Ritual Combat
The first time I encountered them they were equipped as fencers. I turned down the alley and there they were: foils at the ready, their faces obscured by safety helmets. They paid me only the briefest of attention as I stopped to snap a photograph, but still I felt like an unwelcome presence, and continued on after watching only a few initial lunges and parries. I thought the encounter a curiosity, but unworthy of any further attention than the tai chi practitioners who occasionally gather at the local park.
I spotted them next while driving far outside of town. Two figures at the bottom of a grassy meadow, one in the blues of a Union soldier and the other bedecked in Confederate gray. There was only time to see them raise heavy-bladed dueling sabers in salute before they were obscured again by the trees as the course of the car carried me onward. Their faces had been obscured by the brims of their hats, but I had no doubt it was the same pair.
Riding the subway late at night with my girlfriend and there they were, on the far end of an abandoned platform far underground. They swung at each other with katanas, surprisingly agile under the shingled armor and oni-masked helmets of samurai. The clanging of their blades echoed off the pavement as they traded blow after blow, and we saw one impale the other through a weak spot in the midsection before the train rattled on into the tunnel.
And yet they both seemed uninjured when I happened on them again, fighting under a park bridge in the manner of native tribesmen, glad head-to-toe in buckskins and feather headdresses, their faces occluded with smears of warpaint. They whooped war cries as they fought two-handed, each with a tomahawk and a knife.
Perhaps they are ghosts. Restless spirits endlessly repeating a blood feud in duel after duel. Or maybe they’re men, enthusiasts of the martial combat arts, quarreling over some point of honor long since forgotten. Or perhaps they’re merely historical reenactors who’ve simply lost themselves to deep into their costume alter egos.
I don’t know. Whatever, whoever they are remain one of the world’s mysteries.
What I do know is that they’re out there, somewhere in the out-of-the-way places of the world, continuing their duel even now.
In powdered wigs and buckled shoes, taking aim at each other with single-shot pistols.
Charging on horseback towards each other on horseback, lances leveled.
Turn the right corner, travel the right road, look out the corner of your eye at just the right moment and you’ll find them.
And battle will be done.
