Call liked to listen to Long Bill play the harmonica. The old tune, clear and plaintive, made a sadness come in him. He didn’t know why the music made him sad—or even what the sadness was for. After all, as the young woman said, they were all still alive, and not much worse off than they had been before the cyclone struck. The loss of the horses was a nuisance, of course, but it wasn’t because of the horses that he felt sad. He felt sad for all of them: the Rangers, Matilda, the little family that had lost its roof. They were small, and the world was large and violent. They were alive and, for
...more
