Country of the Bad Wolfes

by James Blake

  Don’t speak except to answer my questions, Blake told them.

  The workers informed them there were four Carrasco brothers but one had gone away in the red boat with the Mayans. There were no women in the house, no children.

  James Sebastian told them they could have all the animals in the stable but to get them immediately and then get out of Veracruz and never come back.

  The workers moved fast, and the ones that got the best animals were those who did not even take the time to dress but hurried to the stable with their clothes under their arms.

  Moisés and Chuy Carrasco were at the table playing cards when the front door opened and one of the twins who called themselves Rivera and whom they had never expected to see again came in and stepped off to the side so he would not be an easy target in the doorway. He held an old musket with a cavernous .60-caliber muzzle on a barrel sawed down to about ten inches. Moisés Carrasco had seen other makeshift shotguns and he wondered what dread load this one carried. He could only assume the Mayans were dead. So too Genaro and Crispín. So too his workers, unless they had fled. A pair of Spencer carbines were propped against the wall behind him next to the kitchen door but they may as well have been on the moon.

  Listen to me, son, Moisés said, let’s talk about this. He heard the other one entering the room through the kitchen door. Chuy turned to look, then started to stand, saying, Hey, wait a—

  The rifleshot was ear stopping. Blood jumped from Chuy’s head and he fell against the table and then slumped back into the chair and slid off it to the floor. Moisés looked down at him. The one who’d shot him went over to stand beside his brother.

  Kids, for Christ’s sake! Moisés thought. In the instant before the shotgun’s charge of coral nuggets removed the top half of his head.

  Those were their fourth and fifth and sixth.

  When they docked at the malecón, it was jammed with people staring at the fire’s bright flickering through the trees across the bay. Everyone knew it was the tannery but the twins detected little distress among the spectators. And actually heard somebody say something about reaping what one sowed.

  The next afternoon, when the Carrascos’ blackened bones were excavated from the smoking ashes and it was seen that there were only three sets of skeletal remains and one of them was absent half its head, it was largely assumed that the missing skeleton was still in service of the missing brother, whichever one it might be, and further assumed that the missing brother had become estranged from the other three in the most serious of ways. But in a certain waterfront bar, a few seamen and a bartender would among themselves recall the young crocodile hunters they called the White Twins who two days earlier had stopped in for mugs of beer and had been so interested in hearing everything anyone had to say about the Carrascos. And a certain zambo turtler would say that, all in all, it was probably a good thing for his mulatto friend that those boys had taken his joke about mother’s milk with such good humor.

  OTHER CROCODILES,

  OTHER SHARKS

  On the trip back to the cove they drank beer from large green bottles and when the bottles were empty lobbed them over the side and pulled up the netful of beer they kept cool by trailing it in the water on a stern line. James Sebastian extracted two more bottles and lowered the rest back into the water. He unsnapped the metal clamps on the corks and worked the corks out with a pop and handed one of the foaming bottles to his brother. It was another fine day on the gulf and though they had not had much sleep the previous night they felt in fresh good humor and passed the time singing ranchero songs learned from Josefina in their childhood.

  The night before, while the malecón crowd was still gaping at the distant blaze across the harbor, the twins had gone into the Chinese quarter and wandered the narrow winding streets of that alien world whose border was but a block from the beach road. The streets were crowded and smoky, pungent with strange smells, and the twins felt the lack of enough eyes to see all there was to look at. They began asking after Mr Sing, asking various pedestrians and cart vendors, and were each time ignored or dismissed with no more than a glance.

  They chanced on the place by smell, a stink like the one at the Carrasco tannery, detecting it even in the tangle of the quarter’s outlandish odors. It came from a brick warehouse with boarded windows. They entered into a haze of smoke and steam in the amber light of oil lamps. There were rows of wooden frames with hides stretched on them. Most of the skins looked to be of jaguar and deer and snake, though here and there they spied one of an alligator or a crocodile, none of them very large. The place was shrill with Chinese babble, the churning of wash vats, the rattlings of carts trundling over a cement floor.

  A man no taller than their collarbone was suddenly before them, shouting at them, pointing them back toward the door. In English and in then in Spanish they told him they wanted to talk to Mr Sing, but the little man persisted in his angry demands that they get out. Abruptly the man’s eyes cut past them and he went silent and took a step back and made a small bow. The twins turned to see a man almost as tall as themselves, wearing a cream linen suit and dark-tinted spectacles. In English he said, “Good evening, young gentlemen. May I be of assistance?”

  One twin said they wanted to speak to Mr Sing, and the man said, “He stands before you.” His expression was such that he might be smiling but it was hard to tell.

  “Well sir, we came to talk to you about hides,” the same one said. “Crocodile hides. As many as you want.”

  “I see,” said Mr Sing.

  “Big ones,” the other twin said. “Bigger than any in here. Superior in every respect.”

  “I see. I admire your directness, young gentlemen. You are American?”

  “Mexican.”

  “Ah. Most interesting.” He waited a moment to allow them to expand on the disclosure, but they didn’t, and he said, “You will follow me, please.”

  They went to the rear of the tannery and into a room bare of furniture but for a few chairs and a desk, where they sat across from him. There was nothing on the desktop but a thick ledger and an abacus. Mr Sing said it was very unusual for someone not Chinese to come to him with hides, but he was not surprised they had, as he was aware of the terrible fire at the Carrasco tannery that was still burning at that moment, an event that had quite suddenly made his tannery the only one in town, at least for the time being. He asked if they had ever done business with the Carrascos, and the twins admitted they had sold hides to them earlier that day for the first and last time.

  Ah, Mr Sing said. He said he himself was acquainted with the Carrascos only by reputation. “But if some of the things I have heard are true,” he said, “well, what has befallen them this evening seems to me less shocking, let us say, than . . . inevitable. What no one seems to know as yet is whether there are survivors.”

  “There aren’t,” one twin said. Mr Sing looked from one twin to the other, face impassive, eyes inscrutable behind the tinted lenses. He had not commented on their twinhood and never would. “I see,” he said. And seemed to smile. “Well then. Shall we attend to business? Dime, jóvenes—hablaremos en inlgés o español?”

  “English is better for business,” a twin said.

  Mr Sing told them he had a ready buyer of crocodile hides in Puebla, a Chinese maker of footwear and other clothing who shipped his products from Salina Cruz, but he had been unable to provide the man with as much hide as he wanted because Mexican hide hunters were violently intolerant of Chinese competition. Mr Sing’s hide collectors could venture only where the Mexicans did not, where the hides to be had were few and generally smaller. “As you young gentlemen surely know,” he said, “the common Mexican opinion of Chinese is not a kindly one. I intend no disrespect to yourselves.”

  “None taken,” said a twin. “And we obviously don’t share the common opinion about Chinks. No offense.”

  “I take none,” Mr Sing said, almost with a smile. He told them how many belly hides of no less than seven feet the Puebla
buyer wanted and how many hornbacks of no more than four feet. A delivery of those quantities every two months would be sufficient for the buyer’s production schedule and quotas. The twins grinned and Blake said they could easily get him that many flats and hornbacks every month. Mr Sing said that was very impressive, but his buyer needed only as much hide as specified. Any more than that would create a storage problem and increase his risk of theft. “Whatever you want,” a twin said.

  How much, Mr Sing asked, would they charge to fill such an order? A twin quoted a figure that was double what Moisés Carrasco had paid them. Mr Sing said that was acceptable but their agreement would naturally be contingent on his approval of the hides. “I am certain they are as fine as you say, but with all due respect, young sirs, I of course must see them before I oblige myself to buy.”

  Of course. Each twin in turn shook his hand across the desk. They were satisfied with the arrangement, but told Mr Sing they wished he needed more hides. In less than a month they’d be back with a boatload of all he wanted, but then they wouldn’t have much to do for the month after that. Did he know any other hide buyers they might sell to?

  “Pardon me, young gentlemen,” Mr Sing said. “You say you have a boat? I had assumed you brought the hides overland.”

  “No sir. We get them from near the seaside and so we bring them in the boat. It’s an old fishing sloop but in good shape.”

  “A fishing boat. Most excellent.”

  The twins brightened. “You in the market for fish?”

  “Not fish,” Mr Sing said. “Fins.”

  “Fins?”

  “Shark fins. For making soup.” He said the Chinese markets and restaurants in Mexico City were always in need of shark fins, and because he had the means for processing the fins into readiness for soup—skinning and trimming and drying them before shipping them to the capital—he could get top price for them. As with crocodile hides, however, he had been unable to meet the demand, and for the same reason, the enmity of the Mexicans. Mexican fishing crews wouldn’t tolerate Chinese working the same waters, not even if the Chinese were after nothing more than sharks.

  The twins knew it was so. Mexican crews were infuriated by the sight of a Chinese junk—a boat widely disparaged as requiring no more skill to sail than to operate a set of Venetian blinds—and if the Chinks fished from a sloop the Mexies were even more enraged by the attempt to fool them. It was commonplace for Mexican crews to shoot at Chinese boats to drive them from a fishing ground, and sometimes they got even rougher, boarding the Chink boat and throwing the crew overboard and setting the vessel on fire. There were stories, too, of Chink crews being trussed and left in the hold when their boat was put to the torch.

  “But as you are not Chinese,” Mr Sing said, “you should have no trouble.” Would they be interested in collecting shark fins for him? He assured them they would earn at least as much from that enterprise as from crocodile hides, perhaps more. The twins said they were very much interested.

  Over the next few hours Mr Sing taught them everything they needed to know to begin taking shark fins. He had them draw a diagram of the deck of the Marina Dos and then used it to show them where to position the tackle. He told them the sort of line and leader chains and hooks to get, the kinds of baitfish to use. He drew illustrations of how best to secure these elements one to the other, and of the best pattern for scattering chum—bloody fish or the waste parts of butchered animals—over a range of water to attract the sharks. He took them down the alley to a restaurant he owned, where a small bull shark, a four-footer, was retrieved from the cooler and laid on a butchering table in the kitchen. It had been caught before dawn that day by a pair of thirteen-year-old boys fishing with handlines from the malecón. The best way to kill a shark, Mr Sing instructed, was to shoot it at the intersection of an imaginary line down the middle of its head and a line from one eye to the other. He traced the lines on the bull shark’s head with his finger and put his fingertip at the intersecting point. Right there, he said. Using a knife with a serrated nine-inch blade and a double-edged, slightly upcurved point, he showed them how to cut off a shark’s dorsal fin and two pectoral fins. The fins were then to be stored in brine barrels until delivered to him. His buyer wanted at least ten dozen fins every other month. Twelve dozen would be preferable. “If you bring hides to me one month and fins the next—”

  “We can fin forty-eight sharks every other month,” a twin said.

  “Most excellent,” said Mr Sing. He presented them each with a knife like his own, and asked if there was anything else they might need. There was, they said. And two weeks later, the Colts were in their hands. Mr Sing did not reveal his source and they did not ask to know it, but he had got the guns at a good price, and the twins paid him a bit extra for his fine service. The revolvers were Colt .44 Frontier models and used the same ammunition as the Winchesters.

  From the first, they liked sharking more than crocking, as they referred to their two trades. Shark fishing was the more exciting, and they anyway preferred working on the open sea—in the wind and under the sun and away from mosquitoes—rather than in the shadowy upriver jungle. They liked working shirtless, wearing only hats, trousers cut off at the knees, and canvas shoes with hard rubber soles. They simply sailed out and netted a load of fish to hack into bloody pieces and then picked a spot and chummed the water and baited the hooks and set out the lines.

  It had not taken long to refit the boat. Bolted to the reinforced deck were four short chairs made of ironwork, two on each side of the boat and each equipped with foot braces for leverage in reeling and a center ring brace to hold the rod butt. The rods had been made for Mr Sing by a Chinese craftsman using a special dark wood from China. They were six feet long from butt to tip, about as thick as a pretty woman’s arm and as barely tapered. The strongest man could brace his knee against the middle of one of these rods and pull on both sides of it with all his might and not bend it even a little. But according to Mr Sing—and as the twins would find was true—the rods would flex without breaking under the force of the biggest sharks in the gulf. The reels were the size of a gallon cask and had crank handles long enough to work with both hands if necessary and were fitted with a drag mechanism to lessen or increase the force required to pull line off the spool.

  There were days of disbelief when they raised not a single shark, not with the bloodiest chum. Days when it seemed every shark in the gulf had departed for other seas. Sometimes two and even three such days in sequence. More often, however, they no sooner began to tack back and forth over the red-chummed water than the first dark dorsals cut the surface and one of the lines began running off a reel. One twin then lowered the sails and dropped the anchor while the other began to reel in the shark. Even a small one could make a fight of it and the largest ones could take more than an hour to bring in. The exhilaration of catching a shark far surpassed that of shooting a crocodile. It was thrilling to pit your strength against it, to feel the power of it in the quiver of line and rod, in the sway of the boat, to reel the beast in until it was alongside the boat and feel its furious thrashing against the hull and stare into those eyes as black and indifferent as gun bores, into those jagged jaws. The twin working the rod then locked the drag on the reel and got a gaff and hooked the shark through the jaw and wrested its head around to present his brother a clear shot at the kill spot with the Colt. The dead shark was then hauled into the boat and the fins cut off and put in the brine cask and the carcass dumped over the side for the other sharks to feed on.

  The first time they had sharks on four hooks at once was the last time they tried to land them all. The boat was tossing and shuddering so violently it seemed about to come apart and the lines became so entangled that finally there was nothing to do but cut them all. They understood then why Mr Sing had advised them to carry plenty of extra line. It became their practice, whenever they had two sharks hooked at once, to cut free the other two lines before sharks were on them as well. Still, there were days wh
en they spent as much time replacing line as they did fishing.

  Some months after the destruction of the Carrasco tannery, a new one was raised on the same ground by a businessman from Orizaba, but the twins continued to deal exclusively with Mr Sing. The Orizaban had been told of the Chinese tannery and of the twin Creole youths who supplied it with crocodile hides of superb quality, but he was not by nature an aggressive man and took a live-and-let-live outlook toward the white boys and their Chinese buyer.

  Some of the Veracruz fishermen were another matter. The twins had been seen unloading casks at the dock and carting them into the Chinese district, and everybody could guess what must be in those casks if they were going to a Chinaman. Most of the fishermen didn’t care about it. They saw sharks as a nuisance that damaged their nets and sometimes scared away the other fish. The fewer sharks in the sea the better. Yes, some people liked to eat them, but there was not much demand from restaurants, and yes, a few curanderos and even doctors sometimes wanted a shark liver for whatever it was they used it for, but overall there weren’t enough buyers of the meat or livers of sharks to make them worth the great effort of catching them. If the White Twins were selling fins to a Chink, so what? Every shark they killed was a favor to all fishermen. But others were of a different temper. As they saw it, if the White Twins were catching sharks for a Chinaman it was the same as if the Chinaman himself was catching them, and they would be goddammed if they were going to let a fucking Chink poach Mexican sharks.

  One afternoon in the early spring, anchored off a reef so far offshore that the coast was but a thin dark line on the horizon, the twins spied a large sloop bearing toward them from the north. It had been one of those rare mornings when they had not raised any sharks in any of the usual areas. So they had tried farther out but remained luckless until mid-afternoon when they happened on this reef, and the last of their chum raised a horde of shark fins. To lessen the chance of entangled lines in such a rich lode of sharks, they reeled in two of them and left only one on each side of the boat. They had landed and finned one shark and were reeling in the second one when they saw the coming sloop.