Country of the Bad Wolfes

bunch should go on strike or otherwise impede the orderly operation of a business, well, there were the army and the Rurales—the Rules, as the gringo bosses called that vaunted organization of law enforcement—to set things aright.

This singular era, known as the Porfiriato, would be the most industrially ascendant and most economically prosperous in Mexican history—and there would be much international trumpeting of Porfirio Diaz for his intrepid transformation of a lawless wilderness into one of the most progressive of nations.

At the same time, barely audible through all the fanfare, came the rumblings of a swelling fury in the hopeless impoverished. The distant thunder of a forming storm.

TAMPICO

The town stood some six miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, on the north bank of the Rio Panuco, in the southeast corner of Tamaulipas state. Smaller than Veracruz City, Tampico was even hotter for being those few miles removed from the coast. When they arrived in that late July the air was like steam. The country about was swampland, all marsh and hammocks and shallow lakes. The swamps sometimes pulsed in the night with strange glowings said to be restless spirits of the dead. Because the city had once been a haven for pirates, some of the locals believed the lights were the ghosts of those damned to remain forever at the site of their buried booty. There were countless stories of men who had gone into the night swamp in search of treasure marked by the eerie lights and had not come out again. The first time the twins found themselves on the edge of the swamp at night rise and caught a glimpse of such a light, one of them wondered aloud if Roger Blake Wolfe had ever been in Tampico, and the other said he would wager that he had. They stood a long while in the closing darkness, now losing sight of the spectral light and now seeing its glow again, fainter each time, as if, as it receded into the deeper shadows, it was daring them to follow.

They claimed to be Thomas and Timothy Clayton, American sons of Irish parents and fishermen by trade. Marina was Maria Soti. They did not explain her relation to them and no one asked to know it. They rented a three- story house on Calle Aduana. A tall narrow structure overlooking the Plaza de Libertad and only a short walk from the river port, where they moored the Marina Dos. The neighborhood featured numerous balconies and galleries of lace ironwork such as the twins had seen in Veracruz and in pictures of New Orleans. Part of the house roof was peaked and part was flat and on the flat part there was a ramada and a table and chairs and it was a good place to eat supper and from which to observe the plaza and listen to its nightly music. On the hottest evenings they all three slept up there where the river breeze could reach them and on cloudless nights the stars looked close enough to touch. They liked hearing the trains at the loading docks, the ship whistles and bells in the night.

All her life Marina had lived within twenty miles of the Gulf of Mexico without ever having seen it until she went to the cove with the twins. And as happened to them before her, she loved the sea at first sight. She was sorry they did not spend more than one night there. The twins had dug up the strongbox containing their savings in coin and paper of high denomination and transferred the contents into several money belts they would wear to Tampico, joking that if they fell overboard they would sink like bricks. Marina had more reason than they to fear drowning, as she had not yet learned to swim, but she was never truly afraid of anything when she was with them. They hated having to abandon their books but did take with them an atlas of the world and one of North America. On the way to Tampico they began teaching her the rudiments of seamanship and by the time they entered the mouth of the Panuco she was an able hand with sheets and tiller.

They could not know how much effort Mauricio Espinosa might put into searching for them, but their seekers would for sure be looking for twins, so James Sebastian had Marina crop his hair very short and he remained clean shaven and took to wearing plain-lensed, wire-rimmed eyeglasses in public. Blake Cortez let his hair grow to his collar and cultivated a sparse goatee. The physical distinctions made Marina feel for the first time as if she were sharing a bed with two different men.

And? said James.

Woo-woo, she said.

They would not go unarmed in public, but the Colts were too cumbersome to carry in concealment, so they made inquiries and were directed to a small, signless shop next to the docks where they bought a pair of .36-caliber two-shot derringers. Easy to hide on their persons even when coatless.

They had plenty of money and passed their days at play and at familiarizing themselves with the city and its surrounding world. The Plaza de Armas was but a short walk from the Plaza de Libertad, and some nights they went dancing at one square and some nights at the other and some nights at both. They bought nautical charts and books of all sorts, including volumes of poetry and stories, and on some evenings took turns reading to each other. Marina at last grew tired of telling them to speak only Spanish in her presence and asked to be taught English. They said of course—though Blake affected disgruntlement and said, Well hell, no more telling secrets in front of you.

They bought a canoe and three paddles and began to explore the outlying swamps and on occasion took the pistols with them for target shooting. They tried to teach Marina to shoot, but she could not overcome her fear of guns and fired only a single round with a derringer, flinching at the report, and then would shoot no more.

They took coach trips to Mante, to Victoria, and when the railroad arrived from Monterrey they went for extended visits to that large and rowdy city. They kept the Marina Dos in ready trim and sometimes went cruising for weeks at a time, acquainting themselves with the shoreline for more than a hundred miles in either direction, putting in at seaside hamlets not to be found on any map. They entered rocky passes and navigated lagoon waterways where the only sign of people was the pluming smoke of steamships out on the gulf.

They took her to a dentist who was able to fit her with front teeth. When the job was finally done she could hardly believe the woman grinning from the mirror was herself. It was all she could do to keep her hand from her mouth, so ingrained was the action whenever she smiled, and she would be a long time undoing it.

Do I look . . . better? she asked.

Prettier than ever, James Sebastian said. Blake Cortez said she’d always had pretty hair and pretty eyes and now had a pretty smile too.

It was not just sweet talk. She had in truth acquired a kind of prettiness in spite of the facial scars. Since joining herself to the twins, she had known danger and uncertainty and yet, paradoxically, had at the same time felt more secure than ever before. She loved them very much and felt very much loved by them, and in that strange way that happiness in love can affect a face, her scars seemed somehow less stark, the misalignment of her cheekbones almost beguiling.

Speaking of pretty, Blake said, we don’t even have to mention this lovely thing. He patted her bottom and she slapped away his hand. Then was laughing as she hugged them to her, one in each arm.

They liked to go to the beach just north of the river mouth. They rode out on the public mule-carriage and took a picnic basket and a sheet to spread on the sand and stayed all day and came back on the last coach. They would have preferred to frolic naked as they did at the cove but there were always at least a few other people in view, often with children, and so the twins wore pants cut short above the knees and Marina wore a swimming suit of her own creation, made of cotton and hemmed at mid-thigh and its halter top thin-strapped and low in the back. The costume sufficed to meet the proprieties of a sparsely populated Mexican beach but would have gotten her arrested at any American seaside resort. Her dusky skin became so much darker they began calling her Negrita. They taught her to swim, and the sensation of propelling herself through the water became one of the joys of her life. The three of them would swim out to where the waves formed, and when a big one began to build they would start stroking hard atop it and side by side ride the wave’s accelerating forward roll all the way in to shore where it