Country of the Bad Wolfes (56 page)

Bruno had known that some of the wranglers would resent him for an interloper who'd got the foreman's job by dint of being nephew to the patrón, and they did. But once they saw how well he knew horses and that he was willing to work as hard and get as sweaty and filthy as any man of them—unlike Don Juanito, whom they respected, yes, but who but rarely got his clothes dirty—they began to grant him a due respect. But Rogelio Méndez remained unimpressed and persisted in his recalcitrance. He had been a wrangler at the hacienda since age fourteen and was the best breaker of mustangs on the place, excluding perhaps the twins,
who in the estimation of many had no equal in the handling of horses. Rogelio had been Don Juanito's segundo since the inception of Rancho Isabela, and he had been confident that he would be named foreman if Don Juanito should ever give up the job. But then this cousin from Mexico City comes along, this fucking Bruno—who wasn't even a Creole like his Wolfe kin, for Christ's sake!—and just like that,
he's
the foreman.

Bruno heard the gossip about Rogelio's resentment and understood how he felt. But after three weeks of giving deaf ear to the man's snide mutterings and enduring his insolent attitude in hope that he would soon enough adjust to the situation, he knew he had to do something about it or lose the other wranglers' respect.

It happened the next day. One minute they were walking past each other just outside the main corral, and the next they were down in the dirt and punching and then up on their feet and punching harder. They fought for half an hour and not a man looking on had seen a better fistfight or one more evenly matched. Finally, wheezing like asthmatics, clothes ripped, lacerated faces smeared with blood and snot and dirt, eyes and lips and ears bloated red and purple, fists swollen, they stood teetering in front of each other. Rogelio somehow mustered the strength to swing one more time and Bruno somehow managed to sidestep without falling and the punch missed and Rogelio's momentum carried him in a sideways stutter step for a few feet before he collapsed. He managed to sit up but could not stand.

Bruno dropped his hands to his sides. Chest heaving, knees trembling. Rogelio looked up at him and gasped, Fuck. Bruno nodded and huffed, Yeah. He hawked bloody snot and spat off to the side, then asked Rogelio if the fight was over or if he just wanted time to catch his breath.

Rogelio's forearms rested on his upraised knees. He stared at the ground and made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “No más. Ya me ganaste.”

Thank Christ, Bruno thought. He did not think he could have raised his hands again. Knew he could not have reformed them into fists. I hope, he said, still panting, you will continue to be the segundo.

Rogelio grunted with the effort of looking up again. All right, he said. But I still think I should be the foreman.

I know. But you're not. I am. Oh man, I hope we don't have to do this again.

Nah, hell. You hit too fucking hard.

I
hit too fucking hard?

Their grotesque smiles were the best their mauled mouths could muster. Bruno put a hand down to help Rogelio to his feet. They groaned at the effort and Rogelio did not make it halfway up before they both went sprawling—and they joined in the wranglers' laughter, their bruised ribs aching.

By day's end the news of the fight had carried to every corner of the hacienda. It had already circulated throughout the casa grande when Bruno arrived at the dining room that evening, his neat suit and tie in ludicrous contrast to his bruised
and tinctured misshapen face. Vicki Clara cooed over him with solicitude, but John Samuel was angered by the whole thing. He had worked with Rogelio and thought him a fine segundo, but for the man to start a fight with the new foremen—the patrón's nephew, no less!—was a transgression that had to be punished.

Bruno said the fight had been his own doing as much as Rogelio's, and that Rogelio
had
been punished. If you think I look bad, he said, you should see him.

John Roger smiled and Vicki Clara shook her head in exasperation with the ways of men. John Samuel sighed and half-raised his hands and said, Very well, you're the foreman who has to work with him.

The Córdoban aunt proved to be an interesting companion and was valiant and good-humored to her last breath, which she exhaled on an early morning in July. Though saddened by the old woman's passing, Felicia Flor Méndez was happy to return to Buenaventura. She had been home a week when her brother invited Bruno to supper and introduced him to her as his foreman, Bruno Tomás Wolfe y Blanco—a name change Bruno and his sister Sófi had decided on as more accurate to their parentage.

Like many a brother with a little sister both pretty and unafraid of men, Rogelio had been fretful for Felicia Flor's virtue from the day her breasts began to bloom. The whole time she had been away at their aunt's he lived in apprehension that she would succumb to some charming son of a bitch. He wanted nothing for her so much as the safety of marriage and motherhood. Various young wranglers had courted her from the time she turned fifteen but none had struck her fancy. She was too damned choosy was her problem. What do you want, Rogelio asked her, some guy in shining armor like in a goddammed fairy tale? Of course not, she said. A suit of armor would rust very fast in this climate. That was another thing, her sassy tongue. His hope that she and Bruno might like each other and that something might come of it was rooted more in desperation than in reason. It was crazy to think she would give serious thought to a man thirty-four years old or that a man of thirty-four would put up with her impudence. Rogelio could not have imagined the mutual smiting that took place within minutes of their meeting.

Two weeks later, despite his great fear that she would reject him as an infatuated, impulsive, middle-aged fool, Bruno Tomás asked Felicia Flor to marry him. She gave him a gaping, wide-eyed stare and said, My God, Mr Wolfe—she who had been calling him Bruno, even Brunito, these two weeks—are you truly
serious
? She was able to sustain her aspect of incredulity for several long seconds as his face sagged with disappointment and regret before she grinned and said, I was afraid you'd never ask. Twenty minutes later they rushed in on Rogelio as he was eating supper and Bruno petitioned him for his sister's hand. Rogelio swabbed chili sauce from his mouth and stared as if confronted by crazyhouse escapees. And said Yeah, sure, of course.
Jesus
, you two!

That was two days before Bruno's letter to his mother, which he wrote six days before the wedding. He told María Palomina that the minute he'd seen Felicia he knew she was the one for him. Anticipating María Palomina's desire for him to be married in Mexico City so that she and Sófi could attend the ceremony, he told her he wished he could be married in the capital but to do that he would have to wait until such time as the ranch was not so busy as it was now, but he loved Felicia so much he didn't want to wait a minute longer than necessary to make her his wife. He said Felicia felt the same way and they both hoped very much that she understood and would not be too angry with them. Not until the end of the letter did he make known that Felicia Flor was seventeen years old, and yes, that made him twice her age, but she was a very wise girl and she was really not too young for him.

When Sófi read Bruno's letter to their mother—who refused to get spectacles though her eyes were no longer what they used to be—and got to the part about the difference in their ages, María Palomina said, Too
young
for him? Listen, I know my son, and if she's seventeen she's way too
old
for him! A
twelve
-year-old is too old for him!

In truth, María Palomina was delighted at the news of Bruno's marriage, which took place on the same day she received his letter. Delighted in spite of her immediate suspicion that the real reason for their haste to marry was the age-old one of having put the cart before the donkey by starting the family before the wedding. In which case, his claim of knowing the girl less than a month was of course a lie too, intended to keep her from having the suspicion she was having. What a silly boy he was, she told Sófi, to think he could fool his mother. Or think that the reason for his hasty marriage could mean as much to her as the fact that he had finally taken a wife.

In her letter of response, dictated to Sófi, María Palomina told Bruno that she was of course very vexed that he did not get married in Mexico City, but she understood and she forgave him. She asked to know everything about Felicia. Bruno wrote back that his bride was petite and beautiful and smart and beautiful and such a wonderful dancer that she had even been able to teach him to dance—him! with his three left feet! And did he mention how beautiful she was? You will see for yourself very soon, my dearest Mother, Bruno wrote. Uncle John and I and Felicia will be there sometime in early October.

Sofía Reina too sent Bruno a letter of congratulations. And hoped in secret that their mother was correct in her suspicion about the marriage. Because otherwise Bruno was telling the truth and couldn't wait to marry Felicia. Perhaps out of love, as he claimed, but also, perhaps, because of his great desire to get the girl into bed as soon as he could. It might be that he was at least as much in thrall to his lust for the girl as to his love of her. This possibility made Sófi uneasy, convinced as she now was that the family was cursed by twin passions. Some in the family—herself chief
among them, maybe her brother too—were in thrall to the passions of the flesh. And some—her father a prime example and her uncle perhaps another—to a passion for risks of blood. She prayed for God to have mercy on them all, but especially on those of them who might be damned by both.

O
nly a month after Bruno's wedding, the hacienda celebrated Roger Samuel's fifth birthday. The fiesta was held at the Rancho Isabela, and John Roger provided wagon transport for everyone from the compound and both villages. There were the usual fiesta delectations of roasted sides of meats and tablefuls of food and vats of beer chilled in mountain ice, the usual fireworks and music and dancing. The dance floor was a wide clearing of packed dirt, and boys with sprinkler cans of water were charged with keeping down the dust. A large piñata, shaped like a horse and covered with colorful paper and filled with wrapped candies, hung from a tree branch. Each child in turn would be blindfolded and allowed five swings with a wooden pole—one swing for each year of Rogerito's life—to try to break the piñata as it was made to jounce about on the end of its rope. By custom the birthday boy was allowed to go first and have a few extra swings, as it was deemed good luck for everyone present if he were the one to break the piñata. Felicia Flor and Vicki Clara stood side by side and gave Rogerito loud cheers of encouragement but the best he could manage was to snap off one of the horse's legs, which contained only filler paper. Then his brother, next in line, with his first swing shattered the piñata and set the other children scrambling after the shower of treats.

The twins too had come to the party, and after the piñata ritual they clapped Juan Sotero on the shoulder and praised the power of his swing. They told Felicia Flor—whom they had first met on her wedding day—that marriage certainly agreed with her, as she looked even prettier than a month ago. She blushed and kissed them. Vicki Clara hugged Juanito and congratulated him for his smash of the piñata, then curtsied to Roger Samuel and said, “Most excellent sir, may I have the honor of a dance on this glorious day?” The boy smiled and said, “Yes, mam,” and
took her hand and they headed for the dancing ground. “Your next dance is with me, Victoria!” Blake Cortéz called after them, and Vicki looked over her shoulder and blew a kiss at him.