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CARLOSTHE

IMPOSSIBLE J.T.K. BELLE



For Katie

Text and illustrations copyright 2010 by JTK Belle

Cover images courtesy Pannaria, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license via

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Advanced Reading Copy PDF, November 2010



Querencia:

que·ren·ciaIPA: /ke'renθ ja/

f.(acción de querer) fondness, affection(instinto de los animales) homing instinct

(guarida) den, lair (nido) nest, roost

colloquial (hogar) home, nest, a bullfighting bull's favorite spot in the ring

Etymology: from the verb quere (to desire, to want).

“A bull’s querencia is the spot in the bullring where the bull feels safest. Each bull willfind its querencia in a different place in the ring, though not uncommonly near the gate

where it entered. As the bull tires from the fight, it will seek to return again and again tothis comfort zone. The skilled matador will turn the bull’s querencia to his own

advantage, luring the bull into a tenuous security before preparing for the final blow.” – Book of Bulls: The Official Matador’s Handbook (2nd Ed)



“QUERENCIA IS THE MIRAGE OF A CORNER IN THE ROUNDNESS OF THE RING.”Hernando



1.

Once, outside of Ulysses, Kansas, by the banks of One Hundred Mile Creek, near the

source of the Pequot River, in a slanted sunflower field laid low by grazing cattle, a bullcalf was born to the cow Esmerelda. The calf was large, much larger than one mightexpect from its humble lineage. Later, as the legend grew, they would say the bull calf

was born with six-inch horns to the clanging of the nearby church bells. Or that itemerged smoldering from a ribbon of dry heat lightning. Or even that this was no bull at

all, but the offspring of Indian elephant and Jersey dairy cow. These types of apocryphalswill attach themselves to budding legends and gather details like a tumbleweed of

untruth. But here now are the true and simple facts of this taurine tale.Though large, the bull calf was born sickly, at the Plumpkin Ranch, and soon

afterward, Esmerelda died of the bovine pox. The calf was milked with a bottle byattendant ranch hands and even by Plumpkin himself, who was a gentle soul and grew

attached to the oversized calf, holding its head in his hands as it struggled to fill its lungs.Plumpkin injected the calf with antibiotics morning and night, and by its twentieth day,

the calf was standing on its own, drinking full buckets of milk and devouring eight-pound bags of grain.

Its health restored, the ranch hands watched the bull grow, gaining pounds andinches by the day. By six weeks it reached twenty hands high. By ten weeks, it had

outgrown the calving pen. By six months, it stood as tall as a plow horse. By two years,from horn to hoof, the animal towered over the smokehouse, its hulking frame casting a

shadow that spread over the sunflowers from the meadow at the near side of OneHundred Mile Creek to the limestone bluff on its farther side.

The bull was named Son of Carleton after the seed bull, and the ranch handscame, with some irony, to call him by the diminutive Carlito, and then more often, and

less ironically, Big Carl.Cornelius Plumpkin calculated the poundage and counted the money in his head.

Enough, he expected, to pay for an entire winter’s expenses.When the day came—the day Big Carl was led to the slaughterhouse to be

destroyed—the farmer took measure of his impending fortune with a mixture of wonder and remorse.

What a magnificent animal to have to pay for the winter’s bills, he thought. Butwhat else to do?

The proprietor of the slaughterhouse was equally bemused by the giant bull,though he frowned when the chute scale crumpled under Big Carl’s weight. And so an

agreement on the weight was made without an official recording.Without a hint of fear, Big Carl walked the steps to the door of shed number five,

where the stunner gun was loaded with bolts. The shot was fired. Big Carl did not fall.The stunner was reloaded, and another shot fired. Still standing, Big Carl tilted his head,

eyed the stunner with innocence and suspicion, squinted. Two bullets now sat lodged inhis head, above his left eye, beneath the root of the horn.

The stunner proceeded through the process, as he had done a thousand times, as itwas always done before. He thrust his long knife forward to the carotid, where it scraped



on Big Carl’s hide and swerved sharply sideways. Recoiling, the hand tried again, moreforcefully this time. The knife snapped at the middle of the sheath and fell clanging on

the tile floor.This bull cannot be killed, the slaughterhouse man said.

The men stared at Carl and Carl stared back at them, by his sidelong look

sympathizing with their confusion and disappointment.With nothing else to do, the rancher led Big Carl back into the cattle truck anddrove him home to the slanting sunflower field beside One Hundred Mile Creek, where

the bull spent the following year idly grazing on bluestems and watching gently flowingwaters pass between the limestone bluffs and press on down to the mighty Pequot River.

And then one day, a man arrived at Cornelius Plumpkin’s door.

I hear you have a large bull, the man said.Yes, said Plumpkin.

A very large bull, the man said.As big as a smokehouse, said Plumpkin.

The man introduced himself as Douglas Button, a rodeo promoter from KansasCity. Plumpkin led Button to the field where the bull stood on a rise, eclipsing the

afternoon sun as the men approached. The closer they crept, the darker the sky became,until Button realized it was the shadow cast by the bull that enveloped the width of the

sunflower field.What a magnificent specimen, Button gasped. I’d like to bring him to Kansas

City. To the rodeo.He won’t buck, said Plumpkin.

He’s four thousand pounds if he’s a feather, Button said. He could lie on his bellyin the shade and they’d still come from miles to see him.

Carl sensed them there. He was used to being spied. He sidestepped slightly andturned his head to see them, allowing the sun to rise slowly over the horizon of his

shoulders. Button took in the enormity of the animal.My goodness, he said.

In Kansas City, the crowds did come at first. But Carl was less accommodating

than Button had hoped. Without bucking, there was little other than Carl’s size to promote— no brave riders to draw a story line, no narrative to sell. They did not, in fact,

come from miles just to see the giant bull sitting in the shade. The sums the rodeos werewilling to pay declined in short order.

I have another idea, Button said to Plumpkin.And what is that?

Bullfighting.Bullfighting?

Think of the draw!At the rodeo?

No, in Mexico. I know an agent in Mexico City.And who would fight this bull?

Someone will.He can’t be fought, Plumpkin said, shaking his head. He hasn’t the temperament.



It would be futile. And one-sided.

Eventually, of course, the bull would fight. How else could it be? Yes, this bullwould fight, in a way.

They said Carl was bred to fight. Not true. Carl was not bred to fight. Fighting

bulls were bred for courage, which to the man with the cape is entwined with predictability. Knowing just how the bull will come to him is the only thing that stands between the matador and his death.

Carl never knew fear to overcome. Courage was his nature.When a fighting bull’s courage is finally taken—when the bull is worn down by

the toreros, exhausted and resigned to its fate in the ring—it will go to its querencia, thatspot where the bull feels safest, where it will return, predictably, where the matador will

have to lure him forward to deliver the final, fatal blow.Carl possessed a calm that betrayed his querencia wherever he went. From Kansas

to Ronda to Mexico City, Carlos the Impossible, as he would become known, wouldalways find his querencia here, in a sloping sunflower field, beside the gently flowing

waters of One Hundred Mile Creek, near the source of the Pequot River.



2.Hernando despaired the new age of bullfighting: younger men (younger than he), without

technique but full of bravado, fighting ever smaller bulls bred for ease in poorlyorchestrated contests. Worst of all was the delegating, the wearing down of the bulls to

the banderilleros. All while commanding enormous sums for fancy cape work and little

more. Gone were the days of Arruza, his hero; Jamie Bravo, his mentor; and Manolete,oh Manolete!Often he thought to himself, I am the last of a dying breed, the last of the true

matadors. When he was a younger man it mightn’t have bothered him, but Hernando was

now thirty-five years old. And these younger men with their lesser skills were earningnearly equal his wages, a king’s ransom in this age, tricking uneducated crowds into

believing them worthy of it.Fighting bulls had made Hernando a rich man but cost him a marriage (a brief

one, to a starlet of TV Azteca), the services of his agents and managers (none lasted morethan a year), and countless friendships (hangers-on, who needed them?). Now the

newspapers called him a ladies’ man, Don Juan; they said his emerald green eyeshypnotized the ladies and the bulls with equal rewards. But he was happier with the bulls.

Hernando eyed the crowd. Half of Mexico City it seemed was in attendance. Thedrunks in the sun seats huh-huh’d as the bulls stirred in their pens—the two matches

before his had not satisfied their appetite for drama. They wanted only to see the master.Hernando, the Legend of the Fiesta Brava.

Truth be told, he despised them, mostly. He often complained to anyone listeningthat nine of every ten in the Plaza did not understand. They did not understand the

tragedy that unfolded before their eyes, did not comprehend the noble act for itsintentions. Did not appreciate the difference between a courageous bull and a difficult

bull, did not award him ears or hooves based on anything more than a few flourishes of the cape and a few predictable passes.

Give me one-tenth the ticket sales, he would say, and forget the rest. We would all be happier.

Before each corrida, when he knelt to pray to the Virgin of the Macarena, hewould genuflect casually and ask the Lady not for Her protection and a well-behaved bull

with courage and broad shoulders, but only for a knowledgeable crowd and a windlessday.

Hernando’s bloodline was spilled in the sand by a long family history of middling

matadors. His great-grandfather, who was called El Gaucho, was known for his luck andrecklessness until he was gored nearly to death by the bull Ozomatzin and became a

shoemaker in Aguascalientes. His grandfather El Zapatero was killed by the blue roanZorrito, which his father Juan then had beheaded and mounted above the television in the

family home where it stared down over Hernando’s truculent youth like a mounted Sirencalling the boy to the bulls. Juan, who went by El Pescador, fought for fifteen years, first

as a picador, then in ferias in the south, then in the bloodless fights for the cruise shiptourists in Baja, before retiring to the guava orchards of Ronda.

From a young age Hernando was possessed of a seriousness, an artfulness, notconferred by the Ages on his lineage. He was, they said, touched by the Taurine Fates,



raised up from mediocrity by the angels of the corrida. Even now, at the sunset of hisgreat career, these expectations weighed on him, punctuated his every victory with a

lingering question mark. How much closer to the horns can you go? How many ears,hooves, and tails are enough? What more can you give them before bravery turns to

foolishness and luck turns cold? Who can outrun the horizon?

It is true, the story they tell, that in his youth he fought two bulls at once. This wasduring the Feria de la Exuberancia Juvenile after a poor season when he felt the need todo something grand, something to redeem his lesser efforts of the year before. Now in the

towns around Ronda, where he was born, they will look you in the eyes and tell you hestood in their very plaza de toros with ten bulls at once, and tell you they were blessed to

witness it. What bravery, what honor! Hernando!

He would earn ninety thousand pesos for this fight. More and more, he found himself alone in the ring with the bull, thinking not of the preparations, or the pacing of the

veronicas, or the tendencies of the bull as it came at the cape, but of his newest home inZihuatanejo, high on a bluff overlooking the warm Pacific. Another year of this, another

house. The next one in Cabo San Lucas, possibly a penthouse in the city. Granitecountertops in the chef’s kitchen. Parquet flooring…

In his prime—and the drunks in the sun seats would argue he was past it—hewould have chased these thoughts from his mind in an instant to concentrate only on the

bull. But after twenty years in bullfighting plazas from Tijuana to Cozumel, he sensedthat he was growing bored. The challenge was diminished. His stature was assured.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it was time to— The bull charged out from the callejon and through the gate confidently.

Smoothed sand kicked up under its hooves. This one was a fine animal. From the famedDon Fausto Meza breeding ranch in Tlaxcala. Full of courage and, his men assured him,

this bull galloped straight and true as a train on rails. Perhaps a little smallish, but thick-necked, broad-shouldered, with horns spread wide and curved forward. His glassy pelt

waved over sun-drenched muscle and shimmered in the afternoon sun.Hernando’s focus returned, his senses heightened. The old instincts flooded back;

he smelled the carnitas of the vendors walking the tendidos, heard the horses' quickening breath and the peanut shells hitting the dusty floorboards, saw the presidente of the Plaza

whispering to his companion in the owner’s box, as the late afternoon sun faded throughthe thin breeze, raising the shaven hairs on the back of his neck.

Through the First Act, Hernando critiqued the work of the peónes who ran the bull about, waving capes and testing the animal’s bearings. Fine, thought Hernando,

nothing peculiar with this one. As the picadors approached on horseback, the bull pawedat the sand, then charged. With a thud, the Tlaxcalan put his left horn up into the padded

belly of a picador’s horse. The horse sidestepped, and then fell. Shuffling peónes with athick black tarp quickly covered it over. After this, the picadors had little difficulty,

wounding the snorting Tlaxcalan with several sharp thrusts of the lances into the thick muscle between the shoulders.

In the Second Act, Hernando, full of theatrics, set the banderillas himself, jumping, stabbing deep into the shoulder muscle with two heavy fists, then dancing away

to the delight of the crowd. The colorful sticks bobbed from the animal’s back and fell atits flanks as it skipped forward, snorting and coughing in the direction of the great



matador who walked on his toes, head high, back turned, hand on hip, away from thewounded bull.

By the Third Act, the bull had slowed, its head held low, drooping, its bulgingshoulder muscles exposed, nearly spent but not yet ready for the sword.

Each pass yielded a thunderous Olé! The bull passed, galloping more slowly, but

required little goading.Olé!Another pass. And another.

Olé!Olé!

Hernando stood, feet together, pulling the muleta back gracefully, as the bull’shorns glided past his navel. The Tlaxcalan slowed further still, and retreated toward the

gate on the far side of the ring, seeking what Hernando called “that mirage of a corner inthe roundness of the ring”: its querencia.

Hernando paused for the benefit of the crowd.Take him, Hernando!

He’s ready, Great One!Hernando allowed the bull to gather its courage—he sensed the bull preparing

itself for the denouement. He pushed the muleta forward, slowly, clicking his tongue. Hewaited patiently, pulling gently again and again at the smaller cape, allowing the calls

from the crowd to grow louder.This will earn him a tail, he thought. His third of the season.

The bull lunged. Hernando stood on his toes and presented the sword with hissignature arching of the back (they called this “the Hernando”), before he stepped

forward and plunged the sword high between the shoulders of the exhausted bull. With asnort, the animal fell to its knees and collapsed forward, a little fountain of blood rising

from its back and spilling into the sand as Hernando leaned-to and spread his arms likewinged victory, and the crowd erupted with chants of his name.

After the corrida, Hernando and his men retired to drink tequila at Café La Mancha and

discuss the day’s events.The matador was asked by a peóne about the other fighters of the day. Hernando

was reluctant at first, but he had been drinking double shots, and when his tongue issufficiently loosened he cannot stop it from betraying his true thoughts.

What did you think of Ordonez today, matador? the peóne asked.Ordonez? the matador huffed. Without flair, and he knows nothing of bulls. Did

you notice how he went to the bull in its querencia? Sheepish. Like a schoolboy to aspanking.

And Jimenez?Technically competent, but cowardly at times. Terrible with the kill. He will soon

need a longer sword to reach the bull!This went on. Names of other matadors of the day provided, Hernando responded

quickly, batting back each name with candid derision.Tito Suarez? A bore.

La Rosa? Awkward, angular, like a cactus with happy feet.Villacorta? He dances like a chicken.



Diego Caron? Brave, I suppose, but stupid. He will be dead inside a year.And how do you rate your performance today, matador?

Hernando paused and considered the question with a frown.Average, he finally replied, with a casual wave of the hand. The bull today was on

the small side for my liking. They are bred too small these days. Breed them larger, I say.

We will see who remains in the ring then. There is not a bull alive I cannot handle.Hernando’s words hung in the air. The peóne squinted and turned the tequila bottle in his hand.

I’m sure that is the truth, the peóne said slowly. And since it is, there is somethingyou should know.

Yes?There is a bull fighting in the south.

Fighting? If you are a bull you fight only once.Jaripeos, the peóne said. And street fights. All manner of amateurs. They say he

ran the Humanatlada, then fought in Sincelejo the following day. I understand he is nowrunning in the capeas in your hometown of Ronda. This bull has fought ten times and

killed thirty-nine men.Ten times? What do you take me for?

It’s true. They say he is as big as a cathedral.Ha!

And made of stone.There is no such bull.

They say the earth moves under his hooves.Do they?

I assure you, it’s quite true. This comes from Caron’s men.Caron?

Yes. He intends to fight the bull. He says the capeas of Ronda are no place for such a beast. I’m sure you’ll agree. Diego Caron is in negotiations with the owner of the

bull. He will promote him to the Plaza and kill him honorably.Caron is a child and a cape waver. If this bull is as difficult as you say, he will be

gored before the trumpet blows.I tell you, jefe, he is a beast. This bull is invincible.

A week passed. The stories filled Café La Mancha nightly, passing from table to table,

the tumbleweed growing larger. —This bull they call Carlos fights in the capeas. Haveyou been to Ronda to see? —No, but he killed a cousin of my wife. They say he took off

and swallowed the poor bastard’s arm. —And still the bull lives? —He goes on fighting,he can’t be killed. —He’s tall as an elephant, with a hide twice as thick. —Did you hear?

Diego Caron has been to see him, he intends to bring him to Mexico City. To the Plaza.Another week. More stories of the giant bull passed through the smoke-filled

cantina. —Caron has been to Ronda. —And? —They say he is having second thoughts.When Hernando had heard enough of Caron’s name floating in the stale, hazy air,

he clenched his teeth, made a fist, and slammed it to the countertop.Find me this bull’s owner! he yelled. I will guarantee him ten times Caron’s price.

I will do this as a favor to Caron, to spare his life, and as a gift to the afficianados whodeserve the return of honor to the corrida. And their money’s worth at that!



The following evening, Button appeared. Standing in the doorway of Hernando’s

villa in Las Lomas, straw cowboy hat atop his head, knowing twinkle in his eye. Hesmiled a toothy smile.

Over iced tea in the madrone-paneled drawing room, Button told Hernando of the

bull. I am told this bull is big as a cathedral, Hernando said.Two thousand kilos, give or take, Button said, nodding.

Impossible!So he’s been called. I don’t blame you for your skepticism. You must see him to

believe it.These are the tales of drunks stumbling home from the festivals.

Ha! Well, there are enough of those.And so they are true, then? These reports? He has killed fifty men?

The number is twenty-three. But don’t be fooled, this is no Miura bull. A giant,yes, but he is somewhat passive. Most were trampled crossing under him like calves.

Trampled? How many gored?Only two have been gored, and only as they went for his eyes.

What you say disgusts me. The capeas are for butchers and cowards.I agree. This bull belongs in the Plaza.

With a professional. To have the fight brought out of him. To die nobly at thehands of a true matador.

Well, then, matador. Do we have a deal?Hernando put his fingers to his cheek and scratched upward absentmindedly

against his day’s beard.Why do you approach me and not the empresarios? he asked sharply. It would be

more proper.I’ve found the empresarios reluctant on the basis there is not a matador with nerve

enough to fight this bull. They say only the senseless and the drunk young machos in thecapeas have such nerve. Caron has, how shall I put it? Reconsidered. And so, like a good

producer, I must first secure a star before selling this show. If you agree, I have no doubtthe Plaza will be most pleased to host our event.

Hernando nodded distractedly as he considered his fate as savior of the FiestaBrava.

It will be an honor to kill this bull, Hernando said at last with a faraway look inhis emerald eyes.

And so the deal was struck. It was arranged that the empresario for the Plaza Mexico

would buy the giant bull from Button for Hernando to fight. Come the Fiesta de la FuerzaIrresistible, the Great One would meet the bull that was born of a thunderclap at the great

ranch of Plumpkin with six-inch horns as smoke poured from his cavernous nostrils, the bull that could not be killed in a Kansas slaughterhouse, the bull who had taken a hundred

lives in the capeas of Ronda with not a drop of his own blood spent in the effort, the bullwho they said would not quite fit through El Arco de Cabo, and had come by now to be

known to the aficionados as Carlos the Impossible.



3.They came by Metro, they came by bus. They came on foot and in white-topped Beetle

taxis, drinking from cola bottles and smoking puros and fanning themselves with broad- brimmed hats and taurine magazines. A swelling crowd of aficionados, fifty thousand in

all, snaked toward the bull-statued gates to the Plaza Mexico. Everywhere they looked,

on storefronts and bus stops and bulletin boards in market squares, hung red and yellow posters that cried:

HERNANDOWITH THE GIANT BULL OF PLUMPKIN!

ORDONEZ AND SUAREZ

WITH THE BULLS OF DON FAUSTO MEZA

The fat-lettered posters showed Hernando enveloped in shadow, his emerald eyestransfixed on the enormity of the passing bull, left horn brushing his thigh, cape held out

on a stiff right arm, his feet locked firmly to the sand.Five o’clock in the afternoon. Murmurs circled up and around the great

amphitheatre. A brass band stirred. As the sun crossed over the roof of the upper standsand held directly above them, three gold-suited matadors stood in the ring, flanked by

their men—Hernando centermost, to the delight of the expectant aficionados.While Hernando drank in a long ovation, Carlos stood up in his too-small pen

beneath the pulsating Plaza stands and listened as the brass band struck up a pasodoble.He liked the sound of the tuba best. Of all the noises that came in that paseo music, it was

the low boom of the tuba that lifted him most. The music came in through the ceilingabove him as it rattled with the foot traffic of the thousands taking their places in the

shaded seats. Dust fell on his back and he shook it off with a swipe of his tail.The pasodoble ended.

Trumpets blew.And then every few moments, a dark-eyed man under a felt sombrero descended

the long ramp to the corrals beneath the stands and let loose another bull from another pen that would charge in a craze up the ramp and into the arena.

Whenever this happened, Carlos heard trumpets give way to mild applause, then ahandful of scattered Olés, and then again mild applause.

Soon enough, the man approached Carlos’s pen with a grimace and radiated adesire to retreat. The man steeled himself deep in his boots and gently slid back the rust-

chipped gate bolt. The gate swung open with a loud creak and the man called loudly,Huh-huh! over his shoulder as he scampered up the ramp and slipped back into the arena.

Carlos squeezed through the opening and double-stepped up the ramp toward thesunshine and the sound of the trumpets.

As the trumpets blew, the crowd stood, craning necks and leaning on toes towardthe callejon. When Carlos reached the top of the ramp he paused in the gate jamb (which

had been widened just so, to let pass his hulking frame) and slid through it slowly,scraping his shoulders as he went. When at last he emerged from the shaded chute, his

shadow unfurled before him like a Zapotec rug cast onto the orange sand and into thecenter of the great theatre.



The crowd gasped at first sight of the giant bull.Que enorme! they cried as he came farther from the shadows.

It is true, they exclaimed, as he strode into the sunlight. He is a monster! He must be an elephant! they declared as Carlos settled into the ring, twenty steps

from the gate, turning his head from side to side, the better to size the tittering crowd.

Their loyalty was paid for, but Hernando’s men grew nervous. Their misgivings atsigning on to this event weighed heavily, despite the doubling of their wages. For his part, the matador grew only more confident as Carlos’s shadow drew forward to engulf

him in the unshaded half of the bullring.Your head will look fine above my television, toro, Hernando thought to himself.

Forever from this day, they will talk of the glorious afternoon the Great Hernando took down the impossible bull.

Someone, a journalist from the local paper in Ronda, or possibly it was El Norte,once asked him the secret of his ways. Hernando would not divulge it, not to a

journalista, not to a lover; but to the men in his cuadrilla he would tap the side of his headwith two fingers and declare, It is simple, boys—you have only to think like a bull.

And so as the giant beast stood there, long white horns like a crescent mooneclipsing the afternoon sun, he turned his head from side to side and Hernando wondered,

What are you thinking, toro? Carlos did not charge. He took in his surrounding with a calm confidence,

tranquilly noting the men with the capes shuffling nervously ahead of him. He scannedthe height of the Plaza before him and walked himself around in a tight circle to survey

his rear. Carlos sensed this was no capea, but rather something much more…pleasant.A peóne leaned into Hernado’s shoulder and said quietly, I don’t like this,

matador.Hernando’s eyes remained fixed on the giant bull. Settle the horses, he said in his

cold calm way.Carlos walked another tight circle. No, this was not like the capeas, with their

unstructured violence and frenzied mobs. No silly young men darting across cobblestonealleys and huh-huh’ing over their shoulders as they skittered past his horns. There was a

rhythm to this, a precision, if awkward and unclear in its point. Nonetheless, the First Act was futile. The terrified peónes with their quivering

capes failed to discern anything of use about the bull’s tendencies. It’s no use, jefe! they cried. He won’t run.

The picadors’ efforts came to much the same. Which is to say, they failed todamage the animal, failed to so much as break his hide with their lances, failed utterly to

incense the unflappable Carlos at all. To the observant aficionados, the bull seemedmerely curious of the goings on: the thick-padded horses prancing in the ring, the men

with long pics mounted atop them, thrusting them toward him awkwardly and from toogreat a distance, the lone man with bright green eyes standing near the sideboards sizing

him up, taking him in.Send the horses closer.

The awkwardness multiplied as the horses pulled up short, refusing to approachthe bull that dwarfed them. The men saddled on their backs urged them forward and

slapped them on their withers, but still the horses refused, high-stepping sideways andaway to the fence.



Laughter circled the Plaza. Never mind the horses! Hernando called out.

Hernando came to the center of the ring. A shower of hurrahs greeted him there.Still, Carlos still did not charge. He came forward, leaned forward into a half step,

the better to see Hernando’s eyes—emerald green eyes that grew wide and electric and

dared him to run.Olé! the drunks shouted in mock celebration.Carlos’s eyes dilated like the blooming black rose.

Finally the burning intensity of the matador’s green glare pulled Carlos to him asthe giant bull felt that old mystical impulse and at last divined from Hernando’s eyes that

to play his part correctly he must come forward.Carlos made a passive attempt at a charge.

And another.As Carlos caught on to the cues, his charges, deliberate and reserved, shook the

earth, and with each measured pass, the Plaza crowd let out a series of slow-rollingOooooooo-lés. After several of these cautious passes at the cape, Hernando’s confidence

grew further. He inched closer to the gliding horns with each pass, for the benefit of thecrowd and for the sake of the Fiesta’s redemption.

Carlos began to quicken the pace, sensing now what was expected of him.Olé!

Take him wide, Hernando!

But no. This was too sloppy. Hernando resigned himself then to kill the bull

quickly and forego any further domination with such graceless passes. When Carloslowered his head, Hernando plunged the sword as best he could into the giant bull’s back,

high up between the shoulders in the spot they call the morillo, which required a little jump step, an unflattering concession to the scale of the beast. The sword bowed in the

middle, then broke at the tip and snapped upward into the air, hanging for a moment inthe held breath of the puzzled crowd, then landed ten paces from Hernando’s feet after

those feet had touched down again on the sand.Fifty thousand mouths went all agape.

Nonplussed, Hernando eyed the beast. Carlos remained still, looking up only briefly into the sun seats where the drunks laughed with swollen red faces.

Thinking he’d struck bone, Hernando wiped his brow with his silk suit sleeve,retrieved the damaged sword, walked to the relichero with his back to the bull and was

handed a replacement, which he inspected against the sideboard with a heavy thwack,and then marched solemnly back toward center ring.

Carlos followed the matador with his eyes.Hernando took position, inciting Carlos again with the cape.

Carlos walked toward Hernando and made an effort to catch the cape with hishorn. Emboldened, Hernando waved the cape again and stepped around to Carlos’s rear.

Curious, Carlos circled with him. They did this slow hat dance several times, until thecrowd grew restless.

Basta! they cried.To the end! they cried.

Lowering the muleta, Hernando set Carlos’s head low and prepared to plunge thesword deep between the shoulder blades. But when he did, again the sword bowed and



snapped, shooting upward and out of the matador’s hands, arcing end over end andfalling to the ground.

Hernando’s invectives circled the ring, echoing up into the warm, still afternoonair.

You will need an elephant gun! they cried.

From behind the barrera wall, a drunk tossed an empty bottle that shattered in theouter ring, causing both Carlos and Hernando to turn their heads at once. The bull’s lefthorn caught Hernando high up on the thigh and threw him upside down through the air.

Blood sprayed into Carlos’s eyes as he heard a shriek and the matador’s body thump tothe sand.

Two peónes darted through the slits in the barrera and pulled him toward therailing, blood trailing behind him in a long black tail. Hernando struggled to return to the

bull, clawing for the sword. The picadors grabbed his feet but he slashed at them with thesword until they held up their hands and backed away. Then he flailed wildly in the

direction of the bull, pulling himself on his elbows, lines of blood now crisscrossing inthe sand.

Hernando lost himself at the bull’s front hooves, with his sword held back, ready but unable to strike. The wide-eyed peones dragged him quickly backward with shuffling

feet as Carlos stood motionless, red-tipped horns held high, Hernando’s blood drippingdown from his nostrils.

As they raised Hernando over the rail and hoisted him onto a stretcher, Hernandocame to just long enough to pardon the bull. Save this one, he said. I will meet with him

again.Yes, it is true that Hernando pardoned the bull, staying an unlikely execution.

This was no noble gesture, as a matador might make for a particularly valiant bull after a particularly noble fight. For Hernando intended only to return and kill this bull himself.

This act, the pardon, was, of course, unnecessary, for as the picadors said amongthemselves, Who could kill this impossible bull?

Hernando spent forty-three days in hospital, in a suite once occupied by a twice-gored

Jamie Bravo, his slowly improving vital signs reported daily in El Norte.The Great Matador’s recovery was complicated by infections and malaise. His

suite overlooked a circular garden filled with well-kept zinnias, dahlias, and marigolds. Inhis narcotic hallucinations what he saw there was a bullring: a magical ballet played out

in cloud shadows and blowing leaves, surrounded by long-stemmed aficionados blowingkisses and applauding him with rose petals. Hernando saw himself there, fighting the

giant bull with a duvet for a cape and a maguey frond for a sword, both of which hedragged wearily behind him as he desperately circled an impossible beast. Sweat poured

from him as he was weaned from the morphine and finished the last of the antibiotics thatwere fed to him through intravenous tubes.

On the forty-fourth day, he left the hospital, emerging from the halogen halls,squinting into the daylight and walking with the assistance of a crook-handled acacia

cane. Quickly he was surrounded by a throng of paparazzi at the hospital lobby doors. How do you feel, matador? the throng barked from behind flashing bulbs. Will

you fight again? To which he responded only with silence, turning to stare out thewindow of his chauffeured sedan as it departed, and daydreaming of the day he would



rejoin the impossible bull in the ring and put him to his overdue death.

A year passed. Gradually, Hernando regained his footing, dispensed with the crook-handled acacia cane, and at last sat for a Televisa interview that was broadcast on the eve

of the following season:

Journalist:How grave were your wounds?

Hernando: Not too serious, really.

Journalist:But you spent forty days in hospital.

Hernando:For exhaustion, it seems. And dehydration.

Journalist:I understand the horn discovered the femoral artery.

Hernando:They tell me it was grazed, yes.

Journalist:With three trajectories!

Hernando:I did feel a tickle down there.

Journalist:Will you retire from the ring?

Hernando:I think not.

Journalist:So then what is next for you, matador?

Hernando:I intend to return to the Plaza and kill the giant bull come November.

Journalist:You mean to say you are planning for a rematch? With the very same bull?

Hernando:I prefer to think of it as a continuation after intermission.

Carlos spent the Mexican winter lying in the cool shade of a calabash tree on a rolling

cactus-hilled breeding ranch in Tlaxcala where Hernando knew the owner, the famedDon Fausto Meza, well; as a favor to his friend (and for his own sport), Hernando would

often test the ranch’s young bulls for bravery and form in the private sessions they callthe tientas.

On Carlos’s first day there, the ranch’s herd of twenty calves receded in unison tothe far side of the field to escape the enormity of the imposing stranger. When Carlos

approached them with his nose to the ground and his morning shadow coming at themlike a blackened cape, their eyes widened as they parted and then fled with stuttering

gaits to the rocky foothills (looking over their shoulders as they went). Don Fausto fearedthat Carlos had unsettled the young bulls and sapped their courage, so he instructed his



vaqueros to build a new fence of mesquite wood and river rocks and cleave the field intwo. One side for Carlos where he idled away the long days alone under the winter sun,

and one for the suspicious little toros that kept well back of the barrier that separatedthem from their fearsome cousin.

The ranch hands were no less spooked than the baby bulls. Don Fausto told them

only half in fun that he thought the giant bull was the reborn spirit of the evil one theycalled Huay Chivo and not to look the thing in the eyes.



4.La revancha! The rematch between the great matador and the impossible bull was set for

La Fiesta de la Objeto Inamovible. Red-lettered posters announced the event on shutteredtiendas and busy bus stops and papered-over graffiti on the city’s walls for all of

September and October. During those long, hot weeks, across cantina tabletops, in street

cafes and tequila bars from Tijuana to Vera Cruz, aficionados debated the merits of manversus bull. They debated with the fevered logic of fanatics and the foulest language of philosophy. They argued on the television and on the radio, they argued at work and at

home, over cold meals, under warm sheets, and with the purple prose of letters betweenquarreling lovers.

Inevitably, the gambling houses began accepting wagers on the bullfight. Buthow? Who had ever taken odds on the bull in a bullfight? As the debate wore on, the

betting line hopped like a jumping bean from side to side, until the last placid November week when the odds finally settled at three to one in favor of the bull.

The day arrived under calm blue skies. Ah, pulsing butterflies, buddinggooseflesh and the high adventure of an afternoon at the corrida! Hernando spent more

than his usual passive few moments in the Plaza’s chapel that morning, praying withstudied efficiency to the Virgin of the Macarena. Then he repeated his routine of

superstitions for good measure—massaging his earlobes and the soles of his feet,touching the wallet-worn picture of his first bull, Hamartia, and one in profile of the great

Arruza, then silently reading that old poem of Lorca’s.When he finally took to the ring with a deep breath and a signing of the cross, the

crowd rose to its feet and roared, a show of respect that defied the betting line that sofavored the bull. At this, Hernando puffed with pride and his stomach, which had

betrayed him with flutters, calmed once again.While Hernando drank in his ovation, Carlos stood up in his too-small pen

beneath the pulsating Plaza and listened as the brass band played The Spanish Gypsy Dance. He listened fondly to the familiar booming tuba. When the refrain came around

he held his head high and his black nostrils flared wide and rang in the chorus with thetuba bell. The gypsy dance grew louder as the floorboards above him shook under the

long parade of those taking their seats in the shade. Dust settled on his snout and hediscarded it with a lick of his salty tongue.

Soon enough, a slightly built man with his hair in a ponytail approached Carlos’s pen on the balls of his feet. The man blew a quick breath and slid back the rust-chipped

bolt in the gate. The gate swung open with a loud creak and the man called, Ah-ha, ah-ha!as he backpedaled up the ramp and into the arena. Carlos double-stepped through the

open gate and followed the man up the ramp toward the soothing sounds of the tuba.Trumpets blew. The crowd leaned in. When Carlos reached the top of the ramp

and emerged from the shaded chute, the crowd stood again and they roared and they jeered at equal decibels. In all the corridas de toros in all of Mexico and far beyond, never

had there been such an incongruous reaction at the entrance of a bull to the bullring.Carlos took in the crowd happily, not at all perturbed by the strange contrast of

noises swirling in the round. But what became of the tuba? He scanned the greatamphitheatre from right to left, and then left to right. Fifty thousand round faces looked

back down at him. The one belonging to the presidente of the Plaza was long andmustached and glowed with delight. The presidente’s companion’s was tight with the



corners of her mouth pointed downward. The drunks in the sun seats slapped their hatsand frothed with glee, and the ladies in the shade either clapped their hands politely or

fanned themselves with their programs or folded their parasols in their arms. Carlosobserved one and then another along the long rows behind the barrera without note. But

when Carlos’s eyes settled on the man who stood on the sand twenty paces before him,

they widened with a soft glow of recognition.Hernando’s emerald eyes darkened under arched brows. His fingers tightenedaround the handle of his sword. He put out of his mind the foot-long scar that meandered

upward from his knee to his groin like a crack in a dry riverbed. No picadors appeared. No banderilleros were called in. Hernando’s men sat stone-

faced behind the barricade, prepared, on order of the matador, to intervene only at hisdemise.

As a hush drew over the Plaza, Hernando made a circle around the giant bull.Carlos followed him with only a turn of his head and shoulders, until Hernando reached

the rear side on his right flank, and then the bull turned his head to the other side to watchthe man emerge again from shadow.

Hernando’s thoughts were drawn to Lorca: Now the dove and the leopard wrestle/At five in the afternoon…

Carlos did not charge. Hernando closed the distance between them with a straight back and a stiff neck and presented the red cape.

Carlos sat down on his hindquarter.Someone yelled Olé! which drew a crescendo of laughter. Hernando spat in the

sand and cursed under his breath. Arsenic bells and smoke/At five in the afternoon…

Minutes passed.Hernando willed the giant bull forward with little gestures.

Mocking Olés! showered down on Hernando like tiny banderillas, until finallyand again the burning intensity of the matador’s emerald eyes pulled Carlos to him and at

last Carlos made a passive attempt at a charge.The bass-string struck up/At five in the afternoon…

And another.The Plaza crowd let out a series of slow-rolling Oooooooo-lés. After several more

cautious passes at the cape, Hernando’s confidence grew. He inched closer to the point of the horn with each pass, not for the benefit of the aficionados but only for himself.

It was five in the afternoon…More rolling Olés.

Enough of this, Hernando thought.The final pass. Hernando dropped Carlos’s head with the cape and jumped higher

now, landing the sword precisely in the spot he intended—just between the shoulders, atthe centermost point on a line with the giant aorta beneath.

It was five in the afternoon…Suspended in the air, his hand removed from the sword, which held firmly in the

animal's hide, Hernando felt a moment of joy like no other. Before gravity took hold— before it could return him to the dry sand below, as he simply hung there like a golden

specter of the Fiesta Brava, held aloft by the whistles of the faceless crowd—the cornersof his mouth began to lift, along with his eyebrows and then his cheeks and then his ears,



all together and at once into the beginnings of a…smile.Groups of silences in the corners/at five in the afternoon…

And then, too soon, he began to fall. As the matador landed, Carlos’s right hindhoof stepped directly onto Hernando’s turned-out ankle, snapping the bone. A revolting

Pop! could be heard all the way to the rafters.

Bones and flutes resound in his ears/at five in the afternoon…Carlos quickly lifted his hoof and moved away with a halting, sympathetic limp.Aaaaaay! Hernando screamed.

Hernando fell with a thump to the ground and spun wildly in a half circle. Sandcaked together on his cheek and in the sweat above his brow.

Horn of the lily through green groin/at five in the afternoon…

Glancing toward his men in desperation, he quickly discarded the panic he felt

crossing hotly over his face, drew himself up with a full devastated breath, and hoppedgingerly to a position squarely ten paces before the bull.

I will finish him on one ankle, then! Hernando fumed through his pain. He barkedat his men to remain behind the barricade and to throw him another sword. Carlos, in

consideration of the matador’s predicament, found himself compelled (despite the sword-tip buried shallowly in his hide) to follow the matador’s urging with a benign obedience.

Lowering his head, sword rising from his back, he shuffled awkwardly toward thehobbled matador, who was, it seemed, somewhat surprised by the bull’s sudden

surrender, and not altogether prepared to accept it. Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead/at five in the afternoon…

Gathering up his muleta quickly, he leapt again—inasmuch as he could—but withonly one leg to propel him he failed to gain the height he needed to plant the sword in the

morillo. He landed awkwardly, twisted his remaining good ankle, and crumpled in hissuit of lights to the ground.

Aaaaay! he screamed again.Carlos pulled up and turned to see the matador writhing. The bull turned around

slowly to face Hernando and settled gently on his hindquarter.The wounds were burning like suns/at five in the afternoon.

Ignoring Hernando’s flailing arms, his men leapt over the barricade, distractedCarlos unnecessarily with a great waving of capes, and gathered the matador to safety as

Carlos sat on his tail and watched them from the center of the ring. It was five by all the clocks! In the shade of the afternoon!

Cursed fate! Again Hernando, with maniacal desperation, pardoned the bull as hewas dragged through the barrier to the ambulance that stood waiting outside the gate.

Despondence. Hernando convalesced from his beach home high on a cliff overlooking

the crop of black rock formations in Zihuatanejo Bay. He sat silently for much of eachday, his leg elevated atop a leather pillow perched atop a wicker ottoman, watching the

occasional puff of cloud cross the watery horizon.The uninvited voices that haunted Hernando’s waking dreams spoke between the

calls of the aficionados in the shadows. Is he up to the task? they said. Why not let it go?they said. You’ll get a pass. Fight a smaller bull, a normal bull. Hernando heard them in

the Plaza seats, heard them on the Metro, heard them in their homes talking back to their television sets.



One voice rose above. Whose voice? Whose voice was this? Was it Fortune? Wasit folly or Fate? Our Lady of Surrender? Was it Manolete whispering from the grave?

Was he whispering defeat? Was it humility? Ignominy? What sound does Providencemake?

Hernando chased these thoughts from his restless mind like so many autograph

seekers at the Plaza’s back gate. If he fostered any doubts as to another rematch withCarlos the Impossible, those doubts did not appear in his heavy emerald eyes, which burned with crude, sweet vengeance.

When he squinted into those melting Pacific sunsets, he saw bulls in the fat redclouds.

As Hernando grew stronger and practiced his footwork—at first against anassemblage of charging, bent-at-the-waist, finger-horned peonés, and then with the baby

bulls at the ranch of Don Fausto Meza—Carlos spent the year idly, pacing the dry hills of Tlaxcala and dreaming of sunflower fields and limestone bluffs and the gently flowing

waters of One Hundred Mile Creek near the source of the Pequot River.



5.The third fight between Hernando and the bull was scheduled that same year for La

Fiesta de Conflicto Eterno on the last day of the bullfighting season. Hernando’s ankle,though pronounced by his doctor fit to bear weight, swelled in the rain and throbbed like

an acordeón. This third fight brought more gamblers than the last, and the odds settled

quickly at ten to one in favor of the bull.It will spare the reader to condense the circumstances of this fight: it proceededmuch as the previous contests. Like the two before it, the third ended with what the

matador would call defeat, and the bull might call a happy truce. This contest lasted morethan five hours. For those five hours, Carlos played his part as if he were bred for it,

gaining speed and closing the distance between his horns and the man at each veronica.Hernando, his ankles swelling with each thundering pass and his sword growing heavy,

could not find the spot between the bull’s shoulders after thirty-five attempts. The crowd began to thin after three hours, and showered the ring with catcalls and the balled-up

butcher paper they peeled from their tortas as they went.The stalwarts remained until the sunset turned to darkness. Only the drunks

stayed until the end to witness the Great Matador collapse from exhaustion near tomidnight.

Was there ever such comeuppance? Hernando passed the offseason ignoring the laughter

of the public. Ignoring the slights from breathless journalists and bemused passersby,ignoring the gossiping garnacha vendors in the marketplace. Pride leaked through his

pores like helium passing through a festival balloon. He went for long stretches withoutthe company of women.

The voices persisted. What is this business? This messing about with bulls? Tell me again the point. What good ever came of it? They came like unholy spirits in the night

and loitered in the outer ring of Hernando’s convalescent ego.As for Carlos, he passed the off-season dreaming most often now of red capes that

waved between sunflowers and pawing soft dirt under the steady watch of an emeraldgreen eye as cold clear waters flowed from an unknown source to an unknown

destination.

Despite summer months filled with endless tactical sessions and a coterie of paidadvisers, the following year, the Third Rematch (in the first fight of the season) saw the

oddsmakers start the betting at one million to one in favor of the bull. This, said theoddsmakers, was necessary in order to attract any bets at all for the matador.

One million to one? thought Hernando. Can it be? Can this bull be trulyindestructible?

The sentiment among aficionados was that Hernando would never regain hisswagger, never regain the very bravado that had destined him for fame. Hernando himself

knew well that a good goring had ruined the confidence of many a fine matador. He’d notknown his grandfather but had long felt the cold spell of that blue roan that killed him as

it stared out into the parlor above the static halo of the family television. He had seen hisfather go weak in the knees when he returned to the ring after his brush with the end at

the horn tip of the bull Conejhero. Juan’s passes became quick, jumpy. Not to mentionSuarez, Villacorta, Ordonez, all of whom had lost their footwork, bent back the muleta



with their cowardly elbows, and lost their nerves in the ways he so despised. No, Hernando said, it is all in the head. This bull will die by day’s end, and the

pinches in the tendidos will go silent with awe and the whole of the Plaza will roar withthe chants of Hernando! Hernando! once again.

But, as the Fates had evidently designed, this fight ended as did the others: with

Carlos sitting dejectedly on his tail as Hernando lay unconscious in the sand. By rights,Hernando ought not have survived, said those who witnessed things firsthand—but againhe summoned the strength to pardon the bull before he collapsed into extended darkness.

He spent the year in a partial coma. Though he began to respond to certain stimuli

almost immediately (long and guttural huh-huhs caused his fingers to twitch), it was notuntil the following November when Caron took two tails in the first two weeks of the

season that Hernando sat upright in his bed and declared of a sudden that he would fightagain.

When he returned, the Plaza would not take him. He offered to front the ticketsales, to no avail. They said, You should take this act to the Circus Atayde!

Though nonplussed, Hernando was not altogether surprised. All season long, hecalled on every empresario of every bullring large and small from Tijuana to Cozumel.

We’re full up, they said.Try farther south, they said.

So sorry, Great One, they said. Perhaps you might fight another bull?

And so Hernando bought Carlos back from the empresario of the Plaza for two hundred pesos and a half bottle of Oaxacan mezcal. With nowhere else to turn as the lust for

vengeance burned on his skin, Hernando sold the villa in Las Lomas and bought for himself and for Carlos the smallish but respectable bullring in his hometown of Ronda,

where his name still echoed in the ancient rafters and the feats of his youth were bothremembered and imagined.

That fourth year they claimed the bull became sympathetic to the matador. Even the

rheumiest gabachos in the upper seats could see that Carlos had studied the matador’s passes with a critical eye. But then, any bull will learn from a matador the longer it is

allowed the benefit of experience.They claimed the bull began to develop a form of attachment. Was it ever so?

Carlos, it cannot be disputed, had become an accomplice in the Spectacle Without End(as the newspapers now called it) and enjoyed the exercise and the company, if not the

awkward conclusion of each fight.Carlos, it can even be said, came after a time to relate fondly to the matador. The

giant bull associated the spectacle with companionship, and sensed however faintly at a purpose if not a meaning in his part.

The gambling ceased. There was not an aficionado in all of Mexico now who would part

with his money on the confidence of the matador, no matter the odds.Small crowds came to the bullring in Ronda, at first for the fight, and then for the

man—and then only for the bull. And then simply to mock and jeer at the great bullfighter in his shame.



After the fifth year, Hernando could no longer employ a cuadrilla, even withabove-market salaries and a light workload.

Hernando sold the condominium in the city.And then the crowds simply stopped coming at all. This is the man who fought ten

bulls at once? The Great One? The Legend?

And so it went. For many years they fought like this, Hernando’s spirit, like hisreputation, growing tattered as an aged capote. His heart as empty as the plaza’s seats.

Hernando’s only chance at redemption had ever been in killing the bull. But ateach faena, the tragedy ended as the last—with broken banderillas, broken swords, and an

exhausted Hernando conceding defeat, unable to pierce the shoulder blades of theevermore accommodating bull.

As time went on and the contests lost the last pretense of formality, it was Carloswho shouldered the uneven weight of the performance. By now, he was settled fully into

this daily routine: up with the sun each morning, a breakfast of corn and grain (or nowand then the remains of tamales wrapped in banana leaves left at the gate by the wife of

Don Fausto Meza), a leisurely stroll around the ring under the watchful eye of thematador. Then through the motions with a series of well-practiced charges, then pardoned

with only a wave of the matador’s hand, then back to his pen where he settled into his bed of hay.

Of necessity, Hernando eschewed all expense, save feed for the giant bull. Eachmorning, as the sun crept over the wet sands of the ring, Hernando would drag a feed

sack into Carlos’s pen, open the door, drop the sack on the sand in front of the bull andsay, Eat, toro, this is your last meal on this earth. Carlos would then dutifully nod his

snout and paw at the sack excitedly until it spilled open onto the ground as Hernandoturned his back to the bull and walked back up the callejon to practice his veronicas to the

roar of the empty seats.

If your demons offered you a truce would you take it? If your monsters put forward amiddle ground would you meet them there? Hernando would not. After seven years, the

matador’s anxiety became acute. His prize money, his entire life’s savings, dwindled tolittle more than a peóne’s wages in the form of the pension he drew from the matadors’

union. One by one, the remainder of his homes were taken from him, sold at auction. Andso, he made a home of his bullring—aside from Carlos, the last of his possessions.

For ten years more it went on this way: Hernando’s dementia advanced like the afternoon

shade as he scripted the fights, and fought alone in the ring with Carlos the Impossible.All that remained of the corrida now was the never-ending faena.

Hernando’s beard grew long and white and tangled. As the matador slowed,Carlos compensated with passionate charges, on each animated pass placing his horns

just within danger of the man’s torso, but only just so.At the end of each day, Hernando sent the bull back to his stall with a familiar

refrain:Toro, you torment me.

[Carlos snorts.]You can’t know the pain you have caused me.



[Carlos burrs.]I’m of a mind to set fire to you and be done with it.

Hernando’s heart came undone like a cow hitch slipping its knot—even as that which

joined them grew fast. For Carlos this tie was fastened in the familiar routine of feeding,

running, and sleeping under the matador’s ever-present emerald eyes. Carlos grewcontent with this life, though when he slept he dreamed almost always of the same orangeand yellow sunflower field, the same towering limestone bluffs and the gently flowing

waters of the Pequot River.For Hernando their tie was forged in something like ardor. He slept uneasily, and

dreamed only of killing the bull.Come morning, Carlos would emerge again from the tunnel and circle the ring

idly, following Hernando as a calf follows a cow.

And then the fighting stopped. Matador and bull would only siesta for long stretches inthe afternoon; Hernando on his back basking in the sun, Carlos pacing the ring freely

until he made a bed for himself in the shade. On occasion he would nuzzle Hernandowith his snout, careful with the horns so as not to mistakenly puncture the man.

At nights, as Carlos slept in his pen beneath the Plaza’s empty seats, Hernandowould walk the city, pawing the streets with the tips of his toes and uttering nonsense.

Other nights Hernando sat behind the barrera and watched the shadows play outgeneration-old performances by Arruza and Manolete, cheering them through the echoes

of his own febrile laughter.Only rarely was he recognized now by the public. Only rarely would he be

acknowledged. When he was, they would say with genuine surprise, Are you still fighting that bull? And then they would laugh at the thought of a fifty-year-old man, who by

appearance looked twenty years older still, dancing with a bull who seemed to regard thecorrida as a sublime but humble amusement.



6.It was in the twentieth year, long after the public’s attention had evaporated like morning

dew from the plaza sands, that Hernando succumbed to his madness in full. In the end, hehad come to think like a bull. He slept in the pens or on the bullring floor. He pawed the

sand as he walked, twisting his head and snorting—his long beard hiding oats and hay,

his rotten teeth hiding the corn feed he shared with Carlos. He slept most comfortably, bynow, in the cool shadow of the giant bull as they lay on the plaza floor, exhausted by theafternoon sun.

On his last day, he prayed to the Virgin of the Macarena for a knowledgeablecrowd and a windless day, crossed himself twice, and closed his eyes. When Carlos

emerged from the callejon, he stretched lazily under the morning sun, and saw Hernandoslumped sideways over a horse’s saddle, motionless, dew rising up around him.

Carlos recoiled. His heart contracted, then slowed. Pain filled his chest. Adrenalin poured through him like a hundred toros running blindly through narrowing streets as he

stepped toward the body of the matador, knelt, and nuzzled the cold back of his neck.

Thereafter, Carlos slept fitfully. Days of melancholy followed days of despair. What todo with this bull? Hernando’s creditors asked themselves. The plaza we will keep. But

the bull? Too old now to slaughter even if he could be slaughtered, too old to breed.And what now for the bull to do?

Carlos paced the ring, ate little, sleeping much of the day and all through thenight. The doctors said, This animal is under a great deal of stress.

Carlos began to thin. The giant bull dropped a thousand pounds within a month,another thousand pounds the next. Ribs pressed out from his softening skin and into the

sand of his pen like the ship timbers of a scuttled galleon. Even the ancient bolts trappedin his skull became visible in bright light.

In his fitful sleep, he dreamed a full palette of colors: orange and yellowsunflowers, red flashing capes, the once-sharp look in Hernando’s eyes lit in piercing

emerald green.

The end comes, not with a flash of the muleta, not at the end of a pic. Carlos, having played his part, drifted toward his querencia, unrequited. Some would say it was the two

bullets in his skull that finally did him in. Others would say that for a bull of that age,well, it was simply time. The poets of the obituaries proposed his soul was twinned with

the great matador’s like a nahual and argued the denouement was fitting:Hernando finally killed his bull, they said.

No, the doctor said. This animal was healthy in all other respects. He simply lostthe will to live.

Hernando finally killed his bull, they said.

Tumble, tumble, tumbleweed. These are the last true facts of this taurine tale:The arrangements fell to Don Fausto Meza. Left to divine the eternal wishes of

the matador, Don Fausto spread Hernando’s ashes among freshly planted trumpet lilies beneath a calabash tree on a hill near his breeding ranch in Tlaxcala, where forevermore

the great matador might test the young calves for courage and form. Now, Don Fausto thought to himself as he considered the deadweight of Carlos’s



remains and the difficulty of their transport, what to do with the carcass of an impossiblebull?

And so Carlos the Impossible was buried where he fell, below the sands of the plaza de toros in Ronda, slightly off the center, where to this day, when a bull with

particular courage finds himself strangely in need of comfort, as though he could will

himself away from the toreros and the crowd, he will look for a corner in the roundnessof the ring, and back into that very spot, and feel a slight breeze and a gentle water current and the swaying of orange and yellow sunflowers beneath his hooves, and he will

stay there for a while, until he has gathered up his wits or had them drawn out for him, before he lowers his head and charges through the Olés toward the man with the cape.

-The End-

About the Author

Website: http://www.aerbook.com/carlostheimpossible/

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Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Carlos-Impossible-Novella-

ebook/dp/B003V4B2OA

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