Honorable Mention in Prose

Bulls
Kevin Kelly '04

You've been standing around for nearly an hour getting nervous as the street in front of Town Hall fills with runners. Paul hops around to shake the morning chill. He mumbles in his thick Australian accent. You are trying to forget about the man you saw trampled two days before, but Paul makes it difficult with his talking. He isn't trying to scare you, just rambling from his nerves. He keeps saying, "There's heaps a people runnin' ain't there? Too many if ya ask me. The bloaks'r more dangerous than the bloody bulls ya know. The bulls are bad though, mate. Don't be fooled. And don't get stuck in no doorway or up against a wall. If ya can't move ya can't get away. A coupla days ago I seen an American kid really get worked around by a bull when he got stuck in a doorway. Not just a little either."

"The horns?" You ask the question not really wanting an answer.

"Aw yeah, mate. All of it. Not sure if he's dead ‘er not but his belly got all torn up and the flippen bull charged right over'im after he hit the ground."

He keeps saying things like that until you are ready to pee your pants. Anticipation swells around you. Your stomach is empty and anxious. The crowd is too thick to do anything but move with it when it starts the slow migration you've witnessed each morning from your top rail spectator's perch.

At eight the first cannon goes off, and the crowd starts into a cramped jog. Its density thins slightly as the motion grows more rapid, but there is still no room for agility. You feel hands touch you from all sides. When the second cannon sounds, the hands start to grab and pull and push and everyone is running. Panic spreads instantly. You find yourself having to detach desperate clasping hands from your shirt as you run. Everyone is sprinting and glancing over their shoulders at the runners behind them. You hear the thunder of hooves on the street. You turn your head but see only a stampede of dirty, white clad men with red sashes. The stone ground vibrates under your scrambling feet, and you hear panicked screams and yelps in an assortment of languages. They cry, "Oh, shit!" and, "Oh, my god, no!" Again, you turn your head. This time you see men diving to the side of a parting white sea. You get a glimpse of a huge steer just before you are shoved to the side and pinned tightly against the wall of a building.

Time stops moving as you struggle between the warm stone wall and the trapping forces against you. The size and weight of your captor proves the futility of your efforts toward freedom. While you attempt to work yourself loose, your mind fills with flashing images. You recall yesterday's fights. The one great matador kneeling before his confused, submissive bull. His eyes fixed to the bull's, and his nose nearly touching the hot nostrils. The pointed horns flared around the brim of his hat. The bull was frozen by him. Wanted to move but had been rendered powerless. The matador owned him but loved him at the same time. He reached out and stroked the bull's chin, and, through borrowed binoculars, you saw him give a quiet thank you. Then, he turned without caution away from the broken, obedient bull to strut across the ring. His square shoulders carried the lightness of victory. The crowd applauded madly. When the matador went back, kissed the bull's head and ran it through with one perfect plunge of his sword, the entire stadium erupted. Whistles and cheers came up. Roses covered the ring. Emotions blew like wind through the frantic audience and lifted the matador to the pinnacle of his career.

Another matador was not so good that day. His life was cut to pieces by a strong, fearless, relentless bull. It tossed the picador's horse on its back twice, barely receiving a scratch in return. Then, the bandierros couldn't get near it. Not one steel spur bit into the bull's hide. Not one drop of blood was drained from its body. The matador stepped into the ring against a raging machine. He was frightened so completely by its size and anger that he couldn't make himself go near it. The crowd booed with vehemence as he let the hungry bull pass at unacceptably wide distances. After only seven of these nervous passes the matador drew his flimsy sword. He bent four of them on the impenetrable shoulders of the bull before making one stick. Still, the mammoth bull raged on. It charged and dipped and hooked at its timid opponent. Even after three sword handles stuck out from its stone back, it stood angry and alive until the ruined matador was forced to slice its spine at the base of the skull with a long handled dagger. With no longer a connection between body and brain the bull finally went to its knees, a position it endured for two full minutes, breathing through shredded lungs, staring at its worthless opponent, filling the man and the ring with awkward, humiliating shame before it finally fell to its side with a terrible thud, raising an unwarranted cloud of bloody dust.

There was no walk of glory. No roses were thrown and no ears or tail cut off. The matador only slumped off to the side and buried his eyes and was left alone to soak in his misery. The mighty bull had finished him. It died without ever letting its tongue fall from its noble mouth, and the crowd watched in respectful silence as its body was dragged away.
You see the solemn trail of blood in your mind, but the silence of the bullring is lost as the thundering hooves gain volume behind you. Quickly you pray that the bulls will keep to the middle as you cannot move an inch and men are crashing to the ground at your feet. They trip and stumble and fall chaotically, grasping at nothing on the way down. One goes down, then another, then, over him, a third. Then, in slow motion, as if in a dream, the giant bulk of a bull is beside you. It is an arm's length away, mauling the third fallen man with its head. The deadly horns are wrapped around either side of the man's back and clanking against street as they miss their intended target.

You reach out to touch the bull's flank, but your arm recoils of its own accord for fear of gaining the angry bull's attention. Then, as it came, in a dragging instant, it is gone and you are pulling up one of the fallen men at your feet. Beside you, the big linebacker who pinned you to the wall is pulling up another man. Both of you leap to help the one who was molested. He is crying, though. Not budging an inch. Curled up and trembling on the ground. Behind you rises the clapping thunder of the second wave of bulls. The linebacker looks you in the face to confirm what is happening here. Coming to equal conclusions instantly, both of you let go of the cowering man and run.

Your legs move numbly. You can't feel them at all. Again, you fight the grabbing hands of the crowd. Suddenly, as big as a freight train, with the brutal force of a tank, a bull passes heavily on your right. You don't see the other two but know they've gone by when you see them boring through the crowd ahead. You follow them down the slope into the bullring just before a pile of Spanish men leap down from a fence and push the gate shut. Everyone behind is locked out and angry. Or maybe they are relieved.

Your knees shake wildly. As planned, you find Paul to the left of the gate.

"Brilliant, eh? Brilliant!" he shouts.

"My knees are shaking."

"Aw, mine too, mate."

"I saw a guy get mauled."

"With the horns?"

"No. Just the head. But he wasn't moving afterward."

"Brilliant! O.k., if we get split up again, I'll meet you out front of the gate. Out by old Hem's head."
"Out front," you repeat, trying to catch your breath.

You wait there with your hands on your knees and your heart pounding. It pounds so hard you can feel it in your neck and wrists. Soon young bulls with rubber knobs on their horns will be released into the ring with you. Two hundred people will run and dodge and dive and panic. Some will get drilled. Paul will be one of them. You will laugh when you see it and lose concentration and almost get drilled yourself.

Later, you will say goodbye to Paul and you will never see him again. You've been in Europe for two months, Spain for three weeks, Pamplona for the last six days. Your apartment in little Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will seem strange when you get home. It's time to go now. Time to get back. There is a plane in Paris that will take you to New York, then on to Philadelphia and Harrisburg. You will say goodbye to Paul tonight and wish him well as you board an overnight train.

Once past Biarritz, most of the passengers in your car will be gone. The train will be dark and the rhythmic hum from underneath will capture your wits. You're so tired from your travels. All you want to do is rest. You will find a vacant row of seats to stretch out on and all night long you will try to sleep, but the bulls aren't going to let you.