"The Shotgun Rule" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huston Charlie)

Regarding Your Mother’s Pussy

The Arroyos were legend long before George, Paul, and Hector got to high school.

Bantamweights, they brawled their way through the school system until they emerged at high school, having moved up several weight classes.

Fernando was the first. He spent five years at the high school, leaving behind him a shattered and exhausted administration and a faculty that was to a soul nothing but grateful that they had survived. He had taxed the personal behavior codes to the limit, twisted them, and found loopholes so obscure the entire rule book had to be revised upon his departure. And yet, despite the physical damage he had done to the campus and assorted classmates, despite the psychological scars he had left on his teachers, despite all this, the football coach and athletic boosters had campaigned relentlessly to have a special grading curve installed to keep his GPA hovering in the vicinity of a C+, just that fraction across the border from C that would have allowed him to play varsity football. Their efforts had been inspired by the havoc he had wreaked as both an offensive lineman and linebacker in j.v. ball.

Any opposing player unlucky enough to have to line up opposite him, any bullrushed quarterback, any running back or wide receiver required to pass through his domain on the field, was inclined to trip and fall while he was still yards away rather than endure the rib cracking nose breaking concussion inducing hits he routinely laid down. If the ball was fumbled, every player, his own teammates included, ran from it, terrified of the prospect of ending up in his clutches at the bottom of a pile. His heavily taped fist pounding your groin, fingers gouging at your eyes, a barrage of Spanish curses regarding your mother’s pussy screamed in your ear. But, gamer though he may have been, his all but flawless record of nonattendance in class kept him from advancing to the varsity squad.

State, Coach sometimes mumbled drunkenly at the Rodeo Club, we had had that Arroyo muchacho, we woulda gone State.

In his third junior year he turned eighteen and passed finally into adulthood and the clutches of the criminal justice system. His record as a minor was admirable enough that his first adult arrest earned him a conviction (sentence suspended), and a final expulsion.

With Fernando gone, the school board heaved a brief sigh of relief, then began preparing for the arrival of Ramon.

The preparations were insufficient. Ramon commenced upon his own Sherman’s March the first day of his freshman year. Announcing his presence by egging the entire faculty parking lot at midday in full view of the sixty eight year old campus security guard, who had been phoned at home the night before and told that if he ever called the police on an Arroyo he would have a Colombian necktie the next morning. He didn’t know exactly what a Colombian necktie was, but, recognizing Fernando’s voice over the line, he knew he didn’t want one.

Ramon lasted barely one year, doing as much damage in that time as Fernando had done in five. But shortly after summer vacation began he was arrested for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. The deadly weapon being a hacksaw he wielded like a machete when a clerk at the 7-Eleven refused to open the register for him. He was convicted and sent to juvy and was never seen on campus again. As a student anyway. As a former student he was often seen in Fernando’s Impala, spinning donuts on the grass. The school left the lawns torn and unseeded until Ramon earned his first conviction as an adult and was sent to county for three to five.

Both were long gone when George, Paul, and Hector began their freshman year, but Timo was in their class.

It seemed Timo had watched Fernando’s and Ramon’s progression and decided it wasn’t for him. He played j.v. and varsity soccer and starred on both squads. He maintained a dead on C+ average that never faltered, the product of a series of tutors who were paid to write his papers and prep cheat sheets for his tests.

One of the school’s five letterman Mexicans, and altogether different from his brothers, Timo cruised through high school, far and away the number one Mexican citizen. Also, far and away the school’s biggest pot dealer. Stoners were compelled to buy his shit brown ditch weed even when there was an abundance of green buds to be found. The penalty for not purchasing his goods being a visit from one of his older brothers.

He sported his brothers’ lowrider style: khaki chinos, black leather shoes with white socks, long sleeved plaid shirt buttoned at the collar and wrists but open all the way down the front and left untucked to reveal the white wifebeater underneath, a net over his blow dried jet black hair, and a thin mustache he’d been cultivating since sixth grade. He wore the look, but minus the switchblade in his back pocket or the bag of reefer tucked in his sock or the Newports in his shirtfront. His lackeys carried these for him. He was always clean, ready for a patdown. A fine athlete, he was always welcome at the top jocks’ table. Sleepy eyed and handsome, watched not just by the Mexican girls but by the white chicks as well. Cowgirls, cheerleaders, brains, and jockettes had an eye for him.

All of this concealing from the faculty what an enormous dick he was.