and introduced him to her as his foreman, Bruno Tomas Wolfe y Blanco—a name change Bruno and his sister Sofi had decided on as more accurate to their parentage.
Like many a brother with a little sister both pretty and unafraid of men, Rogelio had been fretful for Felicia Flor’s virtue from the day her breasts began to bloom. The whole time she had been away at their aunt’s he lived in apprehension that she would succumb to some charming son of a bitch. He wanted nothing for her so much as the safety of marriage and motherhood. Various young wranglers had courted her from the time she turned fifteen but none had struck her fancy. She was too damned choosy was her problem. What do you want, Rogelio asked her, some guy in shining armor like in a goddammed fairy tale? Of course not, she said. A suit of armor would rust very fast in this climate. That was another thing, her sassy tongue. His hope that she and Bruno might like each other and that something might come of it was rooted more in desperation than in reason. It was crazy to think she would give serious thought to a man thirty-four years old or that a man of thirty-four would put up with her impudence. Rogelio could not have imagined the mutual smiting that took place within minutes of their meeting.
Two weeks later, despite his great fear that she would reject him as an infatuated, impulsive, middle-aged fool, Bruno Tomas asked Felicia Flor to marry him. She gave him a gaping, wide-eyed stare and said, My God, Mr Wolfe—she who had been calling him Bruno, even Brunito, these two weeks—are you truly
That was two days before Bruno’s letter to his mother, which he wrote six days before the wedding. He told Maria Palomina that the minute he’d seen Felicia he knew she was the one for him. Anticipating Maria Palomina’s desire for him to be married in Mexico City so that she and Sofi could attend the ceremony, he told her he wished he could be married in the capital but to do that he would have to wait until such time as the ranch was not so busy as it was now, but he loved Felicia so much he didn’t want to wait a minute longer than necessary to make her his wife. He said Felicia felt the same way and they both hoped very much that she understood and would not be too angry with them. Not until the end of the letter did he make known that Felicia Flor was seventeen years old, and yes, that made him twice her age, but she was a very wise girl and she was really not too young for him.
When Sofi read Bruno’s letter to their mother—who refused to get spectacles though her eyes were no longer what they used to be—and got to the part about the difference in their ages, Maria Palomina said, Too
In truth, Maria Palomina was delighted at the news of Bruno’s marriage, which took place on the same day she received his letter. Delighted in spite of her immediate suspicion that the real reason for their haste to marry was the age-old one of having put the cart before the donkey by starting the family before the wedding. In which case, his claim of knowing the girl less than a month was of course a lie too, intended to keep her from having the suspicion she was having. What a silly boy he was, she told Sofi, to think he could fool his mother. Or think that the reason for his hasty marriage could mean as much to her as the fact that he had finally taken a wife.
In her letter of response, dictated to Sofi, Maria Palomina told Bruno that she was of course very vexed that he did not get married in Mexico City, but she understood and she forgave him. She asked to know everything about Felicia. Bruno wrote back that his bride was petite and beautiful and smart and beautiful and such a wonderful dancer that she had even been able to teach him to dance—him! with his three left feet! And did he mention how beautiful she was? You will see for yourself very soon, my dearest Mother, Bruno wrote. Uncle John and I and Felicia will be there sometime in early October.
Sofia Reina too sent Bruno a letter of congratulations. And hoped in secret that their mother was correct in her suspicion about the marriage. Because otherwise Bruno was telling the truth and couldn’t wait to marry Felicia. Perhaps out of love, as he claimed, but also, perhaps, because of his great desire to get the girl into bed as soon as he could. It might be that he was at least as much in thrall to his lust for the girl as to his love of her. This possibility made Sofi uneasy, convinced as she now was that the family was cursed by twin passions. Some in the family—herself chief among them, maybe her brother too—were in thrall to the passions of the flesh. And some— her father a prime example and her uncle perhaps another—to a passion for risks of blood. She prayed for God to have mercy on them all, but especially on those of them who might be damned by both.
BLACK HORSE
Only a month after Bruno’s wedding, the hacienda celebrated Roger Samuel’s fifth birthday. The fiesta was held at the Rancho Isabela, and John Roger provided wagon transport for everyone from the compound and both villages. There were the usual fiesta delectations of roasted sides of meats and tablefuls of food and vats of beer chilled in mountain ice, the usual fireworks and music and dancing. The dance floor was a wide clearing of packed dirt, and boys with sprinkler cans of water were charged with keeping down the dust. A large pinata, shaped like a horse and covered with colorful paper and filled with wrapped candies, hung from a tree branch. Each child in turn would be blindfolded and allowed five swings with a wooden pole—one swing for each year of Rogerito’s life—to try to break the pinata as it was made to jounce about on the end of its rope. By custom the birthday boy was allowed to go first and have a few extra swings, as it was deemed good luck for everyone present if he were the one to break the pinata. Felicia Flor and Vicki Clara stood side by side and gave Rogerito loud cheers of encouragement but the best he could manage was to snap off one of the horse’s legs, which contained only filler paper. Then his brother, next in line, with his first swing shattered the pinata and set the other children scrambling after the shower of treats.
The twins too had come to the party, and after the pinata ritual they clapped Juan Sotero on the shoulder and praised the power of his swing. They told Felicia Flor—whom they had first met on her wedding day—that marriage certainly agreed with her, as she looked even prettier than a month ago. She blushed and kissed them. Vicki Clara hugged Juanito and congratulated him for his smash of the pinata, then curtsied to Roger Samuel and said, “Most excellent sir, may I have the honor of a dance on this glorious day?” The boy smiled and said, “Yes, mam,” and took her hand and they headed for the dancing ground. “Your next dance is with me, Victoria!” Blake Cortez called after them, and Vicki looked over her shoulder and blew a kiss at him.
John Roger and John Samuel were surveying the proceedings from up on the ranch house porch, sitting side by side and sipping bourbon newly arrived from Louisiana. Now the twins and Juan Sotero were making their way toward the main corral, and John Roger was aware of John Samuel’s attention on them. He had been unsure the twins would be here today, on John Samuel’s domain, but their distaste for their older brother was outweighed by their fondness for their nephews. It nettled John Samuel, John Roger knew, to see their easy camaraderie with his sons. Only last week Vicki Clara had confided to John Roger that although she had no doubt of her husband’s love for their sons and theirs for him, they never seemed at true ease with each other. She believed it troubled all three of them that this was so, but the obligation to do something about it rested with John Samuel, who was after all the father. Yet he seemed incapable of making the correct gestures, of saying to them the things a father should say. Her disclosure had discomfited John Roger more than she knew, reminding him too well of his own paternal failings.
Among the horses trotting in circles in the main corral—the lot of them nervous from the crack and bang of the fireworks—was a splendid appaloosa John Samuel had bought the week before and given to his son for his birthday. Roger Samuel was elated by the horse. John Roger thought it a fine gift, though the appaloosa was as yet too much mount for the boy, who had only recently learned to ride. “I know that,” John Samuel said. “I want him to have that horse to look forward to. At the rate his riding’s improving he’ll be astride that beauty long before his next birthday, you’ll see.”
But no horse in the corral drew more attention than a black Arabian stallion John Samuel had acquired at the same time as the appaloosa, buying both horses from a dealer he’d met through Vicki’s father. He got an especially
