John D. MacDonald

Salute to Courage

He awakened that Sunday morning from a sleep so deep that for many moments he did not remember that this was the day of all days of his life. When he remembered, he bounded up and ran through the second room to the door of the adobe hut. Yellow sun, blue sky and brown baked hills. A clear, cool day and late, from the height of the sun. His sister, Rosalinda, was a dot of bright Sunday color over at the edge of the stream that was now almost dry.

Augustin started to run toward her and then, remembering this day and remembering dignity, he slowed to a more casual pace. She looked up as he approached and her cheeks dimpled as she smiled. She had sixteen years, one less than he.

“Much, sleep for the torero,” she said. “Everyone was quiet.”

“Where are they, hermana mia?”

“They went to the earliest Mass. You can see them coming now.”

He looked down the rutted road toward the village. His mother and his father were coming slowly. At long distances he could know his father from the limp of the left leg into which had gone the horn of the great black Miura bull so many years ago in distant Spain when his father had been the famed Banderillero who had accompanied the immortal matador, Gaona.

The three smallest children were running up toward the house. They veered and came charging down on their brother, the oldest child. But ten feet away they stopped abruptly and became oddly shy. Yesterday Augustin had been a familiar one with whom they could romp and play. Today all had changed. Today Augustin Galvez would enter the bull ring at Oaxaca, eleven miles from their village of Etla — and so there could no longer be the old familiarity.

Augustin felt their strangeness and he laughed awkwardly and tousled their dark heads. He met his father and mother at the door to the house. It seemed that he had been given new senses on this great morning. The fear that came from his mother was like a dark wave. She did not speak of it, but it was on her face, deep in her eyes. In his father there was a different sort of fear, mingled with pride for his tall son who in one short year had grown from awkwardness into cat-grace.

His father said gruffly, taking the big cape from the wall peg, “Come outside.”

Augustin followed his father out obediently. His father handed him the capote. Augustin held it in his teeth for it to fall into natural folds so that he could grasp it perfectly.

“Veronica!” his father ordered.

He stood and built in his mind’s eye a massive black bull that stood at a distance of fifty feet. He stamped his foot, citing the bull, shouting, “Huh, huh, toro!”

The mythical bull charged. He swept the cape in a slow and stately veronica.

“Olé!” the other children shouted.

“Mariposa!” his father ordered.

Again a sweeping faultless pass, product of nine years of endless practice that had begun when he was eight, holding that first diminutive cape.

“Olé!” the children shouted.

“Un Recorte,” his father ordered.

Augustin performed the pass.

His father turned to the children and said, “Leave us.” The children went away. His father, inches shorter than Augustin, stood and placed his hands firmly on the shoulders of his tall son. “It has been many years, eh?”

“Yes, father.”

“Perhaps it is all a selfishness on my part. To have a son do what I could not do. I had a certain skill with the banderillas no more. My son, you have fought well the calves at the tientas. You have grace. I do not know if you have courage. I have taught you how to know the bulls, how to watch for their faults and their virtues. But knowledge is nothing without courage. Today we will learn.”

“If I have but half of your—”

“Do not think of me. Do not think of all the pesos of the village which have gone into your suit of lights. Think of nothing but that moment of great aloneness when you step away from the wall out onto the sand and it is you and the black beast. Pride will not substitute for courage. If you have the feet that dance away, try your best to fix them. If you cannot do so, then fight at a safe distance and kill quickly and we will speak no more of this. I will not love you less.”

Augustin felt the sting of tears. His father had been a gruff and demanding man. Never had he spoken in this way.

“I cannot speak with you again, Augustin. Down there, in the city, it will be all confusion, many people.” His voice broke. He embraced Augustin quickly, patted his back, turned and limped heavily toward the house. When he turned he was under control.

“Go now to Mass with Rosalinda. I shall meet you at the bus, with everything we shall need. Remember not to eat. Should you be wounded, it will make more difficult the work of the medicos.”

During Mass he prayed for courage. Afterwards, at the bus, he found his father in the crowd. Only his father and Rosalinda were attending. His mother was staying with the small children. It was a special bus that the bus company had provided for this occasion, a large one, though quite old. Even so, it was packed full with all those from Etla who were coming to watch this fight, who had given their pesos for the needed things his father carried in the huge bundle, who felt that the pride and honor of their village rode on his slim strong shoulders. They confused him with their excited words, their eagerness to pat his back, their aura of pulque and tequilla.

He felt too much with them, and yet apart from every one. Juanito, his best friend, was stating loudly how Augustin would chew up two great bulls and spit out the very small pieces; how Augustin was a demon of courage and a miracle of grace. Augustin smiled wanly and wished that Juanito would be still.

His father sat beside him, near the aisle, the big package on his lap, not wishing to trust it to the parcel rack on the roof of the bus.

Eleven miles passed all too quickly and then they were rolling down into Oaxaca, by the high old wooden bull ring, down into the center of the city. It was by then eleven o’clock, five long hours until the beginning of the corrida at four.

Everyone piled off the bus and gathered in a shouting gesturing crowd around Augustin and his father. Here, in the city, it was highly necessary to make more noise, to show that the city could not intimidate the men of Etla.

The impresario, a thin nervous man with a high white forehead under dark receding hair, glasses with heavy black rims and a neat dark suit, pushed through the throng and said, “Galvez? Galvez? This way, please. To my car.”

The bold talk died now that Augustin was to be taken from them. Rosalinda kissed his cheek and Juanito embraced him. “Now we show them, chico!” Juanito said in a husky tone.

He and his father were led over to a big, somewhat shabby, black sedan, leaving their friends behind. The people of the village of Etla would sit in a solid group on the sun side of the ring.

Señor Pimentel started up with a great clashing of gears, talking all the while. “Today will be the best day of our novillero Reason. A great day. Every reserved seat is already gone. The afficionados know of our great luck with the bulls. Bulls of La Punta, you know. Brave and mature, but undersize for the professional season. All a bit less than three hundred kilos. We go now to my house where you will rest and then dress for the ring, Galvez. There is great enthusiasm. They wish to see what Peralta will do with these of La Punta after his great triumph of last week. Three aft-noons in the ring as a novice, a novillero, and already he has a following. And Galvez, those of us who remember the great record of your father expect much from you. Much. The third one, Vizcainas, is of no account. Truly a clown, amigo. It is you and Peralta that they have come to see. The liberty has been taken of drawing the lots for the bulls. Fuentes, who heads the cuadrilla, drew the slips. You have numbers nine and eleven in the pens.”

“I will go look at the animals while my son rests,” the elder Galvez said.

“Good, and it is arranged, Senor Galvez, that you shall act as sword handler for your son in this matter. Ah, here we are!”

The house of Pimental was on a narrow cobblestone street. Friends of Peralta were leaving. Pimental ran here and there, shooing them out, like an anxious mother hen. Augustin was introduced to Peralta, a chunky young man of nineteen with a stolid somewhat puffy face, great heavy wrists. Augustin had read the accounts of Peralta’s three afternoons of glory. The reporters said that Peralta was often awkward, often off balance, but this was more than made up by his flaming raw courage, the strength and certainty with which he killed. Augustin looked at him closely and saw that Peralta seemed pale, that he licked his heavy lips frequently.

Augustin was shown to a small cool darkened room where there was a bed. His father left for the plaza to inspect the bulls. Augustin lay in the darkness, his right hand resting on his damp forehead. There was a crack in the plaster ceiling that looked much like the curved horn of a bull, splintered at the tip. He lay there and silently cursed the rule which made the least experienced fight last. Vizcainas would get the first and fourth bull. Peralta would kill the second and fifth. Augustin would face the third and the sixth. Yet, on the bulls that were not his, he would be permitted to step out to perform a quite, taking the bull away from the padded horse after the picador had done his work.

He tried to sleep but he knew that it was impossible. All that he could do was to keep careful watch on the long muscles of the legs, relaxing them each time they threatened to tighten up.

After an eternity his father came in, sat on the bed and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He smiled at Augustin. “You are in luck I believe. The horns on your two animals are good. Curved in very slightly on the first one, Munequito, which has many nervous movements of the head. I believe he may hook sharply to the left. Watch for that. If I am wrong, if it is to the right, swing wide as you kill. Do not be a fool. It can be hoped that your second one, Pablito, is a railroad train; he has that look. The horns are perfectly straight.”

“Gracias, papá.”

“You cannot sleep?”

“No.”

“It is nearly two. I can help you dress now, if you wish.”

Augustin stood up. He touched his fingertips to his stomach and smiled ruefully at his father, “In here something flutters like a trapped bird.”

“That is to be expected.”

The suit of lights was heavy, of an aqua color, embroidered with gold. It would have been a much cheaper quality had not, at the last moment, rich old Señor Valdez y Mancera decided to donate. The black slippers, the zapatillas, were of a tightness and lightness that made his feet feel like feathers. His father held the end of the deep red sash while Augustin spun twice around, holding it tightly. His father fastened the traditional pigtail to the back of his son’s shining dark head, placed the black bullfighters cap, the montera, at the right angle, then tenderly unwrapped the ancient dress cape and gave it to his son.

Augustin stood proud and tall. His father backed up and said huskily, “Torero!”

At that moment Pimental came in. “It is time to — ah, you are ready.” He cocked his head on one side. “Splendid, Galvez!” He hurried to the door, turned and said, “We will leave in twenty minutes for the plaza.”

It was then twenty minutes of three. Soon the three novilleros were in the back seat of the shabby sedan. Pimental drove slowly through the streets. Children ran beside the car. Augustin was somehow glad that the shouts were for Peralta who sat in the middle. Then all was confusion. There was a time of waiting in the room of the toreros between the Capilla, the bullfighters’ small chapel, and the infirmary where two doctors laid out their emergency instruments.

After Augustin came out of the Capilla, he could hear the deep-throated murmur of the crowd and suddenly the brassy band broke into “España Caña.” Augustin felt weak and sick, and the music did not stir him as it always had in the past when he had watched the great ones in the big Plaza Mexico far to the north.

Pimental, reaching an apex of anxiety, herded them out close to the gate. At the sound of trumpets, the horse pranced across to the Juez de Plaza, the rider doffing his hat, looking up at the official’s box for his permission for the fight to begin. It was given and he backed the horse all the way back to the gate of the bullfighters, then started it forward again slowly.

Augustin was surprised to find himself walking in the mincing parade step of the bullfighter without even having to think. The music and the crowd were a vast confusion. He remembered to remove the black hat. Peralta and Vizcainas, having appeared in the Oaxaca Plaza before, during the season, kept theirs on.

Behind them marched the banderilleros, the picadores, the puntillero and lastly the anticlimactic attendants with their wheelbarrows and tools.

They slung their dress capes up over the wall, spreading them out. Augustin felt a curious deafness, as though the music and the crowd noises were far away. One by one they were introduced. He was the last to be introduced. Vazcainas got a spattering of applause; Peralta received a great wide-mouthed roar. Augustin’s father limped out and gestured to Augustin. They stood side by side and the ovation was long and loud.

Then everyone was out of the ring. After the sound of the trumpets there was a curious stillness. The gate of the door of the bulls was wide. The animal came out, hard and strong and fast, moving the head with a cat’s quickness. The members of the cuadrilla ran him, flashing the working capes, dodging back through the narrow entrances of the burladeros as the bull raced by, grunting, snuffling, the great muscles of the black hump swollen with rage.

As they learned this animal, the banderilleros with the working capes ran out into the ring, trailing the capes in the sand, snapping the bull in short punishing turns.

Then Vazcainas stepped out. His passes were fluid but he worked at a very safe distance from the bull. One pass merited a few feeble cries of “Olé!” The rest elicited half-hearted whistles of derision. Had it been a truly good bull, the whistles would have been much louder. But the animal was uncertain in its charges.

When the picadores came out on the padded horses, the bull charged hard and well, but backed away quickly as he felt the pic. He was a borderline creature — not brave enough to be good, yet not cowardly enough to be sent out.

With his heart pounding, his knees shaking with weakness, his mouth as dry as the very sand underfoot, Augustin Galvez ran out to make the second quite. As the bull drove against the padding, Augustin moved off to the side, jerking the cape to get the bull’s eye, one small part of his mind filled with awe at how huge the animal looked at this range — how huge and how deadly. He gave one long slow veronica, and another, and fixed the animal with a half-veronica, turning his back on it to walk slowly away.

He held his head high in his triumph but the shrill whistles penetrated his consciousness and he felt bewildered. As he heard a shout of alarm he looked around and saw the animal charging him. He dropped the cape, raced for the fence and dived over barely in time. There was great laughter.

He found his father. “What is wrong? What did I do wrong?”

His father gave him a long look. “Don’t you know? Didn’t you feel what your feet were doing?”

The dropped cape had been recovered. The horses were gone. A clever wiry little man was setting the second pair of banderillas. Augustin held tightly to the top of the barrera fence, his knuckles cracking with the pressure. Could this be the end of it — the end of all the years? He could not really believe that he had danced back from the charge, moved back those quick steps that turn the most graceful of passes into what is either comedy or tragedy, depending on the beholder.

The fight had moved into the third stage. Vizcainas had dedicated his bull, thrown his hat up to the person to whom he had dedicated it, and had gone out with the sword and the muleta for that final portion of the fight called the faena, which precedes the kill.

It was a miserable faena, combining an inept torero with an unstable animal. All he could do was chop the beast to left and to right with the small cape, without grace, without great danger, without any poetry. He went in soon to kill and he tried to thrust the sword and run away at the same time. He killed miserably in the fifth attempt and left the ring with an enormous chorus of whistles and catcalls.

Peralta had the second bull. As soon as he stepped out for the first time with the big cape Augustin saw what captured the imagination of the crowd. Peralta planted his stocky legs and every move defied the bull, every angle of his body expressed a hard and exalted dominance. He was a puro fanático, with passes that were too fast, too jerky, too unpracticed — yet working close to the animal every second, gaining tremendous emotion through the almost visible flare of his dedicated personality.

It was only in the kill that he had grace. Then the chunky body seemed to elongate as he went in over the horns. The sword sank cleanly. The animal went three paces and dropped. The Juez de Plaza could not ignore the hoarse-throated “Olé!” that had accompanied almost every pass, the handkerchiefs that waved in every hand.

Peralta, blood on the front of his costume from the closeness of the passes, made three circuits of the ring holding aloft an ear and a tail, while sombreros showered down on him.

Augustin wished that at that moment he could drop dead. He wanted some grotesque force to reverse the plaza clock, so that the hands would begin to turn backward.

He could not see the animal clearly as it came out. It seemed supernaturally fast. The calves with their nubby horns had been toys for children. Memory of those calves was of no use to him.

Inevitably he had to step out and face the animal. It had stopped fifteen yards away. As he walked slowly out into the ring it watched him. There was a great silence. His voice sounded, in his ears, like the voice of a girl as he called, “Huh — huh — toro!”

He placed himself as it charged, its hooves thudding against the sand. The feet must not move. The hands were right, the body right. He brought the cape around in the slow veronica and found that his position after the bull passed was not right. He was bent too far forward from the waist. Could the feet have moved again — those treacherous rebellious feet?

The shrill whistles, the yells of, “Maleta! Maleta!” told him that he had. The bull had turned and started another charge. He planted his feet and this time, as the bull neared him he felt their backward dance — grotesque little hitching steps, backward out of danger.

His eyes filled with tears. The whistling grew worse — worse than anything awarded Vizcainas during his pathetic fight. He wanted more chances to control those feet. But, impatient of such an exhibition, the trumpets had sounded for the picadores.

Peralta came in and linked four awkward gaoneras in a dangerous and highly moving quite. Even Vizcainas acquitted himself enough to get a shout of approval as he strutted away from the bull.

There were no cheers as Augustin, as he had planned, dedicated the bull to the crowd. He threw his hat over his shoulder and over the barrera as he had practiced at home. He marched the rebel feet out. They were less under control than ever. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to scream to them, “See! I am not afraid! From the knees up I am the bravest of all. These feet, they do not belong to me! They dance. They are absurd. I disown them, completely.”

But still they danced. The crowd screamed at him, calling clown and coward. The feet danced blithely, endlessly, gayly, always taking him back from the horns as the animal charged. Seat cushions rained down on him. One struck him in the small of the back, almost thrusting him forward onto the horns, and the crowd chanted a sardonic, “Olé!”

At the time of the kill, the feet found a new way to betray him. He would direct them to run straight at the bull. They would run two straight steps and then veer sharply to the left, so that as he was carried helplessly by, all he could do was make a futile thrust at the bull from ridiculously long range.

He could not kill the bull properly. Finally the exhausted animal backed its haunches against the barrera and stood with lowered head. He had to take the sword with the spade tip and the cross-piece five inches from the tip and kill it with the neck thrust.

The boos and jeers and whistles were enormously loud. The crowd had turned on him like a vast animal. He went to his father. His father’s face was the color of wax and the effort to smile reassuringly was painful.

“The next one will be better, Augustin, my son.”

“Papa, can I not go home? Can I not let someone take my second bull?”

The lame man looked at him for a long moment, then turned and spat onto the sand by the barrera fence. “You contracted to fight two animals. And two you will fight.”

While Vizcainas and Peralta each fought their second animals, Augustin tried to reach deeply inside himself and find either heart or anger. There was merely a nothingness. He wished to find some dark place into which he could crawl. He looked over and located the people of his village on the sun side. He looked away quickly. They sat in slumped positions that showed their dejection.

He looked down at his rebellious feet. So this was the size and shape of cowardice! Ah, the wasted years and the long dreams.

It was as though he stood in a patch of shadow that no one else could see. He only stirred out of his trance when the sixth bull of the afternoon charged in. He heard someone in one of the boxes above and behind him say, “A beauty! That such an animal should be wasted on that—”

Augustin studied the animal with cold objectivity. It was a good bull. Probably the best of the afternoon. It hooked neither to the left nor to right. It charged straight and strong and true.

It was a good animal and he could look at it as though he were high in the stands, an onlooker, not required to fight. He looked around the plaza. Many of them were standing up, prepared to leave, drifting slowly toward the exits.

Thirty more minutes of disgrace and then he too could leave. The people of his village would hate him for a time. It, too, would pass away.

His father pushed his shoulder. “Have you not waited long enough?”

He went out woodenly. Now the infection had crept up from the rebel feet. It was in his arms and his shoulders. There was no fluidity. His arms felt like the jointed wooden sticks seen on dolls. The cape would not fall into proper folds.

As the bull charged he floated the cape out awkwardly and too high and went back in the little dancing steps. He had floated the cape too soon. The bull saw the movement of the legs and shoes and veered, charging those moving legs, hooking up at him through the cape. For an instant he felt, under his fingertips, the coarse short black hair between the horns, the writhing warmth of the neck muscles. Then a great blow struck him in the chest and armpit and the plaza spun crazily under him, the blue sky where he could look down and see it between his feet, while a great shrill scream filled his ears.

And then the sound was gone and he looked up to see a squat little man running for the barrera in a huge skipping limping stride. For one long moment he did not know who it was and then he realized that it was his father who had risked running out to distract the bull. He jumped to his feet. It was impossible that his father could escape. Every throat in the arena was open in one long horrid warning scream. Just as the bull dipped his head to hook up into the buttocks of the man who ran so grotesquely, one of the banderilleros, running in from the side, sped dangerously across, trailing a cape. It deflected the bull and Augustin’s father went over the barrera fence.

Augustin found that he was on his feet and running, that he had picked up the cape without remembering the act. For the man who had saved his father was now trapped himself. The horn had found the trailing edge of the cape and hooked it away. The man would be gored before he could leap the wall.

Augustin cut sharply so as to enter the bull’s field of vision, flapping his cape wildly, yelling, “Toro! Aqui, toro! Huh, toro!” The bull swerved away from the man and Augustin barely had time to grasp the cape properly. The heavy embroidered sleeve of his jacket was ripped from elbow to armpit and he could feel the warm spreading wetness.

He set his feet firmly and brought the bull by him in a classic veronica, the most stately of all passes with the big cape. The bull wheeled and charged again and he passed it on the other side, the cape moving so slowly that at each stage of the pass it seemed carved of deep red marble. The third time he made the pass the great shout of “Olé!” was like an explosion in the plaza.

The bull wheeled and charged as though it were tied to a cable. Again and again and again and between the passes he talked to it, saying, “Come back, amigo. Oh, toro of heart, toro of beauty. Again, my precious little black one. Again, my toy!”

Each pass was like the slowest motion to his heightened reflexes. He felt the horn pass inches from his leg, and then he felt the tiny rip as the horn tip lifted embroidery from his thigh. And then, when the bull was blurred by the tears that filled his eyes, he sensed that it had reached the end of Its series. He fixed it in place with a recorte, turned his back to the dazed animal and stood there for eternal seconds, looking upward at the highest part of the plaza. Then slowly he walked away from the animal, and as his eyes cleared he saw every person on his feet, saw the sombreros spinning down, heard the great roar.

At the first quite, he took the bull away for four mariposas of classic style. The feet were no longer rebels. Each time he planted them, they stayed obediently fixed. He did not fake by thrusting his belly in close to the bull after the horn had passed by. This was the fruit, the product, of nine long years.

After the bull had been piced — wherein it showed tremendous bravery — and after the banderillas had been spectacularly placed, as befitting such a creature — Augustin walked over to where his father stood behind the barrera. The bull was on the far side of the ring. He took off his hat and dedicated the bull to his father.

When he was thirty feet from the bull he held the sword in his right hand, the muleta stick in his left, grasped by the middle. He turned his right side toward the animal, the back of his right hand against his hip, the sword projecting out behind him and down toward the sand. He was inclined slightly from the waist. He stood with his feet together, jerked the cape once and said softly, “Come, toro. Come!”

The eyes of the animal moved.

He charged like a spring suddenly released. He went by within inches, turned and charged again without pausing, and again, and again. Augustin ceased any conscious thought or planning. It had become a strange dance in which he and the bull both carefully followed their cues, weaving a convoluted pattern across the sand. There was a deep calmness in Augustin, and he wished that this faena would never end, that he could go through all eternity, a man and a beast in something that was dance, music, sculpture — combined.

And then, too soon, the bull was ready for the kill. He profiled and sighted along the sword held in his right hand, the muleta low in his left hand. He went in fast, swinging the low-held muleta out to his right, under the rigid right arm. As the sword slipped, without resistance, into the tiny crevice between the massive bones of the shoulders, angling downward to the brave heart, Augustin pulled his stomach in to permit the animal’s right horn to slip by. The heavy shoulder knocked him sprawling.

As he reached his feet the bull turned awkwardly and came toward him, the brain willing one last charge, the body struggling to obey. Augustin stood without movement. The bull fell and rolled over onto its side, the black muzzle inches from Augustin’s toes.

They let him make one circuit of the arena, holding aloft the heavy tail and the two severed ears, and then the crowd could restrain itself no longer. They swarmed into the ring and hoisted him up onto willing shoulders and carried him around and around the ring and then out through the big gates.

Had he not suffered a horn wound, they would have carried him all the way back to the central square of Oaxaca.

The wound was slight. It was dressed and he was told to avoid using the arm for several days.

After he had changed, they all went back on the bus, back to Etla. Juanito used his coat and a small space in the bus aisle to act out the fragments of the drama they had seen.

Augustin tried to laugh with all his heart. But he could not. There was a strangeness about all of them, about his friend Juanito, and his sister, Rosalinda, and even the gnarled man sitting beside him who had so valiantly risked his life.

As the bus neared Etla and the long evening of celebration, Augustin came to realize that during the second fight he had gone apart from them, and he would never be able to return the entire distance. Even the Augustin of that morning was a stranger — a small figure and far away. It was the start of a journey into far wild places, from which there was no returning.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Salute to Courage