Country of the Bad Wolfes

by James Blake

  Some weeks later they found a dead man floating in the river reeds where they were constructing the dock. A young mestizo, shirtless and shoeless. Brought down by the current from who knew where, though it could not have been very far, as he had not been long in the water, the eyes not yet eaten, the lips yet intact. There was a small bullet hole above his ear. His pockets were empty but he was no peón—the pants were part of a suit, the hands unscarred, two fingers showed pale bands where rings had been.

  The only adequate ground for a grave in that lowland was Wolfe Landing, but they were not about to bury anyone there not family to them. But they had an idea. They bore the body to the resaca and looped one end of a rope around its ankle and lashed the other end securely to a tree and set the corpse in the water. The next day the rope was slack and the dead man gone.

  Blake and Remedios’s second child, César Augusto Wolfe Delgallo, was born on the thirtieth of April, exactly one year, to the day, after his brother Jackson Ríos. Marina wrote the news to Vicki Clara, from whom there had been no word in nearly six months. When the first four months had passed without response to two of her letters, Marina had written to Bruno Tomás to ask if anything was wrong with Vicki. But in the two months since, that letter too had gone unanswered.

  In May came a letter of bleak tidings from Bruno. Vicki Clara had kept secret the worsening condition of her vision until it became apparent to everyone that she could barely see at all. John Samuel had taken her to four different doctors, including two in Mexico City said to be the best eye surgeons in the country. They all agreed there was nothing that could be done to arrest her vision’s accelerating degeneration and predicted she would be blind by spring. And she was. Bruno had not informed the twins and their wives of Vicki’s trouble before now because he had been hoping for some miraculous recovery to report. Juan Sotero had wanted to withdraw from the Veracruz academy and come home to care for his mother, but Vicki dictated a stern telegram forbidding him from doing so. She had asked Bruno to convey her apologies to their Texas kin but she could not bring herself to dictate a letter. She felt it was too unnatural, Bruno wrote, to tell someone what to write for her, felt it was too contrary to the personal nature of a letter, and she simply could not do it. She said she would understand if they should feel the same way about someone else having to read their personal words to her, and she absolved them from any obligation they might feel to continue writing to her. She had excellent caretakers who were never beyond range of her summon. Her great regret was that she had not learned to play a musical instrument and so could not entertain herself that way. She passed her mornings listening to the player piano, her afternoons sitting in the patio shade and, as she liked to say, letting the sensations of the world come to her, its smells and sounds, its feel under her feet and to her hands and face. In the evenings after dinner Bruno read to her. Poetry, novels, and—in much lower voice, lest John Samuel venture into the room while he was at it—letters from their Texas family. John Samuel had offered to read to her and Vicki thanked him but said she preferred Bruno to do it and gave no explanation. In private Bruno told John Samuel he hoped he was not in any way intruding on his prerogatives by reading to Vicki Clara. John Samuel assured him he was not, that he appreciated Bruno’s help in making his wife comfortable as possible. He was unaware how clearly Bruno perceived his relief that he did not have to do it himself. Except when being read to, Vicki preferred solitude, even at mealtimes. She had joked to Bruno that what she needed was a blind friend, then wept and apologized to him for her self-pity. John Samuel would sit with her for an hour every evening before dinner, but if they ever had a conversation Bruno never heard them at it.

  “God damn it,” said James Sebastian.

  “I agree,” Blake Cortéz said.

  Marina continued to write Vicki a monthly letter with bits of family news, and the twins added a few words at the end of each one. Bruno would read the letters to her as many times as she wished to hear them. He kept his promise to her never to tell Marina or the twins of the tears the letters prompted from her blind eyes. If they find out they make me cry, she said, they may think it a kindness to stop writing.

  What neither the Mexico City doctors nor John Samuel told her was that the blindness had been caused by a cancer in her head. They believed the information would only add to her dejection. But as the severity of her headaches worsened, she knew—everyone knew—she was in a grave way. Her power of speech began to falter, then failed altogether, and she was reduced to communicating with chalk and slate until she lost the capacity to spell even the simplest words. She had trouble remembering things. The pain worsened by the day. She locked her jaws against the impulse to scream. Laudanum had been of help for a time and she took larger and more frequent doses of it until it was of help no more. The anguish of her final weeks beggared description. Her sightless eyes were monstrous bulges for the pressure of the growth behind them. Bruno would spare his Texas kin this detail and others even worse. At last, on a bright November afternoon, in answer to her prayers and to the blessed relief of everyone in the casa grande—as the open window admitted birdsong, the faint laughter of children playing beyond the patio walls, the insistent barking of a distant dog—she died. The entire hacienda turned out for the funeral. Not even at John Roger’s requiem service, Bruno wrote in a letter, had he witnessed such an outpouring of grief. Looking every inch a grown man in his cadet uniform, Juan Sotero gave the eulogy for his mother and then returned to Veracruz that evening. John Samuel placed a floral wreath atop the coffin before it was lowered in the ground but did not speak during the entire ceremony.

  TRESPASSERS

  During the final months of that year they were living off the last of the dwindled bank funds and were unsure what their next move would be. But they at last had the chance to investigate the smaller groves on their property east of Wolfe Landing. They discovered several more resacas, but saw no alligators in them. By the waning days of December they had explored all the groves but the east-most one.

  Their map showed that this grove followed the river on a northward curve to about two hundred yards from the Boca Chica road before the river looped southeastward again. They set out at first light with their rolled bedding and camp gear on their backs and machetes in their hands. By mid-afternoon they had advanced through most of the curving length of the grove and could see daylight between the trees ahead, indicating a clearing at the river bend. Then they heard voices—and they stopped and stood fast.

  They listened hard. Men laughing. Speaking in Spanish. Somebody telling of a fight in a Matamoros cantina and involving a woman named Carla. They set their packs down and eased forward as soundless as cats to the edge of the clearing. Some ten yards away a mule-drawn wagon stood near the riverbank and three men were taking wooden cases from it and stacking them on a raft with railed sides and moored by a line to a stake in the bank. A large tarp lay heaped beside the wagon and there were only a few cases left to unload. The logos on the cases identified their contents as bottles of James E. Pepper bourbon whiskey. On the far bank was another wagon and three more men, one of them holding a rope that slacked into the water and reappeared near the outer end of the raft, where it was attached. The men loading the raft were mestizos, one of them bigger than the twins. He and another one had holstered pistols on their hips and the third man looked to be unarmed. The twins looked at each other and nodded.

  They came out of the palms in quick soft stride, Colts in one hand and machetes in the other, and closed to within twenty feet of the men before someone on the other bank shouted a warning and the three on this side turned and saw them. One of the armed men threw off the mooring line and jumped onto the raft and ducked behind the stacks of cases. The big man grabbed for his pistol—and in a move he had practiced a hundred times, Blake Cortéz flung his machete overhand and it flew in a lateral blur and transfixed the man’s lower torso, several inches of the pointed end jutting from his back just below the ribs. The man grunted
and his half-drawn gun tumbled from its holster and he clutched both hands around the machete blade and fell to his knees and then onto his side, cursing through his teeth. James Sebastian pointed his Colt at the unarmed one, who already had his arms straight up and now yelled “No me mates! No tengo arma!” James told him to sit on the ground with his hands under his ass, palms down. He jabbed his machete into the ground and picked up the fallen man’s revolver and slipped it into his waistband.

  Blake stood on the bank, holding the Colt down at his side, and watched the raft being pulled across by two of the men while the third held a rifle half raised and kept his eyes on him. The man on the raft was watching him too, still crouched behind the cases and peering over them. Blake tucked the Colt into his pants and the man on the raft stood up and holstered his pistol too and the one on the bank lowered the rifle. The raft was almost to the other side when Blake turned to the fallen man. He seemed smaller than before and his curses had thinned to a low muttering. The machete had severed an artery and the ground under him was red muck. Blake stood over him and the man stared back, eyes wide, breathing in shallow gasps, brown face paled from the loss of blood. He tried to speak but could not. Then died. Blake sat beside him and took hold of the machete handle with both hands and placed his feet against the man’s chest and to either side of the blade and with a hard yank extracted it, falling on his back. He sat up and wiped the blade on the man’s pants and lobbed the machete to James, who stuck it in the ground beside his own. Blake searched the man’s pockets, rolling the body to one side and then the other, and found a fold of American currency. He stood up and counted it and smiled. Across the river the raft was mooring, the three men making haste to transfer its cargo to their wagon.

  Blake went over and stood beside James Sebastian. The prisoner looked from one to the other the way everyone did at the first close sight of them. “He know English?” Blake said. James said he didn’t think so but he might fake that he didn’t. Blake smiled at the man and brandished the money and said, “Para el whiskey, no?” The prisoner nodded. He asked if they were going to kill him. Blake put the money in his pocket and said, Let’s start with our questions.

  The man told them everything they asked to know and more. His name was Anselmo Xocoto. He was twenty years old. For the past eight months he had been working for Evaristo Dória, a smuggler who took things across the river in either direction. Mostly liquor, whiskey to Mexico, tequila and mescal to the United States. This was one of the best spots for smuggling between Brownsville and the gulf because it was close to the Boca Chica road but well-hidden from it and the ground here was much firmer than almost anywhere else along the lower part of the river. There was a curving gap through the palms, a sort of natural trail wide enough for a wagon. Everybody called the place the Horseshoe because of the shape of the river’s loop here. Evaristo had won control of it about a year ago after a war with some other smugglers, but he himself no longer came out on any of the jobs. He had a couple of men who took turns making the actual transactions. Well, only one now, Anselmo said, glancing at the dead man. Anselmo was the helper. There was no regular schedule for the transactions. Sometimes they did two or three in a month, but once they went two months without doing any. Almost all of Evaristo’s dealings were with the Goya brothers in Matamoros. If there were others, Anselmo didn’t know who they were. He described Evaristo as dark-skinned, about forty years old, tall for a Mexican and on the skinny side, with a thick mustache to the corners of his chin. He had a wife and children and lived at the west end of town.

  They told him he could bring his hands out from under his ass, and Anselmo rubbed them to help restore the blood flow. Blake informed him that this spot he called the Horseshoe was now part of their property and if Evaristo wanted to keep using it for his business he would have to come to some arrangement with them. He and his brother would like to meet with him to discuss it. Would Anselmo be seeing him tonight? Yes, yes, Anselmo said, breathless with relief that they were not going to kill him. After every job he had to take Evaristo the money received for the goods. Remembering the money, Anselmo again looked fearful. He will want his money, he said. Tell him we’ll talk about the money when we meet, Blake said. Tell him Berta’s Café in the Market Square, tomorrow morning, eight o’clock. Lots of people around, no place for trouble. Yes, Anselmo said, yes, he would tell him. They said he could go and James Sebastian helped him to his feet. Anselmo stared at the dead man and Blake said, We’ll take care of that. Anselmo nodded and went to the wagon and climbed up onto the driver’s seat. There were still four cases of whiskey in the wagon bed and he looked at them and then at the twins. You keep them, Blake Cortéz said. Anselmo smiled for the first time since the twins had come into his life. “Gracias, jefes,” he said, and took up the reins and raised a hand in farewell, then hupped the mules into motion and the wagon clattered away.

  They thought of dropping the body in the river but decided against it. Best not to chance anyone finding it, not with a living witness who knew how it came to be dead. They fashioned a carrying pole and ripped the sleeves off the dead man’s shirt to tie his hands to one end of the pole and his feet to the other and bore him to Wolfe Landing as they would a killed deer. It was full night when they got there. They built a campfire and lighted a torch and then shouldered the carrying pole again and conveyed the body to the resaca. And there did as before and tied the body to the rope attached to a tree and set it in the water and gave it a shove away from the bank. The rope would let them know if it were taken.

  And when they checked at first light the next morning before mounting up and leaving for town, they found it had been.

  MISTER WELLS

  Berta’s was crowded and loud, as on every morning. The café was owned and operated by a family named Hauptmann. It was the most popular breakfast place with the town’s Anglos, but a number of Mexican businessmen and ranchers were regular patrons too, men who had more in common with Anglo ranchers and merchants than with Mexican laborers. The twins wore suits and ties, and like other men in the room they carried guns under their coats. They had made it a point to arrive early so they could have the rear corner table. It afforded good views of both the front door and the passageway to the kitchen, where the back door was.

  At five minutes before eight, there entered a stocky Anglo of middle years with a big broom mustache and wearing a cattleman’s hat. He paused by the front wall and scanned the room as he received a chorus of greetings, some hailing him as Jim and some few addressing him as Mr Wells.

  The twins knew who he was. It was Marina’s custom to save the daily newspaper for them to read on the weekends and they had seen Jim Wells’s picture in its pages many times. On some Saturdays they had seen him driving his cabriolet along Elizabeth as he commuted between home and law office, trading waves with friends as he went. The basic facts about his life were well and widely known. He’d been born and raised on a ranch near Corpus Christi and earned his law degree in Virginia. He came back to Texas and settled in Brownsville and became law partner to a man twenty-six years his senior and with the fitting name of Powers. An easterner with a New York law degree who once served as an American consul to Switzerland and had a gift for languages and for making and keeping friends, Stephen Powers had been living in Brownsville since right after the Mexican War. He had at various times been mayor of the town, a Cameron County judge, a district judge, a member of the Democratic state central committee, a state representative, and a state senator. To say he was the most powerful man in Cameron County was akin to saying the sky was blue, and if Jim Wells could not have had a more suitable mentor in the four years of their partnership before Powers’s death, Stephen Powers could not have had a more brilliant protégé. Moreover, when Wells married Powers’s niece, Pauline Kleiber, he joined an august circle of prominent families into which Powers himself had wed.

  Powers’s specialty was real estate law, and Wells fast became as expert as his partner in land grant litigation. Their
firm’s clients included Mifflin Kenedy and Richard King, who owned the largest cattle ranches in the state and were part of a coalition Powers had formed of the region’s most important ranchers, fewer than a hundred of whom owned almost all of Cameron County—which in that day stretched a hundred miles from the mouth of the Rio Grande up to Baffin Bay. This alliance of ranchmen was the core of Powers’s political strength. Each ranch employed hundreds of mestizos who would in any election cast their votes as their bosses directed. Like all mestizos in South Texas, regardless of their actual nationality, the ranch workers were all of a category and called Mexicans—“my Mexicans” by the ranchers who employed them—and if some or even most of them who voted were not American citizens, well, who could prove it in a rural world largely devoid of birth certificates? On their arrival in Texas the twins had recognized that the relationship between a rancher and his mestizos was not much different from that of a Mexican hacendado and his peons. A relationship that had developed, after all, from the same cultural traditions.

  In return for Powers’s protection and promotion of their interests in the state capital, the ranchers delivered their workers’ votes to whichever candidates he pointed. It was a form of political brokering as old as the republic, and Powers was a master of it. And Jim Wells became a wizard. He was as affable as his partner, but having grown up on a cattle ranch he was one of the ranchers’ own and hence even more adept at dealing with them. He knew their ways, talked like they did, was given to the same gestures. But in his rapport with the peons he had no Anglo equal. Like Powers he was fluent in Spanish and familiar with Mexican culture and respectful of Mexican traditions, and having converted to his wife’s Catholic faith, he shared the peons’ religion. More than any other Anglo of authority, Jim Wells had a genuine concern for the local Mexicans, and they recognized his sincerity and repaid it with steadfast personal loyalty. He knew hundreds of them by name, and in times of want provided for them from his own pocket. He defended them in court for a nominal fee, when he charged them anything at all. He got them out of jail with reduced fines and sentences. He visited with them in their homes and played with their children and was a godfather many times over. Many a Mexican child had been named in his honor—Santiago or Jaime or Diego. The peons venerated Wells as a patron saint and not even their employers had greater sway with them. When Señor Wells—or Don Santiago, as he was widely known—said he would grateful it if they would vote for a particular political candidate, so did they vote. In the thirteen years since Stephen Powers’s death, Jim Wells, who had never held public office except for a brief stint as Brownsville city attorney, had expanded the political machine he inherited from his partner and enhanced its operation. His influence now reached not only to the Texas capitol but to the Washington offices of Texas congressmen he had helped to get elected. El jefe de los jefes, the Mexicans called him.