Author's Note – For effects sake, all dialogue in this chapter is intended to be spoken in Spanish, unless noted. I have included some smatterings of (possibly inaccurate) Spanish to give the overall atmosphere.

Chapter 1

The Acuna Boys

Part 1

El Muchacho Blanco

"The childhood shows the man,

As morning shows the sky."

-John Milton, Paradise Regained

Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. 1956

Even at 11 years old, Bill was being addressed as a bastard.

"BASTARD! When we catch you, were going to fuck you up…real bad!"

Bill realized the moment he'd been spotted, he had a precious few seconds to get the hell out of there if he wanted to see his twelfth birthday. He knew that voice, and he recognized the bulk of the boy running at him…..now less than twenty feet away, along with five of his less than friendly posse members.

Dropping the now mutilated and useless bicycle, Bill turned and bolted down the narrow side street. Dashing around the corner of a dirty crumbling concrete building, his mop of unruly brown hair and lanky awkward limbs blurred with the speed of a boy who had absolutely no desire to stick around to face his punishment…..deserved or not.

The voices behind him were angry, ringing with the pitch of those around his own age. "Run all you want, we'll catch you!"

Sprinting down an uneven gravel road with reckless speed, Bill came to a sudden halt. With a brief glance over his shoulder, he quickly removed his worn leather shoes. His chest was heaving with excursion and with an angry swipe across his sweaty face; he threw his shoes into some nearby shrubbery. It was likely he'd have to retrieve them later.

Now barefoot, he began his escape anew….and just in time.

"There he is!"

Wild eyed, Bill risked another glance over his shoulder to see a group of Hispanic boys round the corner of the concrete building at a full run. All of them were dressed in dirty jeans, cowboy boots, and various dusty button-up shirts. One of them had acquired a baseball bat.

"Shit…." Bill swore and wasting no time, picked up his full sprint. He ignored the painful jabs of gravel in his bare feet. He often went barefoot and found that he'd developed enough calluses to make running on gravel only partially torturous. He'd just have to pick the rocks out of his skin later……that is, if he didn't have worse physical injuries to worry about.

He took a sharp left down a driveway, running past a blue 52' Ford pickup truck. In his somewhat clumsy rush, he clipped his shoulder on the overly large side view mirror and spun painfully onto the dusty ground. Gritting his teeth against the throbbing in his shoulder, he picked himself up and made a mad dash for a tall chain link fence that separated this lot from its neighbors back lot.

Like some frightened solder, Bill wrapped his fingers around the unforgiving chain link fence and began to climb like his very life depended on it………which, it very well could.

The group of angry boys spilled into the driveway to witness Bill's climb. The tallest of these boys, wearing a blue checkered button up shirt and a Smith and Weston belt buckle, gave a series of quick orders and split the group in half.

Much to Bill's unfortunate luck, he did not witness this change of tactics…seeing as he was far more occupied with trying to scale the summit of what seemed like the tallest goddamn fence he'd ever seen.

Sweat soaked and exhausted beyond his young comprehension, Bill reached the top of the fence and swung a leg over. Squinting into the hot afternoon sun, he inspected the backyard he was about to ascend into….it looked clear, nothing more than a large patch of dirt and a graveyard of abounded car parts.

The climb down was far easier and he was nearing the safety of the ground when a large brown hand latched onto his shoulder from behind and forcefully yanked him right off of the fence. He landed hard on the dusty ground, the breath momentarily knocked out of him.

The situation then became obvious. They had split up and trapped him. Even now, the group that had stayed in the other yard was making its way to where he lay, helpless…staring up at three smirking faces.

Those three faces soon became six. The sunlight became temporarily eclipsed by the hostile shadow of his attackers. Frowning and still gasping for air, Bill glared up at the ring of gloating faces. He was angry……with himself more than anything. He should have thought smarter…he could have gotten out of this, but he'd screwed up and now he was going to pay the price.

"I told you we'd catch you, mi amigo pequeño," the tallest boy spoke. This boy's name was Raul. He was older than the rest of them, probably fourteen or so. Bill was very familiar with Raul…..they'd already had a couple of not so pleasant meetings over the past year or so. As it so happened, last week, Raul and a few of these guys had beaten up Bill's younger and far smaller friend Alonso. Bill felt protective about Alonso and decided, using his juvenile reasoning to trash Raul's bicycle, the boy's prized treasure as it turns out. Bill knew it was no use trying to beat up a beast like Raul, so he tried to be a little sneakier. He'd followed Raul all day, watching him from the corners of buildings and behind the bumpers of parked cars. Finally, Raul had stupidly ditched his bicycle to join his friends at the baseball field and Bill had seized his opportunity to destroy the boy's prized material possession. It had all been going to plan, until he'd been spotted of course. Now, he was facing the fury of an angry testosterone overdosed bully. Bill knew there was really nobody to blame but himself. He could have thought of a better plan, he should have been smarter.

Raul was gloating, "This is so good…..I've been waiting for this. Finally, I get to teach you a lesson muchacho blanco," he turned and sneered at a shorter boy on his right. The boy to Raul's right was his younger brother Julio. Both of them were mutants for their age, tall and beastly. They were the only boys Bill had ever known who could grow mustaches. Their father was a rancher, who so the tale went, had three wives, a pet crocodile and owned more guns than the Mexican army.

Bill pushed himself up onto his aching elbows. He had few options at this point that didn't involve him getting the shit beat out of him. He knew he was far smarter than Raul, or any of these guys…but physically, he could do nothing against the six of them…not to mention a baseball bat. His dark eyes flashed with anger as he stared all of them down. They were acting tough, but they were scared of him…they'd always had been, that's was why they were so eager to show him a lesson. They didn't like him because he was white and they didn't like him because he had never been the slightest bit intimidated by them. Even though Bill was only eleven, not mush scared him….he'd already seen enough.

"What do you have to say for yourself muchacho blanco …eh?" Raul egged him on, that freaky boy- mustache twisting with a widening smirk. "I'll give you one chance to say something nice to us….maybe even we'll let you go, if it's real good."

"Si…or," another boy across the group, Paulo, who obviously used more pomade than Elvis Presley, spoke up, "…..like maybe if you let us all fuck your mother for free… eh?"

This got a round of laughter from all present, save for Bill…whose glare only intensified. He didn't care so much about the insult to his mother, she was a whore after all….she'd made herself a whore, not him…he refused to believe that anymore. What did bother him was that he was now helpless, and he'd foolishly made himself so. He hated being helpless, it made him angry. And Bill was aware of his temper; he knew that it was bad. His temper had been getting him into trouble for as long as his young mind could recall, but he also knew he could control it. And he knew he had to control it now.

Nostrils flared, he raised his chin defiantly, staring right into the eyes of Raul. He'd rather die than lie here and snivel like some baby. He was only a boy, but he knew he wasn't going to be one all that much longer.

It was about time to start taking things like a man.

"Stop talking about it and do it……hágalo…,." he replied in a soft but mature sounding voice, brows arched menacingly. He was going to play this cool, even though inside, he wanted to curl up in a ball and whimper. But, he had to do his best to fake it…..he was good at faking things, he always had been.

There was a wave of hesitation amongst the boys. Bill's reaction was not what they had expected. They thought he would beg for mercy, or better….cry. Raul, on the other hand, had no intention of letting the little white boy get away by playing calm.

"El hijo que jode de una ramera!" Raul hissed, cursing violently. Rearing back, he struck Bill in the ribs with the sharp toe of his overly large cowboy boot.

Bill had little time to dawn on the flare of pain in his side, as Raul's attack started a chain reaction……a volley of blows from the other boys. Before he knew it, Bill had indeed crawled into a ball as he was pummeled on all sides by fists, elbows, knees and feet. Eventually it just became a white noise sort of pain, just like the loud jeering of his attackers. He attempted to cover up every vulnerable spot all at once, but obviously this was impossible…and soon he was resigned to cup his hands over his ears, as he clamped his teeth together in both stubborn defiance and pain.

This went on for a few minutes, but to Bill it seemed like days. He'd never felt so much pain at once. It was worse than the time he'd toppled his bicycle into an irrigation ditch, worse than the time he'd grabbed a cactus plant….even worse than the time he'd been hit by a grown man. He began to wonder if it was ever going to stop.

Slowly, one by one the boys backed away from the beaten and bruised Caucasian boy. It took Bill a few moments to realize they'd stopped; the pain just seemed to go on in returning strikes. He squeezed his eyes shut; no…they just wouldn't open. He could also taste metallic blood in his mouth, along with a good amount of gritty dust.

"Pick him up." It was Raul, audible through the ringing in Bill's ears.

Bill felt himself being roughly pulled onto his shaky knees. One of his eyes still wouldn't open all the way, but he managed to open the other and rose it up to stare at Raul with proud intensity. He wanted to cry now….that was for sure, but he wouldn't, he was better than this. Without even thinking about it, the corner of his now split lip turned up into a smirk.

Raul glared back, "Look at this….he's still giving me a look. Arrogant little ass, you never learn do you?" He glanced at the baseball bat in Paulo's hand. "Give me the bat." As Paulo complied, Bill remained undaunted. He was too angry and too proud to let any of them see him break. They wanted him to break and he wasn't going to give them any more than he had to….to survive.

Raul took a sloppy batters stance, the baseball bat clenched firmly in his meaty hands, "You won't be giving nobody a look after this muchacho blanco. This one's gunna make the Babe jealous, even from his fucking grave." With a sneer, he then swung the bat right at Bill's face with the full entirety of his farm boy born strength. There was a terrifying rush of air and then……

The last thing Bill remembered seeing for a few dark minutes was the distinctive logo of The Louisville Slugger coming right at him.

He never did like baseball much after that.

In his lifetime, Bill would have his nose broken five times. This would be the first. It was also undoubtedly the worst.

When he came to, laying flat on his back, his first thought was that his whole face had been busted completely in. A quick inspection over his puffy tearing eyes, bruised cheeks and split open lip put that theory to rest, seeing as there was still bone standing underneath. But when he went to touch his nose, he pulled away with a wail of pain. It was crunched to one side, broken. He then traced a sticky river of blood all the way down his face, over his button up shirt and inspected his blood covered hands. He was no stranger to blood, but he'd never seen so much in his entire life….not even at the local slaughterhouse.

It was obvious that Raul and his friends, happy with the result of their attack, had left Bill alone. The deserted yard was now silent, save the distant sound of cars and a few scattered bird calls.

Bill let his head fall back on the unforgiving ground, but blood started to run down his throat, choking him. Rolling onto one side, he spit up the blood, his body racking with a miserable sob. He'd never felt so much pain before but, for some reason what hurt more than anything was the shame of it all…the mental pain, not the physical pain. They'd put him out, done a real number on him….it was humiliating and he hated to be humiliated.

Pressing the side of his forehead into the ground, he gritted his blood and dust coated teeth together, peering through one teary eye at his raw knuckles. He could feel his dangerous tamper flare up and the mere fact that he couldn't get up and do something about it made him even angrier.

"Hey….you… niño blanco….." a boy's voice rang from above.

Bill froze, his agony and anger momentarily forgotten. He squinted up into the glaring blue sky to spot the tall form of Julio standing above him. A look of fury crossed Bill's wreck of a face. Here was his chance for revenge. He pushed himself up, making a sharp movement towards the other boy.

"No…no….I'm not here to beat you up anymore." Julio bravely crouched down at his side. "I…," the Hispanic boy took a nervous glance around the silent lot; "…I came back…snuck away from those guys. I wanted to make sure you were alright…my brother really gave you a shitty time on that last hit, even if you did bust up his bike. I wanted to check on you….make sure you weren't dead or anything." He shrugged his wide shoulders in put on masculine indifference. "Maybe I can help you."

Bill blinked his one open eye at the backlit silhouette of Julio. Was the kid crazy? He wanted to help him after beating him up? Bill continued to stare until the blazing sunlight forced him to look down. Maybe Julio was lying, but it was hard to tell. "I'm fine," he replied after a moment, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

Julio shook his head, "No. You look pretty bad to me. C'mon," he grabbed onto Bill's forearm, pulling him all the way up, "…I'll take you to my aunt's house. She's good with medicine and things. She used to be a nurse."

Bill hesitated, stumbling. Like hell he wanted to go Julio's aunt's house, but he was finding it harder to make any sort of physical protest and Julio was far bigger then he was. He staggered a few times, the world a bright haze of spinning shapes. He felt more blood in his throat and he spat it out angrily, managing only to miss the ground and get it onto his torn jeans.

Soon, he felt Julio's hand on his arm, steadying him. "Here, I'll help." Bill shrugged off the large hand with a glare, but when the Hispanic boy persisted, he gave up…he was too tired to care.

Julio led him down a couple narrow streets. Bill wasn't exactly sure where they were going, not only was he short one eye at the moment, he just found it easier to look down than to have to see people staring at him as Julio led him around like some dumb blind child.

"Watch out for the fence," Julio spoke up, the first thing he'd said since taking hold of Bill's arm.

Bill raised his chin, cringing painfully. "Where are we?" He'd lost track of time.

"At my Aunt Blanca's," Julio stopped, and began tinkering with the handle on a metal gate, "….watch out for the fence," he repeated, leading Bill through the gate and down a pathway.

From what Bill could make out of Julio's aunt's house it was small and run down, like many houses in Acuna. There were no windows on the front; the shades were bright orange and pink blankets, hung in the place of glass. There was laundry strung up on the porch and the sound of old mariachi music emitting from the radio within.

Julio opened the squeaky screen door, and seeing as the front door either didn't exist or was already open, he yelled into the house for his aunt. There was some shuffling and Bill waited on the porch, head down, for whatever sort of help he was to receive. He was doing his best to ignore the throbbing that seemed to have enveloped his entire face.

The front door squeaked again and there was a quick exchange of Spanish between Julio and a woman, which Bill missed the majority of.

Then, he felt two strong but tender hands grab him by his forearms and push him into the depths of the biggest bosom he'd ever had the experience of being pushed into.

"Oh, you poor thing!" The rather….large woman coddling him said, clicking her tongue, "Oh, usted muchacho pobre, pobre!" Bill lifted his face, making sure to save his crushed nose from this embrace, to look into the large kind face of Julio's aunt. She was a middle aged woman of grand proportions. Her sleek black hair was tied up into a tight bun and draped over her large body was a bright multi colored traditional Spanish dress.

"I think my nose is broken," Bill mumbled, almost forgetting to speak in Spanish.

"Ohh! You poor child!" Aunt Blanca shook her head, still clicking her tongue with pity. Her tiny dark eyes squinted at him with maternal concern. "Come! Come inside!"

Bill was led into the small, cluttered but very festive house where he was given a couch to lie on and a blanket to wrap himself up in. Aunt Blanca, despite being a little flamboyant, seemed to know exactly what she was doing and she attended to Bill's wounds with professional care.

Things got a little hazy then. Bill remembered the endless droning mariachi music, Aunt Blanca's kind voice and Julio's murmured replies. Just when he thought he could handle the pain, Aunt Blanca grabbed his nose and turned it back into place….at that point Bill threw any last vestiges of stoicism out the window. He cried like a goddamn baby.

A couple hours later, lolled and sedated by something questionable Aunt Blanca had given him, Bill awoke and spent a good hour staring at the peeling ceiling pant before Aunt Blanca and Julio noticed he'd woken up.

"You feel better now?" The large woman knelt at his side, her meaty hands probing his shoulders kindly.

"Yes…..." Bill managed, a hand tentatively excavating his face. He didn't touch his nose, but it did feel like it was back in place. He felt a little woozy, and there was dried blood all over his shirt, but overall…he felt much better.

"Ah, good…good," Aunt Blanca smiled her wide smile, "Julio told me everything that happened and he tells me he is very sorry for what happened. Isn't that right Juilio?" Her kind voice became momentarily stern.

"Si," Julio mumbled, his own head bent as he stood behind his aunt, proficient at the art of playing 'good boy'.

At the moment Bill didn't really care either way. "I'd like to go home now," he spoke up softly.

"Of course you do my dear," Aunt Blanca's voice warmed up again, "I asked my nephew if he knows of your father….but he tells me you have no father. Where do you live child? You live here in Acuna?"

Bill slowly turned his head to look directly at Aunt Blanca, even through his injuries there was no missing the steely resolve on his face, "Julio is right, I have no father. I live with Estiban."

"Estiban?" Aunt Blanca sat back suddenly, her small brown eyes widening, "Estiban Valijio?"

Bill nodded his groggy head against the couch cushion.

Aunt Blanca crossed herself in full Catholic fashion, "Oh….mi madre Mary de Dios….," she regarded Bill with renewed pity, "…..you…..poor, poor child."

Estiban Valijio was, at this time, a successful pimp in his early 30's. He'd been born and raised in Acuna Mexico, but had done a great amount of traveling in his lifetime. Thus, for a pimp, he was a rather worldly man. Bill's mother had come into his acquaintance when Bill was only two years old. She'd sauntered into Estiban's establishment with the quiet toddler under one arm and she hadn't left since. Right away, Estiban treated Bill like his own son; lavishing the boy with attention and wisdom, be it asked for or not. Even though Bill attended school, at least until he was fifteen or so, Estiban went out of his way to teach the boy how to properly read and write. Although, Estiban was far more adept at Spanish than English, he made sure Bill got a good dose of both languages. More than just reading and writing, Estiban was a man of gentlemanly mannerisms….although, as Bill would find out, many of his acts were far from genial. Thus, Bill was, from an early age shown everything from how to properly tie a necktie, shine his shoes, make small talk, communicate eloquently to others, drink liquor with a relish, eat like a gentleman, roll tobacco, pick out the right jacket, play cards and so on.

One of Bill's more amusing gentlemanly learning tasks was dancing. Once a week, Estiban would clear away a small area in his establishment and Bill would get dancing lessons from the pimp. Of course, there was always an abundance of female dancing partners sitting around in wait and Estiban would try to find the smaller of his whores to dance with the young boy. Estiban wanted Bill to adept at all forms of Latin dancing: the tango, the salsa, the rumba, even the lambada.

When informed of his new regimen of lessons, the five year old Bill had been a little skeptical.

"I don't even know a…lamb….bada is Estiban," Bill said, his Spanish still a little clumsy.

"It is the forbidden dance." Estiban chuckled….a twinkle in his eye as he lit a cigarette.

A look of confusion crossed Bill's young face, "But….if it's forbidden…how will I know it?"

"Oh," Estiban smiled knowingly, "You will know my boy," he exhaled a stream of thick smoke, "Now, let us gets started."

"But Estiban," Bill remained perplexed, "I'm….," he searched for a word for what he wanted to say, finally pointing at his skinny forearm, "…white…not brown like you."

"That means nothing when dancing Bill," Estiban replied, dark eyes staring down at the child. "Latin dancing comes from here," he pointed at his own heart, "...not here," he pointed at his own brown hand. "It is about passion. Now, enough of your talk, I talk, you dance."

At first, Bill loathed this part of his lessons…he thought it was boring. As the years went on, he changed his position on the whole dancing thing a few times. He went through a phase where he thought it was fun, in that childish sort of way. Then he swung back the other direction when was he about ten, ashamed of being seen and ostracized by his friends. But, a few short years later, things took yet another turn and soon Bill was asking Estiban if he could dance two times a week.

Estiban complied, until a few weeks in, he looked up from a book he was reading to find his young dance protégé making some serious moves on his dance partner that were falling way out of the category of proper salsa dancing….and the woman was going right along with it.

"Not with my whores Bill!" He snapped, jumping up and boxing the grinning young man on the ear. "Never with my whores! Do you hear me? Nunca!"

After that, the dance lessons were knocked back down to once a week and much to Bill's disappointment, with far closer supervision.

But Estiban was not all whimsy and dance. When Bill was six, he first witnessed the darker and more violent side of his first adopted father when he beat two women nearly to death.

Bill, being so young, was a little unsure of what the two pretty ladies had done to make Estiban so angry. He and Estiban had just spent a day together. As it went, every few weeks, Estiban would set a day aside where just the two of them would go and do something fun together. Sometimes they would go on long drives through the desert in Estiban's red Morris Minor. Other times they'd go to neighboring towns, or even into southern Texas. Once, they even went to California. Estiban would tell Bill wild stories, which questionably were true, but they fueled the young boy's lurid fantasies of adventure and drama. They'd go to movies, listen to records, mostly Frank Sinatra, and drink expensive floats. Once, Estiban made him eat a tequila worm, but Bill hadn't liked that all that much.

On those glorious days, Bill felt, for a short time, like he was a boy with a real father…..a real father who loved him and would do anything for him. Estiban would be attentive, funny and, to a young boy, incredibly fascinating…with his couth mannerisms and nice suits. But, then they'd return to Acuna and Estiban would go back to work, where…sometimes he'd act quite scary.

So, when they had returned from one of their fun "adventure days" and Estiban began to grow angry with two women the moment they walked in the door of the house, Bill wasn't too alarmed…at least not at first.

Perhaps Estiban just forgot he was standing there, or perhaps he had wanted the boy to witness the act, either way, the Mexican pimp's verbal tantrum quickly turned physical as Bill stood in the corner and watched with wide brown eyes.

"Joder a rameras!" Estiban cursed, in Spanish of course, but Bill understood what it meant, even at six. He heard it a lot. Estiban than grabbed the two women by their arms, and gave each of them a hard punch, not unlike the superhero's in the comics Bill liked to look at. But, the women didn't punch back like in his comics, they started crying and wailing like babies, clutching at Estiban as he hit them again and again.

It was terrifying and yet, somehow fascinating and Bill found himself mesmerized by the violence taking place in front of him. Was it the brutal way Estiban enforced his power over the women, or the whimpering reactions of the women themselves? Bill didn't' know, but he did know he found it darkly seductive.

Then, Estiban produced a knife from his jacket pocket. It was a small knife, most likely a pocket knife of sorts. Bill's eyes widened even further as he stayed back in the dark corner of the room. There was a lot of movement; Estiban's angry fist pounding on the women's faces again and again…and then there was the glint of the knife as it reflected off the dim lamp in the dining room.

Bill's full attention then become focused on that knife as Estiban wielded it, not without some expertise, and slashed the faces of each of the women….right near their mouths. It was quick and brutal…and he only cut each one once, but once was enough. The women's cries became softer but far more anguished. They no longer grasped at Estiban's fine slacks; they just crumpled to the linoleum tiling.

Estiban stood above them, like some theatrical stage villain, the knife clutched in his brown hand. The only sound was the soft whimpers of the cut women and Bill's own heart as it pounded against his small ribcage, out of….fright…or…excitement?

Slowly, Estiban lowered the blade and with a fierce growl, strolled into the kitchen to clean it off. Bill's gaze then dropped to the two crying crumpled heaps on the floor. Both women were clutching at their bleeding faces, the whites of their eyes prominent in the dimly lit room as they both looked at the young boy for comfort.

But, he didn't give them any. He simply stood there, staring at them.

"Please," one woman garbled, her hand pressed to her mouth, dark crimson oozing from between her fingers, "….chico….get us…some rags….."

Bill blinked, still unmoving, still silent. The woman looked a lot like his mother……but it wasn't, was it?

"Please…..," she tried again, crawling towards him with her other hand, dirty fingernails digging into the cheap brown tiling. The other woman began to cough, a terrible garbling sound accompanying it.

"Chico….." the first woman continued to crawl towards him, "…please…a rag….something…."

Bill took a reflexive step back, eyes fixated on her in horror and fascination. She looked so much like his mother. Where was his mother? Was she OK? He wanted to see his mother! He felt a sudden sense of sickness and panic.

Suddenly, he spun around with a small whimper and ran through the house….feeling tears sting his eyes. Where was his mother? He had to find her! He knocked into a few walls, swiping at his tearing eyes. He called out for her, but she didn't reply. All of the room doors were shut, dingy tall rectangles towering over him. The hallways were so badly lit…it was so hard to see with tears added. He had to find her room….he knew where it was, it was the dark red one in the last hallway. Stumbling down the hall, he spotted it and running right into her door, he opened it without knocking.

It was very dark inside, and hot. It didn't' smell very good and there were some weird noises coming from the shadows. Standing framed in the dim halo of the open door, Bill cried out for her….and after a few seconds of his eyes adjusting to the dark, he saw her.

At least, he thought it was her. She was sitting on top of some man Bill didn't recognize, she was moving in a weird way…..and she wasn't wearing any clothing.

"GET OUT!" She yelled, frozen in mid-motion, "GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE BILL! I told you, never EVER to come in here!"

Bill stared, confused and hurt. He didn't' understand. What was she doing? He was too young to fully grasp the situation, and more than anything, his mother yelling at him so…when he just wanted to make sure she was alright, was wounding. "Mother….," he managed in a small whisper.

"I TOLD YOU!" She yelled again, her naked silhouette still frozen in mid-act, "GET OUT YOU LITTLE BASTARD!' Her mouth was a cruel line, eyes nothing more than two black holes in darkness of the room.

It was too much. With tears anew, Bill turned away and slammed the door shut. Without really thinking, he ran as fast as he could to the furthest back room in the house, his bedroom…. knocking over things as he went. He threw himself into his bed and cocooned under the covers. He didn't like to cry, but right now he couldn't help it. He was so confused. Why had Estiban cut the faces of those ladies? What had his mother been doing in her room? Why did she hate him so much? Why did she yell at him so loudly? He then started to try to convince himself that the woman he saw crawling towards him with the cut lip had been his mother and the naked woman in the room had been somebody else. He found it easier to grasp the reality of that violent scene than the reality of the dirty and cruel thing in the room. He had almost found the blood to be exhilarating…..but the cruelty and depravity of his mother only made him angry and hateful towards her.

After sometime, he fell into a fitful slumber. Then, Estiban came into his room and sat next to him. He was back to being the Estiban that did fun things with him and he spoke to him softly, his large hand resting comfortingly on Bill's head. Estiban gave him a simple and genteelly delivered explanation, telling the six year old that the women did that 'as part of their jobs' that they 'had to have that done to them' Bill didn't really understand all of that, but he was too tired and upset to inquire anymore at the moment. He didn't mention his mother to Estiban, he didn't want to have to try to explain what he didn't understand.

Giving Bill's brown hair a manly tussle, Estiban stood and left him to his own confused and angry thoughts. Sniffling, Bill eventually fell asleep. In time, he would come to fully understand both of those situations quite clearly, but for the moment he was just a boy newly exposed to a far darker world than he had known before.

Bill and Estiban continued to go on their "adventure days" but the boy never quite got over seeing what he had seen that night, and from that moment on, Estiban began to slowly unveil his darker side to him. Months later Bill saw him cut more women and when he was ten, Estiban hit him a few times, and not playful hits either. But, that was a short lived phase for the pimp and he passionately apologized to Bill….for it appeared Estiban much preferred to hurt women.

As it stood, Bill's childhood was not exactly typical but it had not been without moments of naïve joy.

His first few years in Acuna were spent fairly innocently, as he lived wide eyed and unknowing in a house of prostitution. From early on he was an intense child, who preferred to do things his way and stay mostly to himself. He spent many hours sitting next to the back screen door, playing with plastic cowboys and Indians on the cracking linoleum that was scattered with square islands of outdated carpeting. For Bill, the linoleum was cowboy territory, the carpet… Indian lands. The screen door had been full of holes and dead flies for as long as he could remember, and when he grew tired of playing, he'd sit in the doorframe, right behind the screen door and stare out of the tiny holes across the back lot. Many, many hot evenings were spent this way. Bill never asked his young self what drew him to do this, he simply did. Some of the prostitutes, which at the time Bill just thought of as nice pretty ladies, called him the "Screen Door Boy" or "el Muchacho de Puerta." He'd just smile at them shyly and watch them with large brown eyes as they talked and mingled around the kitchen with cigarettes in their slender fingers.

As the years progressed, so did the toys, and eventually Bill migrated from the screen door to the living room, a comic book in his face. He'd sit there, under the dim lamp light, wrapped up in one of Estiban's woven blankets on the large leather recliner and read Superman, Marvel Tales, and the Two Gun Kid until he fell asleep right there.

When Bill slept he often had strange dreams. The most prominent dream he had began when he was about five and reoccurred throughout his entire lifetime. On a few occasions he'd even revisit it under the influence of drugs…but that was many years coming.

The dream was about the desert. Bill had always had a fascination with the desert that would stay with him his entire life. In the dream he'd take on the form of a snake, sometimes he'd be a scorpion or even a lizard….but usually he was a snake. He'd slither around on the hot dunes, eating everything in his path….plants, cacti, other snakes and animals. He'd even eat people or cars that dared to venture through the infinite stretch of road. As he ate things, he'd slowly get mightier in size and strength, hissing and vicious in his attacks. Nothing could stop him and eventually he began to eat the desert itself, until there was nothing left but endless blackness.

It wasn't a frightening dream at all…in fact, whenever Bill woke up after the desert dream he always felt strangely empowered. Later in his life, he once told a woman he was sleeping with about the dream. She tried to psychoanalyze him, giving him a load of Freud bullshit about sex, violence and male power. He thought she was full of shit and kept it to himself from then on.

During his childish waking hours, Bill often daydreamed about the desert as well. But, he wasn't a completely off base and mystical child. He spent the rest of the time thinking about typical young boy stuff: wanting to be a cowboy, secretly wishing his father was Gene Audrey…only to fix that mistake and replace ol' Gene with John Wayne, going on all sorts of fantastic adventures, and comics of course.

His nightly comic readings reached an obsessive point by the time he was ten and while Estiban was somewhat horrified at this, he was at least happy that the boy was reading something.

While growing up in the house of a pimp was not your typical childhood, neither was growing up Acuna Mexico. Acuna, at the time, was a fairly small town near the border between Mexico and Southern Texas. It sat amidst highways and flat rural farming ground, not so far away there was a good stretch of desert land. The town of Acuna consisted mostly of bars, restaurants and other tourist traps for Americans traversing the line between the United States and Mexico, looking for cheap drinks and a good time. Its main employment, besides the tourist traps and bars, was low paying manufacturing jobs. It was also a haven for the drug trade, prostitution and the manufacturing of cheap medicines. Those who worked there generally worked hard, illegal employment or not.

Acuna was not all that picturesque, nor did it resemble the rather romanticized picture of Mexico in many people's minds. One had to go further south to achieve that sort of atmosphere.

No, to Bill, Acuna's scenic tapestry mainly consisted of out dated pick up trucks, peeling adobe buildings of turquoise and light brown, migrant workers in blue jeans, belt buckles and beat up cowboy boots, and a dizzying array of bars. There were a few places for a kid to "hang out": the market store, a small junk shop that sold baseball cards and comics amongst shelves full of second hand things, a family style diner with a friendly soda jerk, and of course the baseball field behind the schoolhouse.

It wasn't the best town, but it was the town Bill would know as home. Even when he left Acuna, Acuna was still always home.

And what exactly of Bill's mother? . .

Well, Bill never really actually knew his mother. He only knew a few minor details that she was willing to share with her son over the years, like precious clippings of a life she didn't want to remember. She was from Arizona; her father had been a child molester, her mother a child. She'd dropped out of school when she was ten to help out on her aunt's ranch in Southern Arizona, where she spent most of her younger years. She once wanted to be a rodeo queen but when she got knocked up at fourteen, she gave up on that dream. She'd left Bill's father before Bill was even born, tried to be a waitress in Texas, found out she hated people too much to do that and somehow ended up a whore in Acuna Mexico.

Beyond that, she was a closed book. She had no real interest whatsoever in her son and when she did speak to him, it was in a cold distant manner. Her voice was hard and bleached of emotion. She always spoke with a thick Southern accent, and Bill was never really sure where'd she'd picked it up, he never asked either. Somehow he knew, even as a small child, that she hated him. When Bill was younger he thought maybe she hated him because he'd ended her dream of being a rodeo queen and forced her to be a whore. Then he thought maybe she hated him because he looked too much like his father. But, as he got older, he realized that she just hated him without a real clear explainable reason…and in turn, he hated her back. She became just another of Estiban's whores; a woman of low morals and lost ideals. Perhaps there had been some opportunities early on to have developed some sort of sentimental attachment between mother and son…but that faded with time, cruelty and neglect.

Much like her interior, her exterior faded. Bill remembered vaguely, that she had once possessed a sort of beauty; with her pale skin, tall stature and chestnut hair and eyes. But, he mostly knew her as a woman who looked far older than her years. Her hair became dull, her skin sallow, her eyes hard and vacant, her body worn with years of misuse and the touch of uncaring hands.

Once, when Bill was about twelve, he asked his mother who his father was, what he was like. All she'd offered to him was that he'd been "a drifter, a bastard, a drunkard and a mean son of a bitch." That was all Bill was ever given and it didn't do anything to improve the image of the man who'd sired him. Soon after that, he lost most of his interest in his father and often he pretended that the man had never actually existed. He would work to replace him.

For a few years, the closest Bill ever had to a "mother figure", revolved around a woman named Gloria. Gloria was Estiban's, "number one lady" during Bill's younger years in the house. A woman of extreme beauty and charm, she would sit on the carpet by the screen door next to him and read to him…for she was very well schooled for a whore. If he begged her enough, she'd even indulge him in setting up his bucket of plastic cowboys and Indians. He'd been pretty young then, and found nothing suggestive about the beautiful lady with her long shiny black hair, large doe eyes, shapely tan legs and heaving bosom sitting with him on the carpet. For a short time, she was a glimmer of maternal grace and attention, in the dark void that his mother had left. He liked her warm pretty smile and her laugh, which reminded him of tinkling piano keys. But what he really liked was how she'd make all of his toy figures die horribly dramatic deaths. He'd lie on the carpet, in stitches laughing as she acted out scenes of gory death and terrible betrayal between the tiny plastic figurines.

But, when Bill was seven, Gloria disappeared. He was too young to fully understand. He knew she'd done something bad though, something bad to Estiban. The last time he saw her, she was sitting in the back room on one of the many beds, crying. She was holding a rag to her face. Bill knew Estiban must have cut her. He had stood silently in the dark doorway watching her for sometime. She didn't seem to notice him and then, she was gone.

That had been Bill's first and only attempt to collect a mother figure. After that, he sought only father figures for the rest of his life.

But, for the moment, Bill was happy with just one father figure and for the eleven year old bastard, there were more immediate schemes in the works….the most prominent being reaping the many unexpected benefits of recently having his nose broken.

A few weeks after the incident with Raul and his friends, Martina Gonzalez, a girl a year older than Bill, kissed him. He'd been telling her a slightly more exaggerated version of the story of how he'd got his nose broken one hot afternoon behind the schoolhouse. As he was rather animatedly telling her, she began to pat him on the shoulder, a look of girlish pity in her dark eyes as she drew nearer. And when he was able to produce a few dramatic tears…well boy….that was the real cincher. With a sweet, "You poor thing," falling from those rosy pink lips, she kissed him. It wasn't one of those silly little kisses he'd been stealing from girls for years either, but a real kiss….like the ones adults did to each other. When he tired to kiss her again, she shoved him away and ran off with a giggle.

Perplexed by this, but awakened into a whole new world of forbidden sensations, he stood there watching her run away, her knee skirt flipping up in the wind.

At that moment, Bill decided that had made having his nose broken well worth the pain.

And as it turned out, after spending that afternoon at Julio's aunt's house those few weeks ago, he and the Hispanic boy had come to an understanding of sorts….and within days they were best of friends. The powers of forgiveness are strangely refreshing amongst children. Later that week they went to the movies together, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When they secretly admitted to each other later that night, hiding under sleeping bags with flashlights in the living room of Aunt Blanca's, that it had scared the piss out of both of them, their bond of friendship was sealed.

Raul wasn't happy at all about his brothers 'betrayal" but after having broken Bill's nose he seemed to think that they were now even and left Bill alone from then on. Which was a smart move on Raul's part; because in a few short years Bill would not be a kid you wanted to mess with anymore.

A few weeks after destroying Raul's bicycle, Bill spotted Raul parking a brand new one at the baseball field. Bill was truly tempted to trash that one as well, but he quickly regained his senses and let it go. He had moved on beyond that little stupid rivalry and besides, he had Julio for a friend now…..that was more important.

Julio, would soon become, for a few years, one of Bill's closest and few childhood friends near to his age. Julio was a kid who was destined to become a man looking for trouble. He was a deft pickpocket and thief by the time he was ten. He swore that he had originally started these hobbies in an effort to help out his sick mother and her four younger starving children, who had separated from his gun toting rancher of a father. For all Bill knew that was a crock of shit, since during their years of friendship, he never met any of these alleged "poor" younger siblings of Julio's.

Nevertheless, Julio was every twelve year olds dream friend. He swore he could score you anything: weed, dirty magazines, booze, cigarettes….candy, whatever your twisted adolescent heart desired.

Julio was also a pretty damn good brawler too, as Bill had unfortunately already experienced and the bigger boy went out of his way to teach Bill a few good street fighting techniques, all of them viciously effective and practical for their rough young lives. He also indulged upon Bill the finer points of pick pocketing and thievery.

It was Julio who would become a large influence on Bill during these few short impressionable years of his life.

Most of his influence was far from wholesome.