slave-holding ilk, and in turn, he condemned me in the Beacon , called my sermons a cancer, claimed I should be railroaded back to Kansas—come last Lord’s day he sat proud as Satan on my very first pew, smug with his son in tow, both stretching their legs and propping one boot heel atop the toe of the other, so I pointed him out as an asp in the garden and not twenty hours more he quoted me on the front page of his no-count rag, using my words as cause for secession, making me his scapegrace—here he come again, sallying up the Sunday evening walk like he’d no care in the world but I barred the door to him, held my hands straight out and called down the wrath of Moses: This is the spot where you and your ways shall pass from Earth , and slapped his face with all my might and he said, You’ll not have to wait on my response , and I, I may not be the best shot, sir, but God will guide my way, and after you are dead, I shall make of my body a horn and trumpet the good news and deliver my Negro children from Pharaoh’s bonds .
    So under these dogwoods, not forty yards from my clapboard church, we measure our paces—I’m still wearing God’s own armor and the glorified have gathered to bear witness to my redemption yet he fires first—but at what?—the birds in thetrees or, more likely, the good Lord Himself?—my second takes hold of my shoulders, says, Sir, the contest is yours —I shrug him off and take soulful care to put my shot dead center through this heathen’s heart.

Alexander McCarthy Sr., 36,
    Founder & Editor of the Missouri Beacon
     
    I have always admired the sound of a good sermon, the words tippling one over the other, the rhetorical flair of a man in his Passion espousing the poetry of Love. Likewise, it is good to know the mind of your enemy. So I came to this church to search for the words that informed this pastor’s beliefs; instead, I gleaned only his zealous self-righteousness. God knows you can’t talk pragmatics against a