The Book of Duels (8 page)

George Scarborough, 19,

Driving a Rebuilt 1947 Packard Clipper Deluxe

 

D
amn my muddy shoes and my greasy nails and damn this day and this night as well and all this useless mean pride—this fathead flattop prep too dense to let Sara go and me too hardheaded to say no even to this stupid challenge here—damn Kerouac and his kicks and Brando and Dean’s too—
What is a man to do, Daddy
?—these stained jeans and this untucked tee and these rolled cigs in my sleeve and this one in my lips and the two I hot-boxed before—my mouth’s a damn dry wad of dirty rags—I slick my hides into the earth and mash the gas and jam the box into gear, my hands quaking over the leather, and I hear the loose earth crunching under tires as I tear ass down this lane, my back slammed into the bucket by the accelerator I built myself, but man, if I had a shot of rye for every time Pops told me I was garbage to be left curb-side, I’d have drowned by now and been done with this wretched race and this damn road, this bumpy rough way, the stinking sweet bulbs that chalk up my throat and close my nose till I can barely even breathe—damn my old man for ever bringing me to this podunk hick shit town and damn this engine we bored out together, the only useful thing he ever taught me to do, and damn Pops’s popskull whisky breath and beard scruff across my neck, and for the times I’d drop a wrench, double-damn them cherry cigs he’d burn into my collarbone—damn my mom for leaving him but not taking me along—and damn this souped-up car and these bent eight pistons and 380 stroker I rebuilt myself, and damn this shove-shifter and the damn power of this damn engine rattling through the steering
wheel and into my wrists, my damn thin wrists, my damn hand heels gone numb as I race her again like I once did Sara.

And damn you too, girl—I know you were using me—it’s clear as his headlights growing larger by the second; saw you sidle up to your old pals, smiling in the gravel lot—you were slumming, Sara, but goddamn it, did you have to damn me too: here on this single-lane dirt road built for tractors and big truck traffic, searing between two fields of ripe garlic, I know you’ll go back with him but I’ll be damned first before you ever do—I see him flinch and swerve left and I rev my engine for one last chance at revenge and I swing myself right, right into him.

The 1967 Class of the Gilroy High Mustangs,

Witnesses to the Game of Chicken

 

L
ike we knew something was wrong when Sara first showed up to homeroom with a black eye, telling lies about running into locker doors, and later when she and Chaz broke up, like officially, and she stopped wearing his class ring on her choker chain—like we knew there’d be all kinds of drama and stuff when next week she came to class with an open collar and three brazen hickeys bruised across her neck like constellations—we knew tonight would end badly when Jo Anne and Todd told Chaz they’d seen Sara parked in that greaser’s car at the Tastee Licks Cream and Burgers—when we found them later at the drive-in, like we knew if they fistfought we’d all jump in because greasers have no second thoughts about knives or brass knuckles or fair fights of any kind but we never saw this coming.

It was all Chaz’s idea but who could have imagined the collision would be so great—both cars burning down the lane while we jumped and jeered and egged Chaz on until they swerved toward each other and hit that furrow and left the ground—they like hung there in a cool picture for a full second that felt like eternity—then Chaz’s car sort of split in two and exploded and raced in shrapnel and flame through the garlic field and we ran to the crash but the greaser’s car blew up too and like we knew they both were dead and all and the fire got so big and high we lost sight of the stars and the fire followed the gas that ran deep through the runnels and that sweet stench seared our nostrils like when your mom tries to make roasted garlic but burns it and the whole house stinks for
weeks—the smoke was everywhere like the tule fog that winter we tried to make the band-camp battle in Alameda but got stuck on the 101 in that twenty-car pileup and Jason and Todd got in a shove fight on the bus—it was like that but way way worse—and we knew that later we’d have to explain this wreck to our parents and the police and it would be in the papers from Sacramento to Santa Barbara and we knew what had happened, that they had both killed themselves, and we all agreed that we needed to agree and we all agreed that what we needed to say was,
It was all that greaser’s fault; he killed our best friend
.

Dueling Banjos in the Key of A: Redden v. Cox

On the Set of
Deliverance,
Clayton, Georgia,

May 10, 1971

“Lonnie (Banjo Boy),” 16,

as Played by Billy Redden

 

T
hey’ve come to worship the river god but he is wrathful and his minions are legion and they demand sacrifice—because I like his glasses, his ring, his smile, I want to warn him away from death downstream but I have no sound but what comes from my fingertips and thumb—my muscles taut against the strings, strumming and pecking a warning he may not cipher—now he’s following me, strum peck, strum peck, note after note and we’re slow-slithering down the mouth of these sounds to a place I want him to see but I want to go faster like snakes swimming with the pull of water coming fast on me in the river, bitten, and I hollered,
Mommy
, the last word I’d ever speak and my fever burned out my skin and eyes, my swollen tongue filled the whole of my mouth but now I want to go faster and faster and he’s keeping up where I lead him down the river to warn him—faster past snakes’ slitheriness into faster-pulling water, dangerfast—I go strum peck strum peck like the constant ticktock of time measured out one tick at a tock time, by river god, and time thrums through the bones of the world—rocks and trees, birds on wings, the scurry of small things in the night, the slithering of snakes and rivers and snakes in rivers, slithering—the river god’s voice also slithers along the snake’s spine—the bumpy rocks in the white water babbling is also the voice of the river god thrumming, drawing my fingers to his mouth to grab his tongue same as that snake took hold of mine and we will grab hold when we die and enter that great maw forever and we’ll crawl inside like a venom waiting to be spat out in his songs, hallelujah,
and summon the others to follow, lure them in for a song, but I must warn this man because he is not ready to sing, he cannot keep up, and this life goes so fast fast fast and the snake’s fangs pierced my tongue, put its venom there and locked my jaw shut, but my hands are free to yell strumpeck strumpeck strumpeck but then he stops.

“Drew Ballinger” 32,

as Played by Ronny Cox

 

E
veryone here’s missing something—fingers, teeth, half their minds—take this kid, to look at him with his wide eyes and a face bland as a boiled egg you’d never know he is a great banjo picker, a real live hillbilly savant, like you’d only see in movies, and he wants to play with me and I keep thinking what I heard my brother, the professor, once say,
Music is time meted out like the pendulum of a grandfather clock measuring our lives one note at a time
, and that’s true, I guess, like water steadily sliding away, under a bridge, and gone. In the key of A: G, C, G.
Come on, I’m with you
—maybe he’s not so special, maybe I’m just naïve—I can’t trust my judgment on these things like when we were in Helena, Arkansas, and I saw this old black man banging spoons against his thighs, his tip hat set out before him, and I shrugged and my brother turned me around, told me how special and antique this style of percussion was—something about the Civil War and drum and fife music. I nail this kid’s eighth and quarter notes, I know that much, but I wish my brother were here now; he went to school to learn to appreciate this kind of thing. Bet he could tell me about the ethnographic importance of this music to this culture—tell me about the history of call and response, the influence of the Scots Irish folk traditions, and its significance in a greater anthropological context—I just want someone to confirm that this kid’s the real deal, that he’s a living relic, and that I’m truly living in the moment and that this is a rare, special time—he picks that banjo so quick I can’t keep up and sweat is beading on my forehead and lip and there’s a fly buzzing in my
ear but I can’t move my hand to shoo it—this feels so authentic, but how can I tell? I can’t even remember what it’s like to be authentic anymore—everything in life feels prescriptive, like a rehearsal of something I’ve already seen on TV—my brother used to tell me all about it but I never listened enough, never listened to anyone enough, and that’s why I’m here with Lewis, with this boy, with this music, and I’m so tired of all this self-doubt—it’s like I can’t ever get out of my own head, like now, Drew, you’re doing it again and suddenly I’m lost and I say,
I’m lost
, and the music stops, drowned by 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.