Country of the Bad Wolfes (89 page)

And the world spun ever faster.

Over time, the twins had gradually reduced their colonia circuit rides to twice a year, which sufficed to maintain order in them, though sometimes a colonia would send a plea for help to Jim Wells who'd get the word to them and they would at once ride out to attend to the matter. Now they didn't want to do it anymore. They liked being with their families at the beach and they liked taking part in the gun transactions at the Horseshoe, as they had begun doing.

They tried to give their badges back to Jim Wells but he refused to accept them. He said they would no longer be required to ride the circuit, he would have other constables assigned to it. But he wanted them to remain special constables with no specific duty other than to be his “confidantes,” as he called it, to be available whenever he should need to talk about somebody who was causing him a problem and refusing to be reasonable in settling it.

They said being his confidantes was the least they could do for him.

“Good,” Wells said. “So keep the badges. They're a mighty handy thing for confidantes to have.”

The profits from arms smuggling dwarfed what they earned from liquor. They had been smuggling guns for more than a year when they bought the last of the parcels extricated by Jim Wells from the welter of land-grant litigation and achieved their goal of owning all the land—minus the state right-of-way to the gulf—east of the city and between the river and Nameless Creek. An area of some fifty square miles, depending on the Rio Grande's unpredictable and ever-shifting meanders.
Shortly after that final deed came into their hands, they told Jim Wells they wanted one more thing.

“A
town
?” Jim Wells said. He grinned from one of them to the other. They were puffing cigars and sipping whiskey in his den and waiting to be called to Christmas Eve dinner with their families, after which Wells and his wife and children would attend the midnight mass at the Immaculate Conception Church, as they did every Christmas.

“Yessir,” Blake Cortéz said. “You always wanted to know what our big plan was. Well, that's it.”

The three had been talking of the state's intention to form several new counties in South Texas in the next few years, and Blake asked if it was true that one of the new counties was going to be named Jim Wells. “I've heard that rumor,” Wells said, as though he had no inkling at all. “If it happens, it'll be an honor.” They all laughed and had another drink. Then the twins told him of wanting to make Wolfe Landing a town.

“Let me get this straight,” Wells said. “You want Wolfe Landing to be a bona fide
town
. A state-chartered town. Out there in the middle of that godforsaken land nobody owns but you?”

“Yessir,” James Sebastian said.

“And of course the state would get the right-of-way for a road to it from off the Boca Chica Road,” Blake said. “Can't have a town without a public road to it, naturally.”

Wells looked at them as if not quite sure they weren't joking.

“You know we've always wanted to keep the world from crowding in too close,” James said. “What better way than live in a town in the middle of your own land?”

“Which would pretty much make it
your
town,” Wells said.

“Well, I suppose you could say it's our town in the sense that we're its founders, yessir,” Blake said.

“Every town had to be founded by
somebody
,” James said.

“Your town with
your
laws.”

“Well naturally there's got to be laws, same as in any town,” Blake said. “Municipal ordinances and the like. For the protection of the community. For the sake of economic progress. Heck, Judge, nobody knows that better'n you.”

“You already got the petition papers all writ up, aint you?”

Blake tapped his coat pocket. “Every i dotted and t crossed, yessir.”

Wells laughed. “You boys. You make it sound so goldang easy.”

“It will be, sir,” James Sebastian said. “If
you
push for it, it'll be easy as pie.”

“Especially when the state's about to charter all these counties,” Blake said, “and one of them to be named in your honor's honor.” He grinned.

“I mean, how much trouble would it be to throw in a charter for one little-bitty town?” James said. “At the request of the esteemed James B Wells?”

“If anybody can do it, Judge, you can,” said Blake.

“You two think way too much of me.”

“Now don't getting all modest on us, your honor,” James Sebastian said. “We known each other too long.”

Wells smiled and stared into his nearly empty glass.

“What say, Judge?” Blake said.

“You're aware that there will be, ah, some requisite political contributions? To certain personnel on certain state committees.”

“Of course,” James Sebastian said. “Just let us know how much and when.”

Wells emptied his glass and smacked his lips. “Well heck,” he said. “I suppose I could talk to some people, see what happens.”

Pauline had to come to the door and rap hard on it more than once to get their attention and tell them to hush all that whooping and braying laughter before the neighbors thought they were drunk as coots on the Good Lord's birthday.

It took almost a year but Wells did it. He received the official decision shortly after Thanksgiving but he kept it to himself till Christmas Eve because it seemed fitting to him that they should be notified exactly a year to the day after making the proposal. And in the same setting and circumstance—his den, waiting to be called to dinner. As their families socialized in the parlor and kitchen, Wells poured drinks for the twins, but when they raised their glasses to him he said, “Just a second, boys. I got something here yall might want to drink to.” He took a bound copy of the charter out of the top drawer and placed it on the desktop. “Merry Christmas, muchachos.”

They saw the bureaucratic insignia and the embossed image of the lone star and knew what the packet was. They looked at each other and then grinned at Wells.

“This aint the end of it, is it?” Wells said. “You think I don't know what all you got in mind for down the road?”

“Why, Judge, whatever do you mean?” Blake Cortéz said in mock bafflement.

“What you aiming to call it? Something modest, no doubt. Wolfe County, maybe.”

“Whoa there, your honor, now don't go getting too far ahead of us,” James Sebastian said.

“Ahead of you two?”

They all laughed. The twins raised their glasses and James Sebastian said, “Muchísimas gracias, your honor.”

“De nada, fellas,” Wells said. “Here's to the newest town in Texas and its whole handful of residents!”

“A handful for now,” Blake Cortéz said. They drank to Wolfe Landing, to their health and long lives.

The charter for the township of Wolfe Landing would go into effect in the coming May, two months after the birth of Jim Wells County.

T
hey have been careful to spare his tongue, his power of speech, though his screams have abraded his voice to a raw rasp. No tooth remaining in his head. Only one eye. Two fingers left to each hand and not a bone unbroken in either foot. His crotch is red pulp. Edward Little arrives. Despite his eighty-one years he is erect and easy in his carriage and his lean frame and white suit imbue him with a ghostly aspect in the low light of the oil lamps. As always, he pauses just inside the door for the necessary moment to adjust to the smell. A fetor no man of them ever gets used to. He then goes to the table where the rebel lies strapped in his mutilated nakedness. The man's chest heaves. His wild red eye fixes on Edward Little looming over him. In a low, expressionless voice, Edward assures him that the pains yet in store for him will exceed everything he has so far known of pain, but it will still not kill him. That freedom will be a long time coming, Edward says. But I will promise it to you much sooner if you tell me where your associates may be found.

The man's lips work, his breath quickens the more. Edward bends closer to hear what he has to say, then nods and steps back. Now, the man gasps, kill me… for the love of God. Edward smiles at the expression. First I must assure that you have told me the truth, he says. He turns and goes, ignoring the man's rasping cry of
KIILLLL meee
!

He finds Díaz in his chamber and tells him what he learned. Very good, Díaz says. Have you assigned somebody? Edward says he has.

That same evening eight men are seated at a table in the basement of a house at the western edge of the capital, attending to the final details of their plot, when the door abruptly sunders and a clutch of men rush in with shotguns booming in yellow flares—and in seconds every man of the insurgents lies in a rent sprawl on the blood-sheeting floor.

On the night of the fifteenth of September of 1910, his eightieth birthday and the eve of the one hundredth anniversary of Mexico's declaration of independence, President Porfirio Díaz, uniformed in full splendor and having been reelected for the seventh consecutive time just three months earlier, stands on the balcony of the National Palace overlooking the gigantic zócalo blazing with electric lights and packed with two hundred thousand cheering capitalinos. Mexican flags everywhere, bunting of red, green, and white. Díaz clutches a pull rope attached to an overhead bell—the same bell rung in the village of Dolores by Father Miguel Hidalgo in 1810 and since moved to the National Palace by order of Díaz. At eleven o'clock Díaz yanks the pull rope and the bell's tolls reverberate throughout the center of the city, and in emulation of the cry of independence raised by the great Hidalgo, Díaz shouts “Viva Mexico!
Viva Mexico
! VIVA MEXICO!” And the zócalo resounds with the crowd's echoing bellows of “Viva!
Viva
!
VIVA
!” There follows a staccato eruption of colorful fireworks and then a frenzy of music, and the national celebration proceeds in full timbre.