Philipp Meyer - The Son

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.

IT 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.

WHAT 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.

There 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.

HE 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.