Country of the Bad Wolfes (31 page)

For more than four years after the loss of Elizabeth Anne he did not make love to another woman. But there were occasional late nights when a sudden remembrance of her without clothes—in her bath, swimming in the cove, lying beside him in the hammock of the moonlit verandah—would incite him to a frenzied masturbation that each time climaxed with him in tears. The more he recalled their pleasure in each other's flesh, the more he wanted to yowl with the loneliness of his loss, his great aching yearn for the feel of her, the touch. That was when he began taking Alma Rodríguez to his bed. And though the trysts with Alma mauled his heart with the knowledge that the flesh he was relishing was not Lizzie's and never never never again would be, he could not stop himself from returning to it again and again.

Then Alma got pregnant and he married her off. And then, fool that he was—selfish, stupid, self-deceptive fool who even after his experience with Alma would not yet face the truth that he was as much in thrall to the desires of his own damnable flesh as to the memory of his beloved—he bedded Katrina and she conceived too. And this time his selfish indulgence not only produced another bastard but provoked a man to try to kill him, and so made of the mother a widow
as well. In consequence of which there followed another four years of maddening celibacy before his arrival at El Castillo de las Princesas.

His recounts to Margarita followed no order of chronology. Now he might speak of a thing that happened last month, now of a thing that took place when he was ten years old. But no matter the sequence, he told her many things he had never told anyone else. Told of his boyhood in Portsmouth and of his mother and his grandfather Thomas. Told her even of his pirate father. He told of his own twin brother Samuel Thomas and of the last time he'd seen him and of his mysterious disappearance and how the realization that Sammy was dead had almost killed him too. And told how—fool that he was, fool!—he thought he'd never again know such heartache as the loss of his brother. He told of his college days among an elite society of well-bred classmates and of keeping secret from them the truth about his father. When he said he had kept that truth even from Elizabeth Anne because he was afraid to jeopardize her love, Margarita sighed and her gaze on him was one of great pity.

She asked to know how he'd lost his arm and he told her, though he could no longer vouch for the truth of the particulars. It seemed to him he was describing something he had not done but dreamt. His memory of it was mostly an amalgam of blurry images and roiled sensations, of heavy sabers and ringing of steel, an antic play of torchlight shadows, a hardness of cobblestones under knees and hand. The indescribable feel of driving a sword blade through a man.

He told her of Richard Davison. Of Amos Bentley, that resourceful young fellow who had married into a rich and politically powerful Mexican family. Of his dear friend Charley Patterson, who had continued to make visits to the hacienda for years after Elizabeth Anne's death. But Charley had known her so well that John Roger could not bear to talk to him about her, so they conversed mostly about the national upheavals of the day. They spoke often of Porfirio Díaz, who had become an avowed anti-reelectionist, and the little Texan had predicted that if Díaz were to lose to Juárez again in the next election he would rebel against him—which was what happened. John Roger had then accepted Charley's wager of one dollar that Díaz's rebellion would fail. And lost the bet when the federals scattered the rebel forces and Díaz went into hiding, no one was sure where, though some said he'd gone all the way to Texas. When Juárez dropped dead of a heart attack—a death the more shocking to most Mexicans in that the attack on his heart did not involve a bullet or a knife—neither John Roger nor Charley had known what historical turn to bet on next until Juárez's successor, Sebastián Lerdo, offered amnesty to all rebels who would lay down their arms, and Patterson bet another dollar that Díaz would accept it. John Roger took the bet and lost again. Díaz's public proclamation of his retirement from politics in order to devote himself to growing sugar cane on the gulf
coast produced no bet between them because neither one believed him. They were sure Díaz was planning another revolt and were proved right when he pronounced against Lerdo in the spring. This time Díaz was triumphant. He took Mexico City in November of 1876 and only a few weeks later was duly elected president. One of his first official acts was to push through a constitutional amendment to prohibit reelection, and Patterson bet John Roger that Don Porfirio would in some way or other circumvent his own law when the time came. But Charley died during Díaz's second year in office and so never knew the outcome of their bet. He had last been seen alive as he departed a malecón café where he had eaten a late supper and had a lot to drink. In the morning his body was floating facedown in the harbor. He bore no mark of violence and still had money in his pockets. It was assumed he had fallen in by accident and drowned.

He was old and tired and I suppose a lot lonelier than anybody knew, John Roger said. Except for Lizzie and my brother he was about the best friend I ever had. I wish I had let him know it.

My mother used to say that if wishes were horses no one would walk. It was the first reference Margarita had made in any way to her own past, a subject he had a few times before tried to broach and which she always artfully sidestepped. He asked what else her mother used to say.

She smiled at this attempt to steer the conversation toward herself. I think maybe your friend Charley knew how much you cared for him, she said. I bet he was laughing up in heaven because he did not have to pay the dollar.

John Roger said he wasn't so sure about the heaven part but she was probably right about the laughing. At the end of his four-year term Díaz had honored his own law against reelection and did not run again. But everyone knew that the newly elected president, Manuel González, was an old friend of Díaz's and would be his puppet until the next election, when Díaz would again be eligible to run.

They had known each other four months when Margarita asked to know more about his sons, to whom he had made only cursory mention in earlier visits. So he told of 26-year-old John Samuel, who had proved to have John Roger's own gift for numbers and had been helping him with the hacienda's bookwork since he was sixteen. He was a decorous man, John Samuel, with a keen mind for business, but he tended to keep his own counsel and rarely expressed his opinion on any matter that did not bear upon hacienda operations. John Roger sometimes wondered if even John Samuel's wife knew him very well. Next week would be the third anniversary of his marriage to Victoria Clara Márquez, whose family raised the finest horses in the neighboring state of Hidalgo. They'd met when John Samuel went to her family's hacienda near Pachuca to buy a Justin Morgan colt from her father, a fine man named Sotero Márquez. John Samuel had always been somewhat
shy around women, but sweet-natured Vicki Clara was not only fluent in English and his intellectual equal, having been schooled by Jesuits, but she loved horses too, and so they had a shared enthusiasm. Sotero Márquez had been as pleased by the match as John Roger.

Did John Samuel and Vicki Clara have children?

They did. Juan Sotero would be two in June and Roger Samuel was now eight months old.

Margarita smiled wider. “Pues, ya eres un abuelo, viejo.”

A sad truth, John Roger said. A grandfather. Me. How is that possible?

“Háblame de los gemelos,” she said. You speak so little of them.

He said he hardly knew the twins. It was a terrible admission for a man to make about his sons. To make it worse, he couldn't even tell which was which. They were eleven years old and he still couldn't do it. All twins as they grow older became distinct from each other to some degree, but not these two. Not yet, anyway. They were mirror images. Still, a father should be able to recognize his sons, for Christ's sake, no matter how alike they look.

Nobody
can tell them apart?

Well, maybe the kitchen maids. A crone named Josefina and her helper, Marina. But then nobody else had spent as much time with them. He had thought about asking them how they knew one from the other, but that would be absurd. Shameful. Asking the kitchen help how to tell his sons apart.

Margarita regarded him without expression.

I know Blake's nickname is Blackie, I've overheard James call him that. The crone and Marina have picked it up. Can't say I much care for it. Too much of the thug in it. In English, anyway.

“Blackie. A mi me gusta ese nombre.” Did Blackie have a nickname for James?

Jake. But lately it's more often Jeck. I suppose because it's how the maids say it.

“Jake,” Margarita said, pronouncing it with care. She liked that name too. Did they look like their big brother?

No. Johnny had his mother's green eyes and the same reddish hair, but they—

Their hair is black and their eyes are brown with little dots of yellow, she said. Am I correct?

Well, my hair's not that black anymore, and judging by what I see in the mirror my eyes have picked up a lot of red.

I bet they look just like you.

I think they look more like my brother.

Margarita laughed. Don Juan the twin has made a joke! “Qué milagro!” He smiled and bowed his head in acknowledgement.

Were they close, the twins and their older brother?

John Roger sighed. Not in the least. And it had always bothered him that they weren't. He supposed it wasn't really so strange. As twins, they would naturally be
much closer to each other than to him, or to anyone else, for that matter. Plus there was a huge difference of fifteen years between them. Still, there seemed to be more to it than that, he wished he knew what. For some reason they just didn't like each other.

But they are close to each other, the twins, no?

That, he said, was an understatement. He had thought he knew all there was to know about twinhood and had believed no brothers on earth could be closer than he and Sammy had been. But these two! They had a communion that was . . . what to call it? Mystical would not be an exaggeration.

Margarita grinned.
Really
? So strange as that? Tell me, are they happy, these mystical twins?

They seemed to be. They liked to laugh. That was another difference between them and Johnny. He couldn't remember John Samuel ever laughing except for his first ride on a horse. The thing about the twins' laughter, though, is that it usually seemed to come from some private joke between them, some joke about you. They were like that about everything. They rarely spoke in anyone else's presence, even to each other. You might see them talking at a distance, but when you closed to within earshot they became clams. They were strange, there was no other word for it. They no sooner learned to walk than they were exploring every foot of the house and the patios and gardens. By the age of six they were climbing trees with the nimbleness of monkeys, they could scale rock walls like lizards. They were eight when they learned how to vanish within the house and not be found by the entire staff's most thorough search. Nobody ever saw them come out of hiding, either, so you never knew where they'd been. It spooked the hell out of the maids when they disappeared like that—except for the crone and Marina, who only got irked that the twins knew the house better than they did, who had lived in it so many years more. After each such vanishing act, John Roger would reproach them for upsetting the household and demand to know where they had been, but they would only shrug, their eyes full of amusement. He would lock them in their room as punishment. Then hear them in there, wrestling, laughing, reading aloud to each other.