The Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir

There is nothing more potentially hostile than the indigenous ego interpreting the laws of his conqueror upon his own people

The first was to expect crushing disappointment in life, the second was the absolute reliability of loss, and finally, the utter futility of faith

Hope disappears. And still you go on. Then suddenly it's over. And hope doesn't surprise you again, once it's gone. It has a different name. Different face. And you're not happy to see it, or surprised. It's like a long-forgotten agreement. Sort of a, "Oh, there you are. I've been expecting you, I think.

You go and do what you need to do, June," she says to me. "You go and find what you need. Your supper will be here, when you need it. Your supper will be warm. No matter where I am, that will be your home," she says. And I can't believe it, watching her. That look on her face. It is all the love that I didn't have growing up, making a face.

He wasn't doing well, and he had been reduced to being proud, in the way that white supremacists are proud, because they have nothing else to be proud of, really, except for the good luck of being born white in America-and if they're really lucky, being born in Idaho.

My own sense of Gramma's peasant work ethic had driven me to help, but my sissy idleness and a small gash on my thumb had allowed me to give in after only a few minutes, which perfectly captured my psychological profile at the time.

English in that area was the language of money, domination. Six-foot Mexicans would wither when its sounds were spoken by a five-foot-tall white man, make them hunch their shoulders, lower their heads, and move in the direction opposite of the English. Even my father, who understood its themes and suggestions, spoke it reasonably well for the area-even he would send me to collect payment from white people because he was frightened to get into conversations. English was power. And

It's a classic tale of good versus evil, except with garlic. Gramma goes to La Senora for consultation, for help, for direction. But Gramma has darker thoughts than La Senora can get behind. She's casting midnight spells with nail clippings and earwax, cheap powdery perfumes and dead toads in jars, carrying her 9 millimeter pistol in her car. She prays for strength. She prays for death. Not for herself or him. Maybe him. She prays to Pancho Villa, she prays to bad saints.