Bulls & Bullies

Two photos rested on the kitchen table –the small plastic Polaroid being held by the large metal frame below it. She had put the frame in my hands after sharing her theory with me, but its weight quickly tumbled from my grip. She caught it, before it could fall, and discarded it onto the table’s surface to hold my hands in hers. Her eyes, older than mine, held my gaze as he reached out a hand to place on my shoulder. In the past, the touch of any many could cause me to crumble and retreat, but I felt an unfamiliar form of safety from his touch. I took in a deep breath, and was finally able to sigh it back out with a steady chest.

I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, she knew I was ready. “Did he do this to you? Your father?” she asked, motioning to my shoulder in a sling, and my knee wrapped in bandages. Her eyes showed concern and understanding, but also a form of guilt that I couldn’t quite place.

“No…” I began, with my head hanging even lower. “I haven’t seen my father in twelve years; I left him when I was eighteen.” I could feel their eyes on me, and their hearts waiting to hold me in their safety, so I continued. “My only friend lived on a farm down the road from me, and I’d sneak out to be with her. I’d encourage my father to have a few extra beers, and when he’d fall asleep on the couch, I was finally free to be a teenager!

“On the night of her high school graduation, I packed a bag and planned to stay with her for the night; I’d deal with my father’s wrath in the morning. She found the bruises on my arms that night, though, and the marks on my back from his belt. I told her everything –about the photo of the girl holding Marigold flowers, and even the night he discovered it. She convinced me not to go back to him, and I hid in her parent’s basement for weeks.

“When her older brother came to visit, he found me hiding in the back of a closet. He was soft yet strong, and I allowed him to reveal me to the rest of their family. We got married a year later, and I love him dearly.” I paused before that last statement could leave my lips, and I knew that they could feel the lies within my words, as well as the unspoken truth.

I allowed my eyes to rise and meet theirs, but I was surprised to see their gazes on each other. She nodded at him slightly and then passed my hands from hers to his. He turned to face me as I did the same; with my hands clasped in one of his, he brought his other up to my face and gently traced my wounds –the bandage above my eyebrow, and the split in my lip. With my cheek still in his mighty hand, he looked me deep in the eyes and said the words I didn’t know I was longing for, “It’s not your fault.”

My body began to shake and tears poured from my eyes as I collapsed into him and gave him my weight. Leaning forward in each of our chairs, my forehead fell to his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around me to keep me from slithering down to the floor. I cried harder than I ever had, in the presence of others; and the way he held me was new and familiar, all at once. Somehow, I knew these arms wrapped around me, and the chest soaking up my tears. I know this man, and the tenderness of his touch; but how?

My shaking body began to calm, but he kept me close to him. He rubbed one hand up and down my back, with the other in my hair; and then he began to speak. “It’s not your fault,” he whispered. “I know that it’s hard, but it’s not your fault. Those are angry men, and I’m sorry they took it out on you.”

He was saying the words I didn’t know I needed, but I knew I had to reject them, too. I pulled my head away from his chest, just enough to look up at his face. “He’s a good man, I swear. My husband is good…” I could feel the lies in my words, and it began to hurt me to say them. I collapsed back down into his safety, and he let me wail before he continued.

With my forehead on his chest, and my tears falling to the floor, I could see the brown paper in a heap at our feet. The brown box it encased still rested on the table, and I shuttered at the thought of his hand writing my name on its surface. “I’m sure he's a good man,” I heard Jimmy say. “But he’s in a lot of pain. He hurts you to make himself feel better, and you don’t deserve that. Maybe he is a good man, but he doesn’t deserve your love. You deserve better!” He said those last few words a few times over, and when he felt me sigh it away from my heart, he said it again. “You do deserve better! And I know that because I was you.”

I peeled my crying face away from his chest, and looked into his eyes like the hurt little girl I was. I glanced at Dot for just a moment, and I caught the look she gave to him, asking him to continue; and continue he did.

He told me of his father, and the beatings he experienced. He wasn’t as lucky as me; in fact, he couldn’t even remember the first time he was hit. His father was an angry man, and a drunk like mine. His mother had managed to escape, but his father pulled him from the car before they could drive off together. There was no one to protect him, and the only one who cared enough to try was the woman at the table with us.

He spent more time with her and helped on her farm more than he did with his own father. He’d have the school bus drop him off in her laneway instead of his, and he’d feed her animals as she made them chocolate cake. Throughout their stories, there was mention of a 'she' and 'her', but I brushed right past them and tried to picture him as a little boy. Finally, they came to the end of their dreadful story, and I realized how those two people were connected.

“My father died when I was twelve years old, and Dot took me in.” Their eyes had been locked on each other as they shared their past with me, and I could see the love between them. She had become the home he never had, and fulfilled what his true mother had set out to do. She was able to fill what was lacking in his life, and I felt that, somehow, he filled a void for her as well.

As touched as I was to see the family they had formed around each other, I felt my mind wandering in a different direction. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to know, but I felt myself asking the question, “How did your father die?”

They shared a look again, but it was her voice that reached my ears in response. “He was mauled by a bull.” My hand found my face as I gasped, and I felt my breathe catch in my chest, afraid to be released into the air of the room. My sight turned to him as I placed a hand on his knee, but he was looking her deep in the face, waiting for the rest of the story he already knew so well. “He was a cocky man –not humble in the slightest. He liked to taunt the bulls and then jump the fence that contained them. He was always so fast… but so much slower when he was drinking, and he couldn’t get away in time… Dan tried…” Her voice began to trail off, and I could feel the pain in her chest spread.

There were words waiting on the edge of her lips, but they fell from his tongue instead. “Danny tried to save him; he tried to lure the bull to the other side of the pen. It didn’t work though, it was chaos. It was…” He was speaking frantically, and I could feel that he was right back in that moment. He had witness the brutal death of his father, and she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it. It needed to be said, and it needed to be him who said it. “My father died because he was a reckless idiot; but Danny died because he was a good man.” He paused for a moment as his head hung low and I could feel the guilt in his voice. “I couldn’t save him, and I couldn’t save her!”

The power in his voice when he said the last word made me jump back in my seat. There was anger in his words, and although it made me retreat in fear, I knew that it was directed only at himself. I could feel the words drift from his heart to mine, yet my mind was fumbling with some of the details. Who was Danny, and the ‘her’ that couldn’t be saved? With the question on my lips, I looked to hers and she offered me what I hadn’t yet asked.

“Danny was my husband,” she began. “He grew up here, in this house, with Jimmy’s father in the house down the road. Dan always tried to help Jim; he’d talk to him calmly whenever he got angry, and he was the only one that could pry the booze from Jim’s drunken grip. He tried to talk him off the ledge of the bull’s fence, and he tried to help him after he’d fallen in. Dan was a good man, with a good heart –and he died as such.” There was a tear in her eye as she spoke of her dear, departed husband; and I could feel that it was a tear of pride, not sadness. She was proud of her husband and the man that he was; and even grateful for the tragic event that brought Jimmy into her home forever.

I was still stumbling with the details, though, and I found myself caught on Jimmy’s last statement: “I couldn’t save her!” The confusion must have been smeared across my face, because when I looked back to her, the words were already falling from her lips.

“Hannah,” she began. “My daughter.” She placed the metal frame in my hands again, and I looked down at the girl with a Marigold on her overalls. “She was there… the day her father died. She watched it all happen...”

“And we haven’t seen her since.”

To be continued...

• Part 1 – The Old Barn
• Part 2 – Peace & Cake
• Part 3 – The Kitchen Table
• Part 4 – Paper & Twine
• Part 5 – The Polaroid Picture
• Part 6 – Bulls & Bullies
• Part 7 – The Raging Beast
• Part 8 – Water & Ice