Country of the Bad Wolfes

DISTANCES

Even as he began to accommodate his grief, John Roger remained deep in dejection. He was given to morbid fancies and memories. Lying awake one night, he recalled a circus bear he and Sammy had seen at a traveling show one Portsmouth summer. The bear was old and mangy and sat in a wagon cage. It had a red fez strapped to its head and a tin drum strapped to its belly and its dull eyes seemed to stare at nothing as it beat and beat on the drum in unceasing monotony. Sammy had been disdainful of the bear, saying it should refuse to play the fool and instead grab the first man it could get hold of through the bars and tear his throat out before somebody could shoot it. But John Roger’s heart had felt a secret pity for the animal. Unlike Sammy, the bear could not reason nor entertain choices but only go on beating and beating the drum simply because, as with a living heart, there was nothing else for it to do.

John Roger well understood the pain of John Samuel’s loss, but he could imagine too how the twins felt about being the agent of the boy’s death. And could understand the protective imperative the one must have felt on seeing John Samuel pointing a rifle at the other. Could understand the rage of all three, but that his sons had tried to kill each other was an iron weight in his heart.

He knew why the twins were staying away, but as the months passed, he missed the boys more and more. He thought of going to Ensenada de Isabel to see them but could not bring himself to do it. It would be hard enough to talk to them without the distraction of being reminded of Elizabeth Anne every minute he was there. Besides, what if they weren’t there? What if they’d gone away, perhaps forever? The thought of being at the cove absent both her and them infused him with such cold loneliness he had an urge to weep—and the impulse in turn made him angry. His lachrymose feelings of late had more and more confused him. You have become an old fool, he told himself. The worst kind of all.

He had not seen them in almost six months when he decided to send Bruno Tomás to the cove to see if they were there, and told him what to tell them if they were.

When Bruno informed Felicia of his mission, she gave him a Saint Christopher medal to give to the twins. Tell them to share it, she said. He took a load of supplies for the cove house and two men to assist him, a pair of wranglers named Mongo and Stefán. They rode out on burros and trailed a pack donkey, each man armed with a revolver.

Bruno had thought the forest flanking the compound and Santa Rosalba was as dense as forest could be—until they made their slow way along the narrow jungle track leading to the cove. They spent the night on the trail, making an in-line camp between a pair of lanterns they let burn all night, but they slept very little for the burros’ braying nervousness. The following day, about two hundred yards from the cove—though they did not know yet how much farther it was—the trail was blocked by a felled tree nearly four feet thick.

How long you suppose it took them to chop down this goddammed thing? Mongo said. They relieved the pack burro of the tarp-covered load and set it aside and tethered the burros to the barrier tree and climbed over it and trudged on. Over the last part of the trail, they twice tripped wires that in turn set off a great jangling of bells in the overhead branches. For damn sure nobody’s gonna sneak up, Stefán said.

Then there the house was, and beyond it the cove. The pier stood boatless. The twins were away.

They found a store of food in the house and a cabinet with casks of beer and shelves lined with green quart bottles sealed with clipped corks. The men grinned. In a shed in back of the house they found the brewing vats. John Roger had left it up to Bruno, if he found the twins gone, whether to wait a few days in case they came back. The place was so pleasant, and with beer at hand besides, he decided to wait.

They had been asleep but two hours that night when they were awakened by a frantic braying from the jungle. “Los burros!” Mongo shouted. The braying was so loud it seemed the donkeys were not a hundred feet from the house.

They had left a verandah lamp burning low, and were quick to light another and yank on their pants and boots. Holding the lamps high and with pistols in hand they ran down the steps and around the house and entered the solid blackness before them. They hied along the narrow trail, the brush slapping at their arms and faces, their shadows disjointed in the wavering lantern light, and arrived gasping at the barrier tree, where the burros were still honking in terror and jerking against their tethers and kicking out behind them, white-eyed in the sudden light of the lamps.

One burro was gone. Its broken tether like a rent umbilical in a swath of blood vanishing into the underbrush where the animal had been dragged off.

Jesus Christ, Stefán said. You know how big that fucking tiger must be to carry off a burro?

And even as they all had the same thought at the same moment—that the beast could not be very far away—there came from the blackness a reverberant roar to seize the heart and all three of them flinched and cried out, and the burros went into another mad fit of shrieking and kicking. The men huddled close, guns cocked, swinging the lanterns to right and left.

It was several long minutes before the burros began to calm a little, and only then did the men become conscious of a telltale reek on the air. Someone had shat himself. For a minute no one said anything, none being certain he wasn’t the guilty party. When Bruno realized with no small relief that it wasn’t himself, he said, Christ almighty! Which of you guys—?

Not me, boss, said Mongo, who’d made a furtive probe of his pants to be sure.

They glared at Stefán, who stared down at his feet.

Goddam this fucking place! Bruno said. He said they would stay out there through the night to keep guard over the burros and head for home at dawn.

God bless you, boss, Mongo said.

They hung a lantern from an overhead branch, and while Mongo and Stefán soothed the burros, Bruno took the other lantern and with his gun still in hand went back to the house.

He wrote the twins a letter summarizing what he had come to tell them, then folded it once and wrote “para ustedes” on it and left it on the table. Then remembered the Saint Christopher medal and on another piece of paper wrote, Felicia sends this with her love, and lay the medal on it.

He appropriated a pair of his nephews’ pants for Stefán and had the presence of mind to take back three bottles of beer as well.

Some days later the twins returned to the cove from Veracruz and smiled on finding the medal from the darling Felicia. Bruno’s letter told them there had been a requiem mass for Roger Samuel and he had been buried in the casa grande cemetery, the funeral attended by family members only. Their father had of course understood the twins’ absence. So too had Vicki Clara. She had asked Bruno to tell her brothers (her very words, Bruno emphasized, my brothers) that she knew Roger Samuel’s death was an accident and it did not even matter which of them had taken Rogerito on the horse. She’d had a long talk with Juan Sotero. He was only six but was a wise and sympathetic child, and it had added to his sorrow these past months that his uncles might think they were at fault for what happened to his brother. As for John Samuel, his jaw and cheekbone had been badly broken and his nose would never look the same. He hadn’t been able to talk very clearly for weeks, but even after his jaw was healed he didn’t say much, and if he had spoken to anyone about the accident, Bruno wasn’t aware of it. Their father wanted them to know that he was sure that John Samuel’s grief these past months had only been compounded by the realization of what he had almost done in those first mad moments, having so nearly committed an act for which he could never have atoned. But it had been nearly six months now, time enough for everyone’s emotions to ease, and he wanted the twins to resume their monthly visits. The end of the letter informed them of the supply of staples next to the barrier tree.

“You believe Mr Sourmouth’s sorry?” Blake said.

“Sure do. I believe he’s sorry you busted his face and sorry as all hell he was so crazy mad he didn’t think to jack a bullet in the chamber before trying to shoot me.”

They did visit the casa grande the following month but didn’t let their father know they were there. Did not let anyone know but Josefina and Marina. They sneaked into the compound late at night by way of one of their secret passages and then, through another, into the casa grande garden. Josefina woke to their soft tread in the kitchen and rushed from her room to hug them each in turn even as she hissed reproaches at them for being such rude and thoughtless brutes that they had not once let her know these past six months that they were alive. James Sebastian said, Dance with me, my beauty—and turned her in a waltz step before she pulled away and slapped at his arm and called him a good-for-nothing. Then Marina was there too, crying without sound and kissing first one and then the other and then the first again, until Josefina said, “Ya, mija, ya. Déjalos respirar, por amor de Dios.”

Only a few weeks past their sixteenth birthday, they were yet lean but grown even thicker of shoulder and had the arms of timber men and were now taller than their father and their older brother. And yet remained indistinguishable, so selfsame of feature, of stride and stance and voice and gesture, that only Josefina and Marina could tell them apart, though only up close, knowing as they did that Blake’s left little finger had a pronounced crook and that James Sebastian’s right eye had a green flaw at the upper rim of the iris. In time they would note too a little node just above the fore part of James’s right wrist where the broken bone had mended unevenly. But the twins were also aware of these differences and knew how to camouflage them by means of a partial squint and by keeping their fingers slightly flexed and hands turned just so.

They sat at the kitchen table over coffee and conversed in low voices. The women confirmed everything Bruno had said in the letter. It is a horrible and unnatural thing for a child to precede a parent to the grave, Josefina said, but to precede a grandparent was too horrible for words. Marina said their father would be very happy to see them, but they said they did not want to see him, that it was too soon yet. If they talked to him now he would insist that they resume their visits as before, which meant sitting to dinner with the family, but they didn’t think John Samuel was ready for that. “Ay, ese pobre Juanito,” Josefina said. She gestured at her face and said that the doctor had tried to correct his nose but. . . . And the scar on his cheek, ay! Then she caught herself and said to Marina, Forgive me, child, I am old and stupid. Marina took her hand and said there was nothing to forgive, that she had years ago stopped feeling shame about her scars. Josefina patted her hand and stood up with a soft groan and put a hand to each twin’s head in turn as if in benediction, then retired to her room. Minutes afterward they were in bed as well, Marina between them.

They returned to the kitchen six weeks later, again surprising Josefina and Marina, who again were the only ones to know they were on the grounds. Until the following evening, when just as they were about to depart, Vicki Clara happened into the kitchen.

She had not seen them in eight months, and she rushed to them and hugged them and kissed them, asked again and again if they were all right, said, My God, how you’ve grown! She wanted them to sit and talk, but they explained they did not want to chance an encounter with their father because it could mean having to see John Samuel too. She said they had no reason to fear John Samuel. Blake Cortéz said, Fear him? Are you joking? and James Sebastian said, Us afraid of him? She saw the umbrage in their faces and said she did not mean to imply they were afraid of him, that she knew they were not, that she meant no insult, please forgive her. She was near tears. “Ah Christ,” James said in English, and took her in his arms. Blake apologized for their tone and asked her to please forgive them. She brushed at her eyes and caressed their faces and said she would forgive them if they would forgive her, and they said it was a deal.

She told them Juan Sotero’s First Holy Communion was to take place in the hacienda church in two months and asked if they would please attend. It will make Juanito so happy if you are there, she said. He has been worried about you and has so many times told me how much he misses you. And of course it will please your father. He has missed you more than you can imagine. He will be hurt to know you have been here without seeing him, but he would be very happy if you are at the ceremony. Please?

The twins looked at each other, and Blake said they would be there. Did they promise? They promised. The twenty-fifth of July, she said. Without fail, they said. Josefina and Marina smiling too.