Country of the Bad Wolfes

With the twins in Brownsville only one day a week, Marina and Remedios became even closer friends and confidantes. Given the twenty-year difference in their ages, it was only natural the relation between them had a strong semblance of mother and daughter, a bond that became the more pronounced when, a month after Morgan James’s birth, Remedios found she was three months pregnant.

Remedios loved to hear Marina tell of life at Buenaventura. She was hardly able to imagine such grandeur. She was gripped by Marina’s account of the bloody Sunday when they’d had to flee the hacienda before the army arrived to kill the twins. Many of Marina’s recollections of course involved old Josefina, and in speaking of her she sometimes missed her so much she couldn’t hold back her tears. In October she asked the twins if she might now write to Josefina. It had been more than seven years. Maybe Mauricio Espinosa had quit his search for them. Maybe John Samuel was no longer on the watch for a letter that might reveal their whereabouts so that he could inform Mauricio. Josefina would anyhow certainly choose someone worthy of her trust to read the letter to her and write her response.

She had expected refusal but the twins said yes. What did it matter anyway if Mauricio found out they were in the United States? If he came after them over here, he couldn’t bring a company of soldiers with him, and they weren’t afraid of just him and a few henchmen. Marina bolted from her chair to hug and kiss them in gratitude. But there was no reason to make it too easy for Mauricio, the twins said, so she should not put her name or a return address on the envelope, only in the letter.

The next day Marina wrote Josefina a long letter recounting everything that had happened to them since their flight from Buenaventura.

CORRESPONDENCE

The reply that came some weeks later was not from Josefina but from Bruno Tomas. It arrived on a Thursday but Marina did not open it until the twins arrived for their weekend visit—then read it aloud to them and Remedios.

Bruno explained at the outset that as mayordomo he had been given her letter by the hacienda postal clerk because its addressee, Josefina Cortez de Quito, was deceased, and had been for almost two years. Bruno wrote that although he and Marina had not been well acquainted, he knew of her close friendship with Josefina, and he wanted her to know that her death was the sort everyone hoped for himself—of painless old age and in her sleep.

Though this news should hardly have been unexpected—Josefina had been old since before the twins were born—Marina lay the letter on her lap and wept into her hands. Remedios shifted her chair closer and placed an arm around her, her own eyes tearful. The twins gazed at the floor. After a minute Marina dried her tears on her skirt hem and Remedios gave her a handkerchief to blow her nose. She loved the two of you with all her heart, Marina said.

The twins nodded, aspects solemn. Then Blake Cortez said, “It’s a lowdown shame. Had her whole life ahead of her.” He tried to restrain his grin but failed. James Sebastian snickered.

Marina was incredulous. You think this is amusing?

The twins struggled to contain themselves but broke out laughing. The women gaped. Then looked at each other in horrified perplexity at their own sudden urge to laugh. And then they too were guffawing.

Oh my dear God, we are terrible, Marina gasped, her hands on her face. Terrible. James said they probably could have got a good price for her from a museum. You are so evil, Marina said, both of you.

They all laughed until they were gasping and their ribs could stand no more. And Marina once again had to dry her eyes and blow her nose before she could resume reading the letter.

Bruno apologized for violating the privacy of the letter, but the envelope had borne no identification of a sender nor address to which it could be returned, and Josefina had no known next-of-kin to whom he could pass it on. The postal clerk told him it was the first letter ever to come for Josefina Cortez in all his years at the job. It made Bruno even more curious that the postmark was of Brownsville, Texas, as many years ago his older sister had lived there for a few months. Even before he read the letter, he had a strange feeling it might be news from or about the twins, and he nearly shouted when he found he was right. He was very happy to know, after all these years, that the twins had escaped the gunmen Espinosa had sent after them. And of course very happy to learn of their marriages.

My most sincere felicitations to you, my dear new cousin Marina, Bruno wrote, and of course to James Sebastian. And my congratulations on the birth of Morgan James. Please convey my warmest wishes also to Blake Cortez and his bride Remedios and for their coming child.

“The man sent pistoleros to get us?” Blake said. “Damn.”

It was clear from Marina’s letter, Bruno wrote, that the twins did not know Mauricio Espinosa was dead, and it was a pleasure to be the one to inform them that Mauricio had been assassinated only three days after his brother’s murder of John Roger. No one had ever learned who the assassin was.

Marina looked up from the letter. Three days, she said.

All this time we’ve been hiding from a dead man, Blake said.

How were you to know? Remedios said. How was anyone to tell you? You hid so well nobody could find you.

“Yeah,” said James Sebastian. “Joke’s on us.”

Bruno said Marina’s letter also implied their great trust in Josefina to keep all information about the twins in confidence, and he promised he would keep their confidence too. He said he liked his life as mayordomo and admitted that he and John Samuel had a good rapport in attending to hacienda business. But apart from business they spent little time in each other’s company and he did not feel it his duty to inform him about his brothers. He told of the brief siege of Buenaventura by the Espinosa gunmen and of John Samuel’s conviction that his brothers had been captured and killed. But neither he—Bruno—nor Vicki Clara had ever believed the twins were caught. After the siege, Bruno had gone with some men to the cove and found that the house had been burned down to the piling foundations. The dock too had been destroyed. But they found no bodies or parts of bodies nor any sign of a grave and so were pretty sure the twins had not been there when the place was razed.

The cove house, James said. Bastards.

As for Vicki, Bruno was sorry to report that for the past three years she had been in poor health more often than not. She slept little. She lacked appetite and had lost much weight. Her vision troubled her and she now wore thick spectacles to read. As they knew, she was not one to complain, but she had mentioned she sometimes got severe headaches that seemed rooted at the back of her eyes. John Samuel had at last persuaded her to have a medical examination. The doctor said her nerves were exhausted and prescribed a nightly soporific and a diet of dried fruit and boiled eggs. That was a year ago. The regimen seemed to have had no effect.

About Juan Sotero the news was cheerier. The boy at fourteen was as smart as they come and an excellent athlete. For the past year he had been set on becoming an army engineer, an aspiration prompted by a book he’d read about the road-making ingenuity of Yankee engineers under Captain Robert E Lee during Mexico’s war with the United States. John Samuel had of course been opposed to a military career for his son. He wanted Juanito to succeed him as patron of the hacienda. It was fine with him, John Samuel had said, if the boy wanted to become an engineer, but why must he be one in the army? He could get his education at the university in Mexico City, and if he wanted to build roads he could build them at Buenaventura—God knew the place could use them. But in Juanito’s view the only thing better than being an engineer was being an engineer and an army officer. Vicki Clara was insistent that her son would choose his own vocation, though she had in private told Bruno of her own disappointment in Juanito’s choice of the army. Ever since the horse accident, Bruno wrote, things had changed between Vicki Clara and John Samuel. She was no longer reluctant to express differences of opinion with him and could be firm in defending them, and he seemed determined not to argue with her. In any case, and no matter what else one could say of him, John Samuel was not a stupid man. He understood he could neither force nor persuade Juanito to devote himself to a vocation he did not want, and so next fall Juan Sotero would attend a military school at Veracruz.