Country of the Bad Wolfes (59 page)

They did visit the casa grande the following month but didn't let their father know they were there. Did not let anyone know but Josefina and Marina. They sneaked into the compound late at night by way of one of their secret passages and then, through another, into the casa grande garden. Josefina woke to their soft tread in the kitchen and rushed from her room to hug them each in turn even as she hissed reproaches at them for being such rude and thoughtless brutes that they had not once let her know these past six months that they were alive. James Sebastian said, Dance with me, my beauty—and turned her in a waltz step before she pulled away and slapped at his arm and called him a good-for-nothing. Then Marina was there too, crying without sound and kissing first one and then the other and then the first again, until Josefina said, “Ya, mija, ya. Déjalos respirar, por amor de Dios.”

Only a few weeks past their sixteenth birthday, they were yet lean but grown even thicker of shoulder and had the arms of timber men and were now taller than their father and their older brother. And yet remained indistinguishable, so selfsame of feature, of stride and stance and voice and gesture, that only Josefina and Marina could tell them apart, though only up close, knowing as they did that Blake's left little finger had a pronounced crook and that James Sebastian's right eye had a green flaw at the upper rim of the iris. In time they would note too a little node just above the fore part of James's right wrist where the broken bone had mended unevenly. But the twins were also aware of these differences and knew how to camouflage them by means of a partial squint and by keeping their fingers slightly flexed and hands turned just so.

They sat at the kitchen table over coffee and conversed in low voices. The women confirmed everything Bruno had said in the letter. It is a horrible and unnatural thing for a child to precede a parent to the grave, Josefina said, but to precede a grandparent was too horrible for words. Marina said their father would be very happy to see them, but they said they did not want to see him, that it was too soon yet. If they talked to him now he would insist that they resume their visits
as before, which meant sitting to dinner with the family, but they didn't think John Samuel was ready for that. “Ay, ese pobre Juanito,” Josefina said. She gestured at her face and said that the doctor had tried to correct his nose but. . . . And the scar on his cheek, ay! Then she caught herself and said to Marina, Forgive me, child, I am old and stupid. Marina took her hand and said there was nothing to forgive, that she had years ago stopped feeling shame about her scars. Josefina patted her hand and stood up with a soft groan and put a hand to each twin's head in turn as if in benediction, then retired to her room. Minutes afterward they were in bed as well, Marina between them.

They returned to the kitchen six weeks later, again surprising Josefina and Marina, who again were the only ones to know they were on the grounds. Until the following evening, when just as they were about to depart, Vicki Clara happened into the kitchen.

She had not seen them in eight months, and she rushed to them and hugged them and kissed them, asked again and again if they were all right, said, My God, how you've grown! She wanted them to sit and talk, but they explained they did not want to chance an encounter with their father because it could mean having to see John Samuel too. She said they had no reason to fear John Samuel. Blake Cortéz said,
Fear
him? Are you joking? and James Sebastian said,
Us
afraid of
him
? She saw the umbrage in their faces and said she did not mean to imply they were afraid of him, that she knew they were not, that she meant no insult, please forgive her. She was near tears. “Ah Christ,” James said in English, and took her in his arms. Blake apologized for their tone and asked her to please forgive
them
. She brushed at her eyes and caressed their faces and said she would forgive them if they would forgive her, and they said it was a deal.

She told them Juan Sotero's First Holy Communion was to take place in the hacienda church in two months and asked if they would please attend. It will make Juanito so happy if you are there, she said. He has been worried about you and has so many times told me how much he misses you. And of course it will please your father. He has missed you more than you can imagine. He will be hurt to know you have been here without seeing him, but he would be very happy if you are at the ceremony. Please?

The twins looked at each other, and Blake said they would be there. Did they promise? They promised. The twenty-fifth of July, she said. Without fail, they said. Josefina and Marina smiling too.

I
n 1590 Carlos Mercadio Valledolid Jurado, a Spanish nobleman whose grandfather had landed in the New World with Cortéz, established La Hacienda de la Sombra Verde and appointed his longtime friend José María Espinosa de la Cruz as its mayordomo. For the next 296 years every mayordomo of La Sombra Verde would be an Espinosa, each of them the oldest living son of the mayordomo he replaced. Most of them tended to longevity of service—José María himself would serve for twenty-two years—and Reynaldo, the twenty-first mayordomo, had held the post for a decade at the time that John Roger Wolfe became owner of the hacienda and changed its name to La Buenaventura de la Espada. By the summer of 1886 Reynaldo's tenure had lasted thirty-seven years, far longer than that of the longest-serving of his predecessors. He was sixty-three years old but had all his life been blessed with good health. Except for a few weeks of the previous year when he had been incapacitated by a broken leg, he had never missed a day's work.

Reynaldo had married at twenty-one and over the next sixteen years sired twelve children, all of them born in consecutive years but the last one, Alfredo, whose conception was something of a surprise to Reynaldo and his wife after a barren three-year period. Four of his children were girls, all strong and pretty and all of them married and gone by the age of seventeen. Of the eight boys, three died at birth and three others before they were six years old. The only two who made it to adulthood were his oldest child, Mauricio, and Alfredo. But Alfredo's birth was a difficult one, and his mother, worn old at thirty-seven, never afterward regained her strength and died a few months later.

The following year Reynaldo married a seventeen-year-old girl for no reason but the want of more sons. The girl's mother had borne twelve children, a fact
bespeaking strong odds for the bride's own fertility. But after a year of his efforts, the young wife had not conceived, and he was forced to accept the sad truth that his seed had lost all vitality. His spirited wife secretly rejoiced in their failure. She had no desire to share her mother's fate as a lifelong maker of babies. When she absconded one night in the company of a theatrical troupe that had entertained at the hacienda, Reynaldo made no effort to seek after her and hoped she would fare well.

His wish for more sons was prompted by Mauricio's lack of interest in replacing him as mayordomo. From early boyhood, Mauricio had liked to fight and yearned for adventure and to see places beyond Buenaventura and he believed the life of a soldier would satisfy all his cravings. Reynaldo had hoped the boy would outgrow this fancy and accept his calling as the next mayordomo, but whenever he spoke to him about the honor and prestige of the position, Mauricio's boredom was obvious. Not for him the rooted and routine life of a hacienda manager. He desired to be a cavalryman. Not long after his mother died he turned seventeen and on that day enlisted in the army. Reynaldo was crestfallen, but could only accept it. One could not force a son to love the same life as the father's. If it's what you truly want, he said of Mauricio's choice of the army. Mauricio said it was. At their parting at the train station Reynaldo said, Remember, son, if you ever change your mind, the position will be yours.

The military life was everything Mauricio had anticipated and he flourished in it. He distinguished himself in the war against the French and soon became a sergeant. He displayed a gift for leadership and at the end of the war was selected for officer training. On the day before his twenty-second birthday he was made a lieutenant. He fought Yaquis in Sonora for a time and then saw combat against the rebels of Porfirio Díaz and was promoted to captain. He later became an adherent of General Díaz and joined him in the uprising against Lerdo and greatly impressed Díaz with his leadership and tactical expertise. He was made a major and was awarded a medal of valor that Díaz himself, the new president, pinned on him in a ceremony at the National Palace. Over the following years he earned a colonelcy and even more decorations for heroism against various military insurrectionists and marauding Indians. In 1885, at the age of forty, he was made a general and was given command of the military district headquartered just outside of Durango City.

Because so much of his duty had been in the faraway north—and because his Durango post was more than 500 miles from Mexico City and over 800 miles from Veracruz—Mauricio had only rarely had opportunity to visit his father and brother. He might have requested assignment to some post closer to Buenaventura, but he had come to prefer the dry heat and the sun-bright immensity of the desert to the looming shadowy forests and muggy wetlands of his boyhood. In the summer of 1886 it had been five years since his last visit home.

On his last visit, Mauricio had been the patrón's dinner guest in the casa grande. John Roger was impressed by the young general's intelligence and bearing,
and he shared Reynaldo's faint hope that Mauricio might yet choose to become mayordomo. It was this hope, more than anything else, that had kept Reynaldo from retiring and ceding his post to his younger son, Alfredo, now twenty-five, who was avid to become the mayordomo. Alfredo was not unintelligent, but he lacked his older brother's skills, his acumen, his natural authority. Lacked above all Mauricio's self-discipline and sense of order. As a boy he'd been taught by Mauricio to shoot and to handle a knife, to fight with his fists, but had always been prone to pick on those smaller than himself. He had a liking for spirits but was not a good drinker, was loud and belligerent when drunk. No less troublesome was his penchant for young girls. On four occasions to date Reynaldo had been obliged to make monetary compensation to an outraged father for Alfredo's violation of his daughter's virtue. It was as demeaning to Reynaldo to have to make such payment as it was to the aggrieved fathers to have to accept it, but what else could be done? Except what the father of a pregnant fourteen-year-old did in flinging the bag of silver back in Reynaldo's face and rushing around him to grab Alfredo by the throat and very nearly throttle him before several stewards pulled him off. Despite a bloody mouth, Reynaldo admired the man for doing as he did. John Roger did too, and he got the man a job at a ranch in Jalapa and made arrangement for the girl to be married to a young cowboy who promised never to mistreat her.

Nevertheless, if Mauricio did not claim his right to be the next mayordomo, Alfredo, as the only remaining Espinosa son, would perforce be entitled to the post. And though John Roger was aware of Alfredo's shortcomings, Reynaldo had no doubt the patrón would grant him the appointment. Don Juan had too much respect for the Espinosa tradition—and for the honorable service he, Reynaldo, had rendered to Buenaventura for so many years—to dishonor the family's name by denying the post to the only Espinosa left to assume it. The fact remained, however, that Alfredo would certainly prove a failure and Don Juan would sooner or later have to dismiss him, and thus would the last of the Espinosa mayordomos be the first ever to be fired for incompetence, a turn hardly less dishonorable than if he were denied the job in the first place.

Reynaldo gave the dilemma much thought. And one late evening a resolution occurred to him. It was so simple he felt doltish for not having thought of it long before. When Don Juan offered him the job, Alfredo would turn it down. He would do so in a formal letter thanking Don Juan for the offer but expressing his regrets that, for reasons he wished to remain personal, he could not accept it. The letter would be notarized, would be historical proof that he had turned down the post, not been denied it. Thus would the Espinosa name be spared dishonor and the hacienda spared the harm of even the brief tenure of an incapable mayordomo. Don Juan would surely be pleased by this decision—and no doubt appoint Don Juanito the new mayordomo. Alfredo would of course be unhappy, but that was of no import. If he should be obstinate and refuse to write the letter, Reynaldo would
write it himself and append his son's signature to it and present it to the patrón with a truthful explanation.