Fragile Beasts (53 page)

“And why you have a descendant of one of the finest bulls Spain has ever produced romping around your backyard,” I add.

“The obvious answer has always been that it’s some kind of ongoing homage to Manuel, but I think it’s something else. I think I created a Spain for myself because it’s where I was supposed to be living. I’ve made myself an immigrant in my own home.”

She pauses and looks up at me.

“Do you consider America your home or Spain?”

“They are both my home, yet somehow neither is my home. I like to think of myself as a flower—a strong, handsome flower—that’s been picked and put in a vase while my roots have been left to grow a new flower.”

“That’s a lovely thought. So you’re saying there are two of you?”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

“But the one in the vase must eventually die.”

“I’m a sturdy flower.”

“Yes, but even so, the one with the roots will still live much longer.”

“Not if there’s a drought.”

“You’re impossible,” she scolds with mock frustration. “You have an answer for everything. Then answer this for me: If I were gone, would you stay in America?”

“What kind of question is that?”

She sighs and for a moment, she looks every one of her seventy-seven years.

“I won’t live forever, Luis.”

She returns to looking through her photos and my thoughts travel back to the day Manuel told me he was going to ask her to marry him.

I
T WAS BEFORE
a corrida in Sevilla. We were in his hotel. He had just woken up from his siesta and the curtains were still drawn and the shutters closed. The room was dark and quiet. He would keep it this way until he was fully dressed and had finished praying, then I’d open both the curtains and the windows to let in light and noise before we made our way downstairs through the group of reporters, fans, and well-wishers to the van that would take us to the ring.

He had already put on his tights and undershirt. He had pulled his salmon-colored bullfighter’s socks up over his knees and fixed them in place with garters. He had crammed his legs and genitals into the skintight knee-length breeches of his suit and buttoned up the fly. He had stepped into his black leather pumps and set his skullcap on his thick black hair. He had slipped into his tuxedo shirt, tied a thin black tie around his neck, and pulled up the braces attached to his pants.

He had his arms held up in the air as I was winding his sash around his waist when he announced to me, out of the blue, “I’m going to marry Candy.”

The shock momentarily froze me in my duties.

I knew he was serious about her. He had never stayed with one woman for so long and yet, in my opinion, they hadn’t been together long enough to make a decision as important as marriage. And there were other problems, too. For one, she was American. Two, he was El Soltero.

My thoughts flew back to the momentous day he called me up to the room where he was staying above my father’s restaurant and asked me if I wanted to work for him. He joked with me that he could never get married because he would have to become El Esposo. It was still true. How could the Bachelor take a wife? And how could one of the most brilliant stars in the firmament of Spanish heroes even think about taking an American wife?

All of it was blasphemous.

I got over my astonishment and continued wrapping. Then I went to get his vest.

“You have asked her?”

“No,” he said.

I laughed, mostly out of relief.

“Then how do you know you will marry her? Maybe she’ll say no.”

As soon as I said these words, I knew they were a mistake. His face turned dark and sullen. What kind of idiot would ever dream of suggesting to Manuel Obrador that there could be a woman in the world who would refuse him?

“She’d be crazy to say no,” I said nervously, trying to recover, “but women are crazy. And she’s not one of us. She’s American. Would you live in Spain?”

“Of course, we’d live in Spain,” he said irritably.

I walked over to the bed and picked up the final and most stunning part of his costume: the heavy waist-length jacket with wide epaulets covered in gold filigreed embroidery, tassels, and beads. This night he was wearing the color
sangre de toro
. Bull’s blood.

I returned to him and held it up for him.

“Maybe she wouldn’t want to,” I said.

He slipped one arm into the jacket and then the other. I let the heavy weight of it settle onto his shoulders.

“I’m surprised at you, Luis. You of all people should wish me happiness.”

“I do.”

“You should want me to get what I want.”

“I do.”

He walked over to the mirror to check his appearance. No matter how many times I’d seen him dressed in his suit of lights, I was always struck dumb by his beauty.

“Ah, I know what it is,” he said, turning around suddenly, and fixing me with a mischievous smile.

“The other men, they like Candy very much. They respect her. They think she is very beautiful. But they say you don’t like her.”

“That’s not true.”

“I suspect it’s not. You act like you don’t like her, but I know the real reason behind it.”

He turned back to the mirror a final time, but the grin never left his face.

“You want her for yourself.”

S
OMETIMES
I
WONDER
what Manuel would think of us. Would he find it funny or tragic that I did end up getting her for myself, only to find out I could never have her because we each loved him too well.

She lifts her chin and fixes me with her eyes of green thunder.

“I think you would miss America,” she tells me.

“Not the way you think.”

The rest of the words I want to say to her spring to my lips but I won’t let them out: You are my America, Candace. As Manuel was my Spain. Once I’ve lost both of you, the concepts of country and home will no longer matter to me. I will be a nomad looking for a safe place to pitch my humble tent.

R
afael had a wonderful season this year, and I’m happy for him. It seems he may have finally been able to shake off his own insecurities and doubts and get out from under the burden of sharing Manuel’s blood.

I just finished reading his latest letter before starting off on my walk. He still has his final two corridas left in the middle of October, but he seems confident of their outcome.

Along with his clippings he also sent an article about a recent study performed at a university in Spain where it was determined that fighting bulls have special hormonal mechanisms that allow them to block pain by releasing high levels of beta-endorphins.

With each spike of the picador’s lance or thrust of the torero’s sword, the bull is saturated with hormones that switch off pain receptors and produce pleasure.

In other words, he’s having a good time.

I wonder if Rafael sent the same clipping to his American actress.

I wasn’t able to walk much this past summer. My bones have healed. My cast was removed. But I still hurt everywhere, and my knees have never fully recovered.

I’ve set out on this walk alone with my cane and the cell phone Luis and the boys insisted I get so I can call in an emergency. I don’t know how I’m supposed to call using a device I have trouble turning on, but it makes them feel better.

The boys are at school. Luis is taking his nap. He won’t admit to taking a nap, but I know that he does.

I decided to sneak out on my own. I don’t know what possessed me. I see
the potential danger, and after only five minutes, I feel the encroaching pain but onward I go.

I didn’t get to see much of the boys after Klint’s team captured the state title. He and Kyle spent the rest of the summer traveling to tournaments.

Since coming home again in the fall Klint’s been pursued by colleges and even some professional teams, although Kyle has explained the dangers to me in a player turning pro too soon. I’ve had scouts to tea, and I’ve been given tickets to games that I’ve passed on to Jerry that brought tears to his eyes. I’ve discussed everything from signing bonuses to freshman curriculums.

Klint seems to find my involvement extremely amusing while Kyle has told me many times how much he appreciates my help. He’s been amazing. He has single-handedly overseen every aspect of the overwhelming process of helping Klint consider all his options and what they entail.

For my part, I’ve talked extensively to Klint, and he knows what I think should be his most important consideration.

They’ve both been back in school for almost two months now, and things have calmed down. We’ve fallen into a pleasant routine.

I don’t know why lately, these past few days, I’ve felt restless.

I’m sure to a bystander I’d hardly present a picture of restlessness as I hobble at a turtle’s pace down a path through the woods to the bottom of one of my pastures.

I stop to rest and lean against the fence.

It’s a blustery, gray day, but it doesn’t stop me from admiring the scene before me. The dying autumn grass stretches out in rolling hills of lemon-green that are eventually blurred by the deep blue shadows cast by the distant mountains.

The sky is a solid grayish white except for a patch where it looks like the clouds have been worn too thin and are pulling apart into shreds. Hints of the softest blue can be seen behind them tinged an amber-pink from the weak light of a hidden sun.

I’m watching this spot above me when I hear a crashing noise in the underbrush not far from me. It stops then starts again.

I wait with my heart pounding to see if it’s a deer or a wild turkey or even a black bear.

I catch my breath when Ventisco steps out into the field.

He’s only thirty feet from me. Safely on the other side of the fence, I assure myself, knowing if he truly wanted to get through the fence, he could.

I haven’t seen him for a year, and I’ve never seen him this close to the house.

He marches farther out into the pasture, fearlessly, nobly, no different than he would have galloped into a bullring if he had ever been given a chance.

I wonder if I’ve been right to deprive him of his destiny.

The fighting Spanish bull has a different lineage than any other cattle. He is descended from ancient strains of wild stock that once roamed Europe. He is fiercer and more aristocratic than his domestic counterparts and perhaps the most dangerous animal in the world.

Looking at him now, the power behind his loose-muscled gait, the enormity of his neck and shoulders, the perfect balance of his lethal horns, the deep dark glossiness of his jet-black hide, I’m quite sure he was meant for something much greater than this quiet country life in a Pennsylvania valley.

He senses me and looks in my direction.

I’m not afraid. I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be afraid even if there wasn’t a fence between us. If he were to come charging at me, I would stand still and accept what fate brought me, knowing it was my time.

He stands like a statue and watches me intently. There’s intelligence in those fathomless black eyes calling to me the way a wishing well calls to a child to cast all his coins until penniless.

I remember Manuel’s warning: he is not a dumb animal. A bull thinks, but no man can ever know what he’s thinking.

Maybe a woman can.

“Is this what you wanted, Ventisco?” I ask him.

He continues staring at me but doesn’t move.

“Or would you have preferred the ecstasy and glory of the ring?”

A ripple travels through the muscles on his side. He gives me one snort.

“I suppose I’ve kept you from the bull’s equivalent of a man having a fatal coronary during orgasm. Men say they can’t imagine a better way to go.”

He snorts again and takes a few forceful steps toward me and stops.

“I’ve doomed you to the ravages of old age. To watching your strength and beauty fade. To die lying down.”

He tosses his head and I think he may charge, but he hesitates, then turns and trots away.

I watch him pick up the pace until he’s charging across the field in an easy loping gallop, showing off. He stops once and looks back at me from far away, then he disappears over a hill.

Crazy old woman, he was probably thinking.

“Conceited old bull,” I say out loud.

I’m strangely elated after seeing Ventisco.

I head back toward home no longer feeling the aches and pains in my bones as badly as I did before our meeting, but once I reach the house, I’m suddenly exhausted.

Jerry’s standing in front of it in his familiar red-and-black-checked coat studying a second-story window. His arms are crossed over his chest, and his jaw is methodically working a wad of tobacco tucked inside his lower lip.

“Hello, Jerry,” I greet him.

He turns, pulls off his cap, folds the bill, and stuffs it in his pocket.

“’Lo, Miss Jack. You supposed to be out here walking around by yourself?”

“Please, Jerry,” I reply, gruffly. “I’m not an invalid.”

“I know. It’s just Luis …”

“Don’t talk to me about Luis,” I interrupt him. “If it were up to him, I’d be one of those people living in a bubble.”