The Book of Duels (4 page)

General Alexander Hamilton, 49,

Former Secretary of the US Treasury

 

O
n the walls of Fame I have penned my name in a hand indelible and swift—the Federalist Papers, the Bank of New York, the US Mint—for all the good I’ve given to Country, I have been persecuted from all sides—my boots sink in the sludge of this loose shore and we slog our way up the hill to where I shall engage Burr—the ignominy of Adams’s rebuffs, that rascal Jefferson’s uphiked nose, and even my own Federalists, pitching their tents with this devil who awaits me today, patient as a spider—I must admit, I choked his bid for governor, but now as I achieve the trail head, sweat beading on my hairline, I see him again—the burr in my side, the thorn in my eye—I fear our nation will fall asunder, capitulated by shortsighted men such as this Burr and the weakboys who’d willingly give Napoleon back his Louisiana—what’s next, the whole of our country?—foreign armies sit to both the west and south and we have no standing force to fight—I shake Burr’s hand and accept the pistol offered, which is heavier than I’d presumed, and I’ll say this much for him: he’s the only man in my life as reliable as George, my Washington, who never disappointed me save when he refused to be our king, and when I’d lift my chin to see up into his blue eyes, I’d become a child again, an orphan in the West Indies whose father had abandoned him, a boy whose mother succumbed to fever, and I would stand on the cliffs of St. Croix, the water lashing far below me, shouting straight into the wind between my cupped hands,
Daddy, Daddy
, and the wind would blow my words to shreds and dry the tears on my boyhood cheeks—

Now I’ve accepted Jesus Christ into my heart, though He comes and goes—so much on His mind, I suppose one cannot blame Him—how to concentrate on any single one thing—still, He’s filled my heart and I will waste my first shot but thereafter I am Christ-bound to defend myself—standing twenty-five feet from this filthy Catiline, I burrow my feet in the pebbles and I slip and the hair trigger goes off and I’m not afforded the dignity of
delope
—has the Lord forsaken me too?—Burr fires his ball and a full lifetime ticks by before it burrs into my body, and in that eternity, I realize that we are a two-sided coin flipped by Fate and here I land facedown and forlorn and I forgive him everything.

Colonel Aaron Burr, 48,

Vice President of the United States

 

L
ast night before a hardwood fire, shivering with ague beneath a mound of blankets and scarves, I wrote letters of address to my loved ones, none more so than sweet Theodosia,
You are a diamond of the first water, my dear—
poor half orphan these last ten years, I regret betrothing you to that planter, but we will need his votes when I ascend, though if I die first, please flee, hie away from those men who bring themselves low by pressing slaves to service—I penned my will only to realize I am broke, in debt to my waistcoat—all those books for my daughter and wine for myself and glorious Richmond Hill—I see Hamilton level his pistol and so too do I and I should have killed this Creole thirty years ago, this scamp who has cast aspersions before my Honor—alas, he has crossed me once too often and now it has appeared in print that he has called me
despicable
, then had gall enough to describe its nuanced meanings as if I’m not his equal in the world of ideas: he is a coward at heart and I demanded his explanation, because one way or the other I must be done with him, and so we’ve come to this jag of land where we stand in plain sight of The City and on the precipice of violating a law I’m duty-sworn to uphold or become this nation’s bona fide Bonaparte, which I, American aristocrat, was born to be—I have liver and stones enough to make this land mine, the whole damned country, and since Jefferson’s dropped me from the ticket and New York has dropped me as well, I will have to take it, one bullet at a time, and the first will come from this well-oiled .544—my hand holds steady the heavy handle while the
wind whips my coat and my ears ring and the fog is burned away and my man says,
Ready
, and that rascal fires first—

His shot flies high, by Theodosia, and I know I’ll send him to his long home now—my sole regret that I was born a decade too late to be Father of this State and so will have to win my Fame by might to assure my place in History, to be the man whom everyone recalls by name, and leave as inheritance to my adoring Theodosia—Theodosia, my princess, oh Theodosia—the United States of Burr.

Dr. David Hosack, 34,

Noted Physician & Chronicler

 

I
n predawn darkness, a knock on my front door pulls me from a dream in which I am staring at myself in the mirror—stark white surgeon’s gown and a head enwrapped with thick layers of gauze—my eyes the lone feature—I begin to unwrap the dressing layer upon layer and it grows pink and red and redder yet, bunching up in the wash basin before me like an aborted foetus—what will my face be beneath, will it even be there—the blood is thick on my hands and tacky as sap and on my gown as well—and now: the blank face behind the lit lamp of the man who beat upon my door and we are off in a skiff across the Hudson, bobbing about, the wind splishing water over my boots, a young boy bailing with a molasses bucket, until we ground ashore beneath the sheer wall of the Palisades, and the world is violently come into focus—two gunshots at dawn and I am already halfway up the path when I spy a man hidden by umbrella scuttling by me like a cat chased from a rubbish bin—am I to feign ignorance the reason I’ve been summoned; am I not to recognize my friend when he passes four feet from me; am I not to recall that this same stretch of land is where I doctored General Hamilton’s son when he lost his life three years before in a duel with pistols; or that this is where I bandaged that Canadian’s arm when the Stewart boy cut it during a sword fight last year—Burr too has fought here before, with old Church, from whom he walked away with a mere hole in his topcoat, and he fought another with Senator Jackson, they say, but I’d wager that’s apocryphal—still Jackson did kill the lieutenant governor of Georgia, so it is possible—
last year, the editor Coleman killed the New York harbormaster, who was dropped to die on my doorstoop: all this killing in the name of Honor and yet they scurry and hide and lie like rats afterward.

I crest the path, heaving, sleep still crusted in my eye, to see General Hamilton himself—of course it’s him—I kneel by his bloody side and see where the bullet has entered and clipped his spine and liver and my lips tremble,
Your Honor, it is mortal
, and his eyes roll back and he mutters,
Death to this disease, Democracy
, and his man says,
You did not hear him, doctor
, and I nod, holding the hand of this man who might have been king in any other country, in any other time, but here is just become one corpse more, and as we carry him to the boat, I recall how Hamilton tirelessly endeavored to undo Burr’s career—and now, with the cost of his own life, perhaps he has succeeded at last.

A Scalping: Thompson v. Asi-yahola

Outside of Fort King, Big Swamp, Florida,

December 28, 1835

“General” Wiley Thompson, 53,

Former Congressman & Current Indian Agent

 

N
ostalgic this morning for my wife’s milk gravy thick with loose sausage slathered in a heap on her fluffy white biscuits and me in my robe with little else to cover my modesty—coffee percolating in the fire and bacon popping in the skillet and she is happy and breaks two eggs to sizzle in the fat and the sunlight comes through her lace curtains and she is glowing and humming a tune I do not know, something from the hymnal I suppose, and this is the life we always promised one another—soon as the children were grown and gone, I came home from DC and the madness of the House—we were both surrounded by babies—but my pipes stood cold in the pewter tray and the bourbon canter was empty as she demanded it be so at first chance I cut out for this detail.
What would you have me do, dear? The heathen ambuscade the white farmers, snipe them as they try to put order into that wild earth and master it through will and toil and sweat. It is my Christian duty
, I lied—so I repaired to this land, where even after Christmas it is boggy as hell, the bugs ambitious about my eyes and ears, but at least here I can smoke in peace—Erastus keeps his store chock-full of my cigars, and when Jackson makes me general for crushing this Osceola and his band of savages, I will keep a team of islanders to roll them for me at my leisure—and too my wife got me going to church where, despite my best raiments, I never felt comfort—here I am sated and sweating in my wool uniform, the stink of four days’ worth of rye rising into my nostrils—my belly full from the cracklin’ cornbread and venison and beans—yet I hum her tune and think
how good tobacco always tasted right after a good morning romp in the—

A crazed screech splits the air and the scrub brush comes alive with a rush of the ungodly red devils—they are everywhere, like ants, over the ramparts of the fort and into the general store—poor Erastus and all my cigars—I spy Osceola across the field—he stands tall with that rifle Jackson gave me, and I reach for my pistols but only too late: ah, the wasted time, the indecision, the bargains and compromises, and the pains in this life too brief.