Country of the Bad Wolfes (38 page)

“Uncle James to you.”

“I aint calling anybody uncle writes a letter like this to Father.”

“Reckon he ever did come for Momma's bones?”

“Hell no. I think he was just blowing hard.”

“Me too. If he'd come here to dig her up, Father would've stopped him cold.”

“Hell yes, he would've. Would've done him like he did that soldier.”

“Or like he did what's-his-name, the one Josefina said—”

“Montenegro.”

“Yeah, that son of a bitch.”

They opened the leatherbound book and saw what it was and Blake pulled up a chair so he could read along with James Sebastian. Its earliest parts had been inscribed at Dartmouth College and dealt mostly with fellow students and various academic notions. These entries meant little to them and they turned the pages swiftly, slowing only at their father's intermittent mentions of his mother and her father, Thomas Parham. They were interested most of all in his references to his brother, whose name they learned was Sammy and whom their father wished himself more like. “Our Physiognomies the same but Sammy's Spirit so much the more daring,” their father wrote. They read of his desire to become a gentleman and of his fear that his classmates might learn the truth of his father's brigandage and about his brother's mysterious disappearance from Portsmouth.

“So he doesn't know what became of old Sammy,” Blake said. “Or didn't when he wrote this, anyhow.”

“Told Momma he was lost at sea.”

“Maybe that's what he found out later, after he wrote this.”

“Or maybe it was just another lie.”

“Why lie about his brother? Think maybe he was a murderer too?”

“Who knows? But seeing how scared he was of his school chums finding out about his pa the pirate, I'll wager he never told Momma about Sammy either.”

“That counts as a lie too. Lie of omission.”

“Wooo, you're a hard judge, mister,” James said.

“Hey, son, the law's the law, I always say. Law of the books, law of the truth.”

There was an entry about his upcoming graduation and his disappointment at failing to qualify for valedictorian, and then the journal jumped forward by several months to a nearly illegible passage about his marriage engagement to “Lizzie”—his erratic penmanship occasioned perhaps by euphoria. Then a still greater leap in time to his first notation in Mexico, conveying his happiness over Lizzie's miraculous pregnancy. The next segment was five pages long and absorbed them above all others, detailing as it did what their father had learned about Roger Blake Wolfe from the Veracruz archives and the London genealogist.

“Well now,” Blake said, “how about
this
?”

“Now we know. Firing squad.”

“Girls fighting over him even when he's about to get shot.”

“Buying drinks for his pals. Puffing a cigar. The man had aplomb, no question about it.”

“Aplomb aplenty. How come shot, though? They always hanged pirates.”

“Most likely offered the judge a little something to make it the muskets.”

“You reckon? Hell of a note, having to pay to be shot.”

“Beats hanging even for free.”

“That's a point. They sure must've had it in for him to cut off his head after and stick it on a goddamn pike. Made his daddy and momma mighty mad about something too, to disown him like they did.”

“Well, seeing as Grandpappy Roger was a pirate and his daddy was a navy man, I'd say they probably had different ways of looking at things.”

“Roger's sure a right name for him, aint it? Man was a Jolly Roger in every way.”

James Sebastian grinned. “A Jolly Roger and a Big Bad Wolfe.”

“For damn sure! The Big Bad Wolfe of the family.”

“The first one of it, anyhow.” They muffled their laughter with their hands.

There was an entry about his great happiness over the birth of John Samuel, but the entries of the next five years consumed less than two pages, so terse and widely spaced in time were they. There were various mentions of Charley Patterson, whose mode of speech they liked so much, and references to “the company,” and
to people the twins had never heard of. Then came a lengthy segment about the house their father was building on the beach, and they learned of the cove he named Ensenada de Isabel and of their parents' great love of the place. There were a few pages of technical details pertaining to the construction of the house, then a passage about the fishing sloop he'd bought and named
Lizzie
and sailed from Veracruz to the cove with the skilled crewing of their mother. Interspersed through this section were brief references to John Samuel, including one about the only time he had been to the cove, when he was still a small boy, and his propensity to seasickness that had disappointed their father. The twins were tickled to learn their parents were such expert hands with a sailboat—and not in the least surprised their brother was no sailor at all.

The final inscription was dated a few days before their birth. It registered John Roger's great relief in Lizzie's easy term and their eager anticipation of another child.

The rest of the journal was blank.

“Not a word about Momma dying,” Blake said. “Or about us. Or the other two.”

“Well, he sure as hell wasn't gonna write down anything about
them
.”

“I can understand that. But why not us?”

“Maybe we're . . . what's that word for something that's real hard to . . . ineffable.”

Blake Cortéz grinned. “Yeah, I bet that's exactly why.”

 

 

 

 

 

A
lthough John Roger and Elizabeth Anne had always wanted to visit Mexico City, they had for one reason or another still not done so when she died, and after that he no longer had any desire to go there. In all his years in Mexico he had made no trip farther than to Las Nevadas and a few other outlying haciendas of Veracruz state. And then in the fall of 1884, his thirtieth year in the country, he received an invitation from Amos Bentley—the invitation coming by wire directly to Buenaventura's newly installed telegraph station—to be his guest at a friend's party in honor of Porfirio Díaz, who two months earlier had been elected president for the second time. During the four years that Díaz's friend Manuel González had been president, Díaz's political organization had grown larger still, and his return to the presidency had been a foregone conclusion.

John Roger and Amos had been friends for twenty-five years, but they had seen less of each other ever since Amos got married and went to live with his wife at Las Nevadas. Although they neither one had much opportunity to make the long trip to visit the other at home, only managing to do so on a few special occasions—as when John Roger went to Las Nevadas to become godfather to Amos's first daughter—they always had dinner together whenever they were both in Veracruz. As Amos assumed greater responsibilities for the Nevada Mining Company, however, even their Veracruz reunions became more infrequent. During the early years of his marriage, while serving as Don Victor's chief accountant, Amos had taught himself everything about gold and silver, about their modes of mining and their practical as well as aesthetic uses, and he had acquired an exceptional faculty for assaying the worth of either metal in every form from ore to jewelry. In recognition of his talents—and because of the great advantages of his Yankee nationality and native
facility with English—Don Victor had made him his principal agent with British and American buyers. The job obliged Amos to spend most of his time in Mexico City, and because his wife Teresa detested the capital and always chose to remain at home with their three daughters, he had in recent years seen less and less of his family. The simple and secret truth, as Amos would confide to John Roger, was that he no longer missed them very much. He loved his work and could imagine no place on earth as exciting as Mexico City. He had at first lived in a fine hotel, but before he had been there a year Don Victor deeded him a house in an exclusive neighborhood. A gift for his excellent service, Don Victor said, though, as Amos suspected, it was also the don's secret wish that the opulent residence would induce Teresa to join her husband in the capital. Don Victor's desire for a grandson had been thwarted by the birth of each granddaughter and his hope was that Amos and Teresa might again share a bed before she was fallowed by age. He could have reassigned Amos to Las Nevadas, of course, but his great value to the company was in Mexico City, and business, after all, was business. But Teresa remained adamant in her refusal to live in the capital, and that was fine with Amos. The mansion had a full staff of servants and he was ministered to with even greater solicitude than at the hotel. He had many times since invited John Roger to come for a visit, but John had always begged off with one or another plausible excuse. At the time of Amos's most recent invitation, they had not seen each other for nearly three years.

In his invitation Amos wrote, “You are long past due, old friend, to visit the Paris of the Western Hemisphere. The city is at its loveliest in November, and I can assure you an introduction to el presidente. I think you should find him most interesting.”

Since the death of Elizabeth Anne, John Roger had ceased to attend parties. He took no pleasure in large company or loud gaiety. But in addition to wanting to see Amos after such a long time, he found the prospect of meeting Porfirio Díaz irresistible. He sent Amos a wire accepting the invitation and apprising him of his train's scheduled arrival in the capital.

John Samuel accompanied him on the hacienda train to the Veracruz depot. The twins, who had now been living at the cove for more than five months, had only two weeks before made their monthly visit to the compound. When John Roger told them of his upcoming trip they said it was about time he had a look at Mexico City. They themselves had never been to the capital or ever expressed the least interest in going there. The cove was their domain, and their contentment with it was ever evident in their obvious eagerness to get back to it. He did not like to admit it to himself, but it nettled him that, except for the family suppers, the twins spent most of their visits in the company of the crone and Marina Colmillo. Face it, he thought, you're jealous of the kitchen help. He had of course not asked the twins to accompany him to the train station and they had of course not offered to. Still, on arriving in Veracruz, he looked all about the station as he headed for the boarding
platform. Then saw in John Samuel's annoyed aspect that he knew whom he sought.