Running the Bulls Read online

  Howard reached into his jacket pocket and brought out the little car, the red Galaxy with its yellow headlights. He had carried it in his pocket every day that he ran, wondering if that was the day he’d stop and leave it for Eliot. It all takes time. He leaned down and put it on the ground of Eliot’s grave, on top of the rich soil that was already churning itself toward winter, waiting, knowing in its core that there is such a thing as spring. He wanted it to stay there with his grandson, next to the flowerpots and the baseball, Eliot, who was now grown wiser than all the humans he left behind. Ellen smiled to see it.

  “That looks like that Galaxy you wanted,” she said. “Remember? Back when Greta was just born? I always felt guilty that we couldn’t afford it.” She looked up at him then. “That’s why I think your little James Bond car is a great idea.”

  “You do?” asked Howard. The truth was that he had been wavering. It had nothing to do with Ford’s blatant turkey bribe and everything to do with the notion that maybe he belonged behind the wheel of a car more befitting his age. Ellen never failed to amaze him. And this is what had kept their life together interesting for forty years.

  “Sure I do,” Ellen said. “You think I haven’t seen you flying around town with the top down?” He smiled. He certainly hoped she had seen him. That had been part of the plan, after all.

  “Wanna go for a ride sometime?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to make Pussy Galore jealous,” Ellen said.

  “She’ll get over it,” said Howard.

  Evening was falling, the sun dropping, the early autumn night moving in. He could feel the cold beginning to penetrate his jacket. He took a deep breath, full of the richness of fall, the clean, cold air.

  “Can I take you to dinner?” Howard asked. Ellen waited a few seconds before she answered.

  “How about if I cook instead? Chicken cacciatore.”

  He nodded his approval.

  “I’ll bring the wine.”

  “This time, try not to throw it, okay?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Ellen reached out and touched the petals of the African violet. Surely she knew that it would freeze during the night. But it would hold its purple flowers for a couple hours, at least, and that would be enough. That would be an eternity.

  “We bought him that damn bicycle,” Ellen said then, as if this thought was too much to keep to herself any longer. She took a tissue from her jacket’s pocket and blew her nose. The tip of it was already red with cold.

  “Guilt is part of this, Ellen,” Howard said. He was impressed with how wise he sounded in that instant, how brave. “Don’t be tricked, sweetheart. Guilt is part of it.” He felt big, uncontrollable tears well in his eyes, but he wasn’t ashamed if Ellen saw them. They would be a family awash in tears before time came around with its salve and its rolls of gauze. Never a healing, no. But a means to keep the wound wrapped, a way to stop the flow of blood. A promise of distance, eventually, sweet, lovely distance. And forgiveness. After all, the greatest part of life is just that, Howard had come to realize. It begins with us forgiving our parents for forcing us to be born. With forgiving ourselves, for being foolish enough to take part in the first place, despite all our misgivings. For scurrying like blind moles across The Big Landfill, a place where rules are bent or broken, a kingdom where unfairness runs rampant.

  He had called her sweetheart.

  “What about tonight?” he said to Ellen then. “What about dinner tonight?” It almost surprised him. Ellen stood, brushed the snow and dried grass from her jeans. He walked with her back to the car. She opened the door and turned to face him.

  “Bring red wine, okay?” Ellen asked. “It goes better with chicken.”

  Howard nodded. Then he stood and watched as the gray Celica backed out onto Stony Hill Road. Ellen waved, a quick, sweet wave, and Howard waved back. Soon, the car had disappeared beyond the crest of hill. He listened to the sound of its engine, growing more and more distant, until it, too, was gone.

  As Howard ran back toward the cabin, he wondered if it would happen over dinner, perhaps while they were eating their salads with the artichoke hearts, that Ellen would ask him to move back home. Or maybe he would be the one to ask, at the very second the cork came popping out of the wine bottle, his cue to speak. Maybe they would go out for dinner, instead, and it would happen then. He imagined an ending to their own novel, his and Ellen’s. He would drive to her house again for dinner. He would ring the bell, but only once, showing a Hemingway kind of control. Ellen would open the door, look at him, tears in her eyes. Darling, I’ve been so miserable, she would say. Howard would merely nod, for he had learned how cruel and vicious words can be. He knew now how words go deep. They go like horns into the gut, the heart, the soul.

  Listen, Ellen, he would say, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. And she would smile, and so he would take her out to see the town, not in a taxi, but in the little black Aston Martin. He would put the top down so that the cold, autumn wind could sing through her reddish hair. As they drove, all the houses of Bixley would look sharply white, just as they had from the taxi that last night in Madrid, with tears stinging Brett’s eyes, with Jake wanting her more than ever. Howard would take Ellen to dinner at the Café Le Bixley, where a girl would bring them hot bowls of soup and wine. And on the way home, Ellen would put her head against his chest, and she would say something Brettish, like, Oh, Howie, we could have had such a damned good time together. But now, now, Howard would know just what to say. He wouldn’t say what Jake did. He wouldn’t say, Isn’t it pretty to think so? Hell no, he was far too wise for that now. Howard would kiss the softness of her face. He would kiss her and then he would whisper, We still can, Ellen. We still can.

  Maybe it would take a day, two weeks, a month, but it would be soon. That’s all Howard knew. He felt it in his bones. The way Billy Mathews felt the urge to lead a small and happy life. He felt what the squirrels feel each time ice rims the shore of the lake. It would be soon, and it was about time. At the age of sixty-three, Howard Woods was headed straight for his future. It would happen just like it does in a book, because lives are like that. Howard imagined himself putting the book of his and Ellen’s life together high up on a shelf, the one in his old study at Patterson Street. But before he did, he would say the speech to her that he’d wanted to say for such a long, long time: I forgive you, Ellen Ann O’Malley Woods, with your lovely green eyes and your ability to endure. I forgive you, sweetheart, with all my heart and soul. Now, now, can you forgive me?

  Reading Group Guide

  1.The novel opens with a dramatic confrontation, as Ellen reveals her infidelity to Howard. Why might the author choose to begin the story at this point? How does it affect your reading of the novel?

  2.How do you respond to Howard’s claim that he needs to “pay his dues”? What does he mean by this? Why does he think running the bulls in Pamplona will allow him to pay his dues?

  3.Howard refers frequently to Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. What associations or expectations about Hemingway and his work do you bring to this book? How do those associations resonate with this novel?

  4.The characters in this story frequently act contrary to their own best interests or true desires; for example, Howard initiates divorce proceedings, not because he truly wants a divorce but as a means of punishing Ellen. How do these misguided efforts shape your feelings about the characters?

  5.What do you make of Howard’s encounters with his former student, Billy Mathews? What do they suggest about the depth of his distress?

  6.Ellen tells Howard that he is “a coward.” Do you agree with that? What portrait emerges, over the course of the novel, of their married life?

  7.How do you respond to Howard’s encounter with Donna Riley, the hotel manager? Does h
is infidelity somehow balance or cancel out Ellen’s?

  8.What do you make of Howard’s nostalgia for the 1950s? Does he really believe it was a better time? In what ways does he undermine his nostalgic visions even as he creates them?

  9.The author has referred to this novel as a “coming-of-age” story about a sixty-three-year-old man. How does the description resonate with your experience of the book?

  10.Critics have called Pelletier a writer with “a unique ability to be simultaneously sympathetic and wickedly funny.” In what ways does Running the Bulls achieve such a balance?

  A Year After Henry

  Available August 2014 from Sourcebooks Landmark

  An exquisite new novel from acclaimed author Cathie Pelletier.

  Bixley, Maine. One year after Henry Munroe’s fatal heart attack at age forty-one, his doting parents, prudish wife, rebellious son, and wayward brother are still reeling. So is Evie Cooper, a bartender, self-proclaimed “spiritual portraitist,” and Henry’s former mistress. While his widow Jeanie struggles with the betrayal, Henry’s overbearing mother is making plans to hold a memorial service. As the date of the tribute draws closer and these worlds threaten to collide, the Munroes grapple with the frailty of their own lives and the knowledge that love is all that matters.

  With her trademark wry wit and wisdom, Cathie Pelletier has crafted an elegant and surprisingly uplifting portrait of the many strange and inspiring forms that grief can take in the journey to overcoming loss.

  Praise for Cathie Pelletier

  “That master juggler of literary tears and laughter is at it again.” —Wally Lamb, author of She’s Come Undone

  “Nobody walks the knife-edge of hilarity and heartbreak more confidently than Pelletier.” —Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls

  The Funeral Makers

  A century after the impulsive McKinnon brothers set out to tame the Canadian wilderness and instead landed in Mattagash, Maine, their madcap legacy reigns supreme. It’s 1959, and Pearl and Sicily McKinnon have gathered to plan a funeral for Marge, their older sister dying from the rare disease beriberi, thanks to her eccentric diet.

  Pearl, who skipped town with big-city dreams only to marry a funeral director, soon clashes with the long-suffering Sicily, who herself is coping with an unfaithful husband. To make matters worse, Sicily’s teenage daughter is lusting after the town’s blackest sheep, a ne’er-do-well twice her age.

  Brimming with darkly quirky humor and irresistible spunk, The Funeral Makers explores the inescapable ironies of American life and family dynamics and captures the spirit of a world that is at once familiar and quickly fading from view.

  Praise for The Funeral Makers

  “Hilariously irreverent, comic, tragic, and lyrical…” —New York Times Book Review

  “A crazy, rollicking whoop of a book, written with a poet’s sensibility and a deeply wacky down-home wisdom.” —Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls

  “A bitingly funny and highly original novelist.” —Vogue

  “The Funeral Makers completely satisfies…a clear-eyed yet passionate examination of life in an isolated small town, where the road ends.” —Newsday

  The Bubble Reputation

  Available November 2014 from Sourcebooks Landmark

  Rosemary O’Neal lived for eight years with William in a rambling country house in Maine. Then William committed suicide on a trip to London, leaving her with questions, anger, and no way to say good-bye. When her zany family descends on the house, bringing a tidal wave of casseroles and their own petty problems, Rosemary retreats with her cat from the chaos of the world around them. (Her cat understands human nature better than Homo sapiens anyway.) It takes an unsettling turn of events to shock her back into the pitfalls of living and realize that life is a fleeting experience to be carefully savored.

  Award-winning author Cathie Pelletier has been called “a bitingly funny, highly original novelist.” In The Bubble Reputation, she redefines “dysfunctional” in this bittersweet, life-affirming story about the idiosyncrasies of family, the anguish of grief, and finding peace after chaos.

  Praise for The Bubble Reputation

  “Cathie Pelletier accomplishes what every great novelist should. She creates a place, invites you in, walks you around, talks to you, lets you see and feel and hear it, allows you to get to know the people.” —Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café

  A Marriage Made at Woodstock

  Available December 2014 from Sourcebooks Landmark

  Fred and Lorraine Stone met and fell in love at the famous music festival in upstate New York. But as all couples must, they grew up—just not in the same direction. Now in their forties, Fred has morphed into Frederick, a respectable accountant whose last vestige of his younger years is a vegetarian diet. Meanwhile, Lorraine goes by the name Chandra (that’s Sanskrit for changeable), an occasional psychology teacher and animal rights activist.

  When Chandra suddenly moves out, Frederick begins to wonder whether they were as different on the inside as they had become on the outside. Upset, he turns back to that magical time in their lives, Woodstock, where they first fell in love. Can he discover what went wrong? Or has the atmosphere of free love and marital harmony left them behind?

  Praise for A Marriage Made at Woodstock

  “Cathie Pelletier…[is] in top form. The real marriage here is the natural union of humor and sadness.” —Richard Russo, author of Nobody’s Fool

  About the Author

  Author photo by Doug Burns

  Cathie Pelletier was born and raised on the banks of the St. John River, at the end of the road in northern Maine. She is the author of eleven other novels, including The One-Way Bridge, The Funeral Makers, and The Weight of Winter, winner of the New England Booksellers Award for fiction. As K. C. McKinnon, she has written two novels, both of which became television films. After years of living in Nashville, Tennessee; Toronto, Canada; and Eastman, Quebec, she has returned to Allagash, Maine, and the family homestead where she was born.