A Young Man of Promise

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It was a black bull the size of a truck, and the horns went wide and curved back in at the tips so that a man caught between them could be spun from one horn to the other and die there. It came down on him with brute thunder and his feet were nailed and he could not move, the cape hanging useless in his hand...

He writhed awake out of nightmare and in his mouth there was a harsh, dry taste, the taste of fear — the fear which was forever there, forever waiting.

The naked light bulb, set high in the wall on the other side of the bedroom, made sharp shadows on the rumpled spread.

For one taut moment Pablo Bobadilla thought this was the day of the fight, that this was dawn on a Sunday. But as he sat up, the pain and stiffness in his body brought it all back and he knew that it was Sunday night and that the corrida was over. He was twenty-two, with thin, shadowed face, superb bull-fighter’s body, and dark hair, now rumpled from the restless sleep.

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