animals vanished and the run was over.
I’d failed to run, and that misery is something I hope to never feel again.
Fell asleep in a doorway and I woke without a single euro in my pocket. I stumbled to the Plaza de Castillo and lay down in the bright afternoon light. The sound of two Spanish guys goofily heckling passersby kept waking me up. I could barely understand their commentary but something in their inflection reminded me of the Mexican construction workers I’d spent years with on work sites in Chicago. I was penniless in a foreign land and I had the worst hangover of my entire life. Still, I found myself laughing. Fiesta has a way of doing that to people, making a joke of their absolute despair. I started talking with two guys and a girl from Madrid. We fumbled our way through introductions and I told them what’d happened. They took me in, and soon I was drunk again and stumbling around the city with them. They took me all over to big fields with stages set up among trees and grass in the shadow of these tall, white stone fortress walls.
The next morning I woke in a strange car knifing through these epic green rounded mountain peaks. The sunlight cascaded through boulder-like clouds. The small car soared through the Pyrenees. I slowly worked out that my new friends had devised a plan that I accompany them to San Sebastian, then they would take me to their home in Madrid where I would stay until my flight left. This instant solution to my plight overwhelmed me with gratitude. The Spanish are a generous people. As I sobered up on the shore of the Atlantic, I realized I couldn’t go to Madrid. I bit the bullet and called home. My father said he’d send me money. Picked the money order up in town and I bid farewell to my dear new friends and boarded a Pamplona-bound bus.
It was my first attempt at staying sober in fiesta. It was motherfuckin’ difficult. I wandered the area looking for a quiet place to sleep. Slept in doorways, on curbs and benches. It gets chilly in Pamplona at night, even in July. I got really cold. Cops would wake me and move me along. Other times, partiers would offer me a drink and try to pull me to my feet. In my tired wanderings I stumbled across the Hemingway statue outside the arena. He looked stoic, full-bearded and happy. There’s a curved brick slope at the foot of the statue. It made for a comfortable bed. Surprisingly no one bothered me, and I slept well there at the foot of Papa Hemingway as fiesta rambled on a half block away.
Ernest Hemingway’s writing changed my life. I grew up in the Edgewater neighborhood in Chicago where drugs and violence were commonplace. My parents dropped out of school at thirteen and fourteen years old. They were well-read and self-educated but excelling in school definitely wasn’t a priority in my home. Ma even used to bribe my teachers to pass me to the next grade level. My brother was a heroin addict and gang member who ended up in prison for armed robbery. A stray bullet from a drive-by struck my sister and nearly killed her. People I loved died in gangland murders. My parents got us out of the city, but my city sensibilities went to the suburbs with me. They kicked me out of school a bunch, and I even booted a teacher in the nuts then hit him over the head with a chair. I hated school and I could barely read. Midway through high school my history teacher, Brother Peter Hannon, got me into boxing in the Golden Gloves and I turned things around. Still, I needed to go to junior college to get into a four-year school. I took Professor David McGrath’s class on Ernest Hemingway there. Up until then I hadn’t ever read a novel beginning to end in my whole life. My dad urged me to read Hemingway because he wrote about people like us, but I resisted. When I found out Hemingway won the Nobel Prize writing about fishermen, soldiers, and fist fighters, it piqued my interest. Professor McGrath laid out this whole religious metaphor in The Old Man and the Sea that blew me away. I decided to sit down and read a full book. The magnitude of what I was doing hovered in my mind as I strolled the halls of the Elmhurst College Library. I found Hemingway’s debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, and thought I’d start there. I sat down and immersed myself in the story. He instantly wrapped me up with his characters. I felt like Hemingway himself was oozing from the pages and speaking directly to me. At nineteen years old, it was such a pivotal time in my life and perfect time to read that book. I read it in one sitting, enthralled with the grand adventure, the wild fiesta, and the mystical bulls. When I finished that book after six or seven hours of intense reading I knew it forever changed me. I knew I had to devote my life to literature and that I had to travel to Spain, experience fiesta, and run with the bulls. Like those choose-your-own-adventure stories, I was going to set out on my own adventure, except I was going to actually live it and write it.
I woke at dawn when an officer kicked my foot and walked away laughing. Laborers finished standing and securing the barricades fifty yards away. I wandered to Telefónica. Beautiful young Spanish women swept past by the hundreds. I stood in the center of the street as they passed. I met eyes with them, told them bonita. Some stopped and smiled. Others giggled. One took me by the hand and tried to lead me away, but I stayed. I waited and readied for the run. I had no idea I was standing in the wrong place. As 6:00 a.m. approached, the crowds along the barricades thickened and photographers took their posts in peek holes in the boarded-up shops. I moved up Estafeta Street. Hundreds of hopeful runners scattered all over the narrow passageway.
Suddenly a police line the width of the street formed. It moved toward me. They herded everyone up the street. At the first intersection on Estafeta the barricade swung open. I couldn’t believe it. Why are they pushing us off the course? I did everything right! I’m here an hour early, sober! Some of the would-be runners up front resisted. A tall officer with gray stubble on his cheeks cracked a runner over the head with his nightstick. The police line heaved and shoved every single one of us out onto the side street.
We all panicked. I ran down side streets asking urgently, “Where do we have to go to run?!” People pointed different directions. Sprinted all the way down one long street, found no entry at the barricades, and ran back. I cut down another alley that wrapped around a tall building, praying that I would find a way in. Exhausted, I sat down in a doorway and quit. Maybe running with the bulls just isn’t in my destiny. My heart ached heavily, and I wanted to go home. Something swooped up to me and whispered urgently. “Listen . . . Just listen.” As my breathing slowed I heard a tremendous, tense chatter and a voice on a loudspeaker that switched languages every few seconds.
Curious, I followed the noise around a corner and found a long barricade with many people all perched on the top row with others strung along it straining to see over. I pushed forward. A few people ducked under and onto the course—police stopped another and pushed him out. The nearest officer turned his back and I slipped through the barricades deftly, like stepping through the ropes into a boxing ring. As I passed through the second barricade I smashed into a dense mob of bodies. Tons of body-to-body pressure squeezed me. It ebbed and swayed—at its worst I struggled to breath. Everyone chattered tensely. The only direction you could see was up. The ornamental façade of an ancient building with a large clock on it rose above the heads of the many runners. I realized it was the town hall.
The clock read twenty minutes till eight. The recorded PA voice switched to English. It warned of great bodily harm; if you fall down, stay down. The crowd murmured. The murmurs twisted and lifted into a cheering roar that bellowed up then fell into laughter. Some people staggered drunk; others gave obnoxious advice to an American married couple near me. I argued with the advisers, but what the hell did I know? It was the blind leading the blind. At ten minutes to eight, the police line holding us back broke and the thick mob unraveled and sifted up the street.
I walked a half block and came to a sharp banking turn. A five-tiered wall of cameramen loomed behind the barricades. Photographers working for publications all over the world vie for position here, from as early as 5:00 a.m. This was La Curva, the curve, Dead Man’s Corner. I remembered seeing the ESPN series on the run in the early 2000s. They’d called it “Hamburger Wall” and described it as the place where the herd crashes every morning. The series described it as one of the most dangerous places to run. I figured I’d start right there.
Bravely, I held my ground at the curve—right in front of the barricades the photographers jockeyed behind. Suddenly a stick-rocket screamed into the sky and burst high above the red-tiled roofs of the city. Wild panic surged up the street. Suddenly I wasn’t so brave anymore. I crossed onto the inside of the curve where a bunch of runners stood—a stupid mistake, I’d soon learn why. The American couple materialized and asked me, “Is this a good place to run?”