Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - New American Stories

Two days later, Errol appeared by my side late one morning and said, “There’s something I want you to see.”

My brother fidgeted with his hands in his pockets excitedly as I followed him to Angel’s Camp. “What is it?” I asked several times. His only reply was, “Something you’ll have to see to believe.” We passed the Swede’s and continued down a small hill to where a glade flattened out. Many men were gathered there and my heart picked up some, with fantasies of a second mail coach or a bundle of letters lost and now found. But near the crowd Errol halted and tapped a poster nailed to the trunk of a pine:

War! War! War!

The celebrated Bull-killing Bear

GENERAL SCOTT

Will fight a Bull on Sunday the 15th at 12 p.m.

at Tuolumne Meadow

The Bull will be perfectly wild, young, of the Spanish breed

the best that can be found in the country

the Bull’s horns will be of their natural length

NOT Sawed or Filed

Admission is $6 or one half ounce

I had heard of Spaniards hosting contests of men versus bulls and the prospect of witnessing this even higher spectacle excited me. Errol and I hustled nearer the arena, which was composed of tiered seats enclosed by a wood slat fence. We could not see inside. Near the entrance two fiddlers played a lively tune, and a barker lured men by extolling the ferocity of the grizzly General Scott and the virility of the Mexican bull, whom he called Señor Cortez, much to the delight of the Forty-Niners.

But heavy as my pocket was, the entrance fee was prohibitive. As Errol continued to the arena I called after him, “That’s a costly admission.”

“I knew you would say that,” he said. “Follow me, cheapskate.”

I pursued him to the rear of the corral where a crabapple stood, its fruit already fallen and rotting in the grass. He climbed near to the top of the tree, then helped me up. From there we were afforded a splendid view of the arena.

“Look there,” said Errol, pointing to the clearing at its center. “Your foe.” There, tethered by a chain staked into the ground, was a massive grizzly bear. He scratched and scooped at the earth, his great scapulas moving like the machinery of a steam engine. He was carving a burrow for himself, it seemed. Even from our great distance we could see the thick neck shimmering, the monstrous hump at his back swaying, his knifelike claws making shreds of the meadow and the hard-packed soil. I both wished him to roar and feared that he would.

“Now that you’ve seen one you’ll be less afraid,” said Errol. I swelled with affection for him then, for I had not thought he’d noticed my fears. This was how I wanted us to be, always.

The barker was riling the crowd, playing on their terror. I scanned the bronzed and bearded faces under hats of many hues, the gay Mexican blankets and the blue and red bonnets of the French. Among all those like mirages were Mexican women in frilly white frocks, puffing on their cigaritas. Until then I had ever conceived that my wife would be a Buckeye, or perhaps a New Englander. But from where I was perched in that crabapple tree it seemed impossible to choose a bony, board-shaped descendant of the Puritans over one of these rosy, full-formed, sprightly Spaniard women.

Errol said, uncannily, “I’ll marry Marjorie in a meadow like this. Beneath a tree.”

“I expect so,” I managed.

“I’ll marry her here, then I will build us a great big house on the same spot. Soon, Angel’s Camp will be bigger than San Francisco. I’ll have more land than Sutter. I’ll buy the Swede’s store out from under him. Mr. Salter will have to buy a parcel from me. No.” Glee flickered across his face. “I’ll give him one.”

Errol’s gaze cast out from the tree, across the corral and the meadow and beyond. “Marj and I will have sons enough to line the American River. You’ll be there, too. An uncle.”

It touched me to be included like this, in both the fight and the fantasy. “And Mother,” I said.

“Yes, Mother, too. And Mary and Harriet and Faith and Louisa, too. Everyone.”

Then we were quiet, because we knew it would not be everyone.

By now the action below was nearly afoot. The bear General Scott had achieved a burrow several hands deep and presently he lumbered into it and lay there on his back, much in the manner of a happy baby. The crowd hated him for his merriment and screamed for the release of the bull. They stomped an infectious rhythm. Errol and I began to thump the branches of our tree, too.

From the far end of the arena came a large, muscular bull, with horns like none I had ever seen. The crowd went mute.

“Here we go,” whispered Errol.

“Are they going to unchain the bear?” I asked. Errol hushed me.

Initially, the bull seemed not even to notice the bear, so one of the vaqueros jabbed the bull in the rump with a prod, sending the beast galloping from the periphery. This was when he locked eyes on the bear. He stomped and snorted a bit, and then charged General Scott where he lay in his den. I gripped my limb as the bull struck the General in his flank, sending a frightful thunk through the meadowland. A cheer escaped from the crowd.

The bull retreated and immediately charged again. But this time the bear affixed his powerful jaws to the bull’s nose. The bull let out an unsettling cry. But the General would not relent. He latched his forepaws around the bull’s thick neck and held on. I whooped, and in so doing discovered my allegiance lay with the bear General Scott.

The bull attempted to free himself by pounding the General’s chest with his mighty hooves. In response, the General dug his foreclaws into the meat of the bull’s brawny shoulder. Blood spurted, and Errol and I both cheered. The animals separated. Where the bull’s nose had been was now only a dark cavity from which dangled stringy bloodpulp. “My,” I breathed.

Errol said, “Aren’t you a delicate betty?”

The bull paused, then charged again, only to be locked by the General’s devastating, trap-like hug. The match went on like this, with the bull trying to hook the General and toss him out of his hole, the General gripping his antagonist and attempting to pull him down to where the bull might be ribboned. The crowd soon grew restless and booed the flagging bull. The impresario emerged, waving his hat, and announced that for $200 in gold he would release another bull. The hat was passed and the flakes raised. I heard some miners accuse the barker of saving his strongest bull to squeeze more color from them, and when the second bull was released I saw that it was likely true, for this bull stood half a rod taller than the first. His horns were twice as girthy and appeared to have been sharpened.

“Oh,” said Errol, some trepidation in his voice.

With both bulls in the arena, General Scott was sorely tried. The first and smaller bull continued with his strategy of charging the grizzly and grappling with him, while the second bull attacked from the side. Soon the larger, nameless bull speared the General in his ribs and dragged him from his hole. The grizzly roared then, his long, blood-covered teeth gleaming in the November sun. It was a forlorn, haunting sound, not at all the monstrous bellow I had yearned for at the battle’s onset.

Errol had gone quiet. His hand was drawn to his mouth, as was mine.

Exposed in the grassy open, the bear was a pincushion. Horns penetrated his abdomen, his ribs, his haunches and his back. One goring went into his throat and out the other side. Another stabbed his stomach and sliced up and out near the sternum, letting the bear’s guts spill onto the grass. A hot fecal smell filled the air, causing the ladies to bring their kerchiefs to their mouths. There seemed no end to the blood that would spurt from this beast. Soon all the meadowland was wet with it.