The Right Eye of God

by Bacon Thorn

  Nuños pressed harder with his thumbs and gasped, “How does it feel dying alone? Breathing in bull shit . . . ? Smothering like your wife after I had her . . . ?”

  Navarre’s lungs were bursting, his eyes popping in their sockets, his arms weak, lifeless. As the red darkness closed, he twisted his head feebly, realizing too late it was a mistake! The powerful, bruising hands gripped tighter around his neck, lifting him, pulling him up, like a doll dangling, with his toes just touching the floor. The blood was roaring in his ears, or was it the crowd roaring outside, a distant thunder of surf on shore? His fingers plucked ineffectually at the vise closing off the supply of blood to his brain, and suddenly, he heard a sound, a terrible, final sound. He made one great, convulsive heave with his feet against the wall.

  The outward push took Nuños off balance and he stumbled backwards, releasing Navarre. Navarre fell, skidding on his face on the hard floor; his eyes were streaming and he gulped air into the ring of fire around his throat. The sound he had heard that had suddenly terrified him, that had given him a frenzied burst of strength, was the bull El Muerto. He had been let into the tunnel from the corrals. A wooden gate had been slammed with a crash behind the bull, trapping him in the darkness. Now the bull was waiting patiently for light to come and for a target to engage his attention, to arouse his wrath. He would charge when the red door, the gate of fright on the arena end of the tunnel, yanked open, flooding the tunnel with brightness, beckoning the waiting bull for the last corrida of the day. Trapped between El Muerto and the entrance to the arena were Navarre and Nuños.

  Even as Navarre thought about the ceremony of the red door and the bull charging out, it happened. One moment Navarre was on his hands and knees in the darkness, breathing raggedly through his injured throat, and the next moment the red gate slid open with a wooden bang. Light flooded the tunnel with a shaft of yellow radiance.

  Navarre heard the bull inhale, snort, and spring forward. In one electric instant of fright, his mind encompassed the moving black danger and Nuños, vaguely illuminated by the light from the door. He was sucking air noisily and raising himself with ponderous haste from the floor near the opposite wall where Navarre’s push had thrown him. Nuños knew too! He knew the bull was coming! His mouth was trembling, and his dark eyes rolled in his head. There was a flowering red patch of moistness around two holes just below the open left collar of his sport shirt. His hard chin was smeared with blood from his wounds.

  Navarre’s head was throbbing brutally, but his brain was clear as he crouched on his hands and knees for the next few seconds. Each heartbeat seemed like an eternity of waiting as the gathering storm of hoofbeats sent tremors through the trampled dirt floor where he was rooted.

  He heard the kettle drums roll faintly in the arena, and he thought idiotically that what Colorado said was true. Fear drinks moisture like a sponge. His mouth was dry as sand. He thought he would never again be ashamed of being afraid.

  Somehow, he gathered the strength to stumble toward Nuños. When the killer saw Navarre coming, he seemed startled, and then began screaming and clawing at the wall as Navarre’s intention became clear. There could be no mistaking the fixed madness in Navarre’s eyes. He was going to kill Nuños on the horns of El Muerto, even if he died himself in the struggle.

  Both of the men heard El Muerto breathing heavily now, a raspy, puffing sound, as his black shape roared into the area pierced by the light from the open red gate. With a great, wracking sob, Nuños, weakened by loss of blood, gasping and wheezing, fought to break the arm lock Navarre threw around his blood-smeared neck, but his quaking knees and flagging strength betrayed him. Navarre, in a frenzy of fear and hate, clamped his grip tighter on the soggy, straining Nuños and swung him as El Muerto lunged into the swath of light. As he let go of Nuños, knowing that he himself might be crushed, suddenly, with high triumph, certain of survival, Navarre screamed at the stumbling man flailing in the bull’s path: “The horns, Nuños! The ripping horns!” His own hoarse cries were drowned in the long wail of Nuños, the trembling, swift thunder of clattering hooves, and the sudden, solid impact as the low-slung, deadly horns spiked upward in a sweeping hook.

  Navarre hugged the scarred wall for long seconds after the bull brushed past him carrying Nuños like a squirming rag down the tunnel. He stared at his Beretta lying in the dust, picked it up, and jammed it in his waistband. Then he started running toward the arena when he heard the screaming horror of the crowd rip across the stadium like a shrill thunderclap in one great cry.

  He was too dazed to clearly see what happened to Nuños in the next few minutes. The bright sun glare confused him, and he heard a heavy wooden thump as the red toril door slammed down, closing the yawning mouth of the tunnel behind him. He was conscious of somebody shoving him roughly behind a wooden burladero and of questions being asked. He shook his head numbly; he couldn’t speak, his throat was raw, and his tongue clung to the roof of his mouth. He was quickly forgotten in the excitement of the bull in the arena. He needed water badly to wet his burning throat. He stumbled into a costumed man who was drinking Pepsi from a can and offered the man a five-hundred-peso note he dragged from his pocket in exchange for the can. Startled, the man relinquished it, and Navarre leaned wearily against the wooden wall of the callejón and cautiously bathed his swollen throat with the dregs of the lukewarm beverage.

  Navarre was startled for a moment by a loud ringing. He looked around quickly, a little wildly, until he recalled that he’d stuck his cell phone in his pocket. When he answered, he recognized Bombito’s voice.

  “Thomas, I need you. Meet me in the horse tunnel. Hurry.”

  Navarre’s response to the urgency in Bombito’s voice was like an electrifying impulse. He turned and, stretching his legs and running full tilt, he realized his fatigue had vanished. Surprised men who stood in the callejón saw him coming with his right forearm pointing up and the Beretta grasped in his hand and quickly jumped out of his way, clearing a path for him. He reached the entrance to the horse tunnel, much wider than the bull’s passage, and caught up with Bombito, who stopped long enough to explain about Menendez and his dogs. He added, “He’s not heavily armed, and his dogs are wearing yellow K-9 vests, to distinguish them from the others.”

  There was no need for Bombito to explain what was happening in the dimly lit tunnel. The minor uproar of savage clashing, clawing, biting, ripping, and snarling dogs tearing at each other was a vicious battle of fang and claw. Several animals, wounded or dead, had crawled or been flung to the edge of the furry mess. Those in the outer ranks of the concentrated bodies scrabbled furiously over the backs of those in front of them. Back and forth the black alpha dog in the center of the fray cut into muscle and bone, killing and maiming those who attacked him.

  Menendez, holding a pistol in each hand, was warily circling the crowd of wild animals, trying for a shot at one of the enemy dogs.

  Just for a moment, the murderous monster Navarre had feared would reappear was visible in the center of the surging ball of fur and snapping teeth, swinging his huge, blunt head and slashing fangs, spraying blood, tufts of fur, and bits of armored cloth on the dirt floor. Around the black dog were the bodies of several attackers he had slain. For an instant Navarre was overwhelmed with the conviction that the dog had seen the fear in his face that had paralyzed him once before.

  Then he was forced to act without thinking, for out of the bobbing throng sprang a gray-haired bitch wearing a green K-9 vest. Her target was Bombito, who was jacking another shell into his shotgun. At his feet was the dog he’d killed moments before.

  Alarmed by Navarre’s warning, Bombito raised his weapon to shield his throat, holding it like a parallel bar to protect him from the dog’s teeth. There was an audible click as they closed on the round steel barrel. The flying weight of the bitch’s body knocked the gangling Bombito to the floor of the tunnel, with the dog landing on his chest.

  The deafening explosion from Navarre’s Beretta pressed against
the dog’s ear temporarily blocked Bombito’s hearing and sprayed his face and chest with fragments of the dog’s fur, skull, blood, and brains.

  Navarre turned in time to see the black dog throw off the nipping leaders of the pack as if they were bothersome flies and wade out of the circle of death, pausing only long enough to rip a bloody furrow in one attacker’s face and tear another’s throat open. He ignored the impact of bullets from Menendez, which puffed harmlessly when they struck the body armor worn by the dog.

  Fearlessly, with his anxiety, his haunting premonition, the deep, fateful anticipation of his death in the jaws of the black one suddenly gone, Navarre waited, holding the Beretta at his side. His self-assurance and lack of fear puzzled the black beast, and there was caution in his eyes as he tensed his bulging muscles to spring. He was bigger than his dead relative in the desert, battle scarred—a few bleeding wounds on his jowls and one deep slash mark from under his left eye extending to his lip. But other than these wounds, he was unhurt.

  It was then Navarre noticed the necklace of long black feathers that circled his neck. When Navarre realized their origin, the fury in him he had kept banked like a smoldering fire suddenly burned high, fierce, and strong. Heedless of the monster dog’s strength and his obedience to the kill impulse, Navarre raised the Beretta, stepped toward the monster, and fired point blank as the brute Nuños had named Satan sprang. The three shots took him exactly in his left eye, gouging a bloody hole, stopping his brain, and halting his assault. He collapsed in a clumsy heap, the strength vanished from his legs and muscles and the awful energy of savage passion expired in his huge body. A shrill three-whistle blast halted the dogs trained by Menendez and they sat on their haunches, trembling with pent-up violence. There had been seven intruders; all were dead.

  To Navarre, standing over the lifeless corpse of Satan, the body of the sprawling hound seemed to be shrinking inward during the moments after his violent death. Not only was the killer diminishing in size, but he seemed to be withering away, a fading recollection of his former size, power, ferocity, and viciousness.

  For an instant Navarre was standing again in the silent, wild desert, drifting with faint smells of exotic flowers, cactus blooms, and smoky shrubs. He was staring upward at the amorphous, impossible shade taking form in the thick roll of smoke rising between the two ancient rock cairns over the demolished van and its charred victims.

  What Navarre strained to believe was the sharp cry, the flapping of wings, and the black bird that clawed and then flew out of the smoke fully formed—a solid apparition that climbed into the sky and flew away, a mystery.

  Bombito and Menendez joined Navarre to examine the still body of Satan, and Menendez was the one who asked uncertainly, “Where the hell’s the body? I saw you kill him. I saw him fall.” The men looked around among the dead dogs, but there was no sign of the large, black canine. On the hard dirt floor where Satan had disappeared, there was the singular unbroken necklace of long black feathers Satan had worn around his neck. It alone was the reminder of the dog.

  Navarre rose to his feet. He looked once more at the ring of feathers. His throat had begun to ache again, his head hurt, and he was exhausted. As he turned away, he pointed at the feather necklace and said with a curious resignation in his voice, “The Zopilote left us a reminder of who he is—a shape shifter. He’s the black dog and he’s gone.” But Navarre was not convinced the sin eater was truly dead.

  Later, a matter of a few minutes only, after he left the horse tunnel, Navarre saw Nuños’s body being carried on a dirty canvas stretcher. It was covered with a horse blanket. Navarre limped after the men with the stretcher as they plodded to the plaza infirmary. His throat ached intolerably. Maybe he could find a doctor at the infirmary who could give him something to soothe his pain.

  Navarre mused, with his exhausted state of mind and his suffering, that even if he had not been active in the killing of the escaped dogs, it was doubtful if he would have made a coherent witness to the drama that played out when Nuños came riding out of the gate of fright horribly impaled on the right horn of El Muerto.

  The screaming crowd of fans that came jerking out of their seats had a hundred or more versions of what happened to tell and retell, but probably only five people were close enough and objective enough to relate the story truthfully.

  One of these was Orfeo Gilban. As an aspiring torero who was a middle member of Cid Camaro’s cuadrilla, his duty was to set the bright, barbed divisa ribbons of the La Punta farms on the shoulders of El Muerto 73. It was he who first encountered the great bull.

  As he stared into the darkness of the tunnel from beside the raised gate, incredulously, vaguely, he saw the horns dip, heard the squeal of fright and the solid thump of contact, and then the great black bicho was thundering past, the proud, high neck unbowed under the weight of the squirming, spiked human on its horn.

  “Aii!! Mother of God, a cathedral of a bull with a ton of lard on its horn,” Gilban whispered, jumping back in horror and managing to implant the fluttering ribbons in the left rump. His blunder was excusable. He grabbed a cape and ran, beckoning for help as the big bull whirled and tossed Nuños. He rolled near the center of the arena, spotting the sand with gouts of blood as he flopped three times. He tried vainly, weakly, to gather the strength to crawl away.

  Gilban, standing closest, was successful in luring the bull with the rippling wave of his cape and stood stiff with his feet rooted as El Muerto swept past him like a train with a wide-open throttle on a straight track.

  Gilban saw the dripping, red-tipped horn graze the thighs of his pants, leaving a pencil line of red like a marker, and he ran, zigzagging with the cape trailing while the crowd roared an angry buzz of disapproval, and flung himself behind the burladero. He watched in sweating fright as the bull wheeled, ignoring the other diverting cape handlers who had gathered around Nuños, and plunged once more in a straight, unerring line at the recumbent figure. The toss was quick from off the left horn, and Nuños sailed over the back of the bull like a bag of straw. Then, sighting at a banderillero, the horned darkness rolled across the wide moon of sand as if his hooves were wheels, aiming for the man who flung himself behind a wooden shield an instant before the horns rapped the planks like pointed sledgehammers.

  When the bull disengaged his horns from the splintered wood, Nuños’s body had been dragged behind a burladero, and Cid Campeador y Camaro walked alone into the huge, empty, lonely desert, a white sacrifice who signaled his picadors mounted on their horses to move away.

  It was clear to all, the rare thing Camaro was going to do. He was going to fight the bull solo, without the help of his banderilleros, his picadors, or his monosabios. It was Don Toledo Bello, the critic, who had told a television audience of the bull’s great courage, who later described the terrible meeting of El Muerto and the Ghost Who Dances:

  “When Camaro motioned that the bull was not to be lanced in the shoulders to drain some of his power, I knew then what every soul in the plaza was thinking: relief that it was not they who were facing the raw soul of death in that black hide of muscle and sinew.”

  If Don Toledo Bello’s words had been eloquent, they were inadequate to describe Cid Camaro’s performance—it had never been matched in the history of the Plaza México. The bull went straight as an arrow for his cape. Seventeen times Camaro executed flawless passes that drew thunderous praise from the fans.

  The bull soared to Camaro’s cape, floating above the stained horns; he twisted with labored breaths and painful wrenches of his great body that swept the horn points across Camaro’s throat. The black bull charged to his knees as the cloth swept the sand, and he pivoted in dizzy circles as the ghost matador spun upon his nimble feet like a ballet dancer. It was a solo performance for Camaro from beginning to end. When, finally, the bull stood rooted in his tracks, his deep chest huffing, the swollen tongue lolling from the frothing mouth, his hide drenched with the sand-caked sweat of his labors, Camaro turned his back and bow
ed unsteadily to the president of the plaza, then to the president of the republic, sitting in their exclusive boxes; lifting his montera in respect, he asked for permission to spare this bull’s life.

  The word indulgence rose from a whisper, to a wave, to a blasting roar that seemed to shake the stands and make the sand dance with the motion of the clamorous sound.

  When he received the sign, Camaro walked to the center of the ring and, with the crowd in a wild fever of pandemonium, placed first the muleta, then the sword, upon the sand. Last of all, with great deliberation, he put down his hat, then calmly tore the coleta, the pigtail, from the back of his head and dropped it upon his hat. It was his gesture of resignation, his announcement that having fought the greatest bull ever to charge upon the sands of the Plaza México, he would never fight again

  At that moment the crowd broke loose from the seats and started pouring into the arena as the great, tired bull, bearing a wreath of flowers around his neck, was led away, loosely yoked between two docile oxen.

  In the plaza infirmary Thomas Navarre heard the jubilant roaring, and he thanked the doctor who had sprayed his throat with a soothing anesthetic which gave him immediate relief. He washed his hands and face with soap and water and was drying his skin when he saw the familiar figure of Lazlo Peñas. The chief of the Federal Judicial Police stood for a moment taking in the soiled American, expressing his immense relief at the sight of Navarre with his eyes only. Then, both men turned to gaze at the uncovered body of Nuños lying bloodied and deflated, still on top of a metal gurney. The Mexican looked naked without his weapons and somewhat comic with the silver wig askew on his head. His eyes were glazed and rimmed with a crust of dirt.

  What stuck in Navarre’s mind as he took in the gored and disheveled form, which made him sick of his own savage violence, was the condition of the ruined trousers. Even with the thick bloodstains, the circle of dust-caked wetness below the sagging belt line was the final ignominy, the crowning humiliation. Nuños had died with the big fear leak, the mierda de miedo, draining to simple cowardice and shame the immensity of his evil. Navarre then performed an act that drew a look of puzzlement, then understanding, from Peñas. He lifted a horse blanket over Nuños’s face and let it fall as a tidy final absolution—for the dead man and for himself. Then, the two of them walked down the corridor to the bullring.