El Paso: A Novel (53 page)

“Maybe Casa Grande will recognize you,” Rafael had encouraged him the night before. “If he does, he’ll have that little uncertainty—just a moment or two . . . who knows? It would give you a better chance.”

“I doubt it,” Johnny had replied. “When they get him away from those steers and he sees me alone, there’ll be only one thing on his mind.”

Fierro suddenly appeared, with the usual sarcastic sneer on his face. Lieutenant Crucia was with him, the necklace of noses dangling about his chest.

“Well, matador, are you ready to fight the bull?”

“I wouldn’t want to keep him waiting,” Johnny said mildly.

“You wouldn’t want to keep the chief waiting, either,” Fierro added. “Lieutenant Crucia has your gear.” Crucia produced the neatly folded bloody shirt that had been Julio’s and a gleaming cavalry saber. In revulsion, Johnny dropped the still-damp shirt on the ground. He fingered the saber and found it sharp as promised but totally unsuited to the type of sword he needed. To kill the bull it was necessary to plunge the blade deep into the muscle hump on its neck and sever its spinal chord, but the cavalry saber was honed only on one side and designed for slashing, not sticking.

“I’ll have to have more of these,” Johnny said flatly.

“More sabers? What for?”

“Sometimes they break. Sometimes one doesn’t get the job done.”

“Well, that’s all we can spare, so you better be careful. I’m sorry we couldn’t come up with a
traje de luces
for you,” Fierro added nicely.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of clothes I wear,” Johnny said. “What about my cuadrilla?”

“Cuadrilla? I only see two men here,” Fierro said mockingly.

“Well, they’ll have to do,” Johnny replied.

“The general made no mention of others.”

“Don’t you want it to be a bullfight?” Johnny asked. “Or just for me to go out there and get killed?”

“Well, there are time considerations. We have to be on our way. But I’ll see what I can do. Can they use knives, or do they need lances, too?”

“Can they use horses?” Johnny asked hopefully.

“I think that would be out of the question,” said Fierro. “We need all our horses. The chief would be displeased to see any of our animals killed.”

“But we brought our horses with us when we joined up. We own the horses.” Johnny thought this was a good point, and fair.

“Not anymore,” Fierro told him. “They are the property of the Grand Army of the North.”

“Then knives will have to do,” Johnny said resignedly.

“So,” said Fierro, “shall we go?”

Gourd Woman had been hovering nearby and she sidled up to Johnny and slipped something in his pocket.

“What’s that?” Fierro wanted to know.

“A good-luck charm,” Gourd Woman answered.

“So, you think I’ll need it, huh?” Johnny asked cheerlessly. “What is it—one of your bones?”

“Yes,” she said, “it will make you invisible.”

Johnny laughed in spite of himself. “Can any of you see me now?”

“No, but we know where you are,” Fierro told him. “Let’s go.”

THEY HAD SET UP THE BULLFIGHT
in a little offshoot box canyon a few hundred yards ahead of the encampment. It was smaller than a regular bullring but not by much, which Johnny Ollas was quick to see. It had a narrow entrance that was marked by a collapsed debris of rocks that Villa’s men arranged so they could pile them up again fairly quickly once Casa Grande entered the arena. This would more or less form a ring, though any respectable fighting bull could climb up the rock pile and out of it, if it was so inclined.

Getting Casa Grande into the ring was no small problem. Fighting bulls are loaded through chutes from corrals into the arenas, but there were no chutes here. Fierro had sent Luis and Rafael under heavy escort to bring Casa Grande, since they were the only ones who knew how to control him with the trained steers.

But as they escorted Johnny to the ring, he could see no Casa Grande and wondered, like the condemned, when his executioner would turn up.

Oddly, Johnny wasn’t feeling much fear just then. That would come when Casa Grande came thundering out. He only hoped he could control the fear. All matadors are frightened by the bulls; being able to overcome fear was what mattered. Almost always after finishing a bullfight Johnny would go behind a wall and throw up; then the shakes would come. A stiff cup of brandy cured them.

If Casa Grande hadn’t been the bull he was, Johnny would have felt he had a better chance. Matadors can always refuse a bull before the fight, but there was no refusing this one, and Casa Grande was
el toro supremo
. He was of perfect fighting age, descended from one of the great strains of fighting bulls in Mexico, and Johnny knew him well. He was big, fast, brave, agile as a cat, and smart to boot.

Suddenly there was a commotion from the men at the entrance end of the canyon. Johnny could see them standing up on the rock pile and waving hats and hands. Then he saw coming through the little entrance several of the steers, and he could also see Luis and Rafael on horseback. More steers entered and Johnny could make out amid them the great hump and horns of Casa Grande. Rafael and Luis began herding the steers back outside the canyon and, when they were done, Casa Grande stood alone near the entrance, which Johnny figured would become his
querencia
, if the thing ever got that far.

Death and glory often come together, but Johnny was thinking about it differently. Today they became disassociated. He didn’t give a damn about glory right now; and death, if it was to be his, seemed very unfair this way. He watched Villa’s soldiers piling big logs across the narrow entrance to the canyon. They also piled some logs for a small
barrera
, behind which Johnny, Luis, and Rafael could take refuge during various stages of the fight. Casa Grande hulked nearby, pawing the ground and snorting, tossing his massive head. If Johnny stayed still, he wouldn’t charge. It was when Johnny moved that things would get dicey.

Villa decreed that the procedure would be as in all bullfights: The first
tercio
would be the
tercio de varas
, in which Casa Grande was introduced. Johnny would perform some
capeos
to move Casa Grande around; test him, get a feel for him and which way he hooked—but not expose himself to the bull’s horns.

Then Luis would enter with his pics. Normally, Luis would have his pics at the ends of eight-foot lances, or
varas
. Luis would stab them at the back of Casa Grande’s hump, or
morillo
, so as to make him lower his head. This was important because a bull with a raised head is hard to kill, and can kill you instead. But there were no
varas
today and Luis would have to do his work crudely and alone, with knives. At least Fierro had compromised and let them use one of their horses; they would have to share it.

Next came the
tercio de banderillas
, in which Rafael would approach Casa Grande with what, in a fair fight, would be two-and-a-half-foot banderillas with small iron barbs on the ends. He would use them to “correct” Casa Grande’s posture; if the bull was hooking the wrong way, this could generally be fixed. Except that today, like Luis, Rafael had only knives to work with and no other banderillero to help him out.

Finally there would come the
tercio de muerte
, the “third of death,” in which Johnny would fight Casa Grande to the finish. In a fair fight a professional matador would not have much trouble killing his bull if it was just a matter of sticking in the sword. The trick was to kill him while at the same time entertaining the fans by putting himself in harm’s way with the bull’s horns. Cowardly matadors were immediately detected by bullfighting aficionados and, in addition to the booing, often as not got pelted out of the ring with flying objects.

With Villa watching, Johnny knew he could not fight a cowardly fight today; if he was to go, he decided, he’d go with his own head held high. If the crowd was entertained by that, so be it, he decided.

One of Villa’s soldiers blew some kind of fanfare on a bugle, which was the signal to get started, and Johnny picked up and unfurled Julio’s bloody shirt for a cape and began walking toward Casa Grande, who immediately charged. The first pass nearly did Johnny in, because the shirt was nowhere near as big as a regular
muleta
and he was able to dance out of the way only by inches as the bull thundered past. He thought he looked ridiculous—the way he had to fight with the damned shirt—sticking his butt out and leaning over cranelike—but unless he wanted to die on the spot, he had to do it. He goaded Casa Grande into a few more passes before waving for Luis to come on with his knives.

Luis dashed out as Casa Grande completed a swipe at Johnny and, just as the bull turned, reached over his horse’s shoulder and stuck one of his knives in the bull’s hump. He would have stuck both of them in, like a banderillero, but he couldn’t reach that high. The enraged Casa Grande turned on him and made a charge that Luis dodged, just as Johnny came up with the bloody shirt to distract him.

When he thought it was relatively safe, Luis ran at the bull again and plunged in the other knife. He took an instant too long, unfamiliar as he was in the new art of fighting bulls with knives, and Casa Grande jerked his head up in an explosion of fury that caught the horse in its chest, and it stumbled down on its knees. Another lunge caught Luis’s leg in the stirrup and lifted him eight feet into the air. Johnny’s heart stuck in his throat when he saw Luis crash to earth.

He must have broken something, because he was dragging along the ground on his hands when Casa Grande bore down him again, this time plunging an eighteen-inch horn all the way to the hilt under the armpit; then, with a ferocious toss of the head, the bull flung Luis again into the air.

Luis was dead before he hit the ground, but Casa Grande was not yet satisfied and continued to butt and trample and nudge him along until Luis became a limp, filthy mass on the ground covered in dirt and blood and entrails. Johnny was almost paralyzed at the horror of what he was watching. He wanted somebody to shoot the bull immediately so he could to rush to Luis, but even as that was going through his mind Johnny ran up behind Casa Grande and seized his tail, giving it a yank to distract him. It was not a matadorlike thing to do but, being shorthanded, he couldn’t think of anything else.

Casa Grande let out a grotesque bellow and turned on Johnny, who eluded him several more times before retiring behind the
barrera
they’d erected at the entrance to the canyon. Sweat poured into his eyes and he was trembling from head to toe. He felt like he wanted to be sick. Now it was Rafael’s turn with the banderillas. He looked sick, too. Luis had been the brother closest to him, only a year apart in age, gored and trampled now to jelly.

“He’s hooking left,” Johnny panted, “and his horns still aren’t down.” Rafael had seen that, too, and nodded. They entered the ring side by side, saying nothing further because there was nothing left to say. There was a lot of yelling from the men watching from atop the rocks, and while Johnny couldn’t make out what they were chanting, he had a sense they were enjoying the spectacle.

To put in his banderillas, now that the horse was down, Rafael would have to stand on his toes, legs together, body tall and straight, and, with both arms raised, plunge the knives into Casa Grande’s hump in the right spot to correct the hook.

He did this just a little to the left of the bull as it came at him, but right when he made the downward thrust, Casa Grande hooked left, as Johnny had warned. The big head was lowered now, but that wasn’t a good thing in this instance, since the horn caught Rafael in the groin, spilling his guts out when the bull whipped his neck around and the bloody horn pulled out. Rafael sank to his knees, trying to hold himself in with both hands and with a look of stricken terror on his face.

Johnny rushed up with the bloody shirt, flicked it into Casa Grande’s eyes, temporarily blinding him but enraging him even further. The bull brushed the shirt aside and trotted to the part of the ring by the entrance; just as Johnny predicted, it was to be his
querencia
. Only one of Rafael’s knives had sunk in and Johnny didn’t know if it would correct the hook or not, so he decided to fight Casa Grande from the right side.

This would be difficult if the bull was still hooking left, because if he hooked he would take the target of the hump away from Johnny and make it harder to kill him. Casa Grande must have been tiring by now, because he stayed in his
querencia
snorting and pawing but not charging. His nostrils were bubbling froth and his eyes were crazed. Johnny welcomed the respite—but not for long. Rafael, disemboweled, was beginning to cry and scream, and it was a distraction. He was still on his knees, one hand holding on to his entrails and the other hand gesturing, beckoning for Johnny to come to him. Both knew that was impossible; the situation was more than distracting, it was horrifying. The sun had begun to come into the little box canyon by now, lighting up Rafael’s face as a pathetic mask of dread. Then, without a further sound, he toppled forward and lay facedown and still.