Mascot

The day the bull escaped from the slaughterhouse it was all over the local news. A pedestrian had been out walking and was almost mowed down by the creature in the street. He claimed he would have been killed if the bull had intended it, but instead it had kept running past him, head lowered, clearing the way in front of it.

“It were like he was on some kind of mission,” the mostly toothless man reflected on the screen in front of Jerry, who was sitting on his worn-down couch, halfway through a congealing microwaved meal.

Jerry wasn’t paying very much attention, but he did pick up on the fact that the last place the bull had been seen was a wooded suburban area near Greenport.

The things people think are newsworthy, Jerry thought to himself, ignoring the slight pang that went through him at the mention of Greenport. He would teach Derek on weekend fishing trips out there before Sarah picked him up Sunday night.

That was another world away. Jerry took a look at his unsavory meatloaf and dumped it in the trash. Shutting off the TV, he lay across the couch and went to bed with the now-familiar heaviness in his chest.

—

The bull was spotted in the woods behind a civilian’s house in White Plains a week later. The man had called the authorities, who had come to strategically surround and bait the animal, but by the time they arrived, it was gone.

“You hear about that?” the old woman asked from her rocking chair.

Jerry was replacing her sliding glass door. “Sure did, ma’am.”

“Makes me afraid to leave my house,” she shivered. “No telling who he’s gonna come for next.”

Jerry only grunted. He sincerely doubted the bull was coming for anyone- more like trying to escape from his obvious fate. It wouldn’t last for long. This type of thing had happened before and they always caught the animal, wore it down or lured it in.

“What?” Jerry asked. He realized the lady had been saying something else to him.

“I said, you got any children?”

His stomach sank. For a while he couldn’t get his tongue to function, then he merely said, “No, ma’am.”

“Well that’s good.” She leaned back in her chair. “Having kids is dangerous enough these days with all the types of people we got, let alone raging bulls wandering about.”

--

Later that night as he entered his single-wide and went to take a leak, Jerry's eyes kept catching on the medicine cabinet.

The plan. He could do it tonight. It was getting harder to think of reasons not to. He’d thought at first he was just afraid, but the fear had faded away by now.

Jerry shook his head and shifted his focus to the blinking light on his answering machine. His friend Ryan had left a couple of messages.

Haven’t heard from you in awhile bud, just checking in.

Call back when you get this, a few of us were talking about reconnecting for Christmas.

That had been a couple of weeks ago now. Jerry hadn’t responded. Ryan and he had once been pretty close, before Ryan got married and moved out to California where they’d gone to school - “sucked into the family life”, was how he put it, but always with a smile in his voice.

Jerry felt a little bad for not answering, but he couldn’t think what to say. It was harder and harder for him to talk to anyone unless they were complete strangers, like the clients for whom he did work. The last time he’d talked to Ryan on the phone- shortly after the event had happened- he’d gritted his teeth through hearing updates he and his wife’s latest vacation, his son’s win in junior soccer. He knew he should feel happy for his friend, and he did, but all it did was remind him of that other world, the one he would never have back.

--

He had seen Sarah’s face more clearly on that morning than he’d seen it any other. She’d come over to his place without warning, stood in the doorway to his trailer.

“Jerry, we need to talk.”

“What about?” he’d said, hoping this wasn’t going to be about taking yet another weekend away from him so Derek could go do things with her family at their posh fucking lake house.

Jerry and Sarah had been on good terms as far as divorced couples went, with the exception of one thing. Her parents had a lot of money and tight family bonds, and his parents were nonexistent, his mother dead and his father plain gone. It was that and her better career, her better home, that had afforded her a monopoly on their son. Jerry knew it was partly insecurity on his part- he sometimes felt like eight-year-old Derek enjoyed his ‘real family’ more than he did his ‘dad time.’ Jerry was in a particular mood about it that day, and had some choice words stored up for her.

“Jerry, Derek is missing.”

The words took a while to settle over him. “What do you mean, missing?”

“I went to pick him up from school and he wasn’t there. The teacher said she hadn’t seen him the entire day since I dropped him off.”

Thus followed the beginning of the nightmare.

—

A month passed with brief, alleged sightings in what was dubbed the ‘raging bull case’. People were beginning to follow it the way one would a sports tournament, the way people did. The guys at Jerry’s job had been talking about whether or not a reward that would be issued for its capture.

The animal rights activists had now become involved as well, lining up on street edges with signs and grisly slaughterhouse photos. “TAKE HURRICANE BILLY TO A SANCTUARY” several of the signs proclaimed. Apparently the bull had become enough of a mascot to warrant a name. How they’d come up with Hurricane Billy was less clear; probably because no one ever knew where he’d turn up next or where he’d go.

One day, things came to a head when someone in Putnam County spotted the bull in miles of open field near a main road. This time the authorities were able to surround it. They’d brought food and a female cow in heat to lure it in.

Jerry found himself watching the standoff on television that night where it was being live streamed. The bull- Hurricane Billy, he supposed- was standing, encircled by a group of people including the camera crew for the station.

“He does not seem to be taking the bait,” an announcer informed any watchers. Sarah used to think it was so funny how they narrated the obvious. ‘I’d like to be paid for that,’ she’d told him once when he was watching a ball game.

Sometimes he thought of calling her, but then remembered he couldn’t. Their very last interaction had been too ugly to repair with mere words.

--

Despite months of searching and a couple of unsuccessful leads, Derek had never been found. Some days it was as though their son had been a figment of Jerry’s imagination- here one second, gone the next. His nights were full of strange dreams, his days full of thinking he could hear Derek’s voice calling him: “Daddy, come look!”

He and Sarah, already tense from the stress and grief, had begun to grate against one another. Jerry remembered one fight in particular.

“You should have watched him go in the doors!” he’d yelled. “What kind of mother just drives away?”

That had been enough for her. “Don’t you dare blame me for this,” Sarah hissed, her eyes raw from crying. At the time he’d felt righteous in his fury, and he still found himself getting angry whenever he saw anything she posted on social media, whether it was birthday pictures or a vacation she took with her now-fiance. The rational part of his brain knew that no one shared their true emotions on Facebook, that Sarah was likely still hurting just like him. But he needed that rational part of his brain less than he needed to be angry at something. There was comfort in that anger. Any opportunity to feel anything other than the cloying emptiness that had shrouded him for the past couple of years was an opportunity Jerry took. It felt- literally- like choosing life over death, and those days were getting too far and few.

Put simply, Jerry was tired. He was tired of getting up and doing the same job every day, he was tired of coming home to his empty trailer, he was tired of the lack of purpose that swallowed him whole. He was tired of the aching in his chest and his head and his bones that the doctors could find no cure for, that grew heavier every day.

The night the standoff with Hurricane Billy was being aired on television, he’d taken the sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed him back when it happened down from his bathroom cabinet. They were expired, but he didn’t think that mattered. He’d been distracted by the bull story cropping up again, though, and hadn’t gone through with his plan. He’d fallen asleep in the middle of what ended up being a very long standoff.

—

The bull was still not giving ground the next day, and the next after that. Footage was being live-streamed around the clock. Jerry did not eat; he did not go to work. Calls from his employer piled up; he didn’t care. He wouldn’t need to worry about a job soon enough. He’d gotten a few drinks of water during commercial breaks, planning to take them with the pills, but somehow he’d ended up downing the glass and the pills remained in their cylindrical prison, silently waiting.

It seemed ridiculous to think he was actually becoming invested in what became of Hurricane Billy, but in the strangest way it was the only thing that mattered to him. Each day that the bull held his ground, pacing the field or stomping his hoof at someone who’d gone just a little too close was a small victory. There was something intelligent in the animal’s flat eyes, something patient. Prepared to weather the storm. He wasn’t fooled by the bribes of food, though he must’ve been hungry. Jerry himself didn’t eat; he only sat on the couch, the world around him disappearing bit by bit. Later, he thought of the pills. After I know what happens.

Immediately he felt stupid. He knew what was going to happen. Eventually the bull would give in, driven by its hunger or plain exhaustion.

--

On the fourth night of the standoff, Jerry woke to the noise of the announcer shouting.

“He’s made a break for it! He’s off again! Attempts to embed a tracker have failed and the crew has lost sight of him. We are currently searching the area.”

Jerry sat up, scooting to the edge of his seat. His head felt weak and dizzy, but there was a strange new sensation spreading through his chest. An hour passed, and the hopes of finding Hurricane Billy were dwindling. The livestream cut off.

Jerry pictured the bull out there somewhere, muscles rippling under his shiny black coat, hot breath pluming from his nostrils like twin pistons as he raced into the distance, defying any semblance of defeat.

Good, he thought, Keep running.

He shut off the TV and stood up, uncapping the bottle of pills. Jerry stood there for a moment before walking to the toilet, dumping them in. He went over to the phone with the flashing message light and, with his heart pounding erratically in his chest, picked it up and dialed the number of his old friend.

“Ryan?” he said when the familiar voice answered, muzzy with sleep. “I know it’s a little late to RSVP for Christmas but I think… I think I need help.”