Running the Bulls by Cathie Pelletier Page A

Billy,” he said. “There is something you can do for me.”
    Billy’s face came to life. His whole frame grew taller, rose up for the occasion. Howard had no doubt that if Billy had had a dog’s tail attached to his butt, it would be wagging. It would be causing more wind than the blades of a helicopter.
    â€œWhat’s that, Mr. Woods?” Billy asked.
    â€œWould you go over to the fiction section for me?” asked Howard. “See if you can find a book called The Sun Also Rises ?”
    â€œWe’re supposed to ask who wrote the book before we go looking for it,” said Billy. He seemed proud of this rule, as if he had been through an intense basic training and now was fully qualified for the job.
    â€œErnest Hemingway,” said Howard, when he realized that Billy was serious.
    Without further instruction, Billy lurched off. Then, he stopped and looked back at Howard, his eyebrows knitting themselves into a question, a cloud forming over his eyes.
    â€œThe sun also what ?” asked Billy.
    Howard stared. It had been one of the five novels they had studied in American Literature.
    â€œRises,” said Howard. He pointed at the ceiling. Billy nodded happily and then disappeared. Not wasting another moment of valuable time, Howard grabbed the Berlitz Guide to Spain from off the shelf—it included two cassettes to aid him in learning Spanish—and bolted for the checkout counter. It seemed the first skillful dodging he would have to do, on the road to Pamplona, would take place right in his own backyard, in Bixley, Maine.
    The girl at the checkout seemed surprised to witness Howard running. Was it not allowed in bookstores? She gave him a sharp, questioning stare as he patted his hip pocket to see if he had, indeed, remembered his wallet.
    â€œBilly says you taught him English,” she told Howard, as she accepted the Berlitz guide from him. “That’s cool,” she added.
    â€œI believe Billy was somewhat proficient in English when I met him,” Howard replied. What the hell was happening to today’s youth? It seemed as if four or five of them needed to congregate in order to come up with a single good thought.
    â€œAnything else?” the clerk wondered. Howard shook his head. “Cash or charge?”
    â€œWhich is faster?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder to see if Billy had remembered that it was the sun that rises, and not bread dough.
    â€œCash,” she said. “Of course.”
    Howard knew that this young woman thought him incurably dumb. He dug into his wallet and fished out a twenty. If tipping would speed her up, he would have offered her a dollar, for she took forever, the velocity of the young, operating beneath a brain that was running on automatic pilot. Finally, she gave him the bag after tossing his receipt inside.
    â€œAre you interested in our Savings Plan?” she asked. “I was supposed to ask you that before I rang up the sale.”
    Howard looked down the aisle and saw what was probably the top of Billy’s head, brownish thick hair gliding atop aisle four like a wooden boat as it made its way toward the front of the store. Billy must have looked for Howard in section three, and now he was on an all-out search of the store to find him.
    â€œYou pay ten dollars for the card,” the girl was now saying, “but each time you buy a book you get ten percent off. It’s pretty cool.”
    â€œNo,” said Howard, “I’m not interested. Listen, tell Billy I had to run, okay? Tell him I’ll be in again and we can chat.”
    Then, Howard stepped out into the flow of mall traffic, that wave of shoppers that soon swallowed him up in its ranks.
    ***
    â€œÂ¿Cómo está usted?” Howard asked John, when they met in the den at six o’clock for a cocktail before dinner. Patty was still at the theater, working on the costuming for Cyrano de Bergerac —apparently