Dopecentury XXVI --- A Duel
This short fiction is part of Dopecentury, an experimental project where I attempt to channel the aural aesthetics of Dopesmoker into written text. (Dopesmoker is the legendary stoner-doom metal masterpiece by the band Sleep, of which it is said: “the monotony rarely becomes tedious.”) My plan is to listen to the single hour-long track of Dopesmoker while writing each of these “Dopecentury” entries. And repeat that 100 times. See the Dopecentury project page for more details.
I should walk away.
At the horizon the sky is brightening. The last stars of the evening are fading into the smoke of dawn, rising from the city edge. The black stones of the street are slick with the morning damp. Light flowing through the open doors of the machine shops that begin work early brightens the street. The machines chug away, puttering and smoking.
I should have slept.
Sleep would improve my outlook. But sleep never comes easy to those whose life has suddenly reached a rise after the years of slogging through the unvarying plains of everyday existence. From the rise one might look back and see the vast distance traversed. And one might also look ahead, try to pierce the smoke and fog of the future, and see how far one has to go. From a rise, one might find that there is but a short distance remaining.
These low places near the edge of the city seemed perennially damp. The faces of the street stones might dry, but the moisture seeps down between them, spreads under them. The damp is always there. The stones sit atop murk and mud. It is a slog to move through these streets.
I should walk away.
But how did I even get here? Certainly the inability to sleep made its contribution. But insomnia was merely a consequence of the events of the preceding day. Those events that spun and whirled and coalesced to that single moment, that single sentence: “We’ll settle this at dawn.” How stupid of me to let it proceed that far. And now dawn was imminent, the sky purpling and exhaling orange fire at the horizon.
I must make my way to the docks. The docks, where the traditional authorities are afraid to walk. Where the dockworkers set and enforce the rules. There, between the towering steel walls of docked ships, one might stand in a monstrous outdoor room, under the black clouds and the smoke skies, and settle a disagreement with another person. Face off, or at least face death.
I could just walk away.
I should bring a weapon. On the docks, one might be lent a weapon, but there was a chance it would be junk, or weakened in such a way that it would fail at the critical moment. Some dockworkers considered this amusement or entertainment they are entitled to for providing a venue where outsiders may settle disagreements. The best course was to bring a weapon of one’s own.
By the unwritten rules of the dockworkers, the only weapon allowed a chiv — handmade, stabbing only, no slicing, less than the length of one’s forearm so that a disagreement could only be settled at very close quarters.
I really should just walk away.
Instead I go into an open machine shop. I tell the man with whiskers and wearing a leather apron that I need a chiv. He nods, and pulls a cloth off a wooden box, and instructs me to choose. Inside are a variety of worn tools: old files, chisels, whippy lengths of stiff wire, and pieces of metal bar of various diameters. I select a thin metal rod just short of the length of my forearm. The machinist puts it to a grinder and sparks wash over the floor of the shop. The dull metal now has a shiny needle-pointed tip. He fixes the bit of rod to an old chisel handle of smooth wood. The weapon fits my hand well. I pay the machinist, and thank him for his quick, quality work.
On the street, I look to the horizon. The sun is burning the edge of it like paper held close to the fire. The fire of it flows upward. There are only minutes remaining now before I reach the top of the rise. The rise now seems like it is growing sharper and more jagged, like a peak instead of a rise. Shiny and pointed like the tip of my chiv.
I could just walk away.
But I don’t. I move toward the docks now, the hulls of the ships growing larger and larger as the land sinks lower and lower. The gray wood of the docks lean against the weight of the ships. I am walking the waterfront when the sun breaks the horizon and its thin rays penetrate the smoke and the fog of the morning. The sunlight slides right between the ship hulls, like they had been arranged like some ancient standing stones to welcome the dawn on this specific day.
On the specific dock that matters, I see a small gathering of people. Mostly men, but a few women and others who make a proper pastime of such spectacles. My opponent stands among them, a lanky bit of chiv in his hand.
I approach, and his friends insult and goad and challenge. Clever retorts have been driven from my head by lack of sleep and the ever-increasing view from the sharpening peak of this point of my life.
Some large dockworker, in worn woolen clothing, acts as the referee. He looks bored, and perhaps he is, having witnessed events like this so often that he became the established arbiter. All it would take to dispel his boredom, I think, is one other person who needed to reach a settlement with him. I silently wish him a future of more boredom. He takes my wrist in his hand, the wrist of the hand with the chiv in it, and also my opponents wrist. He holds with thick gripping fingers while explaining what few rules there might be.
And then he releases us.
I could still walk away.