The Duel

I

MOST of the things my grandfather knew about John C. Calhoun were passed on to him by his father, Martin Foley. He knew the memory better than he knew the mortal, but he hated both equally. Young Calhoun used to come to our house — my great-grandfather’s, I mean — and they say even the Negroes trailed him about just to hear him speak. You could be a nobody, squatting on a half acre of land without slaves or cotton, and John Calhoun would tip his hat to your woman and pass the time of day. You could come storming up, bitter at something he had done, and he would look at you with those deep-set eyes but never raise his voice while he talked. His mouth was thin and straight, like a piece of wire, but he guided the right words out.

My grandfather had a direct method of explaining his feeling toward Calhoun. He talked in an undertone, forming part of the words with his restless hands. ‘Take one of your dogs and train him for birds, son. Train him hard every day from the time he’s a knot-tail in the puppy yard. Then bird season comes, and what does he do? He flushes a rabbit. His belly is empty and crawling, because that’s the best way to hunt a dog, and he sees this lazy rabbit creeping along. Off he goes for the cottontail, forgetting all you taught him, forgetting all those times you got down on your knees and begged him to stay on point. Cause why? Cause he’s a no-good dog, that’s why. He looks good, he stands good, but he ain’t good.’

Then he would lean back and blink slowly. ‘What would you do with a dog like that? Why, you’d give him to the niggers for a rabbit dog, that’s what you’d do, and like as not, when he was chasing rabbits, he would point quail.’

There was never time for a reply because he would raise his hand for silence and let his voice drop until you could hear a mouse running through the kitchen walls. ‘That was old John C. Calhoun, son. He was just another bird dog that took to running rabbits.’

They felt things about Calhoun down in South Carolina. They still feel them, I guess. They thought he wasn’t like other folk, and the weaknesses of the flesh passed him by. He had his mind on what was best for South Carolina, they told each other, and he didn’t have time for whiskey, women, or cards, as some do hint about Henry Clay.

My grandfather sneers when you tell him that. ‘Calhoun fought a duel, and loved a woman — right here at Bete Noir!’

To get to the beginning, my greatgrandfather was an Irishman from County Cork. He never had much of an education himself, and I believe that is what he loved most about John Calhoun. The land upon which Martin Foley lived was left him by his uncle, and he sailed for Bete Noir with barely enough possessions to keep him together, but he had the Irish ability to adapt himself to new conditions and he had the Irish love for land. When he had been in South Carolina five years, they tell me, no man looked more the planter’s part; no man was more correctly attired.

They shared more in common than you might believe, these two. Calhoun, born the son of simple Patrick Calhoun in Abbeville District, was not in any position to be great shakes in South Carolina. He grew up on the wrong side of things, and he was eighteen before he got a lick at the world outside. He could ride a horse, he could shoot, but he didn’t know a Latin verb from a pig’s eyebrow until he was almost twenty.

My great-grandfather wouldn’t have known a Latin verb if he met it face to face, up until the hour he died, but he came to Bete Noir a low-down Irishman and he remained to make all South Carolina drink with him. He had a way that was all his own, and people liked him for it. John C. Calhoun knew all about such things. He too came down into the tidewater with no purple on his shoulders.

My grandfather never admitted it, but they must have sat in the great room often, with the fire eating at the logs, and smiled at how far they had come.

Then there was the girl. She wasn’t any ordinary girl, the old man always maintained, although he could not say for sure, because she was middle-aged before he was tall enough to judge such things. Her name was Sally Brateen, and her father was Hank Brateen, who made his living ferrying people across Finley’s Creek, which split Bete Noir’s fields in twain. Finley’s Creek was more than a creek most of the time because the drainage was poor and the heavy rains dumped all their water to stay until the hot sun picked it up. When the water was low, and you could wade a horse across, there was no way of knowing what Brateen did to earn his living, but the Negroes whispered he was a witch doctor.

Martin Foley told my grandfather this Brateen was horrible enough in appearance to be most anything. He let his beard grow down to his waist, and he had black eyes which never stopped moving when you were in the room with him. They began at your shoes and went up and down, up and down. My grandfather said you couldn’t get one of the slaves to go into his rooms at Benje’s Tavern if you offered immediate freedom and a ticket to Canada.

Foley and John Calhoun wanted to cross Finley’s Creek one day, or so the story goes, and they walked beneath the tree to strike the metal ring suspended there, which always brought Hank Brateen with his flat-bottomed boat. Then they saw the girl, and my grandfather says even Calhoun swore in a soft, strained voice.

She wasn’t any girl you might meet on a river’s bank. She stood there barefooted, in a mud-splashed dress, but both men uncovered their heads. They did it unconsciously, too, just as if it was the right and proper thing. ‘Pardon me,’ said Martin Foley, always quick with his tongue. ‘We are waiting for the ferry.’

She laughed, and the old man said it was more than Martin Foley could stand, or Calhoun either. ‘Why, I’m the ferry today,’ she said.

The girl pulled the bow of the boat against the muddy bank and Calhoun climbed into the stern, but Foley would not go past the bow because he was too busy with his eyes. He hadn’t seen a thing as beautiful since he left Ireland during June when the green things pushed aside the mists and you could find the cows without slipping in the dew. She wouldn’t talk on the trip across; she pulled at the oars, and she pulled with the wisdom of one who knew.

‘Do you do this for a living?’ asked Martin Foley.

‘No, I do it for fun.’ She laughed, and the sun caught the curve of her lips. Young Calhoun looked and wondered, and he must have felt how tightly drawn his own lips were, pulled across his teeth like a bit of thread. He sat there, my grandfather told me, without muttering a word, because in those days it was all politics and he didn’t know the things that women wanted to hear. Later on, when he settled down with Floride and lived in a great house at Fort Hill, he used to go into Charleston during the proper seasons and pay his compliments. In those early days he was a serious man with the coming fight against Britain burning inside him.

They landed on the opposite shore, and this hulk of a man, Hank Brateen, was waiting. Martin Foley was the first upon the bank. ‘Where does this beautiful child come from?’

Brateen laughed a husky laugh: ‘I reckon she’s my daughter.’

My great-grandfather frowned into Finley’s Creek. ‘That’s strong labor for a girl.’

‘She don’t work all the time. Not at night, she don’t.’ Hank Brateen hid one hand deep within his beard and winked. It was an evil wink, the old man said. It left no doubts as to his meaning.

II

Martin Foley was more direct than most men, and he wasted no time in stating his intentions when he and John Calhoun were striding down the tiny road which led through the hills to Bete Noir. He tapped his gloves against his leg. ‘John, that girl is mine.’

It might have been humorous to Calhoun, but it wasn’t. He found life too full to push aside for humor, and he never fathomed even gentle pleasantries; not because he lacked perception, but because his mind would be far away. So it didn’t seem odd to him that Martin Foley should warn him from a woman, when he was known throughout the Abbeville District for his chastity.

Great-grandfather Foley wasn’t chaste; he was an animal, with an animal’s appetites. There were rumors, even so far away as Charleston, that half the babies born to slaves on his place were black Irish and he never troubled to deny it. There was no reason for Calhoun to feel surprised when Martin Foley marked himself another venture. It was to be expected. It was one of those things which happened regularly, just as cotton grew best when the sun came out hot and strong. That’s the way my great-grandfather was, and all his friends knew it.

They hadn’t had time to catch their wind on the veranda at Bete Noir before Martin Foley dispatched Tiny Will, a young slave, trotting toward Finley’s Creek with a note in his hand. It was addressed to Hank Brateen and it said, in part, ‘You and your daughter meet me at Benje’s Tavern tonight.’

If it hadn’t rained, John Calhoun would have gone on his way, and he would have left this story before it really started, but the skies opened up and the water came down until the roads were flooded. ‘You’ll have to come with me to Benje’s,’ said my great-grandfather, though he would have preferred the trip alone.

Calhoun preferred, for his part, to sit in the library and watch the fire, or to pull forth one of the many books which Martin Foley would never read, but his polite background forbade such a suggestion. The mud was too thick to trust the slender legs of any of the blooded stock, so two of the field hands carried my great-grandfather and John Calhoun the half mile to the tavern.

Benje’s was filled with smoke, as taverns always are, and no matter where you looked some drunk was occupying a chair. My great-grandfather and John Calhoun were hard put to find seating space at all. Then Martin Foley saw the girl. She was between Hank Brateen and another man; there were three or four others at the table.

Foley crossed slowly. ‘Did you get my message, Hank?’

‘I got it.’

Martin Foley rubbed his hands together slowly. ‘Let’s move to another table.’

Brateen looked up and laughed. There was a great deal of impudent malice behind his words. ‘These gents are buying the drinks; we stay here,’ he said.

Martin Foley would have killed him on the spot, but Calhoun caught his hand and kept it from sliding inside his coat to reach the pistol butt. My grandfather always said the girl meant as much to Calhoun as she did to Foley, but he had a cool legal mind and he saw they were on the losing side. He uttered no words to the girl at all, but pulled my greatgrandfather back.

One of the drunkest at the table stood up. ‘Join us,’ he invited, and giggled down in his throat.

John Calhoun shoved Martin Foley into a chair which Benje managed to produce from somewhere. ‘All right, we’re in,’ he agreed.

There was a fight in the wind — Foley knew that, being Irish. He didn’t intend to drink. Pie was going to remain sober and face this out. He wanted to enjoy the feel of his fist when he pounded deep into the flesh of Hank Brateen. He wanted to grasp that long black hair in his fingers and pull and twist until he could feel the pain of it.

So they sat and faced this lightfingered death, because that’s what it was. There wasn’t a man at the table that night who wouldn’t have killed them for the brightness of the buttons on their coats. That is why Martin Foley wouldn’t drink, and that is why he sat balanced on the edge of his chair, ready to start throwing things first, if they must be thrown.

Two times the rounds were made, and two times the glasses filled, but the liquor remained untouched in the cups of my great-grandfather and his friend, Calhoun. They remained tight-lipped and quiet.

‘What kind of thing is this?’ Brateen demanded. ‘When a man won’t drink the toddy he buys?’

‘Your belly is wet,’ said my greatgrandfather. ‘You be content.’

Calhoun smiled and he looked straight into the eyes of Hank Brateen. ‘I’ll drink with you,’ he said. ‘Forget about my friend.’

There are those in South Carolina who won’t believe this, but my grandfather says it is true: John C. Calhoun drank down the two glasses of Bourbon before him; he did it slowly and easily too, and then he reached across for Foley’s. ‘Drink hearty, gentlemen,’ he said. They stared amazed at the four empty glasses.

The old man claims Calhoun got drunk — not just a middling drunk, the way you might get before you realize it, but a real skunk drunk. He wobbled on the scat of his chair, and he made strange noises. There are many people who believe that he never laughed in his life — that is, never laughed aloud, like anyone else. He did that night.

He sat there until the rest of them began to nod, and he was pouring from his sixth bottle when Hank Brateen slipped beneath the table. When Hank went, the rest of them followed; it was a wholesale surrender. They lay on their backs beneath the table, and there was Martin Foley, still sober, staring at Sally Brateen.

III

No words ever passed his lips to tell it, my grandfather said, but John C. Calhoun loved Sally Brateen. Drunk as he was, he kept his eyes on her frightened face and one arm held Martin Foley. It was young Calhoun, not my greatgrandfather, who helped her take Hank Brateen from the floor and carried the bearded giant senseless up the stairs to his room. Martin Foley followed and he would have stepped inside, but Calhoun turned when Brateen was across the bed. ‘We’d best go home, Martin,’ he said.

Sally Brateen’s hand pinched his shoulder, and the fire of it must have fed that thin, gaunt frame with something it had lacked ever since he was a boy, roaming the highlands of South Carolina. Sally Brateen’s hand touched John Calhoun, but her eyes were for Martin Foley. ‘Good night,’ she said.

Martin Foley decided that night it was time for him to take a wife. Sally Brateen was the woman he wanted. My great-grandfather was a sincere man, who believed in God and hell, but he couldn’t control himself. He needed someone on hand to use the whip; he saw that someone in Sally Brateen. There was strength in her will to guide the two of them.

John C. Calhoun realized how my great-grandfather felt. He listened to these words of desire, but kept his own counsel. There was gloom in his eyes, and something near despair, when he heard this talk about Sally Brateen. The same judgment that told him Sally could never love a lanky man with a twisted mouth and bright stubborn eyes told him too that she deserved something better than Martin Foley. Here was a man who knew all the joys of license, and who suddenly decided they were not for him. John Calhoun held no faith in this newfound philosophy. ‘You won’t last six months,’ he said to Martin Foley.

From here the story greatly varies, depending upon those who tell it to you, but my grandfather says that John C. Calhoun, just before he went away to the legislature for the first time, walked over to Benje’s Tavern and climbed the stairs to Hank Brateen’s rooms.

Martin Foley found him there talking to Sally. He was talking, and nothing more, but he was in her room alone and it was after six in the evening. Such evidence seemed too strong for my greatgrandfather, who was never overbright. He struck Calhoun across the face.

The great man never uttered a word, but walked out the door.

‘Oh, you fool, you fool!’ cried Sally Brateen, and she pushed Martin Foley out into the hall and refused to let him reënter.

Then, of course, there was the duel.

They say John Calhoun was a long time answering Foley’s challenge. That he retired to his living quarters and left the second waiting outside while he pondered. Martin Foley had said plainly it was to be a duel, or a horsewhipping, and Calhoun could take his choice.

There were several things to make the great man pause and think it over. First, from boyhood he had been brought up on horseback, with a gun near his hand. To be sure, since his schooling venture in the East at Litchfield, he didn’t shoot as much now as he once had, but he was still a good marksman.

Martin Foley was an extremely bad shot; even his slaves chuckled when he went after birds because he never returned with enough for a meal. Those few that graced his saddle were usually brought down by a companion’s bullet. That has been a shortcoming of our family all the way down the line.

John Calhoun could kill Martin Foley. Even as he read the note, he knew that.

To accept the challenge meant that young Calhoun would have to spill the blood of a man he liked, and then too there was no deciding just what reaction such a thing might have on the career of a man on his way to the state legislature.

To refuse meant certain disaster, because then Martin Foley would attempt to make good his threat of a public whipping.

Calhoun returned to the messenger after half an hour. ‘I have my choice of weapons?’

‘Naturally.'

‘All right. Tell Martin Foley I will fight him.’

There was no smile on John C. Calhoun’s face when he uttered those words. His face and voice were grim, and his eyes burned their way into the messenger’s brain. They say the hapless second almost stumbled over himself as he fled.

‘Here’s where he showed his training,’ my grandfather said, pointing a finger at me. ‘He went against his breeding and did a thing no gentleman would do, boy. He showed himself for a rabbit hound, all right, this fellow Calhoun. He sat down and thought it all out, then did it the way that suited him best, and not the way it should have been done. He didn’t fret about nobody but John Calhoun, you can bet on that!’

They met beneath the oaks at Bete Noir.

Sally Brateen had gone to Calhoun the night before. She had knocked at his door, and quailed before the grimness of his glance when he answered the summons. She had asked him to be generous and forget this awful thing; to go on his way to the legislature and leave Martin Foley in the field with his gun.

‘You love him, don’t you?’

Sally Brateen had answered, ‘Yes, I love him.’ Then the door closed sharply in her face, and the gaunt man was gone. She had reached forth to knock again, but withdrew her hand, knowing he would not return to face her.

Now Sally Brateen came through the early morning damp to plead with Martin Foley. ‘Forget this duel and I’ll marry you today,’ she told him. ‘We can leave Bete Noir forever.’ But Martin Foley was a stubborn man. He refused to listen to her words, and awaited the coming of John Calhoun.

Sally felt that she was saying good-bye for the last time; she could see his young strength limp and shapeless against the ground. Pushing back her bonnet, so all those about could see her face plainly, she kissed Martin Foley on the cheek. He stood straight and still, with his hands down close to his sides. ‘You must go,’ he told her. ‘You have stayed too long.’

Calhoun came shortly after dawn, riding a gray horse, instead of coming in a carriage as most gentlemen would. His second carried no pistol case, and no doctor accompanied them. ‘Are you planning to use my pieces?’ Martin Foley demanded in surprise.

‘Guns?’ queried John Calhoun. ‘Come, who mentioned guns?’

‘This is a duel, John.’

‘To be sure, but not a duel with guns.’

That was a blow to my great-grandfather. None knew better than he the small chance he had with pistols; practically no chance at all. Now it was to be with swords. Martin Foley drew himself up proudly. He had never held a cutting edge in his life. ‘So, it’s to be with steel?’

‘Steel?’ Calhoun said. ‘Why steel?’

My great-grandfather became angry then. ‘’Tis bound to be either guns or steel. This is a duel, you know.’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ replied the great Calhoun. ‘The choice of weapons is mine. Right now my boots look good enough for me, Martin.’

‘Your boots, John?’

‘Why not? We’re to be allowed one kick each, you see. The one who knocks the other farthest naturally wins. Shall we match for honors?’

The men on the field heard him, but they didn’t believe. The tightness within them relaxed, and they leaned forward in the half light to scan his face. What kind of joke was this? What madness for a man to bring with him to a duel? John Calhoun stood quietly, without removing his greatcoat, and then they realized he meant what he said: that he had come to this field to fight in the early dawn with his boots, and nothing more.

My grandfather couldn’t say who laughed first; it happened spontaneously. One minute there was death beneath the oaks, calm but certain in the wind, then there was breathing, and laughter. First it was a whisper, then a guffaw, then one continuous roar. Men held each other by the shoulders to support their mirth; several collapsed and rolled in the grass.

Laughter cut the heart from Martin Foley. It was one thing to feel the sudden burning of a bullet through your stomach, — a man could prepare himself for that, — but it was too much to fit yourself for death and then here was mirth before you. Martin Foley grabbed his cape and rushed from the field; none followed, or tried to make him stay. He mounted a horse, they say, and fled to Savannah.

John Caldwell Calhoun went on to the legislature, and then later to Washington — you have heard of him.

And Sally Brateen?

She brought my great-grandfather back to Bete Noir a married man.

You see, that’s why my grandfather calls John C. Calhoun a rabbit dog: according to the rules, he should have shot Martin Foley. He should have left him bleeding in the grass. Instead, he made a laughingstock of him for a time, but he let him live to marry and have strong sons. ‘He was a politician, boy, that’s why he didn’t do it,’ my grandfather told me. ‘He was afraid of what other folks would think when he got to arguing and making laws. He was just like that old bird dog and the rabbit, by golly. That’s the thing his belly wanted most.’

But I don’t know about that. Sometimes I think my grandfather is just getting too old to remember things — things that used to be important, even to him. He’s forgetting there was a girl named Sally Brateen — a beautiful girl with a laugh that pulled at a stubborn man’s frown.

He’s forgetting there’s a thing inside a man that a bird dog never knows, and it ain’t politics either.