The woods were on fire.

"Jacob!"

The first bright flames leapt from the evergreen branches, leaf litter crackling, the wind lifting the smoke and pushing it across the earthen beds of the dead. Renee thought she heard a final "Wish me," or it may have been the roaring echo of an earlier fire, one whose embers glowed deep and red and ceaseless inside her heart.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Carlita had taken Joshua's virginity at the age of fourteen, the same age at which Jacob had discovered the brutal numbness of alcohol.

On the backside of a hill on the southern corner of the Warren Wells property, a row of cramped mobile homes housed the Mexicans who worked the Christmas tree farms, spraying pesticides and planting seedlings to replace the spruces and Fraser firs that had been harvested in previous years. Many of the workers had temporary agricultural visas, enduring thirty-hour bus rides each season to earn American dollars. Illegal aliens were cheaper and never complained about working conditions, so the papers were often pa.s.sed to different hands if a worker said "No mas" and caught an early bus back to Guadalajara.

"Who the h.e.l.l can tell a Jose from a Joaquin?" Warren Wells used to say in his una.s.sailable logic. "They're all brown beaners to me."

The twins were fascinated with the small tribe of strangers that were their closest neighbors. Jacob wasn't allowed to go near the tree fields because of the pesticides, whose stench cloyed the air for weeks after a spraying. Mom had warned of the drunken fighting that went on in the Piney Flats camp, and she implored her husband to hire "honest white men" who attended Baptist church and kept their drinking and violence behind closed doors where it belonged. It was at the family dinner table that Jacob's imagination had fired, and the dark-skinned men he had seen moving like silent ghosts between the Fraser firs took on a mythic quality. After Mom died, the twins found more and more freedom as Warren Wells grew preoccupied with his ever-expanding empire.

He and Joshua had talked about them one night in July, weeks before the sailboat incident. Dad was on the porch smoking and looking out over the mountains, plotting ways to buy and build on more of them. Joshua had played a game of "Wish Me," and Jacob had answered, "Wish me a peek into the Mexican camp."

"You're too chickens.h.i.t for that, brother."

"No, I'm not."

"You wouldn't last five minutes. They fight c.o.c.ks and spit blood."

Unformed s.e.xual imagery flashed in Jacob's mind. "How do you know?"

"Don't you know nothing? What do you think I'm doing after school while you're up here doing your stupid homework?"

"Liar."

"I'll wish you, then. Put on your pants and shoes and let's go." Joshua sat up in bed, the crescent summer moon bathing his shoulders, his eyes glinting like wet beetles.

"No way. Mom will kill us."

"She'll have to catch us first." Joshua slipped on his shirt, leaving it unb.u.t.toned as he put on his jeans. His legs and arms were more muscular than Jacob's, and the hair that rose from his groin to his belly b.u.t.ton was thicker than his twin brother's. Joshua always said that though he had been born second, he had become a man first.

Jacob trembled with a mixture of dread and excitement as he hurriedly dressed. They climbed out the window onto the sloping roof, edged to the back of the house then worked their way down by leveraging against a long metal pipe that contained the utility lines.

The dew was cool and crickets fidgeted their legs. Fireflies blinked against the black curtain of forest and a sullen moon hid behind clouds of warship gray. Jacob's heart jumped like a trapped rat in his chest as he followed Joshua past the barn and across the hay fields. From the top of the rise, he looked back and saw the Wells house with its small yellow squares of light. The structure appeared to be a stage set, a lifeless thing that was waiting for something to happen.

They slipped into the trees and down a worn path the Mexican workers used when they carried hand tools from the barn. A creek ran below the trail, and its silver music played against the night sounds of the woods. The canopy overhead blocked most of the moonlight, but Joshua appeared to carry a map and compa.s.s in his head, leading Jacob through the stands of oak, buckeye, and maple without pausing to get his bearings. Soon they emerged into the regimented rows of Fraser fir, the trees a little taller than the boys and soon to feel the chain saws of autumnal harvest. At the bottom of the slope, the trees gave way to seedlings and a clearing where the box-like trailers lined an uneven dirt road. Music and laughter spilled from the open door of one of the trailers then someone shouted what sounded like a curse in Spanish.

"They're playing cards," Joshua said. "They do that on weeknights. They only fight c.o.c.ks on Sat.u.r.day night."

As if to punctuate Joshua's words, a rooster let out a cackle, seven hours too early. Joshua could make out the gray walls of a pen behind the trailers, chicken wire wound between crooked posts and plywood nailed across the openings.

"How many times have you been here?" Jacob asked.

"Not enough. Not yet."

They hunched and crept through the dwindling firs, then crouched just beyond a power pole whose lamp cast a cone of pale bluish light. Inside the noisy trailer, men sat around a table, shirts off, skin moist in the heat. Cigarette smoke wended out the door and rose toward the moon. The clink of gla.s.s was sharp and dangerous, as if bottles would soon be broken and used as weapons. The men were talking rapidly in Spanish, flipping cards, stacking American bills.

"They're gambling," Jacob said.

"Big deal."

A short, barrel-chested man exited the trailer and stood in the soft rectangle of light that spilled from the door. He wore a ragged bandanna on his head and smoked a t.u.r.d-colored cigarillo. He hawked loudly, spat toward the darkness, then fished at the front of his pants and sent a stream of p.i.s.s arcing into the dusty yard.

"Over here," Joshua whispered, shifting between the brittle bones of dead ornamental shrubs. "This is where the action is."

They worked their way to a tumbled outbuilding near the chicken shack. The shed was constructed of warped planks, tarpaper, and bulging plywood. Joshua opened the door with a shriek of rusty hinges, and Jacob glanced back at the urinating Mexican. The man swatted at a mosquito, sending his stream oscillating out in front of him. The boys entered the shed, the only light a dim, lesser gray that knifed between the wall's cracks.

Jacob b.u.mped his head on something dangling from the ceiling, and a rain of grit went down the back of his shirt. He put his hand up and felt the leathery object. It was a salted rack of ribs, smoked and cured and hung where the rats and dogs couldn't get it. The room smelled of wet hay and used motor oil, and the air was stale. Joshua moved to the wall, motioning Jacob forward, his arm like a strobe against the lighted cracks.

There was a knothole in the wall the size of a silver dollar. "Cheap peep show," Joshua said.

Jacob squinted through the hole and couldn't see anything at first. Then he realized he was looking at one of the rear mobile homes. He rolled the gaze of his right eye downward and saw a window, its dirty curtain like a soft gauze veiling the scene beyond the gla.s.s. On the bed was a girl with black hair and eyes, reading a book by candlelight. She wore a bathrobe whose whiteness was in sharp contrast to her tan skin. She appeared to be slightly younger than Jacob and Joshua, though the swells on her chest beneath the robe suggested an early push toward maturity.

"What do you think?" Joshua said, as if he were showing off a star baseball card fresh out of the pack.

Jacob's heart turned a sick flip but he couldn't tear his face from the knothole. The girl stretched her legs and the robe parted below her waist, revealing pink panties. She must have just finished a shower, because wet hair was plastered to her cheeks. She worked her lips as if trying to p.r.o.nounce the words in the book, and the sight of her moist tongue brought an electric tingle to Jacob's groin.

"Hot tamale tamale, huh?" Joshua said. "How would you like to roll up in a burrito with that?"

Jacob finally forced himself away from the wall. "How long have you been spying on her?"

"Long enough. I figure she's the daughter of one of the workers, and they smuggled her up here. Because there ain't no d.a.m.n way the government's going to give a work visa to an underage girl."

"An illegal immigrant? Like down in Texas and California?"

"Like all the way to North Carolina. Right here in Wells Country."

Jacob ached to take another look, though his stomach clenched with guilt. This was sneaky and wrong. This was something that perverts did, like Melvin Ricks, the janitor, who had been fired by the high school for drilling a hole in the wall to the girl's locker room.

There was only one door to the shed. "What if they catch you?"

"I only come at night, when they're already drunk," Joshua said. "Besides, what are they going to do? Tell Dad and get fired? Report me to the cops? They'd check everybody in the place for green cards and half these beaners would be on the next bus to Brownsville."

Jacob swallowed what felt like a sharp stone lodged in his throat. "Have you seen her naked?"

Joshua's grin flashed in the dimness. "Better than that."

"Bulls.h.i.t."

Joshua clapped him on the shoulder. "Ten bucks and your run of Hulk comics says so."

"I don't gamble."

"Hang around here awhile and you'll get over it."

An unintelligible shout came from the trailer that hosted the card game, followed by laughter. "Sounds like somebody hit a full house," Joshua said. "Some idiot probably just lost two weeks' worth of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g branches. Dumb f.u.c.ks."

Jacob scarcely heard, because his cheek was pressed against the wall again, his one-eyed gaze crawling between the curtain and up the curving insides of the girl's thighs. He felt a small stir of air. Joshua had opened the shed door. The door closed with a rattle of metal, followed by the sound of a latch slamming home.

"Joshua," Jacob said with a whispered hiss. "Let me out of here."

"Keep watching, bro', and I'll show you what it means to be a Wells."

Jacob scrambled over the sc.r.a.p metal, bundled straw, and tree baling equipment until he reached the door. He tried his weight against it then nudged it with his shoulder. He was afraid to make too much noise and risk drawing the attention of the card players. Despite Joshua's a.s.sessment, he could think of a number of ways the Mexicans could vent their anger at a gringo gringo pervert. pervert.

He heard a tinny knock then Joshua called out, "Carlita, it's me."

Jacob listened for a moment and scrambled back to the knothole. He got there in time to see the trailer door close. Joshua was nowhere to be seen. Until he stepped into the girl's bedroom, moved to the window, and opened the curtains. He winked, then the room went dark as Carlita leaned over, her robe parted and rumpled, and blew out the candle.

Jacob wasn't sure how long he sat in the shed, huddled in a ball. The card game went on and on, the laughter sharpening while the Spanish banter grew more gruff and slurred. After perhaps an hour, Jacob looked through the knothole to find the girl's window was still dark. He tried to picture Joshua, the girl lying beneath him with the robe parted, their limbs entwined.

Two men left the card game and stood outside the shed, pa.s.sing a bottle, talking quietly in words that Jacob couldn't understand. One of them went into the girl's trailer, and Jacob expected shouts as the couple was caught in the act. Instead, a light came on in the room, an overhead bulb this time instead of the candle. Joshua lay on the bed, the blankets pulled up to his bare chest. The girl was nowhere in sight. Joshua lifted his head and flashed Jacob two fingers in a sign of peace or victory. Or maybe that he'd done it two times.

Someone fumbled with the latch to the shed door.

Jacob looked around. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and he could make out some agricultural equipment in the back of the room, fertilizer spreaders and watering tanks. He pushed away from the wall and clambered under the machines just as the door opened. Someone entered the room, clinking gla.s.s against the wooden door frame.

The man slumped into the loose stack of hay, hummed a drunken ballad that contained references to senoritas senoritas and and corazon corazon, then the toneless notes drifted into snores. When the snores became gravelly and steady, Jacob slipped from his hiding place and knelt by the door again. The half-light lay on the bottle by the man's side, causing the liquid within to glow. Jacob took the bottle and returned to his vigil by the knothole.

He twisted off the lid and smelled the contents. He knew it was liquor, because his father had a cabinet of the stuff kept under lock and key that was occasionally broken out for dinner guests. Medicine to dull pain, Warren Wells had said.

Joshua was still on the bed, and the girl was with him now, her bare back to the window as she slid astride him. She threw her head back and Joshua's fingers gripped her waist. She moved back and forth, her firm b.u.t.tocks flexing with the gentle motion. Jacob sipped the liquor, barely aware of the burning on his tongue and in his throat. He took another swallow as the girl writhed faster, rocking as if on a hobby horse. The trot turned to a gallop and Jacob wasn't sure how much of the liquor he'd drunk but his head swam and his hand ached to reach for the heat inside his pants. The girl began crying out, and Joshua was yelling and groaning, the girl's skin red around the imprint of his fingers. Her flailing black hair fell across her shoulders as she ground her hips against Joshua, and with one great shudder and shriek, she went rigid.

Jacob drained the last of the bottle's contents as the couple slowed their movements and the girl collapsed on top of his twin brother. Jacob's head was thick; he was angry and aroused and nauseated. The card game must have ended, because silence filled the camp. He leaned his face against the wall and closed his eyes.

The next thing he knew, Joshua was shoving him awake. "Come on, goober, we better get home."

Jacob felt as if a plow had speared his skull. He blinked, looked past the door at the graying of dawn, the Mexican asleep in the hay, the empty bottle at his feet.

Joshua picked up the bottle and laughed. "Jose Cuervo, huh? Cheap c.r.a.p. I'll bet you feel like Pancho Villa's army camped out in your mouth."

Thirst scorched Jacob's throat. He tried to clear it but he couldn't swallow. A knot of dry vomit worked its way up past his lungs. "That girl--"

"Carlita," Joshua said. His hair was mussed, his eyes bright. "Mmm, mmm, moy bien chiquita. moy bien chiquita."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Jacob wasn't sure if he was jealous or simply angry because Joshua had kept a secret. His thoughts were foggy and his eyes were dry as stones.

"Because you wouldn't have believed me."

"Then why did you bring me out here?"

"Because I hate you." A rooster crowed, then another. Joshua nodded to the sleeping man. "They'll be going to work soon. Dear old Daddy can't make a profit off them if they sleep all day. Let's get out of here."

They headed back across the Christmas tree field, Jacob staggering and holding his stomach. The revelry that had colored the camp the night before had died with darkness, and now the trailers looked rumpled and sad. A Dodge van was parked out front, its side door gone, the rear window broken. Jacob knelt in the gra.s.s and tried to vomit, but all that came up was a caked, greenish-yellow substance. He crawled several yards with the stuff trailing from his lips until Joshua yanked him to his feet.

"Shape up, Jake. You don't want n.o.body to suspect nothing back at the house."

Jacob took one last look at the girl's window, thought of that miraculous skin against the soft terry cloth of the robe, the black hair, the curves and muscles of her legs. He spat his mouth clear. "Did you...um...?"

Joshua patted him on the back. "A Wells never fails."

They made it back to the house, and Jacob was able to shower and have breakfast before Old Man Wells made it to the table. Dad drank his coffee and checked the stocks in the newspaper. Joshua sat in silence, wearing a faint smile of amus.e.m.e.nt. The greasy bacon and eggs sat in Jacob's stomach like steel shavings and rubber, but the nausea pa.s.sed and his hands no longer trembled. It was Friday, so he and Joshua would have to walk the half mile to catch the school bus down by the bridge.

"What are you boys doing after school?" Dad asked.

"I thought we'd go down to the workers' camp," Joshua said, catching Jacob's gaze and holding it. "I'm thinking of taking Spanish next semester and figured I could get a few free lessons."

"You stay away from there. Those beaners are rough. They're hard workers, but if they didn't work so cheap, I wouldn't bother with them. When they're drunk, they get mean. They'd cut each other's throat for a nickel."

"I don't think our workers drink, Dad," Joshua said.

Dad actually looked over the newspaper at that. "They all drink. So don't be hanging around there. If you want to learn Spanish, we can hire a tutor."

"But I want to learn about the tree industry," Joshua said, and Jacob was stunned by the glib cunning of his brother. Joshua knew how to trick Jacob, all right, but his recent conquest must have fueled his arrogance, because there he was bulls.h.i.tting Dad, the king of the bulls.h.i.tters.

"I can teach you about the trees when the time comes," Dad said, turning his attention back to the Dow Jones average.

"What if something happened to you? One of us would have to know what to do."

"Nothing's going to happen to me."

"It happened to Mom, didn't it?"

Dad folded the paper, crossed the kitchen, poured his coffee down the sink, and rinsed his gla.s.s. He left the room, and a minute later the front door closed, followed by the sound of his truck engine.

Joshua leaned back in his chair and grinned like a dyspeptic weasel. "What's really cool is one day one of us is going to have to carry on."

Jacob put his head on the table, head in his hands. He wondered if he could skip school without Dad finding out. "Are you in love with her?"

"What's that, pukeface?"

"Is she your girlfriend?"

"Love. You really believe that s.h.i.t, don't you?"

Jacob wanted to ask what it was like, her hot, slick skin on his, her lips brushing his face, the secret folds opened. He wanted to know how Joshua could enjoy all those wonders and then remain so callous towards them.

He'd always been afraid that the twins were too much alike, that his and Joshua's shadow would always be merged and neither would escape the other. That morning, he saw for the first time how little alike they actually were, as if they didn't even belong to the same species.