After the eighth unsuccessful attempt to get the bull to face the horses, Don Eduardo shouted, “Shoot him.” The crowd gasped, because sometimes such a bull was returned to the corrals and sold later for beef, or if the rancher really needed the money, secretly sold to some remote plaza. But Don Eduardo turned his back on the bull and repeated, “Shoot him.”
Three trained oxen were turned into the plaza and with uncanny cunning surrounded the bull and lured him back to the corrals. A cadaverous man in charro costume carrying a gun left the box near Don Eduardo’s. There were a few moments of apprehensive silence, a shot, and a wave of sorrow swept through the little plaza. But before anyone could speak Don Eduardo hurried into the ring shouting merrily, “Let’s have one more cow. You, son! Do you want to be a bullfighter?” He pointed directly at Juan Gómez, whom he had not noticed before, and the little Indian boy saw that the big rancher had tears in his eyes. Mesmerized, Juan nodded his head and felt the other boys pushing him into the ring.
He was dizzy with emotion and hardly heard the low, strong voice of Armillita as the big matador whispered, “Hold the cape like this.” With uncertain hands the little Indian grabbed at the cape. He dropped one end and the boys laughed. Reaching for that end, he lost the other, then succeeded in getting the entire cape tangled in his feet.
Then something happened. He felt a tremendous hand on his left shoulder, pressing in toward the bone. He looked up and saw that it belonged to Armillita, who was saying: “Keep your feet still. If the cow knocks you over, it won’t hurt.”
The gate swung open and a feisty black cow, hardly a year old, burst into the arena. She charged at whatever she saw, and the matadors prudently drew Juan back to a safe area, spreading their capes to lure the animal. But she needed no lures. Anything that moved was her enemy, and as she flashed past, Juan thought, Isn’t it strange that the bull should have been so cowardly and the cow so brave?
“Watch me,” Armillita called as he ran into the ring to give the determined little cow her first passes. The crowd cheered as the animal charged again and again at the tall matador, trying vainly to knock him down, and one could hear in the repeated olés both relief from the tragedy of the bull and the wish that it was not the cow but the bull that had been brave.
Now a firm hand was placed in the middle of Juan’s back, and he felt himself pushed awkwardly into the ring. The crowd shouted encouragement, but before the first applause had died, the cow spotted the boy and charged at him with even greater fury than before. Ineptly Juan tried to protect himself with the cape, but his feet became tangled with the cloth, and the cow hit him with full force, her blunt and still unformed horns making a kind of cradle in which she lifted him, throwing him some six feet into the air.
This was the moment of decision, when a human being flying through the air thinks, I am going to be killed. In this instant, if that thought overpowers the boy or the man he can never become a bullfighter; but if, as in the case of little Juan Gómez, the imperiled one dismisses that first fear and follows it with the vow “I will conquer this bull,” then there is a chance that courage will prevail.
At the moment of crashing down onto the sand Juan laughed: “It’s not a bull. It’s a cow.”
He struggled to regain his footing, but his rear was covered by the red cape, and this attracted the cow, who gave him a second tremendous thrust. The crowd cheered, while the matadors, knowing that the cow could not hurt the boy too badly, stayed off to one side, ready to rescue him if he fell into real danger.
Again he tried to get up and again the little cow knocked him around like a football, but at one point the animal charged well past him, giving him time to straighten himself up. From a distance he heard someone crying, “Stand firm,” and he planted his feet in what he considered an advantageous spot and recovered control of the cape. He did not have to cry “Eh, bull!” at this one, for as soon as she saw the cape, she whirled about, charged, and caught Gómez on the side, catapulting him once more into the air.
He got up and stood near the middle of the ring. Flicking the cape as he had seen Armillita do, he shouted at the cow and she came toward him like a locomotive. This time he managed the cape correctly, and for the first time in his life led a wild animal directly past his waist. He could hear Armillita shout, “¡Olé!” and from that moment his soul belonged to the bullring.
“I hiked home that evening in a daze,” he told me. “The stars came out and as I entered my village and saw its meanness, and the ugly mud house in which I lived, I discovered the power that would keep me moving back and forth across Mexico.” It was some weeks before he found the courage to tell his mother of his plans, and when he did she started crying, saying that the government had taken his older brother away to school and now Juan wanted to become a bullfighter, and someday he would be brought home dead. He ended the argument by heading down the road toward the city of Toledo and whatever bullrings he could find en route.
With no proper attire, no money, no friends and not even the ability to read and write, he drifted from Toledo to León to Torreón to Guadalajara. In the second city he met a friendly, soft-spoken man who told him that in return for certain favors he would guarantee to make Juan Gómez a first-class matador, as he had done for others, and he did actually give Juan an old suit and two swords and an opportunity to fight in a small ring out in the country. But after three months with the man Juan decided: “This is no way to live,” and ran away, taking with him the suit and the swords.
He was now a bullfighter, with one pair of pants, one shirt, worn shoes and a torn cape in which he folded all his belongings as would-be matadors had done for generations. At fifteen he fought seven times in villages few had ever heard of. At sixteen, in the remote town of Rio Grande de Zacatecas, he tried to fight a bull seven years old weighing half a ton. One of the townsmen said, “This bull has fought so many times that when you come into the ring, he salutes and tells you where to stand. That’s so he can kill you better.” With this bull Juan had no luck whatever. Four times the huge, wily animal knocked him down, and four times, with that fearlessness which was to mark his career, Juan got up and tried again. But on the fifth try the bull caught him in the right leg and ripped a deep gash thirteen inches long. For a while it looked as if he might lose his leg, but a doctor in Aguascalientes heard of his plight and had him brought to that city, where he was able to save the limb.
At sixteen Juan Gómez, limping rather badly, had earned as a bullfighter exactly one hundred and twenty dollars. Most of his fights had paid nothing, for boys were expected to risk their lives for the practice they got from fighting fourth-rate bulls in fifth-rate plazas. And this Juan was willing to do. While the drain tubes were still in the upper part of his leg to keep the wound clean of pus, he had fought two incredible animals that had been hauled from one plaza to another. This was near Aguascalientes, and when he reported with his tubes back in place to the doctor who had saved his leg he had expected a severe lecture, but that man said simply, “If you don’t have courage when you’re young, you’ll never have it.”
But when the leg refused to grow strong, and he was generally debilitated, he had to hike penniless back to his mother, who had managed to keep alive in the mysterious ways women do in small villages. She put him to bed and nursed him back to strength, telling him sharply: “You will soon be seventeen, and you must find yourself a decent job.” She sent him to a friend in the city of Toledo, and this friend got him work distributing beer. Hefting the heavy cases gave Juan Gómez those extraordinary shoulders that were later to enable him to kill bulls with such overpowering skill.
It was arranged between Juan and his boss that whenever an informal bullfight was planned for some village near Toledo, he was free to try his luck, for the man was a bullfight fan and took pride in having one of his force appear before real bulls. But what Juan liked best about his job was that once each year, during the Festival of Ixmiq, he was allowed to manage the brewer’s stand at the bullfigh
ts. There, as he sold cold beer to the patrons, he could watch the leading matadors for three afternoons in a row, and in order to ensure himself more time to study the fighters he employed at his own expense young boys to sell the beer. It was under such arrangements that he attended the festival in 1945, at the age of seventeen.
There would be great fights that year, with the final gala presenting Armillita, the ace of the Mexicans, Solórzano, the stately gentleman, and Silverio Pérez, the darling of the mob and a man who could do wonders if he happened to draw a good bull. Above-average fights on Friday and Saturday had generated excitement, so that on Sunday Juan felt impelled to undertake a move he had been planning for some time. He appeared early at the plaza, arranging his beer as carefully as a housewife arranging her teacups for a party. He coached his boys on the parts of the ring each was to cover, then allocated the bottles. When the crowds began to enter, he was everywhere, encouraging them to buy, and although, true to his Indian heritage, he was never exuberant, there was about him this day an unusual alertness and quickness of action that his helpers noticed.
“What’s going on, Juan?” they asked as he rushed beer to all parts of the plaza.
“Sell the beer,” he ordered, and by the time the fifth bull out of the six of the afternoon was ready to be killed, most of the bottles were gone. Scooping up his money, he ran to one of the spectators connected with the brewery, a man named Jiménez, and said abruptly: “Hold this.” Then he was gone.
What happened next has found its way into the modern annals of bullfighting in Mexico, and if you listen long enough you can hear some pretty wild accounts of that sixth bull of Ixmiq-45, but I prefer to blow away the myths and report what I believe actually happened.
When the final bull of the feria rushed out, the crowd knew that this animal, though on the small side, was bound to give a good fight, and a roar of hopeful encouragement filled the plaza. Although the Festival of Ixmiq usually commanded the best bulls available, this year’s lot had not been exceptional, but this last one was excellent with the cape and very powerful against the horses. He took five punishing thrusts of the pic and would have accepted more if the horses had not been ordered from the ring. Silverio, the matador who on his first bull had performed badly, now presented himself to the judge, asked permission to kill the bull, and turned to dedicate the animal to the crowd, always a popular gesture and one likely to win an extra ear or a tail if the bull was superb.
But as Silverio turned to face the center of the ring from which he would dedicate the bull, he groaned and cried: “Oh, hell! Look at that!”
From the barrier in front of the beer stands a young man with a limp in his right leg had dropped into the arena, carrying a stick that could be used as an imitation sword and a length of red cloth draped over a second stick. Juan Gómez had decided to present himself to the people of Toledo, and if he could escape the policemen, peóns, matadors and general attendants who were already trying to catch him, he might win two minutes—he would need no more—in which to prove what he could do with a full-grown bull.
“Damn that boy!” Silverio mumbled as he ran across the arena to try to keep the espontáneo (spontaneous volunteer from the audience) from spoiling his fine bull. The matador’s third-string peón, a tall wiry man with the pinched face of a gargoyle, hurried from an opposite direction crying: “I get him, matador.” As the peón neared Gómez he made a wild lunge at the boy’s legs, but Gómez anticipated this and escaped.
This motion carried him toward the bull, so while still running he adjusted his cloth, whipping it vigorously with his right hand in order to make it fall free and at the same time attract the bull. The animal, still panting from his encounter with the horses and the pain from the banderillas, caught sight of the fleeing boy and made a quick, unexpected charge. The crowd gasped as bull and boy approached the point of contact, then cheered wildly as the boy planted his feet like a real matador, dropped his right hand close to the sand, and led the bull past in a thundering charge.
“¡Olé!” came the great approval.
Now the boy had to escape the clutches of the dozen or more men bearing down on him while trying to position himself properly for the next charge of the agitated bull, whose confusion and anger were heightened by the large number of people in the ring. Deftly he sidestepped both the wizened peón and Armillita, the senior matador, who half an hour ago had considered his work for the afternoon ended with the killing of the fourth bull, but now was back in the ring to help remove the boy.
A man who tended the horses tackled the boy and succeeded in getting a grip on Juan’s left leg, but only for a moment, and for the second time Juan faced the bull. Placing the cloth in his left hand, for the most dangerous of the regular passes, he called to the bull and brought him past in a beautifully executed gesture.
The crowd leaped to its feet with one gigantic ¡Olé!” and began throwing things at the men who were trying to eject the young fighter.
“Let him finish the job!” the men in the sun began shouting.
“To-re-ro!” others cried in mockery of the men who were trying to clear the arena.
But this time the skinny old peón was not to be denied, for he pinned Gómez against the barrier and seemed about to knock him to the ground when the boy gave a violent thrust with his right elbow, knocking the peón backward onto the sand and almost rendering him unconscious. But in falling, the peón kept hold of the boy’s improvised muleta and carried it with him, so that when Juan broke free he faced the bull with only a wooden sword and no cloth for protection. Seeing the bull about to charge, he hesitated in awful fear. From the stands he heard the unanimous shout of “No, no!”
As the bull hurtled toward him he instinctively dropped his left hand as if it held the protecting cloth, trusting that this motion would deceive the animal. And for a second it did, enough for the tip of the deadly horn to move past the body, but then the lure failed, and the bull turned. The horn caught Juan in the chest and sent him flying through the air, away from the men who were trying to catch him. Quickly the bull wheeled and bore down upon the fallen boy. With one deft drive the left horn passed under the boy and tossed him backward, still away from the men who might have rescued him.
Again the bull wheeled, satisfied that it had at last found a solid enemy and not a fluttering piece of cloth. This time the animal exercised greater care but succeeded only in piercing the boy’s right pant leg, making a ripping sound that all could hear and throwing him into the air. He would have fallen directly on the horns had not Armillita at that moment caught the bull by the tail and given it a savage twist. Bellowing with pain, the bull turned to attack his new enemy, and Gómez fell limp on the sand.
The first man to reach him was the third matador’s peón, the tall man with the gargoyle face, and instead of helping Gómez to his feet, this peón began beating him in the face. “You son-of-a-bitch!” he kept shouting. “You ruined a good bull.”
Now a dozen hands clutched at him and started rushing him toward a gate that had been thrown open. When the gate slammed shut a policeman started jabbing his rifle butt into Juan’s stomach, whereupon the crowd, awed by Juan’s bravery, began hurling beer bottles at the policeman.
At this juncture Silverio, always the calculating showman, realized that although his enviable bull had been ruined by the intrusion, there might be a way to retain his popularity with the crowd. Rushing to the barrier as if on a mission of life and death, he demanded that the burly policeman release the boy. With a grandiose gesture, which the crowd approved with ecstatic shouting, the matador summoned Juan back into the ring, wiped away the blood on his forehead caused by one of the beer bottles, and embraced him. “You can fight,” the matador shouted into the boy’s ear. “But don’t ever fight my bull again.” With the hand that embraced the boy he twisted the skin on Juan’s neck until the boy winced. But, uncowed, Juan said to the matador, as if thanking him for a kindness: “See if you can do as well.” Then, turning abruptly,
he walked at a stately pace not to the nearest gate but to a distant one, arching his back like a true matador and throwing insolent glances at the crowd, who rewarded him with an ovation.
That night Juan Gómez washed the gash in his forehead, pressed his only shirt, tied the rope around his pants and went out to watch the bullfighters as they lounged in their usual manner before the House of Tile. At the first of the two big tables sat Armillita. At the other was Solórzano, surrounded by admirers, and Silverio, the idol of this part of Mexico. There was exciting talk as the three afternoons of the festival were reviewed, and waiters hurried about with trays of beer and toasted corn. For some time Juan loitered in the plaza across from the hotel in shadows near the statue of Ixmiq, but finally the allure of bullfighting proved too great and he ventured onto the terrace of the hotel itself.
Unfortunately, the first to spot him was the old peón with whom he had brawled in the arena, and this man called out, in the near-illiterate jargon that bullfighters use: “You not come here. Ruined our best bull entire fair.”
Men at various tables turned to inspect the boy and Solórzano asked, “Your face hurt?”
“No,” Juan said.
“Have a beer,” a big man at another table suggested, and Juan realized with delight that it was Don Eduardo, at whose ranch he had first tasted the thrill of bullfighting. Hoping that Palafox would remember him, he said: “I was the boy you aided at your testing, the day you shot your seed bull.”