Читать книгу Mozos - Bill Hillmann - Страница 9
ОглавлениеCHAPTER TWO:
POSSE
2006
TRISTEZA
Got some work in construction with my family’s company when I arrived home. Things went well at work, but I ended the day with such physical exhaustion I didn’t have the energy to write. Knew if I didn’t get away I’d never complete a quality novel. My deepest dream was to become a successful novelist. Irvine insisted I had to write “every fookin’ day” for hours if I ever wanted to be a real writer. With the hard labor and my chaotic drinking and partying and the revolving door of women I kept stepping through, there just wasn’t any hope for me to write in Chicago. I saved money and figured when I got to three grand I’d drive down to New Orleans and rent an apartment in the Marigny, live simply, and write for hours every day. Then Hurricane Katrina hit. I didn’t know what to do. I contemplated my dilemma as I sat in the old Filter Café in Wicker Park, a cool, Chicago artist neighborhood at the time. A girl named Stephanie and I started talking about Mexico. She told me about a little town in Guanajuato called San Miguel de Allende. It was an old Spanish colonial town built on a large hillside, full of artists and writers and expat Americans. An idea struck me. I could go down there without speaking Spanish and still get by, maybe even learn some Spanish along the way. My money would stretch for months.
I landed in Mexico City in November, jumped in a cab, and tried to communicate “bus station” to the cabbie. He drove me to a subway station at the other side of the airport and charged me twenty bucks. I jumped on the subway and found the bus station. I paid thirty bucks for a luxury bus to San Miguel de Allende. The sun set as we slowly swayed through the mountainous region of Guanajuato. In the darkness we rounded a hill and the brightly lit city spilled into view. It splayed up a long sloping hillside glowing deep yellow. Numerous cathedral spires launched up to the sky, a big castle hung to the side. I gawked, and instantly knew I’d found a special place in the world. Rented a room at a cheap hotel and I went out that night, wandering up the cobblestone streets in the unbelievably beautiful ancient pueblo. San Miguel was the town where many believe Jack Kerouac finished On the Road and was the place Neal Cassady walked away from when counting rail ties to the nearby town of León when he died of a sudden aneurism. I knew nothing of this then but the town enraptured me. An American dance instructor helped me find a $200 two-bedroom apartment a quarter mile from the main Jardin in the town center, where elderly Americans fed pigeons in the morning light. The scent of incredibly good cheap food enticed me everywhere I went. Beautiful women and artists swarmed down each stone street. Dozens of galleries lined every sloped avenue. The art ranged from experimental to traditional Mexican. I was intending to go into a gallery on the corner when I walked into a smaller one next door. It was dark, and as I entered I realized I’d made a mistake and was about to leave when a cute, little Mexican chick with dark-brown eyes and short hair clicked into view. I tried to apologize in Spanish and explain that I was leaving when she said “Hello” and smiled. I decided to look around. Instantly a bright-orange fireball of an image leaped off the wall at me. She explained the artist was a woman name Serafina. “Nice,” I said and looked at another painting. It was of a Spanish fighting bull. I laughed and said, “I run with the bulls in Spain.”
The girl scrutinized me and said, “Yeah, right.” I laughed and said, “No, it’s true, it’s true. This past summer.” She wouldn’t believe me. I tried to convince her. She explained that she thought bull running was stupid, and she hated bullfighting and protested the bullfights in Mexico City, her hometown.
She told me her name was A-Need. I tried to say it but couldn’t. She spelled it for me: E-N-I-D. I still couldn’t say it right, but she laughed at the way I tried. We were clearly a perfect match, so I asked her out. She hesitated but said yes.
We went out for drinks that night and I took her home with me to look at the stars from my rooftop, but she wouldn’t even give me a kiss. OK, maybe one peck on the cheek. I took her out for dinner the next night and ate the thickest, rarest filet mignon I had ever eaten, and it was only twelve bucks. I bought a bottle of wine from the restaurant, which caused quite a scene, because we didn’t exactly look like a couple that could afford it. Then we walked all the way up the hill to the lookout point at the top of the city. About halfway up the hill I grabbed her and pressed her against an old oak door. I kissed her full and hard and felt her give in to me and knew that she was mine or could be mine. We walked up the hill holding hands. We talked and drank on a grassy hillside between some bushes. She wanted to know about America and all the places I’d traveled and I told her everything I’d done and everywhere I’d been and she didn’t believe a word of it until I pulled out my passport. That’s when she realized my name was William, not Bill. The soft and sweet way she said William blew me away. I didn’t correct her and she called me William from then on. I brought her home with me and it went well and well into the night.
And that was the start of my time in San Miguel de Allende.
I woke each morning to the calls of roosters. Put on Tom Waits’s Mule Variations and I cooked four eggs with cheese in butter and tortillas with refried beans. I’d fix myself a thick cup of Nescafé and go up on my open roof and smoke cigarettes and watch the horses and donkeys in the walled-in ranch that bumped up against my apartment. I’d go back down and take a huge dump. Then back to the bedroom to chant. I’m a practicing Nichiren Buddhist and member of Soka Gakkai International-USA. We chant the title of the Lotus Sutra, which translates as Nam (devotion to), myoho (the mystic law), renge (simultaneity of cause and effect), kyo (sutra, the voice or teaching of a Buddha). It’s based on the principle that world peace comes through individuals satisfying their desires and finding happiness. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo . . . As I chanted, the voices of my characters would begin to speak to one another. I’d chant until I couldn’t hold it anymore and rush to the computer to write the dialogue, and then build the scenes around that. The writing fictionalized the many tragedies of my childhood. The catharsis of writing about those things truly healed me deeply. As the book took shape I realized I was writing about my great yet flawed father, about his redemption. My goal was to write 1,000 words each day. I met that goal for forty-something days straight; sometimes I’d surpass it by a bunch. I’d finish writing by three or four in the afternoon and then go and eat. Then no matter how we’d left it the night before, I’d find myself walking toward the gallery to be with Enid. Even if I was so mad at her and didn’t want anything to do with her, I walked to her, my white snakeskin cowboy boots clicking on the stone sidewalk, and she’d be there and I’d help her close up shop and take her out for dinner and we’d walk the town and dance and drink and go home and she’d read my writing from that day and I’d listen to her laugh at the jokes in the dialogue and then we’d fuck hard into the night with her screaming so loud that I knew all my neighbors hated me. Enid helped transform my life into a rambling machine.
It went like that for over a month until I got scared of the feeling that snuck up into my heart each time I made that walk to the gallery. A feeling I thought I’d never feel again after the intense loves in my past. She was also afraid of what was happening and confessed that she had a boy back home in Mexico City who she was in love with. He didn’t want her, but she felt I should know she still loved him.
That stung but also gave me liberty. I went out the next night without her and met a crazy white lady in a bar called La Cucaracha. She was a raunchy ex-beauty queen from Georgia who’d married a Mexican matador, though he’d passed away leaving her a thirty-five-year-old widow. Everyone in town lusted after her, and she’d had affairs with several rich and powerful men. We made out near the piss-stinking bathroom, and when we came back to the bar, all the roughnecks in the saloon began to threaten my life. We left and went out dancing deep into the night. At about four in the morning, we were walking to her car when she noticed a new designer-clothing store and wanted to window-shop. I was pretty hammered and stopped with her. She was going on and on about how she wanted to buy some dress when I looked back to where we’d come from, and suddenly two surly little Mexicans rounded the corner with hostile gazes. I grinned at ’em, glanced back at her and joked, “I’m gonna get in a fight.”
I looked back. They sprinted directly at me. I readied and as the first closed in he reached back to punch me. When he swung I noticed a softball-sized stone in his hand. I ducked at the last second and the stone glanced me behind the ear. I stumbled forward into him, gathered and cracked him with a short right cross. He crumbled to the sidewalk. I went to kick him square in the head to finish him off but I was so drunk I missed. My foot sailed over his head. I slipped on the stones, flew up in the air, and landed flat on my back right beside him. The other one rushed at me as I jumped to my feet. The lady screamed. “What are you doing?” I yelled in her face. “RUN!”
The other one windmilled both his fists at me. The blur of wild motion threw me off. I caught his hand as it swung at me. Something sliced deep into the pad of my palm. Wet electricity splashed inside my fist. It didn’t click that he was cutting me. He hopped back and swung his other fist. I grabbed his hand in midair. Something sunk deep into my palm in almost the same spot. He yanked his fist away and what I assume was an ice pick stuck and pulled my hand with it. I unhinged my hand from the pick. His starved, yellow, junkie eyes told me he’d kill me if I let him. He lunged at me desperately and hit me in the ribs. I countered it with a left hook that crashed into the side of his head and wobbled him out into the center of the street. My cowboy plaid shirt hung off me in long ribbons. He’d sliced it to shreds. I ripped what was left of my shirt off. His friend got up and fumbled with the big stone. I lunged at him and he gave ground. The chick screamed at me: “Why are you fighting!” I turned and screamed in her face: “RUN! We’re getting mugged, bitch!” I’m not bleeding much. He didn’t get me good. The one with the box cutter and ice pick stopped staggering. I laughed at them and screamed, “I’m from Chicago, motherfuckers! I will fucking beat you both to fucking death right now!” They backed up. They argued with each other, then the one with the big stone came at me tentatively with the stone cocked and ready. I gave ground to him, waiting for him to swing that thing as the other guy grabbed at the chick’s purse. Finally he swung it at me. I dodged it and slammed him facedown into the stone curb. I rained down savage punches through his flailing arms; his head bounced off the curb. A whiny girlish scream poured out of him. I laughed and looked back at the chick. She wouldn’t let go of the purse! The guy finally gave up and rushed at me. I stood. Again I backed them down the street, taunting them maniacally. They argued with each other until one of them pulled a three-foot chain out of his pant leg. Really! How many weapons do you motherfuckers got?!
I sighed, shook my head, and said, “Let’s go, you motherfuckers are gonna have to fuckin’ kill me.” They glanced at each other, thought better of it, turned and ran away down the dark street.
I inspected my hand. The ice pick caused a puncture wound beside my lifeline. The box cutter left a two-inch slice along the bottom pad. I picked up my plaid cowboy shirt; it dangled in unrecognizable strands but there were only superficial scratches on my chest and stomach. We got the car and came back. I had a pack of Marlboros in my shirt pocket. I looked around and found them on the sidewalk. I laughed insanely and screamed, “You motherfuckers didn’t get a fucking thing!” Then I lit a smoke. Back at her place I realized that the guy had stuck me in the ribs with the ice pick. It’d gone in at a lucky angle and didn’t hit anything, but it could have easily popped my lung.
My bad karma didn’t end there.
Banged that crazy white lady and that led to a two-day drunk where I didn’t write a fucking thing. She just kept telling me I should help her write her memoir about marrying a matador. When I finally did get home I sat down to write and spilled a full cup of hot coffee on my keyboard. The screen went blank. It sizzled and smoke lifted off the keys. When it wouldn’t turn back on I realized I’d lost 40,000 of the best words I had ever written.
After I stopped screaming at myself, I wondered why all of this was happening. In a moment of clarity I found myself thinking about Enid. I realized I was deeply in love with her. She’d blown wind in my sails, she’d made me laugh like no other girl before her, and let’s face it, the sex was incredible. She was a city girl and all her sensibilities matched mine. She was in love with me too, and the power of that love had driven us apart.
I contemplated all of this as I drove around with the crazy lady to different bars; murderous stares targeted me each place we went.
Something kept telling me, what are you doing with this skank? You love Enid.
I’d been a coward in the presence of the purest love of my life, and all this darkness was the consequence of my cowardice. So I went to find Enid. We talked for a long while in the back of the gallery. I confessed I loved her and she did the same. A couple weeks later I ran out of money and we said goodbye with a kiss and my promise to return.
Luckily I salvaged my novel off my fried computer. Found work that winter and I came back to Mexico, but now Enid was in Mexico City. She helped me get a cheap apartment in a very dangerous section of La Neza in Mexico City. In the film Amores Perros, the assassin lived there.
The first night in La Neza, Enid and I bought a quart of Victoria and climbed way up to the roof of my building. The bright lights of the city spread around us and ascended the mountainsides that surround D.F. like a cloud of pulsing lightning bugs. Enid was more beautiful than ever with her short black hair, dark skin, and big full lips. I marveled at how I’d found this gem of a girl and ended up in this monstrous third world maze as we passed the quart back and forth. Some neighborhood kids began to call up to us and talk shit from down on the street. So I poured some beer down at them and called them “little motherfuckers,” playfully. They just giggled and repeated “Motherfuckers! Motherfuckers!” and before you knew it we were exchanging lessons on swearing in our respective languages and swiftly becoming friends.
I wrote every day and hung out with Enid at night. This family that lived down the block from me befriended me. They were six kids from about eight to sixteen years old; a few of the boys were there for the welcoming party swearing lessons. They wanted to learn more English, and after I’d written all day they’d come and knock on my door yelling, “Willians” (they thought that was my name) until I came downstairs. They’d take me to go play soccer or play video games at the arcade; they taught me Spanish and I taught them English. I thought I’d have a check coming from home but it never came, and I was extremely low on money. So I survived mainly on Ramen noodles. When they found out I didn’t have money for food they began to trick me into coming to their home to eat dinner. I would refuse to go, but their mother would ask me to come and eat. The generosity of these people was just heartbreaking. I only was ever in their kitchen/dining room but the last day I was there one of the kids brought me into the bedroom to see something. Ignorance made me assume the house was big, but when I stepped into the other room I saw that they all slept in the second room. This just magnified my gratitude; they were so poor and had given me so much. I finished the book, ran out of money, and went home in early February.
Worked, saved, and came to be with Enid that June. Luckily I had money this time and gave the family a letter thanking each and every one of them for all the wonderful fun we’d had. I put a couple hundred bucks in the envelope. Knowing they’d give the money back, I told them not to open it until I left. I’d still go to visit those guys, but they moved away and we lost touch. Afterward I took Enid to a small town on the beach in Veracruz. I asked her to marry me on a little dirt road down the street from the house we’d rented. She said yes. I promised her that I would be a better man and I’ve striven every day to be that. We made crazy plans for our future. Our dreams filled us with astonishing hope.
BUFFALO
Returned to Pamplona that July. I’d stayed in contact with Graeme Galloway. He offered for me to come and work for him in his travel group, the Pamplona Posse. I said, “It sure as hell’d beat sleeping on the street,” and signed on. I walked up to Graeme the afternoon of the sixth of July outside of The Harp bar on St. Nicholas. He staggered drunk from the Chupinazo and didn’t recognize me. He kept asking if I was a punter. I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Exhausted from the long trip I almost told him “go fuck yourself” and walked off, but eventually they handed me a drink and the job of bringing punters, tourists staying with the Posse, up to their rooms above the bar.
The Posse consisted of several dozen workers from all over the English-speaking world. Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, Irish, Scots, English, and of course a few Americans; most were in their early twenties. I found an instant kindred spirit with a forty-something American from New Jersey named Gary Masi. Gary was an ex-New Jersey cop. He was big and athletic and a sick fucker. He reminded me of my football buddies. It was Gary’s and my job to settle any disputes with punters, assess and fix any damage they caused the several dozen apartments throughout the old section of town, and to kick out any punters who’d overstayed their booking. We played good cop, bad cop, and I was always the bad cop. Each morning after the run we went back to the restaurant above The Harp and ate a free breakfast: either eggs with bacon or Rabo de Toro, fighting-bull tail stew, butchered and bought straight from the Plaza de Toros. It’s a thick, spicy concoction, wholesome and hearty. Eating Rabo de Toro gave me this sense of completion: the hunt, the kill, and the feast. I ate Rabo de Toro every morning and drank red wine. After that, Gary and I’d take a full bottle of red and drift downstairs and out into the brisk and vibrant fiesta morning with our to-do list—passing the bottle back and forth along the way. The adrenaline of the morning’s run still buzzing through us, we tried to top each other with gross-out jokes; Gary always seemed to win. It was a paradisiacal existence. I threatened any cocky Englishman who spoke out of turn with serious bodily harm while Gary explained that it was time for everyone to leave or pay for an extra day. We’d laugh and bust each other’s balls along the way.
Was sitting in the plaza one night when Galloway introduced me to an elderly woman named Frosty. She was a frail, white-haired lady in her eighties and a bull runner. Graeme would position her in between two drainpipes along Estafeta behind Bar Windsor where she’d puff on a Marlboro Red as the herd rambled past. Frosty also had a long, storied history at fiesta, where she never lit her own cigarette. I lit a bunch of Frosty’s smokes as she told me stories about her decades at fiesta.
“One morning I was there on the street smoking my cigarette when the glorious herd swept past. Suddenly a few moments later a marvelous black bull appeared. He stopped right in front of me. I just froze, thinking, good heavens Frosty, what have you gotten yourself into now? He looked at me just a few feet away and tried to figure out just exactly what I was. Then the great Spanish runner José Antonio appeared. José called to the grand animal and swooped him away up the street. I really love José; he’s a dear chap.”
José Antonio wasn’t just a heroic runner who saves frail, old grandmothers. José also happened to be deaf and mute. His brother suffered from the same disabilities. His brother also had an anger problem, but José was different. He was very kind and friendly. José is one of the greatest communicators I’ve ever encountered. He’ll give all of himself to tell a simple story, using body language and objects and even writing words when needed. He is an incredibly giving friend as well. He runs the curve. To run with bulls is incredibly difficult, but to do it without the use of a fundamental sense like hearing raises the danger to outrageous heights. But the fact that José Antonio stands in the near center of the curve and waits for the animals to hit the wall before running just shows you the type of phenomenal, raw courage that churns in this man’s heart.
This time, I did plenty of research on the run in the leadup to Pamplona. I found an interesting article in the New York Times by a New York bar owner named Joe Distler. A Spanish newspaper recognized Distler as one of the five greatest runners of a twenty-year period. I’d met Distler briefly the year before and asked him a few questions. He was one of the nicer guys, with his spiked gray hair, big smile, and peppy Brooklyn accent.
Distler was a successful businessman when he read about the great American bull runner Matt Carney. At age twenty-two, Distler set out to travel to Pamplona and run with Carney.
“On my first run I ran into the arena way ahead of the herd. The Spanish taunt runners who do this and mockingly call them valientes (brave ones). I ran to the wall and jumped it, and when the herd entered the arena, the sight of those incredible bulls scared me so much that I pissed my pants. I was hitchhiking my way out of town when I stopped. I realized if the run had had such a powerful effect on me, that there must be something important back there on the street. I went back and followed Carney the next day. Later Carney became my maestro. The run was different back then. There was only a handful of runners on the street. It was wide open. It wasn’t until television and later ESPN came that the thousands of runners poured in from all over the world.”
Distler became a legend to the Pamplonicos by running on the horns of bulls for over forty years. He had the grace of a ballet dancer and a magical fluidity and speed to find his way into the pack. That, combined with his raw courage, luck, and fate, allowed him to become just the second American in history to run as the very best Spanish runners do. Matt Carney and Joe Distler are the only two foreigners to ever truly become one of them, one of the greatest runners to ever run an encierro. Distler is also known as the Iron Man of Pamplona because he didn’t miss a single run at Pamplona in all that time. A bull gored him in the nineties and dislocated his hip, which doctors eventually replaced. This along with age forced him to find a new way to continue to get close to the animals.
The article outlined an old-fashioned approach to running the curve. Chema Esparza, one of Joe’s Spanish maestros, taught it to him. The technique is to stand in a doorway just before the curve along the outer wall of the bend. Then you wait until the herd passes and crashes into the blind turn. Just as this occurs, with split-second timing you dash into a sprint and cut along the inside of the curve. As the animals rise you sprint in front of them and lead them up Estafeta Street.
After experiencing the panic and chaos the year before, I realized I needed a plan. Distler’s plan was the cleanest I’d heard yet, and I jumped at the chance to run with Joe and the others at the curve. I hadn’t brought any running shoes. I was going to run in my white snakeskin cowboy boots.
Before the third morning of runs I shook Joe’s hand and said suerte and he replied igualmente. But I had no idea what it meant and fixated on it, hoping I hadn’t pissed him off. I couldn’t see much along Mercaderes as the bulls rushed down the slow slope. Then they rocketed into view like a careening black mountain range. The exiting runner pushed us all against the wall. The bulls and steers slipped and slid on their hooves as they tried to halt and make the turn. As the last animal’s hindquarters slid past, several runners surged forward fast and cut hard along the inside of the curve. I followed. The animals slowed and slammed into the wall as I accelerated and breathed in the rank stench of bull dung and adrenaline. They bellowed and cried as the bells banged and the spectators above roared. The final bulls slipped as I closed in on them, three beasts slid in unison, their mountainous backs swelled and contorted as their momentum carried them through the turn. Their hooves skated over the stones. I could have reached out and touched them, but I didn’t. Some powerful force sucked me toward them but I feared it. I pulled away as they gathered and accelerated past and up Estafeta.
The rush impacted me so strongly that I thought I’d run beside them for twenty yards, but the photos proved I was only really beside them for a moment then drifted away. Still it was my first outstanding run. I was in the herd’s space and it thrilled me. Rushed over to Photo Auma, a shop in Plaza de Castillo, and I bought a bunch of photos. I showed them to anyone willing to stop for a second and look. In the most impressive image of my run the photographer cut my body out of the shot. The only thing that remained in frame directly beside a rising bull was my white snakeskin boot. I was most proud of this image and boastfully shoved it in everyone’s face. Once again I became a jester for the serious runners. Even Frosty couldn’t help but laugh in my face and pat me on the head. Most people dismissed the photos as not me and spread the word that I was nuts.
I caught wind and got surly and stopped showing my images. Got seriously drunk and I fell into bed at 5:00 a.m. at my place on Estafeta. I didn’t wake until the cameraman climbed into the blue box attached to my balcony. I was brutally hungover and stumbled into the bathroom and vomited. Knew I couldn’t run like this and was morbid over not being on the street. I watched television and the cameraman on the balcony waved to us, and sure enough, his camera went live. A shot of the street below spread across the television. I felt somewhat better as the excitement flooded all over the street from balcony to balcony. People asked me if I was a runner and I nodded, but I was even more regretful at missing the morning’s run. The police released the runners from Town Hall and I watched them round the corner and dash up empty Estafeta Street. Just as the rocket went off, the fog in my mind cleared. I can still run! I can run down these stairs and out onto the street and run. I rambled down the stairs and out the door onto the street. A few seconds later, bam, the herd hit the wall at the curve, and I ran up Estafeta and didn’t get close at all but was so grateful to have run! I barfed on the cobblestones afterward and went back upstairs and slept for a few hours. Later I explained to Gary and Galloway that I’d run and they rolled their eyes and thought I was telling lies again. I finally screamed at them. “If you don’t believe me come over with me. I just opened the door and walked out onto Estafeta!” They looked at each other and it finally clicked; of course it was possible. I was right.
The next morning they were there with me, sitting on the sofa, and we slipped out onto the street together without incident. That night Graeme dubbed the apartment “The Alamo” and that name remained for several years. Graeme and Gary wanted me to run Santo Domingo. I agreed, and we didn’t use the Alamo that morning and ended up singing the “San Fermín Pedimos,” a prayer for protection to the idol of San Fermín, the patron saint of fiesta. They placed the idol in the tall stone wall near the beginning of the course. Hundreds of runners crowded around. It’s one of the iconic images of fiesta. They even have a board with the song lyrics written in Spanish and Basque.
I ran Santo Domingo for the first time. It’s extremely fast. The rocket bursts and the bulls are already closing in on the police line. I ran the center of the road and was trying to run fast but it was crowded. As I looked back over my shoulder an older man was in my path, moving slowly. I slammed into his back. He fell and I toppled over him and smashed my knee into the asphalt. The herd crackled past. The collision with the ground tore my jeans and scraped my kneecap. I was too pissed off and proud to take care of it. It wasn’t until the next morning that the waitresses at the breakfast place sprayed it with peroxide and gave me a bandage. My run made TV for the first time that I knew of. I was there for a few strides even though I’d fallen. It was the first time I’d ever fallen in the run. It wouldn’t be the last.
I ran the curve the next day and didn’t get very close. There’s a scent that remains after a street fight. It’s a lime smoldering of adrenaline. There’d been a tussle at the curve that morning; two runners sprinting with the pack got into it, and there was a photo of them punching each other just feet from the horns. As I walked around the curve at about noon that day I caught wind of it. That scent always sparks bright memories in my mind. I started to strategize how to master the curve when the California boys walked up. They worked for the Posse. One was this tall kid with long blond hair and the other was a short squat guy. The tall one had this arrogant pompous attitude that rubbed me the wrong fucking way. They’d been dismissive of my running so I’d invited them out the night before to run with me. They didn’t show.
The tall one gave me a snarky smile.
“Where were you guys this morning?” I asked.
“Ah, we decided not to run,” he replied.
“So pussied out, huh?”
He laughed in my face and said, “Yeah, whatever.”
“I ran the curve this morning. I started right here.” I replied nodding to the doorway.
He laughed. “You never ran the curve in your life.”
I thought about it and said, “You know what . . . ” and popped him in the chin. He flopped on his ass and lay down flat. His boy rushed up and I flinched at him hard and he lunged away so wildly he almost fell down. Then I leaned over the tall blond and grabbed a handful of his hair and smacked him alongside the head. I told him just exactly what kind of a pretty boy California pussy he was. Then his midget short friend came barreling into my back and I fell on top of the tall one. The midget landed on top of me and that drove my bad knee into the stones so hard I thought I might have fractured my kneecap. We all held each other in a strange body lock. The families of Pamplona slowly eased past smiling and talking merrily. Some even laughed at us.
I said, “If we all let go and break clean, it’s over.”
“You sure?” the midget said.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
We got up and broke clean. I told the pretty boy he was a coward ass pussy, but I said I respected the midget for having his boy’s back. Walked back to The Harp and about ten minutes later Galloway came up and scolded all three of us and made us shake hands. We did. I sat down and drank beer with some of the Posse and they asked me about my knee, and I said it was fucked but the beer was helping. They laughed and about fifteen minutes later there was a ruckus in The Harp. I stood up and saw Owan, the owner of The Harp and the restaurant above, push two short Moroccan guys out and try to close the garage-style sliding door of the packed bar. The Moroccans pushed back in and jammed the garage door. I got up and stood silently beside Owan, who was savagely mad and screaming in their faces. They all spoke Spanish and they didn’t like what Owan said. One slapped Owan softly on the cheek. Owan screamed something insanely and stormed back into the bar for what I assumed was a weapon. Figured he was going for a club or knife or gun to fuck these guys up so I screamed in their faces, “GO AWAY!”
They looked at each other mystified and put up their fists and snarled at me. I took a hard step at the hairier one and pushed him with all my might in the chest. He flew airborne and landed hard on the street. His head cracked on the cobblestones and his eyes rolled up in his head. The other went to punch me so I pushed him square in the chest and he flew and cracked his head. His whole body convulsed like something was electrocuting him. I screamed at their unconscious bodies: “GO THE FUCK AWAY!”
The first one started to get to his feet on unsteady legs and staggered across the street. Owan emerged from the bar without a weapon, ran up and snagged him and slammed him against the brick wall across the way. The barback dashed out and tackled the other one as he tried to get up and they both fell at my feet.
“I’LL STOMP YOUR FUCKING HEAD!” I shouted and raised my boot and stomped the Moroccan’s head into the cobblestones. There were about 300 people watching and 50 or so women screamed simultaneously in horror. I grabbed the Moroccan by the back of his shirt and his pants, picked him up, and threw him as far as I could down the street away from The Harp. He got to his feet and the other rushed over and they backed slowly down the street with their fists up as Owan, the barback, and I stalked them. Then I noticed a mother obliviously pushing a double-stroller with two toddlers in it toward us, a ways behind the Moroccans.
“STOP!” I screamed. “There’s kids here!” The Moroccans somehow understood that, looked back, saw the kids, nodded, and jogged away. A lot of the people in the street clapped at the conclusion of the performance. I didn’t pay for a drink for a very long time after that and never paid for another drink at The Harp. And I drank a whole lot. I know what you’re thinking: pretty funny that a practicing Buddhist is violent, right? Well, Buddhism was the only thing keeping me from fucking killing somebody.
When Graeme got back about fifteen minutes later, someone told him I was fighting again. He shrugged and walked over to me and said, “I’m gonna have to let you go, Bill.”
I shrugged and said, “Can I sit here a while and keep drinking?” Then an uproar of support swelled in my favor and a few seconds later Owan came out of the bar and told Graeme the whole story. Graeme apologized and commended me for what I’d done. He gave me five euros and told me to go buy a cigar for myself. I got up and my knee throbbed and wouldn’t straighten for a while. I walked off and bought the cigar and came back limping badly. As I approached The Harp from about a block away Gary stood in the center of the narrow channel of the street, sipping a quart of San Miguel beer. His sangria-drenched shirt clung to his muscly torso. He looked my way and his blue eyes lit up on his stubbled, dark face. When Gary saw me he smiled and I smiled and I knew I’d found a lifelong friend.
Galloway walked out beside Gary and handed me a beer as I limped up.
“This cunt is a proper cowboy,” Galloway said to Gary. I just laughed.
“He is,” Galloway said. “Really, you are, Bill.”
Gary patted me on the back. “And what’s his cowboy name?”
“Well, it’s gotta be something good. How ’bout Buffalo Bill?”
“Buffalo Bill it is.”
“Can we call you that, Bill?”
“I don’t give a shit, Graeme; you can call me whatever you want as long as you keep giving me beers.”
And from then on in Pamplona I was known as Buffalo Bill.
On the sixth morning the herd soared past me at the curve. I broke into a sprint crossing behind their path. A bald Spanish runner streamed alongside the pack on the inner curve. The black bull nearest him slid. The animal gathered his hooves and found purchase. He opened his frothy mouth and raised his head upward in a slow graceful lunge. One of his long tall horns embedded into the bald runner’s thigh. The bull lifted and the man floated up into the air. The horn’s upward thrust halted. The mozo unhinged and ascended up another few feet. He floated above the chaotic runners and animals in a long arcing flight, then descended and flopped on his back as the animal and the herd galloped up the street. The mozo screamed and clutched his thigh. The wound plopped dark blood in a gooey smear on the cobblestones. Red Cross medics moved in, and I remembered the sweeper steers and the other runners and I helped form a shoulder-to-shoulder wall to protect the man and the medics from the sweeper steers trampling them. Then we got out of the way of the medics so they could get him off to the hospital.
I finally sobered up enough to realize my knee was completely fucked. It swelled to the size of a Chicago-style softball. If I was walking it was fine but if I tried to sit it wouldn’t bend. If I was sitting for a while, when I tried to stand it wouldn’t straighten. Galloway convinced me to go to the hospital.
I took the bus to the emergency room. A woman and some children cried and pressed to get into a curtained room. Inside a man screamed on a gurney. The curtain opened. The bald Spanish runner from the curve writhed as the doctors inspected his wound. One of the more painful things involved in a goring wound is the clothing and debris that gets thrust into the hole by the horn. A bull’s horn has splinters at the tip. Those splinters break off when they insert into the body. Goring wounds are extremely dangerous. The animals continually sharpen their horns on any hard surface. You can watch them do this from the castle wall above the corral in the night before their runs. The horns are porous and they will dip the tips of their horns in the large piles of dung in the corral. In effect they are turning their horns into poisonous spears. Goring wounds are guaranteed to infect. I was pretty lucky; my knee was just busted. The doctor took an X-ray and said the kneecap wasn’t broken, just a severe contusion. An infection also festered in the knee from the filthy street. He prescribed ibuprofen and an antibiotic and I took the bus back to town.
I remember waiting for the fireworks that night with the Posse. They have the best fireworks you will ever see, and they have them every single night of fiesta. We all sat in a big circle in the grassy field in the dark. Lights illuminated the white stone castle walls as thousands of people filled the fields beside them. My injury really impressed Graeme’s son Will; he asked for the X-rays. I gave them to him. He was a nice kid. I’d get to watch him grow up over the coming years. Galloway told me I shouldn’t run the next morning, but I assured him I would. We drank and watched the fireworks explode above us and were very happy.
The second-to-last run I came up to Top of Estafeta with Galloway and Gary. As the herd approached I ran alongside Galloway. Suddenly he hip-checked me and I fell into a doorway. He glanced at me and nodded. He was just trying to protect me because of my knee, but it infuriated me. I fought through the bodies to get back out into the street and ran alongside the herd pretty close. Didn’t tell Galloway it’d made me mad. I just smiled at him at Bar Txoko afterward when he brought me a beer.
The final morning we were in the Alamo waiting for it to start. Galloway and Gary tried and failed to talk me out of running. I assured them if my knee didn’t loosen I wouldn’t try for it. They asked me where I planned to run and I told them the Curve and they looked at each other and sighed and then we all laughed and told each other suerte before we left.
I stood at the curve and waited. I tried to squat to stretch my knee but it wouldn’t bend and I doubted I’d be able to run. After the rocket the adrenaline loosened it up a little and I tried really hard to bend my knee. The herd ambled toward us. I decided to try. As they crashed into the wall I ran, but my knee didn’t cooperate. It wouldn’t bend and I couldn’t muster much more than a painful jog. I watched the herd accelerate away. Goodbye till next year. Suddenly there’s a whirl. I look back and a straggler bull rambles directly for me as I float slowly through the curve. The sudden terror limbers my knee and I sprint deep and hard and painlessly. I veer right as the bull tears up the center of the street. The way the adrenaline limbered my knee shocked me. A while later I found a photo of my flash on the horns. It wasn’t much but it was something.
Got on the bus that night and I jumped a flight over to London. Johny Brown invited me to read from my novel on a legendary radio station called Resonance FM. Stayed with Johny for a couple weeks and we rehearsed a great show with live music and even performed to a packed house at the 12 Bar, a classic punk rock venue just across the street from the station. We also did two different hour-long segments on his show Mining for Gold on Resonance FM. Johny gave me a book on black magic voodoo and I found a passage on white magic. White magic is good magic that can cause good luck and positive mojo. My novel wasn’t anywhere near being ready for publication. I was just starting out on a long journey. But the inspiration and excitement Johny gave me by doing those performances was exactly what I needed. Johny Brown was my white magic voodoo and I’ll never forget it.
Made it home a broken bag of bones and I luckily got enough money together to fly down and spend some time with Enid in September. I got back home and was completely run down.That’s around the time I began to lose my mind.
