Journal of Theodore Roosevelt Sr. [Father of Theodore Roosevelt]

October 27th, 1866

[Squabble of the Titans novel excerpt]

Today was Little “Teedie’s” eighth birthday. For the last several years he has been running to and fro with his hands balled into fists. I believe his difficulties in breathing result from a lack of having killed anything, when his little spirit demands what his tiny, cherubic hands have heretofore been unable to accomplish. At the end of The War, even as the rest of the family celebrated, Teedie sobbed his eyes out in frustration, hoping that if it would but go on for just a few more years he would be old enough to join up and fight for the cause. I have tried to dissuade him for Mittie’s sake. We couldn’t have Young Teedie jabbing at his Confederate uncles’ knees with an oversized bayonet in some misguided, patriotic attempt to get himself a “Johnny Reb.”

Now with The War safely behind us, it seemed safe to offer Little Teedie his heart’s desire. Mittie shook her head and declared her sentiment that the brand-new Winchester 1866 was a “man’s gun” not fit for a lad, and that it was pure folly to give one to an overeager child who cannot see. I disagreed…at the time. I saw that it was almost heavier and taller than Teedie. While he did not show immediate excitement upon receiving the weapon of justice, I knew it was because he could only perceive it as a dim outline. As soon as I guided his tubby fingers to the trigger, stock and bore, his face was aglow with the toothiest grin I have ever seen.

We practiced loading and unloading the gun by the touch and feel method. Teedie remarked on the beauty of the gunmetal, and its smooth coldness. I had the servants place a row of pumpkins on some fenceposts and showed Teedie how simple it was to blast away at them. He jumped up and down gleefully with his hands over his ears with each report, remarking on how wonderfully loud the rifle’s “voice” was. Mittie thought it best that Teedie’s First Kill be something already dead, so I took him in one hand and the Winchester in the other and led him to almost within point-blank range of the largest pumpkin.

I offered Teedie the Winchester. He could barely place two rounds into the repeating rifle as his hands trembled with excitement. “Oh boy!” he kept saying, “Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh Boy!”

After cocking the rifle, he had trouble raising it to his shoulder due to the heft of the gun. Then and there I should have heeded Mittie’s warning and quitted the field (it would still have been possible to walk away with honor at that point). Instead, I looked into my son’s expectant pinhole eyes, his desperate grin. I said “Teedie, are you ready for this?”

“Father,” said Teedie, ignoring my question entirely, “Do pumpkins cry out when they explode?”

“I’m not sure…” was all I had time to say. It all happened in a split-second. I was still helping Teedie hold the rifle. What he saw — if anything — as he peeped down its sights at his rotund orange quarry, I will never know. But I saw a look of steely determination in his mien, as if he was determined to find the truth of the matter through his own experience, not his father’s explanations. Before I could add one word of caution Teedie pulled the trigger and the rifle bucked up into his face like an unbroken stallion. Teedie was immediately flat on his back, his rifle beside him, the pumpkin untouched. The servants were already running for a doctor.

Blood gushed from Teedie’s nose, which was broken. Thankfully, no other damage was done. Through it all, he didn’t cry once. “Father,” he said. “Did I get my first kill?” he said weakly as I held him.

“No son,” I said, stifling a tear.

“Then I am not yet a man. Father?”

“Yes, son?”

“I pledge to do better next time.”

I daubed the blood from his face with my handkerchief and stroked his hair but said nothing else. After a pause, Teedie blinked and licked his lips inquisitively while he still had blood on them. “It tastes like iron,” he said. “It isn’t bad. …Not bad at all.”

Care to read a hilarious account of Theodore Roosevelt hunting Bigfoot? Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Squabble-Titans-Recollections-Roosevelt-Rainforest/dp/B097X4R4LN