The other thing is, George and Paul think they’re better fighters. Well, they talk more about it, and Paul gets in more fights than anyone, but that’s because he’s always mouthing off and starting them. He just doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. Doesn’t know how to keep shit inside. Doesn’t know that if you want to kick someone’s ass you just do it, you don’t talk shit about it. Hector knows that’s how it’s done. Just stand there and stare at the sidewalk while some redneck calls you spic and wetback and makes fun of your mohawk and the safety pins in your earlobe, and when he turns to his friends to laugh at you, you pull your fist, wrapped in eighteen inches of bicycle chain, out of your pocket and start punching him in the side of the head.
George and Paul think if there’s trouble at the Arroyos’ it’s best they be the first two showing up. They think they’ll be able to do something. They’re wrong. They could all three show at the same time, leap off their bikes and dive straight into a hook, but if Fernando and Ramon are there they won’t stand a chance.
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.