Country of the Bad Wolfes (78 page)

“That it is,” Watson said. “You fellas got the biggest bunch of em in the county.” His mien was commiserative. “Too bad there aint much you can do with the things. No good for lumber. Makes a poor firewood, so smoky. It's a job just to make your way through them palms, what with hardwoods and shrub all mixed in with them. I tell you, boys, there's probly places in there nobody's ever set foot. Me, I don't go tracking around in any such jungle, not if I got a choice. Give me streets and sidewalks.”

After lunch they drove eastward along the creek until by Watson's estimate they were near the corner of the property, and he again found the spot with no difficulty. They repeated the process for staking out the property line—and Watson won the bet with himself that it would be as free of tree obstruction as the west line.

As they headed back to Brownsville the sun was more than halfway down the sky and reddening. Watson looked tired but satisfied with his day's work. Marina dozed in her seat, the brim of her hat pulled low over her face. The twins kept looking back down the road and grinning at each other. Plan forming.

T
hey were eager to begin exploring the palm groves along the river, an area Watson had estimated at about six square miles. As they had expected, Marina did not want to go with them and slog around in the mud and live in a tent the whole while. But they did not want to leave her alone in the Miller Hotel. Even in the middle of the night it was as loud as they had been warned, and it housed a number of rough men. The twins would not put her at risk of being accosted or harassed in their absence. They spent the next days looking for a house to rent but there were few available and they had to settle for an old weathered clapboard on Adams Street and near the Market Square. Its outhouse was falling apart and the roof needed repair and the house demanded a thorough cleansing, but Marina agreed it was better than the Miller.

Over the next two weeks, while Marina gave the interior of the house a good scrubbing, the twins repaired the privy and reshingled the roof and replaced the broken windows. By then they were into the new year. They had strolled down Elizabeth Street on New Year's Eve, beholding the arrival of 1893 in a din of fireworks and gunshots and high howlings in the streets. Though smaller than Tampico, Brownsville was rougher, and not only on festive occasions. In their first weeks in town they would witness a number of fistfights in the street, a group of raucous spectators always looking on until police arrived. Sometimes knives came into play and someone got badly cut. There were nights they heard gunfire near or far. It was an uncommon week the newspaper lacked a report of at least one killing.

They took Marina around town to buy household items and cookware. A market stood handy at the street corner. They bought a wagon and a brace of mules, and while she was arranging the house to her satisfaction they drove to Point
Isabel to check on the
Marina Dos
. They retrieved the Colts and shotgun and the rest of their clothes and the document case, locked up the sloop and drove back to Brownsville. That night there was a heavy rainstorm and in the morning they discovered the roof still had a leak and they had to reset a few shingles. Water had run down a closet wall and got into the document case, but the contents were sealed in oilpaper packets and undamaged. Except for one packet with a tear through which the water had seeped and smeared unrecognizable the ink portrait their father had labeled as that of Roger Blake Wolfe.

They went to a barbershop where Blake had his beard shaved off and they had their hair shorn in the same short style. The customers waiting their turn were as awed as the barber by the brothers' transformation into an indistinguishable pair but for one's lower face being paler than the other's, and three days of outdoor work would remove that difference so that even Marina would again find it hard to tell who was who from more than a few feet away. The twins told her there was no need to hide their twinship on this side of the border. They had expected some sardonic remark about reverting to the dullness of twins in her bed, but she made none. She seemed out of sorts and avoided their eyes. They told each other she was just uneasy about their going away for a while, that she wasn't yet very comfortable in this borderland world.

They bought camp bedding and tools and supplies. She was not going with them so they saw no need of a tent. Early one morning they gave her a sum of money and one of the derringers, though she protested she did not want it. Then kissed her each in turn and said they would be back in two weeks or so.

They explored from west to east and in a week arrived at the largest of the property's palm groves. There were yet a few more groves to the east of this one, but from out on the road they could see that those palms were neither as tall nor as dense as these. They left the wagon and the tethered mules in a high growth of scrub in the chaparral and out of view of anyone who might pass by on the road—a remote likelihood, as in all the time they had been there they had not see a single wagon or horseman pass in either direction. There was a stream where the mules could water and grass for them to feed on. They waited till the sun was well up before they entered the grove, machetes in hand and their bedrolls and rucksacks slung on their shoulders. This was the thickest grove yet and some of the palms looked to be forty feet high. They had to hack their way through much of the underbrush and were often in mud to the shins. Past midday they were in a segment of grove so dense it was in twilight, and after another few hours they began to suspect they might be going in a circle. Then they saw light through the trees ahead and as they drew closer to it they felt a slight incline under their feet. They came out of the palms and into in a large sunlit clearing—a rectangular expanse about seventy yards west to east and
forty yards north to south, the south side abutting the gray-green river, which they could see through gaps in the reeds and cane.

The clearing was high and flat and dry, some three feet above the surrounding ground. It contained moss-hung oaks and cottonwoods, patches of lush grass to their knees. They thought somebody must have axed out the clearing and raised it with a mix of rock and river dredge, a formidable undertaking. But they found not a single stump nor any other sign that the clearing was man-made or even that anyone else had ever been there. The only explanation they could think for the clearing was geographical quirk. Such high and solid ground should not naturally exist in a marshy palm grove, yet here it was. The river at this point was a hundred feet across and they saw that on the Mexican side there was no similar high ground or clearing.

They built a campfire and caught small frogs to use for bait on handlines and in quick order landed four fat catfish, which they filleted and peppered and fried in a pan with lard. They divided the fillets into two tin plates and sat beside the fire with the map spread between them and studied it as they ate. They figured where the clearing was and penciled it on the map and reckoned a distance of five miles from there to the Point Isabel road—though they would have to build a wagon bridge over Nameless Creek—then about twelve miles to Point Isabel itself.

They knew the unexplored groves to the east could not provide such privacy as this, nor, they were certain, a clearing of such good ground. This was the place for a house. A big one on heavy pilings ten feet aboveground, high enough to protect it from any flood lesser than Noah's. With a verandah. It was no Ensenada de Isabel, of course, but it was on a river and the gulf was but eight miles downstream and it was far from town and its people and its noise and afflictions. The problem was Marina. She had made it plain she didn't like it out here.

They talked of her recent remoteness and wondered if she might never adapt to this region. What if she hated it even more than they knew? She dearly loved Tampico and would have been very happy had they stayed there forever. Would she prefer to return there, even without them? They had known her all their life and had lived in her company for so long now that they did not like to think of being without her. But they would not have her think she was obliged to remain with them, and they of course would never alter their plans to suit somebody else, not even her. They decided they would tell her quite frankly what she should already know—that she was free to choose her own course. If she wanted to live in town, fine. Go back to Tampico? Very well. To Buenaventura? All right. They would fund her. Whatever her choice.

Vapor rose off the river as the night closed around them. The air heavy with the odors of dank earth and muddy water. They unrolled their bedding next to the fire and settled themselves and talked a while longer. And determined, among other things, to name the clearing Wolfe Landing and their entire property Tierra Wolfe.

As expected, she said she would not live out there, no matter how nice the house they would build. I don't like it there, she said. They said they understood, and gave her their prepared talk. Told her she could live in town, if that's what she wanted, but if she did not want to live in Brownsville, well, she could go wherever she chose. They would always see to it she had plenty of money to live on.

Her eyes brimmed. I will not go live somewhere else, she said. I do not want to go away from you. They smiled. They had been almost sure she would say that. That she loved them too much to go away. All right then, Blake said, so you'll live here and—

Besides, she said, a child should not be apart from his father.

They stared at her.

She said she had suspected her condition for a few weeks before they left Tampico but hadn't said anything because she wasn't sure. Now she was sure. Her great fear, she said, was that they would think it had been deliberate. It was not. She would never do that. She was anyway thirty-six years old, for the love of God. Too old for this. She had never wanted to be a mother. It is hard enough tending to you two children, she said with a weak smile. She had always taken precaution, always, but they knew as well as she that there could never be absolute certainty. Now that it happened, she said, the wonder was that it had not happened long before.

They stared at her. I know the question in your mind, she said.

Well? Blake Cortéz said.

She looked from one to the other. How is it possible to know whose?

They nodded. They had another question in mind too but they would not ask it. If she had said she wanted to go to a curandera to resolve the matter, they would have said all right, and would have looked somber in saying it—and would secretly have been relieved. But she did not suggest a curandera, as they knew she would not, even if she really did think she was too old for motherhood.

I have to take the laundry from the clothesline, she said. Before it rains. They watched her go out the back door. The day was nearly cloudless.

“After all these years,” Blake said. “I never expected this. I sure as hell never wanted
this
.”

“Hell no, you never wanted it. Neither did I. Neither did
she
. But here it is.”

“I know, I know. So what do we do?”

“ I don't know. Hell.”

They stood silent a long few seconds.

“Aint but one thing
to
do. Unless you got another idea,” James said.

Blake shook his head. “Dammit.”

“Yeah.”

“Well hell, then, let's get it over with.”

James Sebastian took a coin from his pocket. “Call,” he said, and thumbed it spinning in the air. Blake called tails. James caught the coin and slapped it to the back
of his other hand and uncovered it for Blake to see. Tails. Blake looked at it without expression. Then looked at his brother. James nodded and sighed.