Flesh and Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

realized he would cry soon. He was mortified, but helpless to prevent it.
    His father sucked in a breath. “What if I got you a football instead?” he said. “What if you and me went down to Ike's tomorrow and got a football? How would that be?”
    Billy hesitated. He wanted to go to Ike's with his father in the morning, to try out different footballs and select the best one. But he also wanted what he'd asked for—a small, muscular horse that had no defect, that would stand as it was meant to.
    “I don't want a football,” he said, though in fact he did want one. He wanted everything.
    His father shook his head. “Forget it, then,” he said. He looked back at the television, where a happy blond woman sang a song about something that was like cheese, but better.
    Billy would have traded anything to be able to keep from crying, but his sorrow and outrage were too much for him and the crying won, as it usually did. Crying pulled him down. He turned away from his father, uncertain about where to go. He wanted to go someplace where his crying wasn't. He wanted to step outside of it and sit watching television with his father, both of them disgrunded and annoyed as the crying swarmed around them.
    His mother came into the room. “'What's going on?” She carried a limp dish towel, and her black hair crackled. Billy looked at her, helplessly, from the middle of his own noise.
    “Your son wants a new horse,” Billy's father said. “He don't want a football. I told him I'd buy him a football, he don't want it. He wants a new toy horse.”
    Billy could feel himself as a spoiled, greedy, ungrateful little boy. The louder he cried, the more firmly he became that, but the feeling of becoming it only made him cry harder. If he could have managed it he'd have slipped underground like a gopher and burrowed his way to Germany or Japan, someplace where he hadn't yet affected the air with his little desires.
    His mother came and crouched before Billy. She brought her colors and her stiff rustlings. “Is something the matter with your horse, honey?” she asked.
    He didn't move or speak. The crying continued without his permission. His mother took the horse out of his hand, looked tenderly at its wound.
    “It isn't much to want,” she whispered. Then, louder, she said, “I guess he didn't ask for a football, did he? I guess he asked for a plastic horse that costs ten cents and is made right here in the U.S. of A.”
    “He's got a million of them little animals,” Billy's father said. “He needs a million and one?”
    “For heaven's sake, listen to yourself.”
    “He wants an American toy, l'll get him a football.”
    “You and I can talk about this later,” Billy's mother said. “C'mon, Billy. Come in the kitchen with me, I could use a little help with the dishes.”
    He followed her, because he was unable to do anything of his own. He felt his father's silence pressing on the back of his head. In the kitchen his mother wiped his nose with a handkerchief that smelled like her. “We'll go out tomorrow and get a new horse,” she said. “Okay? Accidents happen, it's no big deal. We'll just get you a new one. Okay?”
    He nodded avidly. She smiled, deeply pleased, and told him he was a good little boy, a prize. She told him he deserved all sorts of good things, and if anyone tried to tell him differently, that person didn't know what he was talking about. Billy stared at her gratefully. She offered a practiced smile, one he'd seen thousands of times: a quick jerking upward of the corners of her mouth, a squeezing shut of the eyes, as if the act of smiling caused her a sharp and exquisite pain. Something bucked inside him, a feeling so unruly he thought he might be sick. She was his friend. She was the one who allowed. How could he dislike her? He heard, again, the sound the horse's leg had made, snapping off.

1963/ It happened quickly. It happened because Constantine was Greek and because he stopped into a tavern for a