Running the Bulls Read online

  Howard nodded that he understood. Message delivered. He walked over to the mirror and peered into it. What he had left of his hair was still wet, and now it sat like a grayish rag on his head. He combed the strands over to one side and studied them a bit. He wanted to laugh out loud, a gleeful burst of joy. Patty came and peered into the mirror herself, as if hoping to see what was entertaining him so. But how do you tell someone still in his or her thirties how outrageously funny it is to see a man who looks just like your father, a gray rag sitting atop his head, peering at you from within your own mirror? You can’t. So you don’t. Instead, Howard turned to Patty and gave her his second smile that day.

  “You theater people know anything about hair color?” he asked.

  ***

  The girl at the drugstore wanted to show him every product on the market that would change the natural color of a man’s hair for just a few dollars. Howard wasn’t interested.

  “I’m looking for Greek Formula,” he told her. She stared, a snippy smile appearing at the corners of her mouth.

  “Would we be talking about Grecian Formula, by any chance?” she wondered. He felt like slapping her.

  “Whatever,” he said. It was the kind of hair color that Larry Ferguson used, the first in the group to fall by the wayside. And then Wally had taken it up. Howard even suspected that this magical box was the true reason Pete Morton wasn’t sprouting any gray hairs, but Pete would be too proud to admit it. Howard was last to fall, but he was ready. His only concern was that he not look like other men in their sixties, men like Larry, and Freddy the Mattress Mogul, and Floyd Prentiss—the bastard—who colored their hair one solid color, as if they were painting a chest of drawers. Men who looked as if a black beret crouched atop their wilting heads.

  “Here,” the clerk said, and handed him a box that said Grecian 5. The color was Medium Brown. “This is what you need. It targets only the gray areas. It’ll look more natural.” She was trying very hard not to study the hairs on Howard’s head as she said this. “Shannon will ring you up, over there.” She pointed at the cash register and then disappeared, as if he had only dreamed her.

  ***

  When Howard pulled the little Aston Martin into John’s drive, he was humming. There was a panic lying just beneath the hum, it was true. But at least to the ears of the outer world he was humming. He saw Patty’s car already there, pulled up close to the garage door. Good. She had done just as she promised. She had gone straight home to wait for him. She opened the door on his first ring. He held up the brown paper sack that contained his purchase. Patty gave it a quick look.

  “I hope you didn’t get blond,” she said.

  “Medium Brown,” said Howard. “The salesclerk helped me. Think you can work your magic in time for my golf game? We tee off at one o’clock.” Patty stepped back, allowing him passage.

  “This way to the alchemy room,” she said, and pointed to the kitchen.

  Howard went straight to the chair Patty had positioned in front of the sink. He had many questions for her, and none of them had to do with alchemy.

  “What did Ellen say?” he asked, as Patty put a towel about his neck and shoulders. She had already donned the thin plastic gloves that came with the formula. As Patty worked the dark liquid through Howard’s hair, she thought about his question.

  “On the one hand, she wishes now she’d never told you,” Patty said. Howard thought about this. How the hell could there be any other hand? Patty soon answered his question. “On the other hand,” she went on, “Ellen says that people often get married in their youth and then fall asleep. When they wake up years later and open their eyes, they realize they don’t even know that person they fell asleep with.”

  This infuriated Howard. Ellen probably knew Ben Collins all right, when she woke up next to him in some seedy bed in Buffalo. What was happening to people? Did Cro-Magnon brides and grooms wake up one day to realize that they didn’t want to hunt and gather as a team anymore? No, and that’s because Cro-Magnons didn’t have Phil Donahue, and Sally Jessy, and Rosie, and Maury, all those psychobabble gurus like Deepak Chopra telling them how to get in touch with their inner feelings. Inner feelings were meant to stay inside, damn it. That’s why they’re called inner in the first place.

  “What else?” Howard asked. He heard the bottle in Patty’s hand squirt viciously and felt a cold dab of the hair coloring hit the side of his temple.

  “Oops,” said Patty, and wiped it off with a towel. “That was about it. She wants to be alone for a while, so she can think.”

  “I see,” said Howard, as brown formula, the color of shit, ran down the side of his face.

  ***

  “Well, what’s it gonna be?” Pete Morton wanted to know. He stood waiting, the quarter poised on his thumb. It was just a few minutes past one and a perfect day to play, considering that only one other twosome was on the golf course. “Heads or tails?” Howard took a deep breath. He rearranged the new hat he wore on his head. He looked at Pete.

  “It’s gonna be heads, Pete,” Howard said. “But then, you already knew that.”

  It wasn’t until after they’d played the sixth hole and Pete had knocked the ball, thunk, a couple hundred yards or more straight down the fairway, and Howard had sent it, tink, into the patch of willow trees, that Pete brought up the new hat. They were standing side by side, two grown men, basking in the same old victory, the same old failure.

  “I bet it’s nice and shady under there,” Pete said, his eye on the willow trees where Howard’s ball had neatly disappeared. As usual, Howard said nothing. They started a slow walk toward the clump of trees, where Howard would be forced to kneel and dig the damn ball out from under the green branches with his club as Pete watched. This was usually when Pete began his little “it’s all psychological” pep talk, the one that always informed Howard that the willow trees were in his head. But on this day, Pete broke with custom.

  “I can’t stand it anymore,” he said. “Why the hat?” Howard got back on his feet, slapped the green grass from off the knees of his slacks, and slipped the ball into his pocket.

  “I just needed something to keep the sun out of my eyes,” he said to Pete.

  “But a cowboy hat?” Pete asked.

  “It was the only one at Baker’s Merchandise that fit,” Howard answered. That wasn’t really true. But the other hats were so, well, old-fashioned, the kind of hats aging men wore in movies, men curved over wooden canes, men inching along sidewalks like slow-moving spiders, hoping to catch a bus, gray felt hats pulled low above their yellowed eyes. The cowboy hat was, well, the kind of hat cowboys wore.

  They were at the eighth hole, overlooking the algae blob, and Howard had already said, “We should complain about this.” And Pete had already used the side of his shoe to push a red toothbrush, its white bristles fat and worn, back down into the slime and ooze. It was then that the hat came up again. In fact, it was when the hat came off. Howard had just noticed that the little 1959 Galaxy car was back. It had driven itself up again to the surface of the muck, its painted yellow headlights half-hidden in greenish algae. He felt an instant sympathy for it, for what it used to be, a shiny new idea, once, years ago. And the painted yellow lights reminded him again of the mural on the ballroom wall, back at the Holiday Inn, a frozen memory of warmth, once. Surely, with the proper cleanser that rust would come off. The thing was probably a collector’s item by now. After all, car companies don’t make real cars anymore, cars with personality and looks. Eliot! Howard imagined his grandson opening a birthday box to discover a fully restored classic toy car. It was one small way the Ford Motor Company could pay him back for all their harassment. And that’s why he had bent over and pulled the little Ford Galaxy up out of the muck. And that’s when Pete had pulled Howard’s cowboy hat off his head.

  Nothing was said for what seemed like long seconds. Ticktock. Ticktock.

 
; Then, “Holy shit,” said Pete. “What the fuck happened to you?”

  Howard was almost too angry to speak. He grabbed the cowboy hat back from Pete’s hand and repositioned it on his head. He felt a warm blush moving like a cloud across his face. Would Pete Morton ever grow up? Would he ever learn how to act like an adult? So Howard asked him both of these questions. Pete thought for a minute.

  “You’re the one with orange hair and wearing a cowboy hat,” Pete said.

  “It isn’t orange,” said Howard.

  “Yes, it is,” said Pete. “When the sun hits it just so, it’s got an orange tint.”

  Howard took a deep breath. His hair was very Brown, this was true. There was nothing Medium about the brown, and there was certainly nothing natural about it, considering the formula had decided to attack every hair on his head and not just “target the grays.” And when Howard Woods found the time to dash off a letter to the company that had manufactured Grecian Formula, he would inform them of this. As well as the fact that when light, artificial or otherwise, struck his hair in a certain way, it did look as if the strands might be on fire. He heard Pete suppressing a laugh behind his back.

  Howard turned and looked toward the clubhouse, that distant glob of white paint, all the way down at the eighteenth hole. Fuck it. He was done for the day. He’d simply had enough. Without a word, he turned to face Pete Morton, and then, his eyes staring hard at Pete’s, he swung his golf club around and around in the air above his head. Pete ducked just as Howard let the club go. They both watched, fascinated, as the club flew gracefully through the air like a dark boomerang, cutting a fine arc as it went. It struck the top of some elm trees thirty feet away. Then, silently, the club made its way down through the arms of the tree, taking its time, all slow motion. Small branches and leaves broke away and came down with it. Finally, the club hit the ground at the base of the tree with a thunk and lay there, exhausted. Sun caught the silver and it sparkled. Pete looked back at Howard.

  “You know, Dances with Bulls,” Pete said. “That’s the best drive I’ve seen you make in years.”

  ***

  “The brown is way too dark,” Howard told the same salesclerk who had sold him the infernal box of formula in the first place. “And when the sun hits it, it has an orange tint.” He was whispering, embarrassed that other shoppers might hear. And he was again wearing his cowboy hat.

  “I don’t understand,” the clerk said. She was blatantly staring at the feathers in the brim of the hat. “Why would it do that?” Howard wished she’d lower her damn voice.

  “Because,” he whispered, “the color you gave me didn’t work.”

  He removed the cowboy hat and showed her his hair. She stared, her bottom lip doing a bit of a quiver. Since she now appeared ready to run, Howard quickly put the hat back on. Maybe she thought his next move would be to unzip his pants and expose himself, orange-tinted pubic hairs and all.

  “You obviously left it on too long,” she said, her voice high enough to crack a Pepsi bottle. “It’s a five-minute formula. Didn’t you read the box?”

  Howard thought about this. No, he had not read the box. He had read Macbeth, by God. He had read Hemingway and a host of other great writers. He had even read Samuel Pepys’s boring diary, ridiculous old freeloading, gossipy leech that he was. But no, by Christ, he had not read the goddamn Grecian 5 box!

  “No,” he admitted. “I didn’t.”

  “Well, no wonder it didn’t work,” the clerk said, smug again. “So what happened? Did you fall asleep with it on?”

  Howard couldn’t help himself. He wanted to explain, to perhaps vindicate himself. Otherwise, she would think he had dabbed dye on his head just in time to nod off in a senile snooze, the box still in his hand, his mouth wet with drool. All he had set out to do was to hide a few straggly gray hairs. Was that such a crime?

  “My daughter-in-law is in theater,” he heard himself telling the clerk. Had he grown so pitiful that her opinion of him was now important? Yes, he had. “And she got to telling me all about Cyrano de Bergerac, and then Eliot came in for a sandwich which Patty made for him, and then Patty’s mother called, and while she was talking on the phone I started reading my new Golf Digest and, well, we sort of forgot about the time.”

  He had fallen asleep, there in the chair, and Patty let him snore, thinking a nap would be good for a retired cuckold about to become divorced.

  The clerk stared at him, as if waiting for his full confession. Howard gave up. Let her think him rude, ruder than any of the other senior shoppers. He turned his back on her and began searching through the boxes himself. Grecian Liquid, clear and colorless. Grecian Cream, grooms and conditions hair. Grecian Plus, foam that thickens and conditions gray, thinning hair. When had it become an empire, this hair business?

  “Maybe you ought to go to a specialist,” the clerk suggested.

  ***

  Howard remembered seeing a small beauty salon out at the mall, a few shops down from the Bixley Travel Agency. This was a safe distance from the salon in town where Ellen and Molly frequently sat under hair dryers, flipping through the pages of Women’s Wear Daily. And, if Howard remembered correctly, the mall shop had a sign on their door that said: Walk-ins Welcome. The little Aston Martin spun away from the drugstore, just ahead of rush-hour traffic.

  Ten minutes later, and still wearing the protective cowboy hat, Howard was peering through the glass panel window of The Hair Cyndi-Cut. Seeing that all the stylists were busy with customers, he decided to wait outside the door until a chair became free. Passersby stared at him, or so he imagined. If he thought his life as a cuckold was embarrassing, that was only because he had not yet become a walk-in. Finally, he saw that a chair was becoming available, a young woman digging into her purse for a credit card. The stylist looked through the glass at Howard and nodded. She was ready for him. Howard took off his cowboy hat—he was still too much the Eisenhower generation to step inside any room wearing a hat—and held it against his chest. But before he could lift a foot, a hand touched his arm. Billy Mathews.

  “Billy,” said Howard.

  At first, Billy simply stared at Howard’s hair, assessing. Howard could almost see the brain process in the works, a few dull snaps along the neurons, a few listless sparks. Then, it was as if Billy understood. He grinned.

  “Did you just get back from Norway?” Billy asked. Howard was about to ask “What the hell are you talking about, Billy Mathews?” when he remembered. The Berlitz Guide to Norway. Howard nodded.

  “I did, Billy,” he said. “As you can see, I was there for their national celebration.” He pointed at his hair. More wattage burst forth in Billy’s eyes.

  “Was it fun?” Billy asked. He had in his hand that perpetual McDonald’s cup, the straw sticking like a periscope up through the plastic lid.

  “Billy, I’m about to go inside here.” Howard gestured at the chair, the stylist. “And get my hair American again.”

  Billy nodded that he understood.

  “When you come out,” said Billy, “can we talk? I don’t quite get the thing with Jake and Brett. I mean, why do they sit in bars and talk a lot? Why don’t they ever act like, you know, boyfriend and girlfriend? I think that’s really all they want to be.”

  Howard put his cowboy hat back on his head, lest someone he used to teach with, some graying academic, pass by and see him there.

  “Billy, I’m no longer your teacher,” Howard said, gently. “The class is over. The grade has been turned in.” And, if Howard remembered correctly, he had been gracious to give the boy a D, instead of failing him.

  Billy’s face seemed to hang like a sad moon before Howard’s own.

  “Hey, cowboy!” someone shouted. “Park your horse and get in here!”

  Howard looked up to see the stylist, hovering at her empty chair, a hand now on her hip, impatient. She had short, frozen spikes of h
air sprouting all over her head.

  “See you, Billy,” said Howard. “Take care.”

  Howard clutched his hat and stepped inside the salon. He went willingly to the stylist as she swung the chair around to accept him. A small badge pinned to her shirt said, Hello, I’m Cyndi. A shiny silver bead gleamed from the left nostril of her nose. She picked up a plastic black sheet and shook off dead curls from the previous customer. Then, she looked closely at Howard’s hair.

  “Whoa, look at this!” Cyndi said, loud enough that all the other girls stopped cutting and curling and combing and coloring in order to listen. “Incoming wounded!”

  More Changes

  “I was very drunk. I was drunker than I ever remembered having been.”

  —Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises

  It was Wednesday afternoon that Howard drove toward Patterson Street in a rumbling rental truck, Pete Morton bouncing around in the passenger seat. Howard had already backed the orange monstrosity up to the service door at the Holiday Inn, where Wally had tossed out a couple dozen empty boxes.

  “If you need more,” Wally said, “I’m expecting a delivery tomorrow.”

  Howard had thanked him, and then he and Pete Morgan had climbed into the cab of the truck and, gears grinding, had headed for Patterson.

  “A van would have been big enough,” said Pete. “I mean, she’s keeping the furniture, right?”

  Howard tried not to think about this: the bed they had slept in for all those years, a nick in the wood on his side of the headboard; that sofa that seemed to reach up and pull one’s tired body down into the plushness of it; the kitchen table where John had dropped his pocket knife in the third grade and knocked away a small chunk of wood; the lamp Ellen had bought at an antiques store in Connecticut, a clipper ship of some kind that they’d always intended to have appraised; the coat rack Howard Jr. had made in shop. He could go on and on if he got to reminiscing about the material things inside the house. But he had agreed in the divorce papers that the house and its contents would remain with Ellen, his personal belongings would come with him. On paper, it was just a string of words, meaningless. Now, those words had turned into a string of brown boxes.