Raising Cubby

by John Elder Robison

  I don’t know how it happened, but somehow, when Cubby was ten, he got wind of an event called the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. He was fascinated by the televised images of beasts running wild in the streets alongside strangely dressed humans. We had never lived among livestock, and Cubby had no prior experience as a bull runner, so I could not understand what he saw in either the beasts or the event. But he was stubborn, and his enthusiasm grew in inverse proportion to mine.

  “Can we go can we go can we go?” He bounced in time to the words, as if he were on one of those amusement park kangaroos that sit on big springs. Kids have no concept of distance. He begged for a five-thousand-mile trip to Spain just like he’d beg for a trip downtown for ice cream. Cubby had learned early on that the persistent bird gets the worm and the persistent kid gets the treat. I usually gave in, though there was often a verbal tussle.

  I might tell him the persistent kid gets chained up in the basement, or eaten for dinner, but he no longer believed in my threats, and he went with the odds in hopes of getting whatever he wanted at that moment. Even a trip to Europe.

  Some dads would have balked at the idea of crossing the Atlantic to mix children and large animals in an uncontrolled environment. Not me. I am just fine among beasts. Bull running actually sounded kind of cool. The only part I had a problem with was the distance and the cost. Luckily, I had an answer.

  “We don’t need to go all the way to Spain. We have a local event, a strolling of cows, right here in Vermont.” If Cubby picked up the distinction between cows and bulls, he didn’t let on. “Not only that,” I continued, “the cows in Vermont are kid cows, heifers, so they are a lot closer to your size.” And the best part was that Vermont’s run happens a month earlier than the one in Spain. That meant the stroll was coming up the very next weekend. I promised Cubby we’d go. Every time he thought of it, I repeated my promise. Ten or twenty times, some days.

  When the fateful Sunday morning dawned, we got up bright and early and piled into the car. Brattleboro is about an hour north, and Cubby chattered excitedly about cows all the way. When he was locked onto something, it did not do much good to introduce alternate conversational subjects. He didn’t hear them.

  “Dad! The average speed of a bull run is fifteen miles an hour. How fast is that? Can we run fifteen miles an hour?” I wondered where he found the average speed of a bull run and whether it was right. More often than not, Cubby did prove to be correct about things like that. For a kid who didn’t read until third grade, he had turned out to be a remarkably good researcher.

  There was no traffic behind us, so I slowed the car from sixty to fifteen miles an hour. It felt like we had stopped as I turned to Cubby. “This is fifteen miles an hour.” Cubby was sure he could run considerably faster, but I sensed a bit of apprehension as we got closer. Cubby had read about people getting trampled or gored, and I’m sure he did not want his name added to that list. “It won’t matter, Cubby, because this particular event is a stroll, not a run. That means they go slower. We won’t be in any danger.”

  As vivid as my descriptions had been, Cubby still wasn’t absolutely sure if he believed in the Brattleboro Cow Stroll. He knew the one in Spain was real, but he wasn’t so sure about the one in Vermont. Maybe the whole thing was a giant deception of mine. When we got off at the exit, he knew immediately something was up. The road was totally jammed. We’d never seen anything like it on any previous visit to Brattleboro. Parked cars lined both sides of the street, with late arrivals disgorging adults and kids, who flowed together into an amorphous mass, headed for town. It was clear that cow strolling—or whatever we were headed for—drew a big crowd. We had a mile to walk, and Cubby talked bulls every step of the way.

  His excitement increased when we passed signs announcing the stroll, and he knew for sure it was real. “Maybe they have iguanas and weasels, too,” I suggested, but he wasn’t losing sight of the cows. He continued to chatter as we made our way along.

  By the time we reached Main Street, I knew where bull runs were held, how many people had died in them, how the bulls were herded, the number of bulls in a run, and a thousand other bits of bull trivia. Cubby’s ability to gather facts about topics of interest was always impressive. I remembered being that way myself. Actually, to a large extent, I am still that way now. I just mask my enthusiasm a little bit as an adult, because not everyone is as keenly interested in the finer details of life as me. I’ve always gotten a certain satisfaction from knowing I can recognize all the farm tractors in the parade and explain the features of every single one. That is the joy of a true machine aficionado; something less mechanical people can never understand.

  Surprisingly, Cubby had not collected any trivia about this event in Brattleboro, though his mind was filled to excess about bull runs in general. I was pleased to present him something new, because things I knew and he didn’t made it hard for him to dismiss me as a total idiot. He was already becoming certain that I was the fool, and he the only one with any worthwhile knowledge. “All kids get that way,” my friends told me, but the words did not make his incipient teenage superiority any less aggravating.

  Martial music began as we started down the little hill into town. “Hurry,” Cubby said. “They’re about to start.” We picked up the pace and soon a marching band came into view. “This is like the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” I said.

  “No, it’s not,” he answered. “This is a bull run.”

  At that point, the first of the bulls came into view. They were huge creatures, far bigger than a fat guy on a Harley, with little gold balls on the tips of their horns. They were led by stern-looking farmers who didn’t look left or right, only straight ahead, as they led their bulls at the head of the procession. They looked like the kind of farmers you read about in Stephen King novels, doing unspeakable things in small-town granges. I could imagine them with those same stern expressions, holding torches and advancing on some poor victim on a moonless Maine night.

  Behind them we saw young farmers, some Cubby’s age, leading smaller versions of the beasts past us. They smiled and waved, a reassuring contrast to their somber-looking elders. “They’re not running at all. This is a cow parade!” Of course, I had already told him that this was a stroll, not a run, but my words didn’t count. In any case, I didn’t want to disappoint Cubby. “Maybe they will take off in a minute. Perhaps someone will jab a cow with a stick, and he will be off like a rocket, trampling spectators and crushing small cars.” Cubby looked hopeful. He also looked for a stick.

  He was having a good time, which was all that really mattered. We followed the cows all the way through town and down another hill to the Brattleboro Retreat. I told Cubby the retreat was a famous institution for the depressed and insane; his own grandmother had been there once. He had heard stories of her craziness, but she was just a nice old grandmother to him, so I never knew what he made of them. I guess our parents are very different for our kids.

  “Will they eat the cows?” Cubby’s focus had shifted a little bit from bull running, but he was not ready to make the topical leap from bulls to insanity. A shift from bull running to bull eating must have seemed more acceptable.

  As we descended the hill onto the lawn of the retreat, sounds and smells wafted up to greet us. Cubby’s attention was grabbed by two things: the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream stand and the guy cooking burgers right beside it. “Those burgers might have strolled past us a few minutes ago.” Cubby looked at me and then at the cows, and was momentarily speechless.

  I don’t think he had ever really considered the mechanics of converting cows to hamburgers before. He had a general idea that it happened, but there was no evidence of a factory or a machine to bring it about. Yet there it was. Behind us were hundreds of cows, filling the street. In front of us were hundreds of burgers, sizzling on a grill. The process remained a mystery, but the result was unmistakable.

  We ate the ice cream instead.

  Cubby loved our adventures, but one
particular Sunday in June was always special: Father’s Day. That was the day we went to Newport for the big car show.

  The year of the Heifer Stroll marked another turning point in our lives: My car company received Chairman Mao’s Mercedes-Benz for restoration. We’ve seen some unusual and sweet cars during my quarter century in business, but that was one of the finest. I had bought the car for a client, and we were just finishing an extensive mechanical overhaul that had lasted six months, through the winter and spring. I was proud of the work we’d done, and I liked the idea that we’d restored a piece of automotive history.

  The chairman’s car was just short of thirty years old—one of the last automobiles the Chinese leader ordered before his death in 1976. It was a massive 600 limousine complete with Chinese diplomatic plates and flagstaffs adorned with Chinese embassy flags on both front fenders. The car was four tons of polished black metal, with an interior of hand-stitched red leather, Macassar ebony, and French walnut veneers. With its blacked-out windows and official banners snapping in the breeze, it made a powerful impression.

  Even in a crosswalk, cars like that have the right-of-way. That is the wonder of diplomatic immunity. They can run you over, and all the local cops can do is protest to the State Department. Most times, that goes nowhere. What are one or two flat Americans to the ruler of China, with a billion subjects under his thumb?

  Of course, we were not diplomats, and the car was no longer an official diplomatic vehicle. We didn’t look the least bit Chinese either. But with darkened side windows and sufficient speed, no one could tell.

  Approaching an intersection, the car was sort of like an oncoming train. When you see the locomotive coming, you do not step out onto the tracks, hold up your hand, and ask the engineer for his qualifications. Right-of-way matters little when you face immediate annihilation. They’ll be wrong, but you’ll be dead. So you jump out of the way, quickly. And salute as they roll by, just in case.

  That was exactly what the Springfield Police did the first time I took the massive beast for a road test. Inspired by that show of respect, I decided to take the car for a longer run. The Newport Car Show was coming up, and Cubby and I needed a ride.

  It’s about a hundred miles from our house to Portsmouth Abbey, where the show is held. We set out at eight in the morning, with a cooler full of drinks and a bag of toys and games. I invited Cubby to ride up front, but the cavernous rear compartment proved irresistible, as I had thought it would. The first part of the journey passed uneventfully, as we rolled down the Mass Pike and Interstate 95. We went through the drive-through at the Sturbridge McDonald’s, but the cashier was so jaded she did not even notice Cubby. The fun really started when we pulled off the interstate onto Route 24 for the final ten miles into Newport.

  We approached our first stoplight at a brisk rate of speed. The light turned yellow, but cars like that do not just stop at the whim of traffic lights. I applied the brakes and our speed moderated, but we continued sailing forward at a pretty good clip. Some drivers might panic in a situation like that. Not me. I reached across the dash and flipped the switch for the annunciator, which began shrieking like an ambulance siren in an old foreign film. No one in his right mind would get in our way, including the police car we passed on our way through the red light. Not surprisingly, the cops pulled in behind us.

  “Watch out, Cubby, we might be getting stopped,” I warned him, but he remained unperturbed. All he did was shut the rear shade, so any pesky blue lights would not disturb his video game. I wondered what would happen next.

  A second police car appeared from a side street, to join the first. When that happens, you know you are in trouble. One cop car means a ticket. Two cop cars means you’re getting arrested. I wasn’t sure what we’d done to justify such action, but I warned Cubby and he was ready. Unlike me, he’d never been in jail, and the idea seemed kind of cool.

  But nothing happened. There were no flashing blue lights, and no one shouting through a loudspeaker, “Pull over and remain in the vehicle!” We continued sailing along, with all the lights green before us, and nothing standing in our way. Suddenly, it hit me. The cops had not pulled out to arrest us. They were there to escort us. I realized we had best not stop or step out of the vehicle, lest we spoil their image of Chinese royalty. I accelerated slightly as the annunciator roared briefly at an errant pedestrian. The police could arrest him later.

  We made it to the show in record time, only to find the entrance blocked. Two hundred cars stretched out in a line as harried volunteers admitted people one by one. There was always the challenge from the keepers of the gates: Are you parking or exhibiting? Cars that were deemed worthy of exhibition were allowed onto the show grounds. All others were consigned to the meadow down below.

  We did not have any doubt as to our car’s destination, and with two police cars to protect us, we saw no reason to linger. Chairman Mao certainly would not have waited. In fact, in his day, outriders would have cleared the riffraff from the road before he even appeared. In the sixties, the guards at the gate might well have been executed or at least imprisoned for their impertinence. We didn’t have armed outriders, but we had the next best thing.

  With a brief chirp from the annunciator, we drove into the oncoming lane, around the offending automobiles, and past the startled attendants. Our flags snapped crisply in the oncoming ocean breeze. The people at the gate turned to follow us as we motored by. Then they turned to our escorts. I don’t know what happened back there. Either they didn’t let the police cars pass, or else the cops decided their job was done. I wished I could thank them, but I didn’t want to be arrested for doing so. In the end, we simply watched them recede into the distance as we motored serenely across the grounds.

  We found two shady parking spaces and settled the car in with its littler brothers. The chairman’s Benz looked big enough to put any two of those smaller Mercedes in its trunk, with room to spare. I opened the door and stepped out into the sun. Cubby opened his door and emerged blinking, Game Boy in hand.

  Many eyes had followed Chairman Mao’s car in its stately progression across the show field. Nothing like it had ever appeared at the car show before. The crowd may not have known who was inside, but they knew he was important. The way that car looked, they probably expected someone like Oddjob from the James Bond movies to step out the driver’s door. Being aware of that, I waved as I got out. I think they expected someone else. Someone perhaps a little more Asian looking. And a passenger in the back with something more in his hand than a Game Boy.

  Later that day we learned we’d won a prize: Best in Class for Mercedes. Cubby took the award—a large silver platter—and loaded it with cookies for the ride home.

  By this time, Cubby had been doing gymnastics for several years, and he was really quite good at it. He could stand on his head on parallel bars and sit perfectly straight while hanging from a ring in midair. His cartwheels and tumbling put my own teenage efforts totally to shame.

  To get to that point, he’d spent countless hours practicing with Coach Cal and his teammates. Together they had made the transition from gawky kids to poised young athletes. As an added bonus, Cubby had made several new friends on the team. He spent all his free time talking to them and hanging out.

  The only problem was, the team went on vacation when school let out for the summer. At the same time, Mom decided to go to Mexico for her doctoral research. That meant it was up to me to manage our kid seven days a week and burn off his energy. Even though I’d never faced full-time kid management before, I was undaunted. I had a plan. I would send Cubby to gymnastics camp.

  At that time, the University of Massachusetts had a topflight gymnastics team that recruited athletes from all over the country. Cubby and I watched them whenever we got the chance. In fact, they won the ECAC championship that year, and my son and I were there to capture the moment in pictures. On a few occasions, his teammates from Hampshire Gymnastics got to work out with the college team, and when UMass co
mpeted in a big meet at West Point, the Hampshire Gymnastics team performed at halftime. The kids were awfully proud of that. Their parents were in the stands hollering louder than the families of the college gymnasts who were actually competing.

  When Cubby heard the men’s coach was offering a two-week summer camp, he was eager to sign up. Off we went.

  Everything went smoothly right up to the end. Coach Roy Johnson told me how much my son had improved on cartwheels, rings, and parallel bars as Cubby nodded his head in excited agreement. Hearing that, I decided to attend the last day of camp and photograph the kids. Armed with two cameras, I followed them through the pool, the bars, tumbling, and even outside for free-form moves on the grass.

  As I trailed them around, I could not help noticing that Cubby had made fast friends with several of the college gymnasts who helped Roy with the coaching. I remembered doing the same thing myself, when I connected with the grad students at my father’s school even as I failed to make friends my own age. The college students had the mental agility to follow the weird things a geeky kid like me would say, and I had no doubt the same thing was true for my own son. I also saw the way he took the time to help the younger kids and share what he had learned, and how the younger kids looked up to him. I was proud of that.

  At the end of the camp day, the coach had a surprise. “We’re going to Riverside Park,” he announced. Riverside was a large amusement park located half an hour away in Agawam. The kids were bouncing up and down at the thought of roller coasters and other scary rides. The coach had lined up transportation and I wasn’t too keen to spend a few hours in a crowded amusement park, so I wished them well and sent them on their way. “I’ll see you this evening,” I said as I watched them drive off.