Country of the Bad Wolfes (70 page)

You would have said no.

And if I had?

Edward said nothing.

You would have done it anyway.

Edward said nothing.

And then
I
would've had to do something about it. You know that.

Edward said nothing.

And don't think for a minute I wouldn't have, goddammit, friend or no friend. I let you get away with disobeying my orders and then what? Everybody'll think he can get away with it. No, sir. No.

Edward said nothing.

Díaz stared at him.

That's
why you didn't come to me, isn't it? If I didn't say no, you weren't disobeying.

Edward looked off to the side.

Very clever, Lalo. Very fucking clever. You should've been a goddam lawyer.

Edward's smile was small and crooked.

Díaz rubbed his face hard with both hands. All right, let's settle this. Now listen to me. Listen good. You listening? No more shooting generals without my permission. That's an order, Mr Little. Understood?

Understood, my president.

I mean it.

I understand.

You fucking better.

I said I understand.

All right then. Good.

Díaz gazed out the window at the darkness. Edward waited.

You say he was kissing the girl?

It looked like it.

Did he have a hand on her ass?

That I can't say. I was pretty far off.

Díaz turned to him. Spare me the bragging. He probably had a hand on her ass, don't you think? I would have had a hand on her ass.

He probably did.

One shot, right, Mister Deadeye? Quick kill?

Probably dead on the way to the ground.

Just can't keep from bragging, can you?

Edward returned his smile.

Kissing a woman. Hand on her ass. There are worse ways to go.

Plenty of them.

Goddammit, Lalo. I liked him.

I know.

He wasn't a son of a bitch, not that one.

I believe you.

Well thank you so much for your belief and go fuck yourself.

Edward grinned.

Christ, the older you get the scarier that smile. I bet mothers point you out to their kids on the street.
There
, you see him? Right
there's
the man who comes to take away bad little boys who disobey their mamas. Kids probably piss their pants and can't sleep for a week.

They both laughed.

Díaz consulted his gold pocketwatch, a gift from Doña Carmen. Let's go to Lagrimas. What do you say?

Las Lagrimas de Nuestras Madres was a brothel in a derelict neighborhood a dozen blocks from Chapultepec. Díaz had discovered the place the year before and he and Edward would two or three times a month slip away from the bodyguards and go there for a few hours of fun. They did not go there to fuck the whores but only to drink and dance with them. Like Díaz, the madam and most of her girls were from the state of Oaxaca, and the music and dances of that house were those of his boyhood. Dances that Edward himself had learned back when he first met Colonel Díaz in Oaxaca during the war against the French. They always went to Lagrimas after dark and always walked there rather than rode because it was a district of dangerous reputation and Díaz always hoped to be accosted by robbers. He had often complained to Edward that the worst thing about being president was the lack of action. He missed the action of his army days. They had run into thugs only once. Five of them suddenly blocking the sidewalk and showing their teeth in the light of a streetlamp, pleased by the easy pickings of two graying men with gold-hilt canes and fine clothes that bespoke fat purses. Young toughs so ignorant of the world outside themselves that even in full daylight they would not have recognized the president of their country. They produced knives and demanded money. Díaz laughed and ignored the pistol holstered under his coat and drew his cane sword. Edward too. In less than half a minute three rateros were down and the other two fled bloodied. Díaz examined the fallen ones and determined that two were not mortally wounded but advised the third to make his peace with God as quickly as he could. When they would pass by here again on their way back from Lagrimas long after midnight, only the dead one would still be there, rolled into the gutter and absent his shoes. The fight so invigorated Díaz that he danced that night with even greater gusto than usual and till a later hour. He drank with keener pleasure
and sang in louder voice and tipped the girls with a freer hand. And as always in that dingy malodorous cathouse called The Tears of Our Mothers he and Edward danced and danced with every girl in the place. Danced as if they were yet young men who would never die or even ever grow old.

I say let's, said Edward.

A
month after John Roger's death, Javier Tomás Wolfe y Blanco Méndez was born to Bruno and Felicia. At the insistence of Vicki Clara they had brought a doctor from Veracruz to make the delivery. Old Josefina waited in the kitchen, ready to be of assistance, but although the birth was difficult no one thought to summon her. Bruno and Felicia were delighted by Javier Tomás but sick at heart when the doctor told them they could not have more children. It wasn't that Felicia could no longer conceive—how much better, the doctor said, if that were the case—but that she had an irregularity in her womb. Another pregnancy would place her at grave risk, regardless of her youth. Abstinence was the only sure protection, but the doctor was a cosmopolitan young Creole who shared their lack of enthusiasm for that solution and knew as well as they there would be times it could not hold. With a casual frankness—We are sophisticated adults, are we not?—and with Bruno blushing no less than Felicia even as they smiled, the doctor discussed various ways other than intercourse by which they might pleasure each other. And for the inevitable occasions when coitus was simply not to be denied, he informed them of the latest English condoms, in his opinion the finest in the world. He would send them a supply from Veracruz. He warned, however, that although condoms were quite effective, they were known to fail, and he recommended the additional safeguard of withdrawal. A less satisfying climax, to be sure, he said, but a much safer one. I cannot stress strongly enough the importance of safety in this regard. The passions are pleasurable but must never be permitted to overrule reason.

Bruno wrote to Sófi and María Palomina with the good news of the baby's arrival but did not tell them of the doctor's warning, only of his pronouncement that they could not have more children and of their sadness about it, for they had wanted
to have many of them. Sófi wrote back that they should consider themselves lucky to have even one child, and a healthy son, at that. There was no need to remind him of her own sad history with husbands and children. Bruno had told Felicia about it, and Sófi's letter was of great help to them in shunning self-pity.

Javier Tomás was baptized at three months. His godparents were John Samuel and Victoria Clara. The celebration party in the compound plaza produced the first loud gaiety heard at Buenaventura since John Roger's death. The fiesta dispelled the gloom of the last five months and the hacienda began to revive.

The baby was ten months old when Bruno and Felicia took him to Mexico City so his Grandmother María and Aunt Sófi could meet him—and at last meet Felicia Flor too. The two women doted on Javier Tomás and lavished Felicia with affection. It was Bruno's first return to the capital since moving to Buenaventura, and the weeklong visit was a happy one for them all. His mother and sister several times told him he was luckier than he deserved, and he each time smiled back at them and said he knew it. Just before they left for the train to return to Buenaventura, Bruno said his wife had something to tell them, and Felicia announced she was three months pregnant. They had deliberately saved this news for a goodbye present. María Palomina and Sófi whooped and hugged Felicia yet again and told her over and over to be careful. Sófi shook a finger in Bruno's face and said, You
see
? What do doctors know?

It had happened on the night of her brother Rogelio's wedding party. The evening of dancing and drinking had so heated their blood that when they got home they did not even get all their clothes off before they were at each other, her skirts gathered at her breasts and his trousers bunched atop the boot yet on one foot. It was the only time they did it without a prophylactic since the doctor's warning. They afterward lay in close embrace and made effusive apologies to each other for their lack of caution. They agreed that a single instance was not a great risk but also agreed they would not take another such gamble. While alarmed by their rashness they were stirred by their abandon, by their own wild crave for each other. They joked about crossing the high wire without a net. Then two months passed without her menses and they knew.

The young doctor confirmed the consequence of their lapse. He told them that of their two choices abortion presented the lesser danger. Not to the baby it doesn't, Felicia said, and began to cry. Bruno and the doctor exchanged glum looks. The doctor then said that he was sometimes not so assured in his opinions as he might seem. That some of his prognoses had proved wrong. That it would not astound him if everything went well. For the next five months and sixteen days Felicia Flor told Bruno daily she believed everything would be fine, that she felt strong, that she knew, just knew, she and the baby would both fare well. Bruno each time said yes, yes, of course, he felt sure of it. And for much of every night lay in a sleepless dread.

On the last night in October, Felicia went into labor and five hours later their second son—whom they had already decided to name Joaquín Félix—was born dead. And twenty minutes afterward Felicia Flor too was dead. When Bruno learned the baby had strangled on the umbilical, he had a momentary vision of the infant hanging from a gallows. Sentenced to death by his father's brute lust. As was his mother.

Sofía Reina and María Palomina were stricken by the news. Only three months after completion of a year's mourning for John Roger they again dressed in black. Six weeks later little Javier Tomás contracted an intestinal illness, then seemed to be improving, then took an abrupt turn and died. And Sófi and María began the mourning period all over again.

It was not until some months after Javier's death, when he at last went to visit his mother and sister—who were shocked by his skeletal aspect—that Bruno Tomás told Sófi about the doctor's caveat. It was late and he'd had much to drink. Amos Bentley had said good night and left for home and María Palomina had retired to bed. In a voice so low Sófi had to lean forward to make out what he was saying, he told of the doctor's dire prediction and of the stupid chance he had taken for no reason but sexual urgency. I was supposed to protect her, he said, but I couldn't protect her from my own stupid cock.

And Sófi thought, I knew it. I
knew
it.

She went over and sat beside him on the sofa and held him close and said that what happened was not his fault, nor Felicia's, nor anyone's. Things sometimes just happened and were nobody's fault. She knew he did not believe her but she knew too she was right. How, after all, could he be at fault for a wild curse in his blood? A curse like a ready noose around the neck of every Wolfe.

O
n a cold Sunday afternoon a few weeks after Sófi and her mother had once again put away their mourning clothes, the lower-floor maid announced that a neatly groomed young gentleman who gave his name as Luis Charón Little Wolfe y Blanco was at the front gate and wished to see them. There followed joyous introductions between Luis Charón and his grandmother and aunt, who said he must join them for dinner. Luis grinned and said his timing had worked out as he'd hoped. He was a lean young man just turned twenty-one, poised and well-mannered, jet-haired, with eyes so dark blue they were nearly violet. His mustache was cropped in the military mode made popular by President Díaz.

Amos Bentley was present, as he always was for Sunday dinner, and was very pleased to meet the young officer. Luis had at this time been in the Rurales for more than a year. He had been promoted to captain on his reassignment from the army to the Rurales' Eighth Corps at Aguascalientes, where he'd been an adjutant to the corps commander. Now he was in command of his own company in the Fifth Corps—the youngest commander in the Guardia—at the outskirt of the capital. He cut an urbane figure in his pinstriped suit. The Guardia uniform was strictly for duty, and the only time Sófi and María Palomina would ever see him in it was in parades when he and his comrades passed by on their prancing horses.