Country of the Bad Wolfes (71 page)

At his first bite of Sófi's chicken enchiladas Luis Charón pronounced the dish every bit as savory as his mother had alleged. The women invited him to be their dinner guest every Sunday but the best he would be able to do was every six weeks or so. Not only did he alternate Sunday command of the detachment with another captain but there would be times when his company would be out on a mission. And too there was a young lady back at Patria Chica whom he went to see
whenever he could. This last bit of information intrigued the women. Was marriage a possibility, they wanted to know. If she will have me, he said, and everyone laughed.

As they would on his every visit thereafter, the women told Luis Charón stories of the family and of his mother's girlhood, giving many of the episodes about Gloria a comic aspect they had lacked at the time. They would prevail on Amos to relate some of their favorite anecdotes of his days as an assistant at the American consulate in Veracruz and of his experiences with the Trade Wind Company before the firm's demise in the American Civil War. In turn Luis Charón told of his childhood on Patria Chica and of his parents. He depicted his American father Louis as a hardworking man who enjoyed his life as manager of the hacienda—and much enjoyed being addressed as “patrón” in his own father's long absences—though he much preferred being in the saddle and working with the ranch hands to dealing with the estate paperwork. To his mother Gloria he attributed an affectionate nature that Sófi and María Palomina could scarcely relate to the querulous girl of their memory. He told them of his uncles, Zachary Jackson and John Louis, now young men of nineteen and seventeen and being groomed by his father, Louis—their older brother—to manage the hacienda on his retirement. It amused the women that Luis Charón's uncles were younger than himself, one of them by nearly three years. He told too of his Grandfather Edward, though he was sorry to admit he did not know him very well. In boyhood he had seen his grandfather only on the man's brief visits from Mexico City, and even though he was now posted so near to him, their respective duties were such that it was unlikely they would ever see each other in the capital.

He would volunteer little about his life in the Guardia Rural and always responded to the women's questions about it with general details of camp routines and training and amusing anecdotes about some of his comrades. But whenever he and Amos were alone while the women were busy in the kitchen, Luis would tell him in low-voiced enthusiasm of his company's most recent skirmishes with bandit gangs and of executing captives on the spot. Amos an avid audience.

Because Patria Chica was a train ride of only a few hours from his post at the northern outskirt of Mexico City, Luis Charón was able to make frequent, if brief, visits home. The main reason for these trips was Rosario Monte DeLeón, daughter of the Creole foreman of the hacienda cattle ranch. Luis had known her since childhood, a soft-spoken girl who after accepting his proposal confessed she had been in love with him since she was six years old.

They were married in the summer of 1891 and their three children were born on Patria Chica. Eduardo Luis in winter of 1893, Sandra Rosario a year later, and on New Year's Day of 1895, Catalina Luisiana, blackhaired like the others but the only one with the blue eyes of their father and grandfather. Rosario bore all
three with ease, but after delivering Catalina she did not stop bleeding and died the next day. Luis Charón made no public show of grief save for a black armband. The upbringing of the children fell to their Grandmother Gloria and a trio of maids.

Catalina's middle name was meant to be Louisiana. Luis Charón had heard his father speak of the natural beauty of that place and both he and Rosario thought the name a pretty one and decided they would so name the next child if it was a girl. The church recorder, however, having never heard of Louisiana, assumed the name was a variant of “Luisa” and entered it as “Luisiana.” The misspelling appealed to Luis Charón and he left it that way.

The year after Rosario's death, twenty-four-year-old John Louis Little was introduced to seventeen-year-old Úrsula Filomena Bos at a quinceañera fiesta hosted by a mutual friend at an estate in San Luis Potosí. From the moment of their meeting they had eyes for none but each other. She had been educated at an academy in Monterrey and spoke English very well. Her parents were present and when she introduced him to them they saw at once that their only daughter was smitten as she not been before. They had one surviving son, Gaspar, but Úrsula had been their only girl and besides was the baby of the family—the jocoyote—and hence their favorite. They called her Sulita. Her father, Don Hector, owned a large hacienda, containing a cattle ranch, just south of Matamoros, and in addition owned a horse ranch a few miles west of town. He was a man without social pretense and had fretted to his wife that the men who aspired to woo young Úrsula were either too old for her or were spoiled brats who had not done a day of manual labor in their lives, a failing in Don Hector's view that more than offset their wealth and station. But he liked John Louis at once. So what if he was a gringo with red hair and green eyes? He had his mestizo mother's brown skin, and in most of Mexico that made him more Mexican than any Creole, even one of long lineage such as Don Hector himself. Besides, the young man had grown up in Mexico and spoke Spanish and had fine manners and was well educated and knew much about ranching and, thank God, had calluses on his hands. Úrsula's mother, Doña Martina, herself mestiza, also approved of him. The owner of the hacienda invited Úrsula to remain as his family's guest for as long as she wished, giving John Louis the opportunity to court her, and Don Hector granted his permission for her to do so, knowing she would be properly chaperoned.

Only four months later, John Louis and Úrsula Filomena were married at Patria Chica. Don Hector had no qualms about the speed of the courtship but wanted the couple to hold to tradition and be wed in the home of the bride, which would have been fine with John Louis, but Úrsula, who could be sweetly headstrong, insisted that she preferred to be married in her new home of Patria Chica. Her parents' mild annoyance at this breach was forgotten the moment they found that President Díaz was among the wedding guests. They were awed when
introduced to him. Úrsula had wanted to surprise them with the revelation that the president was a longtime friend of the Wolfe family. Don Porfirio did not stay long, however, not wanting to further detract attention from the newlyweds.

Edward Little was gracious toward Don Hector and Doña Martina but tended to reticence, and they found it difficult not to stare at his disfigured face. They met Luis Charón—an officer in the Guardia Rural!—and expressed condolences when informed he was a widower, then offered congratulations on learning he had three young children, ages one through three. They also made the acquaintance of Louis Welch Little, Don Eduardo's eldest son, and his wife Gloria. If Doña Martina had not discreetly directed his attention to it later in the evening, Don Hector would not have noticed that Gloria and Louis Welch rarely looked at each other and almost never at the same time, and that the few looks they did exchange were without evident affection. She tries not to show it, Doña Martina said, but she is very angry with him. Don Hector said Don Louis himself did not seem troubled. That is because he does not pay very good attention, Doña Martina said.

Úrsula's parents would return to Patria Chica in February of the following year to dote upon their newborn grandchild, Hector Louis Little Bos. Then visit again in January to cuddle their first granddaughter, Luisa Raquel. She was named in honor of Luis Charón and John Louis's mother, Raquel. Four months later, however, Don Hector and Doña Martina would be back yet again, this time to attend the baby girl's funeral after her death by a swift-acting sickness of the lungs.

In the summer of 1899 Luis Charón's children, motherless for four years, became orphans when his company engaged with bandits a few miles outside of Coyoacán and a bullet shattered his jaw and ricocheted up through his brain. His body was conveyed to Patria Chica for burial and the funeral was attended by several army generals and the highest officers of the Guardia Rural. Standing at the side of a stone-faced Edward Little, Porfirio Díaz wept as Louis Welch Little delivered the eulogy.

Louis and Gloria endured in their separate ways the sorrow of losing their only child. Gloria devoted herself to helping the maids with the grandchildren. Louis devoted himself to drink. He could afford the indulgence, having relinquished the management of the hacienda—with Edward Little's sanction—to his half-brothers, Zack Jack, now thirty years old and well-trained to the duties of a manager, and John Louis, a most capable segundo.

Edward Little would not remonstrate his eldest son about his drinking. Louis was a grown man and responsible for himself. But Edward did not know that Louis had also reverted to his former penchant for occasional dalliances. Louis told himself he was simply seeking solace against the pain of his son's death. A kind of solace unattainable from his wife, who could not help it that her body was almost fifty
years old and had lost all allure. They had years ago taken to separate bedrooms on the mutually accepted pretext that his snoring interfered with her sleep. In truth he no longer wanted even to lie beside her and she knew it—and she preferred to sleep alone than in the heartbreaking company of a husband who could no longer bear to touch her.

A fact Louis chose to ignore was that he had resumed his infidelities prior to the death of his son. Moreover, he believed himself a master of discretion, and for good measure always threatened the woman of the moment with severe punishment if she should say a word of their assignation to anyone. But although he had been an able patrón in his father's stead, Louis had never really understood the society of a hacienda and was ignorant of the impossibility of keeping such secrets within it.

B
y the fourth year of Amos and Sófi's acquaintance, it had become their custom, as soon as María Palomina retired for the night and left them alone in the parlor, to move from their separate chairs and sit together on the sofa and hold hands as they talked to a late hour before at last saying goodnight. One night he dared to kiss the inside of her wrist, an act that caught her by surprise and seemed so sensual—so long had it been since she'd had any intimate touch from a man—that her breath caught. He said he felt her pulse quicken in the vein under his lips. Don't, she said. You mustn't. We mustn't. But made no effort to withdraw her hand. It was another year more before he ventured to kiss her on the lips, to which she reacted by yielding to the kiss for a moment before drawing back and saying, This is not right. But did not stop him from kissing her again. And then one night kissed him in return. Another year passed before the first touch of their tongues left her breathless and wondering how she had managed for so long to do without such delectation. In time they were kissing as if seeking to remove each other's mouth, and by the end of still another year she had ceased pushing his hand away and left it to its playful explorations of her clothed breast. Not until the ninth year of this relationship of steamy restraint did he finally summon the courage to confess he had loved her since the day they met. She had of course known that for many years but she said he must not say such things. You have a wife, she said, you have children. It is terrible enough, what we do, without saying such a thing. He said he was only saying what was true and she should not prohibit him from saying it to her in their private moments. She hushed him with a kiss.