Country of the Bad Wolfes (93 page)

But it was Sófi's singular distinction to have been born and raised in Mexico City, where nobody else in the border families had ever been. They loved to hear her descriptions of the capital, her reminiscences of the Wolfe y Blanco family and her account of how it came to have that surname. They were enrapt by her epic tale of Gloria's wedding to Louis Welch Little. Were awed by the sad saga of her own marriages and the lamentable outcomes of them all.

It would be years yet, however, before she would tell any of them of her conviction that the family was cursed by its own blood.

She had been in Brownsville two months when the twins came to her with a document case and told her it contained information she might find interesting. Then opened the case and she saw the banded bunch of photographs, the various packets of letters and other documents, the leatherbound ledger. It was all in English, which she did not know, but they promised to translate it all as time permitted. What was important, they told her, was that
she
know everything about the family. That she be the keeper of its history. The one to pass it down.

Sofía Reina looked from one to the other of them, her eyes shining. She reached across the table and took each one by a hand. “Gracias, mijos,” she said. “Con todo mi corazón. Gracias.”

T
hey broke through the gate, howling like fiends. The guards stood no chance. Many of them threw down their weapons and surrendered, pleading for mercy. And were eviscerated, pulped, quartered, decapitated. Screams of agony and of exultation. The warden was dragged out into the main yard and doused with oil and strung up by his feet and set afire. Everything of wood in flame, everything of paper. Among the first to reach the armory were Juan Lobo and his henchmen—Fat Pori, Sarmiento One-Eye, Ugly Dax, the three with whom he had ruled a prison block for the last nine years. With rifles in hand they ran out to the main yard where he and Sarmiento caught riderless mounts and Pori and Dax shot men out of the saddle for their horses. They rode away with the attackers and camped with them that night, but the rebels were going in the wrong direction, and in the morning he and his trio and ten others recruited to his party reversed to eastward. They plundered as they went. He taught himself to shoot by shooting people. There were challengers to his leadership and he fought and killed them each in turn in front of the spectating others. They crossed the sierras, descended to the valley roads, dodged army patrols and the Guardia Rural. Their number increased. He did not know the country they passed through nor the names of the villages they left smoldering behind them. But he knew where he was going, and every man of them, now almost fifty strong, believed his promise of ample and easy pickings. He had his mother's map branded in his brain. Could yet see her finger tapping the spot as she said, Right there, Juanito, right
there
! And as surely as a raptor winging for home he bore toward Buenaventura.

And arrived on a warm June morning.

John Samuel wakes to blastings of gunfire, cries of panic and anguish, lunatic howling. He fumbles for his spectacles and goes to the window and opens the shutters to a daybreak vision of apocalypse. Horsemen amok in the plaza, shooting people, hacking them, throwing torches through windows, onto rooftops. Sees more of them in the courtyard below. The bloody bodies of casa grande servants. There are crashings downstairs, gunshots, terrified cries. Hard thumpings of boots in the hallway. His door bangs open and he stands stricken as men of wild aspect rush in, one hollering, Don't
kill
the fucker, don't kill him, the chief said! He is grabbed by each arm and propelled from the room unshod and in his nightshirt, pulled stumbling down the stairs, his thin gray hair disheveled, skinny legs flashing with each flap of his nightshirt. He sees draperies afire, broken furniture burning, white-eyed mounts stamping through the salon and down the hallways. Then out into the burning compound hazed with smoke and strident with the cries of the dying, the maimed. Women wailing over the dead and in desperate attendance to the wounded. The shooting now reducing to sporadic reports. He is yanked along to the plaza fountain where Bruno Tomás sits on the ground, bareheaded and in shirtsleeves, a man with an eye patch standing over him, pistol in hand. Three years older than John Samuel, sixty-year-old Bruno yet has thick hair more black than gray, but his face is now bloody, one eye purple and swollen shut, nose obviously broken.

They jerk John Samuel to a halt in front of a man sitting on the rim of the fountain and eating a mango. He is flanked by two men, one fat and smiling, the other with hideous burn scars on one side of his face. At their feet are three strongboxes. John Samuel recognizes the one from the rear room of the main kitchen and the two that had been locked in the armory, but he does not see the two boxes kept cached under the stone floor of his office, which is at that moment pouring smoke from its windows. The man eating the mango tosses the half-eaten fruit into the fountain and wipes his mouth and fingers with his shirt and stands up. “Yo soy Juan Lobo,” he says. “Mi mamá se llamó Katrina Ávila. ¿Te acuerdas de ella?”

John Samuel sees the madness in the man's eyes. “Katrina Ávila?” he says.

Juan Lobo punches him hard in the mouth, jarring the spectacles off his face and knocking him down. Two men haul him back up to his feet. He tastes blood and feels the sudden bloating of his lips and chokes on a dislodged front tooth and tries to cough it up but swallows it.

Juan Lobo picks up the spectacles and puts them on and looks all about, squinting. Then takes them off and snaps the lenses out of the rims and sets the frame back on his face and grins at his men. Then turns back to John Samuel and says, Your father fucked my mother for his fun, and then when he became
my
father he sent us away.
But
. I am now here to say—he spreads his arms wide and grins with great exaggeration—
Helllooo
, brother!

Certain that he is going to be killed, John Samuel is crying now, gasping, mucus streaming from his nose, blood from his mouth.

Lobo gestures about the plaza and says, These, ah,
people
tell me somebody gutted your father a long time ago. They tell me the twin ones were killed for something to do with the same thing. Have I been told the truth?

John Samuel stutters, gags on snot, manages to say, Yes, it's the truth, yes.

Aaaah Christ, Juan Lobo says, shaking his head. I knew it was too much to hope for that the old cocksucker would still be alive, but, goddammit, the twin ones dead
too
? He smiles at John Samuel in the manner of a commiserative friend and says, I feel
soooo
cheated, you know what I mean? But what the hell, my brother—and he again makes the open-armed gesture—there's still
you
! Then loses his smile and snatches John Samuel by the hair and shoves his head back and draws his knife and puts it to his throat.

John Samuel whimpers and pisses in his pants.

Somebody shouts, Don't do it! Listen,
listen
! I know where they are! They're not dead!

Juan Lobo looks over at Bruno Tomás. He steps back from John Samuel and gestures for the guard to help the mayordomo get up, and then beckons Bruno to him. Bruno comes limping. His only hope to save John Samuel is in giving Juan Lobo what he wants. The twins can look out for themselves.

He stands before Lobo, who says, You're a very helpful man, Mr Old Mayordomo. It was helpful to show us where the money was, though of course you only did that to save your hide. But nevertheless it was helpful. And now you want to tell me where the twin ones are. That would also be very helpful. He taps the knifepoint on Bruno's chest and says,
But
. Everybody else, you see, says the twin ones have been dead as long as their fucking father.
Soooo
. What can I think except you want to lie to me to try to save this son of a whore? He runs the knife up to Bruno's throat and the point forms a dimple in the skin. You have fucked yourself out of our deal, Mr Mayordomo.

I'm not lying. They're at the Río Bravo. I have letters to prove it. Letters that tell about them. With addresses, with postmarks.

Oh? Where are they, these letters?

I'll tell you if you won't kill the patrón.

It's a deal. Where are the letters?

How do I know you won't kill the patrón anyway? Bruno says—and glances at John Samuel, who is squinting at him as if trying to comprehend some alien language.

Very good question, says Juan Lobo. But your bigger worry should be whether I'll kill
you
anyway.

Yes. How do I know you won't do that?

Juan Lobo issues a loud mock sigh and lowers the knife and calls for two saddled mounts. The horses are brought and he has John Samuel—still dazed with fear, confused by the proceedings—helped up onto one. He tells Bruno the other horse is for him. But listen, Lobo says. A man's word is the only thing in this world
worth more than gold, don't you agree? Well, I give you my word—
my
word!—that if the letters prove what you say, you and this cocksucker can ride out of here. But if they don't, I'll kill you both. You have my word on that too.

Bruno points to his quarters and specifies where the letters are stashed within it. Juan Lobo sends a man to retrieve them—fast, as the fire is by now already consuming the roof of that building.

The man is not long about it, panting on his return. He hands the packet of letters to Juan Lobo, who cannot read and passes them to Dax, he of the half-burned face. Dax scans several of them and says they all mention twins named Blake and James and also their wives and children.

Ah, they have
families
, how excellent, Juan Lobo says, and smiles wide.

All the letters show the same addresses, Dax tells him. In Brownsville, Texas. Across the Bravo from Matamoros.

“Muy bien,” Lobo says. He gestures toward the ready horse and tells Bruno he can go.

Bruno struggles up onto the horse and takes up the reins. “Let's go, John,” he says.

Before John Samuel can hup his horse forward Juan Lobo grabs him by the nightshirt and yanks him down and sends him sprawling onto his hands and knees. Bruno yells
Noooo!
as Lobo takes a machete from one of his men and steps over to John Samuel and with one swing beheads him. A thick jet of blood lays a bright red stripe six feet long on the cobbles as the head tumbles and stops with a wondering stare at nothing at all.

You gave your worrrrd
! Bruno screeches.

Juan Lobo turns to Fat Pori and says, Count to five and if he's still here shoot him.

Bruno heels the horse and gallops away.

Juan Lobo picks up the head and sets it on the rim of the fountain and transfers the lensless spectacles from his own face to the head's. How's that, patrón? he says. Can you see more clearly how things are, my brother?