Boy Kings of Texas Read Online Free Page A

went on their own. Grampa had given my dad half the property as a wedding present so he and his new wife could build a new house. Our front doors faced each other, but they said very little anymore; they looked away from each other’s lives in what passed for politeness.
    There are lots of cars in the driveway parked over by Gramma and Grampa’s house that night, and that’s what catches my attention. Something going on over there. I walk over to see what’s happening even though it’s late, like eight o’clock. Richard’s first of many wives is there, and she holds me back, tells me not to look. Richard is Dad’s younger stepbrother, the one who beats me up years later. His wife is seventeen and knocked up. Her name is Patty. She smells soft, very pretty for the area. Fair. All the men like her, pretend not to flirt. The family is talking about taking Grampa to the hospital across the border because it would be cheaper. He’s sick, really sick. Where is Dad? I don’t see him. He’s not there. Gramma is mad, throwing things around and crying that loud, wailing cry again. Grampa’s whole family is there—his brothers and their wives, maybe one of their kids. I see Grampa through the doorway of his bedroom for a moment, when they finally decide to drive him. They should have called an ambulance hours ago, they shouldn’t move him, but they do. I see him make a painful effort to get up off the bed, swing his legs over the side, and he can hardly do it. His face is aortic, totally purple, like he’s been beaten up again; his neck is a deep crimson, and the rest of his body is deathly pale, freckles on his sagging, overweight torso. He sees me and tries to smile. “ Pookie ,” he tries to whisper. It hurts him. This makes me cry, even today.
    They get him to a clinic in Matamoros, and they immediately send him to that bleak, dirty green hospital. He dies within an hour, of diabetic shock, on a tile table. Someone is holding his hand and his last words are, “¡Sueltáme, Poongui!” —telling me to let go of his hand, imagining I’m there, even though I’m across the border watching television now. He needed to go. It was time for him to say goodbye, and he said it to me. It was March 26, 1980.They tell me this, when they come back, one man short, that his last words were of me, like I should be proud. And I am proud, strangely, even today, but I don’t know why. Maybe because he was the last person I loved without complication, before I learned that love was a negotiation. He was someone I never failed, never hurt, and I still can’t let him go, let go of his hand when I dream of him. And I can’t remember much of him when I’m awake, only feelings. I wouldn’t recognize him if I saw him.
    At the funeral, only Gramma cries louder than I do, probably because she kept his insulin from him as punishment for his last bender and didn’t mean to kill him, not really.

Chapter 4
    Curses
    When we received the chain letter, it took my parents one or two days to discuss it with the rest of the family and organize a response. This freshest of hells was met with the same resignation that every other ill omen to strike the family had been received, as we were hit often with the relentless misfortunes of Catholic beliefs.
    That the chain letter was simple and idiotic superstition would never occur to Dad or Gramma or even Mom: They played by the rules of faith, and faith, like everything else, has a positive and a negative side, a good and a bad, a yin and a yang, Budweiser and Miller Lite.
    So it naturally followed that their prayers for good fortune would sometimes bring them bad. In this, they were unquestioning.
    The whole family was therefore collected one dark and eerie evening (What made it eerie? The television had been turned off) around the typically cluttered and unused dining room table, and we were each asked to