Country of the Bad Wolfes

by James Blake

  The drawer held a leather-bound ledger and a document case. They took out the case and opened it and the first thing that came to hand was the framed daguerreotype of John Roger and Samuel Thomas on the day of their high school graduation. They stared at it for a time before James Sebastian said, “Do you believe this?”

  “Cuates! Just like us.”

  “Not quite like us. One on the left’s a little bigger in the shoulders, you can tell.”

  “Yeah. Doesn’t tell us which one’s Father though.”

  “Don’t look to be much older than we are. And I thought he looked young in the ones with Momma.”

  “So that’s Samuel, eh? Whichever one.”

  They had once asked Josefina if their father had any brothers or sisters and she had told them what their mother had told her, that John Roger had been orphaned with no sisters and only one brother, Samuel Thomas, an apprentice officer on a merchant vessel who was eighteen years old when his ship went down. Older or younger brother, they asked, and she said she didn’t know.

  “Why didn’t she say they were twins, I wonder?”

  “I expect she doesn’t know or she would’ve.”

  “If Josefina doesn’t know it’s because Momma didn’t know, either, and why wouldn’t he have told her?”

  James shrugged. “If Momma didn’t know, she for sure never saw this picture. Bedamn if Father aint starting to seem like a secret-keeping man.”

  They laughed low. And now took from the case a rolled paper and unfurled it and saw that it was two papers—a letter with a bureaucratic heading, and rolled inside of it, an ink portrait.

  “Looks like Father,” Blake said of the sketch. “Except Father’s name’s not Roger Blake Wolfe and he aint dead yet, much less since 1829.”

  “Grandpap’s my guess.”

  “Me too. Damn sure looks like Father, don’t he?”

  “It’s how you’ll look at his age.”

  “You too.”

  The letter was the one from the British Embassy to Mary Parham Wolfe. “Father’s mam, must be,” James said. They read it.

  “Man was a goddam pirate.”

  “Begging your pardon, mister, he was a goddam captain of pirates. Says so right here, see? Captain.”

  “You suppose Momma knew this?”

  “I’d wager she didn’t.”

  They studied the letter again. “Says executed but not how,” Blake said. “Hung for certain. It’s what they did with pirates. And left them to rot on the rope. Our own granddaddy. Man, aint life just fulla surprise?”

  “With a daddy like that, hardly a wonder Father’s killed two fellas.” James Sebastian said. Then grinned. “Two we know of, anyway.”

  “A grandpappy like that says something about a coupla other fellas I could name.”

  “We couldn’t help it, Judge. It’s in our blood.”

  They started to laugh and hushed each other lest they be heard by some passing maid. They extracted two packets of letters. Most of them were to their father from Richard Davison and to their mother from her mother, neither set of much interest to the twins except for the fact of their mother’s maiden name—which they had thought was Barlet because of Josefina’s pronunciation. Davison’s letters were chockablock with details pertaining to the Trade Wind Company. Their Grandmother Bartlett’s abounded with trivia about her family life. The brothers skimmed through them and arrived at the letters to their father from Sebastian Bartlett and James Bartlett, and after skimming these, they read them again.

  “Who’s he think he is, blaming Father for what happened to Momma?” Blake Cortéz said of Sebastian Bartlett’s letter.

  “A son of a bitch is who he is, grandpap or no. That goes for this James galoot too.”

  “Uncle James to you.”

  “I aint calling anybody uncle writes a letter like this to Father.”

  “Reckon he ever did come for Momma’s bones?”

  “Hell no. I think he was just blowing hard.”

  “Me too. If he’d come here to dig her up, Father would’ve stopped him cold.”

  “Hell yes, he would’ve. Would’ve done him like he did that soldier.”

  “Or like he did what’s-his-name, the one Josefina said—”

  “Montenegro.”

  “Yeah, that son of a bitch.”

  They opened the leatherbound book and saw what it was and Blake pulled up a chair so he could read along with James Sebastian. Its earliest parts had been inscribed at Dartmouth College and dealt mostly with fellow students and various academic notions. These entries meant little to them and they turned the pages swiftly, slowing only at their father’s intermittent mentions of his mother and her father, Thomas Parham. They were interested most of all in his references to his brother, whose name they learned was Sammy and whom their father wished himself more like. “Our Physiognomies the same but Sammy’s Spirit so much the more daring,” their father wrote. They read of his desire to become a gentleman and of his fear that his classmates might learn the truth of his father’s brigandage and about his brother’s mysterious disappearance from Portsmouth.

  “So he doesn’t know what became of old Sammy,” Blake said. “Or didn’t when he wrote this, anyhow.”

  “Told Momma he was lost at sea.”

  “Maybe that’s what he found out later, after he wrote this.”

  “Or maybe it was just another lie.”

  “Why lie about his brother? Think maybe he was a murderer too?”

  “Who knows? But seeing how scared he was of his school chums finding out about his pa the pirate, I’ll wager he never told Momma about Sammy either.”

  “That counts as a lie too. Lie of omission.”

  “Wooo, you’re a hard judge, mister,” James said.

  “Hey, son, the law’s the law, I always say. Law of the books, law of the truth.”

  There was an entry about his upcoming graduation and his disappointment at failing to qualify for valedictorian, and then the journal jumped forward by several months to a nearly illegible passage about his marriage engagement to “Lizzie”—his erratic penmanship occasioned perhaps by euphoria. Then a still greater leap in time to his first notation in Mexico, conveying his happiness over Lizzie’s miraculous pregnancy. The next segment was five pages long and absorbed them above all others, detailing as it did what their father had learned about Roger Blake Wolfe from the Veracruz archives and the London genealogist.

  “Well now,” Blake said, “how about this?”

  “Now we know. Firing squad.”

  “Girls fighting over him even when he’s about to get shot.”

  “Buying drinks for his pals. Puffing a cigar. The man had aplomb, no question about it.”

  “Aplomb aplenty. How come shot, though? They always hanged pirates.”

  “Most likely offered the judge a little something to make it the muskets.”

  “You reckon? Hell of a note, having to pay to be shot.”

  “Beats hanging even for free.”

  “That’s a point. They sure must’ve had it in for him to cut off his head after and stick it on a goddamn pike. Made his daddy and momma mighty mad about something too, to disown him like they did.”

  “Well, seeing as Grandpappy Roger was a pirate and his daddy was a navy man, I’d say they probably had different ways of looking at things.”

  “Roger’s sure a right name for him, aint it? Man was a Jolly Roger in every way.”

  James Sebastian grinned. “A Jolly Roger and a Big Bad Wolfe.”

  “For damn sure! The Big Bad Wolfe of the family.”

  “The first one of it, anyhow.” They muffled their laughter with their hands.

  There was an entry about his great happiness over the birth of John Samuel, but the entries of the next five years consumed less than two pages, so terse and widely spaced in time were they. There were various mentions of Charley Patterson, whose mode of speech they liked so much, and references to “the company,” and to people the twins had
never heard of. Then came a lengthy segment about the house their father was building on the beach, and they learned of the cove he named Ensenada de Isabel and of their parents’ great love of the place. There were a few pages of technical details pertaining to the construction of the house, then a passage about the fishing sloop he’d bought and named Lizzie and sailed from Veracruz to the cove with the skilled crewing of their mother. Interspersed through this section were brief references to John Samuel, including one about the only time he had been to the cove, when he was still a small boy, and his propensity to seasickness that had disappointed their father. The twins were tickled to learn their parents were such expert hands with a sailboat—and not in the least surprised their brother was no sailor at all.

  The final inscription was dated a few days before their birth. It registered John Roger’s great relief in Lizzie’s easy term and their eager anticipation of another child.

  The rest of the journal was blank.

  “Not a word about Momma dying,” Blake said. “Or about us. Or the other two.”

  “Well, he sure as hell wasn’t gonna write down anything about them.”

  “I can understand that. But why not us?”

  “Maybe we’re . . . what’s that word for something that’s real hard to . . . ineffable.”

  Blake Cortéz grinned. “Yeah, I bet that’s exactly why.”

  PART THREE

  IN MEXICO CITY

  Although John Roger and Elizabeth Anne had always wanted to visit Mexico City, they had for one reason or another still not done so when she died, and after that he no longer had any desire to go there. In all his years in Mexico he had made no trip farther than to Las Nevadas and a few other outlying haciendas of Veracruz state. And then in the fall of 1884, his thirtieth year in the country, he received an invitation from Amos Bentley—the invitation coming by wire directly to Buenaventura’s newly installed telegraph station—to be his guest at a friend’s party in honor of Porfirio Díaz, who two months earlier had been elected president for the second time. During the four years that Díaz’s friend Manuel González had been president, Díaz’s political organization had grown larger still, and his return to the presidency had been a foregone conclusion.

  John Roger and Amos had been friends for twenty-five years, but they had seen less of each other ever since Amos got married and went to live with his wife at Las Nevadas. Although they neither one had much opportunity to make the long trip to visit the other at home, only managing to do so on a few special occasions—as when John Roger went to Las Nevadas to become godfather to Amos’s first daughter—they always had dinner together whenever they were both in Veracruz. As Amos assumed greater responsibilities for the Nevada Mining Company, however, even their Veracruz reunions became more infrequent. During the early years of his marriage, while serving as Don Victor’s chief accountant, Amos had taught himself everything about gold and silver, about their modes of mining and their practical as well as aesthetic uses, and he had acquired an exceptional faculty for assaying the worth of either metal in every form from ore to jewelry. In recognition of his talents—and because of the great advantages of his Yankee nationality and native facility with English—Don Victor had made him his principal agent with British and American buyers. The job obliged Amos to spend most of his time in Mexico City, and because his wife Teresa detested the capital and always chose to remain at home with their three daughters, he had in recent years seen less and less of his family. The simple and secret truth, as Amos would confide to John Roger, was that he no longer missed them very much. He loved his work and could imagine no place on earth as exciting as Mexico City. He had at first lived in a fine hotel, but before he had been there a year Don Victor deeded him a house in an exclusive neighborhood. A gift for his excellent service, Don Victor said, though, as Amos suspected, it was also the don’s secret wish that the opulent residence would induce Teresa to join her husband in the capital. Don Victor’s desire for a grandson had been thwarted by the birth of each granddaughter and his hope was that Amos and Teresa might again share a bed before she was fallowed by age. He could have reassigned Amos to Las Nevadas, of course, but his great value to the company was in Mexico City, and business, after all, was business. But Teresa remained adamant in her refusal to live in the capital, and that was fine with Amos. The mansion had a full staff of servants and he was ministered to with even greater solicitude than at the hotel. He had many times since invited John Roger to come for a visit, but John had always begged off with one or another plausible excuse. At the time of Amos’s most recent invitation, they had not seen each other for nearly three years.

  In his invitation Amos wrote, “You are long past due, old friend, to visit the Paris of the Western Hemisphere. The city is at its loveliest in November, and I can assure you an introduction to el presidente. I think you should find him most interesting.”

  Since the death of Elizabeth Anne, John Roger had ceased to attend parties. He took no pleasure in large company or loud gaiety. But in addition to wanting to see Amos after such a long time, he found the prospect of meeting Porfirio Díaz irresistible. He sent Amos a wire accepting the invitation and apprising him of his train’s scheduled arrival in the capital.

  John Samuel accompanied him on the hacienda train to the Veracruz depot. The twins, who had now been living at the cove for more than five months, had only two weeks before made their monthly visit to the compound. When John Roger told them of his upcoming trip they said it was about time he had a look at Mexico City. They themselves had never been to the capital or ever expressed the least interest in going there. The cove was their domain, and their contentment with it was ever evident in their obvious eagerness to get back to it. He did not like to admit it to himself, but it nettled him that, except for the family suppers, the twins spent most of their visits in the company of the crone and Marina Colmillo. Face it, he thought, you’re jealous of the kitchen help. He had of course not asked the twins to accompany him to the train station and they had of course not offered to. Still, on arriving in Veracruz, he looked all about the station as he headed for the boarding platform. Then saw in John Samuel’s annoyed aspect that he knew whom he sought.

  Neither of them had seen the other off on a trip before, and at the coach steps there was a mutual uncertainty about how to proceed. They had not hugged one another since John Samuel’s childhood—and in this awkward moment it occurred to John Roger that he and the twins had never hugged even once, never even shaken hands. Never touched. He moved to embrace his son just as John Samuel put out his hand, and then drew back and put out his hand as John Samuel raised his arms to receive him. They reddened at this clumsy dance, smiled stiffly for a moment, unsure what to do. Then John Samuel said, “Have a good trip” and again offered his hand and John Roger shook it and said he hoped to.

  That evening he detrained into the cacophonous swarm of the Mexico City terminal. Amos Bentley materialized from the crowd and came striding toward him with his arms open wide and a great grinning bellow of “John, old friend! Here at last!” His Southern accent as pronounced as on the day they first met. While he had always been stocky, Amos had over the years acquired a barrel of a belly, and John Roger felt the press of it between them as they embraced in the Mexican fashion with much patting of each other’s back. Except for his greater girth, Amos, now in his late forties, seemed little changed. His round face was unlined, his sandy hair ungrayed but for traces at the sideburns. On their way out to the waiting carriage, John Roger gave him another clap on the shoulder for no reason but his great happiness to be with the last of his living friends.

  Amos’s house was on a tree-lined street along the north side of picturesque Alameda Park. The elite residential areas of the city had in recent years shifted from north and east of the zócalo to westward of it, to the Alameda and then along the imposing Avenida Reforma—broad and tree-lined, commissioned by Maximilian in imitation of the Champs Élysées—which went all the way to Chapultepec Park.
In the residential style of the Mexican wealthy, Amos’s property was shielded from the streets and his flanking neighbors by high walls whose tops were lined with embedded shards of glass. Amos gave him a cursory tour of the house before they sat to a light supper of fried eggs on white rice and a side dish of fried plantain slices sprinkled with sugar. They then repaired to the library until a late hour, smoking Cuban cigars and sipping French brandy and catching each other up on things.

  Among the topics they discussed was the recent trouble at one of the silver mines at Las Nevadas. A few weeks before, nearly 300 miners had gone on strike in protest of working conditions. There were too many of them for Don Victor’s gunmen to deal with, so he telegraphed to Mexico City for help. The next day there arrived an undermanned troop of twenty-seven Rurales—the Guardia Rural, an elite force of national mounted police, unmistakable in their distinct uniforms of big sombreros and charro suits of gray suede and silver conchos. In many parts of the country the Rurales were more feared than the army. They had been in existence since the time of Juárez, but it was Díaz who made them into a legendary force. He favored the recruitment of bandits into their ranks, believing that few men were as trustworthy as former criminals and that no one was better at hunting outlaws than a man who had been one himself. He gave them both incentive and license in the exercise of their duty. They were permitted to keep a portion of recovered loot, and in accord with Díaz’s directive—Mátalos en caliente! was his standing order—to kill on the spot every bandit they caught. The Law of Flight sanctioned the shooting of a prisoner who tried to escape, and a dead man could not argue that he had made no such attempt. Díaz was lavish in his public praise of the Guardia Rural and hosted a sumptuous annual banquet in their honor. They were a source of national pride and the incarnate symbol of Díaz’s personal might. And as loyal to him as dogs.

  Don Victor offered the Rural captain the assistance of his thirty pistoleros but the captain politely declined, simply wanting to know where the strikers were. The Rurales then rode out to the mines and reined up in a line facing the protesters, their mounts stamping and snorting. Each man of them was armed with a saber, revolver, and Remington repeater carbine. They drew the rifles from their scabbards and held them braced on their hips, muzzle upward. The Rural captain took a watch from his pocket and called to the strikers that they had five minutes to get back to work. One of the mine leaders yelled We are not bandits! We only want fairness!