Scumbler

by William Wharton

  “That’s cold, man. I don’t know how you two could take it yesterday. By the way, we got some good tickets for the bullfight tomorrow; they’re in the sun close down to the barrios.”

  I hope they didn’t get one for me, but I’m sure they did. OK, I’ll give it one more try.

  They’ve brought back baskets of food from Málaga; they shopped in the big open market there. There’s bread, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, apples, oranges. We make ourselves quite a meal. Then we spend the rest of the afternoon sopping up that sun. Lubar rigs a kind of football by rolling his T-shirt in his belt and he plays catch with Sweik and Dale.

  Sandy doesn’t make any overt moves but by some general understanding we’re together; Sweik’s backed out of the whole thing, the way he did with Lotte.

  I can’t tell what Sandy’s thinking but she gives me a couple of long looks; she’s probably wondering why I didn’t invite her to share that nice bed in the hotel last night. Maybe she isn’t thinking that at all; this could only be my worry.

  We go bar hopping in the evening and end up eating pizza at an Italian place. It’s the cheapest and best-looking deal in town. The Spanish cognac is cheap, too, and we all drink more than we should; nobody’s weaving drunk but we’re louder. We walk down to the bajandillo roaring off a chorus of Lubar’s fucking-machine song. I don’t know if there are that many real lyrics or if Lubar makes them up as he goes along; maybe he made up the whole song.

  They pick up their things at the hotel room and head out. I’m pooped. The last to leave is Sandy. She turns as she goes out the door and gives me another long look. Gosh, a young, easy-moving girl like her can make a man my age feel old; it’s cruel. But then I am old; what the hell.

  A BOUNCE IN GRACE, A FLOUNCING OF

  THE NATURAL; WITHOUT A TRACE.

  The hotel has a small red neon sign outside the window. I can just pick up the change in color against a whitewashed wall as it flashes on and off. One minute in my imagination I see us, red devils, slipping over each other; next it’s dark, green-dark in after-color. It’s like a 1920 porno movie or the kind you turn yourself in an old-time penny arcade. I make it go slow, sometimes, then fast; I begin to think I’ll never get to sleep.

  I’m almost wishing they hadn’t come down; it’s pushing things for me. I’m only just coming out of a deep hole and I can’t take this kind of excitement. I’m feeling fragile and this is edging the blood pressure up for sure, going to blow out those retinas. Hell, I’m a painter and I’m missing work time. That’s the real world for me; this one’s too much. Finally, I manage a dry, restless, thin-eyed sleep.

  SLEEP WITHOUT REST, DREAMS

  THAT TIRE: AT BEST: STILLNESS.

  Next day, we beach in the morning. Sure enough, they’ve bought a ticket for me and they won’t even let me pay for it—definitely some more “daddyo” treatment. They’re going in on the bikes but I’ll take the bus.

  Sandy volunteers to bus it with me, keep me company. Sweik isn’t exactly fighting the idea; it can’t be much fun having somebody high up over your shoulder like that while threading your way along a crowded Spanish road, past donkey carts and huge trucks.

  During the bus ride, Sandy slips her hand into mine and pulls it onto her lap. It’s a wonderful, calm, almost warm, sunny afternoon. The sun comes through the bus window and warms my hand there between her legs. I’m feeling shy somehow, afraid to look in her eyes.

  She’s wearing a dress and sandals, almost as if she’d read my mind. Why should that be more sexy than jeans? I don’t know; maybe, just as with everyone, I’m caught up in my own past, old hang-ups. But it feels wonderful having her dry, coolish thumb caressing me slowly in the joint between my thumb and palm. The dress she’s wearing is soft, silky, one of those dresses you just twist and pack so it comes out wrinkled in one direction and looks as if it’s supposed to be that way. I can feel her thighs; hard, slippery under the cloth; no slip.

  We find the bullring; the others are waiting at the entrance gate for us. They’re excited by the crowd, the sounds, the street vendors, the prospect of the corrida. Sweik says it’s only a novillada, so it probably won’t be the best of bullfighting, but he hasn’t seen one in over two years so anything will do. Sandy’s never seen one before and neither has Dale. I think they’re somewhat anxious. I know I am. My stomach’s twisted, curled in knots.

  I’m remembering the first bullfight I ever saw, where the ribs of the bullfighter were ripped out like a clamshell by a hooking horn. He kept trying to stand up, holding himself in, blood over everything, and the bull knocking him down time and again while the other bullfighters danced around yelling, waving capes, trying to catch the bull’s attention.

  Then, after they dragged the poor kid screaming out of the ring, they got an older bullfighter to kill the bull. He himself was just coming back from a bad goring, and was so scared he couldn’t get the damned sword to stick in the bull’s neck. He must have tried to stab it six times and the whole crowd was hollering and hooting, whistling, throwing paper and pillows into the ring. I walked out not knowing for whom I felt more sorry, the bull, the bullfighter or all the sad, hostile, hopelessly incapable men in the stands.

  I read in the papers the boy died that night; he was nineteen years old. So I’m not looking forward to a bullfight, no sir.

  “Sandy, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to make this. The last one I saw was awful. I couldn’t eat meat for a week. I could hardly get anything at all to stay down, even chicken soup. So if I walk out, I’ll wait for you outside by the gate or you can ride back with Sweik, OK?”

  “OK. But wait for me, huh? I’d rather go home with you on the bus. I’m not so hot with this kind of stuff either. Once I fainted at a boxing match on TV.”

  The seats are about twenty rows up and the sun’s directly in our eyes. We’re with the real Spanish fans. They’re drinking beer or swigging wine, and most of them already seem half drunk. Sandy and Dale are some of the only women in this section.

  I don’t even like all the theater part of a bullfight: the trumpets, bugles, drums—everything they use to start it off. It sounds too much like sad, scared bragging to me, something close to Fourth of July military parades or the Anschluss. Then that first black bull comes tearing out of his gate, stops in the middle of the ring, lifts his head up and down, pawing the sand, so beautiful, so powerful, so dangerous.

  After only the third pass, with the crowd already roaring quietly, I’m ready to go. I’ve put myself on the end seat and everybody’s concentrated so I don’t make much fuss. A few Spanish men give me disgusted looks. I guess it’s like walking out with the count three and two on the first batter at a baseball game.

  I’m glad to get down the worn, splintered wooden stairs and outside. Inside, there’s music again and the crowd’s undulating roar plays against it. This part reminds me of being late for an American football game and hurrying, when you know that first big yell is the kickoff. Only this is the opposite; I’m running away, not rushing to get inside. Maybe I’m just too American to be a bullfight aficionado.

  I find a seat in a small bar across the street and order a beer. Even the noise from here makes me nervous. After I’ve finished my beer, I might walk down to Málaga’s botanical garden where the Dahlstroms stole their tree. The whole town is quiet except for the stadium. It’s as if there’s an execution going on and everybody’s holding their breath. There is.

  I sit there and wonder what happened in those bullfighters’ lives or even the lives of these screaming people in the stands that didn’t happen in mine so I’m out here drinking beer and they’re in there enjoying a bull being killed.

  I’m paying for my beer when I see Sandy come out the gate. Two Spanish men who’ve been loitering at the door move toward her. I don’t blame them; she looks tender and vulnerable in her dress, crossing that wide street in the bright sun. I wave but she’s already seen me. There aren’t many people except vendors; I’m the only one sitting at the café.
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  She runs across the street. There’s something of a junior-high-school high jumper in the way she moves; when she runs, she lopes as if she’s about to put all her force into one grand leap against the sky.

  “Oh God, Scum! I couldn’t handle that. I felt sorry for the bull, the bullfighter, then that whole damned crowd of horny, roaring men. Do you know what they do to that bull? And they use horses; I love horses.”

  “Yeah, I know. It worries me so many people enjoy that crap, Sandy. Sometimes I think they could want me to be the bull for them. They always ask men at one time or another to play bull or bullfighter. In a way, war is a gigantic bullfight, a phony proving ground for when people aren’t sure of themselves. Watching a bullfight makes it hard to stay an optimist.”

  Sandy says she doesn’t want a beer. I tell her about the botanical garden and she wants to go there.

  “I need something clean and beautiful to get the feeling of sand, spit and blood out of me.”

  We walk hand in hand into Málaga. It’s like a grandfather with his grown-up fifteen-year-old granddaughter. I could have a granddaughter this age by my first kids; maybe I do. It feels nice. We talk when we want but most of the time we don’t; we only look at the flowers and enjoy the peace, the shade, the green of grass in this dry town.

  CONTRAST IN TIME, TWO ENDS OF A DISTRIBUTION

  MOVING TOWARD EACH OTHER, SLOWLY, HASTELESSLY,

  WITHOUT WASTE: YET WE YEARN FOR RETRIBUTION.

  When we get back to the bullring, the fights still aren’t over. Sandy and I walk around the ring outside to the accompaniment of hysterical shouts, yells, moans, screams interspersed with music, like circus music, DA____DAAA! In back we find a pair of dark red-painted doors partially closed. There’s a small crowd of old people, cripples, children looking in. We peer through the crowd and see two of the dead bulls stretched on yellow sand bleeding from the mouth: red, thick blood against black fur, blue muscles. One is hoisted on a butcher’s hook.

  Four butchers are working frantically, skinning the bull on the hook. Skins of earlier bulls, horns and all, are piled in one corner. Before the skin is fully off, one butcher cuts away a hindquarter and carries it, bleeding warm, to the butcher bench where two others are cutting it into meat-sized chunks. These in turn are wrapped with newspaper and brought to the opening in the door. The next person in line shows some kind of identification, presents a colored slip of paper and receives the cut of meat. It’s done with the efficiency and dispatch of long experience. We turn away. I look at Sandy.

  “Well, the matadors might get ears or tails or hoofs or balls, or whatever they cut off a bull for awards, but these people get the best parts. Bullfighting isn’t all bad after all. You know ‘matador’ means butcher or killer in Spanish. The whole thing’s only a complicated, dangerous way to kill and butcher some beef.”

  When the others come out, they’re excited. It seems one of the bullfighters felt the bull he’d fought wasn’t good enough, so he bought, with his own money, a seventh bull to be killed so he could show how good he really was. He then did the job in great style, was awarded two ears. It was like an extra-inning ball game, or when you go to a movie and find out they’re having a sneak preview in addition to the feature film. I wonder if they still do that in L.A.

  We agree to meet at the Bar Central. On the bus, on the way home, I hold out my hand, palm up, and Sandy puts her hand in it. We don’t say much. But it will definitely go down as the nicest bullfight I ever didn’t watch.

  WE CALM EACH OTHER MUTUALLY, GIVE BRACE

  TO OUR GRACELESS EFFORT: A BALM THAT EMBALMS.

  That night we ride up into the hills to see what’s supposed to be genuine gypsy flamenco dancing. Lubar takes Dale up there first, then comes back to get me. Some ride! No wonder Dale’s scared; I’d be a blithering idiot. Lubar likes to go through things—ditches, bumps—at high speed rather than avoid them; it makes for nervous riding. He drives with his shoulders hunched forward and his head tucked down between his shoulders as if he’s driving through a snowstorm.

  Maybe there actually aren’t any genuine gypsies and there definitely isn’t much genuine about flamenco dancing, but it’s fun. A real tourist kind of thing, with swinging blue-black straight hair flinging a flower into the audience. Lubar catches one and puts it between his teeth. There’s much breast heaving, breath holding, loud yelling, along with hard heel stomping and good guitar playing. Sandy puts her hand on my thigh under the table. I put my hand on top of hers. This way, flamenco dancing is really exciting: having a good-looking, vital, young girl’s hand on your thigh; edging its way slowly up to your crotch.

  Is this wrong? How far out of line am l? Maybe I don’t care enough. There’s some kind of hole in my head. Kate accused me once of being able to compartmentalize my mind, close off parts of it. She said it might only be a thing all men do. She could be right.

  I know Kate knows what just about everybody we know—especially our kids—is doing all the time, no matter how far away they might be; right through time zones, even. She must write five letters and ten postcards a day. I tend to live my whole life only about three yards around me. I don’t think I write ten letters a year. I’m definitely short-minded the way some people are shortsighted.

  We buy a bottle of cognac when we get back into town, then we all go up to the room. We spread out on sleeping bags and pass the bottle around. Lubar is still pressing everybody to make a tour along the foothills. He bought a detailed map in Málaga and he’s worked out routes on dirt paths from one mountain village to the other. Sweik passes the bottle to Dale.

  “Look, Lubar. We don’t have enough bikes. And I refuse to do any dirt riding with my antique machine and somebody on back. It’s not built for that kind of thing. Besides, my back won’t take it. I can feel it’s about ready to go out again.”

  Lubar takes the bottle from Dale, drinks, wipes his mouth.

  “I saw a place outside town where they rent bikes. I’ll bet the old man here can rent a bike good enough for those hills and Sandy could ride on back with him.”

  We talk about it more, poring over the map; as we get drunker the better it sounds. Sweik agrees if I can rent a bike and Sandy rides on it, he’ll go along.

  “But I’m telling you, Lubar, if I hurt my back I’ll haunt you into your grave.”

  They all leave except Sandy. She’s stretched out on her side, with her hands clasped under her cheek on her sleeping bag, pretending she’s asleep. After the door’s closed, she opens one eye and looks at me. She’s one of those people who can give a full double whammy with one eye—sideways.

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “Do you want me to sleep here in my bag on the floor?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  She doesn’t move. She opens the other eye.

  “I’d like to sleep in that big bed with you.”

  I sit on one end of the bed, take off my shoes. I feel as if I’ve gotten caught up in a porno flick, as if everything we’re doing is being filmed or written down somewhere.

  “I didn’t think men meant much to you, Sandy.”

  None of us has ever come out in the open, talked about this part of things, but I’m in a very faded-away mood, partly drunk, excited and at the same time tired. Sandy gets up, comes over, stands between my legs, kisses the top of my skin-bared head. I look up at her.

  “Oh, you’re so old you don’t count. I just want to sleep with you, OK?”

  “Tired of the damp shit and piss smell already?”

  “Yeah, and tired of listening to Lubar and Dale humping away beside me, too.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Two ways, bi-jealousy; simultaneous agitation.”

  And suddenly, she seems so vulnerable, so intensely young and somehow jaded, overused. I put my arms around her and she falls onto me on the bed. She runs her hand over my face. I hook my heels on the edge of the bedspring to push my head farther
back onto the pillow. She kisses me softly just above my beard, then on the end of my nose, then brushes her tongue across my lips.

  “I’d like to cuddle and kiss, huddle and hug with you. There’s nothing so bad about that is there? I’m feeling awfully alone.”

  I roll her off me so we lie side by side holding each other. She’s tucked her hand up under my beard against my neck. I run my hand down her back feeling the tight stringy muscles, the little pebbled mounds of her spine.

  “I’m a deeply married man, Sandy. I have five kids; I love my wife. I don’t want to hurt anybody, including you and me.”

  I pause. Shit, it all sounds so mundane, so much like things people have said too often for too long. Boredom for me is the greatest torture. But I’m not bored right now, quite the contrary; but what I’m hearing myself saying sure as hell sounds boring.

  “Sandy, I’d love to cuddle, hug, hold and kiss with you. Something inside me always feels alone; it’s a private disease. I hate sleeping by myself, in any case, at any time.”

  She pushes herself away, gets up on her knees beside me, sitting back on her heels, her hands between her thighs.

  “OK, then. So what’re we waiting for? It isn’t going to kill anybody if we curl up together and go to sleep, is it? You probably couldn’t find a woman within five miles you’d be safer with; I promise, cross my heart, I won’t rape you.”

  She smiles. I take her hands where they’re clasped, holding each other tight in her crotch.

  “Now, since we’re out of that goddamned cold water, I’m unrapeable, lady. Not only that; I probably couldn’t rape anybody myself, even if they wanted me to.”

  She reaches up, unbuttons the top button on her shirt, then crosses her arms in front of her breasts, grabs hold of the shirt and sweater on opposite sides and lifts the whole thing over her head. She isn’t wearing a bra and has beautiful, firm, small tits, with very pink nipples. She cups them each in a hand.