"Gentlemen's Duel" by Gretchen Hintz

No one takes much notice of Hawthorne, Nevada. Located almost dead center between Las Vegas and Reno, it’s less a locale and more of a ten-minute detour for tourists. Most of the residents there complain about being shackled to a town with no real future, but strong, eager men planted themselves there after the gold rush bust, and pulling up old roots takes effort. Even the younger generation, with their fists balled up while spitting hatred for their dull hometown, so close to cities of promise and attainable wealth, couldn’t bring themselves to depart for more than a day or two. Only the dry desert sand sometimes struck off on its own, past the city limits and over the surrounding mountains never to return.

Their escape from Hawthorne being highly unlikely, the residents once attempted to bring in new revitalizing blood to the town for a short-term or long-term transfusion. Unfortunately, all Hawthorne, and much of the West, is known for are geological findings. The recent decision to garishly paint the outside of the Mineral Country Museum was a failed endeavor to attract the untapped teenage geology-hobbyist crowd. It was immediately repainted in sage within three months, and no one ever spoke of it again.

After two years of plans and ordinances to put Hawthorne on the map, it remained the ketchup stain it always had been. The population numbers did not budge in either direction. When one relic thought fit to return to the dirt, one was born to a regretful mother. But, eventually, the perpetually weather-beaten residents were rewarded with a vivacious outsider. Their population increased from 3,714 to 3,715 thanks to a new settler: a Mr. Thaddeus Kelsey. Previous profession: drifter. Current profession: part-time derelict, part-time dawdler.

Kelsey happily took up residence there, studied the town and its residents better than even the mayor had, yet he still had never received his polite welcome to Hawthorne. No other tramp had the fortitude to remain as long as he had, most choosing to put on their modest drifter boots once more and depart for greener pastures. They migrated to the south, where people were intoxicated and wallets more likely to fall out of pockets undiscovered. But Kelsey is a diligent man. Day in and day out he stood where 95 intersects with 359, the only major intersection within the city and the only route that one could escape the city from.

It was on this corner that a not-remotely famed oddity also existed. In the 20s, a traveling snake oil salesman had seen potential in the location and brought out his soapbox on the curb to promote his wares. Preachers and other men with a dire need to be heard emerged and did the same. The town officials, just as desperate as their future relations, installed a permanent “soap box” to encourage speakers and traders, but it was soon forgotten when the Wild West lostits mystique and salesmen stopped coming. The once-coveted block of cement only found acknowledgment when some person tripped over it haphazardly. Kelsey must have felt a kinship.

Everyday Kelsey stood there, the northeast corner, directly in front of the Bank of America, punctually arriving at 9 a.m., taking a very short lunch break, and then, with vigor, he approached the rest of his workday until 5 p.m. Never taking sick days, he was always there in his ecru tweed jacket and tie, which he kept relatively clean and pressed given his circumstances. His presence, sign in hand, became a staple of daily life in Hawthorne that no one desired. It was impossible to deposit a check without having to cross “that lunatic with his dreadful sign.” No one stood there long enough to discover that he was fluent in three languages and held two doctorates. He felt no need to wave his numerous publications and awards at the residents. It was not Dr. Kelsey’s desire to be revered by the people of Hawthorne. Any town with any type of salt-of-the-earth residents would have sufficed when he chose to uproot and relocate; Hawthorne won the draw simply because Dr. Kelsey held the author of the same name close to his heart.

Three years of diligent punctuality on Dr. Kelsey’s part did not aid in Hawthorne’s stagnating population crisis. His cardboard sign was open to everyone, without prejudice, offering a legitimate trade transaction. But none granted him the opportunity to enrich their town with a bit of small business. He and the faux soapbox kept each other company (as well as a duo can when one party is mute), both too unusual to meld seamlessly into Hawthorne’s distinctly unremarkable flush landscape.

One morning Dr. Kelsey made his usual commute to work by foot, to find that another usurped his position. Dr. Kelsey pondered many self-indulgent reasons for the loss of his beloved pulpit before deciding to confront the man. Despite recent attempts to overcome his vice of scrutinizing people at a quick glance, he judged the man and was frankly offended by such a replacement. The man was just a little younger than himself, maybe around thirty-five, and looked like the expired lead singer of that one popular grunge band, though the corpse probably looked more presentable. Dr. Kelsey’s eyes rolled up towards the sky as he reflected on how most homeless men coveted plaid shirts and loose jeans as a means to grasp tightly onto the 1990s, as though all of the “good old times” could come back if their clothes remained loyal to that time alone. Such contemplation often grabbed the aging scholar at inopportune times: during lectures, at home, or at the onset of a street scuffle.

The children were the first residents of Hawthorne to overhear the argument at its onset. They noticed an uproar erupting over the typically subdued voices in town and took interest and flight. Gradually the mothers noticed the absence of their children and the unsavory direction that their kids had dashed off to. Their feet clacked in unison across the pavement; their minds mulled over the speeches that they would later give their children about “those types” of people. But no one was prepared for the sight that accompanied all of the shouting. Dr. Thaddeus Kelsey’s sign, well-maintained and clearly painted, still read as it always did: “Will invoke the muses for food or story.” The new straggler’s dirt-stained sign meanwhile read: “Will perform magic for your attention.” The new man clearly was offering the better deal according to the onlookers. The concrete soapbox showed no clear preference towards either opponent.

The competition of two hobos over a block of carved concrete on the corner of an intersection in the middle of nowhere was too novel to be ignored. In the span of a week, the crowds grew. People took off of work or flooded in during their lunch breaks to behold the spectacle with their own eyes. On the northwest curb of the Highway 359/95 intersection stood the awkward stranger, whom Dr. Kelsey had fondly named “Holgrave,” performing slight-of-hand illusions and card tricks. Dr. Kelsey stood on the opposite corner, delighted to finally show the people of Hawthorne just what a muse and a bard are. The balding manager of the Hawthorne Bank of America came out a few times raging, his cheeks flushed and shaking his fist to the heavens, but was booed back into his bank at every turn. To the left, a silver bauble turned infinitely, refusing to be defeated by the laws of gravity. Turn right and you’d be greeted with a majestic recollection of a mortal hero fearlessly facing a god on the battlefield. Left, never-ending patches of color pulled from a breast pocket, a unique rainbow with no end. Right, a woman’s prayers for her long-missing husband and king.

The community was starting to feel some hometown pride for Kelsey and speculated whether he could indeed be brilliant in addition to being deranged. Despite the novelty of magic being enticing, he had drawn in his share of the crowd. The crowd hadn’t known what he was doing exactly, but those dramatic words he kept spouting were about people who seemed to be important. Every once in a while, Dr. Kelsey would stop reciting and ask to be told a story as compensation, and his crowd would be respectful enough to simply ignore this odd quirk of his.

While Dr. Kelsey was drawing in many of the adults, Holgrave enamored the children. Many had watched him perform everyday and were just as marveled by his magic tricks after seeing them for the fifth or sixth time. Dr. Kelsey couldn’t deny that Holgrave did have some talent and a charm that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was different from the charm that his ex-wife often recalled Dr. Kelsey lacked after they were married. Charm was not a quality that he put much stock in anymore. But Holgrave’s charm was unique; not a bit of charisma was present as he concentrated on his tricks, but there was a dedicated focus and ease to how his hands performed flawless illusions just inches away from curious eyes. Never blinking, never looking at the crowd unless they were a part of the trick, the crowd likewise could not look away either.

On Sunday, a reporter from Reno approached the two men, putting on her best toothy, wide-eyed reporter face and straining to keep it frozen in that unnatural smile. She wanted to televise a short segment on them for the Monday evening news. They’d both do one last performance; winner takes all (all being a block of concrete, a peculiar detail that would most likely be underplayed in the broadcast). The crowd would choose who was the best entertainer of Hawthorne’s street dwellers. Both men agreed to the terms mostly because of sheer exhaustion after a week of solid performances. Dr. Kelsey in particular was still jovial but worn out nonetheless. He had received financial payment, never stories, for all of his effort. His only payoff was getting to eat a substantial dinner each night. Holgrave still appeared to be energized, though it was difficult to judge if his spirits were ever up, his face constantly covered in shadow and solemnity. The agreement was made. The next day the fight for the pulpit, the kingdom, nay, their very identities, was at stake.

Dr. Kelsey could not help but wonder if this was all just a bit too familiar to a life long ended. Somehow it seemed to him that he was travelling in a circle just as worn as his path to and from the concrete soapbox each day.

The early morning sun peaked over the surrounding mountains and the sparse and scattered buildings of Hawthorne. Dr. Kelsey awoke from his back alley literary fortress in good spirits. As the location of their duel came into sight, Dr. Kelsey’s shadow followed behind him ominously like a black cat as each of his footsteps echoed loudly. The buildings created dark shadows that set the atmosphere quite impressively, inspiring Dr. Kelsey to dig into his pockets for a scrap of paper to record the mood of the scene in the framework of grandiose metaphors. Coming out of the low shadows from the opposite direction, a little too perfectly timed, appeared Holgrave.

“Good morning, sir. Are you prepared for your demise?”

Holgrave smiled for the first time in Dr. Kelsey’s presence. “I was working on some new card tricks last night and something that is so original that it can’t be topped. What have you prepared, professor?”

“I rehearsed an excerpt from one of Inferno’s cantos,” beamed Dr. Kelsey, “and a personal favorite from Goethe’s Faust, and I plan to win over the crowd finally with Hamlet’s ‘What piece of work is a man’.”

“I think I read Hamlet back in high school. We were halfway into it when Dad pulled me out of school… How does it end?”

“Everyone dies, dramatically.”

“Well that’s pretty convenient of them. By the way, my name is John, John Richards… though I like the sound of Holgrave, wherever you pulled that crazy name from.”

“I believe you already overheard my name, but it’s Thaddeus Kelsey. Pleasure to meet you formally on this day of days.”

They shook hands.

While setting up their performance areas on opposing corners, using the best methods allotted to men with no steady income, they continued to speak freely, comforted by the unseen barrier that separated them from those asleep within their homes. Dr. Kelsey, an expert at listening and deciphering, added little about himself. But he learned much about John. He had a commonplace backstory, though still worthy of inspiring a tear or two if it was recounted on television. His father was a mechanic and attempted on many occasions to get him to appreciate the mechanics of a car: the inner workings of the carburetor, the growl of an eight-cylinder engine. That which is inspirational and the artistry of one’s man life does not always hold true to another. It just would not take with him. Young John was not shaken from his atrophy until he saw his first David Copperfield nighttime special. An eighteen-wheeler completely vanished right before his eyes. That was artistry and power to John, not becoming a god but playing the part to perfection so that it might raise doubts in onlookers. But John’s father pulled him out of school in his senior year to help in the business and soon succumbed to a fatal heart attack. John ran the shop for five years until his mother and sisters found a way to rely on relatives and made their way. John decided his dreams had been put on hold for too long and took for the road, longing for someone, anyone, to see him through years of built up oil and gasoline—to believe in what he did and what he didn’t do.

Dr. Kelsey received his first worthwhile story for free, and it rang out as clearly as truth can—with building kinetic energy and a lot of familiar resonance.

At 10 a.m., the biggest crowd yet surrounded both men. There were numerous news vans parked in the area, word reaching other stations since the offer from KRNV. John’s initial threat was serious; he performed stunning tricks with the most unusual odds and ends found on the streets, a magical MacGyver with interwoven rubber bands and beer bottles. But Dr. Kelsey orated with a passion he had not felt in years. He absorbed the audience’s energy, sensed the miracles being performed feet away, and the words escaped him:

...for all the gold that is beneath the moon,/ or that ever was, of these weary souls could not / make a single one repose.

He remembered his old office at UCLA. The poster from the production of Faust that he alone on staff was given tickets to by the president of the university. The novelty phallic bust of Aristophanes that he received the previous Christmas sat upon his desk on top of the copy of The Divine Comedy that he was supposed to be transcribing. There were endless papers to grade and faculty running in and out with frantic issues needing to be solved. His essays and criticisms consistently achieved worldwide acclaim; scholars quoted him in their research. A queue of students was desperate to get into his classes purely because of his notoriety. The pile of research materials grew and shifted while the literature in his reading pile collected dust.

The crowd’s cheers heightened. They grew in number on both curbs. Out of the corner of his eye Dr. Kelsey spotted what appeared to be a levitating dachshund, ears flattened like the wings of an airplane. A woman was screaming out “Wolf! Oh God Wolf!” desperately at the dog, but the rest of the bystanders were applauding. He felt his audience leaving him for John’s corner or to bombard the news cameras, desperate to have their face immortalized for a couple of seconds, but Dr. Kelsey was too swept up to care. The words, the stories, they were all that really mattered, but no one seemed to understand. His second recitation flooded out:

Poor son of Earth, how couldst thou thus alone / Have led thy life, bereft of me? / I, for a time, at least, have worked thy cure; / Thy fancy's rickets plague thee not at all: / Had I not been, so hadst thou, sure, / Walked thyself off this earthly ball.

His wife walked out the front door, luggage in hand. She made one more comment about how he was a dead man standing in front of her. The cheap brass engagement ring that went missing twice and both times found by him under potted plants sat alone on the bare dining room table. There was screaming, mention of being “jealous of titles,” the front door slammed, and a framed wedding portrait dropped to the floor.

What is this quintessence of dust? / man delights not me;/ no, nor woman neither,/ though, by your smiling,/ you seem to say so.

Words, beautiful words, looped within Dr. Kelsey’s head. He was back there in the seminar room. Amidst his duties as department head and with scholarly publications, he had one or two classes at most per semester. His intention was to simply present the class with a believable imitation of the techniques of Ancient Greek tragedy theatre, but then, with each new beautiful phrase he uttered, a heat grew within him. A feeling of real passion, intimate though spoken before dozens of ears, returned to him for the first time in many years. His mind was soaring and his zeal for the elaborate illusion, truer than any reputation, could not be described through any human language. As his eyelids parted, he beheld students with their attentions elsewhere. The interior world reawakened, his place in his castle, built on foundations of knowledge and title, revealed itself to be both moot and mute in relevance—a family curse passed down for generations. The monarch is merely a figurehead covered in glittering ornaments. By his own doing, Dr. Kelsey had gradually become a golden wrapper around a package of sawdust.

Dr. Kelsey never returned to the campus since he regained his misplaced passion for life. No one understood it, the realization grabbed him quickly, and he never looked back. All Dr. Kelsey could think to do was to go in headfirst and make up for lost time and disprove his wife’s assessments of his character.

There was little doubt who would win the competition for the corner. John had a strong desire to be seen while Dr. Kelsey gradually shrank more and more behind the images he uttered. Somehow John devised grand explosions for his final act. Colorful lights and fire flew from his fingertips like a modern-day Merlin. One little girl in pigtails watched the fireworks without blinking, her mouth agape. Holding her breath, so in awe of these godlike feats, she passed out right before Holgrave finished his final act.

Dr. Kelsey gladly accepted his defeat with a simple laugh shared with himself. Not only did John win the sacred pulpit, but a contract to perform magic in Las Vegas. You may know him by his stage name, Holgrave the Magician of a Million Wonders.

Dr. Kelsey, by a fortunate circumstance, was returned to his important pulpit where he decided to remain for perhaps another month before setting off on a different journey. He still considers himself the true victor and watches the papers for signs of John’s inevitable aversion to fame. The episode with that little pigtailed girl, Dr. Kelsey was sure, would end up being the peak moment of Holgrave’s career.