Running the Bulls (23 page)

Wally had begun entertaining a young couple who had taken lopsided stools at the bar, new, fresh faces on whom he could ply his wares, wares that were no longer appreciated among the regulars.

“There is something about a martini, a tingle remarkably pleasant,” Wally recited as he made their martinis. “A yellow, a mellow martini, I wish I had one at present.”

The woman giggled and the man nodded his appreciation of such fine talent. The phone rang behind the bar. With one hand, Wally put the martini in front of the man. He answered the phone with his other hand. Larry looked up from his keyboards, anxious, as if by some wild chance it was the pump, escaped from its captor and calling from a pay phone.
Help. I'm on the roller coaster at Coney Island.
But the call was for Howard. He thanked Wally as he accepted the receiver. John had promised to phone if he was able to make dinner that night, so Howard expected to hear his son's voice on the other end of the line. But it wasn't John. It was Ellen. She was crying hysterically. It took Howard an eternity to calm her down enough to find out where she was.
The
hospital.
Why?
Eliot
was
there.
Why was Eliot there? Howard felt something breaking inside him. It was starting to come together. Ellen phoning him, of all people, at the Holiday Inn lounge, of all places. Howard waved his arm at Larry, a frantic wave, telling him to stop playing. Seeing Howard's face must have been enough for Larry, for he quit instantly. Pete and Freddy also saw that something was wrong. They stopped talking. Voices filtered over from some customers at other tables, but the bar had fallen into paralyzed stillness.

“I can hear you now, Ellen,” Howard said into the phone. “Tell me what's wrong.” And so she did. She told him. She was phoning from the hospital where they'd taken Eliot. He'd been riding his bike on the street in front of his house. Davie was with him. A car had coming flying down the street, the driver possibly drunk. The car had lost control, had driven up onto the sidewalk. It was dark blue, at least Davie
thought
it was. It struck Eliot. It went on its way. Eliot was still alive. But barely. And then, Ellen had hung up.

Howard stood for a few seconds, phone in his hand, staring at the photos of Bill Cohen and Lola Falana behind the bar, dusty and yellow, but still holding the old energy of the day they were taken. Eliot was still alive. Wally took the phone from Howard's hand. Pete appeared at Howard's elbow.

“My grandson is in the hospital,” Howard said, his voice trembling the way Vera's had when she talked of her husband, Ben Collins. “He was struck by a car.”

“Come on,” said Pete. “I'll drive you out there.”

***

When Howard arrived at Bixley Hospital, he rushed in through the large glass doors of the emergency entrance only to be informed that he must wait there for a doctor to come out and speak to him.

“I'd like to see my grandson,” Howard had told the young woman at reception. She shook her head and looked generally helpless with the situation. Before she could assure Howard yet again that it would be just a minute longer, a doctor arrived. He had been summoned to the front with the news that the grandfather was waiting in reception. This is how Howard learned that his only grandson, Eliot Lane Woods, had just died.

“Your son and his wife are still with him in intensive care,” the doctor said, his voice low and steady. “Do you want me to take you there?” Howard looked at this man's face, a face years younger than his own, a stranger to him. He nodded. He would like to go wherever Eliot was. The doctor put a hand on Howard's shoulder.

“Come on, Mr. Woods,” he said. Howard heard all this through a blurred glass, as if the world had suddenly separated itself from him. He was conscious of Pete, there at his side, asking the questions Howard couldn't think to ask.
Where's Ellen,
being the first. She was somewhere in a private room, he was told, with a nurse who was trying to console her. Another nurse came along with Howard and Pete and the doctor, down the long, shiny hallway.

“I want to see Ellen first,” Howard told this woman. He felt strong, warm tears on his face and realized they were running from his eyes. Could you cry and not know it? Pete put his hand on Howard's shoulder. The hand felt warm and heavy.

“We'll find Ellen,” Pete whispered. The nurse opened a door that said
Family
in small white letters on a black sign. Howard wiped his tears away. He didn't want Ellen to see him cry. The nurse and the doctor stepped aside so that Howard could enter the room. Pete came with him. Inside, Ellen was sitting in a chair by the window. Her own eyes were swollen. On her lap she held Eliot's jacket, the
Florida
Gators.

“I'll wait out here in case you need me,” Pete said and Howard nodded to him. Pete left the room, closing the door behind him. Good ole Pete. He was a steady friend, steady as their golf game all those many years.

Howard walked over to Ellen and stood looking down at the jacket. It lay on her lap like something that had once been alive but was now lifeless. He knew he
had
to see Eliot one more time. He knelt next to Ellen, and she dropped her head against his shoulder.

“Oh, Howie,” she cried. “How will we live without him?” Howard cradled her in his arms, rocked her body, touched his lips to her hair. It felt so good to hold her, and yet he could feel the weight of grief now in her body. The lightness of her had gone away.

“I don't know, sweetheart,” Howard said. It had been a lot of days since he called her that, and yet, it was what he had called her for almost forty years. “Sweetheart, I just don't know,” he said again.

Another doctor stepped into the room, a man not much more than thirty, his face grim with the news. Maybe death was still somewhat new to him, given his youth. He looked at Howard.

“I'm Dr. Moirs,” he said. “Do you want to join your son and daughter-in-law?” Howard nodded, but Ellen shook her head. She lifted the jacket to her face and breathed the scent of it. It was already wet with her tears.

“I want to remember him as he was,” said Ellen. Howard leaned over and kissed the top of her head. Then he followed the doctor out of the room and down the long hallway. At the room that held Eliot, several nurses had gathered outside, talking in hushed tones.

When they saw Howard, they fell into silence. A nurse with tiny diamond earrings in her lobes opened the door for him. He followed Dr. Moirs into Eliot's room. Patty was sitting on a chair by the bed, her head down in her hands. There seemed to be no life left in her.
How can emotion actually have weight and substance?
Howard wondered. But it did. Like Ellen, whose body now seemed sodden with grief, Patty appeared to be helpless beneath some great boulder that was pressing her down, pressing the life out of her. But Howard knew Patty was alive. He also knew that the weight was unbearable, that it might even kill her.

John was lying on the bed, his lanky legs stretched out the length of it, Eliot in his arms. Howard stepped to the side of the bed and looked down at them, his son and grandson, his seed, his offspring, his life. Eliot's little lips were already blue. His face was badly cut, his right eye swollen. A patch of hair had been torn from his scalp. But he was still that little boy, the gentle child with the big heart who loved pepperoni pizza and a game of Asteroids. John seemed to be humming some song, the kind of childhood lullaby parents sing to their kids. When he sensed someone standing near the bed, he opened his eyes. Howard put a hand on John's leg, the only way he could say
I'm here, son.
He wanted to speak those words, but he couldn't. It felt as if his throat had broken open, split with grief, no matter how hard he was trying to be strong for John and Patty. Howard reached out then and took one of Eliot's hands in his own. There was a cut on the hand, and a purplish swelling around Eliot's little finger. Howard realized then that the finger was broken. A flash of panic overtook him. He turned to the doctor, frantic.

“His finger is broken!” Howard shouted. “Somebody needs to fix it!” He heard Patty cry out, an anguished cry that tore through the room. A nurse came and put her hand on Howard's arm.

“It's okay, Mr. Woods,” the nurse said. She patted his back. “It's okay.” Howard turned to John, who had leaned forward to kiss the boy that lay in his arms. John kissed Eliot's face, his forehead, his lips, his nose. He smiled down at his son. Then, he looked up at Howard.

“There were children, you know,” John said. Tears ran out of his eyes and down his face. “Beneath those bombs we dropped on Baghdad,” he said, for he could tell that Howard was confused. “There were children.”

***

It was just before midnight that Howard and Ellen stepped outside the big glass doors of the Bixley Hospital emergency entrance. Patty's mother and sister had arrived earlier and they had driven Patty and John home. Pete had already gone, after telling Howard he would leave the Aston Martin in the parking lot, in case Howard needed it. By the time Ellen and Howard walked out into the night, it was pouring a cold, summer rain. Howard held Ellen's cotton sweater for her so that she could slip her arms into it. They stood back out of the rain, side by side, and watched as lightning broke the sky in the east and then came crashing to earth somewhere in the distance. So much power. So much pain. Howard looked over at this woman he loved so well, Eliot's grandmother. He saw it clearly, recognized it, identified the monster that had grown between them like a fungus, an algae that can't be stopped:
grief.
It either joins, or it separates for good. And now they were standing with nothing but pain between them.

Howard put his arms around her then, and Ellen rested her head against his chest. He was now glad, no
exhilarated,
maybe even
exalted,
that he'd crashed the birthday lunch at Chuck E. Cheese's. What had Eliot said?
I
was
only
pretending
that
I
didn't care, but I did. I wanted to spend my birthday with you both.
Howard wished he could ask Ellen if she needed him to come home, at least for the next few days. Home was where
he
wished to be. But he wanted now, more than ever, to do what was right, an action that would help, not hinder. The Woods family had in an instant, and thanks to a stranger whose name they might never know, become a family that would need all the help it could get. As if reading his mind, Ellen looked up into his eyes.

“No, Howie,” Ellen said, and he nodded. He understood instantly. That's what so many years of marriage can do for a man and a woman. It gives them their own language, like twins who speak gibberish.
No
was all she had to say. But he knew how she meant it. It was not that she didn't love him, or miss him, or need him. It was that the monster between the two of them had not been slain. It had only been replaced with this new monster. And now Ellen wanted to share her grief with no one, not even him, not even Eliot's grandfather. She wanted to hoard her sorrow, as if it were a family heirloom. And so she turned and walked across the parking lot to her car. Wind and rain swept along the pavement, a blanket billowing at the heels of her feet, following along with her. Howard waited, wanting to see her safely inside the gray Celica. When she backed out of the parking lot and left the hospital, he followed, the storm beating on the canvas top of his little car, wind rocking it back and forth. At Patterson Street, he waited at the curb as the garage door went up and Ellen's car disappeared inside. He waited as the door came back down. He waited as the kitchen light burst on. Howard waited, outside, in the heart of the storm, and imagined how tiny the lights of his car must look on a wind-tossed sea. Two small yellow beacons. He hoped Ellen saw them out there in the dark rain, and knew that she was being watched with great affection. He waited.

The bedroom light finally came on upstairs, all warm and yellow and safe. When it went out, twenty minutes later, Howard put the little car in gear and drove off into the wind and rain. This would mark the first night they would live and sleep and dream without Eliot Woods among them. He hoped Ellen had found comfort in the fact that a friend—not a
husband
—had watched her drive home. That a friend who loved her had waited for her garage door to go up and then down, for her bedroom light to blink on and then off. He could never bring Eliot back, could never bring back her grandson. So Howard hoped she knew.

The driver who killed Eliot had not been found. He was anonymous, a
virtual
driver, careering down the information highway, hiding out somewhere in cyberspace. It wasn't that law enforcement hadn't looked. They were searching everywhere. They just didn't have much information to help them, other than a small boy's traumatized glimpse of a car that
might
have
been
blue.
It was almost too painful for Howard to think of Eliot, to imagine him, and so he tried hard not to. During the three days that followed Eliot's death, as he waited for the family to arrive and for the funeral services to be over, he kept busy by unpacking the many boxes and arranging his things in the tiny cabin. It was the only way he could shelve the pain. He now had shirts and slacks hanging from hangers in the makeshift closet. He had the crude bookshelf bulging with his books. He had stacked the wood box above the brim, just because it was empty. He had gone to the local Kmart and purchased a few pans, a few forks and knives, some dish towels. He had even bought curtains, a means to discourage the morning sun since the only window in the modest bedroom opened to the east. He had stopped by the hobby department and selected a can of cleanser and some bottles of paint for the toy car, the '59 Galaxy. He had shopped at the huge IGA and picked up plenty of canned foods, some fruit and bread, coffee, and a few bottles of wine.

Howard was keeping busy, but he knew he couldn't put it off forever. When he wasn't being careful, he would find himself staring at the faces of drivers he met, in those blue cars that cruised along the highway. He stared at oncoming headlights, the silver sneer of a front bumper. Was that what Eliot had seen? Was that his last picture? There, that car just turning onto Fillmore Street! Was
that
the one that had run the boy down, his bicycle crunching like aluminum foil beneath the tires? Was that the one? That woman? That man, there, in the car just pulling up to the dry cleaners? That girl, the one talking on her cell phone and not watching the street? How blue did Davie think the car was? How new? How long? The questions, if he gave in to them, were relentless, and so he forced himself to push them aside. Instead, he concentrated on putting his physical life in order. He was getting ready for the pain the way one gets ready for a long, hard winter. And all the while he worked, he was aware that Ben Collins was keeping a close eye on him from the photograph that Howard had taped to the mirror over the tiny sink. Ben was keeping an eye.

At the bottom of the box that had
Murray's Clay Pot Kit
written on its side, Howard found the battered dictionary that he'd kept for years on his desk, in his office at Bixley Community College. He was pleased to see it again. He had not realized how much he missed what it represented, that place to go when one needed help with words. But since his retirement, the only thing he'd written had been his letter to the Ford Motor Company. He flipped through the tattered pages until he came to the one he was looking for. The verb
to
grieve
comes from the Middle English
greven,
which is derived from the Old English
greven,
which is derived from the Latin
gravare,
to burden, which is derived of
gravis,
or heavy. Howard closed the dictionary and put it on a shelf of the bookcase with the other books. Now he knew why the lightness had gone out of Ellen, why Patty looked as if she were being pressed to death. It's been known for some time, then, that grief is a burden. It's heavy as stone.

Howard Jr. had arrived first with his family and then Greta with hers. They had gathered, they had hugged each other, they had mourned. Apparently, Ellen hadn't told these two older children yet about the changes that had taken place in her own life, in her marriage to their father. Nor had he mentioned it, the few times over the previous month that he'd spoken to them by phone. If they were surprised to learn that Howard was now living in a camp near Bixley Lake, they kept it to themselves. The larger, more important issue was Eliot, who was dead, and his grieving parents, who were alive. That's all. Howard Jr. and his wife, Rachel, had gone to her mother's home and put up there. Greta wanted to be with her own mother, with Ellen, and so she settled into her old childhood room for a few days, the kids in the spare guest room.

On each of those past three days, Howard had gone to Ellen's door on Patterson Street to ask if she was okay. Did she need anything? And while he was there, he stayed long enough to visit his daughter and other grandchildren, girls who were not old enough to understand the mechanics of grief. And then he had gone to John's house, Patty's house, what used to be Eliot's house. No one seemed to need him there either, so he had sat up in Eliot's room, on Eliot's bed. He had fed Eliot's dog. But there was nothing else for him to do. John and Patty had made good friends in their marriage and now those closest friends moved in like a small, soothing army to see that the proper things were being done. The casket. The funeral. The burial. Howard was thankful for this. He assumed Ellen was thankful, and that John and Patty were thankful. Thankful. He had heard John say only one thing about the preparations: “His Gators T-shirt,” when the question arose as to what Eliot should wear in his casket. Howard left then. He wanted to hear no more. The family had decided that they and everyone else should remember Eliot as he was, not the bruised and broken little boy he had become under the tires of some unknown automobile. There would be no wake. There would be a memorial service for family and friends. They would say good-bye, they would separate again, and then they could all concentrate on the task of grieving.

On July 6, the day that hundreds of anxious runners gathered in Pamplona where they would soon skillfully dodge the bulls, Howard Woods stood with the rest of his grieving family and watched as Eliot's casket was lowered into the earth. Eliot Lane Woods, born in 1991, on a god-awful, rainy night that had seen Howard and Ellen skidding into the same emergency parking lot at Bixley Hospital, unfurling their umbrellas, then racing up to the delivery room so that they would be there when John walked out with a baby in his arms. Their first grandson. Seven years ago, and yet it was a lifetime.
Eliot's
lifetime. When the small casket disappeared below the edge of the burial hole, Howard heard Patty cry out again, that cry he'd heard in the hospital the night Eliot died, a cry she might have made with the pain of Eliot's birth. John was there to comfort her, his arm around her narrow shoulders. But his own face was void of that confidence he used to have. Howard had to wonder if John's face would ever return to them. Or was it gone somewhere now where they would never see it again? That happened sometimes with death, Howard knew. He'd seen it in his own mother when his father had died. It was as if his father had taken the best part of her with him.

After the funeral, they had all gathered at Ellen's house for food and consolation. But Howard felt little comfort, the house already becoming strange to him now that his things were no longer in it. While the others huddled in the kitchen, trying their soldier's best to tell the happy stories of Eliot's life,
the
time
he
locked
himself
in
the
basement, the time he gave his teacher a white mouse, the time he found the hundred-dollar bill, the time he ran away from home and came to Patterson Street,
Howard stood staring out at the birdhouse in the backyard and wondering how sixty-some years could disappear so fast, much less seven.
His
lifetime.

Howard Jr. had to get back, a meeting the next day that couldn't be avoided. Greta and her husband were buying a house and had papers to sign. As fast as they'd come, in a whirlwind of suitcases and wet tears, they were gone. Back to their lives. The silence they left behind was unbearable. Howard wasn't sure if a death had really taken place after all. Was it real, or was it Hollywood? But this is how people must live, he told himself. This is how they go on, by pretending it will never happen to them. This is sometimes where their courage lies. His only concern now was Ellen. And so, he had gone to her again. He had told her he would come home in an instant. And again Ellen said no. “It would be because of Eliot,” Ellen said. These were the words she didn't speak to him that night in the rain, standing outside the hospital. “But in a year, two years, Howie, this thing between us would raise its ugly head again, and we'd be right back where we started.” He couldn't argue with her, for she was right. Ellen was always right about those subtle things that lie just below the surface. He knew in his own heart that he still didn't feel forgiveness. He still didn't feel it, no matter how hard he tried. On the afternoon following Eliot's funeral, with his son and daughter disappeared again into the world, with John and Patty holed up in their own house not wishing to see anyone, Howard worked on the toy car, the one he had hoped to have ready for Eliot as a Christmas present. He did this for his own sake, so afraid was he that the grief would press him to death. And then, if it did, no one would be there for Ellen. He smiled as he poured some cleanser onto a damp cloth and wiped away the rust and grime. A 1959 Galaxy, the first year Ford ever made the model. Howard had been desperate to buy one, knowing that with his family about to happen, it would be his last splurge on a fancy car. He even remembered what the thing would cost him, a whopping $2,650, but it would be worth it. She was a beauty, sleek and shiny, with those little gold balls on the fenders. And if you pretended you didn't see a Thunderbird flying past you on the highway, you could imagine that you had the sportiest model Ford could offer. She'd be a collector's dream one day, given that '59 was her debut year. He had explained all this to Ellen. The Galaxy would be his
sporty
car,
and he would leave it sitting beneath a cover in the garage. Someday, one day, he would sell it for good money. It was an investment, damn it. But 1959 was the year Greta was born. Ellen was thinking ahead to two more children yet to come, to the appendixes that might need to come out, to the braces that might need to go in. How could a monthly payment be made on something as frivolous as a
sporty
car
? She was right, of course, and so Howard had given in to marriage, fatherhood, the sensible Rambler, and impending middle age.

Howard painted the toy car the same color as the Galaxy he never bought, a shiny red. He painted the headlights yellow and then added strokes of silver for the chrome. When he was finished, he put the little car on the windowsill over the sink, where the morning sun could dry it fully. Then, he stood back and admired the simplicity of it, remembering how sweet it had looked rolling down the highways and byways of 1959. What a notion that had been, what a safety in those days. But Howard now knew the truth. America was a country sound asleep, waiting for something to prod it awake, the way Ellen had prodded him awake to tell him of Ben Collins. And when it came, it was a crash so loud that people jumped to their feet, dazed, stunned as sheep. Howard knew now that 1959 had been our last good sleep before the sixties.

“So what do you think, Ben?” Howard asked the photo beneath the strip of tape. Ben's eyes were everywhere these days, like one of those Catholic icons that appear to see everything. “She's a beauty, isn't she?”

***

That night, in his narrow bed out at the cabin, with the sounds of the lake waters lapping against the shore, Howard dreamed that it was Richard Nixon who had been driving the car that killed his grandson, Robert McNamara in the passenger seat. He had peered from behind the curtains of his living room window and watched as the runaway vehicle veered up onto the sidewalk and then plowed its way down Patterson Street, killing other kids. Killing lots of kids. Howard wanted to do
something,
he wanted desperately to
act,
but his arms were broken again, useless wings that flapped at his sides as he watched in horror, watched as though the scene before him were taking place on a large television screen, Walter Cronkite narrating.

Finally, Howard woke, his back moist against the wet sheet beneath him. He woke and stared at the ceiling as he fought to place the dream fragments into some kind of order.
Symbolic
, he thought, like the Macbeth dream, a dream of longing and helplessness. Not to mention another war that Howard had missed because he was old enough to be safe with a wife, and three children, and a teaching job. Another war his sons were too young to be killed in. But other people's sons, 58,000 of them, had perished among the rice paddies. There was Howard's neighbor, Sam Mason, who still lived in the two-story brick on Patterson, the very street where Ellen was probably dreaming her own nightmares. Sam had lost his boy, Bradley, a nice young man, tall and good-looking, who drove a white Mustang wherever he went. That is, until Bradley went to Vietnam and stepped on a live mine, somewhere in the Mekong Delta. For years the white Mustang sat parked above Sam's garage, pooling the spring rains, catching up the autumn leaves. A zillion snowflakes had hit, then melted, on the Mustang's canvas roof before Sam finally had the heart to sell it. Everything takes time. Even for Robert McNamara, who had finally published a book admitting that the war had been wrong.
It
all
takes
time.

Howard sat up and slid his legs over the side of the bed. He sat there as the gray film of dawn ebbed in over the treetops. One of the loons was already awake, for he heard its cry echo from the other end of the lake. He thought of the eggs in the sparrow's nest, back at the Holiday Inn. Soon, they would crack and break open, the safety of the shell taken from them. He imagined the fledglings opening their small plum eyes to the neon glare from signs along that busy street. The first thing they would know of this strange, new world would be
Goodyear
Tires, On Sale Now! Try Our Taco Salad! Develop One Roll of Film, Get One Free! Mel Gibson in
Conspiracy Theory
.
They would wake to the first big car sale that summer, at Gregson's Auto Sales, just across the street, their sealed eyes opening to the newest Chevrolets on the market, their small beaks coated with the dust of the parking lot, their feathers filled with exhaust. The ones that died in the nest, from sickness or hunger or predators, would never fly up far enough on their new wings to see the blue lake below, or the white birches, or the yellow stars. What had John said? “There were children beneath the bombs we dropped, there were children.” But didn't John know that war was big business? McNamara certainly knew it. And
big
business meant
good
business, and good business meant
body
count.
It had been that way since the first bloody war ever waged on the planet. It would always be that way. And some bodies were better to count than others. Howard had learned that from television, too. He'd seen how the corpses of Vietnamese civilians were simply thrown onto the pile and forgotten about. And those 58,000 American bodies? They were thrown onto a long black wall in DC, another mark for big business since lots of folks came every day to look at the names, to spend money in the cafés, the stores, the gas stations of our nation's capitol.