All the Pretty Horses

might just get a haircut, he said.
    He looked at the boy.
    I know how you feel. I felt the same way.
    The boy nodded. His father looked at the paper again and folded it.
    The Good Book says that the meek shall inherit the earth and I expect that’s probably the truth. I aint no freethinker, but I’ll tell you what. I’m a long way from bein convinced that it’s all that good a thing.
    He looked at the boy. He took his key out of his coatpocket and handed it to him.
    Go on back up there. There’s somethin belongs to you in the closet.
    The boy took the key. What is it? he said.
    Just somethin I got for you. I was goin to give it to you at Christmas but I’m tired of walkin over it.
    Yessir.
    Anyway you look like you could use some cheerin up. Just leave the key at the desk when you come down.
    Yessir.
    I’ll see you.
    All right.
    He rode back up in the elevator and walked down the hall and put the key in the door and walked in and went to the closet and opened it. Standing on the floor along with two pairs of boots and a pile of dirty shirts was a brand new Hamley Formfitter saddle. He picked it up by the horn and shut the closet door and carried it to the bed and swung it up and stood looking at it.
    Hell fire and damnation, he said.
    He left the key at the desk and swung out through the doors into the street with the saddle over his shoulder.
    He walked down to South Concho Street and swung the saddle down and stood it in front of him. It was just dark and the streetlights had come on. The first vehicle along was a Model A Ford truck and it came skidding quarterwise to a halt on its mechanical brakes and the driver leaned across and rolled down the window part way and boomed at him in a whiskey voice: Throw that hull up in the bed, cowboy, and get in here.
    Yessir, he said.
    I T RAINED all the following week and cleared. Then it rained again. It beat down without mercy on the hard flat plains. The water was over the highway bridge at Christoval and the road was closed. Floods in San Antonio. In his grandfather’s slicker he rode the Alicia pasture where the south fence was standing in water to the top wire. The cattle stood islanded, staring bleakly at the rider. Redbo stood staring bleakly at the cattle. He pressed the horse’s flanks between his bootheels. Come on, he said. I dont like it no bettern you do.
    He and Luisa and Arturo ate in the kitchen while she was gone. Sometimes at night after supper he’d walk out to the roadand catch a ride into town and walk the streets or he’d stand outside the hotel on Beauregard Street and look up at the room on the fourth floor where his father’s shape or father’s shadow would pass behind the gauzy window curtains and then turn and pass back again like a sheetiron bear in a shooting-gallery only slower, thinner, more agonized.
    When she came back they ate in the diningroom again, the two of them at opposite ends of the long walnut table while Luisa made the service. She carried out the last of the dishes and turned at the door.
    Algo más, señora?
    No, Luisa. Gracias.
    Buenas noches, señora.
    Buenas noches.
    The door closed. The clock ticked. He looked up.
    Why couldnt you lease me the ranch?
    Lease you the ranch.
    Yes.
    I thought I said I didnt want to discuss it.
    This is a new subject.
    No it’s not.
    I’d give you all the money. You could do whatever you wanted.
    All the money. You dont know what you’re talking about. There’s not any money. This place has barely paid expenses for twenty years. There hasnt been a white person worked here since before the war. Anyway you’re sixteen years old, you cant run a ranch.
    Yes I can.
    You’re being ridiculous. You have to go to school.
    She put the napkin on the table and pushed back her chair and rose and went out. He pushed away the coffeecup in front of him. He leaned back in the chair. On the wall opposite above the sideboard was an oilpainting of horses. There were half a dozen of them breaking through a pole corral and their manes were long and blowing and their eyes wild. They’d been copiedout of a book. They had the long Andalusian nose and the bones of their faces showed Barb blood. You could see the hindquarters of the foremost few, good hindquarters and heavy enough to make a cuttinghorse. As if maybe they had Steeldust in their blood. But nothing else matched and no such horse ever was that he had seen and he’d once asked his grandfather what kind of horses they were and his grandfather