Dad Killed a Bull

Rushing into the hospital lobby, the parents were shoulder to shoulder and breathing heavily from the cold walk in from the parking lot. Unbuttoning and removing coats and gloves, they approached the information desk to inquire about their 10 years old son, Christopher. “Room 301” the nurse said like an automated tape recording. Entering the room, they were met by the Dr. and their oldest son, David. The Dr. spoke and said “it was a close call, but we got to him in time”. Explaining that an appendicitis is not uncommon, and he had removed many in his career, and that the probabilities say, for a boy Christopher’s age, it would take a couple of weeks before he returned to normal. The Peterson’s thanked him as mom dried her eyes and searched the room for some more tissues. “David”, what happened?” his dad asked. “We were playing in the back yard and Chris just bent over in a ball, and started screaming in pain.” “You didn’t hit him or anything did you?” and David said, “of course not dad”. “What were you playing?” asked Mrs. Peterson. “We were throwing the football back and forth and running around, just playing” David said. A nurse came in and whispered that Christopher should be awake for visitors in a couple of hours, and the cafeteria was open, if we wanted to eat. David said he was hungry and dad was too, but Mrs. Peterson didn’t want to leave, and asked if they’d bring her a coffee on the way back. An hour or so later, David and his dad returned with coffee, and found Christopher awake and chatting away about the operation, couldn’t wait to show his friends the scar. The doctor had come back by and said if Chris passed a couple of tests in the morning that he could get discharged tomorrow afternoon. All was well as visiting hours ended with hugs and kisses all around.

Pulling into the yard, Mr. Peterson noticed the garage door was not all the way down. “David”, did you leave the garage door like that?” I don’t think so, but we were in a such hurry to get to the hospital, I might have. “Well, close it all the way down before you come in” and David said OK dad. Arriving at the door, it was clearly being propped up by a cardboard box. Pushing the door up and ducking inside, he was surprised to see his dad’s deer head, that once hung in the living room, jammed sideways into the box. Talking to himself, David said it must have been Chris, but what the heck was he doing? He pushed the box aside and the door came down on its own. David’s dad was already sitting down, reading the newspaper, when he told him what the problem had been; his dad uttered something about being responsible and went back to reading. Today’s drama had interrupted Mr. Peterson’s normal habits, the newspaper should have been read hours ago. David understood and drifted to his bedroom, normally also occupied by Chris, tonight I’ll read and then get some sleep, today had been very unusual.

Saturday morning and David woke, rubbing his eyes and straightening out his pajama bottoms, that somehow, always got crooked during the night, so that the front was in back and vice versa. After washing up and brushing his teeth, David came back to his room and dug out some clothes for the day. He noticed a book on Chris’ bed and reached down to see the title. Fighting bulls in Mexico, was the name, by a man named John Stevens. On the cover was a picture of a matador, holding a red cape, with a sword hidden under it. David shook his head, and barefooted his way to the kitchen for some Rice Krispies with milk and fresh strawberries. Grabbing a banana, David walked out to the garage, thinking he’d try to figure out what brother Chris was doing, before his appendix gave way. Hearing the door opening, David’s dad, yelled out “while you’re out there, clean up the garage, it’s a mess, and with winter coming I want to put the cat in there.” David said “ok”, “did you hear me”, dad said, “Yes, I heard you” David said loudly. Stacking boxes and sweeping the rear of the garage, he noticed the wheelbarrow was upside down and a wheel was half on and half off, so he stopped to finish the work that, he guessed, Chris had started. Turning the wheelbarrow on its wheels, he pushed it to where the box with the deer head was, and with a boy sized grunt, lifted it into the wheelbarrow and then pushed it back to his dad’s workbench, and continued sweeping the garage with the big warehouse push broom his dad bought at Loew’s.

“David, we’re heading over to pick up your brother at the hospital, we’ll back in an hour or so. Ok?” David yelled “ok” and headed into the house, to his room to change his, now dirty, shirt. He sat on Chris’ bed and thumbed through the pages of the bullfighting book, and a piece of yellow line paper folded in half fell to the floor. David opened up the paper and saw a diagram that Chris had made of the deer head tied onto the wheel barrow, clearly this was the beast to challenge, as yet, an unnamed matador. He went back to the garage observing the yellow paper, and thinking he could complete what his brother had started as a homecoming gift. Grabbing some heavy-duty twine and some scissors, as well as two concrete blocks, David pushed the flat side of the deer head against the blocks, and weaved the twine around about thirty times, tugging once in a while to make it as tight as possible. Some old clothesline was then attached to the left wheelbarrow handle and then around the deer head and cinder blocks unit, and back to the right handle and pulled tightly, so everything was snug. Then David ran some line over the top blocks and under the wheelbarrow, made a loop and pulled the line through it, so he could pull it wicked tight. Lastly, he tied off a piece of rope to the right handle and crossed over the top of the mounted piece, and similarly the left handle and over the top, as they hung from the front of the wheelbarrow, David tied them to the clothesline that was underneath, thus making a solid piece. He took an old brown blanket and pulled it over all but the antlers, and tucking in all the hanging edges, made a reasonable facsimile to the diagram on Chris’ design sheet. Then he centered it in the garage, so Chris could see it when he got home. Heading back into the house, David hit the light switch to turn it off and the bulb blew out with crack and a quick flash.

David heard his dad pull into the driveway and beep twice, and he went outside to hear his dad say, “we’re going out for a welcome home dinner, come on.” Chris was gad to see his brother and they talked in the back, while mother and dad chatted in the front. David told Chris about completing his diagram, and that it was all set to try out, whenever they could play again, which would have to be tomorrow as it was already dark. Chris was grateful and hugged his brother.

At the restaurant, David had the meatloaf and Chris had his favorite cheeseburger and French fries, and for dessert there was chocolate cake, for David, but Chris, was only allowed to have some vanilla pudding. Driving home, they both fell asleep, and dad stopped in the driveway to let everyone out, saying he was going to put the car in the garage, because it might snow tonight. David told his dad about the light, and opened the garage door and went inside. A few minutes later, there was a loud crash and dad could be heard yelling. Seems he drove straight into the garage, and had turned off the headlights and crashed into the wheel barrow with deer head, as everyone came running into the garage, steam was rushing out through the car’s radiator, and he said something had killed the car. Chris turned to David said, “dad killed a bull”.