Free The Book of Duels by Michael Garriga Page A

dreamer’s ideology. Yet I have tried. I have tried. But when no peaceful accommodation proved practical, we loaded the pistols I keep in my carriage for just such engagements. Truth is, I don’t believe in shackling people any more than freeing them. True character is revealed by the aim of your shot and nothing besides—What a lie! What a liar!—I’ve covered my heart in a thin veil of words to hide the crimes I commit and now I stand waiting for the word and try to spit but nothing comes out of my mouth. I pinch the bridge of my nose and yawn and steady my breathing as I’ve done in five previous duels. I level my pistol, which, like its mate, I had handmade in Denver five degrees off true, and I compensate for the weapon’s dastard defect—I cannot possibly miss from this distance. I rock back and forth and the leaves crunch underfoot and my breath rises like spirits. I have always enjoyed the winter because I can see farther and clearer and I spot the button on the reverend’s wool frock where I will bury my lead. Then I see young Lex, who stares at me with those hollow eyes. Lord, I have been too hard on the lad, I know, blistered him with belts and branded him with irons, but only to clean him of the sin vested in hisskin from birth, the matricide he can’t recall and for which I can never forgive. Yet in a world so dim and mean, I can at least afford him this one moment of Grace—
    I aim my charge heavenward and delope —I look to my lad to see if he understands, but I am, as if by some magnificent umbilical cord, yanked back to the world’s womb. Slammed into the earth, I can’t catch my breath, and all about me are the faces of the congregation. They all look exactly like my lad and they sneer and bare their teeth as if they have come to tear me apart.

Alexander “Lex” McCarthy Jr., 14,
    Witness & Vengeful Son
     
    F ather’s eyes bore into mine and I recall him washing the lather from my hair when I was yet a toddler, dunking me beneath the warm water and holding me there until my tiny hands flailed against his wrists and when he finally relented, I shot up straight, gasping for air that burned my lungs, only to find his expression same then as now—I understood that what exists in this world does so with his blessing alone—last week I tore the head from a toad and the week before I gutted Widow Tatum’s cat with a sharp river stone—ever since I was strong enough to level a rifle, I have shot wild squab and every creeping thing slithering in God’s drat earth. This morning I tore a lizard in two to see which half crawled faster and stomped on the losing end, because the killing, and the mercy, is my birthright—why has Father now sent his shot into the treetops, stark and leafless and gray as skeleton bones etched against the dark sky, where crows scatter, cawing through the clouds? And that preacher, fine white hair whipping about his cavernous face, fires a coward’s slug that drives Father down, and as he yaws side to side and keeling, I kneel over him, smoke rising from his belly wound and into my face, and I reach to push my finger into the hole when these Bible gnawers crush against me and I sprawl into his arms and Father hugs me and we lift and carry him to Dr. Gregg’s where he will lie in his deathbed, jabbering out his head about degrees of truth until I wish him good and gone already.
    I know murder when I see it but that was suicide. Still, I’ll send word for the preacher to get square with God, becausetwo days after we lay Father in the ground, I will bury that man dead as well. I don’t understand all their Bible talk—preacher and Father could quote scripture to argue the Devil to tears—through all of the beatings he was still my father and I was tortured less than Jesus by His: I’ve always been told that vengeance is the Lord’s, but they never said it is His alone.

Slap Leather: Hickok v. Tutt Jr.
    In the Quick-Draw Duel That Gave Birth to the Wild West,