Free Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez

nearly bit Gramma as she killed the first one, and the mechanic tries to join in on the fray but as he lifts the hoe to swing it down hard, it is caught by the laundry line—it’s close quarters combat in that yard—but he adjusts and catches the second snake in the mid-section and nearly cuts it in two. It turns and strikes back at the mechanic, who is well beyond reach, just as me and Dan finally come to, look around for some sort of weapon to join in on the fracas—where’s a goddamned machete? That would be cool!—but we can’t find anything except the bucket and an ax handle, so Dan throws the bucket on the snake making more noise than concussion, and though the snake is stunned, unravels itself and then attempts to run, and I pick up the ax handle and Gramma pushes me away, says I’d get too close to it trying to hit it with that, was I stupid? and the snake tries to slip away and Gramma gives it the coup de grâce , flattening its head against a particularly hard bit of earth, and the snake begins the same coiling thing that the other one did, rolling around and around on its back, in a final seizure.
    Gramma doesn’t let up though. She then turns the shovel into a large, edged spear and begins to divide the snake into sections, and the mechanic joins in with the hoe: halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, et cetera. They turn on the original snake, too, and leave a large, bloody smear on the concrete slab.
    When she’s done she leans on the shovel and breathes heavily, looks at the mechanic, who’s also feeling a bit of that victorious bloodlust, and they smile at each other.
    â€œ No sábien con quien estában chingándo, ” she says to him. They did not know who they were fucking with.
    â€œ La Señora Rubio, chingádo, ” says the mechanic, laughing and shaking his head in amused disbelief. He’s heard the stories, has been warned: “Don’t fuck with Mrs. Rubio.”
    Gramma’s reputation preceded her all over South Texas. Growing up on that farm in the 1930s, in Tamaulipas, Mexico, it was not uncommon for the Mexican government to encourage squatters to set up camp on the land of indigenous farmers, then by some stroke of bureaucratic maliciousness, serve the illiterate owners some documents claiming that their land was now forfeit, that it belonged to the squatters. They were called curceríos , the “men of diarrhea.” One had set up camp on Gramma’s father’s property, and was slowly attempting to stake his claim. He had the annoying habit of putting his saddle and saddle blanket on a tree that was of particular value on that farm, since there was little else on it, and one that Gramma’s family had asked him repeatedly to desist from using to dry his saddle, as it was killing the tree. After ignoring them for the third time, Gramma, who was fifteen, had had enough and took her father’s .45 caliber revolver and woke the man up with the pistol in his mouth. She led him to a field near their house with the whole family watching, and she made him kneel in his underwear, beg for his life in the dust. “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you right here,” she asks him.
    â€œBecause I’ll leave right now and you’ll never see me again,” was his reply, and this time, he was as good as his word.
    Before that, when she was thirteen, she and her little brother Robé, who was always her wingman during this time, were out checking the traps put out on their land that their father would use to catch small game, rabbits and such. This particular day, he’d caught a thirty pound male ocelot. No shit. They were mesmerized by the cat, a tigríllo .
    They’d heard of them, but had never seen one. This wasn’t a bobcat: This was an actual fuck-off ocelot, about a third the size of a leopard, and similarly mottled, and it was pissed. Gramma was not about to let this opportunity pass her