Tex

Tex Summary | Chapter 1 Summary

Tex opens on a beautiful fall day, with Tex riding his beloved horse, Negrito, before heading off to school. Once Tex arrives at school, the reader meets his best friend, Johnny Collins. We learn that Tex and Johnny spent much of the preceding summer riding Johnny's new motorbike. On this particular day, Tex is looking forward to returning home to go horseback riding again. However, he arrives home to discover his brother, Mason, sitting at the kitchen table in a very sour mood. Mason, or "Mace," is the town's high school basketball star. It strikes Tex as odd that Mason is home rather than going for a run or doing something else related to basketball. As the brothers engage in a terse conversation, Tex notices that it is cool in the house. When he mentions this, Mason informs him that the heat has been turned off, but that the problem has been addressed, and that the heat will be back on the next day. When Tex says he is going for a horse ride, Mason reveals that he sold the horses (each brother owned a horse).

A violent fight erupts between the two brothers. Afterward, Mason leaves in his truck, and Tex begins walking down the freeway, intent on finding the horses. Johnny and his sister, Jamie, find Tex, but Tex ignores them and continues walking. Soon after, Mason picks up Tex in his pickup truck and takes him back home, where Johnny, Jamie, and their brother, Bob (Robert), are waiting. Tex overhears Mason having a conversation with Bob; Mason is expressing his deep frustration about being left in charge of all the finances. Mason and Tex's father, "Pop," has been away for months doing the rodeo circuit, and Mason wants nothing more than to get into college and leave home. Mason plans to figure out a way to use basketball to get into college and out of town. Mason is seventeen; Tex is almost fifteen.