way than live in a town in the middle of your own land?”
“Which would pretty much make it
“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
“Your town with
“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
“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 Cortez 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, “Muchisimas 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 Cortez 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.
CRIES OF LIBERTY
They 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
He finds Diaz in his chamber and tells him what he learned. Very good, Diaz 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 Diaz, 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 zocalo blazing with electric lights and packed with two hundred thousand cheering capitalinos. Mexican flags everywhere, bunting of red, green, and white. Diaz 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 Diaz. At eleven o’clock Diaz 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, Diaz shouts “Viva Mexico!
Among the company with Diaz on the palace balcony are a number of federal officials and army generals and an elite squad of bodyguards under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Juan Sotero Wolfe Marquez. Some nine years earlier, Gloria Tomasina had shared with the Littles the news from her brother Bruno that her cousin Juan Sotero Wolfe, an artillery officer, had just received his degree from the army engineering college. Edward Little recalled the name a few years afterward when he and Diaz attended the army’s annual fencing competition and were much impressed with the daring swordplay of one Captain Juan Wolfe, who was barely defeated in the championship match by a cavalry major who won for the third year in a row. A little
