Running the Bulls (22 page)

At the bar, the boys huddled. Wally seemed to think the guilty party was one of the two salesmen who had been in the day before for happy hour.

“They were drunk as coots and requesting songs nonstop,” said Wally.

Pete and Freddy suspected the two women sitting like fat mushrooms at that table so close to the stage.

“Look at the smiles on their faces,” Pete noted. “They always return to the scene of the crime, don't they?”

Wally shook his head. Absolutely not.

“Those are the Baily sisters,” said Wally. “Larry has had them both, even at the same time. I doubt the Bailys would hide the pump. They need it.”

It was too much for Howard to think about. He had his own revelations to deal with. He ordered a rum from Wally and then reached inside his shirt pocket for the picture of Ben. He pulled it out and again studied the frail arms, the tubes disappearing into the nostrils like two railroad tracks, the shock of pure white hair.

He noticed for the first time an ashtray on the table beside Ben, within reaching distance, a thin curl of smoke wafting up from the cigarette in its belly. The poor sucker had smoked right up until the end. Howard decided then that he
would
come to terms with what happened during that spring and summer so long ago, those ten weeks between Ellen and Ben Collins. It was just taking a little time, running its course. That's all. Soon Howard Woods would lean to the future, the way a plant leans toward sunlight.

But who knew the future? Before it was all over, Howard might find himself back at Bixley Performance Ford, bent over, letting someone in greasy coveralls give him a lube job.

“Oh hell… Let's not talk about it. Let's never talk about it.”

“All right.”

—Brett and Jake,
The
Sun
Also
Rises

Within four days of its disappearance, the pump and Larry were back in touch. At least, Larry had heard from the pump. It was at Pioneer Village, down in Massachusetts, its plastic neck in one of the exhibition stocks. Larry was sitting at the end of the bar, his head in his hands, as if his own neck was in a vise grip. Wally put a letter in front of Howard and then nodded for him to take a look. The envelope was addressed to
Larry
“Pump Boy” Ferguson,
in care of the Holiday Inn lounge. Howard opened the letter and found a postcard inside, along with a Polaroid picture. He looked at the postcard first.
Greetings
from
Pioneer
Village, Salem, Massachusetts.
On the back, in a childlike scrawl, was this message:
Dear
Master. I miss you but I'm having lots of fun. Love, Bator.

“Bator?” said Howard. Larry let loose a long sigh at the end of the bar. It sounded like air being leaked from a tire, slow and painful.

“That's a bad joke,” said Wally. “He doesn't call it that at all.”

“I called it Petie,” said Larry.

Howard picked up the Polaroid and stared at it. It was of the stocks at Pioneer Village, the punishment exhibit set up for the public to visit. There was the pump all right, out of its duffel bag and naked for the world to see. Someone had laid the round plastic body inside the circle where a neck is supposed to rest.
Have
fun
at
the
stocks
and
pillory
had been the description typed on the back of the postcard, and that seemed to be what the pump was doing. Howard looked up at Wally, who was looking over at Larry.

“Shitty thing for her to do,” said Howard.

“He shouldn't have called her a fucking bitch before she left here,” said Wally. “I even warned him. Didn't I warn you?” He asked this of Larry, who merely shrugged. “Let her go without a word, I said. But no, you had to go and call her a fucking bitch, and now your pump is in the stocks.”

Larry took a drink of his beer. He kept his eyes on the yellowing photo of Lola Falana behind the bar.

“Still,” said Howard. “It was a shitty thing to do.”

Wally softened. “It was,” he said. “And she is a bitch.”

Larry seemed to feel better. He picked up his drink and went over to the jukebox, stood looking down at the selections without playing any. Once Larry was out of eyesight, both Wally and Howard let loose the laughs they'd been suppressing. These were silent, Marcel Marceau laughs, so Larry wouldn't hear. Wally picked up the Polaroid shot again, and he and Howard both stared. So Donna Riley had a sense of humor after all. Howard was glad that the boys now understood and appreciated this. Donna was a hoot, and despite the trouble he was in, he'd had one hell of a fun night with her, until morning had dawned with its sad reality.

“Listen, I'll see you later,” said Howard. “I gotta get my stuff moved into Pete's cabin.”

Wally had managed to stop laughing, especially now that Larry was on his way back to the bar.

“Don't worry, Lar,” said Howard. Larry sat again at the bar and motioned for another beer. “It'll come home.”

As Howard left the lounge, he winked at Wally.

***

Pete's cabin was one of the larger and nicer ones at Bixley Lake, which lay just two miles from the Bixley town sign. Howard had gone there many times to fish, and had always enjoyed the chance to breathe in a little nature. During the summers, the other cabins filled up on weekends as the owners brought their families out to enjoy the water and sun. But weekdays were mostly quiet, and he was thankful for that. Pete was the one who had suggested the cabin when it became obvious to even the kitchen help at the Holiday Inn that Howard was now using the rental truck as a closet, and sleeping in a room that was costing him a weekly rate of two hundred and ten dollars.

“I'd have suggested the cabin sooner,” Pete said, as he and Howard drove the rumbling truck all the way around the lake, through the white birches and poplars and flashes of pine, to arrive at the two-room cabin. “But I figured you'd be going home any day.” So had Howard. But he said nothing as Pete backed the truck up to the cabin's front porch and shut off the engine. It snorted a few times before it fell silent. The first thing Howard heard was the chickadees. He thought of the sparrow back in the sign at the Holiday Inn and wondered if it would miss him. If it ever knew that he'd been watching it for so many days, wishing it well. He had one more night to sleep in the room beneath the huge sign. He would say good-bye to the little bird by leaving it more of the complimentary breakfast bar's croissant, on the pavement near the base of the sign. So far, the sparrow had been one of the few not to complain about the staleness.

Pete got out first and slammed his door. Howard followed. Both men stood for a minute, breathing deep, listening, staring out across the lake. Squirrels rushed through the tops of the trees, scurrying away from the sudden noise. Howard felt a small breeze waft in from the water, thick with the threat of rain. It was cool and soft on his face, and he thought of Jake and Bill Gorton, fishing so high up in those Spanish mountains. This would be a good place for him, here at the lake. He should have come straight there until the issue was resolved between Ellen and him. But how did he know, that early dawn he had driven over to John's house, his suitcase bouncing around like a dog in the back of the blue Probe, that a month later he would still be wandering about in the desert, next to the ice machine? Howard unlocked the back door of the truck, and he and Pete began the chore once more of carrying boxes.
Murray's Clay Pot Kit, the Bread Company, Amazon Books, Lilly's Glassware.

Pete had built an addition, a small alcove off the one bedroom, and had set up a toilet in there, one of the biodegrading kinds. This meant his cabin was one of the few with no unsightly outhouse loitering behind it. There was a tiny kitchen, a sink with water running in from a tank outside, a table, a fridge, a small woodstove, and Pete had managed to add a sensible fireplace, something Carolyn had insisted on for ambience. It was rustic, but it was comfy. Howard felt a kind of welcome from the unvarnished hardwood floors, from the modesty of the table and chairs, the bed, the reading lamp, which was oil and had a wick.

When they were finished stacking the boxes inside, Howard and Pete broke open beers and stood drinking them out on the front porch. Summer was in full swing now and canoes dotted the lake here and there, along with an occasional small boat. Warblers careened in the tops of the trees, and red squirrels scurried across the roof. Howard assumed they were picking up the rainstorm that weathermen had already predicted, and this was the cause of their excitement.

“I'd worry about you out here with no electricity,” said Pete, “but you'll be gone before cold weather hits.”

“Let's hope,” said Howard, “but these days I place no bets.”

Pete smiled as he took the remaining cigar out of his shirt pocket and lit it up. Smoke curled away from the tip, caught the breeze and then vanished on the wind.

“Well, Thoreau,” said Pete, “in that case, the woodpile is around back.”

***

When Howard and Pete joined the happy hour regulars, they were all in a tizzy, the way birds get excited at a feeder. Another postcard had arrived that afternoon from Larry's pump. This time, it seems, the pump had visited the Old North Church, in Boston. On the back Donna had scrawled,
one
if
by
hand, two if by pump.
Larry had tears in his eyes as he read the card for the fiftieth time.

“Fucking whore,” Larry said. “She's pushing my back to the wall on this.” The picture of his pump at Pioneer Village was now taped to the mirror behind the bar, in between William Cohen and Lola Falana. Next to it was a newer Polaroid shot: the pump on the steps of the famous Boston church, waiting for Paul Revere to thunder by.

“I say we form a special commando unit, go down to Boston, and get the thing back.” This was from Freddy Wilson. Howard had just stopped by room seventeen to drop off his jacket. He would sleep there one more night before moving out to Pete's cabin. Once that happened, he had already made a promise to himself to visit the lounge once a week, maybe less. True, he and Pete had liked popping in after a game of golf for a quick, cold beer. But in the past almost month that Howard had lived in the building, he'd seen enough of Pete, of Larry, of Wally, of Freddy, of the other regulars. He wanted his safe, married life at Patterson Street back. He wanted to mean it the next time he said, “Hey, good to see you,” to any of these guys.

He ordered his rum.

Two more days and he was on his way to Pamplona.

“So, how's it feel?” asked Wally, as he gave Howard the drink.

“What's that?” asked Howard.

“You know,” said Wally. “I mean, shit, none of us thought you'd really go to Spain. But you're doing it, man. I gotta tell you, Howie, I'd be scared as fuck to run with them bulls.”

Howard tried not to let his appreciation show. He had waited years for this kind of scene, had dreamed of it since he was a boy, watching all those old Hollywood flicks in which men like Audie Murphy, and John Wayne, and Gary Cooper proved themselves. Men with Remingtons strapped to their lean hips, with machine guns rat-a-tat-tatting in their hands, with airplanes buzzing beneath them, or horses sweating against their chaps. Men with just their fists, but
men,
dammit. And they were smart men, too, back in those days. In the '50s you didn't have Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. You didn't hear dialogue like “Hasta la vista, baby!” and “Yo!” You heard intelligent speech, dammit, because men were
allowed
brains back then, to go with their dicks. Hollywood knew it. And the average guy on the street knew it, too. So why hadn't they seen the signs? Because the signs were there, too, if you knew how to look for them. Trouble was, few people did. And guys like Howard had no way of peering into the future and witnessing what would be the emasculation of the American male. Instead, American men felt a rumbling in their groin area, a trembling of what was to come. But the minute they got a glimpse of it, the minute they realized that maybe those
suburbs
they were so proud of, maybe all that growing
industrialization
that they were part of, those sleek automobiles that were getting bigger and longer by the year, maybe it was all going to shrink one day, the suburbs running out of space, the American car growing smaller and smaller until it became Japanese. Maybe it was going to suck them down the drain, where they would all disappear for good. But Howard and his ilk had ignored those signs. Instead, if he and the average American guy got nervous, all they had to do was rush down to the movie theater and buy a ticket to see Brando one more time in
The
Wild
One.
Or maybe James Dean in
Rebel
Without
a
Cause.
Then, they could sit back and breathe easy as Marlon and James played it all out for them on the big silver screen, made that tingling they felt lessen just a bit, made them forget about the castration that was sure to come, so many years down the road. They could sit back, with one hand into a bucket of buttered popcorn, the other hand dangling from the arm they had just thrown around the back of their best girl's neck, dangling as close to that pure, lily-white breast as was possible in the 1950s. That was the Holy Grail of Howard's generation, because all that mattered back then was getting that titty into your hand, holding it as though it were a soft white snowball. It was all that mattered because Marlon and James were looking out for the American male. Marlon and James were watching the store. How did anyone know that Marlon and James were slowly being morphed into Arnold and Sylvester? How the hell could anyone dream?

“This is on the house,” said Wally. He put another rum in front of Howard. Wally was a generous man again, now that Donna Riley was gone. “You cover your butt over there, you hear me, Howie? That's a dangerous thing you're doing.”

“Yeah, well, what you gonna do?” Howard asked. An image of Babe Ruth flashed through his mind. He hoped he lived to witness the Red Sox lose the World Series one more time. He would be sad, but he would be alive. And Wally was right. He was really going to do it. He was leaving in the morning for the drive to Bangor. From there, it was on to Boston, London, and then,
that
old
Bilbao
moon, would rise above the dune.

“Hey, Runs Without Balls!” Pete shouted. Howard turned and stared at Pete, who was now
hitting
on five women, all seated around a table by the door and dressed in what looked like waitress uniforms from a fast food joint, purple and yellow. They reminded Howard of a flock of exotic finches. They waved in sync, five hands, five big smiles. Howard had asked Pete several times about his wife.
Doesn't Carolyn ever miss you at home?
No, Pete had said, she doesn't. There you had it. Howard knew
why
she didn't miss him, too. He turned his back to the table. His plan was to say good-bye to the boys early. In the morning, he would rise with the sparrow in the sign, he would go for a mile-long run before showering and driving to Bangor. Well, maybe not a mile. A half mile would do it. He hadn't taken up running as he had intended earlier, and as Pete had instructed him to do. But there was still time. He would run in the morning and then walk a lot in the airport at Logan while he waited for his international flight. And then, when he got to Pamplona, he would still have two days to get over his jet lag and get in shape. That ought to be enough time. How fast can bulls run?