The Book of Duels by Michael Garriga Read Free Book Online Page A

my overthinking, and I’m left alone with a silence that fills the gap between my fear and insecurity and I say, Goddamn, you play a mean banjo , and I hold out my hand but he turns away and that’s it—I’m going to experience something real even if it kills me.

Burt Reynolds, 35,
    Playing “Lewis Medlock”
     
    H ow many takes they gon’ use of these two playing guitars—hell the inbred ain’t even frettin’ his own banjo—why am I even here today—I know it’s the first day but I’m hardly in these shots and I am the gotdamn star of this picture—I know these guys are all professionals—Jon fresh off that Academy gigolo picture and Ronny and Ned from Broadway—but damn, I wouldn’t have played Ned’s role for all the Oscars in the pig-squealing world—I am glad Dickey’s gone, bad enough he’ll be back with all his loud talk and bragging ways to play the sheriff—I’m the man with the muscles and sweat the ladies want to see, so what if I wear lifts and a toupee, it’s all for art, and there’s two little homegrown peaches waiting in my trailer right now who I’d like to bite on their fuzzy navels but I need to stay focused, rub my triceps I just swelled with push-ups and dips—focus, man, and prove everyone wrong who said I only got this gig ’cause I made Carson laugh, like I’m just some pretty boy jock with no talent beyond my smile—Daddy likes old Johnny but when I asked if he’d seen me on The Tonight Show , he said, I ain’t watch it last night , and I said, Daddy, I was on there every night last week , and he shrugged like he always shrugs, the stoic lawman—but Burt, baby, just breathe and scowl because Boorman needs you to lead these three goobers, the serious cat out here in the coon-on-a-log country—I think again of Daddy and his hardnosed Cherokee scowl that I imitate, cock my head like him until I feel like my father, the sheriff who fills up doorways and made me feel like a small muck-about all my life until I called him last month and said, Daddy, you were right all along: I am a quitter.I quit football, I quit college, I quit my work, and now I’ve quit my marriage too , and he said, Come on home, son, and I’ll tell you all the things I’ve quit in my life , and in that moment, it was like he’d said, Once you recognize what a fuckup you are, then you are on your way to being a man , and man, you ain’t no man until your daddy says you are.
    And Boorman calls cut and comes over and drapes his arm over my shoulder and says, Burt, baby, you were perfect, you’re going to carry this picture , and I just scowl and nod like the man I am.

Peleas de Gallo : Caesar v. I Am
    In the Last Legal Cockfight in the United States, Pumpkin Center, Louisiana,
    August 15, 2008



Caesar Julius, 29 Months,
    Dan Gray Roundhead, 4.02 lbs, Record: 8–0
     
    A peace stills the certain center of me when he takes my beak inside his mouth, rubs my fluff feathers, and settles the jerking muscles along my spine—he does not call me chanticleer nor the vile cock but rather Caesar , always Caesar , cooing with his sweet hands on me—even as they dubbed my wattle and comb, his look calmed me—his eyes focus my attention, save me from all distraction: the pickups eaten by rust and rent with neglect; the old man pushing the wheelbarrow filled with ice water and cans of beer, shouting above the other shouts of men with cash and knives pushed at each other; the smells of turpentine and sawdust, whiskey and tobacco—so I’ll crow from the mountaintops: I love my man more than my hens—shameful to some, I know, like this rooster strutting across from me, contempt nested there in his eyes, yet in these last still moments before combat I can’t help myself: I slip into thoughts of his hands on my back cape, stroking my neck, and the solemn way he takes the leather straps and wets them and fastens the razor-gaffs to my spur stumps and runs his thumbnails up the ridges of my shank—sometimes I