Big time baseball pitchers pose in mirrors, thinking they’re all sporting fairly large and attractive balls. But baseball is silly. My daddy has a pair of dried-out bull dangles on his truck hitch, and I’m not talking stupid rubber impostors—real testicles, once belonging to a champion bull, a bastard by the name of Homer. And here’s some incidental baseball truth for you: the Homer is mightier than the pitch. Either way, in the end, somebody parades your withered manhood—trailer hitch or the out-of-gas throw—with the world looking on at your strutting manhood, laughing.
Me and the stupid summer farm boys that I work-sweat alongside of—we embrace a scenario that happens maybe two, three times a year—we straighten our backs and look around, and find our labor fairly caught up—and the Boss has gone out of town to Charlie-hustle business for the farm. And that’s when me and the boys play a real game: The Bull Pen.
A champion bull has humongo balls and a tight sheath. He’s insanely horny and fertile, and his lady friends all calve easily. His performance records make baseball statistics look like nothing more than a 4-H judging of mild-mannered, skinny steers. A top bull’s physical attributes—sound feet, muscular frame, a pompous walking gait, majestic eyes and teeth and jaw—they are pronounced, and frighteningly severe. A champ bull’s attitude: never back down. He performs, unwavering, like Chicago Bull Michael Jordan with the ball in his hands, one point down, three seconds to go. Sorry, baseball. Your moment against a batter’s box is slow and minor league in comparison.
First off, if you dare The Bull Pen, you gotta know: bulls can outrun you. Second, as owners of nasty and superior temperaments, bulls have no problem crushing you under hoof, or piercing your extremities with their pointy horns. Crushing amounts to breakage—goring is mostly a thigh or rump entry point, though the groin is fair game, too.
Me and the boys—Jerome and Jackson—we don’t bother with low stock bulls. Our farm has a titan named Beelzebubba—a Jersey bull, crossbred between Charolais and Brahman—and the fencing used to contain him consists of brick walls, close-spaced vertical rod gates, refuge housing, sliding doors made of 48 mm metal tubing, a nose-ring yoke, and heavy-duty welded bull panels. The Boss always warns, “You don’t play with Beelzebubba,” but when Boss is gone, we do.
That running with bulls thing somewhere over in France or Spain or Portugal—we’ve seen videos. Our guess: alcohol to boost your manhood, and then you depend on the distraction of so many bodies plus a wide avenue ahead. There’s Major League pitchers who have used cocaine and amphetamines to juice their power against guys holding up a hand to an umpire while they dig holes and adjust crotches. We don’t know what any of that silly shit’s all about.
Because when we play, it’s life or death. Even though all three of us are fifteen years old, we can’t stand the thought of busting out cell phones and recording the game. That’s nothing more than showoff shit. Baseball is broadcast shit. Us—we get down in the shit, and run.
Somehow, the smallest things creep in. Free-range chickens clucking and chasing down grasshoppers in the next pasture over. The ancient smell of desiccated cow patties owning all air beneath the clouds. Grass turning crispy-brown in the blaze of heat-wave sun. Heifers and cows hesitating from two fields over: witnesses to the truth of their Champion versus the oddities that bring them grain and complicate their lives. In anticipation, the simplicity of future slaughter carves along the edges.
When you’re climbing over the extra-tall fencing into The Bull Pen, you focus down to three things: your awareness of what’s around you, your awareness of what’s coming, your own damn-me-or-I-die speed. Nobody but me and Jerome and Jackson and Beelzebubba have anything to do with the space and time we occupy. Though God and livestock heads look on to see if this is the day, the choice is farm-clean, untainted by anything outside of the Pen, and completely mindless. All Beelzebubba knows is that he’s been affronted in his house, and all we know is that we have nothing but fleet bodies and reckless instinct to depend on if we want to see tomorrow.
Today, I’m first. The Champ relaxes back in the shade of his brick and straw, drinking a sizeable drool of water—and that’s when I drop off the fencing. He hears my disrespectful human feet hit ground within his territory, and he wheels. Jerome and Jackson yell “Hi, Bull!” to incite. We have all played this game before, and The Champion knows the aggression and rules by heart. Soft earth flies away behind his hooves.
I sprint along the tubular fencing, aiming for the end of Beelzebubba’s paddock. Running The Bull Pen means: encroaching at point A, then racing to the far-goal exit of point B without prematurely scrambling up fence, being run down and crumpling beneath hooves, or getting slung sideways on a point of keratin and bone.
Looking backwards: that’s doom.
That’s dumb and unlucky and deadly and something a baseball player caught between first and second in a rundown would do. No. You listen. You sense. You breathe in the farm and loosen your limbs to the wind. Murderous thunder chases you—at the proper time, you must rise from the earth like lightning if you wish to see bloodless Heaven.
It’s hot; maybe I haven’t drunk enough hose water today—a step and judgement slow. I’m beginning my leap for fencing when Beelzebubba catches up. Broad between his devil eyes, he brings his strong, masculine muzzle up beneath me. My rump and the head between the horns are a perfect fit.
Ten feet in the air, sailing over the boys, I decide: baseball’s better. I will land and slide into home, and this time, there I’ll stay. Safe.
