The Tale of the Toreador
by George Albert Leddy
THIS IS THE STORY I HEARD ONE NIGHT
BY THE MAN WHO STUMBLED IN
WITH THE OLD BANDANNA ‘ROUND HIS NECK
AND THE RAGGED SCAR ON HIS CHIN
AND THE COWHIDE BOOTS WITH COPPER SNOOTS
AND AN EMPTY GUT WITHIN
Let me sit here awhile by the fire;
it’s cold as the devil tonight.
I’ve mushed all the day through the mire;
I’m sick, and I long for a sight
Of some face that will smile at the meeting;
some voice that will ring with a cheer;
Some hand I can clasp in a greeting; of a soul who will welcome me near;
For a man from the trails who will pity, another who’s down on his pins;
Who will buy me a drink then I’ll tell you, of a world and it’s many sins;
A world that is not for the weakling;
A world, that’s a world, for men.
There’s a land where the hot sun is heartless, where the sands seem to glory in pain.
They that know it, they hate it, they curse it;
and yet, they will go back again;
Like the dog that is whipped by the master; the critter once burned by the brand;
The outcast, the dope-fiend, the drunkard; will return at the word of command.
‘Tis the spirit of those who have perished; the call is: “Come, share in my fate!”
‘Tis strange, but somehow, ‘fore you know it,
you’re back in the land that you hate;
Back, and you stick, and you linger;
You ponder, you wonder, you wait.
Such to me was the curse of that hell-land; it held me a miserable slave.
All its horrors were joys in my madness;
my hopes were as dark as the grave.
But, God, it was wild, and I loved it;
its vastness, its freedom, its ways;
The flair and the glare of the dance hall; the women, the wine, and the maize;
The cards, and the dice, and the betting;
the truce that is held by the gun.
Well, if groping with death is a pleasure,
then I’ve had my share of the fun;
Playing, and betting, and cheating;
To win, then to lose what I’d won.
In the midst of that music and laughter, the whirl and the twirl of the dance;
Shown a face that was bright as the morning;
a little of love in the glance
That I met, and I knew she was waiting; the dance done, I called her aside;
It was love, and her promise she gave me;
on the morrow, I’d call her my bride.
But a half-breed, green-eyed in his passion, had followed us into the street.
There a shot in the dark told his story;
my sweetheart lay dead at my feet.
Stilled, was her heart so loving;
Stilled, was her voice so sweet.
Then the wild cries-of-hell were around me;
I tried to explain it at first;
But I soon saw that pleading was useless; the half-breed had left me his curse.
Soon the blood-thirsty crowd had me silenced; my lips were as dumb as the dead.
They had quickly prepared for a lynching; a rope was thrown over my head.
But Two-Gun, the sheriff, then entered;
I cried, “I am innocent, Sir!”
“He’s a liar! He killed her! I saw it!”
was howled by the Mexican cur.
A cur, a fiend, and a liar;
A sneak, and a murderer.
I was locked in a jail - God have mercy,
on those who had been there before;
Some were living apart from their reason;
some rotting there on the floor.
There were smears on the wall where in anguish, some battered their heads so to die;
And the hair and the brains marked a tombstone, o’er forms that were withered and dry.
On the floor of the den crouched a madman, making love to a skeleton-frame
Of some woman who’d once queened the dance-hall;
in the end, a prison and shame.
Shame, when her beauty had vanished;
Pride, while her beauty had reigned.
While I sat there, to me, it was heaven, compared to the noise from without;
Those drunken, crazed, half-breeded devils,
who circled my prison about;
Who thirsted my blood like a wolf-pack; who yearned for my heart as their pay;
But my comrades, within, were companions;
I loved them ere morning was gray.
When the rats came to feed on a carcass,
I frightened them off by the score;
To the skeleton, I sang some ragtime;
she grinned, so I sang her some more.
Sang, with the heart of a victor;
Sang, ‘till my throat was sore.
With the first streak of dawn came the Sheriff,
with a posse to drive off the swine,
Who were waiting to swill-down my lifeblood;
who swore it was their life or mine.
There were shots; there were howls; there were curses;
fowl oaths that I feign to repeat;
Then the bolt, it was drawn, and the sunlight,
streamed ‘cross the floor at my feet.
Oh, God, how in hatred, I cursed it;
It’s brightness had brought me once more
To the life that was cursed with my badness;
I loved the black dungeon much more.
Its horrors had filled me with pity;
A pity, I’d ne’re felt before.
Then my trial was a stern, and a short one;
I told them the story all through;
But the half-breed, he called me a liar;
and swore that he saw and he knew.
But the Sheriff, who sat in my judgment, was fair, and I saw in his glance
That he doubted the words of the half-breed;
and decided to give me a chance.
Then he spoke, and his words was a challenge:
“To prove that your story is true,
You will fight the Mad-Bull in the bull-pit;
to win, means your freedom to you.”
To freedom, to light, and to gladness;
Or to live, and to suffer, anew.
Well, the news it spread fast like the fire, that lowers the grass in the plains;
That herds the wild cattle together;
that fires the blood in their veins;
That stampedes them on to the river; that hurls them on into the flood;
Then stops at the banks, its fiery fangs
shoot out o’er the river like blood.
Well, such spread the news of the bullfight;
the arena was jammed to the gate.
I stood all alone in the bull-pit,
awaiting, in silence, my fate.
In wonder, in joy, and in gladness;
In horror, in madness, in hate.
Well, my soul seemed to die, then awaken, in a land that is strange, and afar;
I saw not the glare of the bright-lights;
I saw not the things as they are.
It was dark, and I stood in a valley, by a deep, raging river of blood;
Where the rapids were raging and roaring, o’er the bones that were lodged in the flood.
On the banks, all around, was a gathering, of skeletons, grinning and bold;
And there, among them, a face, I remembered; smeared with the curse of a soul.
Sneered, and blanched, and frightened;
Trembling, painful, and cold.
There are men with the minds of an adder; they crouch, and they crawl, and they spring;
They hiss, and they spit, and they poison;
they slink, and they cringe, and they sting;
They grin, and their grin is a challenge;
they sneer, and it drives you insane;
Till your soul is o’er pregnant with hatred,
and your heart is a-deadened to pain.
Such was he, whom I saw in my madness;
who tempted me, sorely, until
My soul it was filled with a badness;
my heart was a-longing to kill.
Grewsome, morose, and despairing;
Helpless, hopeless, and still.
When the Devil arose from the river,
and drew back the gates of the flood;
From whence came a monstrous critter, lashing and splashing in blood.
His tail lashed his sides, and he bellowed;
I stood like a man in a spell;
What I saw was a terrible demon, with eyes like the windows of Hell.
In a moment, the brute was upon me; his hot breath was singeing my brow.
But I fought, God, I fought like a demon;
I fought, like I’d always known how;
I fought; and Oh, God! - how I loved it; the blood of the beast in my veins
Had filled me with longing to conquer;
I felt a strange joy in my pains.
A joy, a pride, and a glory;
The honor a fighter gains.
Again, and again, he would charge me; again, and again, I would score;
Till the point of my sabre struck squarely; his eye was a pool on the floor.
He bellowed; he pawed; and he snorted;
my foot struck the slime, and I fell;
Then he bounded – his foot struck my chin, there;
see the cloven-foot brand-of-hell!
Then the crowd wildly roared, “Kill the critter!”
I shot, but the bullet went higher;
And the maggots grew fat on the carcass - of the bastard that called me a liar!
Now his bones they are white on the desert;
Blanched by the hot sun’s ire.
The Bull seemed to know he was conquered; he slunk back again to his pen.
My mind cleared, and once more, I was living; a man, in the world of men.
Then the hoots, and the sneers, and the snarling; the curses, the taunts, and the jeers
Of the Mexican hounds who were longing, to see me torn-up by the steer.
But I fled from the glare of the bright lights;
pray, God, I’ll go back, never more;
But today, if you go there, they’ll tell you -
"The Tale of the Toreador."
***