The Forest Bull (The Fearless) Read online

  The tide was slack, and the sun was angled in a way that meant it was late afternoon. My unspoken agreement to be back in time to clean up for our family dinners out was at hand. My parents would dress casually for dinner but were satisfied if I managed to wear shoes and be relatively free of fish scales and sand. I took vacationing quite seriously, and hygiene was among the first casualties of my routine upon arriving in the Sunshine State. I packed my bucket and bundled my rods together to climb the few feet to the parking lot and instantly knew I was being watched.

  My first step toward the rocks framing the path upward was accompanied by a chill. I stopped, completely motionless, and looked at a man’s face waiting above me. The wind was very still just then, and I heard little traffic. The pines were quiet. His smile was lewd and oily, grotesquely spanning his tanned face. A shock of white hair was artfully tussled, and he crouched in a linen suit that spoke of money. He appeared to be in his late 50s--impossibly old to a twelve-year-old, but radiated a venomous vigor that made me instantly brand him dangerous.

  He waved slowly with the fingertips of his right hand and spoke, his eyes never leaving mine. “You’re a bit far from home, aren’t you,” he questioned, moving forward slightly, with his hands spanning the two coral rocks. His fingers were long and delicate. He held his body poised like he was afraid I would bolt. He was right.

  I thought of my parents and how close they were. I felt the water behind me, the sun pulsating in spots across my back, and the shards of oysters beneath my bare feet. It was 20 feet to safety and the eyes of others. It was six feet to the man whose smile faded into a triumphal leer, his lips parted slightly by his probing tongue. The tip was almost white, and there was saliva at the corners of his mouth, gummy and moving with each breath as I sensed him tense his legs to rush me.

  I leapt, arm out, knife in hand, and buried the blade to the wooden hilt in his chest, the bones grating under my hand as a shock travelled up my arm and burst from the back of my shoulder like invisible confetti. He fell forward, the oleaginous smirk still on his face as inertia pulled my knife from his body and he rolled partially over, the coral raking his ear and cheek in a bloodless gash that was tan, then grey and pink in layers that looked diseased and dead. Next to the deep burnished suntan on his skin, it was gruesome and jarring. A smear of gore at his point of impact was tinged with the brown of his skin. It was makeup, covering the pallor of a dead thing gone ripe with time. He made no sound, and his body began to wilt where the salt water surged slightly forward from a passing sailboat moments before, the wake just now reaching my private little beach. He was dissolving in a cloud of decay as I gathered my things and pulled myself up to the parking lot, the knife in my left hand, still rigid with fear.

  I exhaled. The pines whispered in a freshening of wind. I walked to my parents and our room, where I would bathe in scalding water, scrubbing at my skin until I felt the fear rinse down the drain, never to reappear.

  I was no longer a child. I left that under the pines. But I kept my knife.

  Florida

  The room was very still when I finished, my mind and weakened body exhausted. There was no catharsis with the truth, only a realization that more good people were now painfully aware of another unseen threat to their lives and children. It was an act I reviled. I reached for my water, but Suma moved first, ever the healer, and guided the straw to my mouth. She also spoke first among the quietly stunned faces of her family. Risa and Wally sat mute, knowing that there was so much more to tell.

  “Is it the knife?” Suma ventured. Her tone was pensive. “It makes some sense in that you mentioned it as an heirloom, but that doesn’t explain all three of you. If it isn’t a thing, a weapon, whatever, then it must be you. Or some aspect of you.”

  Panit asked a halting question, his eyes flicked from me to Risa to Wally, curious. “Boon, do you remember when we were robbed?” His tone was quiet, echoing the fear of a father and husband who had seen a very personal act of war come to his doorstep. Two addicts with knives had slashed at him one night, barking their anger even after he had dropped the cash deposit on the ground. He had positioned himself between the criminals and his car, where his family sat in the dark, waiting. It was a moment of sheer, unbridled terror, but he had remained calm until the robbers fled, and then had broken down in shuddering sobs against the car door, prayers of thanks gusting through his chattering teeth.

  Boon caressed his shoulder. They were an inseparable team. His fear had not been for himself, but at what he might lose. It had been graven on his face for days.

  Panit continued, “The fear ate at me, but I could not let it consume me. I have never been afraid like that again, but I was that night. Tell me, Ring. Have you ever been afraid?” He looked at me intently. My true nature was revealed under his eyes, it seemed. Panit judged me in a glance, his truth shredding my glib humor and ease of life that was my defense. I looked down.

  “Wally, the horse?” I asked, softly. “Risa, the café? Will you explain? I’m tired, and sore.”

  Risa shifted in her seat and retold a story about smoke and fire, blood and glass. And calm in the midst of it all.

  Risa

  When you’re eleven, days are a mélange of order and chaos. Order from your family, school, and home are punctuated by outbursts of youth. Laughter. Running. Shouting. All of it in a dizzying array that leaves you tired and happy each day if you have a good life. I had a very good life. My family was loving and boisterous. I was rarely alone. I spent entire days outside in the sun and had a room full of books that brought the world inside. I also got to travel with family. My uncle Zev was a tailor with three shops, one in Tel Aviv. To me, it was visiting a place of mysteries and colors. Rolls of fabric lay in orderly rows, stacked nearly to the ceiling in the long, narrow building. The smell of linen and wool and an acrid hint of dye hung in the desultory heat of the back storage. A single air conditioning unit chugged in protestation from a high window near the front. It was, and will always be, my home away from home. The spools of thread arced away from the gleam of beautifully maintained sewing machines. Their cowls shined under the lights, and the folding tables were crowded with orders in various states of completion. His staff always knew exactly what went where. In a scene of disorder, everything had a place.

  I was playing with a lurid red ribbon, wrapping it around an empty spool and rolling the spool across the smooth tiles, when a flash of disturbance broke the normal chatter of the busy street outside. My uncle and one of his helpers, a stout woman named Sarah, briskly walked to the front of the store, opening the door wide enough for both of them to see the street. I followed, my interest piqued by the noise.

  It was the last thing they would do on this earth. A young woman crashed through the crowd, her western style clothes soaked with sweat. Dark eyes looked across the tables of the café next door and found mine as I stood holding my uncle’s leg. Her face was beautiful but hollow, the gaze bright with mania as she was tackled from behind by a female police officer, red ponytail lashing her neck as she rode the wiry, crazed girl into the heavy edge of a table, chairs rattling away across the concrete as she detonated her suicide vest and a small spot of the sun opened in front of my vision. A peony of fire and metal turned the area into an open air coffin, screams and sobs bursting forth from the victims even as the shattered furniture and bodies began to thump to the ground in a drumbeat of horror. The smell of cordite and flesh lay over the street like a layer of sin.

  Zev and Sarah gurgled and whistled to their death in seconds, their lungs rent by flying nails and bolts from the bomb that carved them into a frothy red pantomime of humans. Their hands shook and went limp almost as one. I stood on the balls of my feet and exhaled the breath I had held, letting go of my uncle’s pant leg. His body collapsed to the ground, devoid of motion. The sirens screamed into the air, and, after some period of time, I was led by the hand to a gurney, my body sticky with the blood of others. I was floating.

  My pulse ne
ver quickened. I never flinched. Years later, I knew why. I respected and sensed danger, but never feared anything. I was born as such.

  Now, with my partners, I know the truth. It’s a dangerous world, but, even within the very darkest parts of it, I am not a victim. If I’ve learned anything with Ring and Wally, it is that I am something to be feared.

  Florida

  Suma drew a conclusion and gestured at me, then Risa, and then settled uncertainly on Wally, pointing an inquiry. “So, if I think I understand, you can kill these creatures because you cannot be afraid? Is that right?”

  “There’s a difference between being free of fear and being stupid,” I began. “Mostly, if you’re brave but dumb, you just end up dead. None of us are ready for the grave. Seriously, look at those women. Do you think I’d do anything to jeopardize their privilege of living with me, caring for me, seeing me in my underwear, drinking milk in front of the fridge at three in the morning?”

  Risa snorted. Wally nodded in confirmation of my general disregard for manners and hygienic kitchen behavior. I remained dignified given my admission of being a serial nudist, despite our physical relationships. Just because we were sleeping together didn’t mean they want to see my underwear, I’ve been informed on more than one occasion.

  “We three are just capable of stepping outside of our fear. We don’t deny that it exists, but we deny it the ability to gain a purchase on us or our actions. Especially during extreme duress. Traffic is another issue for certain team members,” I looked pointedly at Wally, “but we were always free of that curse. Even as children. In fact, Wally knew even sooner than Risa or me that she was wired differently. Didn’t you, Slim?” I asked.

  Wally pursed her lips and then asked Boon “You know I was raised on a horse farm, yes? Well, I wasn’t always the most obedient child . . .”

  Waleska

  Please work. Please work. Please Work. Waleska beseeched the humble chip of soap that she rubbed against the heavy wooden pin on the barn door. Her small hands shot the dowel bolt without a sound. Hinges next. She moved with the exaggerated care of a seven-year-old engaging in a serious breach of familial rules. One hinge, then two. The third, she greased with a flourish as the soap disintegrated, its heroic duty complete.

  She held her breath and swung the enormous door open, exhaling as the bulky steel strapped wood arced silently past her, coming to a stop inches from the wall. Waleska crept forward, straw skritching lightly beneath her boots. After dressing in the dark, she had shimmied down the spreading branches of the espinillo tree that sagged lazily against the sash of her second floor window. Looking east, she spied the first fingers of dawn amongst the wispy cirrus clouds. The Criollo mare heard her and whickered questioningly at her presence. It was still dark, and rarely did anyone visit the barn at night, unless a foal was imminent. Waleska’s father had bought the mare a week earlier, but the headstrong beast had rejected every hand on the farm. She loved roan horses more than anything in the world, and she had seen the mare sporting about in a paddock while visiting a nearby farm, carefree and headstrong. It was an equine version of her own heart, and love at first sight as the girl’s eyes filled with joy, as her eyes drank in the rippling colors and sleek muscle of the shapely mare. Wally told her father with the gravity only a seven-year-old can know that she must ride that horse or she would cry. The owner, a rangy woman who, Wally had sniffed, was far too refined to be a true horseman, had seen the interchange between them and sold the horse on the spot for less money than it would cost to buy a saddle. As her father paid, the seller admonished Waleska, telling her that horses such as that one were meant for adults and seasoned riders. The nerve. The fact that her gift rolled over on every rider mattered not a bit to the grim-faced child, who would not be denied a ride on the mare she had claimed for her own.

  Spirit was fine, thought the girl, but being thrown was verboten. Wally would have none of that, and she meant to prove it this night.

  Climbing the heavy pine stall, she knew that saddling the horse was out of the question, so her legs and hands would have to do. Her bravado ran wild in the dark, where the horses were shadows and sounds. The stall door opened easily; it was the big door that had worried her, but, now, she squatted before the mare with her hand out. Slowly, she fed the sugar cubes secreted in her pocket to the skittish head looming in the darkness above her. Her plan was simple. Ride the mare on the turf track that circled the outbuildings and have her put up before her parents awakened. She could groom her later while uttering a steady stream of reassurance in low tones, just like she had seen her father do time and again. She breathed deeply, thinking about being calm with the focus of a much older rider. Fear was her enemy. Fear would expose her to the mare as a pretender to the throne rather than as someone who would rule the saddle with ease and grace. Wally had no fear. She felt nothing but the preternatural calm that cloaked her during times when most children would quiver with fright. After several nights of these rides, Wally knew, with the certainty that only a child can feel, that she would have a horse all her own.

  I must neck rein only, like Father does when he is being the boss, Wally thought, slipping the rope over the mare in a fluid motion. She cooed and chatted amiably, quietly, never ending the commentary as she stepped up the slatted wall and onto the broad back of the still-penned horse. Looking outside, she saw that the sky had gone from ash to rose and hints of gold. She had to hurry, so she nudged the flank and led the resistant horse out into the feedlot. Wally knew the test would come soon, that this quiet was a false front. She had earned nothing from this mare, but, with a single tug at the rein, a neck turn to the left placed them on the turf that yawned away in the growing light.

  Wally rubbed the muscled neck and was rewarded with a single snort as the mare turned back to look at her as perched with confidence on the horse’s back.

  “Time to go. Hup,” Wally urged, but to no avail. With the sun beginning to heat the day and fingers of light spilling wildly from the horizon, Wally drew her heels back once and planted them with a meaty whump into the obstinate sides of the horse.

  The mare whickered once in irritation, then flattened her ears to her skull and jumped, carrying Wally forward ten feet in a blast of muscle and noise that slammed her chest against her own hands. In seconds, they flew down the track, chipping free clods of earth shaped like black crescents that hurtled left right left right, Wally gripping the back firmly with her long legs and laughing, urging the horse on, and then crying with the abandon and joy of it all. Only when Wally felt a heavy sweat on the mare’s neck did she turn her, now compliant, towards the barn, tears of joy still streaking her dusty face as she gasped at the sight of her father. And mother. Waiting, and watching, by the barn.

  She approached them, her tall father glaring at her with murderous intent. He mother had tears in her eyes, of relief, anger, and a wry admission of pride.

  “Horst, gently with her, now, she is safe. Please,” Wally’s mother pleaded. Her father stood, impotent with rage, and, for a moment, nobody spoke, until Wally commanded the mare in a voice that was no longer that of a child.

  “Park, Boudicca. Park out, now,” Wally issued the order to her newly named mare, who complied, spreading her legs wide for her rider to dismount. It was the first willing direction Horst had seen the mare take since her arrival. He was stunned, but then looked at his daughter and realized he should not be.

  “Boudicca? An appropriate name for a spirit like hers. Or yours, Waleska,” Horst granted, his anger fading, replaced with something more like respect. Her mother sobbed lightly and rushed to hug Wally, admonishing her to never bring fear like this to their home again.

  Wally looked up at her parents, their faces colored with relief and grudging admiration. “But mother, I wasn’t afraid. I’m never afraid. Not even when I saw you and father standing here. And Boudicca . . . she was going to like me. They all like me. I just picked her, that’s all.”

  Florida

  It was ful
l dark, and Wally cleared her throat from the doorway where she had been leaning and speaking. “I know that there may be more questions, but they can wait. Ring is tired. Risa, you go home. I will stay with Ring. In the morning, we will talk again. For now, rest.”

  Her tone crackled with authority, and she slid past our friends who filed obediently from my room, saying their goodbyes in various degrees of thoughtful shock. Risa patted my arm and asked Wally if we needed anything. “No. Take my truck home, sleep with that beast on the couch, and, then, in the morning, think about what we will do next. I don’t want you up all night scheming.” Her gaze took us all in. “We will be fine.”

  With that, Risa left, the front door shutting with a thump. Muted voices followed her outside, as I expected. This evening had been too jarring for the psyche of our friends. It was only one discussion, but it would have to do for now.