Running the Bulls Read online

  Howard stared at the same spot in the fireplace where John was now staring. John, the quiet kid, his face awash with the orange glow of the flames, his thoughts far away from that spot he was occupying in the chair, in that cabin, on the outskirts of Bixley, Maine, that tiny stop along the universe. Howard remembered again that night, could pull it up at the drop of a hat—January 16, 1991, at six forty p.m.—when Marlin Fitzwater told the world: The liberation of Kuwait has begun. “It looks like fireworks,” Ellen had whispered. Later, with Bernie Shaw watching the war from a hotel room in Baghdad, they heard him say, “I’m looking in the direction of the Euphrates River.” Ellen had grasped Howard’s hand in her own. “My God, Howie,” she cried. “We’re bombing the Cradle of Civilization.” Howard had agreed then, but since that night, he had had time to really think about it, on all those morning runs along the lake, the fields, past the cemetery, and out around the stadium. Now Howard saw it more clearly. What difference did it make where an atrocity occurs? After all, what was the Cradle of Civilization but our oldest landfill, where human jawbones, teeth, hip joints, work up to the surface to bake in the sun. Old poems written on papyrus. Shards of ancient pots, similar to the ones Ellen and Molly were learning to make. What difference did it make where?

  “You need to forgive my mother,” said John. “And I need to forgive myself.”

  Howard sat staring at the fuzzy glow of firelight, bright flickers of orange and blue. After Desert Storm, Kuwait had burned for more than a year. Howard sat and waited for John to decide what he should do next, what he must do next.

  “I used to think we had nothing in common, you and me,” John said at last. “And we didn’t. But now, Dad, now, what we share is grief over the loss of a little boy. It’s what I share with Patty. It’s what I share with my mother. And it should be enough to hold us all together, until we can fix ourselves again.”

  John stood, zipped his jacket, turned its collar up about his throat. He searched in his pocket for gloves and then put them on. The days were getting colder so fast, so sudden. Just that morning Howard had noticed a thin film of ice rimming the shores of the lake. He had seen specks of what he thought might be red-tailed hawks, headed south for the winter. And he had noticed that the squirrels were anxious. Something in that old primitive coding was urging them to get ready, to line the burrows with more leaves, to remember all those caches with their stored nuts. It all takes time.

  At the door John paused and looked back at Howard.

  “We’re lucky men, Dad,” he said. “We’ve finally got some common ground. Even if it is at the Bixley cemetery.”

  Endurance

  “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.”

  —Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises

  Howard spent the next few days winterizing the cabin. The squirrels and what birds hadn’t already migrated watched him from the tops of the trees. They seemed to understand this need of his, this urge to feather the nest, to line the burrow with some sturdy grass. A couple guys came out from Morgan’s Home Builders, the back of their pickup truck filled with insulation and a new roofing material guaranteed to withstand the wrath of winter. Pete had driven out to the cabin to give his blessing to the work, but he would trust Howard to make the actual choices. Pete’s greatest concern was that Howard had let the golf season slip away without one last game. But Pete understood. He would catch Howard in the spring for the first game of the season, and he would whip his pants off then.

  “Why don’t you stop by the lounge some time and say hello?” Pete said, as he piled back into his Jeep and reached into the ashtray for the remainder of his latest cigar. “I think the guys miss you.”

  “Tell them I’ll show up one day soon,” said Howard. And then he watched as Pete’s shiny Jeep disappeared among the white trunks of the birches.

  Three days later, the guys from Morgan’s Home Builders were able to assure Howard Woods that he could survive in the little cabin, come hail, come snow and sleet, until spring. As long as he kept the wood box full and the stove and fireplace burning during the coldest days and nights. Howard felt that he could do that. He had decided against the generator for now. When spring came, he would know more of what would become of the rest of his life. Maybe when the warblers returned from their warm nooks and crannies they would bring the answer with them. Right now, he had no idea what course his life would run next. But he knew a few things, on the larger scope, in the bigger picture. He knew now what Macbeth came to know too late: Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that frets and struts his time. So get the goddamn lead out. He even came to pity Lady Macbeth, stung again and again by that snake of a conscience. Some mornings, Howard would wake in the predawn and lie there in the narrow bed, missing the sad cry of the loons. That’s when he would think of Lady Macbeth, tormented by the memory of her victims, trying to wash away that infernal blood. And this, in turn, always made him think of Robert McNamara. Did the former Secretary of Defense rise in the night from his own anguished nightmares? Did he, too, try to cleanse himself of the blood of all those soldiers? Howard doubted that he could. And why should he alone pay the price? It was a useless scrubbing of a blood too deeply embedded to rub out, and Lady Macbeth knew this. She knew it, and that was her pain: the knowledge that she must live and die with what she’d done. And then, with dawn lying in a pink ribbon along the horizon of lake, Howard would focus on her, not on her husband. After all, the play wasn’t titled Mr. Macbeth. Or even Lord Macbeth. Maybe this was a little trick of Bill Shakespeare’s that no one had caught onto yet. Maybe the work, that study in fear, was really about the little woman in the family. Howard decided to give her a first name, to know her a bit better. After all these years, and for all his teaching of her dirty works, they should be on a first-name basis, as he and the Ford Motor Company now were. Brett Macbeth? No, it was too catchy. During one of those early mornings, he came up with the name Laura. Laura Macbeth. He liked it. It gave her a life, flesh and bone. It suggested a past, maybe even a reason for her scheming and her greed. What had her own childhood been like? Those were the questions counselors would ask today. Maybe those Human Resources folks, had they been around in Shakespeare’s day, would have gone in and saved Laura Macbeth, put her in a better home environment. If Lady Laura Macbeth were living today, she’d hire the best divorce lawyer around. She’d hire a publicist and pour her heart out to the media. In the end, her lawyer would sue the witches and Laura would sit on the Scottish throne all by herself. It became Howard’s modern version of the play.

  ***

  On the day the builders finished their work, cleaned up their debris, gathered their tools, and disappeared back toward town, Howard decided it was time to do some grocery shopping at the big IGA. He would shop first and then do his run later in the afternoon. He had just put a box of cereal and a can of coffee grounds in his cart when he turned down an aisle and bumped into Patty Woods, his daughter-in-law. Howard was astonished at how thin and haggard she had grown. Beneath her eyes were dark circles that seemed to be embedded in the skin, as if she were born with them. He had tried to stop by John’s house every other day in the beginning, offering what support he could. But it seemed that Patty wanted none. It seemed that she and John were grieving at their own pace, and on their own terms. Howard didn’t want to be a nuisance. Besides, he had his own anguish to wake to each morning, to fall asleep to each night.

  “Patty?” he said, and she turned. She smiled to see him and then, as if uncertain, finally stepped into the circle of his arms. He felt as if he were holding a small child, a wounded girl.

  “Dad,” she said. “How’ve you been?”

  “Okay, I guess,” said Howard. “You?” Patty shrugged.

  “I’m still here.”

  “How is the theater group coming along?” Howard asked. “I’m sorry I missed Cyrano de Bergerac. I take it he hasn’t had a rhinoplasty yet.”
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br />   Patty had to think, as if trying to remember what group, what play, what connection. Then she remembered.

  “Oh, I haven’t been back to the theater,” she said. “It was just too much, you know, without Eliot and all.”

  “Of course,” said Howard. He forced a smile for her benefit, but he supposed she’d seen enough of those smiles since that day in early July, when Roddy Burkette’s car had come out of nowhere.

  “Dad, I gotta run,” Patty said then. “I’m having company later today and well, I was just picking up some snacks.”

  “Sure,” said Howard. He glanced down at her cart. Candy bars. A bottle of Pepsi. A box of cookies. A can of tuna fish. Cigarettes. She had started smoking? The power walker?

  “Maybe you’ll take a drive out to the cabin,” he said. “It’s peaceful by the lake.”

  Patty smiled again, relief spreading over her face that she was finally being released from the conversation.

  “You got a deal, Dad,” she said. And with that, she spun her shopping cart around and headed for the checkout counter. Howard watched from an aisle behind her as she paid for the few items in the cart. He watched through the big glass window at the front of the store as she hurriedly loaded the shopping bag into the backseat of the Volvo. He watched as she pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared.

  ***

  An hour later, and holding two bags of vegetables, fruits, milk, cheese, and baked bread from the deli, Howard rang the bell at John and Patty’s house. John’s car was not in the yard, but Patty’s was. Eliot’s dog, Gator, was sleeping on the front porch. When he saw Howard, Gator stood and shook himself, his tail wagging a welcome. When Patty opened the door, she didn’t seem surprised.

  “I knew you wouldn’t fall for company’s coming,” she said. “But it was the best I could think of at the time.”

  “Actually, you were telling the truth,” said Howard. “It’s just that I’m the company.”

  As Howard stepped into the house, he was immediately aware of the disarray. Clothes were strewn about on chairs and across the living room. Shoes. Socks. Used towels. Dishes had been left on the coffee table, several days’ worth of them. Dust covered the bookshelves and the television set, which was broadcasting some talk show. The kitchen was in a worse mess, the sink piled high, smears across the fridge door, the dog’s dishes spotted with dried food. And over it all hung the musty odor of cigarette smoke. Patty didn’t seem to care. Maybe it had become the new order to her new life.

  “I’ve been so busy,” she said. “My mother and Ellen, they’ve been keeping things up. But it’s been a couple days.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Howard. “What have you been doing to keep busy?” He wanted to get her talking a bit so that he could determine just what was going on in her head. Patty brightened then, an excitement in her eyes.

  “Come and I’ll show you,” she said. He followed her past the clutter of the living room and into the tiny back office where she often stored her theater supplies. Now, an easel had been set up in there. She’d been busy all right. Everywhere Howard looked, he saw paint-by-number paintings. They were hanging on the walls, leaning against furniture, lying on the desktop, propped up in chairs. Dozens of them. A talk program was coming from a radio that Patty had obviously plugged into the socket under her desk. Howard couldn’t see it, but he could hear it. Some male voice was giving investment advice.

  “I keep the radio on all the time,” Patty said. “And the television too. I like the sound of human voices, you know, as I paint.”

  Now Howard was beginning to see a theme in the paint-by-number paintings: just dogs on one wall, just clowns on another, just pastoral settings on the ones lying flat on the desk. It was Patty’s new passion, all right.

  “I like the numbers telling me what to paint and where,” Patty explained, when she saw that he’d been staring. “It’s so much easier that way. The first month, I painted only dogs. The second month, it was just scenes of the countryside. You know, peaceful. Now, well, I like clown faces now. I like to see their different expressions.”

  “They’re very nice,” Howard told her.

  “It was Roddy Burkette,” said Patty, startling him. He nodded. He said nothing as he put a finger on one sad clown face, touched the buildup of red paint on the bulbous nose. “I never met him,” Patty added. “But I suppose he’s hurting too, just as we are.”

  “I suppose,” said Howard. He needed to leave. He needed to be away from the sad clown faces and the dogs who seemed lost without owners. He gave Patty a quick hug and promised he’d be back soon.

  When Howard stepped out into the autumn day, he breathed deeply, bringing the fresh air down into his lungs, trying to exhale the smoke he had just left behind him. He got into the little Aston Martin and drove it quickly through the colored leaves, out around the stadium, up past the cemetery with its wrought iron gates, and then the college where he’d spent so many years of his life. From there, it was bare, open fields until he saw the lake glistening blue in the distance. He flew in among the white birch trunks where the ground was now yellow with leaves. He saw the cabin ahead, sitting still and solid among the trees, and a certain warm feeling rose up inside of him. Home. It might not be where his heart was, but at least it was home. And anything was better than the Holiday Inn. He had been trying his best not to think of Patty as he drove. He was still amazed at how pure her grief was. It was not tinged with anger nor cluttered with any kind of guilt. She didn’t even seem to hate Roddy Burkette, as Howard was certain he did. Instead, through her obsessive painting, she was quietly trying to fix the world, to remake it, to shape it into a better place. I like the numbers telling me what to paint and where.

  Howard got out of the car and slammed the door. The echo of it rushed out on the water and then bounced off the trees on the opposite side of the lake. Pure. Peaceful. Like those pastoral settings Patty had been painting. Howard breathed the fresh air again. He decided he would not run that day. Instead, he would cook himself a hot dinner, right on the top of the woodstove. Some kind of pasta, maybe, with a marinara sauce. He would spend a quiet evening with a glass of wine. He would not dwell on the disorder at John’s house, where lives seemed to have been tossed onto the backs of chairs, lives smoky with pain, crusted and dusty. He couldn’t save everybody, could he? And then, he did have himself to think of. Besides, Patty’s mother and Ellen were dropping by often to help out. Women knew how to nurture other women. What did Howard know, other than that you don’t wash red things with white things? He had learned that the hard way and now he was a bit of an expert at the Bixley Laundromat, his tubs being sorted and washed properly. He wondered if Lady Laura Macbeth did her own laundry. Was she careful to separate all those bloody sheets and pillowcases from the white stuff?

  For the next few days, with October firmly rooted now in the scuttling of leaves and in the ice rimming the lake before the sun rose and took it away, Howard simply couldn’t wipe Patty from his mind. He continued to run along his daily course, past the fields and the college and the cemetery and the stadium. Some days, he took the little Aston out for a spin, down past the sleeping golf course with its dentures and syringes, past the shopping mall, out to the Mattress Warehouse, where Freddy Wilson was mostly likely still on his throne. He began to see Bixley anew, from a distance, and this time with the eyes of a wise outsider: the school’s dim windows, the church spires, the faceless shoppers along the streets, the rooftops and parking lots, the grocery stores and gas stations, the neon signs where leftover eggshells lay in bird nests. And he began to think of the people who were sheltered inside those private homes, those larger nests, people who ate and slept and raised the children they had created. They were like the soft figures in an impressionist painting, just enough out of focus that they might be the people who walked along the Montmartre over a hundred years earlier, and not those modern residents of Bixley, Maine.
But all one can do is live, as Howard was beginning to realize, a little tenet the sparrows already knew so well.

  ***

  It was just as the sun came to rest on the horizon of water, before it sank beyond the lake and evening moved in, that Billy Mathews came to visit. Howard was sitting in the rocker on the front porch, watching the late-feeding birds in their frenzy to grab that last meal of the day, when he heard the rumble of a car’s engine. A small green vehicle, one of those unrecognizable Japanese models, made its way down the gravel road, through the white trunks of the birches, and up to the steps of the cabin. The engine died and the door opened. This was when Howard saw that it was Billy.

  “Mrs. Woods told me where to find you,” Billy said. Howard was trying to imagine how he could untrap himself this time. He couldn’t use Hemingway’s old ploy, Well listen, I got to get back, not out there in the woods. Billy came up the steps and onto the porch. He smiled as he held his hand out for Howard to shake.

  “Billy,” said Howard. “Imagine running into you, out here in the woods.” Billy was staring out at the lake now, at the colors of the sun resting atop the water.

  “This is sure nice,” said Billy. “I’m used to that indoor pond we have over at the mall.” Howard nodded, remembering the murky water, the Bird of Paradise flowers, the rigid benches.

  “Well, welcome to Walden,” he said.

  “Is that the name of the lake?” Billy asked, and Howard could tell by the guileless look on the young man’s face that he meant this.

  “Sit down, Billy,” Howard said, and Billy did, taking the empty chair beside Howard’s. “I was just watching the sunset and having a glass of wine. Would you like one?”