The Son (64 page)

But what would she say? That the Colonel had been right? That you could only depend on yourself? It would not exactly fill a book. She tried anyway, and for a time a dream came back to her from youth, sitting behind a desk, answering letters from all her subjects, the cameras lingering on her every word, she wrote about her father and two brothers and the mother she had never known, her husband and son, where should she stop, children in the graveyard, the dead pouring forth until she set the papers aside. She knew why the Colonel had hated talking about the old days. Because the moment you looked back, and began to make your tally, you were done for
.

B
Y ’83 THERE
were wildcatters going bankrupt left and right, but for Ted and most of their friends, the boom had been nothing more than a period of unusual wealth, in which the royalty checks they all lived on had been preposterous instead of merely large.

Jonas was fine, frugal as always; no belt tightening necessary. He still commuted down to Boston a few days a week in his old Volvo, maybe from Martha’s Vineyard, maybe from Newport, maybe from his lake house in Maine, though if he really did anything at his legal practice, she didn’t know. Mostly he seemed to wake up at the same time every morning, spending hours writing lists of what needed to be done:
winterize boat, paint railings on porch
(he considered himself handy)
, call about Volvo noise, Bill squash (racquet), porch screens, tuition, Bohemian Club, reservations at . . .
He got great satisfaction crossing things off his list; sometimes he would write things he had already done (
breakfast with Jeannie
) just to cross them off again.

She considered selling the ranch, keeping the house but selling the land, she had no family left in Texas; in Midland you could buy a Rolls-Royce or office building or even a Boeing for pennies on the dollar, there wouldn’t be work in the oil business for a long time, that was clear. It was time to sell. There was no point being so far from her only living brother and her children.

She and Ted were at the ranch, fighting about this very thing (one did not sell land, he thought), when Consuela came to tell her there was someone at the door.

I
T WAS A
Mexican woman around her own age, wearing a dress and jewelry as if expected for a party. Jeannie hadn’t yet showered that day; she brushed back her hair and smoothed her blouse and felt short.

“I am Adelina Garcia.”

This meant nothing.

“I am Peter McCullough’s daughter.”

This meant nothing as well. Then it did. She reached for the doorknob.

“Peter McCullough did not have any daughters,” she said. “I’m afraid you are mistaken.”

“He is my father,” the woman repeated.

When Jeannie didn’t react, the woman got an imperious look. “You are my niece,” she said. “Regardless of our ages.”

Maybe it was the language barrier, but she could not have picked a worse thing to say. “Well you have met me. And I am busy.” Jeannie closed the door. The woman stood on the porch a long time then walked slowly back to her car. Jeannie wondered how she’d gotten through the gate.

It was an old trick. Though usually you heard about it through a lawyer. Still, she felt unsettled, and back in the library, she lost all her strength and collapsed against Ted. He leaned around her to see the television.

“Anyone important?”

She felt sick; something told her to follow the woman but she could not make herself get up.

“What do you want to eat?” he said.

“That was a Mexican person claiming to be my relative.”

“Your very first?”

She nodded.

“Welcome to the club.”

She sat there.

“Call Milton Bryce,” he said, not looking up from the television. It was
Dallas.
People were obsessed with it. “Call him right now if you’re really worried about it.”

But she was not sure that was she was worried in that way. She decided to think about it. She waited until dinner and decided it was nothing.

W
HAT ELSE MIGHT
she have been? She had plenty of friends from old families who were always carrying on about how helpless they were, no driver’s licenses or social security cards, the worst sort of bragging, they were helpless, absolutely helpless, and proud of it.

The things that made them happy meant nothing to her. She was a leftover from another time, maybe, like her great-grandfather. But even that was not true. She was not like him at all. She’d had no imagination, she’d chased only what she could see, she could have done more.

She had a feeling she ought to apologize, but to whom, and for what, she didn’t know. She looked around the room. It was still dark. When it finally happens, she thought, I won’t even know it, and then she wasn’t afraid.

Chapter Fifty-seven

Ulises Garcia

T
here had always been a rumor that they were descended from wealthy Americans, it was a story his mother liked to tell about his father’s side of the family. His father had died when he was two. The Dirty War was going on, and the last anyone heard of his father, he was being taken into a police station.

After that, they had moved around a lot, finally settling in Tamaupilas with his grandparents. His grandfather worked on a ranch, tending the fences, repairing the windmills and outbuildings, more time on a truck than on a horse, but this is what vaqueros did now. In America, the cowboys now flew helicopters. Or so it was said.

His grandfather had worked for the Arroyos his entire life and was no richer now than when he started; the Arroyos had owned the land since the 1600s and paid as if no time had passed since. Sitting at the fire with the old-timers, he could see his entire life from birth to death, it was good work, he was lucky to be born into it; his friends would end up in the refineries, or selling trinkets to tourists, or with the narcos.

Still, there were nights he woke up thinking he was as old as his grandfather, he would turn on the light and go to the mirror and look at his face. He was dark, people thought he was mulatto, he had a soft nose and a heavy brow.

In winter the men would trickle back from the north with thousands of dollars in their pockets and some would blow it all—a season’s work—in a night or two of gambling. His grandfather just shrugged. Mercedes Arroyo would spend three thousand dollars on a scarf, what was the difference?

As for Ulises, he watched the Arroyos’ pretty granddaughters come and go, their drivers and BMWs; when they passed he smelled perfume from inside the cars. The house was full of stuffed jaguars and elephants, exotic rugs, bathrooms done in gold, but he’d only heard this; he’d never been allowed inside.

His mother went to work in Matamoros and he stayed with his grandparents. One day he was going through a suitcase she had left, which was full of her junk, old pictures and keys, birthday cards from people he didn’t know, letters, faded receipts, his father’s university ID, and then, in its own paper bag . . . his grandmother’s birth certificate. The document was in Spanish but the name of the father was not: Peter McCullough. And there were letters written in English.

He knew that his grandmother had tried to get in touch with the American side of her family, but they had spurned her, and then his father had tried as well, and also been sent away, and he could not imagine how the McCulloughs (he now knew their name) had done this. He tried to imagine their point of view, a person showing up on your doorstep and asking for money. The details mattered; it would have to be handled a certain way.

He began to daydream about visiting them, and being received, and given land, and made wealthy. Of course they would not simply do this for no reason; he would show them that he knew cattle, he knew their business, he was not simply some freeloader, he was a hard worker, and then, once he had proven himself beyond question, he would make a formal presentation.

Those daydreams had gone on for several years; they were straight out of a telenovela and he was not clear when they had materialized into a firm plan. But in September of 2011, he crossed the river and rode onto the McCulloughs’ ranch. His grandfather knew someone on an olive plantation on the Mexican side, just a few miles upriver from the ranch, and he and this old man had waited for a dark night and crossed. After that it was easy. He was not some pollo, he was a vaquero, and he belonged.

H
E FOUND THE
white foreman and offered to give up his hand-tooled saddle if any bronco in their remuda could throw him. The foreman burst into laughter, then explained they did not have any broncs in the remuda, it had probably been half a century since they had broncs. They did their big roundups with helicopters and bought most of their horses as three-year-olds from other ranches.

But he could see the foreman was impressed with his appearance, he had not thrown Ulises off the ranch immediately, he’d carefully inspected his tack, his chaps. Ulises threw a few loops for him, caught a calf by the neck and then the foreleg.
I roped an eagle in flight once,
he said. It was not exactly true—it had been a turkey. But he could see the man liked his face.
I can also use a welder
.

He spent the rest of the day in the man’s truck, helping with chores, repairing a fence, running a tractor with a bale spike. At the end of it, the man said:

“Two fifty a week.
La Migra
mostly stays off the property, but if you stick your nose out and get caught you’ll spend a few months in the pokey. Normally we’d never do this but we are shorthanded and getting shorter.”

He noted this, but decided not to ask why.

“If you’re still here after a few months, we can talk about applying for a permit. Though none of us are sure if this place will even be around that long. I lost two guys this week alone. So if you’ve got other prospects, I suggest you follow them.”

H
IS SALARY WAS
not much by
norteamericano
standards but he had nothing to spend it on. On smaller ranches the ICE agents came and went daily but the McCulloughs kept their own security and
La Migra
was rarely around. It was dangerous to leave the property, though: the white-and-green trucks were everywhere; it was a bit like being under house arrest.

He had a bunk and a few nails to hang his shirts. When he wasn’t working he sat around watching TV with the other vaqueros. When they wouldn’t let him watch the American programs—they did not care about their English—he borrowed a rifle and went out into the
brasada
and shot an occasional javelina or rabbit, or trailed the big-racked deer that were everywhere. They were too valuable to kill; the Americans would pay thousands to shoot them.

He snuck to town once a month and sent his grandparents half his salary and bought a new shirt, though he had to ask for the hanger it came on. At Christmas he spent a long time looking at some Lucchese handmade boots but decided on Ariats, as they were a quarter the price. He also picked out a Leatherman tool. He felt rich. Then a white man with a gun walked into the store and everyone got quiet. Some kind of deputy. Ulises stood by the cash register, waited for his items to be bagged, watching the man’s reflection in the window. He felt disgusted as he walked out. He paused near the trash bin, considered throwing away everything he’d just bought. It could not be worth this.

It will be better when you get your permit, said Romero, when they were back in the truck.
No estoy recibiendo mi permiso,
said Ulises, but Romero pretended not to hear. He had worked for the McCulloughs five years but still got stopped by the ICE, who pretended not to recognize him. Ulises could see the pride he took in the new white truck, though it was not his any more than the ranch was, and it struck him that Romero was a fool and he was a fool as well.

T
HE OLD LADY
was dying and had no one to take over the business. Her daughter was a drug addict and her son, it was said, was not fully a man. There had been a grandson everyone liked, but he had drowned in three feet of water. The other grandson visited the ranch with his friends: they wore sandals and never shaved and were constantly smoking
mota
. One look and you knew why the vaqueros were leaving. This place would die with the old lady.

H
IS PLAN WAS
ridiculous. The old lady rarely visited the ranch and the foreman, who was likely looking for another job himself, forgot his promise to apply for a permit. But still it was better than the Arroyos. So he stayed.

Chapter Fifty-eight

Diaries of Peter McCullough

S
EPTEMBER 1, 1917

The shadow follows me everywhere; I see him in the corner at supper, biding his time; he stands behind me as I sit at my desk. As if a great fire were burning in front of me. I imagine reaching for it . . . letting the flames carry me off.

I ride to the casa mayor and put my ear to the rock. I hear the bell of the church, children calling, women’s shoes.

A memory from the day after the killings:

My father postulating, absentmindedly, that María’s survival was a kind of tragedy. Had she died, all the Garcias’ anger and sadness would have disappeared from the earth. His words have become a moving picture, playing over and over in my mind. I imagine putting a revolver to his head while he sleeps. I imagine the well shooter parking his truck next to the house, setting a match to the nitro bottles.

Of course this has always been inside me. It was only waiting for a moment to escape. There is nothing wrong with my father: he is the natural. The problem is those like myself, who hoped we might rise from our instinctive state. Who hoped to go beyond our nature.

S
EPTEMBER 4, 1917

It came to me this morning: she is dead. I paced my room but then I was sure of it, she is dead, I have never been so sure of anything in my life.