SanFermin 3

By Jesse Graham

All rivers flow eventually to the sea. In the culminating volume of SanFermin 3 long drowned strands of the saga rise at last to the surface. Lives take new bearings. Gates open to unexpected avenues: the worlds of politics, television and accidental media fame. Prisoners are freed; children are born; the Camino continually beckons. Time and change are more and more to be reckoned with. For the bulls keep their same speed forever while each year the runners lose a step.
In a post cold war 21 st century world the stakes are complicated. Many of the habituals find themselves directly engaged in the fall out of both man made conflicts and natural calamities. From the sunken wrecks of Bikini Atoll to the ruins of Belchite. From the Towers to Katrina. Journeys and escapes from Iran to Afghanistan. From abandoned ghost towns in the Inyo range to a boat stranded on the immense Pacific. Revisiting old haunts to wind back the clock. Rekindling old embers in order to alter the old outcomes and perhaps come to different answers.
Scanning the past to make sense of the present, the narrative weaves and shuttles from the early 50’s to the late 60’s and onwards to the challenges of a remorselessly altering world. The threats of terrorism abroad and at home. The speedily expanding web of the Internet, smart phones and drone surveillance. Navigating through the multiplying and unseen consequences. Trying to chart voyages into the future. Clinging on. Letting go.
Through it all, as the cuadrilla hold to the lifeline of fiesta, San Fermin keeps the covenant. The wheel still turns. The tales get told. As some leave the stage, new faces appear. The dance goes on. Giants still waltz and bulls still run in the streets as they did before the wondering eyes of a young American writer all those years ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jesse Graham
• Release date: Oct 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301917983

Jesse Graham

Jesse Graham was born and raised in the Far East. He has been variously an oil rig roughneck offshore, a stagehand in London, a tour/travel guide in the Western United States, a film maker and screenwriter (details on IMDb.com) and a bull runner (retired).

Book preview

Praise for SANFERMIN 1 –

"Sui generis, unlike any other novel I’ve ever read. Anyone interested in Pamplona’s famed fiesta will want to read this book."

Ray Mouton – author of IN GOD’S HOUSE and PAMPLONA: Running the bulls, bars and barrios in Fiesta de San Fermin.

Like the fiesta itself, I just don’t want the book to end.

Jim Hollander – award winning photographer and author of RUN TO THE SUN: Pamplona’s Fiesta de San Fermin.

Jesse Graham has gotten the magnificent festival with a thoroughness no previous writer has approached. He has absolutely captured the unique chaos of the fiesta.

Allen Josephs – past president of the Hemingway Society and author of FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS: Ernest Hemingway’s Undiscovered Country.

Praise for SANFERMIN 2 -

You don’t need experience in Fiesta to adore this book.

Edward Levine – author of DEATH AND THE SUN: A matador’s season in the heart of Spain.

I never understood running with the bulls in Pamplona. But in his masterful books Jesse Graham sucked me into the vortex. He let me smell the streets, hear the thunder of the hooves.

David Weddle – writer/producer of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and author of IF THEY MOVE, KILL ‘EM: the life and times of Sam Peckinpah.

SANFERMIN 3

by Jesse Graham

para Tom, Noel y las hermanas Loinaz

Smashwords Edition. Copyright © Jesse Graham 2013.

All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author, including reproductions intended for non commercial use. Despite the use of real places and events, this book is a work of fiction.

Visit website and blog –

www.jessekgraham.com

Cover by Miren Loinaz. Glyph design by Felix Igartua.

Production help by Sushuma. Editorial work by Lucy Ridout.

Lyrics quoted from Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues by Danny O’Keeffe Used by permission of Warner-Chappell/Alfred Music.

Lyrics quoted from So Sad by Mickey Newbury. Used by permission Susan Newbury.

*****

CHAPTER 1: Bikini, Belchite and Blanco

Those lovely lilac days, the Sanfermines that were real for us – somehow not the Hemingway version, certainly not the Michener either – but something we happy hapless band of extranjeros stole out from under an enormous horde of small-town idiots bent on self-destruction in a totally local celebration of a not very important little black saint. It was fun, wasn’t it, Tib? Just a bit larger than life, just a handful of days a year we tilted windmills and faced up to our dragons. The freedom of ambling down a cobbled street at noon in shadow to emerge into a sunlit square filled with pigeons and pipa shells and bits of confetti to stumble over a sleeping god or two.

(Barbi Hollander in a letter)

There was the year the weather was lousy. It rained so hard the procession was cancelled for the first time since 1949. That was the year that José Tomás first appeared – as a substitute for César Rincón.

*****

Jay and Echo were now a serious item. Dixie was fascinated. It’s like with John Lennon. We should call her Yoko.

Courtney on the phone, dandling her son, listening. Are you sure she’s taking him over?

Remember that woman, Marcia, she was running the galleries for Jay? Well, she’s history. Echo brought in somebody she knew. And she has all these friends in talk TV and radio. She’s got Jay on a few daytime shows, talking about running and showing photographs of encierro.

Whatever for?

Dean flew up to New York to see if he could stomach running a senate race for a man with clammy hands. The city was the way it always was. The yellow cabs like frantic shoals of fish, salmon leaping upstream, playing tag and chase as they hurried up Madison Avenue in the winter sunshine. He had lunch with Jay at Mellons.

That’s it? The guy’s got a dead-mackerel handshake. So you say no?

That’s enough. Besides, I’d have to hang out in Albany.

The conversation turned to updates on the cuadrilla. Donny was starting to lose it, Jay reported. Senility was remorselessly setting in.

The waiter came; they both settled on the steak tartare. Dean remembered something. I forgot. How’s that Shakespeare show of Kit’s doing? Wasn’t it supposed to open in New York?

"The Times killed it, Jay said. They said it was old hat populist literary agit prop. The other reviews were okay but nothing special. It went off a couple of weeks ago."

He must be licking his wounds.

*****

Kit got the word that Julio had died unexpectedly in Thailand. It wasn’t said but the implication was a drug overdose. He rang Beau to pass it on. Julio had long ago drifted out of orbit. But there was still the sense of loss and waste.

Beau told Kit about taking acid in the Andes and carving their way with ice axes up to the mummy child in its high cairn above the world. Kit remembered the lamb being born by the pass near Roncesvalles where he and Julio had crossed on his return to Spain.

Senta was supposed to come over that night. He rang and left a message, saying he felt unwell. He sat in the back garden, watching the hummingbirds hover and dart among the bushes as he smoked. He felt stranded, as he had done for some time. Was this the promised mid-life blues? He wondered what tide would take him off his current shore. The phone rang several times but he did not answer it.

Bruce called to say that a producer and director team was interested in hiring Kit to write a mini-series on the gangster Legs Diamond. An appointment had been set up for Thursday.

I don’t know anything about Legs Diamond, except that Budd Boetticher made a movie about him back in the 60s.

So go hit the books. I’ll see you at Paramount at ten thirty.

The research did not go well. Kit read enough in the library to decide Legs Diamond was a singularly uninvolving character. The notion was not going to fly. As he flicked through the encyclopedias of gangsters and criminals, his eye was caught by a paragraph on a different outlaw. He found himself reading on.

Driving up Melrose towards the studio gates, Kit felt that rare state of grace, a sense of pure indifference to outcome. The meeting was going to go according to his own private script.

From the moment he sat down, Bruce taking a chair carefully off to the side, Kit was enjoying himself.

Why do you want to do a show about Legs Diamond? he asked. The most exciting thing about him was his nickname – The Clay Pigeon – because of the amount of times he took a bullet.

He went on almost joyfully to tear the project apart. He could see Bruce, stiff with horror, listening to his willful sabotage. The producer and director mumbled responses. But it was clear that the Diamond tale was now dead in the water.

On the other hand, Kit said as if it had just struck him, why don’t you think about John Dillinger? He’s never properly been done. And pretty much everything people think they know about him is wrong. And everybody knows three things. He was gunned down by the FBI beside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. He broke his way out of jail with a pistol carved out of wood. And—

The director interrupted. Is it true, he said, that his dick is in the Smithsonian?

And that’s the third. Kit pointed at the director.

The atmosphere had come alive again. He spoke with no interruptions for five minutes. The deal was agreed there and then.

Seated in the Formosa Cafe across the street afterwards, Bruce shook his head, laughing. I swear to God I thought you’d committed suicide. Is all that stuff true or did you just make it up?

All the facts are true. Various investigators have advanced the theory, chiefly a writer called Jay Robert Nash. The autopsy report resurfaced after Hoover’s death.

Holy shit. This one could be something.

And you know something, Kit said, It’s not a gangster story. It’s really the last western.

*****

Thanksgiving out at Wade and Lonnie’s. A whole slew of people showed up. By four in the morning, only three were still on their feet. Wade, Kit and another man, Greg, a neighbor with a passion for scuba diving. Kit went outside and leaned against a tree and spewed an evening’s cargo of cocktails down the scrub hillside that fell away from the deck. His face prickled with cold sweat. He wiped it with his sleeve and went back inside.

Feel better? Wade grinned, knowing exactly what had happened.

As usual, Wade, you’re the last man standing. But I hope I avoided the hangover.

You know, the best cure for a hangover, Greg said, is to go underwater with an oxygen tank. Cleans you right out.

I’d love to go diving again, Kit said. I got my PADI on Bonaire. That was fantastic diving. But I just don’t fancy diving in all the kelp round here.

I’m going on an incredible dive trip, Greg said. They’ve opened up Bikini Atoll to sports divers this year. You can actually get to dive on the wrecks they nuked there in ’46. Fifty years ago.

Kit didn’t even think about it. His mouth opened. I want to go.

Greg looked at him. No promises. I’ll see if I can get you on.

Wade said, I think that might call for a drink.

Later, when Greg had left, they stood out on the deck, looking down at the dark moon-silvered ocean. Wade gestured with the drink in his hand.

This is it, he said. It took me a long time to get that. It’s not the official moment when you sign the contract or go up on a stage and collect some piece of tin. It’s the actual unimportant moment that counts. Being out there in the morning, treading water while an otter or a sea lion checks you out. The cat bringing a dead mouse in. Weeding the garden. Having your ashes hauled. Watching the kids grow up.

It’s the last one I’m having a little trouble with.

You’ll figure it out, Wade said. Being free costs too.

*****

It was a long flight across the heart of the Pacific to the Marshall Islands. They overnighted in Majuro and were flown by seaplane out to the dive boat anchored by Bikini Island. There were a dozen divers, all male, plus the crew. The captain, a ginger-bearded man, heavily freckled, set the tone with his opening address.

You guys are going to notice a lot of fish down there. Sharks and all. I guess you know why. Nobody’s hunting them. They’re as radioactive as hell. Practically hear them crackling underwater.

He chuckled, giving them permit to laugh.

Okay, it’s not quite that bad. But that’s why we bring all our food in with us. We eat nothing that grows on the islands or in the ocean round here. Who does not have experience wreck diving?

Kit raised his hand. So did two other men. The captain nodded.

"Okay, you’ll have a dive pro with you, who’ll be with you to start. Now, there’s quite a fleet down there on the bottom. We used quite a lot of captured Japanese ships. But the big one is ours – the aircraft carrier USS. Saratoga. 110 feet below."

There was a whole fleet beneath those waves. The Nagato, which was Yamamoto’s flag ship, two submarines, two destroyers, another battleship – and, bigger than the Titanic, the aircraft carrier, three football fields in length. And it was the Saratoga that held them all.

It was the looming immensity of it, anchored by the small concrete details; a battered coffee pot on the deck; an encrusted bugle hanging on a hook. Kit’s guide led him that first time to the huge elevator shaft. They sank down inside to the hangar deck and swam between ghostly rows of parked fighter planes, SB2C HellCats, waiting for the summons that would never come again.

The force of the atomic blast had struck the starboard side and the metal was buckled, warped by a waffle-like imprint from the pressure. Yet most of the flight deck remained, though furred with growth and wreckage. What they had to watch out for most as they penetrated the ship was silt up, kicking with flippers and stirring the accumulated sediment in confined quarters.

They made two dives a day. The dive crew tried to get them interested in the other vessels. But they could not keep away from the carrier. They drifted about the bridge, explored the captain’s quarters, hovered above the giant deck, accompanied by darting, curious fish, inspecting the loose rockets and torpedoes. It had been a point of those first atomic tests after the war that the vessels should be fully equipped and not just stripped and gutted shells. So combs and hair brushes were still in the ratings lockers along with bottles of shaving lotion.

The decompression rig was hung on a bar framework below the dive ship. The divers spent up to three quarters of an hour decompressing, with nothing to do but gaze across at the bridge and the giant shape losing itself in the blue-green gloom below. It was during those enforced periods of idleness when Kit most apprehended what was around him. They all had the awe. Topside, over dinner, people voiced the wish that the experience could be shared more widely than was feasible.

It’s like what church should be.

Makes me feel like a Martian viewing a lost civilization.

Greg, not surprisingly, was fully equipped with underwater video and camera gear. Kit had brought none, figuring that trying to master new technology would distract him from truly absorbing what was around him. He regretted it all the same. The fact they were cabin-mates made it easier for him to raise the matter. He knew he wanted a record of what he had seen. Greg was happy to help out and show off the capabilities of his toys. They worked out a handful of sequences: sinking down the elevator shaft, swimming past the planes, exploring the bridge, tracking along the flight deck, floating over the bow with Kit in the frame to give a sense of the perspective. It wasn’t just for the record. Kit knew he wanted the footage for something; he was not sure as yet for what.

There had been a confrontation here of man and nature that could not be ignored. He knew to seize it while he could. It was unlikely he would pass this way again. The sunken fleet was rotting, collapsing. Soon it might not be possible to explore the wrecks with the freedom they had now.

*****

Mace flew to Cancun on a whim. He had it in mind to explore his old haunts. But he recognized nothing. It all was changed. After one day, restless, he quit looking and rented a car and drove three hours to Merida. He found a small hotel and took a room. Now with no plans, he bought cigarettes from a street vendor and wandered down towards a covered market. A green-tinged light filtered through the awnings overhead. There were rugs and shawls and bad pottery on display. At the end of one row there was a large glass case on a table. Beetles with jeweled armor, rainbow backed, trailing gold chains, clambered about the rocky floor of the case, marching stolidly over each other. Mace heard his name called.

A chunky blonde woman in turquoise slacks and white embroidered blouse pushed up her sunglasses and grinned at him.

Don’t you recognize me, Tib?

Marie!

Glad I haven’t changed that much. She turned and beckoned a slight, balding man with a mustache. Neil, this is Tib Mace. He’s one of those people like my brother Jay I’ve told you about.

They shook hands. One of those bull runner crazies, hunh?

Marie said, We’re down here to look at some of the temples. Neil’s interested in Mayan culture. What are you looking at? Oh, my, what are they?

She had caught sight of the beetles, glittering and moving.

Mace said, I haven’t seen them in a long time. They’re called Ma’kech. They can live a couple of years or more. You wear them as a brooch, pin the chain to your blouse.

Marie shuddered. What do you feed them on?

Damp wood chips. Pretty low maintenance.

Neil said, Of course, it’s illegal to take them out of Mexico.

Mace turned to the girl. ¿Cuánto?

Cien.

Mace said, Dame diez.

Ten! Tib, what on earth are you going to do with ten?

I’ll think of something. Start a trend.

*****

Senta, lying in bed with Kit the first night back from the dive trip. She had quizzed him but only out of idle curiosity. She had something else upon her mind.

Do you ever think of getting married?

Cathy flashed across his mind. Sarita. Espe as he had last seen her. An image of Sally peeling off her nightdress. He lied.

I don’t believe in getting serious.

He didn’t want to lose her. The sex was strong. But it was not enough. The role-playing that mattered to her could not in the end support the weight of a life’s conversation.

There was a small silence. Then she rolled away in the bed.

The next morning Kit arranged to meet Sarita in Bombay.

*****

Mumbai was different. There were parties every night. They drank at tables scattered about the outfield of the Cricket Club. They closed the nightclub at the Taj Mahal hotel. They drank and danced at Breach Candy. They stayed with cousins of Sarita’s in the embassy section of town. There were four servants in the apartment, not counting the chauffeur. Many of the company were Bollywood producers and on finding out that Kit was in the business, they dropped blizzards of names on him.

"You do not know Tom Cruise? He is a very fine fellow."

One night he was asked what he was working on. He had drunk enough Scotch to become unguarded. Besides, telling stories was what he considered he did.

Why was this man remarkable? Just a gangster, isn’t it?

He wasn’t a gangster. He was an outlaw. Kit fished a Camel out of his pocket and lit it. He gets a sentence of ten years for a very small-time robbery. His father advised him to plead guilty. The judge throws the book at him. Dillinger asks to be transferred to the state prison. The reason is that’s where he gets to learn how to be a real bank robber, someone who plans everything. It’s his college course. And he gets his degree.

Sarita was perched on the arm of a sofa, watching his performance with a half smile.

So he gets out in the middle of the Great Depression, trying to make it home before his stepmother dies. She passes an hour before he arrives. He’s left a bunch of friends behind him in prison. He arranges to get rifles shipped in via laundry crates. There’s a ten-man break-out. By the time they escape, Dillinger has been caught and put in jail in Ohio for a bank robbery. His friends return the favor, they come to Ohio and break him out. And that’s the start of the first Dillinger gang. From the moment he leaves jail to the moment when he is supposedly gunned down in front of a Chicago movie theater is fourteen months. In that fourteen months, he goes from being an unknown parolee to the most notorious name on the planet.

He looked around. He had their attention.

In that fourteen months he robbed over thirty banks, was involved in three jail breaks, half a dozen pitched gun battles and high-speed car chases and he held up three police stations to supply himself with guns and ammunition. More than once during a getaway, he would drive little old ladies to their front door and let them off. He was making the news about once every ten days. It was a soap opera with the whole country watching. And they were on his side because he was sticking it to the banks that had ruined them.

Is it true he escaped from jail by carving a wooden gun, making it black with shoe polish?

That’s the story. The real story is more interesting.

Sarita got up from the sofa and came to him, touched his arm.

And that is quite enough for now. You still have to write it.

There was an immediate chorus, an outcry of protest.

But we want to hear it.

Kit was about to resume when he felt the pinch from her fingers and saw the warning look. He raised his glass. Hope you all see my version soon on a screen or TV near you.

Later, when they were in the car, Sarita said, You don’t realize. Half of them would have been in the studio dictating your story to their secretaries tomorrow morning. They would add music and Indian dancing and they would be shooting inside of a month.

Oh, come on.

Sarita sighed. I think it’s time we went to the movies.

She took him to an ice cream palace of a theater the following afternoon to see some of the local product. Hours later, Kit emerged, blinking and outraged. "The first half was a cross between One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and The Count Of Monte Cristo. They lifted an entire scene from Thelma And Louise, another from Dirty Harry and there were at least two or three more that I recognized."

Ready to go to Goa?

*****

Marcus bought a piso in a quiet central rincón of Madrid. He intended to devote his time to following the bulls for the whole temporada, not piecemeal as he had been obliged to up to now.

Boone and Gretchen came for a night in April before they all went down to Sevilla for the Feria. Boone wanted to know how Fulton was after the grim accident that had left his young Japanese prodigy a paraplegic.

I’d say – agonized. The lad really had talent too, that’s what’s grim about it.

They been taking up collections for him?

John’s organizing a beneficia fight but you know what it’s like. People say sure, count me in. And then when it comes to it…

Marcus shrugged as he refilled their wine glasses. Speaking of tributes, you know that they had the one for El Soro at the beginning of March.

I’m not really a fan, Sam said.

No. The big thing was who started the show. Conchita Cintrón. The roof would have come off if there were a roof. She and the horse were joined at the hip. She was magnificent.

Kit’ll be sorry he missed it.

*****

ETA were much in evidence these days. Ian and Thalia flew into Madrid to the news that the Spanish police had found and freed the kidnapped prison official José Antonio Ortega Lara after 532 days of captivity in a tiny cellar.

Why did they kidnap him in the first place? Thalia asked. They were sitting in the cafeteria at Barajas with their bags, waiting to rendezvous with Kit and some old Spanish lady friend of his from Boston. Ian was scanning El País.

Because there’s over five hundred ETA prisoners in jail. And they are m-m-m-aking a big push to let them all be kept in the Basque homeland. So far, the g-g-government isn’t playing.

He looked past her and put down the paper. There they are.

Thalia was introduced to the birdlike old lady Socorro and general conversation was made on the way to the rental car. Kit asked about Emma.

She’s getting on well with my mother. We felt I could get away this time, see how it goes.

How long has it been since you were last in fiesta?

Too long, honey. Thalia made an exaggerated smile at Ian.

We’ve got a detour en route, Kit said. Socorro wants to show me this place called Belchite. We’re meeting my friend Fermín the photographer there. He’s doing a shoot.

I can be the perfect tourist, Thalia said, so long as I have a cold glass of crisp white wine in my paw. Excuse my southern belle ignorance but what is Belle Cheetah?

It’s a town that was blown to bits in the Civil War. Franco decreed that it be left the way it was as a monument. So they built the new town beside the old.

The earth was blood red as they approached Belchite. The ruins were eloquent, especially the broken-walled church. It had a visible effect on Ian and Thalia. For Kit the experience was not of the same order as the sunken fleet of Bikini. This was impressive but it was graspable. One could master it.

There were no other visitors among the ruins. They found Fermín and his model beside the church. She was nude, except for a matador’s pink and yellow capote. Not that color mattered. Fermín shot almost exclusively in black and white. With the blasted buildings as a backdrop in the bright sunlight, the model posed with the cape as a cloak, as a blanket, as a guard, almost always with her face averted.

Socorro was amused. Thalia felt awkward. Ian was intrigued.

Fermín waved to Kit. Keett, show her a real pase.

Kit, embarrassed, stretched around the model from behind, adjusting her arms and her grip. Making her perform a convincing pass was too hard. After a number of tries, Fermín accepted a rebolera. They made up for it by setting up the cape in waiting and advancing position, so they could pose her with no need of motion. Fermín had the model lower the collar of the cape a couple of inches to expose a pubic fan of hair, which he echoed by taking a plain fan from a bag and having her hold it up across her face.

Kit was reminded of how much prior calculation took place with an artist like Fermín. It made him depressed his friend had consented to lend his talent to what was essentially artistic soft-core porn. But maybe these were the images that would get him the recognition he merited.

Fermín planned on working till twilight. They said their farewells. Nos veremos.

Picking their way back to the car, all four were silent. It was Thalia who broke it.

I thought there was something blasphemous about that, she said. What he was shooting. I kept thinking of someone doing that on some Civil War battlefield.

Maybe one should blaspheme in such a place, Socorro said. Maybe one should make mock. It is healthier. She turned in her seat and looked at Thalia. I lived our Civil War. I do not wish to keep it fresh and green.

You’re t-talking to M-m-iss Magnolia here, Ian said, convinced the South will rise again.

*****

When Kit walked into the Windsor, he saw Donny at the bar. Donny!

Donny beamed and held out his arms. Buddy, how you been?

They hugged and exchanged the ritual questions, getting interrupted by other people bent on making greetings. Kit found himself next to Yoey, Donny’s son, as he signaled for a drink.

Isn’t it a great poster they got this year? Yoey nodded to the cartel pinned on the wall. The tricorne-hatted, sinister-mustached face of Caravinagre suspended against a blood-red background.

What I really like about it, Kit said, is how he’s not looking at you but off sideways, like something’s going on to his left.

Yoey stared. You’re right. I hadn’t noticed.

How’s it been? Kit tipped his head back towards Donny.

Yoey made a face. I’ve driven him round Spain for two weeks. It’s been tough. He’s losing it. He doesn’t remember names or stuff properly anymore.

He looks fine to me.

Yeah? Yoey said. Tell me, did he once use your name?

Sure he did, Kit said automatically.

That’s good. But I tell you, he’s in and out.

Half an hour later Kit stepped outside for some air. His eyes roamed the familiar lines of the Plaza Castillo. Donny came out to stand beside him. Neither of them said a word. There was no need. A memory surfaced. Kit pointed to the mouth of Chapitela.

Remember you and me walking the gauntlet in ’78 trying to get Judy back to the Perla?

Donny nodded, smiling, reminiscent. Moments passed. He turned to Kit, still smiling and said, Buddy, where are we exactly?

*****

Charo was the same as ever. A rock. Asun had made a lateral step, switching her work for a graphic design company to working in the computer department of the Ayuntamiento. Of Espe nothing was to be said. A sad shrug said all. No hay remedio. There is no answer.

They walked over to Marcus’s piso, where Dixie was loudly proud that she had arrived with only one travel bag. She announced this might even be the year she would weaken and try that revolting sounding concoction – a Kallimocho.

Marcus gave an elaborate shudder, pointed at the label of the Ardanza he was uncorking. What’s this wine ever done to you that you would treat it like that, drown it in Pepsi?

To start with, Kit said, Pepsi is fatal for the proper Kallimocho. El auténtico. Coke from a bottle is the only way.

This modern world, Marcus said. Two of the local runners have told me they have a web page. Andreas and Felipe. Offering to organize encierros for TV commercials. Talks and so on.

Changing the subject, Kit said. He pulled some small plastic tubes from his pocket and handed one each to the women, who received them with suspicion, expecting a gag.

It looks like half a dozen cocktail nuts. Do they go bang?

What you have in your hand are genuine Mexican jumping beans.

Oh, come on. That’s an old joke. They don’t really exist.

Shake them out into your hand and hold it still a minute.

Dixie was the first to lose her skeptical face. She squealed.

God! It bopped in my hand.

Put it on the table and watch it go.

Within a minute some twenty beans were clicking on the kitchen table.

Look at that one go, Dixie said. Speedy Gonzalez. You could race them along the bar.

How would you tell one from the other? Marcus said.

Fingernail polish. I could paint racing stripes on him.

The buzzer rang. I’ll get it. Kit went to open the door.

Asun cocked her head, listening to the heavy tramp of feet echoing up the main stairwell. Un montón de gente. A ton of people coming up.

Charo said, "Los Yorkies, seguro. La voz de Bryan." It’s the Yorkies. That’s Bryan’s voice.

Another bottle or two, more glasses. Marcus disappeared down the corridor to the cave.

The Yorkies burst in, panting theatrically from the five flights of stairs. Followed by Boone and Gretchen. A minute later, wheezing and puffing, François entered, his arm draped for support over the shoulders of a young man. Marcus and Kit stared at the youth, not sure at first.

Aussie Tom!

Our streaker!

May I present Tom of Australia, François said in plummy tones. He’s quite a good bloke for an Antipodean.

Shut up, François. Where’ve you been hiding, Tommy?

Up to my ears in sheep dip, mate. Had to make it back.

You already know young Thomas? François was disconcerted.

Let us say, Will said, that no part of Thomas has escaped our investigative eye.

And if you’re going to be a formal Frog, Kit said, you should meet Samuel of the Sierras.

François eyed the tall Boone with a hint of doubt. But he’s a dreadful Yank, isn’t he?

Marcus said, You be polite to Sam and he might introduce you to your favorite retired banderillero. He is going to be in town, isn’t he, Sam?

Boone nodded with a half grin. François blinked like an owl. His eyes widened. He sneezed.

"You know El Formidable? My dear fellow, we must have words."

Bless François’ little black heart, Dixie said. So enjoyable to watch when he has to grovel.

The conversation split into overlapping circuits. Asun and Bryan with Aussie Tom. Fergus, Will and Marcus. Dixie and Charo. Boone and François. Kit drifted off down the corridor, looking at the gallery of moments and faces captured over the years in this fiesta and hung on these walls. Each year Marcus added to them. A tapestry of life, a parade of histories.

Gretchen followed along, studying the faces. She jerked her head back towards the clattering competing voices in the kitchen.

It’s like one of those ensemble Altman movies, she said. Sometimes I’d like to put a wireless mike on everyone and record it.

And spend the next five years playing it back.

They were at the entrance to the front salon and the noises of the street were rising up through the open windows. A new sound rose above the normal traffic. A heavy thudding tramp of feet and the rhythmic clank of cowbells, a pounding beat.

What’s that?

Kit said, I think - it’s the zanpantzar.

He stepped to the balcony and looked down. He could see the double line of dancers coming out of the Plaza Consistorial and heading towards them on Mercaderes.

Quick. This is worth catching. He ran for the door, calling out to the kitchen. Zanpantzar. The mountain boys.

He took the stairs two at a time. The dueña, Angeles, who lived above Marcus and had a voice like a bugle, was standing in the open front door, watching with neighbors. She heard his feet pounding down and stepped aside, urging him past. Pase, pase.

There was menace in the sound, there was weight. The double files of men were dressed like Morris dancers. Cross-gartered. Heavy sheepskin vests on the back of which were fixed two bronze cowbells. Conical hats with streamers that would have seemed familiar to Eleanor of Aquitaine and her court. The sound was that of conquering troops entering a fallen city. The dull clash of the bell clappers bounced off the high buildings.

Beside him, Gretchen stood, working her camera. Crouching down for a better angle.

Who are they?

Little pueblos that still keep this up. Ituren and Zubieta. They hardly ever come into Pamplona. They announce Carnival. They signal the end of winter.

Spooky sound.

The noise they make, it’s meant to awaken Nature itself.

The dancers were moving up Estafeta now to the heavy thudding beat, followed by much of the crowd. Kit glanced up. The others were out on the balconies, watching.

How’s Sam? I haven’t seen you guys in a while.

Gretchen lost her smile. Not great. He won’t want anyone knowing. You know how he is.

His legs?

The knees give him hell, especially when he’s going downhill. And the doctors basically say, hold out as long as you can before going under the knife. Because what they can do is only good for ten or fifteen years.

She turned to go back up the stairs. Are you coming back up?

I’m going to drift up to the square.

He walked up Estafeta, up the steps into the plaza and walked along to the Sevilla. The Windsor would be a zoo. Ali and Mace were sitting with Jay, who was in full spate, stroking the underside of his chin as he did whenever he was amused. He turned on seeing Kit and pulled him down into a vacant seat.

We have already decided the toy of feria is those damn red-dot laser lights. The pickpockets in front of the Otano are in great form. They tagged Big Jim and Toby the Train in two minutes last night. And fiesta hasn’t even started, man.

The song of fiesta?

"It’s already settled. ‘La Luna Y El Toro’. The one about a little bull falling in love with the moon’s reflection in the river."

The best corrida?

The best corrida we have decided will be Day 10. Rincón, Ponce and Fran. A slam dunk there. Oh, and your friend Fermín is doing some very interesting work. Very interesting.

Ian and I were with him in Belchite.

"Those photos I really want to see."

Mace looked across the table at Kit. It was the first time they had seen each other. He said, What you got?

Kit shook out a cigarette, raised his watch and pressed a button on it. Flame jetted up from the watch.

Motherfucker, that is good. Does it even tell time?

Of course.

And when do I get mine?

In due course.

Jay put a hand on Kit’s arm. His face had changed, was serious.

I just remembered. You don’t know about this. Harpo’s got AIDS, well, HIV anyway.

Kit looked to Mace. There was a slow unhappy nod.

A needle? Something dumb? Bad transfusion?

He’s gay.

Harpo!? Biggest cocksman around? Since when?

Well, I guess you’d have to say bisexual. But since the news, he has come right out of the closet. Chicks are a past life.

I don’t believe it. Who’s this coming from?

Mace said, Jay saw him in New York. I saw him in hospital in Atlanta. He was in for tests and treatment. Right now he’s down on St. Thomas or St. Kitts with his boyfriend.

"His boyfriend?"

French, fat, fifty, glasses, academic, sociology. They hold hands. Harpo’s a changed person.

Is he going to make it?

Jay shrugged. Mace said, My money’s on him. He’s a tough boy. But he won’t make it back here this year.

Kit looked to Ali, who was listening to the other two as if he were watching a game of tennis. Where’d you come from this time?

Afghanistan. Not too good.

What’s this group that want to blow up all the carvings?

They are called Taliban. Ali shrugged. Both my countries are fucked. How’s LA? You working on anything?

John Dillinger.

Jay said, Been done, babe. What’s new to say?

A lot. We don’t have a clue of how it really was.

Come on. What do you mean?

I mean, Kit said, everyone was on the take. I mean everyone. Judges. Cops. Half the time the bank raids were put up jobs. The books were going to get audited, they’d contact someone like Dillinger, get robbed and report the false count. You could buy people out of jail. And they did. It was all about the fix.

Mace said, Nothing’s changed, then. He looked up as two men approached the table. One had a video camera on his shoulder. The one without the camera smiled at them.

You guys are sort of veterans here, I’m told. We were hoping for an interview, you know, on what draws you back.

Mace said, Sorry. Basically we just come here to get drunk.

Jay said, Maybe later, guys.

The man looked at Kit and Ali, who both shook their heads with smiles. He waited a moment as though they might change their minds; then he jerked his head to the cameraman and they both turned and walked away.

Jay said, If we don’t tell them, it’s going to be someone else.

That’s fine by me, Mace said.

You know, it’s ten years since Shane, Jay said. We should do something. Some tribute.

Mace said, The Young Turks have a dinner in his honor every year. People who never met him make toasts, speeches and start to cry.

Ali said, It’d be a little odd to do anything without Luke.

Luke! Jay was scornful. How’s a guy who’s supposedly CIA end up in the tank?

His problem was that he had what they call ‘non-official cover’, Ali said. He didn’t work out of the embassy. So he could be cut loose.

Kit thought to himself of what Jay’s reaction would be to the news of Luke’s DNA matching. Astonished glee for sure.

What are you thinking? Mace asked.

Guess who’s up at Marcus’s, already adopted by François – Aussie Tom, the streaker.

"My boy’s back? And you didn’t tell me?"

*****

Across the square at the Iruña, Thalia shut off her cell phone and sighed. That was Raley from New York. He won’t get here till the 8th.

He calls you too? Courtney said. I love how he talks dirty.

I think he does that to all his friends’ wives. He can be on the phone for hours being suggestively filthy. He makes you laugh and he cheers you up.

You feel like you’re a hot babe when he hangs up.

When he starts talking about hot buttery clefts.

God, yes!

Thalia started waving. Sally!

*****

[Sally] Gideon insisted this year he wanted to be in San Fermín. Now that Indurain was retired, he and Hervé were temporarily without a figure to follow. So I was going to drop Gideon off with Ovideo’s parents and head on to Burgos. I had volunteered to help out at the refugio there. They had an archive I wanted to consult. Like a lot of other people, I thought that I could write a book about the pilgrimage and the Camino. At least I thought I’d investigate the possibility. If it didn’t pan out, well, no harm done.

It seemed ordained we would run into Thalia and Courtney. So we sat down with them. Gideon being the typical tongue-tied teenager, shuffling his feet and slumped apathetic in his chair. Dixie came by. And when I explained I was not going to be around and Gideon was staying, she said that he should come up to Marcus’s piso to watch the encierro. I had to nudge him to mumble his thanks.But I knew he would enjoy it.

Thalia mentioned the first time she had seen Gideon in Madrid in the Corte Ingles and of course he didn’t remember. Then Ian and Beau came from one direction and Dr. Walt from another. And I thought of Ian and me all that time ago in my little piso on Descalzos. They all found chairs and Courtney said Raley had been on the phone trying to seduce his friends’ wives. Ian and Beau laughed. Ian glanced at Dr. Walt. And Beau and Courtney did not look at each other. I thought I was being fanciful. But then I thought they must be thinking strange things of me as well.

Anyway we left them all and went down to Redín where we were to meet Ovideo’s sister and her daughters who would take Gideon while I got the bus to Burgos. Jay was down there, standing in front of the closed Marceliano’s, talking to a reporter and cameraman about Shane, who had been like a father to him and who had taught him about running and life. I don’t think he recognized me.

*****

Kit was stopped by Nestor on the street, Luis’s brother. He said Angel planned to be running. He on the other hand had given up. He looked happy. He introduced Kit to a lanky youth with a broad smile. José Luis. Kit realized he had seen him running in Teléfonos, always in a checked blouse. As the youth walked away, Nestor nodded after him, approving. Corre como un hijo de puta. He runs like a son of a bitch. Coming from Nestor, that was practically anointing him as the new crown prince in waiting. Thinking of it made Kit feel heavy. The sensation of reflexes dulling, the losing of a step.

That first morning he ran Santo Domingo and noted that Jokin was moving his position further up the street, acknowledging too that adjustments had to be made. After, listening to the bulletins at Txoko (one man, a foreigner, gored in the thigh at Teléfonos), he made a remark to Mika about having to reckon with the inevitable alterations. Mika looked at him and said simply, almost impatiently Cambias o dejas. You change or let it go.

Tanya was back in fiesta, sad over the end of her romance in Bordeaux, but bearing up. She and Glory were the first recipients of Mace’s living brooches. Asun insisted on one as did Charo. Dixie refused with shrieks, as did Thalia. Courtney was brave enough to sport one. In the street, girls peered suspiciously. ¿Se mueve? ¡Dios mío! It moves? My God! and jumped back out of range.

The Chinese street vendors all came in suits this year. And the number of living statues had doubled. A statue of liberty. Two Don Quixotes. A silver water bearer. Kids tried to startle them into motion by jumping or suddenly waving their arms.

That was when Mace achieved his greatest success. He walked up to the statue of liberty and pinned the jeweled beetle brooch onto the statue’s breast. Unable to see below because of her lofty pose, the statue resisted until she felt the scrabble for purchase, glanced down and shrieked in alarm. She jumped off her plinth and began flailing haplessly at her breast. Mace unpinned the beetle before it met an early end, and, feeling guilty, dropped 500 pesetas in the bowl as mollification.

*****

It was barely the start of fiesta and already the bartenders had that glazed eye look of men trying to beat back the incoming tide. There was little reason in the order of getting served. You could wait for ten minutes or be served immediately.

It’s all a question of what snags their eye. Beau said. In Redín or Fitero, say, we have enchufe. Catch Oscar’s eye, you’re getting served. It’s all a question of standing out. Which is why we shall now deploy these. He pulled from his pocket four flesh colored thumb stalls and handed one each to Kit, Ian and Mace.

What the hell do they do?

Slip it on and press with your forefinger. He raised his hand and his thumb had turned into a flashing red beacon. The nearest bartender – they were in Sixto’s – blinked, laughed. Beau mouthed Kallimocho and the bartender nodded and set to making it.

Holy shit! It’s Rudolph’s red nose without Rudolph.

Exactly. Think of how much valuable drinking time we can save.

The drink was set on the bar. The bartender swept up the note and went to make change. On his return, met with a trio of flashing traffic light thumbs, he raised his hands in surrender.

Dixie and Marcus swirled in. Marcus said.We come to pass judgment upon this abominable Kallimocho. Set them before us and let them not be made with Pepsi or other unclean elements.

Kit handed over his, untouched. Marcus assumed the pose of a wine snob. He took a cautious sip. An expression of surprise came over his face. He took another sip. He looked at Dixie with a touch of sheepishness. You know, it’s actually not bad.

The s-s-sound you hear is the t-t-toppling of the last pillar in the t-t-temple.

En dos palabras, In two words, Beau said, using the sportscaster’s phrase that had caught on all over Spain, ¡Iiiiiim… presionante!

From the speakers above the bar, the music swelled up, augmented by the instant live chorus chiming in, full throated.

Y ese toro enamorado de la luna And this bull in love with the moon

Que abandona por la noche la mañá That abandons the day for the night

Ah, welcome home, my dears, Marcus said. Welcome home.

*****

Before a motley scattering of the regulars in the gutter outside Redín, Ali and the Yorkies were arguing a thorny question. What, quite simply, was the best job in the world?

Suggestions flew in the air to be shot down like skeet. Bryan was impatient, leaned forward. "Sodding obvious. Being a 70s rock idol. Never been a better gig in the history of the planet."

Val the Pal said, How about a movie star? Red carpet. Golden Globes, dressed in Armani.

Bryan waved that off, dismissing it. "No, no – it’s boring. Movies are like digging ditches. Long hours. Up before dawn. No direct feedback from an audience. Doing shots over and over. It’s too hot or too cold. The only time you get a direct buzz is at a premiere or opening a Planet Hollywood. The work’s dull. You’re at the mercy of directors, producers and getting the right script. And most of the time you sit and wait in a trailer. No, thanks."

Miffed at the dismissal, Val said, What’s so great or different about rock stars then?

Bryan stared at her. He got to his feet and spread his arms out like a preacher testifying. Ali quietly started