Fragile Beasts (20 page)

Luis has been friendly and helpful ever since we arrived. He also seems to be the voice of reason with Miss Jack on certain topics. She’s out of touch about a lot of things, not because she’s stupid but because she lives in a different time period. Luis had to explain to her about iPods, cell phones, and video games. She knew about them, but she didn’t realize they were necessities, not luxuries.

I also think Miss Jack might be the only person left in the world who doesn’t have a computer. Luis has one. He has a big family back in Spain he visits once a year. He has over thirty nieces and nephews and they all have kids. He says he could never stay in touch with all of them if it wasn’t for e-mail. Plus he also uses it to keep up on the news and politics in Spain, and he uses it to run the estate and Miss Jack’s affairs, although he doesn’t take care of her money. When I asked him if he did, he had a good laugh and said no and laughed some more.

He asks how I am and what I’ve been doing. I try to hide my sketchbook, but I realize it’s pointless. He asks to see what I’ve drawn, and I show him Coach Hill.

“This is very good,” he says, nodding and laughing.

“It’s okay,” I reply with a shrug.

“No. You have a gift for caricatures. It’s better than okay.”

He hands the sketch back to me.

He puts his hands on his hips, and the serious look returns to his face. He blows out an exasperated puff of air from beneath his walrus mustache.

“Is something wrong?” I ask him.

“No, no, no.” He holds up a hand and shakes it at me. “Everything is fine. Just Miss Jack is driving me crazy. She always does when she has people over, especially her nephew. They don’t get along.”

“You mean Shelby’s dad?”

“Sí, sí. My God.” He glances skyward like God might actually hear him. “It’s never good. She doesn’t get along with Shelby’s mother, either, or her sisters.”

“What are her sisters like?”

“Pretty. One is dumb and very spoiled. The other is smart and very bad. I think the bad one’s coming.”

“Did you say they’re coming over? Shelby, too?” I ask hopefully.

“Yes, but not today. Next week. For dinner. But it doesn’t matter. She’s already in my way. No, not just in my way. She’s …” he pauses and stares into the sky again. “How do you say it? She’s in my face. I’m going for a ride to try and relax.”

He raises his eyebrows like a good idea has just occurred to him.

“Do you ride?” he asks me.

“Horses?” I wonder stupidly.

He nods.

“Yeah. Sure. We used to live close to the Hamiltons’ dairy farm. They had horses they let people ride. They weren’t really great horses. They were kind of old and broken down. It wasn’t any kind of fancy riding,” I’m quick to add as I take in his pair of tan trousers tucked into oiled brown leather riding boots and his red scarf tied inside the open neck of a crisp white shirt.

“We don’t do fancy riding here, either. You want to come with me?”

“Sure. I didn’t even know she had horses. I guess I’ve been kind of out of it.”

“It’s understandable.”

He lets me take my stuff back up to my room and I change out of my gym shoes into the old harness boots I wore when I worked at the Hamiltons’ farm this past summer.

I meet him in the barn. It’s the first time I’ve been inside it. The barns I’m used to are either abandoned and falling down or part of a working farm. They’re dusky and musty, dirty and cluttered, full of the sounds and smells of machinery and livestock.

Miss Jack’s barn is clean, bright, and airy. It’s cleaner than our high school cafeteria. Sunlight pours through the open doors and makes a pool of white warmth on the swept floors. Dust motes twirl slowly above it like planets in a tiny lazy universe. I take a deep breath and smell new paint, and fresh, sweet hay.

Everything is neat and well organized. There’s none of the haphazard junk that always makes its way into the corners and unused stalls of most barns. Bridles hang on shiny brass hooks. Bags of feed are stacked in a pyramid against one wall. A huge John Deere tractor mower that would have made my dad salivate is parked off to one side.

On the opposite wall from the tractor are three large framed photos of black bulls, each with a gold plaque at the bottom engraved with a name.

Luis sees me looking at them and joins me with two harnesses in his hands.

“Calladito, Viajero, Ventisco,” he reads off the names.

Shelby already told me Calladito was her aunt’s first bull and Ventisco is the one she has now. I ask Luis about the second name, trying to pronounce the “j” the way he does, like I’m choking on an “h” in the back of my throat.

“The Traveler,” he explains.

He gestures at each picture in turn.

“Grandfather, father, son. Miss Jack keeps a bull from each generation. The one she thinks is most like Calladito.”

I study the pictures more closely. At first glance, they could all be different shots of the same bull. All three of them are massive coal-black monsters with sharply pointed upturned white horns that look like they’d slide through a grown man’s chest as easily as a power drill through butter.

They all have the same air about them. They’re simple and noble: a combination of pure muscle and pure arrogance.

After staring at them for a minute, I see slight differences in their eyes and their stances, and I begin to wonder if bulls have personalities like people do.

Calladito seems sad and wise. His coat has a lot of brand marks on it so he’s not as sleek and shiny as the other two. He’s on the scruffy side but looks tougher than they do, a guy who’s been through a lot and relies on his street smarts as much as his size and strength. The picture of him is very natural. He’s standing in a field of tall grass. He’s not trying to impress anyone.

Viajero has movie star good looks. He’s young and healthy with blank eyes. He’s definitely posing, holding his head high and staring right at the camera. The muscles beneath his blue-black coat seem to shimmer in the sunlight. I can imagine him tossing his head and asking the photographer to be sure and shoot him from his good side.

Ventisco is staring at the camera, too, but there’s no acceptance in his eyes. They glint with challenge. Even though it’s a still photo, I can feel energy radiating from him. He’s a cocked gun. A fastball ready to be launched. He wants to attack, but this desire isn’t motivated by a wish to harm; it comes from a refusal to be dominated. He’s not a bully. He’s a badass bull.

“Why does she like bulls?” I ask Luis. “Most old ladies like cats.”

He smiles.

“This is true, but Miss Jack is not like most old ladies. And Calladito was not just any bull. He is the bull who killed El Soltero.”

“You mean the guy in all those bullfight posters?” I look back at the photo of the bull. “He killed him?”

“Yes.”

“Killed him?” I repeat myself, but I don’t know what else to say. “Killed him? In a bullfight? In front of hundreds of people?”

“In front of thousands of people. And me. And Miss Jack.”

I instantly see Miss Jack in a different light. I try to imagine her young and can’t, but knowing she watched some guy get torn apart by a bull fills me with the same kind of morbid respect I felt for Aunt Jen when I found out one of her boyfriends in high school accidentally shot himself in the face while cleaning his rifle.

“Did he die instantly?” I blurt out and immediately regret it, but I can’t help myself. This concept has been weighing heavily on my mind ever since Dad was killed.

Luis gives me a wary look out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes,” he replies, stiffly. “I worked for Manuel Obrador. He was my best friend and one of Spain’s greatest toreros. I was around your age when I first met him.”

“I don’t get it. Miss Jack kept the bull that killed your best friend and now you work for her?”

“It’s complicated.”

I want to ask him tons of questions. Exactly how was he killed? Where did the bull get him? Did he stick him with his horns a bunch of times or only once? Was there tons of blood? But I realize these kinds of questions would be in poor taste. I learned my lesson when I asked Aunt Jen if pieces of brain are really gray when you see them spattered on a wall and she started crying and Mom smacked me and sent me to bed.

“Was Miss Jack friends with him, too?” I ask, instead.

He considers my question. I get the feeling he’s not sure if he should answer it. Finally he says, “They were in love.”

I try again to picture Miss Jack young and even decide to make her pretty, but the image won’t come. I try to see the setting in my mind, but this is equally difficult. The only bullfight I’ve ever seen was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Then I decide to try and duplicate her emotions. I take all the pain I felt when Mom left and all the sadness and betrayal I’m still feeling over Dad’s death and mix it with the imagined horror of watching someone as beautiful as Shelby die in front of me, and I feel really bad for Miss Jack.

“That really sucks,” I tell Luis.

“Yes,” he says, nodding slowly; then he suddenly turns on his heel. “Vamos. I have lots of work to do later.”

I follow him down a lane of stalls toward the sound of a horse nickering.

He disappears into one with a harness, then leads out a big, sleek, reddish-brown horse the color of a polished acorn.

“This is my beauty, Águila,” he says, smiling and stroking the animal’s silky neck. “Eagle,” he clarifies for me.

“He is beautiful,” I confirm. “I’ve never seen a horse this nice.”

A smaller black horse but an equally attractive one sticks her head out of the stall next to Águila and snorts at us.

“That’s Shelby’s horse, Molinera,” Luis says.

He makes big circles with both of his arms.

“Runs like a windmill,” he explains the name. “She calls her Molly. She’s a
spoiled princess of a horse, and she’s going to be jealous and throw a tantrum when we don’t take her out. You’re going to ride our other lady, Seta Loca.”

“Seta Loca?”

“Crazy Mushroom.”

“What kind of name is that?”

He hands me the reins to Águila and goes into another stall a little farther away. I can feel the power in the big horse just from standing next to him, and I’m relieved I’m not riding him, although I’m not exactly thrilled about being put on a horse with the word
crazy
in her name.

Luis leads her out, and I instantly understand at least half of her name. She’s the same creamy gray-brown as the raw mushrooms in the Ponderosa salad bar that Klint and I never eat, but the color looks good on a horse.

“She’s only crazy around women,” Luis tells me. “Put a female on her back, and she’ll do anything to try and throw her off, but she’s a pussycat around men. See.”

He rubs his cheek against hers.

I reach out and stroke her velvety nose. She has kind, calm eyes.

“I like her,” I say.

“Good.”

We get the horses saddled and leave through a back door.

I can tell immediately that Luis is an excellent rider by the way he sits in his saddle and guides his horse with seemingly no effort.

I’m a good rider if all that’s required of riding is being able to stay seated on the horse. I can handle a canter, but I have a feeling I look like I’m always about to fall off. I know I feel that way. Luis, on the other hand, looks like he’s part of the horse. The faster Águila goes, the more the difference between man and horse blurs.

Miss Jack has acres and acres of open fields. The summer green has faded from them and now they’re streaked with yellows and browns. All around us are distant hills crowded with trees in their colorful party clothes. The sky is a soft blue with motionless popcorn-shaped clouds stuck to it. If Shelby was riding with us and my dad was still alive, it would be pretty close to a perfect day.

Luis pulls up next to me, and we bring our horses to a slow trot.

He calmly announces, “There’s very little chance we’ll see Ventisco but if it were to happen, you do exactly what I do.”

“You mean we could run into the bull?”

“Probably not. I doubt he’s this close to the farm. Águila is acquainted with him. He would sense Ventisco before Ventisco would see us.”

This doesn’t comfort me much.

I realize Luis is wearing a red scarf. I mention it to him.

“Bulls respond to motion, not to color. The use of a red cape in bullfighting is a tradition. A bull would run at a blue cape just as happily.”

“I remember Miss Jack telling us that.”

“Ventisco would only charge if he felt threatened, and he would only feel threatened if we were to come upon him suddenly and aggressively.”

“Is that why we’re walking very slowly right now?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you said he’s probably not around.”

“What is that expression? Better safe than sorry.”

I look over at him. He’s grinning. I see a line of small, perfect white teeth set in his dark face beneath the bushy gray mustache.

“He could kill us, though.”

“Oh, yes. Very easily,” he says, nodding his head vigorously and still smiling, “but so could a fish bone.”

Again, his words don’t comfort me very much. I think he might realize this because he changes the subject.

“I’m very impressed with your drawings. Do you think you could make a set of caricatures for me? I have a brother who is mad about them. I’d love to have pictures made of all of us—the eight siblings—and give them to him as a gift.”

I don’t know what to say. I’ve never drawn a picture at someone’s request. I’ve always only drawn for myself and Krystal, but she was just a kid who used to love me.

“I’d pay you, of course.”

“Pay me? That’s a lot of pressure,” I say. “What if they’re bad?”

He laughs.

“If they’re bad, I won’t send them. Do you think you could work from photographs if I explained to you about each one’s personality?”

“I’ve never tried but I suppose I could.”

“Good,” he says, happily.

He actually seems excited about this. A lot more excited than I am.

“Have you always been an artist?”

“Me? I’m not an artist.”

“Of course you are,” Luis says sharply.