Boy Kings of Texas Read Online Free Page B

produce what we could. The chain letter called for twenty-five duplicates, each to be mailed off randomly and within the week of the letter’s arrival. We were slow in writing out the unfamiliar words of the badly written chain letter because none of us, save the preteen girls, were too confident in our writing, in either English or Spanish. So we sat there, that night, as a large Catholic family in the yellow dining room light, with the somber reverence of pilgrims genuflecting before a particularly testy saint.
    I was about eight, so I was required to produce only one copy, if that. My sisters proudly cranked out about five each, in that large, pouty-lipped flowery script of the junior high nymphet.
    Personally, I was in dire trouble. My left margin drifted dangerously toward the center of the page and then drunkenly over-corrected back to the left, the letter stumbling like a tourist pouring himself out of a Mexican bar, ending in a tired, horrible scrawl of, well, an eight-year-old.
    See, I wanted to do my part to set this right, to participate in the salvation of the family, because continuing the chain would bring better fortune and ignoring it would bring the bad, the chain letter explained. This became very important to me that night.
    When I finished, Mom looked at my work and remained characteristically quiet, but I could immediately see she wasn’t exactly satisfied, though she accepted it, also very characteristic of her at this time.
    We had to reproduce the twenty-five copies of the chain letter like fifteenth century monks, writing them out in long hand because the technology of copier machines had not yet infiltrated the barrio. Mom folded my work and reluctantly stuffed it into an envelope to be mailed to some unfortunate soul with a last name like Salazar in McAllen, Texas. I kept wondering the whole time, if it was illegible, if that recipient didn’t take it seriously, would the curse still take hold? Would my childish scrawl disqualify the magic number twenty-five and would it be my fault the family was still spiraling toward indigence? It frightened me to consider that we had left this to chance.

    Seven years later, my older brother Dan pulls me aside and says, “Do you remember the chain letter we got right after Grampa died?”
    Of course I remembered the fucking thing. I had to smile inwardly at the idea of a chain letter written by an eight-year-old landing in the mailbox of what was probably an equally superstitious Catholic family (chances were) and the fear that it would trigger, the Exorcist -type horror that would settle upon the person opening the envelope. He would struggle at first to make out the childish script, very likely wrestling with a language barrier. Then the weight of the potential curse would settle coldly into his heart, its evil beyond measure because it was written with the hand of a dreadful, pestilence-bringing child, like in that other movie, The Omen . . . .
    â€œI think that’s what started this whole thing, was that letter,” Dan starts telling me in quick secret. It’s morning, before school, and we’re helping a very panicked Dad change tires on one of his trucks.
    â€œGrampa died right before that, the business started to fall apart, and things just got really bad, right? It was right after we got that letter,” he says.
    â€œBut we sent out all the letters.”
    â€œI don’t know what happened, but something went wrong.”
    Immediately I thought of my work, somehow unacceptable to the cosmic decorum of chain letters because of the bad margins, the cross-outs, the candy stains, the little drawings of an X-wing fighter I made at the end—had it all been my fault?
    â€œBut it’s been seven years now,” he says. “I think it’s almost over.” He is very satisfied with this, convinced, and I can see he’s serious.
    I almost join in his little moment, am almost convinced of the same thing,