Sangre y arena

The crowd screams his name until it sounds like love. It isn’t. Juan Gallardo comes up from nothing with a sword and a gift for making death look like art. Spain puts him on its shoulders. Women do too. Then a different kind of spectator arrives — moneyed, bored, hungry — and the man who never feared a bull has to learn what a person can do. The sand always takes something. The question is who is still standing when the horns come.