But then, as though he were in a trance, and using the simplest hand-tools, he began to make perfectly beautiful cowboy boots, which he sold from door to door. They weren’t only tough and comfortable: they were dazzling jewelry for manly feet and calves, scintillating with gold and silver stars and eagles and flowers and bucking broncos cut from flattened tin cans and bottle caps. But this new development in his life wasn’t as nice for me to see as you might think. It gave me the creeps, actually, because I would look into his eyes, and there wasn’t anybody home anymore.
