Running the Bulls by Cathie Pelletier

Author:Cathie Pelletier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2014-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

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“I was very drunk. I was drunker than I ever remembered having been.”

—Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises

It was Wednesday afternoon that Howard drove toward Patterson Street in a rumbling rental truck, Pete Morton bouncing around in the passenger seat. Howard had already backed the orange monstrosity up to the service door at the Holiday Inn, where Wally had tossed out a couple dozen empty boxes.

“If you need more,” Wally said, “I’m expecting a delivery tomorrow.”

Howard had thanked him, and then he and Pete Morgan had climbed into the cab of the truck and, gears grinding, had headed for Patterson.

“A van would have been big enough,” said Pete. “I mean, she’s keeping the furniture, right?”

Howard tried not to think about this: the bed they had slept in for all those years, a nick in the wood on his side of the headboard; that sofa that seemed to reach up and pull one’s tired body down into the plushness of it; the kitchen table where John had dropped his pocket knife in the third grade and knocked away a small chunk of wood; the lamp Ellen had bought at an antiques store in Connecticut, a clipper ship of some kind that they’d always intended to have appraised; the coat rack Howard Jr. had made in shop. He could go on and on if he got to reminiscing about the material things inside the house. But he had agreed in the divorce papers that the house and its contents would remain with Ellen, his personal belongings would come with him. On paper, it was just a string of words, meaningless. Now, those words had turned into a string of brown boxes.

At the corner of Patterson, Howard slowed the big truck as he shifted from third into second. Pete rolled his window down and rested his crooked arm in the open space. He looked over at Howard.

“I mean, this is a Norman Schwarzkopf kind of truck,” Pete said.

As they passed the massive lilac bush at Marjorie Cantor’s house, Howard shifted back into third. He wanted a big truck, dammit. He wanted Ellen to see in a big way what was taking place. He had called the night before to inform her that he would be arriving the next day to get his things, as her letter had instructed him. She was polite. She was cool. She was brief. “That’s fine, yes, that’s fine,” was all she had said. Now, Howard envisioned the big orange rental truck as a military maneuver all its own. When Ellen saw him packing his personal things, his clothing, books, mementos, into brown boxes that said Smirnoff and Cutty Sark and Jack Daniel’s, when she realized he was really moving out, the knowledge would shake her up. Funny, but in the beginning, the power of the fight had lain in Howard’s hands, at Howard’s camp, his to dole out as he wished. But now, he sensed a change in the air, something Stormin’ Norman probably also knew, a knowledge that the sands of war had suddenly shifted.

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