Boy Kings of Texas

by Domingo Martinez

  There had always been many loud and terrible signals that Texas was not my home.

  My relationship to Texas had always been disturbingly patriarchal: I don’t know if Texas is capable of any other kind. I had the same emotional response to it as I had to my father: I can make fun of Texas, but if you’re not from Texas, then you may not. And seriously: Don’t push it.

  Sure, ours was an abusive relationship, but it was an abuse that grew out of odd circumstances, like a plucky ragamuffin in a 1930s vaudeville sketch who is unexpectedly forced upon a bitter, racist, drunken war celebrity widely féted for the cannibalistic defeat of the ragamuffin’s people. Sort of a:

  — Papá, more tabasco-infused tacos, pliss!

  — Eat boot-heel instead, you lazy, no-good, diapered wetback worm!

  — Aye, papa! Jou’re so crasy!

  Texas has an image to keep up, goddammit. Didn’t need a scrappy, artsy ragamuffin to complicate its drunken, colonial retirement. This was eminent domain, turned inward.

  Texas, I still maintain, is a semiotic thunderbolt, can answer any cocktail party question about the superconscious power of symbols and signifiers across the widest cultural divides. Next to Bruce Lee, Texas is probably the most easily identifiable Western image that someone in deepest Kazakhstan or darkest Africa can recognize. Would you like to try that with, say, Nebraska? Or Maine? No, it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work in America, let alone Nepal.

  Texas is in the shape of America’s heart: As goes Texas, so goes America. It’s the hoofprint of Jesus and would make a great tattoo.

  The word Texas itself draws infinite responses from people the world around, mostly negative, and appropriately so. I won’t pretend to defend it in the least—most everything reported about it that is negative is terribly accurate, but the thing is, if you haven’t lived there, then you couldn’t have met the Molly Ivinses, Anne Richardses, the Old 97ses, Audie Murphys, Kris Kristoffersons, Gibby Haneses, and Buddy Hollys.

  At any rate, like anything complicated, the idea of Texas draws a tapestry of an emotional response, has many moving parts, eddies, and tide pools. Brownsville itself was just a conventional market on the banks of the Rio Grande, until it become a new phenomenon in the 1800s, as a “border town,” when the delineation of a state—and moreover, two countries—was agreed upon by people who didn’t live there.

  Suddenly, a hinterland town that had been like any other—on a plain on the banks of wide dangerous river—was turned into a frontier, turned into dangerously complicated politically charged country. Turned into the end of one thing, and the start of another, though it was exactly as it had been just a week before.

  It’s no wonder it would create such perilous divisions in a person who grows up here. And the generations-old classism and racism insinuated itself like a prearranged agreement in which you were never personally invited to previously arrange. Whatever the case, I gave it a second chance. I had to, like that plucky ragamuffin.

  So coming back home to Texas, right back into the nook of the hoof, there was an immediate, inexplicable resistance to the culture, especially in the accepted patois of the area. To me, it had become palpable, this tap dance of language, a sort of psychic agreement in word choice, insinuating and dancing around the very pronounced idea that race was a factor in every uneasy discussion. It was tiring how much energy people put into concentrating emphasis to imply or divert attention away from certain racially charged phrases or words.

  The word Mexican was especially leaden, dense, dark matter. Heavy with multiple meanings, with sharp edges, and none of the meanings really meant “originating in or from Mexico.”

  I had never felt the racial charge hang so heavy and so clearly as when I was reimmersed into the area after being gone for a year in bland, yogurt-covered Seattle.

  It was now like a fog that only I could see, or couldn’t see through, but everyone else pretended wasn’t there. But I tried to reintegrate.

  I moved back first; Dan would eventually move back later. He was reluctant to give up on Seattle just then. He took off a week from work and I paid for gas on the way back to Brownsville and he and I drove his Lincoln Continental all the way from Seattle to Brownsville in roughly two days, the sons of a truck driver with the bladders to prove it. (I whimpered all the way through Wyoming as Dan drove. Why is Wyoming there?)

  But school was not to be.

  It was New Year’s Eve again, I think 1993.

  I had managed to enroll back into school and found a place to live, with the help of my sister, Mare. Dan had also moved back and was taking advantage of his GI status, had enrolled as well. I had no idea what I was doing at this school, wasn’t really sure what college was about. Still, I tried. My sisters did it, and so would I.

  I fell back in with some people I had known previously and had been invited to a party. Dan was spending the evening with Mare and her fiancé, Mark. We’d made plans to rendezvous later, and I went out with these people to some remote farmhouse and started mixing with the locals.

  Things were uncomfortable from the start, but the evening started to turn when I began joking with my friend, Ernie, who was from Washington, D.C., and had somehow ended up in Ricardo, Texas, living with his grandmother, a retired journalist, and I said something funny and began getting some attention from a girl.

  Her boyfriend didn’t approve and said something like, “Give a Mexican some tequila, and he gets funny.”

  I took that as my cue to leave. I drank the rest of my beer and left through the side door. Ernie saw this happen and followed me out.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, out in the street.

  “It’s just . . . I dunno; it doesn’t feel right here. That was out of line, that comment,” I said. My feelings were hurt; my eyes started watering. I wasn’t able to endure that sort of language anymore.

  “Dude, these guys are not like that; they’re not racist. The guy throwing the party, Aaron, his girlfriend’s Mexican.” I liked Ernie quite a bit. He was my favorite person in Kingsville, and it hurt me even more that he didn’t get it.

  “Just because you’re fucking someone from that race doesn’t make you racially tolerant. This isn’t cool. This isn’t right,” I said.

  I turned and walked away, walked a mile to a convenience store and called Mare’s house, asked Dan to pick me up. No taxis, no public transportation in that part of the world. It’s just too wide and flat.

  Dan picked me up, and we went back to Mare’s apartment and watched Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve and had some more beers. A little after midnight, Mare and Mark showed up and asked what I was doing home, why wasn’t I out with Ernie . . . ?

  “He’s upset because someone called him a Mexican,” said Dan, burping up some Miller Lite.

  “It’s not exactly like that,” I began, but Mare was suddenly livid.

  “What? Who said that? Who hurt your feelings like that? No one’s going to talk like that to my little brother! Get your keys, Mark. Let’s go have a little talk with that person.”

  “It was just some guy, some guy named Larry, at a party. It’s no big deal, really. Just kind of a misunderstanding, Mare. Please, let’s just forget about it and stay here,” I pleaded. I saw where this was going, and I knew the potential for harm, and I did not want to be responsible for this. It was boding ill, seriously ill.

  Dan felt what I was feeling. He and I exchanged dark looks. He knew where this was heading, as well.

  “Where is this guy?” asked Mare. “Is he at this party? What’s the address?”

  “I don’t remember where it was; I don’t know the address,” I said, thinking that I could put a stop to it there. But I had written it down on a scrap of paper earlier that evening, in case they had wanted to join us. Mare remembered this and found the paper.

  “Here it is,” she said, from the kitchen. “Mark, get your keys. We’re going to this party. No one talks to my family like that.”

  Dan and I looked at each other again, caugh
t in the tractor beam of family honor.

  They were there because of me.

  My sister leaped from the car intent on giving someone what-for. Her fiancé, Mark, standing at five feet ten inches and looking like he could bench press a truck, followed her, equally incensed. Dan and I followed gloomily behind, knowing what was going to happen.

  Mare walked through the party looking for this guy, Larry. Larry had gone. That didn’t matter to Mare, who was not shy about letting people know when she was displeased. “Who do you people think you are to make my little brother feel bad? Look at you! Look at how you dress, you rednecks. How dare you speak like that to my little brother?”

  To the people at the party, it looked very much like I had become upset, gone home, and wrangled up my family posse to come back and start shit. How could it not? It was exactly what it looked like, from the outside.

  How could they know what I was feeling, the low, razor-blade blood pumping through my heart, the shame and guilt at having my sister putting herself and her fiancé and Dan in harm’s way, to defend my pathetic, skinny honor?

  I begged her to leave, to get out of there, and panicked when Ernie came out and asked, “What the hell are you doing back here, with your family? What are you doing?”

  And I just flipped out and put my fist through a window, as we left.

  “Just go, Domingo,” said Ernie’s girlfriend, looking at me with shame, for even knowing me.

  The next morning, things were quiet and dour at the apartment. I could tell Mare was embarrassed at her outburst. I looked through the phone book and found a window-repair person. I borrowed Mare’s credit card number and had the guy go over to the farmhouse and replace the window for 35 bucks.

  “Anyone else want to call June a Mexican?” Mare said, while we had hangover beers.

  We start school that next Monday.

  Dan and I both know that the situation from the party is not over, that some sort of escalation is imminent, as a result. Kingsville is a small town. Texas is even smaller. We both move through our developing routine with some appropriate sense of dread, and after a few days things start to feel like perhaps they will quiet down.

  Mare and Mark drive to Brownsville one evening and are not due back for a few days. Dan and I are left alone at their apartment while our own rental down the street is being readied for occupancy.

  We stay up one night on a very limited budget, having forty-ouncers and watching Ren and Stimpy, when it’s brand new and a novelty. Feeling a bit better, we decide perhaps we should go to a nearby bar and see if we can meet up with a local floozy. What the hell.

  We dress up a bit better, scrape our collective cash together, and drive in Dan’s Lincoln Town Car to a cheap, low lying college bar that serves $2 beers.

  At twenty, I’m able to use Dan’s military ID to gain entry to the bar, easily fooling the illiterate bouncer, and Dan comes in right behind me with his driver’s license. The bouncer doesn’t notice we have the same name and birth date.

  Almost immediately, I’m accosted by Larry, who happens to be standing in the bar.

  Unwittingly, we’ve walked into possibly the most hostile place we could have chosen: This is Larry’s bar, as the head of Delta Tau Delta, in whose fraternity house we happen to be, during “rush week.” This bar is their bar, and their . . . whatever the head of a frat is called . . . is Larry.

  “Domingo, I heard you came looking for me,” he says. He looks much bigger up close, outweighing me by about eighty pounds. Dan is standing behind me, and I turn to him and say, “Let me handle this.”

  “Listen, man, that was a mistake. It got completely out of control,” I start to say.

  Larry takes off his glasses and hands them to a slim, blonde-haired flunky, off to his left. I direct my attention to the little guy and say, “Give him back his glasses,” dismissively. “He doesn’t need to take them off. There isn’t going to be a fight; we’re going to leave right now.”

  But Larry hits me at the “Give him back his glasses” part, and I’m suddenly on the floor.

  Well, not immediately. When he hits me, I rock back on my heels, stunned, unsure of what just happened because he hit me hard, but I didn’t fall. I pop back up like one of those air-filled, bottom heavy clowns, to finish my sentence, “ . . . there’s not going to be a fight . . . ” And technically, I’m correct, because he hits me again, with the same result, but this time he decides to tackle me as well. All this happens in seconds.

  Dan, behind me, sees the first hit, moves forward, tries to stop the second hit, and is immediately rushed upon by the bouncers.

  I am on the ground rolling with Larry, and I can’t get out from under him. He is holding my arms down, and I’m drunk, bewildered, and coming to the realization, “Holy shit: I am in a fight, and I am losing.” He sits on me and is saying something, but I can’t understand him. I stop resisting, start listening:

  “ . . . so you and your family came looking for me, DO-MING-GO. What business you got with me? Cuz I called you an uppity MEX-I-CAN? That why you come back with all your family, to find me?”

  It has all been a horrible misunderstanding, but it’s too late to explain. I start to kick and push my way out from the spot, when a bouncer grabs Larry and pulls him off. I stand up, then the kid who is holding the glass rushes at me and swings wide and loose, and I block it and push him in the face—I don’t know how to punch—and he falls down, stops. The bouncer looks at me and says, “Get out of here! You’re causing trouble, I call the cops!”

  I look around for Dan, and there are two bouncers holding him around the arms. He’s incensed, saying, “Let go my brother, let go me!” And I can see he wants to fight everybody.

  I just want to get out: I’m done.

  We drive back to my sister’s apartment. Dan’s really pissed but doesn’t say anything. The minute he gets to the apartment he changes into shorts and a T-shirt and his tennis shoes, and I know he wants to go back. He’s not talking to me and is moving through the apartment quickly, with intention and palpable seething rage. This just . . . this just feels terrible. I want it to stop, but Dan is single-minded.

  Glumly, heavily, I change into a pair of jeans, and I find the only thing I think is appropriate, and I quietly thank God I have them: a pair of combat boots, suddenly becoming more than a fashion statement. I look around, trying to find something that might work as a weapon. Anything.

  I find Mark’s golf clubs. I hardly remember looking through them, or what made me choose a 9 iron, instead of say, a putter, but I weighed it out, and it felt like it could be swung about like a weapon. I wasn’t thinking straight.

  By this time, Dan is stomping his way to the car, intent on finishing this fight, and I follow along, full of dread, a whole lot of Sturm and far too much Drang, nearly paralyzed with shame at getting my family into this, and knowing full well that there is nothing I can say to Dan to get him to steer off this course he is on.

  Dan finally gets what he wants, after calling out Larry from the bottom step for twenty minutes.

  Larry runs out after changing into street clothes, and we don’t recognize him, but clearly this is the giant the frat has sent out to challenge Dan, so Dan and he sprint in that sideways crab-running motion to the field across the street, and we’re surrounded by what seems to be a hundred people. It’s rush week at Delta Tau Delta, remember, and everyone loves a fight, in Texas.

  They’re both pretty fucking big; I hadn’t noticed how big Larry was before; Dan is out-classed in weight.

  They square off, get in that foot stance, and I see Dan advance offensively, leading with a right jab cuz he’s left handed. I see him swing once, and then that’s it: We’re engaged in this thing. There’s no turning back; I feel my extremities drain with life, go leaden.

  The bouncer comes up behind me and, almost with a gentle insistence gets me in that full nelson, while the other bouncer slowly steps up and takes my golf club, and I give it up without a fight, as it seems rea
lly idiotic and useless at this point anyway.

  Then it seems like the whole fucking crowd decides instead to come up on me. They leave the two big fuckers to fight, and one hundred drunk, wound-up farm boys want a piece of the smaller guy who won’t fight back, it seems.

  Meanwhile, Dan gets in a boxing match with Larry. But Larry doesn’t want to box; he wants to grapple. He brings Dan down, to the ground, and gets the better of Dan when they’re on the ground. Larry, like I said, is a strong fucker. He gets on top of Dan, starts to choke him into submission. I see this because the bouncers have decided to start taking control of the situation by restraining me. I have a three-hundred-pound Mexican at each arm while I watch Larry pin Dan and put a forearm into Dan’s throat, and the whole of the frat comes instead at me, taking shots at my Jesus Christ figure before the opportunity is lost. I kick at their thighs and knees and if I can reach, their hips. I am successful at keeping them all away: No one attacks me head on. I find myself wondering why this position is so popular in movies, when people are getting beaten up. This has to have been the easiest position to defend in, so far. No one is able to get within arm’s reach, and I kick a tonnage of testicles from that position.

  But Larry is choking Dan out. Dan submits to Larry. When we talk about it, years later, Dan says he admitted defeat to Larry, said, “Alright, alright; we’re done. You win.” Larry holds Dan in that position for a bit longer, then says, “It’s done,” and Dan replies, under the pin, “Yeah.”

  So Larry lets go, sits up, and Dan immediately jumps up and hits him with a round-house left hook, which knocks Larry flat on his back.