“PACK THE VAN, Marty,” Jack said.
“Now?”
“Now. Make sure you have everything. Video and stills for all three of us.”
“OK. For what?”
“The last bullfight,” he said. “Mexicans are outlawing bullfighting at the end of April. We have nine days to make the last one in Huamantla. La Taurina.”
“Why?”
“To make a documentary,” he said.
“If your ‘source’ is right, there’ll be a horde to cover it.”
“No. The big names head for Mexico City. They don’t know about Huamantla. We’re going small and classy. It’s the best opportunity we’ll ever have.”
So, Gretchen and I packed the van, an aged Teutonic panel truck with the transmission of a semi and the suspension of a light tank. Jack bought it used. I expect it will outlast all of us. We always pack light: three knapsacks with a couple of changes of clothes and our toothbrushes. But it takes a day and a half to “pack the van.” We stow the equipment, cameras, lenses, electronics, so the gear travels safely. Finally, we hit the road.
On the road, Jack does the lion’s share of the driving. Gretchen spells him when he needs a break. I ride shotgun and think.
I’ve spent my whole goddamn life trying to make something beautiful. At twenty, what I meant by ‘making something beautiful’ was picking up a clarinet and playing New Orleans jazz or bringing out a rainbow of watercolors and painting a beautiful landscape. I found out I was tone-deaf and color-blind. Never did jack shit.
Almost twenty years ago, I turned forty and discovered photography. If your mind can imagine a beautiful picture and your eye can compose it through the viewfinder, then you can make an image. So can a gazillion other people. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up taking shots for ads, like I did. If you’re super-lucky, you’ll photograph beautiful models and beautiful places. Or, the best of all possible worlds, beautiful models in beautiful places. Then some ad agency dork turns your work into a Photoshop layer and covers it with text in a tasteless font.
I’ve done OK. Two failed marriages, kids who hardly speak to me, and a retirement account barely hitting six figures. Five years ago, I met Jack. Don’t get the wrong idea, we’re both straight. But he’s almost as crazy as I am. He makes black and white documentaries to show at film festivals in artsy summer towns. Win and you get a cocktail party invitation, a nice plaque and two or three hundred dollars. Most of the time, you don’t win.
I still want to make something beautiful. I want to capture an image, show it to my grown-up kids and say, “Look, your old man made this.” And then hear them say, “That’s beautiful. Dad, we’re proud of you.”
Dream on.
Gretchen’s younger, early thirties. Her eyesight is better than mine. “Eyesight,” defined as able to read those charts with smaller and smaller letters all the way to the bottom. LPTOZ. So, I don’t drive.
While Jack drives, I occupy the front passenger seat. Gretchen is about five-three. She’s comfortable in back. When Jack gets tired and she drives, either Jack or I will sleep in the back and the other one talks so Gretchen stays awake. Once, in northern New Jersey, she almost hit a bear. She said she saw it but didn’t believe it. She barely missed it.
It's a long drive from Brooklyn to Huamantla, but it’s not complicated. Go straight from Williamsburg to Slidell, Louisiana. From there, keep the Gulf on the left and go another eleven hundred miles. At Tihuatlan, turn inland. That means take a right. Then you climb to Huamantla.
It took four days. After a couple of days, when we couldn’t stand the van or each other any longer, we got two rooms at a cheap motel. I told you; it’s not that kind of a story. Jack and I shared one. Gretchen had her own. Hot showers, no hanky-panky.
Late afternoon of our last day on the road, we head into the Mexican highlands. We’ve watched cumulonimbus towers build all afternoon. Now, we drive into them with lightning hitting all around. Sheets of rain obscure a road that has no guardrails, Jack shifts into neutral, grabs the hand brake, and lets the van coast uphill. When it stops without a skid, he pulls hard on the handbrake. We take our chances sitting in the road. Jack can’t see far enough to keep going.
Seconds later, lightning splits a boulder on the uphill side of the road. There’s a shattering crash, and a chunk of rock the size of the van bounces across in front of us.
“Good thing we stopped,” Jack says.
We sit in the van, shaking, for a quarter of an hour. Maybe something, or somebody, doesn’t want us to make this film. The rain slows, and we creep half a mile farther through clouds and fog to the plateau. After we crest the rise, the sky clears.
Our spirits lift and we roll happily into Huamantla. The tiny town could be the set of an old western, like “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” or “A Fistful of Dollars.” A cantina, a half-dozen men napping in the shade, and a mariachi band practicing surround the plaza. The occasional vehicle reminds me of Havana. No one has a cellphone, and our devices show no service.
Down there in the clouds, when the stopped van cheated death, did we slip back seventy, eighty years? It’s the stress, a crazy thought. We park the van and find rooms at the Hostal del Dulce Nombre. No TV, and the sign at the desk says, “cash only,” but Jack has a wad of pesos. It will do just fine. We have tomorrow to look around and all day on Saturday to set up.
Friday morning, Gretchen says, “You two go scout camera placements. I’ll chat up the locals. Find out what’s going on.” Gretchen travels widely, effortlessly. Speaking English, she has a faint accent no one can place. Some say Dutch. I think it’s the eastern shore of Maryland. Whatever it is, she gets along fine in Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Jack and I walk to the bullring. Posters for “La Ultima Corrida” cover every available wall. A matador in his traje de luces, balanced on the balls of his feet, arches his back with his capote de brega flowing as the bull with his banderillas passes.
In the traditional three-matador, six-bull event, Antonio Montes has top billing. The other two names, journeymen novilleros a year ago, get small font, below. People speak of Montes, an aging Spanish star, with awe.
In the compact ring, fifty yards across, the mix of smooth clay and sand promises sure footing for the matador and the bull. The opening ceremony begins at 4 pm tomorrow, and the first two toreros will warm up the crowd. Then, an hour and a half later, Antonio will face his two bulls. We will save most of our film for him.
The matador wants the bull facing away from the sun, and we want the matador’s face. We set the tripods to the northeast and the southeast, Jack’s to the north and mine to the south. We check exposures the old-fashioned way, light meters. You can’t run around a bullring, even a small one, trying to find the right spot at the last minute. A great film or photo takes planning.
Access to the matador’s dressing room for stills falls to Gretchen. She finds a couple of young men who help at the bullring, and they agree to meet us in the cantina after work on Friday. The beer is cold. We buy a round, then another. Jack and I wouldn’t get access to the stables, much less the dressing room. For Gretchen however, if Antonio agrees, something might be arranged. He will arrive this afternoon. A welcome with the mayor and the local dignitaries begins at 8:00. Our new associates will slip her into the party. After she makes contact, she’ll step out through the kitchen and disappear. Pesos change hands.
Antonio arrives outside the only other hotel, the fancy one. The crowd presses to catch a look. Short and handsome, he waves, smiles, exchanges air kisses with a couple of the prettiest girls. El alcalde, the mayor holds the door as he moves from sunshine into shadow. Jack and I circle to wait for Gretchen in the alleyway. In twenty minutes, she arrives grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Gretchen has talked her way into the matadors’ preparation room. They dress early for the entry parade. She will help fix their hair into the classic tight rolls at the back of the head.
On Saturday, the hours pass slowly. Jack and I make sure all the equipment is clean, set up the tripods. About 2:00 pm, I carefully peel one of the larger posters from the wall of the hostel. The paper is thicker than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s as heavy as parchment, and the colors have soaked deeply into the fibers. It reminds me of the framed bullfight posters on the walls at Hemingway’s Finca Vigia, outside Havana. Again I wonder, up there in the clouds did we slip back seventy, eighty years? I roll the poster carefully and tuck it into a space at the top of the van where it will be safe. A treasure.
While we wait outside, in the dressing area Antonio watches Gretchen. She’s never in the way, yet she moves continuously with her camera: squats down, climbs on chairs, gets the best angles as his squire helps him into his suit of lights. Dressed, he sits in front of a small dressing table with a mirror. She stands behind him, bending over to pull his hair tight. She sees his eyes in the mirror, his gaze fixed on the top of her breasts. She finishes the bun. He stands, turns, and kisses her.
“Will I see you tonight?” he asks.
“Yes,” she whispers.
The two journeyman fighters dispatch their assigned animals. The bulls are small, but the first lad’s second bull is courageous. After the picadors, he stands bleeding, then makes a series of charges. He rips the muleta to shreds. It takes three passes to get the sword to the right spot. The crowd cheers for the bull.
The second matador handles his cape like a housewife shaking crumbs off a tablecloth. Although he makes his kills, he is a butcher, not a bullfighter.
The groundskeepers race to rake and tamp the ring as the band plays a pasodoble, an up-tempo march.
The sun slips behind the stands well before it reaches the horizon. The lucky spectators who had the sun straight in their eyes now have shade; the ring remains brightly lit. The angle of the light is perfect. Antonio enters the ring. His first bull is large, strong but not particularly fast. Antonio works artfully, with lovely passes before he switches to the small cape. The animal rushes at him to meet a perfect estocada, the killing stroke. Antonio takes a half-step backward as the bull collapses at his feet. The crowd gives him two ears.
The final bull is a monster: enormous, fast, and angry. After the picadors, Antonio maneuvers him around the ring. Everyone gets to see a pass, a veronica, the man and the bull, dancing. At last, Antonio tosses his hat to the mayor, brings out the muleta, the small cape, and tempts the bull to the center of the ring. The gold embroidery of the traje de luces glows. The setting sun reflecting off a thin veil of clouds softens the shadows. I have a fast shutter and set the aperture wide. Antonio’s eyes, the tip of the sword - the espada, and the deadly horns will be in focus. The crowd will be a blur.
Antonio holds the cape low, the blade just above it. He strikes the pose for the crowd. He will demonstrate his courage. He’s not going to move. I switch to manual focus. This is the chance of a lifetime. I’m not going to risk it on the camera.
The animal charges again, but not the cape. His thundering body shifts six inches toward Antonio. I take three shots as Antonio drives the sword to the hilt between the shoulders, an estocada.
The dead bull’s momentum carries him another five yards before he collapses. The mounted picadors surround the motionless beast. The fresh wounds do not bleed.
All eyes are on Antonio, lying in a pool of his own bright red blood slowly soaking into the sand. The borders are almost black. The local doctor stumbles out and waves for the priest. It is over.
Gretchen weeps. Jack collects the movie cameras. I only want to see my photos, the photos of a lifetime. We have a small printer in the back of the van, nothing extraordinary, a simple utility printer to check composition and exposure for critical shots. If I start the van, I can make prints. There’s nothing I can do to change what is happening outside.
I turn on the printer and slip the memory card out of the camera and into the reader. The contacts look strange, like they’re corroding. The wait is unbearable. The first image shows Antonio’s sword driven straight to the hilt as the beast’s right horn pierces the white shirt below the embroidered jacket. The second freezes the bull as it passes under Antonio. He’s airborne, a red bloom already covering half his shirt. The final shot captures a body in the suit of lights, inert on the bloodstained sand. I select the first one and print an eight by ten. The image is perfect. The fading light highlights Antonio’s eyes. He has seen the bull shift, and his gaze has fixed on the horns. He knows this is his last bullfight.
I carefully place the print in a clear archival sleeve and tuck the sleeve in a heavy protective manila envelope. Jack refuses to risk the trip down at night. The darkened town mourns silently. Antonio’s body rests in the Basilica of Our Lady of Charity.
We spend the night at the hostel and leave early. The warm wet wind from the Gulf turns to fog as it rises into the highlands. Picking our way down, we pass the splintered boulder. Hours later, we cross the border, pass Harlingen, and then stop. Too tired to push on, we agree to rest for a few hours. I go out to the van, bring the envelope into the motel to show Jack and Gretchen.
Sitting at a small table in a cheap room, in Raymondville, Texas, I share the most beautiful thing I have ever done…
— ROGER MILLS
Roger Mills grew up in the Midwest reading Ray Bradbury paperbacks. He now lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, with his wife and two Labs. Before retiring to write full-time, Roger had a long career in academic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. He completed Stanford’s Online Writing Certificate program, and in addition to his short fiction, his debut novel, Everything’s Under Control, will appear in June 2026.