Artwork by Aldo Jarillo. Source image: Original manuscript of The Woman from Nowhere, with the markings of the author © The Estate of Charles M. Portis. Courtesy the Wittliff Collections, Texas State University

Editor’s Note: The author Charles Portis, who died in 2020 at the age of eighty-six, published five novels, of which the most well known are Norwood (1966) and True Grit (1968). Portis completed three more novels over the next three decades: The Dog of the South (1979), Masters of Atlantis (1985), and Gringos (1991). In 2023, the Library of America published his Collected Works. In an essay for this magazine on the occasion, I wrote that Portis’s brother Richard had many years ago “spoken of another novel that was never published,” set in Veracruz, Mexico. “What became of it?” I wrote. Following Portis’s death, a number of significant archival discoveries were made. In 2022, in the basement of a Little Rock, Arkansas, home that Portis had originally purchased for his parents, workers repairing the house’s HVAC system found a trove of his manuscripts, notes, and correspondence. And in his own apartment, the family recovered what remained of his efforts to begin the sixth novel, The Woman from Nowhere, of which this marks the first published excerpt. In preparing the text, Harper’s Magazine had the kind assistance of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, which acquired the archival material last year; of the Portis family and estate; and of Jay Jennings, Portis’s longtime friend and the editor of his Collected Works.

—Will Stephenson

I.

There was a witch scandal some few years ago in the old port city of Veracruz. “Look how brazen they are now, these sorcerers,” said Valentin Camacho to his young business adviser, Hector Melta. “They offer their services to us in the newspapers.”

He showed Hector a notice in the classified-advertising section of El Filibustero. The two men were seated at the window table in Valentin’s restaurant, La Cofa, where they met for their daily conference early, before opening time. They lingered over glasses of milky coffee and browsed through the morning papers.

The notice was straightforward enough. A woman calling herself Doña Beatriz was boasting in print that she knew the 144 names of power and how to utter them properly, unbroken in sequence. She was in frequent communion with occult forces and could promise immediate help to those persons standing in need of money, health, beauty, love, courage, popular esteem, a job, fertility, virility, vengeance, or a good car. All confidences were respected. All secrets were locked safely away—tickalock—in the massive bosom of Doña Beatriz. She gave a telephone number in Boca del Río.

Hector glanced over the ad, shrugged, and went back to his own newspaper, the more respectable La Corriente, with its statistical pie charts on the front page. He said he took no interest in witches and their fooleries. The ones who weren’t downright frauds were only cracked and wretched old women with delusions. If they could in fact summon and control those dark spirits, then why were they, the witches themselves, not rich and healthy and beautiful? Why would they choose to remain such smelly old hags, muttering in the streets? It was all nonsense, beneath the notice of grown men.

Valentin said, “The Rubio Robalito woman is no hag. She has good health and plenty of money.”

“Oh, well, Isabel, yes. That’s different. That’s something else again. She is—well, a striking woman, to be sure, always nicely turned out. And she lives high, thanks to Borja. He is generous enough to his mistress. But she only plays at that witchery game. Can’t you see? Isabel likes to dress up in her fine clothes and pretend she is some haughty woman of mystery. That’s all it amounts to. She wants us to think her some sort of abeja reina or maestra.”

“So you think she plays a little game.”

“Works at it, I should say. Oh yes, she loves it when these country folk come to town on Saturdays and how they shy away from her. How they cross themselves and dance and hop about to get out of her shadow. Then there’s that old fat tomcat, Rufino, that she fondles and nuzzles. Correction—Master Rufino. Really now, a cat. That’s too much. More witch comedy. Can’t you see? She is putting on a show for us.”

“I can see well enough, thank you. The blind man is you, Hector, for all your education. Or because of it. You look around and can see nothing but what your professors and your books have told you it is correct to see. Look here, this woman doesn’t sell charms and love potions out of a stall in the Hidalgo Market. She is a practicing witch of the most devilish kind. She has murdered three husbands—that we know of. Three old fools, if you like, for thinking she really wanted to share her bed with some scarecrows. But how many more do you need?”

“Oh, don’t tell me that old story has come around again. They died of cholera, Valentin. Old men do die, you know. And there were only two that I recall. Don’t you remember? La Corriente put all that gossip to rest. They showed photographs of the two death certificates on the front page. There they were in black and white—cause of death: cholera.”

“Yes, the woman is clever. I give her that. We have a cholera epidemic. She finds herself an old-timer with some money or some insurance or some property. She marries him and then sprinkles rat poison all over his food from a saltshaker with extra-big holes in the top. He dies retching up black stuff, the same as all those people with cholera. Then she has the gall to do it again. And the doctors now, look here, they are working day and night. They don’t have the time for a lot of paperwork. People are dying left and right. They just scribble down ‘cholera’ on all those forms. Those papers mean nothing at all.”

“I can see you’ve been brooding over this. You have it all worked out. But you said three husbands. Who was the third one?”

“The third one was the very first one—that we know of. Around here on the Gulf, anyway. It was old man Dorantes, down in Alvarado.”

“Yes, the old fisherman down there. I had forgotten all about that marriage.”

“So has everyone else. It was short enough. Alvarado was where the woman first turned up here on the Gulf. She got off the bus there one afternoon, out of nowhere, and checked into the Hotel Barcelona. And it was there in the hotel barroom that she heard about Dorantes and his two shrimp boats and his money. About how well set up he was. She stood at the bar and drank with the men—no shame whatever, and her a Mexican woman, too, or so she claims. When Dorantes showed up there one afternoon, she introduced herself, just as bold as brass. She made eyes at him. His old knees buckled. He couldn’t believe his luck. So he put his good old wife aside and married the Rubio Robalito woman. He didn’t last long, a month or so. She had him buried in a plywood box not much bigger than a suitcase and cleaned out his bank account and sold his two shrimp trawlers for cash money and came on up here to the city for some fresh pickings.”

“But there was something about a monkey.”

“Yes, Dorantes had a pet monkey. An old bull monkey called Crespo. Now listen to this. Here was the woman’s tale. One night at home, after supper, the old man and Crespo got into a good-natured scuffle over the last one of the little cakes on the table. Crespo had his own high chair at that supper table. They tussled around. Dorantes, you know, he wasn’t much bigger than a monkey himself. So here they are now, on the floor, wrestling over a little gingerbread pig. Then Crespo bit Dorantes on the thumb. The old fellow suddenly took sick and died forty minutes later of monkey fever, raving and flopping about on his bed.”

“So fast? Forty minutes after a playful nip on the thumb?”

“That was the woman’s story, Hector.”

“What is monkey fever, anyway?”

Valentin shouted across the breadth of the empty restaurant to Rafael, an ancient gnome who was the senior waiter. “Rafael! Call the nuthouse! Tell those people to get over here pronto in their white vans and take Hector away! He believes old man Dorantes died of monkey fever! He wants to put Crespo the monkey in prison!”

But Rafael with his catlike dignity never deigned to turn his head when his name was spoken, nor would he respond at once to the sharp handclap or the ding of spoon on glass from an impatient diner.

Hector said, “All right, then. Say there is a pattern. Where does your witchcraft come in? What you’re describing sounds like an ordinary criminal matter to me. So why haven’t the police looked into it?”

“Because that woman scares them out of their boots, Hector. That’s why. They look the other way. And besides, policemen don’t know anything about poisons. When she starts using an axe they might take some notice.”

“But if Isabel really does have these demonic powers, then why would she have to feed arsenic to her husbands like ordinary wives? Why couldn’t she just cast spells and strike them dead on the spot?”

“She could, at a heavy cost to her own health, and not on the spot even then. Death spells are hard to work. They take time. Conditions have to be right. A waning moon in the right quarter. All those little things from her kit have to be lined up just so on her altar. Her rare gums that she burns, and those consecrated wafers that she stole from Holy Souls Church. It’s a wonder they don’t scorch her fingers. Ask the Monseñor, he can tell you all about it, and about some missing holy oil, too. Can you imagine? Making off with the Host itself! And then, look here, to work her spell she would have to chant hard words all night long, with every word in the right place. Why would she bother with all that? She takes her opportunities where she finds them.”

They went back to their newspapers. Rafael topped up their glasses from two steaming kettles, one of coffee and the other of milk. His little hands were gnarled now but had not lost their touch. He poured fast from high above each glass, and then with a snap of the hands he cut off the flow clean from the spouts. No droplet fell astray.

A bit later Hector broke the silence with what suddenly occurred to him as a telling point. “You’re forgetting something, Valentin. The old Capitán married Isabel and he lived to tell the tale.”

“Escaped to tell it, you mean. He had to slip away from her in the night and leave the country in an airplane. The old Capitán now, yes, he is a fine man. He has his honor. But he couldn’t see what he was getting into with that woman. Then one day he did see it and he knew his only chance to live was to steal away from her in the night. I will remind you that he didn’t come back from Galveston, Texas, until the divorce was final. When she had no more claim on his property.”

“What property would that be? All he has is his retirement pension from the Navy, and as far as I know . . . that can’t amount to much. Hardly enough to attract avaricious women.”

“I don’t know the ins and outs of it. Maybe he has some insurance. Or maybe she was interested in his social position. I haven’t figured out that part of it yet. Not even Flaco can get to the bottom of it.”

“At least we know why he left her. No mystery there.”

“Oh? I wonder if you do know.”

“I heard he left her because it took her three hours to get ready for bed every night.”

“Yes, that was the story he put out. Still, it was true enough, the three-hour business, and he knew that would be solid grounds for the divorce. But that wasn’t why he flew away in a fast airship in the middle of the night. Have you ever looked closely at that woman’s neck?”

“Isabel’s neck? No.”

“Take a good look at her neck sometime. Her throat. It is the neck of a girl. Why hasn’t it started going stringy? That woman has not aged one day in nine years. No one knows how old she really is.”

“Well, aren’t there these special night creams that women use?”

“No, no, don’t talk to me about your neck creams and your special night creams. You will always come up with something lame and pitiful like that to explain away a strange business. Listen to me, Hector. This happened up in Xalapa just a few months ago. The Rubio Robalito woman was there, on God only knows what business. She was walking across the Juárez Park. A small boy came riding along on a bicycle and splashed a little water on her leg from a puddle. That very night she worked a hex on him—on a child, mind you. His little fingers and toes rotted away from the tips down until they all dropped off. Flaco was telling me about it, and he knows an uncle of the boy.”

“Ah, Flaco. I might have known. Flaco and his boy with paws. But why all this talk about Isabel? What are you driving at? You’ve got witches on the brain. I’m not getting the drift of this.”

“That woman has been looking at me. I don’t like it. She has no business looking at me and smiling at me. Something is going on, I tell you. I can smell something burning.”

“Looking at you where?”

“Everywhere. Out on the streets, the plaza, the market. She will catch sight of me from a block away and stop dead in her tracks and smile that little smile at me.”

“But her dark glasses. How do you know she is looking at you?”

“By the way she cocks her head. You can tell, all right, from the set of her head. And now on top of everything else she is interfering with my sleep.”

“How does she do that?”

“I don’t know how she does it, but when I’m sleeping she puts ugly pictures in my head of five or six hairy demons. I wake up just shaking all over like a wet dog.”

“What are the demons doing?”

“Nothing. Just squatting, drooling there and grinning at me. They have no business grinning at me. It was Borja who put that woman up to all this. You can count on it.”

“Borja, yes, of course. Now I see. He has to be behind everything. You’ve got Borja on the brain, too.”

“He is behind more things in this town than you know. You can’t deny that he threw up that big ugly building across the street just to spite me and block off my morning light. You don’t know the man.”

“I know him well enough, and yes, he likes to annoy you, but I can’t believe he would build a seven-story office building on a whim like that. You flatter yourself. Borja doesn’t spend that kind of money unless he is sure of a good return.”

“That woman is working a spell on me and he put her up to it.”

II.

Various stories about the Rubio Robalito woman—older ones, somewhat improved upon over time, and ever new ones—were told and retold around the city. It was said that she could raise a storm at sea, placing the fishing boats in peril, and that she could lay waste to field crops by raising a plague of weevils and cankerworms; that she slept with her eyes open, and that her sleep, like that of a house cat, ran to eighteen hours a day; that she was a morphine addict; that she had six toes on one foot, and that she had a black mole in the shape of a toad’s foot behind one knee; that she had an albino daughter, abandoned at birth; that she had strangled her mother, also a witch and a prostitute, in Mexico City, then set fire to the bed on which the mother lay still; that she had fled to Veracruz by rail, when the passenger trains were still running, carrying her mother’s grimoire and Master Rufino in a satchel punctured with air holes; that her father was a French diplomat in Mexico City, that her father was a French baker in Mexico City, that her father was not French at all but rather a common pickpocket in Mexico City; that she could touch any hard, smooth object with her fingertips while blindfolded and tell the color of that object; that a Mexico City police detective from the Expulsion Bureau had put her on a bus with a one-way ticket to Catemaco, “the city of witches,” south of Veracruz, with a warning never to return, whence her recent appearance on the Gulf Coast; that she had married a drug dealer called Popo in Mexico City, then murdered him during their honeymoon on the Isla del Carmen, whence her recent appearance on the coast; that she was a nature lover and had traveled to the forested mountains rising above the Gulf, to await with glee the arrival of the migrating monarch butterflies, whence her recent appearance on the coast; that she had married an American dope peddler in San Miguel de Allende by the name of Monroe Beede, also known to the police as Budro Beede, Cedro Beede, Spider Beede, Skeeter Beede, Booger Red Beede and Roger Dale Beede and Wardell Beade, then strangled him with a loop of wire on their honeymoon bed in the fragrant, vanilla-bean town of Papantla, whence her recent appearance on the Gulf; that she had command over a band of demons the size of mice living beneath the docks; that she had command over eight or nine unclean spirits in the Gulf states of Veracruz and Tabasco; that she could transliterate the night cries of birds and frogs and insects into comprehensible if repetitious bird statements and frog statements and bug statements in the Spanish language; that her sorceries and curses were effective only on that fifth Friday in a month with five Fridays; and so on.

She, Isabel, was incapable of laughing or weeping. When she saw or heard something that struck her as being ridiculous she gave only a little grunt. On hearing that last rumor she gave just such a grunt, followed by a piggish snort of contempt.

The old Capitán’s marriage to Isabel Rubio Robalito was a brief and strange affair, not to mention his midnight flight from the marriage bed and the subsequent divorce. As for the courtship, it was she, Isabel, having social aspirations and living in a city where the social standing of witches was quite low, who had made the first move.

Her only reading matter, apart from the tattered leaves of her mother’s grimoire, an old conjure book of spells and incantations, was the society section of La Corriente. Every Sunday morning she bought a copy of the newspaper at a kiosk near the zócalo. She extracted the society pages and dumped all the rest into a trash barrel.

Then she sought out an empty bench in the park, as far away as possible from the bandstand, and settled in. She pored over the photographs of debutantes and brides, as well as those of the well-burnished matrons who presided over the holiday balls, masked balls, charity balls, banquets, levees, seasonal galas, and other festive affairs in the city. She came to know the names of those sleek older hostesses, and even some of their nicknames. She even came to know something about the correct seating arrangements for these gatherings.

Isabel read every word of the society news, saving the best for last, and the best, by far, was the popular gossip column called “Whispers . . . from Lupita.” In one of her recent Whispers, Lupita had made it known that a Navy Capitán of flag rank or higher, active or retired, was automatically invited to all social events of any importance in Veracruz. Isabel took note of this tidbit in a casual way.

A few days later, on seeing a laughing, elderly gentleman coming out of the post office, the importance of the tidbit finally registered and stopped her cold in her tracks. Wasn’t he the one they called “the old Capitán”? Here was her entrée! Yes, of course! Her ticket to the balls! It was destiny!

So it was that she made a play for “the old Capitán,” as he was known fondly to one and all, rich and poor, to young and old alike. A widower twice over, and long retired from the Mexican Navy, he was still something of a ladies’ man, even at his age. He strolled about the old city with his cane and a smile and a friendly word of greeting for everyone along the way. In his gait there remained the faint touch of a rolling swagger.

The old boulevardier responded at once to Isabel’s flirtation signals, gallantly pretending that it was he who had initiated the wooing.

But then the woman had second thoughts. She held back from marrying him. Something wasn’t quite right here. She kept getting a confusing reply from her divinations into the matter, thus—C is wrong but C is right. Her trance-writing was guided, as she knew well, by emanations from the big yellow cat with the yellow eyes, Master Rufino, he being her familiar spirit and those being the words her fountain pen kept spelling out, over and over again.

What to make of such a riddle? Oracular revelations are expected to be ambiguous but this one appeared to be self-contradictory. “C” would have to be the old Capitán—that was clear enough—but how could he be both wrong and right as a husband? And there was no mistaking the words. All the emanating syllables rang clear in her head, as she took care to jot them down verbatim, in blue-black ink, which is to say the ink wrote blue and dried black. She was likewise faithful in keeping a daily record, in a different spiral-wire notebook, of Rufino’s tiny and all but inaudible emissions of gas.

So, what then to do? Usually so decisive, she wavered. She had misgivings. She continued to see the old sailor but brushed aside his proposals of marriage—until that strange night when he whispered to her that he was one of the Five Proud Walkers, and nor was he the least of them.

He showed her a small golden key, engraved on one side with a sunburst emblem, the wavy rays of which suggesting a kind of glory. This, he explained, was no functional or ordinary key, but it was rather a symbolic key of great age, older than the carved stone heads of the Olmecs. It was the badge of his high office. There were only five such keys in the world. Few eyes had ever seen one and no woman had ever gazed upon this one. But now, as a mark of his devotion, he would permit her, Isabel, to hold the little talisman in the palm of her hand for a moment or two. Perhaps, in squeezing it, she could feel the tingle of its potency. She said yes, she thought she could sense a sort of . . . prickle.

He swore her to silence. Brutal punishment would follow hard any breach of this confidence. His life was at stake as well as hers. The pair of them would be hacked up with machetes and their bloody remains flung to a pack of street dogs.

Then he softened the tone of things with a smile, as he proposed a loving pledge. They toasted each other, arms awkwardly entwined, with glasses of red wine. It was a betrothal pledge.

Isabel was stupefied. Who could have foreseen such a thing, a Proud Walker? A strange moment indeed. The very air seemed to be charged and something was pulsing. What? Blood? Was there not also a faint hum? Did coursing blood hum? For all her vanity and extravagant ambition she had never dared to think that she might one day meet in the flesh, much less embrace, a Proud Walker. And yet here was one. Or was he? This shuffling old fellow a Proud Walker? This old man with his enormous ears and with his head settling ever lower between his shoulders—of all people! And here in Veracruz—of all places!

But then no one could say with much confidence just where, at a given moment, a Proud Walker might be, or just who might be one. They were a cabal, these Five, a camarilla of nameless and faceless men who were believed to be the ultimate rulers of Mexico.

But just who were they? One theory had it that the Five were Jesuit priests, or perhaps defrocked, apostate Jesuits. Another theory held that they were Freemasons, possibly renegade Masons, members of a breakaway lodge, the smallest and most exalted lodge of Scottish Rite Freemasons in the world. Still another claimed they ruled from an underground room with high bronze doors, beneath the Chapultepec Hill in the very heart of Mexico City.

As for the apparent government of Mexico—or so the theory went—it was nothing more than an elaborate sham structure of sticks, cardboard, and painted canvas. It was a mere puppet show of elections, with dummy presidents, senators, and the like going through their scripted paces. It was all a colorful but empty pageant which served to entertain the people and keep the lawyers occupied with endless artificial disputes and to provide daily political fodder for the journalists, with their furrowed brows.

Isabel saw at once how foolish she had been to imagine the Five as haughty bravos in the prime of life, swaggering about in public five abreast with their insolent heads thrown back as they drove ordinary folk off the sidewalks—and perhaps off cliffs, as well, for sport. No, “Proud Walker” was almost certainly a poetic term, not to be construed literally. As governors of the nation they must necessarily be older men of experience. They would be the wise men, the tribal elders. And they would have to be somewhere, even here on the Gulf, just as they would have to find their wives somewhere. Why not here?

And as for the old Capitán, he did have a certain hidalgo air about him. His was a felt presence. He was a natural-born don of some kind. And who better than she, Isabel, daughter of Belial, handmaiden to Asmodeus and beloved of Baal, to serve with her regal bearing as his consort? Things were at last falling into place. She had fetched up here in this sweltering old city to meet her high destiny.

After a civil marriage service, quite brief and cold-blooded, the two lovers took a bus to Boca del Río, just a few kilometers down the coast, for their honeymoon. It was all something of a disappointment to Isabel. They traveled in a decrepit shuttle bus, an old American school bus, still yellow here and there, and in a driving rainstorm. They did manage to find adjoining seats but could not escape being jostled and breathed on by the standing passengers. And even dripped on by soaked and steaming passengers who came aboard out of the rain. Progress was slow. The bus stopped frequently, on being hailed at any point along the way. Isabel said to herself: I have married another old man with no car.

“I know Boca well,” the old sailor had said. “Leave all the arrangements to me. Allow me to surprise you. I am going to show you the best-kept secret in Mexico. Such food! Some very nice people go there—refined ladies, you know, clean feeders as a rule, with dainty table manners—and they just gobble that food down like hogs at a trough. That’s how good it is. They stuff it down till you think they must pop. Oh my—wouldn’t that be something?—a series of damp pops under the table. Everyone stops gobbling for a moment and looks about for the source of the muffled popping. And do you know what you are going to say? Oh yes, with those first few bites your eyes will sparkle and you will turn to me and just blurt it out—‘Yum, yum!’ ”

The surprise was that they would be staying not in the bridal suite of a luxury hotel on the beach, but in a small bedroom of a downtown boardinghouse. The dining room there was long and narrow. Ranged along the walls at eye level there were framed newspaper clippings, which featured photographs of singers, dancers, athletes, politicians, actors, and other laughing celebrities, who, it was implied in the text, ate here at every opportunity.

But they were back-number celebrities of another day, unfamiliar to Isabel, and it was somehow clear that these luminaries were no longer dancing, singing, boxing, laughing, or indeed eating anywhere at all these days—that they were in fact all now quite dead. Some glint of life had faded from their eyes. Or it may only have been the overall sepia tint of the news clippings that dated the celebrities so.

The meals were served family style at a long communal table and at fixed times. “But what meals!” said the old Capitán. “It’s the best cooking to be found on the Gulf of Mexico! Ten times better than that overpriced hotel slop! Twenty times!”

True enough, perhaps, but Isabel was not pleased on finding herself in the company of boardinghouse people. More bus people. The old Capitán himself was, of course, open and cordial to everyone, of whatever station in life, and with his ready fund of jokes and polished anecdotes he kept the voracious boarders shrieking with laughter, all up and down the long table, and shaking, too, so that their wooden chairs creaked.

Isabel sat fuming in silence. She was disgusted by the liberties these people took, and much annoyed with her old husband. Why would he invite these familiarities from such nobodies?

III.

Alfonso Borja was sitting alone at his new oval desk of dark mahogany in his new penthouse office atop his new seven-story Borja Building. The office was a rotunda in form, mounted on a turntable. A heavy rain had swept in off the Gulf and was beating down with a terrible clamor on the glass dome above his head—which crystal cap topped off this very modern Edificio Borja.

He kept craning his head about with alarm, being fearful of water leaks and bolts of lightning. Hard man of business though he was, he had never really managed to hold his architects, with all their self-indulgent fooleries, in check. He was disgusted. How could any work possibly get done here at an egg-shaped desk in a rotating room under a glass roof?

The bolt from the blue, however, came not from the heavens but rather from a private telephone. Dazed somewhat, Borja listened to the caller without saying much. Then the line went dead and he placed the beige telephone back into its cradle. So—amazing news then—if true. He considered the possibility that the caller had been a prankster, or some personal enemy playing him a dirty trick. And yet, on the whole, no, he thought not. That confident voice, however much reduced so as to make its way along a copper wire, had a certain pitch of authority in it.

But how did the fellow get through to this telephone? Not even Borja’s wife had the number. No one, in theory, knew the number of this most private of his several telephones except for himself, his lawyer, his current mistress, as well as his former mistress, Estela, who remained his confidential secretary.

The caller was a stranger with a harsh Monterrey accent who gave his name simply as “Brother Enrique.” He said he was calling from Mexico City on a matter of some urgency, and that, without further ado, he was pleased to notify Señor Borja that he was in.

Borja said, “In? What am I in? How did you get this number?”

“Yes, permit me to explain. For almost a year now your name has been at the top of our short list—shortest of short lists—of candidates for the office of Proud Walker. We never use the word ‘vacancy,’ but in the event of a death among our Five, the man holding that top position on the list automatically becomes the successor. And, earlier today, at 7:23 am, one of our older Brothers, while doddering across the Reforma Promenade, was struck down and killed by a speeding motor scooter. And there you have it—ignominious death by red scooter. That will give you some idea of his frailty. So, Señor Borja—or now, more correctly, Brother Alfonso—you have been a Proud Walker since early this morning. Thus does our Eternal Five remain intact.”

“Hold it. Wait a minute. Are you telling me that I am now one of the Five Proud Walkers?”

“That is just what I am telling you. As of the last exhalation of our older Brother early this morning. Strictly speaking, there can be no vacancy. Ours is a self-perpetuating body. Immortal, if you will. We exist outside of time. The replacement procedure is self-activated and immediate. Well, something of a convenient legal fiction there, I will concede, since you are not yet an effective Proud Walker. There is always a bit of a gap. Still, you were listed on our active muster roll as of early today, and very soon indeed you will be seated in your own Oak Chair.”

“I didn’t even know I was being considered.”

“No one knows until he is actually tapped, and you must regard this call as that metaphorical tap on the shoulder. The old Brother is out, in more ways than one, and you, Brother Alfonso, are in.”

“Who was the old fellow?”

“Oh, you would know the name, if I could reveal it. Quite a well-known figure at one time. In any case, that’s all water under the bridge. No real loss, I hasten to say. A blessing, really. He was senile, demented, deranged. Not exactly a nullity, but close, close. Proud Walker indeed. Shuffling mummy is more like it. And the man had lost all sense of propriety. He would snort and snore through our most solemn conclaves, then wake with a start and give a little chirping cry of fright. So much for decorum.”

“Why didn’t you retire him, or just give him the boot?”

Brother Enrique laughed. “ ‘Give him the boot,’  the man says. I like that. Yes, you will bring a healthy candor to our deliberations. Just what we need, a man of the world, bluff and straightforward. But, alas, we cannot give anyone the boot, as you put it. Lifetime appointments, you see. No provision for removal from office, short of death, and no provision for euthanasia. Neither is there any provision for amending our Articles of Foundation. Carved in stone, they are. And there you have the weakness of our ancient Articles. Still, we manage. We are not quite so dotard-heavy as you might expect. And for all that, the old fellow, the recently deceased, did serve, if only as ballast, by way of filling a Chair. And his death comes at an awkward time, this being one of our busy seasons, when we are preparing our quarterly directives, both regional and national. So it is imperative that the office be filled at once. No official business can go forward, you see, until we are all well and truly seated in our Five Oak Chairs.”

“Why couldn’t four do the job? Or even three?”

“Not possible. Our laws are fixed in stone, as I told you, and not one jot or tittle of them can be effaced, not even by our chief, the Wrathful Prince himself.”

“Your chief is a wrathful prince?”

“No, no, he is the Wrathful Prince. El Jefe Máximo. Our chief executive officer. Primus inter pares. The first among five equals. The first among five caudillos, you see.”

“How does that work? A caudillo, yes, the boss, I understand that very well, by way of being one myself. But five caudillos? How could that possibly work?”

“A rota. We have a rotating leadership. Five caudillos, yes, but only one Wrathful Prince at a given time. And during that time the Four must defer and submit to discipline. Clear enough?”

“Not really.”

“Well, if he, the Wrathful Prince, comes in and sees that we do not have a quorum, or rather a plenum, he will say, ‘What, do I see an empty chair? Fewer than Five Proud Walkers on deck? Then I must declare these proceedings suspended and adjourned sine die.’ But now, Brother Alfonso, let us get back to your own accession. The first thing you are going to need is a signet ring.”

“A ring? Who is this? Do I know you? How did you get this number? What kind of ring are you talking about? You are going much too fast for me.”

“My sincere apologies. Things have been hectic here in the Deep Chamber since early this morning and I am a limp rag. Here I am, just babbling away. And no, we have not met, though I feel I know you quite well. You have been under our scrutiny for some time now and we like what we see.”

“Do you people use a secret language? That I will have to learn?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Castilian Spanish is good enough for us. It is the only language for gentlemen. Of course we do have our passwords and countersigns. And you will be taught our hand signals of greeting and warning, that sort of silent communication. Our intricate handclasps and our winks and nods of alarm.”

“How much is all this going to cost me?”

Brother Enrique laughed again. “Right to the point! ‘How much will it cost?’ Right to the heart of things! But have you ever stopped to consider, Brother Alfonso, that there may be a few things in this world with no price tag?”

“You find my question offensive?”

“I think you spoke before you thought.”

“Well, all this is quite an honor, of course, but surely I am entitled to know—”

“At this stage of things you are entitled to know just what we see fit to tell you, nothing more. And, if I may say so, it’s a double honor that is being bestowed upon you. First, the high honor of being a Proud Walker, and then the unique distinction of being the first Proud Walker from the venerable old city of Veracruz, four times heroic—or is it five? An outrage, of course, that the fine men of our brave old city, oldest of our Spanish cities here, have been overlooked until now, but there it is. And I must tell you that we are strictly forbidden to utter the word dinero, money, when we are sitting in council. Not done. Sacrilege. Defilement. But where there is a will there can usually be found a way, and we are not specifically denied the use of synonyms for that taboo word. You may rest assured that the material benefits accruing to you as a Proud Walker will be substantial. And we will leave it at that. Now, let me say that your initial out-of-pocket expense will be nominal. The cost of a silver ring and the cost of a few silken items—sashes and the like—which we wear on formal occasions. Now then, will you be needing an emergency loan to cover these trifling expenses? With perhaps a little extra on the side to tide you over?”

“Certainly not. I could buy and sell the lot of you twice over and never miss the money. But I must have things clear in my head before I make a move. What kind of ring are you talking about?”

“A silver ring for your left ring finger. A heavy ring, gem-set, of no great intrinsic value. In tomorrow’s express mail you will receive a fire opal of an oblong, baguette cut, engraved with a ram’s head. That is our signet, which makes a clean impression in sealing wax. Have your jeweler melt down an old milled Spanish dollar, a piece of eight, for the casting of the ring itself. Those old coins assay out, I believe, at around .800 fine, which is eighty percent silver and the rest copper. This alloy gives our rings just the right heft and just the right subdued luster. No cheap sheen. In that package with the opal you will also find a drawing, to scale, of the ring itself. Have your jeweler prepare it to the exact specifications, as given, and then insert the opal into the setting, as shown. Tell him the stone is an old family heirloom, nothing more. Are we clear so far?”

“Well, I suppose so, but I don’t quite see—”

“But you do understand, don’t you, that you must not disclose one word of this conversation to anyone?”

“Certainly.”

“Not to your wife, not to your old Mother Borja, not to your confessor priest—to no one at all. Breach of confidence—that is the scarlet sin, the cardinal and unforgivable sin of our fraternal ethos. And a word of warning about imposters. Only I, Brother Enrique, have been cleared to speak directly to you. Hang up at once on any other caller representing himself as a Proud Walker. Meanwhile, I want you to think about ice. You savvy ice?”

“What? No, I don’t. Ice?”

“Big square blocks of frozen water. Ice is the key to empire. Surely you savvy key, a master key. Well, never mind, the answer will come to you soon enough, out of the mist, in the form of a small soft glowing ball. Understood? Good. Now, in view of our emergency, I will be frank and tell you that your accession rites must be curtailed somewhat. Don’t worry, I can promise you that neither the dignity nor the efficacy of the ceremony will be diminished. Oh yes, I pulled rank, and put my foot down on that point! You can count on it! It’s just that the processional and recessional movements of the investiture will be trimmed a bit, and with not quite so many blazing candles. And fewer drumrolls, you know, and fewer trumpet fanfares, with shorter accolades, shorter poems, that sort of thing. But the essential dignity, the essential gravity of it all, is being preserved. Now, do I have your consent to go forward with this? Well, of course I do, that goes without saying, so we need not linger there. Just a bit of boilerplate formality. Yes, I think we can take that as read and endorsed. What else now? Let’s see here. Do you have a spinal deformity of any kind?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Frequent convulsions?”

“None at all, no.”

“Any missing limbs or withered limbs?”

“No.”

“Any major business reverses within the past five years?”

“No.”

“Have formal complaints ever been lodged against you concerning your personal hygiene?”

“Certainly not.”

“Now then, what is all this here about your orthopedic boot?”

“My what?”

“Or perhaps I should say boots. It is not made clear here whether you wear one or two of these—heavy black corrective shoes.”

“I don’t wear any such thing.”

“Then why . . . or no, wait . . . now I see, yes . . . I am looking at the wrong curriculum vitae! Not yours at all! It’s that of some hopeless fellow by the name of Borro! How foolish! What you must think of me! I am just so rattled this morning, what with this cascade of paperwork. But bear with me, we’re almost done for the day. I am trying to squeeze so much into this one call. Oh yes, and this is vitally important—the menacing caution. I almost forgot. If you speak of this call to anyone, you can abandon all hope. Within twenty-four hours you will be bludgeoned to death with ball-peen hammers. Understood? Not a peep. Is that clear?”

“Quite clear.”

“Then permit me in closing to be the first Proud Walker to offer you a hearty welcome into the ranks of our Ever Unbroken Circle. With the warmest of felicitations. And on that happy note I really must run. Extended telephone conversations are dangerous, so vulnerable to wiretappers. Goodbye for now, Brother Alfonso. You will be hearing from me again soon.”

Borja said, “Wait, how can I reach you? How did you get this number?”

But there was a click and the voice was gone. Brother Enrique was gone. Borja sat stupefied at his big desk. Rain was still drumming away on the glass dome overhead. Down in the streets, far below, the just pedestrians and the unjust pedestrians alike were getting soaked as they scurried about for shelter.

A prank call? Perhaps, but he thought not. A bit too circumstantial for a hoaxter. And besides, why shouldn’t he be a Proud Walker—a man of his position, his riches, his accomplishments? And, come to that, why the delay? Those Proud Walker people had taken their own sweet time in getting around to him. This recognition was, after all, no more than his due, and long overdue at that.

Still, there was no denying that this dignity was a high one, and that it might well serve to place his name, at long last, into the exclusive reference book called Nosotros—pronoun, first-person plural, which is to say, Ourselves, We, Us. This slender and expensive volume, bound in soft red leather, was a compendium of biographical summaries of the socially notable families in Mexico, of la gente de bien, the elite, the aristocracy of blood, not of wealth as such, and Borja knew, to his slight embarrassment, that you could not buy your way into the vellum pages of that Mexican Almanach de Gotha.

And yet, seeing as how he was now sworn to silence, how were they to learn of his elevation to the Proud Five? Surely they would just know these things, wouldn’t they? Men of their eminence. Word would get around. Whispered confidences would be exchanged in that exalted loop of insiders.

A secret in Mexico has the life of a mayfly. Such was the folk wisdom. But was it true? Borja was well informed. He had prime sources of gossip and he paid well for choice morsels—financial, social, political, criminal. But he did not know the baptismal name of a single Proud Walker. So much for that received wisdom. Perhaps he would have to see to it personally that word of his high appointment got around. A man of his stature could hardly be bound to the letter of some petty legalism.

But what if his breach should become known? What then? Public humiliation? Forfeiture of all his money and property to the Brotherhood? Would the Proud Walkers drum him out of the club with some shameful and disgusting ritual? Strangle him with a silken rope until his tongue protruded? Hack him about with ceremonial knives—the death of a thousand cuts—and dump his body near the Isla de Sacrificios for the sharks to finish off? He would have to give careful thought to his next moves, and step ever so slightly, what with all these snares and pitfalls before him.

The Nosotros people had returned Borja’s bribe money to him with no comment, only scornful silence, but the sting of the snub had not gone very deep. Borja had the hide of a crocodile. It was, after all, their loss. A temporary setback. His time would come. They were stupid, all those soft and pampered aristos who had blackballed him. For Borja knew that, whatever the measuring rod, he was one set apart. In time, they would be honored by his presence.