Country of the Bad Wolfes

by James Blake

  They are halfway to the casa grande when Blake Cortéz stops and looks back toward the church, where the crowd is just beginning to exit. James Sebastian looks back at him. “What?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  James looks toward the church. “Good-looking, huh?”

  “Not that. Something else. Just barely saw it. Goddammit, what was it?”

  “Harm?”

  “Has that feel.”

  “See Father?”

  “Not in that crowd.”

  They head back to the church.

  As they surge from the church, people are laughing, speaking in shouts to be heard above the clangor of the bells. Children race off toward the far end of the plaza, toward the music and the tables of food. John Roger begins to descend the steps—John Samuel and his family to one side of him, Bruno Tomás and Felicia Flor to the other—and then, directly before him, two steps below, is Alfredo Espinosa, his expression such that for a second John Roger doesn’t recognize him, and then he does, and he smiles and halts, wondering what he might want. Alfredo now smiles too and steps up and places a hand on John Roger’s arm in unseemly familiarity—then locks his hand on the arm and brings up the knife and stabs him with terrific force three fast times. In the abdomen, the stomach, the chest.

  The others have already descended another three steps before they are aware John Roger has halted behind them, and when they turn to look he is on the seat of his pants and falling onto his side, hat tumbling, face clenched and teeth bared, hand splayed against his chest. The people to either side of him are agape with shock. John Samuel says “Oh God” and backs down another step. A woman shrieks. Bruno sees the bloom of blood on his uncle’s white coat and sees Alfredo with knife in hand as he is starting to move away. He lunges and grabs him by the collar and Alfredo twists about and slashes Bruno’s arm and face and Bruno lets go as Felicia Flor pulls him to her and gives her back to Alfredo, who slashes again and the blade opens her sleeve without touching flesh. More screams now as others see what’s happening, but most of the churchgoers are still oblivious or in confusion, and Alfredo vanishes among them.

  The twins come shouldering through the crowd and see their fallen father, his head cradled in Vicki Clara’s lap and his coat opened to expose a shirtfront sodden with blood so bright they know he will be dead within the minute. Don’t die, Papá, Vicki Clara pleads, don’t die! John Roger’s eyes are wide and keep moving from one looming twin to the other. He wants to say “Sons” but manages only what sound like gasping exhalations. Then his eyes go still and their light is gone.

  James Sebastian takes the shortened Colt from his father’s shoulder holster and Blake Cortéz shouts “Pa donde fue?” Hands point and wave in the same direction amid a chorus of strident babblings and the twins charge through the throng, knocking aside men and women and children alike.

  In all the turmoil, no one has tried to stop Alfredo before he reaches his mount. He swings up into the saddle, knife still in hand, and heels the horse hard, heading toward the main gate at the other end of the plaza. The twins break through the crowd and spot him. James Sebastian assumes a shooting stance and sights just above the distancing rider to allow for the truncated trajectory of a short-barreled handgun and squeezes off three rounds in measured succession, adjusting his sight after each shot. The first bullet falls short and ricochets up into the horse’s thigh but the animal barely flinches and doesn’t break stride. The people at the far end of the plaza flee for cover. The next round strikes the horse in the hindquarter and it staggers but keeps its feet and Alfredo heels it hard and presses himself low against its neck. The third bullet hits the horse behind the ear and it plunges headfirst and Alfredo hears its neck break like a tree branch as he sails forward and onto the cobbles and goes tumbling to a stop. Blackie would later praise the shot and James would confess he had been trying to hit the rider.

  Alfredo scrabbles to his feet, incredulous that he has broken no bone, his heart ramming against his ribs as though trying to make its own getaway. His knife is gone. The twins are coming at a jog and the crowd trotting behind at a distance. He bolts down a narrow alleyway between worker row houses and turns into a wider alley behind the residences, this one lined with animal enclosures—chicken houses and cattle corrals, goat pens and pig sties. He sees another alleyway junction up ahead and runs toward it and then stops short when the twin with the gun comes sprinting out of its shadowed mouth and sees him and turns toward him at a walk. Alfredo whirls around and sees the other twin advancing on him too, Alfredo’s knife in his hand. Onlookers stream out from each of the flanking alleyways but each bunch keeps well back of the twin ahead of it. Alfredo remembers the derringer in his pocket but is too afraid to make a move for it.

  It occurs to him that surrender will resolve everything. Surrender, yes! Let them lock him up! What else can they do in the eyes of so many witnesses? He raises his hands high and yells, “Me rendiro! Me rendiro!” He’ll have someone send a telegram to his brother. To General Mauricio Espinosa de la Santa Cruz. Who will speed down here. Then let’s see how long he stays locked up! Then these two sonsofbitches’ll see what’s what!

  Look! he yells. All of you, look! He shakes his raised hands. I am surrendering! You see! He keeps shifting his attention from one twin to the other as they approach him from either side. And then they are near enough for him to see their eyes. I surrender! he yells, voice breaking. I surrenderrrrr!

  Blake Cortéz stabs him just below the ribs and with a lateral yank slices him open. The pain exceeds any Alfredo could have imagined. He clamps his hands over his exposed viscera and his face contorts but the pain constricts his voice to a rasp. The front of his pants darkens with blood and urine. He falls down, knees drawn up, and moans low. They are next to a pig sty loud with snortings, and a row of little furious eyes peer between the slat rails. The twins look at each other—and then James Sebastian puts his boot against Alfredo’s shoulder and pushes him onto his back and shoots him through each elbow to render his arms useless and Alfredo finds his voice and screams. And then screams higher still as the twins pick him up by the wrists and ankles and sling him over the top rail of the pen. He smacks down into the muck—and then everyone hears the clamorous raven of the pigs. The excruciations of his final minutes.

  They take the Dragoon from the top right drawer and then from the middle drawer take a handful of the photographs of their mother and two of their father and one of their parents together. They pick the lock of the lower left drawer and take the ledger and the document case and put the ledger into the case with its other contents. They ignore the other drawers. They have already been to see their father where he is laid out. In deference everyone else left the room. When it was just him and the two of them, they touched him for the first time in their lives. His hand, his hair. Touched his face.

  As they head for the office door James Sebastian says, “Hold on” and goes over to the big map of Mexico on the wall. Blake Cortéz comes up beside him.

  “Where’ll it be?” James says. Veracruz was out of the question. It was the first place their seekers would look.

  “I don’t care as long as it’s near the gulf. I’d rather not live anywhere other.”

  “Me neither. North or south?”

  “Nothing south but Indians who mostly can’t even speak Spanish.”

  “Well then, that just about leaves only here,” James taps a fingertip on the map.

  “Fine by me.”

  They are midway down the stairs when John Samuel comes through the tall front doors and across the great room at a quick stride, heading for the staircase. As he nears the foot of it he looks up and sees them and stops short. The twins pause a few steps below the middle landing to regard him. They had not seen his face since the horse accident and see now what Bruno meant about his nose and that Josefina was not exaggerating the scar on his cheek. His eyes move from one of them to the other. Linger a moment on the gun each has tucked into the front of hi
s pants. One of them puts a hand on his gun and says, “You aint got a rifle hid on you, do you?”

  John Samuel reddens. The twin grins and takes his hand off the Colt.

  “I want to talk to you,” John Samuel says. His voice has deepened, no doubt because of the nose.

  “Make it quick,” says one.

  “I mean in private, not out here in—”

  “You have something to say, say it,” says the other.

  He seems unsure how to proceed. Then gestures in the direction of the plaza and says, “What you did to that man was . . . was. . . .”

  “Discourteous?” one offers. “Ill-mannered?”

  “Good God! You two are just—”

  “He murdered our father,” says the other. “Yours too, I guess.”

  “Yes! Yes, he did! And he deserved to be punished for it. By the courts! Not the way you two—”

  “We punished him no more than he deserved.”

  “Punished, you say? Christ, you defiled him. What do you think Mauricio . . . do you fools not know who his brother is?”

  “Ah, quit your mewling,” says one. “We know about his brother and we aint about to fight his army. We’re leaving. When he gets here you tell him we’re gone and you don’t know where.”

  “He’ll know you’re at the cove. He’ll find out and he’ll go there. People talk, especially if they’re afraid. Somebody will tell him.”

  “No doubt,” says one. “But don’t worry about us, big brother, we won’t be there for long.”

  John Samuel’s surprise is more apparent than he knows. “Where are you going?”

  “China. The moon. We aint decided.”

  John Samuel glares. “Fine. That’s fine. I don’t care a damn. But don’t ever come back here. I mean it. This place is far more important than you two and I won’t put it at hazard just to protect you from—”

  “Protect us?” one says. They laugh and start down the stairs and he steps aside to give them berth. As they pass, he notes the document case and says, “What do you have there? If that’s Father’s it stays here!”

  They stop and turn and stare at him. Then grin at the look on his face. Then go off to the kitchen.

  Josefina hugs them each in turn. Her withered face looks older than ever. Of course you must go, she says, of course, go quickly. She has never cried in front of them and will not do so now. But her red eyes tell them she has been weeping for their father. When she’d seen the pistols in their pants she’d said, “Ay, Dios.” Said it like a sigh. The Concha girl stands mute at the wash sink, her arms soapy, staring at the twins, at the set of their faces. So different from this morning.

  Marina Colmillo had fled the room as soon as they said they were leaving. Both she and Josefina had known at once that they did not simply mean they were going back to the cove but were departing Buenaventura for somewhere else—and with small likelihood of coming back.

  Now Marina returns, a little breathless, a sack of clothing in one hand and in the other a small straw case with a handle. Her worldly goods.

  Where are you going? says Blake Cortéz.

  With you.

  No you’re not.

  Yes I am.

  You can’t come, says James Sebastian.

  Why not?

  You just can’t.

  I’ll follow you.

  Don’t be foolish, James says. We’d leave you way behind quick. Lose you easy.

  I’ll follow the trail.

  We’re not going to stay at the cove, Blake says.

  I know.

  We’ll be gone before you get there.

  Maybe.

  You’ll just have to turn around and come all the way back.

  I won’t.

  Oh? What’ll you do?

  Wait.

  Wait? You mean there?

  Yes.

  For what?

  For you to come back.

  You don’t seem to understand, James says. We may never come back.

  Then I will wait there until then.

  Until when?

  Until you never come back.

  The twins stare at her. James turns to Josefina and says, Tell her she can’t come.

  It is not for me to tell her, she says.

  He blows out a long breath and cuts a look at Blake, who shrugs and says, “Hell man, I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Josefina swats at Blake and says, No gringo talk!

  James Sebastian points a finger at Marina. The minute you complain, the minute you cause any kind of trouble, we’ll put you on a train right back here. You understand?

  Of course I do, she says. I am not sixteen years old.

  Josefina smiles at Marina’s rebuke of them for addressing her as if she were the child among them, she who is nearly twice their age.

  Yeah, well . . . just so you know, James says.

  The boys give Josefina a last quick kiss and put on their hats and take up the food sacks she has prepared for them and head for the door. Where they stop and look back at the two women hugging hard and murmuring endearments to each other.

  You coming or not, for Christ’s sake? says Blake.

  Josefina watches Marina go to them, the burlap bag over a shoulder, the basket hanging from the crook of an elbow and bumping against her hip.

  You’re already slowing us down, James says, taking the basket from her.

  All your blah-blah-blah is slowing us down, Marina says. Then turns and mouths a kiss at Josefina, who makes a benedictory sign of the cross at them.

  And they are gone.

  After his father’s body is taken away to be washed and dressed for that night’s vigil and tomorrow’s funeral, when he will be buried beside Elizabeth Anne in the casa grande graveyard, John Samuel goes to the telegraph office. Everyone within but the telegrapher steps outside to grant him privacy while he dictates a wire to General Mauricio Espinosa, informing him of the morning’s violence. Still shaken by his witness of his father’s killing and the reports of what his brothers did to Alfredo, he cannot bring himself to relate the grislier details, and he tells Mauricio only the bare facts of John Roger’s being stabbed to death by Alfredo who in turn was stabbed to death by the twins.

  He sends for Bruno Tomás and Rogelio Méndez to meet with him in his office and is somewhat better composed by the time they arrive. He is brief and to the point. Bruno is now the mayordomo of Buenaventura and Rogelio the foreman of Rancho Isabela.

  As they make their way back across the plaza, Rogelio says, Didn’t waste a minute, did he?

  John Samuel goes into his father’s office and closes the door and seats himself behind the desk. He feels his father’s absence like a sudden, unseasonable change in weather. But at the same time it feels right to him to be sitting where he is. He opens the middle drawer and passes the next twenty minutes studying the photographs he had not known existed. His childhood pictures seem those of someone he never knew, some boy stranger. The ones he looks at longest are of his mother. He feels a mix of peculiar sensations and the oddest of them is very near to an urge to cry. He remembers the day they collected seashells on the Cove’s gulfside beach and the wind blew up her skirt and he saw her underwear. He wishes he had a picture of that moment. Then feels a hot shame on his face and glances about as if someone may have been watching him and known what he was thinking. And puts the pictures away.

  The next drawer he tries is the top left and in it he finds John Roger’s will and an attached document. He scans the will and smiles. Then examines the other document and his smile falls away. It is a prepared deed for the entire eastern tract of Buenaventura, including all of its coast. It is made out in his brothers’ names and ready for legal registration.

  Good Christ, he thinks. This almost was.

  His hand trembles as he puts the match flame to the paper.

  John Samuel’s telegram about the killings does not come as news to Mauricio Espinosa. The general has already received several telegraphed accounts of the bloody morning from
other residents of Buenaventura. His father dead but a week and now his brother dead too. The Espinosa de la Cruz family reduced to himself alone.

  That stupid kid. Twenty-something years old and still a stupid kid. Witless. Killing the patrón because of a damned job. In front of his family! In front of a hundred witnesses! Based on his own acquaintance with John Wolfe, Mauricio regarded him a good man. His own father, who had known the patrón for more than twenty-five years, had always had high opinion of Don Juan.

  Stupid kid.

  He pours another drink. He feels partly at fault, having encouraged Alfredo to believe he would make a capable mayordomo. He had done it solely in hope that it might make Alfredo work harder to better himself, so when the time came for him to take over the job he might prove adequate to it. It was less a hope than wishful thinking. You could sooner alter the configuration of the stars than change a man’s character, and Alfredo’s character was not the stuff of a mayordomo. Simple as that. Had he been in the patrón’s place he would not have given the job to Alfredo either.

  But the denial of the job to Alfredo was not the point. The whole thing seemed clear enough. The patrón denied Alfredo the job and gave it to his own son, so Alfredo killed the patrón for wronging him—as Alfredo saw it, anyway—and then the patrón’s twin sons killed Alfredo. That Alfredo committed a wrong is without question. And who could argue that the twins were not justified in avenging their father?

  However. That they killed Alfredo was also not the point. John Samuel Wolfe’s telegraphed report said of the killings only that Alfredo had killed the patrón with a knife and the twins then knifed Alfredo. But as others of the hacienda have reported to him, that wasn’t all there was to it. For one thing, it was said that Alfredo had surrendered. It was said he was yelling that he surrendered and that everyone in the crowd heard him and that his hands were up. But they killed him anyway. Injustice? Some would so argue. But not he, a cavalry officer who has seen more than his share of killing in hot blood and understands the power of its compulsion. No, injustice was not the point.