Rafo’s estrangement from his father after the denial

Rafo’s estrangement from his father after the denial becomes explicit when Mr. Polk, reached by phone, disclaims knowledge of his son and Mike confirms that the story of a summons was false. The rupture is not simply the result of a parent’s rejection: it also breaks the account Rafo had trusted about why he was being brought back, exposing the lie that had connected his hope in his father to Mike’s paid task.

An expected summons

Rafo’s belief that his father had sent for him gives the call its particular force. The sergeant has contacted the police, Rafo’s mother, and finally Mr. Polk; while the conversations proceed, Mike cannot know what fragments Rafo is gathering, but he sees the boy’s expression grow graver and watches him withdraw further into himself. The scene makes the anticipated answer visible before it is spoken: Rafo is listening for information about whether he is wanted, not merely for the practical arrangements of his return.

When the sergeant reaches Mr. Polk, the conversation grows angry enough that the officer briefly raises his voice. He then regains his formal manner and asks what should be done about Rafo. The answer, as the sergeant reports it, is that Mr. Polk says he knows nothing about the matter. That denial contradicts Rafo’s belief that his father had sent for him. The father is not present to explain himself; the relationship reaches Rafo through a phone call, an official intermediary, and Mike’s eventual confirmation.

The denial delivered

The sergeant’s account also sets the parental responses beside one another. Rafo’s mother, he says, will not defend her son because she does not know how to defend him, and thinks perhaps he should learn that the law is the law. Mr. Polk, by contrast, offers no account of Rafo at all: he says he knows nothing. The sergeant appears distressed as he delivers this part of the message, but his official report cannot soften its meaning for the boy.

Rafo tries to challenge the report by insisting that his father sent for him and directs the sergeant to ask Mike. The gesture makes Mike the person who could either sustain or undo the story. For a moment, the sergeant waits for him to answer. Mike says nothing; before he can find words, Rafo turns away. The pause matters because the truth is not yet stated outright, but the man who could confirm Rafo’s hope cannot do so. The breakdown begins as a silence between the boy and the adult who brought him there.

The lie exposed

Later, Rafo asks Mike directly whether he has been lied to. Mike admits that he has. Rafo then names the conclusion the call has forced on him: his father did not want him. Mike does not correct that conclusion. When Rafo asks whether his father wanted money from his mother, Mike again says yes. Rafo understands the supposed summons not as a father’s attempt to reclaim him but as part of a transaction involving money from his mother.

Rafo’s bitter attempt to laugh at the situation does not hold. He says he had always known his mother would not give even one peso for him, while wondering whether her response to his situation means she has changed. He calls the story both a joke and a lie, trying to measure what the deception has done. This is not simply anger at a false detail: the lie had offered a reason to believe that his father wanted him. Mike’s admission removes that reason and makes the distance between Rafo’s hope and his father’s denial impossible to ignore.

What the father represented

The exchange also tests Rafo’s picture of his father against a small, concrete question. After learning that Mr. Polk did not send for him, Rafo asks whether his father ever rode a wild horse. Mike says no. The answer strips away another element of the father Rafo had imagined: he is not the horse-riding figure Rafo had hoped might embody courage or capability. The question shifts their conversation from what Mr. Polk wants to what sort of person he is, and Mike’s answer offers no supporting detail for Rafo’s idealized image.

Rafo’s effort to recover himself fails; his eyes fill even as he tries to pull himself together. He then turns to Mike, recognizing that Mike’s part in the journey also began with money. Mike acknowledges that it did. Rafo describes the arrangement as one in which Mr. Polk was Mike’s boss and Rafo himself was the sucker. His anger therefore reaches beyond the absent father: the false summons has also made Mike’s apparent care difficult to separate from his employer’s payment.

A relationship left in rupture

The denial leaves Rafo with sharply narrowed possibilities. He says that if his father does not want him and Mike has acted for money, the only one who wants him is the police. The remark joins the two revelations without equating them: the police seek him for truancy, petty theft, and resisting arrest, while the adults he had hoped might claim him have offered no reliable welcome. In the scene, Rafo’s sense of being wanted has been inverted into the prospect of being pursued by the law.

The relationship’s decisive change is thus a collapse of trust grounded in direct confirmation. Mr. Polk’s denial reaches Rafo through the sergeant; Mike’s confession establishes that the story of the summons was fabricated; and the question about the wild horse punctures a further idealization. The available exchange does not show Mr. Polk speaking to Rafo or repairing the breach. It ends with Rafo confronting the lie and Mike’s role in it, leaving the father-son bond defined by absence, rejection, and the painful gap between the father Rafo expected and the one whose denial he has just heard.