Mexico (68 page)

"I'd be fascinated to hear," Grim said, and with obvious embarrassment Ricardo explained, "I'm ashamed to say that five months after I made my big resolve to stay here forever, I was back home begging my mother to let me have the small inheritance my grandmother had left for me in her care. When she learned what I wanted to spend the money on, she asked my father if he thought it was a practical idea for me to become a Mexican bullfighter, and when he heard the question he exploded. I listened to him rant and rave, then I said I knew what I wanted to do and he screamed: 'You're no son of mine,' and I snarled back: 'I never was,' and that day 1 changed my name to Ricardo Martin, partly out of respect and a kind of love for Mother, but also because 1 couldn't see making my way in Mexico with a name like Caldwell. How are you going to put that on a billboard? But Martin easily becomes Martin, heavy accent on the last syllable, or even Martinez.

"Mom turned out to be a lot smarter than I thought, because she said: 'I'll not allow you to touch that money my mother left for you, but I'll mail you fifty dollars a month.' "

"Glad to hear someone in your family has good sense," Grim said, and I saw Penny kick him.

Ricardo, ignoring the interruption, said, "You'd be surprised how much extra change a guy can pick up down here just by keeping his ears open."

"And his hand outstretched," Grim said.

"Are you making headway?" Mrs. Evans asked, and Ricardo said: "Anyone here know the wordpachanga! I'm not sure it's in the dictionary, but I'm king of the pachangas."

"What are they?" Mrs. Evans asked, always curious.

"A brawl. A village brawl in which everyone can participate. It's really a village bullfight without a barricaded ring, without picadors, and without formal costumes. What they do have is some seven
-
or eight-year-old bull with very big horns but the sharp tips sawed off. Weighs about fifteen hundred pounds, half again the size of a proper bull. If he doesn't get you with his horns he tramples you to death."

"Sounds rather disorganized," Mrs. Evans said, following the account closely.

"It's a riot, really, not a bullfight," the young man said. "There're two kinds of riots: those organized like the attack on the Bastille: 'Let's get those prisoners outta there'; and those that are totally disorganized, like a real pachanga."

"Then why do you bother with them?"

Ricardo stopped, looked at her in disbelief and said: "Because the job of a would-be matador is to fight bulls. Any bull, anywhere. In a pachanga, you learn
. W
hether you have the courage to get within range of those horns and then stand there with your feet planted and make him drive past you. To take part in the next pachanga I would walk to Oaxaca." The sincerity with which he spoke, this young man who had fought as a Marine in Frozen Chosen and then run away from the security of home again to attempt this dangerous profession, impressed his listeners. *

"Is yours a special case, or are there a lot of young men like you?" Penny asked.

"There've always been wandering hopefuls like me. Some of the greatest came up my way, Juan Belmonte in Spain, Juan Gomez here in Mexico. I guess we're universal."

"I mean, Americans?"

"Sidney Franklin made it, a kid from Brooklyn. And Patricia McCormick, a girl."

At this startling information, Grim exploded. "You mean a decent American girl came down here, did the pachanga business you spoke of and became a matador?"

"She did," Ricardo said matter-of-factly. "Fought real corridas and was pretty good."

"The world is going to hell," Ed grumbled. "And you, young lady, stay away from matadors."

She smiled and said, "Senor Ledesma told me the same thing," and Grim said, 'That critic gets smarter every minute."

Mrs. Evans wanted to get back to her main interest. Smiling at Martin, she asked, "You use such good English when you want to. Where did you learn it?"

"Idaho has good schools. Mom made me read."

Mrs. Evans now spoke like a mother: "And you're giving up your education to be a matador?"

"It wasn't much, really. I would never have been a scholar. In the Marines I'd never have become an officer." Looking down at his hands he said: "I wasn't losing much. But I could not risk blowing this one chance to do the big thing."

"If you dreamed of doing something big, why didn't you grab at the G
. I
. Bill? It helps pay for a veteran's education toward a new job or profession."

"I told you I did."

This was too much for Ed. "You mean you're just pretending to go to college so you can be a bullfighter? What kin
d o
f kid are you?"

"We settled that yesterday. An ex-Marine who will knock you flat on your ass if you make one false move."

"Penny, let's get out of here. This dump is no place for a decent young girl."

"I'm staying," she said. "I like these people. They're my friends."

"I told you to come with me," Grim repeated, but Ricardo said quietly, "And she said she was staying. Good-bye, Mr. Grim," and the daughter stayed as the father stormed off.

When he was gone, Mrs. Evans said, "I don't want you people to underestimate Ed Grim. He's a terrific oilman."

"That doesn't give him the right to order everyone around," Ricardo said, and she replied, "Young man. Ed Grim fought the battle to give oil-field workers medical insurance, fair wages, and the right, if they wanted to, to join unions."

"But, of course," Penny said, "having made that grandstand play, he did all he could to bust the union."

"Even so," Mrs. Evans said, "what you see. with Ed is basically what you get." Then, turning exclusively to Ricardo, she asked: "So you still dream of doing the big thing?" and he replied, "Yes, because I've watched so many setde for the little thing."

"So what do you do next?" she asked, and he said: "Sneak in the fight tomorrow to see how Victoriano and Gomez handle it. You can always learn if you study the best."

"And in the cold morning-after?"

His face broke into a big smile as he patted Mrs. Evans on the hand. "You really understand bullfighting. Every day is a cold morning-after. Well, on tomorrow morning after the big fight I hurry back to Mexico City to seek out news about the next pachanga. I'll work my way to some village, and one of these days something big will happen.".

"And if it doesn't?" Mrs. Evans bored in.

"I'll have to make it happen."

"And how do you do that?"

"I have a plan!"

We sat silent for some minutes--the widow of a Tulsa oilman with ample funds and a fifty-two-year-old journalist with a comfortable income--and we were both struck by the precariousness of Ricardo's financial condition.

Mrs. Evans asked Ricardo: "You said you were going to sneak in to see the fight tomorrow. How?"

"You learn the ways."

I think she was going to lend him some money, but just at that moment Ed Grim came to our table lugging two heavy suitcases and bringing Mr. and Mrs. Haggard behind him with their luggage.

"We're heading north," he announced almost fiercely as if to say "And what are you going to do about it?" He placed one suitcase beside Penny's chair. "We decided that bullfighting is barbaric. We want no more of it. You're coming with us, Penny. And, Elsie, you'd come home, too, if you had any sense."

Without hesitation Penny said quite calmly, "I'm not going." Drawing her suitcase closer to her, she said, "For a long time I've wanted to spend a day at a Mexican ranch, and Mr. Clay told me he could arrange it. I'm staying."

"Now wait a minute!" I protested, "I said that before I knew you were leaving your father and staying behind. Believe me, the Festival of Ixmiq is no place for a seventeen-year-old high school girl on her own."

"I'm almost a college girl and old enough to know my own mind."

Penny was adamant. She would not ride back to Tulsa with her father and the Haggards. She was determined to stay with the matadors, and when her father seemed ready to carry her off to his Cadillac, Mrs. Evans felt she had to intervene. "Chester! I'm staying and Penny can stay with me. She's a big girl now. Come autumn, she'll be away from you anyway."

"But at a decent college. Not in some Mexican pachanga or whatever it's called."

Seeing that he could not budge Penny and that we seemed to be encouraging her to resist him, he became furious, almost tearing his coat pocket to get at his fight tickets for the remaining bullfights. Throwing them on the table, he cried in fury, 'Take them, and as for you, Elsie Evans, your husband must be turning in his grave."

"I think he might be," she said, and then she became the conciliator. "Chester, your little girl is growing up. If Millicent were alive she'd tell you to let her go. And you can do it with the assurance that I'll look after her."

As Ed got in the car, he realized he could not leave his daughter as if he were dismissing her in a fit of temper. Hastily climbing out, he came to where she stood beside me, clasped her in his arms and mumbled: "You're a champion, kid. Don't screw it up." He kissed her, then turned to Mrs. Evans and me and said fiercely: "Keep an eye on her. She's Oklahoma gold."

When Ed and the Haggards were gone Mrs. Evans asked, "Now, how am I going to get my car home? I don't drive anymore." Before waiting for an answer, she pushed the eight valuable tickets into the center of the table, where Penny reached out to grab her pair and tuck them into her small purse. The other six Mrs. Evans turned over to Ricardo, saying, "Since they pertain to bullfighting, they're yours." Leaving them on the table, he arranged them in a neat line. "Six tickets. Two tourists were here about an hour ago begging people on the Terrace to sell them tickets. Fifty bucks for today's fight. A hundred bucks for tomorrow's." When the women gasped, he explained, "After a death in the ring, interest goes way up." Moving the tickets about in patterns, he said, "Four hundred and fifty bucks. Enough to keep me chasing pachangas for a year." Rising abruptly, he went to Mrs. Evans and kissed her. "Mom would approve of you, and so do I," but she said, "Thank Ed Grim, not me."

This amiable discussion was interrupted by the passage through the Terrace of a matador in full costume on his way to fight. He was a man for whom I had great admiration, so I called him over and made introductions: "This is Pepe Luis Vasquez, the Mexican one. He has the misfortune that Spain has its own matador of that name, but this is the good one."

Ricardo was awed at having this fine torero standing beside him. He rose and with his right forefinger indicated various parts of the matador's costume: "Wound here. Wound here. In the trade he bears the honorable title The Pincushion. No matador in recent times has survived the wounds this man has," and he indicated: "Horn here could have been fatal but the medics saved him. Horn through here. Eight or nine horns in the buttocks down here. This leg, that leg."

"Is he telling the truth?" Penny asked, and Pepe Luis bowed and said in good English: "Under more favorable circumstances, I could prove it." Penny said without changing her tone or her expression, "That would be compelling," and I thought, Senorita Penny knows how to handle herself.

We chatted briefly, and he was a splendid torero of the solid middle group, never a transcendent star but always the man of dignity who faced the bulls as they came. He represented the backbone of the bullfight business, the man who year after year filled the afternoon bill in second or third position, often outshining the stars.

He had barely gone when one of the aging phenomena of the Mexican scene passed through on his way to the arena. It was Calesero, the matador from Aguascalientes who each spring helped the Toledo people put together their program for Ixmiq. He was the gentleman of the profession, a man of exquisite delicacy in the ring, a master of cape work, none better, but never outstanding with the sword. Aficionados came to the plaza in hopes of catching him on a good day when with his cape, his nimble feet and his arching body, slim and artistic in its movement, he would weave miracles with some compliant bull. A man of great dignity, he nodded to me as he passed, and I did not try to intercept him.

So, by the simple device of having shared Ledesma's table at the House of Tile, Mrs. Evans, Penny and Ricardo had seen at close hand the four toreros who were to be in that day's fight: Conchita the adorable; Calesero, the elder statesman; Pepe Luis Vasquez, the valiant; and Fermin Sotelo, the new comet rising above the horizon. It promised to be a rewarding afternoon.

As we rose from our table for the bullring, Ledesma and I were detained by the arrival of my uncle, who presented the critic with a moral dilemma: "Don Leon, I'm aware that neither Calesero nor Pepe Luis has paid you your customary fee."

'They have not," Ledesma said coolly.

"But this festival is important to our city--to me, personally. To help me, trusted friend, to sell tickets for tomorrow's fight, could you bring yourself to speak well of the matadors' performance in today's?"

"Praise them when they haven't paid? Impossible." He turned away, but Don Eduardo could not risk the damage a scornful review might cause.

"Leon, gentleman of honor, let's admit that they did not give you your fee. Let's admit that they've insulted you. But if I paid their fee, would that make it possible?"