Howard

Howard is Rafo’s estranged father and the distant figure around whom the boy’s memories, resentments, and hopes have gathered. He promises to return, to bring gifts, and to take Rafo north to the rodeo, yet repeatedly fails to do what he says. Years later, he pays Mike to bring his son back from Mexico; the journey exposes the distance between Rafo’s imagined father and the man Mike expects him to meet, as well as the possibility that Howard’s interest is bound up with a legal and financial dispute rather than affection.

Identity and Background

Rafo remembers Howard as handsome, immaculate, and almost uniformly pale: light eyes and hair, pale gray suits, clean fingernails. The details give the father a polished, compelling presence in the boy’s memory, but also make him seem unreachable. Rafo compares him to a sacred fire on a mountain in the game of Ixtatl: a person might climb toward the flame, but reaching out to touch it would mean being consumed. Howard’s remembered glamour is therefore inseparable from distance and danger; he is an object of awe who cannot be approached safely.

That image is sharpened by Rafo’s conviction that Howard is the ultimate gringo. Rafo’s hostility toward gringos serves both as a source of revenge and as part of his streetwise persona, but his hatred of Howard is especially personal. The father is not simply an emblem of a group Rafo distrusts. He is the man whose attention Rafo once sought and whose broken commitments taught him to expect abandonment.

Promises and Estrangement

Rafo remembers a pattern of small and large disappointments. Howard might promise to be home by Saturday and return the following Tuesday. He promised to bring Rafo a Texas sheriff’s badge, but never did. After deserting Rafo’s mother, he promised to come for the boy and take him north to the rodeo. That last promise mattered most because it joined the father Rafo longed for to the things he loved: animals, horses, and the possibility of belonging in Howard’s world.

Rafo’s attachment to horses was already intense. He learned to ride before he learned to read; on his first visit to the Hipodromo, he ran onto the field after the first race, shouting with excitement, and had to be restrained. The promised rodeo journey thus offered more than a trip. It seemed to promise that Howard would recognize Rafo’s deepest enthusiasms and make a place for him. When Howard did not come through, the failure became proof, in Rafo’s eyes, that an adult could simply forget what he had promised. Rafo’s bitter reflection that adulthood might mean forgetting the promise expresses how thoroughly the father’s repeated absences have shaped his sense of trust.

The Return Rafo Expects

When Mike tells Rafo that his father will pay to have him brought north, Rafo is bewildered. The news contradicts the history he knows: he has not seen Howard for five years, Howard did not ask after him, and he received no birthday present. Rafo cannot reconcile that neglect with the idea that Howard would now pay a substantial amount to recover him. He accuses Mike of lying, and Mike produces his employment card to establish that he works for Howard. The card verifies Mike’s employment, but it cannot by itself make the promised reunion believable to a boy whose experience has taught him otherwise.

Mike, in turn, recognizes the danger in Rafo’s expectations. He understands that Rafo has imagined a father who has finally begun to miss him: a man of rodeo, horses, physical action, and authority who will welcome him as an owner’s son, give him access to the stables, and teach him to rope, handle bulls, and ride wild broncs. Mike sets this dream against what he regards as the reality. Howard cannot ride a horse, dislikes the musky smell of a bull, has little interest in the rodeo, and has even less affection for his son. Mike anticipates that Rafo may receive a cold, appraising smile rather than an embrace, and that even a small gesture of affection could leave the boy hurt.

The boarding school Mike imagines as the likely alternative makes the gulf especially stark. In his estimation, Howard would put Rafo away at an expensive, possibly military-style school while lawyers argued over dollars and pesos. Mike imagines Rafo running away from that school and becoming more embittered. This is Mike’s forecast, not a reported event: the passage reveals what he fears for the boy, rather than confirming what Howard eventually does. Its force lies in the contrast between Rafo’s dreamed-of welcome and Mike’s bleak expectation of separation.

Money, Custody, and Narrative Significance

Howard’s payment brings Rafo into Mike’s custody, but it does not settle what the payment means. When Mike and Rafo later need money for their journey, Rafo proposes the simple solution of calling his father and asking for a hundred dollars. Mike cannot answer him readily. He considers confessing that, on the one occasion when he phoned Howard, Howard refused the call. He also considers telling Rafo that Howard wants him north not out of love but to bargain with Rafo’s mother, keep his legal position clean, and avoid trouble with the Mexican police. The passage presents these as Mike’s understanding and contemplated explanation, not as a direct statement from Howard establishing his motives.

That silence matters: Rafo still treats Howard as someone who might provide what they need, while Mike believes the boy may instead be used as a means of exchange. Howard’s physical absence from these encounters leaves his character to emerge through promised money, remembered failures, and the expectations of others. For Rafo, the father remains both the dazzling, untouchable figure of childhood and the promise breaker who did not come. For Mike, Howard’s employment of him creates an obligation, but also a moral problem: carrying out the assignment risks confirming a hope that Mike believes may be cruelly misplaced.