Читать книгу Mozos - Bill Hillmann - Страница 8
ОглавлениеCHAPTER ONE:
THAT FIRST TIME
2005
IMMERSION
I was a complete mess before I started running with the bulls. I’m still a mess today but then I was complete.
Authorities jailed me at the age of twenty for the crime of defending myself against three rich kids who’d just humiliated my girlfriend. I hurt one of them very badly and received three months in county jail. There were two guards molesting the prisoners there. That experience angered me and drove me away from society. I’m surprised that I was ever able to return.
In the winter of 2005 I was selling cocaine out of my studio apartment in the Edgewater neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side and working on my first novel. The Latin Kings of Little Village were fronting me half ounces every couple weeks. It was like writing on a grant.
I met novelist Irvine Welsh (of Trainspotting fame) outside a White Sox game on Chicago’s South Side through a mutual friend in Chicago boxing named Marty Tunney. Irvine and I became good friends. He invited me to his wedding in Dublin. When one of the greatest writers in the world invites you to his wedding—you go.
I worked my ass off and raised the funds to fly to Dublin. Irvine was getting married at the end of June. The Sun Also Rises was the first novel I’d ever read cover to cover. I remembered the running of the bulls in Pamplona took place in the middle of the summer. I found a $60 flight from Dublin to Madrid.
Twenty-three years old, I was ready for an adventure to sow my wild oats. I considered myself a real cocksman. In reality, I was mostly failing at getting laid, though I would have tremendous weeklong stretches of a different woman every night then be marred with six-month dry spells where I became extremely intimate with my right palm.
Everything fell into place. I sat in a terminal at O’Hare International waiting on my flight. A foxy little brunette sat across from me. We made eyes a few times. When I went out for a smoke she followed. We sparked a conversation. She was French and had a bad attitude. I started to tease her. She liked it. She had light-brown eyes and a nice ass. We boarded the plane together. She sat a couple rows behind me. It was one of those nine-seat getups—five seats in the center and two at the windows. I sat at a window seat and nobody sat down next to me.
After everybody settled into their seats, a stern-faced stewardess appeared, walking this old obese lady my way. They scanned the rows for an open seat. I turned and waved the French girl over and she hurried to sit next to me. We got to talking and giggling. It was a ten-hour flight. We drank a couple of those little bottles of red wine and then things got interesting.
Somewhere over the Atlantic we joined the Mile High Club, but this mean stewardess put a stop to it and threatened to separate us. She was just jealous. We gave up and snuggled the rest of the way. I actually started to fall for her. She had a real nice scent and got kinda sweet after it all. I invited her to the wedding. Then she ditched my ass at the Dublin airport. I walked around the terminal for an hour lovesick before I gave up on the tramp.
Ran around Dublin with Irvine and met his best man, Johny Brown, a radio host, poet, and lead singer of The Band of Holy Joy. I spilled some Guinness on his shirt. He told me to get a rag. I brought him one, but he held a pint in both hands and told me to wipe his shirt. I laughed and did it. We became quick friends. He told me I had to come read some of my stories on his radio show in London. I didn’t believe him but said sure.
Irvine’s wedding was a blast. They held it at the governor’s house or something. It was a big, high-ceilinged ballroom with a balcony terrace. I met a bunch of the characters straight out of Irvine’s books, a couple of legendary Edinburgh hooligans; one guy was about 300 pounds of bulk with an enormous head and a big scar on his face. He wore a glass eye in place of one he’d lost in a little underworld misunderstanding involving a samurai sword.
I gave Irvine a draft of my book as a wedding present: a pretty stupid-ass, cocky thing to do. The book was complete garbage. I trashed it a few months later and apologized.
I’ll never forget seeing my friend dancing with his new wife Beth well into the night. At one point, everyone crowded around in a big circle. Irvine and a few friends held hands and just leaped up and down. Irvine’s Bic’d scalp radiated wild joy; a huge grin streaked across his face. Everybody clapped and cheered around them. That man has a way of experiencing pure joy like no other individual I’ve ever come across.
I’d been making eyes with one of Beth’s friends; she was the hottest one of the bunch. This slimy guy with long, straight, dirty-blond hair started hitting on her and her friends. I didn’t sweat it ’cause he was Irvine’s age and these girls were in their twenties and he wasn’t Irvine Welsh. He bickered back and forth with them a little as I walked off to the bathroom. Next thing you know there he is beside me as I’m washing my hands. He calls me a poof. I knew what it meant.
Didn’t want to start no trouble with one of Irvine’s mates, but I was thinking about cracking him when he starts telling me about all the beautiful women he’s fucked in his lifetime. Models, millionaires, celebrities, royalty, you name it. That’s when I realize, looking into his weathered good looks and greasy hair, he’s got to be fuckin’ Sick Boy, or one of the main inspirations for him anyway. It was like he was trying to intimidate me away from the girls. I just grinned, maybe he was fucking princesses back in the eighties, but there was no way this British guido was gonna bag a chick who was making eyes with me all night. I ended up heading to a bar with her and a few friends. Sick Boy showed up but he stopped with all the competitive crap. He was actually a cool, friendly guy once that stuff ended. I really liked him. I took the girl back to my hostel as Sick Boy was hitting it off with her friends. I wished him luck and he winked at me as I headed out.
Said goodbye to the girl with a kiss early the next morning and jumped on a Madrid-bound plane.
Got lucky on the sixth of July and I boarded the last seat on a Pamplona-bound bus. As we entered Navarra, a police roadblock halted us. A cop with a black M16 hanging from his neck boarded the bus. Everybody’d been singing before and now they fell silent. The cop walked slowly down the aisle in his blue uniform, eyeballing everybody behind his dark glasses. All the passengers looked down and away. He had the face of a sadist. I decided to stare him down. He walked right up to me and asked for my passport. I felt around for it and realized it was in my bag stored underneath the bus. Somebody asked him something and he turned. I went to tell him about my passport and a Spanish guy hushed me urgently. The officer walked off the bus. The ETA, an acronym roughly translated to Basque Homeland and Freedom, is still very active in Navarra. This Basque separatist militant movement believes Navarra is a sovereign nation. The ETA has a long history of terrorist activity and are firmly aligned with other separatist militants like the Irish Republican Army and the Zapatistas. The ETA historically uses the fiesta de San Fermín as a staging ground for small revolts, none more infamous than the riots in 1979 that put an end to fiesta that year. The singing kicked back up as the bus eased out of the roadblock. Everybody cheered as we rolled into the old Pamplona bus station.
The entire city pulsed electric. It was a few hours after the Chupinazo, the fiesta’s raucous opening ceremony. I wandered the narrow cobblestone streets. Balconies rose up five and six stories on either side. I’d been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans a few times. Pamplona during fiesta is ten times wilder than Mardi Gras, and the old section is five times bigger, older, and more beautiful than the French Quarter. There’s much less of the stale “been there, done that” spring break vibe. There’s also a tenth of the violence. Fiesta is a peaceful insanity. There’s a sense that the culture of this ancient city is alive and intact. Impromptu Peña marching bands parade down busy streets. They don’t expect you to step aside and observe; they want to encompass you and swallow you into them. They will feast on you and you become one with them, marching and dancing through the garbage-strewn streets.
Searched the town for a place to stay, which is hopeless. Every room in the city is booked six months in advance, unless you know people. I didn’t know a soul in the entire country.
I found out about a college that would lock and store your bag for five euros. Chose to keep all my cash on me, figuring that the guys checking the bags might rob me. I took to the street and immersed. Bought a plastic jug of sangria and I wandered the avenues. The epically beautiful northern Spanish women dumbfounded me—their porcelain skin and dark eyes floated through the madness like crystalline ghosts. Pushed and squeezed my way through a tight-packed street that opened onto the immense courtyard called Plaza de Castillo. Thousands of revelers clad in sharp-red scarves and waist sashes filled the plaza. Hazy sangria-red clouds soaked into their bright white shirts and pants from the raucous Chupinazo.
I got lost—like you should in fiesta that first time. Sink into that dark circular maze of streets. Let the music carry you. Follow it and bright eyes and laughter. Enjoy the splash of sangria on your drunken head. Take drinks from anyone who’s giving. Kiss and dance with any girl who’s willing. Don’t fear loud booms and glass bursts; they are not sounds of violence. Here they are background noise pollution, punctuations on joyful sentences. The only foul you can commit at fiesta is to get angry for any reason, and the only repercussion is shameful ohhhhhs and being ignored and left behind. But it’s only momentary, ’cause when you smile you are welcomed back into fiesta without hesitation. Over the years I’d learn that you must give and give and give to fiesta and that it will never take from you. But that would be later. Then, I drank for ten hours straight. Realized I should sleep for a while so I could run, but I was afraid of pickpockets, so I tried to sleep up in a tree but a scuffle below woke me. I met an American who was going to school in Pamplona. He told me he’d help me get to the run. We walked across the city to the ayuntamiento, (town hall). The city workers began setting up the barricades. I tried to help them. Hoisted up a plank but a cop ran me off. Then I waited on the street, wobbly and dreary. Someone said the run started in two. I took a nap.
Fell asleep on the side of a building and I didn’t wake up for a very long time. I arose to an enormous cheer and three guys pissing on the wall way too close to me. Morning light peered down at me over the roofs of the buildings. I ran toward the packed barricades, knifed through the people, and climbed them in time to see four sweeper steers thrust past. I remember saying “those are just cows” disgustedly as I tried to climb over the top plank. A female police officer reeled back and rapped her nightstick with all her might an inch from where my hand gripped the plank.
I froze. The animals vanished and the run was over.
I’d failed to run, and that misery is something I hope to never feel again.
Fell asleep in a doorway and I woke without a single euro in my pocket. I stumbled to the Plaza de Castillo and lay down in the bright afternoon light. The sound of two Spanish guys goofily heckling passersby kept waking me up. I could barely understand their commentary but something in their inflection reminded me of the Mexican construction workers I’d spent years with on work sites in Chicago. I was penniless in a foreign land and I had the worst hangover of my entire life. Still, I found myself laughing. Fiesta has a way of doing that to people, making a joke of their absolute despair. I started talking with two guys and a girl from Madrid. We fumbled our way through introductions and I told them what’d happened. They took me in, and soon I was drunk again and stumbling around the city with them. They took me all over to big fields with stages set up among trees and grass in the shadow of these tall, white stone fortress walls.
The next morning I woke in a strange car knifing through these epic green rounded mountain peaks. The sunlight cascaded through boulder-like clouds. The small car soared through the Pyrenees. I slowly worked out that my new friends had devised a plan that I accompany them to San Sebastian, then they would take me to their home in Madrid where I would stay until my flight left. This instant solution to my plight overwhelmed me with gratitude. The Spanish are a generous people. As I sobered up on the shore of the Atlantic, I realized I couldn’t go to Madrid. I bit the bullet and called home. My father said he’d send me money. Picked the money order up in town and I bid farewell to my dear new friends and boarded a Pamplona-bound bus.
It was my first attempt at staying sober in fiesta. It was motherfuckin’ difficult. I wandered the area looking for a quiet place to sleep. Slept in doorways, on curbs and benches. It gets chilly in Pamplona at night, even in July. I got really cold. Cops would wake me and move me along. Other times, partiers would offer me a drink and try to pull me to my feet. In my tired wanderings I stumbled across the Hemingway statue outside the arena. He looked stoic, full-bearded and happy. There’s a curved brick slope at the foot of the statue. It made for a comfortable bed. Surprisingly no one bothered me, and I slept well there at the foot of Papa Hemingway as fiesta rambled on a half block away.
Ernest Hemingway’s writing changed my life. I grew up in the Edgewater neighborhood in Chicago where drugs and violence were commonplace. My parents dropped out of school at thirteen and fourteen years old. They were well-read and self-educated but excelling in school definitely wasn’t a priority in my home. Ma even used to bribe my teachers to pass me to the next grade level. My brother was a heroin addict and gang member who ended up in prison for armed robbery. A stray bullet from a drive-by struck my sister and nearly killed her. People I loved died in gangland murders. My parents got us out of the city, but my city sensibilities went to the suburbs with me. They kicked me out of school a bunch, and I even booted a teacher in the nuts then hit him over the head with a chair. I hated school and I could barely read. Midway through high school my history teacher, Brother Peter Hannon, got me into boxing in the Golden Gloves and I turned things around. Still, I needed to go to junior college to get into a four-year school. I took Professor David McGrath’s class on Ernest Hemingway there. Up until then I hadn’t ever read a novel beginning to end in my whole life. My dad urged me to read Hemingway because he wrote about people like us, but I resisted. When I found out Hemingway won the Nobel Prize writing about fishermen, soldiers, and fist fighters, it piqued my interest. Professor McGrath laid out this whole religious metaphor in The Old Man and the Sea that blew me away. I decided to sit down and read a full book. The magnitude of what I was doing hovered in my mind as I strolled the halls of the Elmhurst College Library. I found Hemingway’s debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, and thought I’d start there. I sat down and immersed myself in the story. He instantly wrapped me up with his characters. I felt like Hemingway himself was oozing from the pages and speaking directly to me. At nineteen years old, it was such a pivotal time in my life and perfect time to read that book. I read it in one sitting, enthralled with the grand adventure, the wild fiesta, and the mystical bulls. When I finished that book after six or seven hours of intense reading I knew it forever changed me. I knew I had to devote my life to literature and that I had to travel to Spain, experience fiesta, and run with the bulls. Like those choose-your-own-adventure stories, I was going to set out on my own adventure, except I was going to actually live it and write it.
I woke at dawn when an officer kicked my foot and walked away laughing. Laborers finished standing and securing the barricades fifty yards away. I wandered to Telefónica. Beautiful young Spanish women swept past by the hundreds. I stood in the center of the street as they passed. I met eyes with them, told them bonita. Some stopped and smiled. Others giggled. One took me by the hand and tried to lead me away, but I stayed. I waited and readied for the run. I had no idea I was standing in the wrong place. As 6:00 a.m. approached, the crowds along the barricades thickened and photographers took their posts in peek holes in the boarded-up shops. I moved up Estafeta Street. Hundreds of hopeful runners scattered all over the narrow passageway.
Suddenly a police line the width of the street formed. It moved toward me. They herded everyone up the street. At the first intersection on Estafeta the barricade swung open. I couldn’t believe it. Why are they pushing us off the course? I did everything right! I’m here an hour early, sober! Some of the would-be runners up front resisted. A tall officer with gray stubble on his cheeks cracked a runner over the head with his nightstick. The police line heaved and shoved every single one of us out onto the side street.
We all panicked. I ran down side streets asking urgently, “Where do we have to go to run?!” People pointed different directions. Sprinted all the way down one long street, found no entry at the barricades, and ran back. I cut down another alley that wrapped around a tall building, praying that I would find a way in. Exhausted, I sat down in a doorway and quit. Maybe running with the bulls just isn’t in my destiny. My heart ached heavily, and I wanted to go home. Something swooped up to me and whispered urgently. “Listen . . . Just listen.” As my breathing slowed I heard a tremendous, tense chatter and a voice on a loudspeaker that switched languages every few seconds.
Curious, I followed the noise around a corner and found a long barricade with many people all perched on the top row with others strung along it straining to see over. I pushed forward. A few people ducked under and onto the course—police stopped another and pushed him out. The nearest officer turned his back and I slipped through the barricades deftly, like stepping through the ropes into a boxing ring. As I passed through the second barricade I smashed into a dense mob of bodies. Tons of body-to-body pressure squeezed me. It ebbed and swayed—at its worst I struggled to breath. Everyone chattered tensely. The only direction you could see was up. The ornamental façade of an ancient building with a large clock on it rose above the heads of the many runners. I realized it was the town hall.
The clock read twenty minutes till eight. The recorded PA voice switched to English. It warned of great bodily harm; if you fall down, stay down. The crowd murmured. The murmurs twisted and lifted into a cheering roar that bellowed up then fell into laughter. Some people staggered drunk; others gave obnoxious advice to an American married couple near me. I argued with the advisers, but what the hell did I know? It was the blind leading the blind. At ten minutes to eight, the police line holding us back broke and the thick mob unraveled and sifted up the street.
I walked a half block and came to a sharp banking turn. A five-tiered wall of cameramen loomed behind the barricades. Photographers working for publications all over the world vie for position here, from as early as 5:00 a.m. This was La Curva, the curve, Dead Man’s Corner. I remembered seeing the ESPN series on the run in the early 2000s. They’d called it “Hamburger Wall” and described it as the place where the herd crashes every morning. The series described it as one of the most dangerous places to run. I figured I’d start right there.
Bravely, I held my ground at the curve—right in front of the barricades the photographers jockeyed behind. Suddenly a stick-rocket screamed into the sky and burst high above the red-tiled roofs of the city. Wild panic surged up the street. Suddenly I wasn’t so brave anymore. I crossed onto the inside of the curve where a bunch of runners stood—a stupid mistake, I’d soon learn why. The American couple materialized and asked me, “Is this a good place to run?” I shrugged.
A second boom rumbled in the sky. Then a wild cheer from the balconies and barricades swung up behind it. A steady stream of runners rounded the curve and flowed past me. Some laughed; others yelled, terrified. A low, deep rumble grew in the distance. The speed and density of runners pouring around the bend grew. Only terror-struck faces flew past now accompanied by a high-pitched scream. The leaden rumble twisted into a sharp hard crackle. The cobblestones and buildings resonated. A large black streak surged through the curve. The crackle exploded. Time froze. The lead bull bucked a runner with its forehead. The man floated on a cushion of air above the bull’s snout with his arms flung out. His lips stretched in a wide-mouthed terror-grin. Bulls, steers, and men crashed into the mural of San Fermín next to the photographers’ barricade with a thunderous, wooden boom. I gawked rigidly. Most of the herd rose and rumbled past. One bull stayed and dug his horns into the fallen people. The immense sculpted muscularity of his neck and back contorted under his black fur. A white flash swirled in the corner of my periphery. A hard-panging bell flooded my eardrums. I turned. A giant steer barreled directly at me an arm’s length away. I dove backward and pressed my hands into its shoulder. The fur stretched taut as a drum. Somehow my legs missed his hooves. The young American couple jogged obliviously ahead of me, hand in hand. The steer plowed through them. Its hooves gobbled them up. Their arms and legs splayed wildly under the hooves. They screamed.
My forward momentum carried me over them. At the last second I leaped and pulled my knees way up to my chest. My feet barely cleared the couple. I stopped and hovered over them. “You OK?” They both writhed on the ground. I reached down to help them when the last bull at the curve bellowed wrathfully and raised his massive black head. His powerful white horns swung up tall. I remembered hearing that a separated bull is deadly dangerous. He broke into a gallop and I turned and ran as fast as I fucking possibly could. Luckily the final bull rocketed past me on the other side of the street. The thick stampede of people spread to allow him through. Other individuals seemed to force their way in front of him and sprint ahead for several strides before peeling to the side. I kept sprinting forward, at first in terror, but as the crowd slackened I remembered that they released vaca (wild cows) into the ring after the run. I sprinted for the arena at the end of the course. As I got to the opening of tunnel into the arena several police officers pushed the immense red double doors closed. A crowd fought to get through the narrowing opening. I pressed into it as well. Then the police pulled out their batons and cracked a few of the revelers in front. I gave up. Another stick-rocket burst above the arena and a joyous cheer washed over the entire city. I cheered and grasped at others nearby. “Did you see that? Did you see that?” They shrugged me off, laughing. I realized that this was bigger than any individual experience, that all of us had shared it together. Then the joy twisted to shrieks again. A wild ramble of shouts and panging bells approached. I had nowhere to go so I climbed up on the barricades just in time. Four steers swept just under my feet. They’d opened the arena doors to let the steers in. I hopped down. The police struggled to shut the heavy doors. Two other runners pushed at the opening. I sprinted and drove my shoulder into the others’ backs and we avalanched into the darkened tunnel. The police shut the doors and we ran down the tunnel giggling. Jogged down the dark tunnel and I stepped onto the white sand of the arena for the first time. The brilliant morning light struck me like a warm wave. The entire arena, full to the rafters, gave the hundreds of runners a standing ovation. Then the cheers fell into Spanish songs. Complete strangers embraced on the sand. Others raised their arms like victorious gladiators. I walked around dumbfounded with euphoria among the wild pandemonium.
Then some cops called us to a corral door. I walked over. They motioned for us to kneel. About fifty of us did. I knelt near the back of the shell-shaped group of kneeling men and women. We gave the animal no way to exit the corral except over and through us. It’s like Rodeo Poker. We were fucked and we all knew it. Even so, we exchanged smiles and pats on the back.
A red door opened. A cubic black void appeared. Something stirred in the darkness. Fear shot me to my feet, but regret at my cowardice sank me back to my knees beside my new friends. A man in the very front stood and waved the unseen animal forward. Suddenly the vaca’s horns emerged from the darkness—corked tips with brown leather straps over them. She galloped and bounded over the first three rows of kneelers. Then she landed hard into the fourth and fifth row. Her hooves dug deep into shoulders and backs. A young guy screamed, twisted, and lunged toward me. The vaca trampled the rest of the way through us. I rose and backpedaled. The vaca bowed her head, slung her horn between a guy’s legs, and vaulted him into the air. He flipped sideways and landed on his shoulder. The vaca barreled through the thick crowd and somersaulted another mozo. Hundreds in the ring ran for safety; some leaped the arena walls. I dashed around and tried to stay safe.
As the minutes passed I noticed that some people actually ran at the vaca. I couldn’t figure out why, so I got closer to see. They sprinted up and slapped the vaca on the ass. Then they dashed away as the vaca tried to retaliate. I instantly knew I had to do it. I didn’t notice the Spanish guys who instantly beat the crap out of anyone who touched the vaca, because doing so is strictly forbidden. Even so, I devised my plan. I’d sprint right at the vaca’s ass then slap it as I rushed past. It was a good plan—simple and as safe as possible. I took a deep breath and bolted at the vaca—cutting through the flock of people. As I got close the crowd thinned. I careened close to the vaca when she saw me in her periphery. I reached out to slap her ass and she turned and her hindquarters whipped out of reach. I kept running and exited her wrathful realm. Dejected, I gathered and lined her up again. As I swept past she spun again and I smacked the wind.
I worried they’d take the vaca away before I’d had chance to slap her ass! The realization sank in. I’d have to go in slow, sneak in, or face her outright. I jogged up and slowly stepped to her with my knees bent, on my tiptoes ready to dodge or dash away. She pursued another mozo as I snuck up on her broadside. I approached almost within reach when she saw me. She seethed and whirled around on me.
I jumped backward and smashed into another guy who crept up behind me. We caught each other by the arms and balanced. She twisted on another runner and her big furry dung-spattered ass was beside me. I gathered, leaped in, and smacked her bottom with my brittle palm. She unleashed a high-pitched bellow and whipped around on me. I twisted and dove into a sprint. Another mozo dashed in behind me and clipped me with his shoulder. I flew airborne and fell belly-down. As I descended, I brought both palms up over my head, swung down, and smacked the sand hard. The collision vaulted me back up into full stride. She galloped and seethed at my back as I hauled ass straight to the wall and leaped headfirst. I cleared all the people standing along the outside of the wall. My thighs crashed into their heads and shoulders. Some of them grabbed my legs and I landed hands first on the cold concrete. My shoulder slid out of the socket and I tumbled to the ground surrounded by jolly laughter. My shoulder was an old football injury; it slid back in on its own. The adrenaline coursed through me and stopped any pain. I figured I’d accomplished that one and decided not to get back in. Walked around and out of the arena down the same tunnel I’d come in.
Outside, I walked with a strange purpose. Restless explosive energy pulsed in my palms and shoulders, throbbing right under the skin. Images of the morning’s events riffled through my mind: bright visions that ejected roaring shouts and mad laughter as I bobbed and leaped through the Pamplona morning air. An entire giant arena had just urged me through a daring act on the sand where matadors and bulls danced and died. I kept pondering if it were real. If there was really a place in this modern world of sitcoms and McDonald’s culture where just about anyone could show up and partake in this epic, wild tradition. I actually pinched myself. The up-close sight of those immense bulls—TV does them no justice. Their heads stand shoulder height; they’re incredibly wide; and their necks, backs, and shoulders bulge with enormous, sculpted muscle. They’re fantastically fast, agile, and powerful. I wondered if someone had died that morning. No one had, but injuries hospitalized several runners. I didn’t know any of this at the time, and later I’d realize I didn’t know anything about the experience I’d just survived. In the coming years I would become a tour guide for the run and grow disgusted by people who came to fiesta without any knowledge. Even later I’d realize it was my duty to inform them.
I walked to a café beside one of the large circular intersections that mark the modern section of Pamplona. Inside locals packed the long room. The Spanish smoked cigarettes and cigars as they drank coffee. I found an open space next to a standup counter, stepped up and ordered. A white-haired guy with a camera hung around his neck stood beside me. We started to chat. His name was Ned. He was a photojournalist from London. I told him I was a writer. He asked me if I’d run that morning and I glanced down at my shoes. A dusting of white arena sand clung to the cuffs of my jeans.
Ned asked me eagerly what happened, and over some strong Spanish espresso—I told.
“You must write this!” he urged.
I laughed, then considered it. He told me about the professional runners—a term no serious runner would ever use, but Ned was just learning too. Then he explained about running on the horns, the way the best Spanish runners ran over the centuries. These new concepts shattered my notions of this experience being a once-in-a-lifetime thing. There was a deep tradition on the street of foreign runners who traveled across the world to Spain every year to run. Some became legends.
“I’ll shoot it, you write it.” Ned smacked me on the back. “We’ll get it in somewhere big, you’ll see.”
At the time I was a completely unpublished writer, aside from my small college journal and a few obscure online sites. I figured, what the hell? We walked to the Plaza de Castillo where runners gathered afterward. There we found thirty or so Americans, English, Scots, and Irish standing around in front of a bar named Txoco. I asked stupid questions. “Are you a professional bull runner?” as I scribbled furiously in my little Moleskin notepad that I had tucked in my back pocket. The guys just laughed in my face and turned away. I didn’t know any better. Then a portly Scotsman with white hair and a beard rolled his eyes and answered my questions. I asked about the cows that ran with the bulls and he laughed.
“There’s no cows out there on the street, mate.”
“I saw cows out there.”
“No you didn’t, you saw cabestros.”
“What’s a cabestro?”
“It’s a bull with family jewels snipped,” he said as I diligently took notes. And with that, I began my slow and painful education in the run. The Scot’s name was Graeme Galloway. Galloway was a veteran of more than twenty fiestas, and over the next decade he’d become one of my dearest friends.
Matt Carney became the first American listed as one of the five great runners of a twenty-year span. At the time, he was the only non-Spanish citizen to ever earn that prestigious appointment. The Spanish accepted him as one of them. Before Matt died of cancer in 1987, he made a request that the room he owned, in the heart of town, be left open for any young man who lurked at the edge of the group. Matt asked that his friends bring that young man into the group, and if he had no place to stay that they should give him Matt’s room for free.
After my awkward introduction to the serious foreign runners, they pretty much ostracized me as a nut-job kid who thought he was a journalist. It was a pretty accurate assessment actually. Somber, I lurked at the edge of the group after that. I observed them as they drank and ate in the picturesque Plaza de Castillo well into the night. They hung out among the chrome tables and chairs in front of Bar Windsor. I leaned against the stone archways and listened to the British eloquence. I wondered if they were descendants from Hemingway’s era. I rehearsed in my mind things I’d say to Hemingway’s grandchildren: Your grandfather’s work changed my life. I wondered if they were writers. Some were. Most descended from James Michener’s era. Michener wrote the nonfiction work Iberia in the late sixties, which dedicated many pages to San Fermín. Later Michener published The Drifters, which fictionally chronicled many of the then contemporary Pamplona characters. Harvey Holt partially embodied Michener’s close friend Matt Carney. I knew nothing about Michener’s history at fiesta then, as I hovered in the shadows of the stone archways. Lonely, I watched and wondered what these characters from The Sun Also Rises were talking about. Mistaking me for a pickpocket casing the group, they ran me off a few times. They never offered me Carney’s room, or maybe a guy named Jim did, and I cut him off not wanting any charity. Can’t really remember . . .
Slept in my cold stone bed at Hemingway’s feet and ran the next morning. I did better and strode alongside the herd the first half of Estafeta, never getting closer than about ten feet. Ned kept insisting that I watch a run. I decided to watch the next morning.
OBSERVATIONS
I milled through the busy morning traffic of runners looking for a place to watch. Finally I ended up at the curve. Two small, unoccupied balconies hung above the barricades where the bulls crashed most mornings. Small, closed wooden windows stood behind the balconies. I scaled the fencing as the photographers and television crews set up on the scaffolding. First I stood on top of the fencing, reached up and grabbed the steel bars of the closest balcony. Then I pulled myself up and climbed in. It was just big enough for one person to squat in. Some of the people watching clapped. I smiled and waved down to them and tried to get comfortable.
I didn’t know at the time, but a very special breed of bulls was set to run that morning. They came from a ranch called Jandilla. The Jandilla weren’t so famous yet, but this bloodline began to impress their legacy on Pamplona the year before. The Jandilla were huge and muscular like most bulls that come to Pamplona, but they also possessed astonishing speed and insane ferocity. They inflicted twenty gorings the morning of July 12, 2004. A runner named Julen Madina received eight of those wounds. By then, Julen Madina had established himself as one of the greatest runners of all time; he’d run on the horns of bulls in Pamplona for over thirty years. Running on the horns is the act of leading the animal by running in front of its face and horns. If done successfully the animal accepts you as its guide and follows you up the street. Madina famously ran on the horns of bulls all the way from La Curva to the bullring in one morning. That’s over 400 yards with the herd—a superhuman feat. Afterward the media dubbed him one of Los Divinos, divine mozos who run with outstanding grace and bravery. If you look over the footage of the past few decades, you’ll see him most mornings in Pamplona, wearing white, his round head shaved and small hoop earrings in both ears, running the end of the course, bringing the bulls into the arena.
The most dangerous situation in bull running is something called a montón, or a pileup. For runners who run near the arena there is nothing they fear more than a serious montón. When bad pileups occur there are often deaths and injuries numbering in the hundreds. One person falls in the tunnel, several fall on top of him, then an avalanche of bodies collapses to the ground, plugging up the narrow passage of the tunnel. When the herd reaches this plug it attempts to plow through. It pushes into the bodies; goring, breaking bones, and suffocating those unfortunate ones on the bottom. And sometimes mozos die there at the bottom in the darkness, underneath the tremendous weight and pressure.
As the Jandilla approached the arena that morning in 2004 there was a terrible pileup forming in the tunnel. The bulk of the herd navigated around the pile and through the tunnel. The trailing two bulls fell. Trigueño, an enormous pitch-black bull, plucked Julen Madina out of the pile and gored him repeatedly. One serious shot near the spine almost killed him. A brown striped bull named Zarabrando turned backward and gouged at several of the fallen. Years later, Julen himself would tell me what happened that morning in horrific detail.
“I was running with the Jandillas like any other day. I was coming down on Telefónica and there were lots of people. The encierro (bull run) was very dirty. People were falling over. They were crossing in front of me. I couldn’t see the bulls. I had a bull at my back very close. I was trying to stay under control. I had to keep looking down and measuring the space. I saw that by the left side of the tunnel a very great cork was forming. People were falling over and piling up. I decided to go toward the right side of the tunnel to avoid the problems. I entered on the right side with a bull very close to my back.
“What I could not see was that behind that first pile there was a second pile. I fell over directly on top of that second pile. The bull [behind me] was very aggressive, so as soon as I fell it gored me. It lifted me from my belt and shook me vigorously. I tried to grab my belt buckle to loosen my belt but I could not, so the bull continued hauling me before he dropped me. I landed on top of a group of people and I lay very still, without moving because I knew that there were a lot of people who were going to shout so the bull would raise its face and go away. Or, that is what I hoped. But the bull stayed with me and he kept on goring me. It lasted twenty-two seconds and nobody was able to take the bull away. Aside from the gorings, I remember hearing this noise, a zzzz zzzz, like a stabbing sound.
“The bull then took to me from my butt cheek and lifted me and kept me on his horn. Then he dropped me, and I noticed a severe pain. The other thing that called my attention was the bellows of the bull, how it snorted, the energy with which it was attacking me. I could hear the noise that the hooves made in the ground, and the burned scent of the hooves scratching against the ground. I was lying face down and I stayed quiet, quiet, quiet. He gave me a terrible beating. I remained on the ground totally crushed and I remember that then I thought, I can see the street, so the pile is being broken. What the bull didn’t do now, the people will. There is an avalanche of people coming, and they are going to massacre me. They are going to crush me and step on me.
“So, I dragged myself and I got underneath the wall [an opening low in the tunnel], hoping that the help would arrive soon. I remember that I was falling asleep because of all the blood loss. I was talking to myself a lot. I told myself to breathe slowly, breathe through the nose and your mouth, control the breathing, because I thought if I breathed slowly the blood would flow slowly. With an accelerated heart rate the blood circulates faster and you will bleed to death faster. I thought, If someday this had to happen, this is the best place, here in Pamplona. They have the best doctors and best resources. They’ll help you. Now wait and be calm. That is when I heard voices and I saw the Red Cross guys. They tore my clothes and made a tourniquet. One of them put his fist in my wound, in my left leg to stop the hemorrhage. They carried me to the horses’ patio, and they performed surgery at the nurses’ station right inside the arena.”
Julen never resented the animal who gored him. Later he said this was a small price to pay for all the joy the bulls gave him. He recovered quickly and was preparing to run on that morning one day shy of a year later, July 11, 2005, as I crouched in the small balcony above the curve.
After about twenty minutes up there a woman in a balcony across the street noticed me and got on the phone. Five minutes later the window opened. An older man with a police officer led me out through a nice apartment and onto the street where I resumed my search. I walked urgently up and down Estafeta Street asking people if I could watch from their balcony. I had no idea that most balconies cost fifty euros for one space; I was waving a ten euro note and begging. The police began to clear Estafeta. The officers closed in on me standing about half a block from La Curva. I caught eyes with an older woman four flights above and begged my heart out. She disappeared from the balcony, and just as the police started to push me up the street she emerged from her doorway and waved me in. She brought me upstairs where I stood behind some children in the balcony and waited. I had a perfect view of La Curva. My gracious hosts offered me wine and food even though I couldn’t communicate with them. Their smiles made me feel right at home.
I was grateful Ned had convinced me to watch. This perspective opened a whole new understanding of the course. I saw my folly standing on the inside of the curve. It blinded me to the pack’s approach. I watched as many runners foolishly gathered there. Across from them a pocket of runners in colorful shirts gathered. They stoically shook hands and embraced each other. Then guys with green shirts and thin willow canes walked past; their shirts read PASTORES. They were the official Pamplona herdsmen. The pastores stopped and embraced each of this group in the doorway. One of the guys in the doorway was bald and wore spectacles. His green and red sweater was bright and bold. He greeted everyone eagerly and generously. I’d later learn he was an American named Tom Turley. The year before he’d made his bones as a runner on the same morning Trigueño nearly killed Julen Madina in the tunnel.
Back in 2004, the Jandilla hooked and gored several runners along the early part of the course, but when they reached the curve they crashed hard and the herd dismantled. Most of the pack continued up the street. Trigueño and Zarabrando remained. Turley hailed Zarabrando with a shout and ran the brown-striped bovine’s horns for a long distance up Estafeta. The act was remarkable and heroic. Turley helped keep the animal moving up the street and stopped Zarabrando from halting and attacking his fellow mozos. Even with all the blood the year before with the Jandilla, there seemed to be nothing special in the air. It was just another morning in Pamplona.
As I stood on the balcony the rocket rose into the sky in the distance and burst. A joyous roar swelled throughout the balconies. About thirty seconds later bodies poured around the corner like a raging rapid. There was a huge swell in density, then a quiet before the final surge. The bulls blistered into view and crashed into the wall. Three tumbled over each other, and when they rose they turned backward the wrong way up the street and went after several runners. One animal disappeared up Mercaderes. Two galloped up Estafeta. The final animal, a jet-black bull with huge, wide shoulders and a bulbous neck named Vaporoso, stood mystified. Tom Turley appeared and called to Vaporoso. Vaporoso charged and Turley ran his horns for thirty yards. Vaporoso gained on Turley. Turley peeled off to the side. Vaporoso surged on, and I noticed a portly man running ahead of Vaporoso. Vaporoso picked him out of a dozen others and accelerated. The man’s name was Xabier Salillas. Salillas ran as hard as he could until his legs began to fail him. His strides desperately elongated as Vaporoso closed. Salillas collapsed into a doorway directly under and across the street from my balcony. I gripped the railing and peered over the heads of the children; one little girl whimpered and burst into tears as she witnessed the mayhem. There were easily 100 people within Vaporoso’s reach, but he stopped and loomed over Salillas. Then Vaporoso dug his horn into Salillas’s gut, lifted him up, and slammed him into the boarded-up shop door. Salillas slipped off the horn and fell to the ground. Vaporoso stabbed the horn in Salillas’s thigh and bashed him against the wall. Vaporoso continued to ferociously gore Salillas. His horns ripped through cloth and flesh.
He’s killing him. I’d seen people die horrible deaths before, and I was sure now I was witnessing it again. A terrifying helplessness gripped my heart like a massive claw. Time stretched. The horror filled my visual plane as I ached to help. Running down the stairs and into the street didn’t even cross my mind. Then a man in a purple-striped shirt appeared behind Vaporoso and grabbed hold of his tail. I’d later know the man as Miguel Angel Perez, one of the great mozos of Estafeta. Perez held tight to Vaporoso, and he stopped attacking Salillas and looked backward to see who gripped his tail. Salillas, to my shock, bloodied with no less than four gaping wounds, took the opportunity to crawl away. Salillas scurried across the street and Vaporoso, with the hundreds of men around him trying to distract him, turned with Salillas and followed him. Perez held tight and Vaporoso dragged him across the way.
Vaporoso twisted to see his adversary gripping his tail. Then he looked up the street to where his brothers had gone and listened to the roars and chaos they inspired. He turned toward them, and as he did, Miguel Angel released his tail, dashed before Vaporoso’s snout, and led him up Estafeta and out of sight. I walked back into the room from the balcony and saw the live television as Vaporoso flung a man into the air then continued through the tunnel and into the arena where he encountered one final man who aimlessly ran around on the sand. Vaporoso rammed and flipped him.
I ran down the stairs to see a dozen medics surrounding Salillas and already fastening him to a stretcher. I kept asking, “Is he dead? Is he dead?” No one seemed to know. The ambulance came and I walked off, looking for the men who came to Salillas’s aid. I found few answers, and it wasn’t until the next day when I saw Salillas on the cover of a local paper in a full-body cast on a hospital gurney giving the cameraman and all of fiesta the thumbs-up that I realized he survived.
Overwhelmed, I spent the rest of my time in Pamplona contemplating what I’d witnessed. Sitting in the Plaza de Castillo sipping San Miguel beer, I played the images over in my mind and something clicked. From my bird’s-eye view I realized this was more than just a thrill, a rush, that there was a logic to the madness. That this was an elaborate art, a fiercely loyal brotherhood, a place where grace and heroics melded seamlessly the instant circumstance called for it. It was an honor to witness. I wanted to meet these men and shake their hands and know them and know what it was to be one of them. I felt guilty that I’d done nothing to help Salillas. I wanted to make it up to him and all of those who came to his aid. I ran the remaining days of fiesta. As my bus pulled out of Pamplona, I knew I’d return.
I’d been a Chicago Golden Gloves boxing champion and traveled a good portion of the world, all expenses paid. It’d gotten to a level where if you don’t commit completely to training, your opponent will seriously hurt you. All the drinking, drugs, and street fighting were tearing my life apart. They began to take their toll, and I received a couple savage beatings in the ring as a result. Many professional trainers and boxers told me bluntly that I had the potential to be a very successful professional boxer. More importantly, I knew deep down I could. But there was something broken inside of me that I couldn’t quite describe, something that I was born with. That genetic flaw, combined with the partying, took boxing from me. It’s something I never got over. The run replaced boxing as my obsession, and I threw all my passion and fury into it.
