"You've got to stop using that 'Texas was once a nation and we might be again' line in your stump speech," the Professor said.
"Why? The people love it."
The Professor sat across the aisle from Bode with his face in the New York Times, not recommended reading before breakfast, even for a Ph. D.
"I told you-it's a myth. It's not true."
"Sure, it is. Texas can secede from the Union anytime we want."
"No, we can't."
"Why not?"
"The Civil War."
"Other than that?"
It was the next morning, and the governor of Texas was flying out to West Texas. Of all the perks of office, Bode enjoyed the Gulfstream the most. Jetting around the two hundred sixty-eight thousand square miles that was the State of Texas at three hundred miles per hour beat the hell out of being tailgated by eighteen-wheelers running eighty-five on the interstate. They were now over the High Plains, but his thoughts were still in Austin, where he had left his wife.
Was their marriage over?
Lindsay Byrne had been part of his life for almost thirty years. Could he live without her? Did he want to? He still loved her, but did she still love him? He had stepped out on her with Mandy, sure, but their troubles had begun long before Mandy. Because of politics. Like most voters, she took politics seriously, more so than politicians, just as football fans took the games more seriously than the players. Players and politicians understand that it's just a game. You win some, you lose some, but the goal is to survive to play the next game or compete in the next election. But voters seemed to think that politicians could do good.
More particularly, his wife seemed to think that this politician could do good.
She had been so excited when he had first been elected governor. He-they-were going to do good. He had actually believed it, too. But reality crashed the party like a SWAT team: politics is all about money. Who pays it to the government; who gets it from the government. Politicians are money-brokers, and money rules everything and everyone in politics. Even Bode Bonner. Consequently, he had disappointed his wife. Which was a hard thing for a man, disappointing the only woman he had ever loved.
"What's wrong, honey?"
Mandy Morgan sat next to him, but her fingers were tiptoeing up and down his thigh. He took her hand and put it in her lap. She pushed her lips out.
"I'm not in the mood," Bode said.
"Really? There's something about flying that puts me in the mood."
"Girl, breathing puts you in the mood."
That familiar twinkle came into her eyes, as if he had laid down a challenge. She unbuckled her seat belt and hiked her black leather miniskirt high enough to climb onto his lap and reveal her red lacy thong. She was wearing a low-cut top that exposed a good portion of her impressive breasts, which she pressed against him as her lips went to his ear. She moved her bottom against his lap.
"I'm not sure, Bode, but I think you might be getting in the mood."
He was.
His mind might be elsewhere, but his body was present and at full attention. Funny how men could separate the mind and body when it came to sex. Women always talk about sex being more of a mental exercise than a physical one; for men, it was just the opposite. It was strictly a physical act. A man could have sex while wondering how the Longhorns were playing; in fact, a man could have sex while watching the Longhorns play and figuring out how to bet the over-under. Jim Bob noticed the commotion in seat 3B.
"Jesus, get a room."
He folded the newspaper, stood, and headed up front to join Ranger Hank and the pilots.
"I'll be in the cockpit."
"Me, too," Mandy said with a little giggle.
She slid down his lap and unbuckled his cowboy belt. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes "Bode, honey, are you a member of the Mile High Club?"
— and listened to the engines humming outside while inside Mandy "Oh, baby."
Two hundred fifty miles due south of the governor's Gulfstream, Jesse Rincon said, " El bebe viene de pies. "
"What does that mean, Doctor?" the woman cried in Spanish.
"That means your baby is coming out the wrong way. Feet first. That is not good. Inez!"
Over six thousand men, women, and children lived in this colonia, many more children than women or men. He had never met this woman named Alma until she had walked into the clinic an hour ago fully dilated and experiencing contractions. She had awakened that morning in Mexico, but when contractions began she had waded across the Rio Grande; she wanted her child to be an American citizen. She knew the doctor in Colonia Angeles would deliver her baby. There were now Mexican businesses that arranged tourist visas and stateside vacations for wealthy pregnant Mexican women-often wives of drug lords-offering a stay at a luxurious resort, facials and body wraps at a spa, shopping sprees, and delivery of an American citizen at a private hospital with a birth certificate to evidence that fact.
Poor women just waded across the river.
Alma should be admitted to a hospital for an emergency C-section, in case complications arose, such as the umbilical cord compressing or wrapping around the baby's neck and depriving the child of oxygen; and an anesthesiologist should be on stand-by. But Jesse did not even have a receptionist standing by.
"Inez!"
Of course, the hospitals would turn her away. She was a Mexican without money. He might have to perform a C-section there in the clinic. Alone, if Inez did not return soon.
"Inez! Why is she always gone when I need her?"
The woman named Alma screamed with pain.
"?Ay, Dios mio! "
"Oh-my-God!" Mandy said. "Is there any place to shop?"
Bode chuckled. Okay, she wasn't Phi Beta Kappa, but she had skills. She was buckled in, applying lipstick, and staring out the window as they landed at the private airstrip on John Ed Johnson's ranch outside Fort Davis, population 1,000, in far West Texas. Located four hundred miles west of Austin, one hundred seventy-five miles east of El Paso, and eighty miles north of the Rio Grande, the deserted, desolate land might seem a perfect drug-smuggling route for the Mexican cartels. But wolves and mountain lions and even black bears roamed the land and made the journey north tricky if not deadly. From the air, the land seemed as barren and drought-stricken as the rest of Texas. But on the ground, in the Davis Mountains, hundreds of springs kept the land alive. Bode felt a sense of excitement surge through his body. He couldn't wait until the next morning when he would saddle up a horse and ride the land.
And shoot a lion.
The woman cried at the pain as if she had been shot.
"Inez!"
The clinic felt like a steam bath. Jesse wiped sweat from his face. He sat on the stool between her spread legs and crouched close to the birth canal, waiting and hoping the child would deliver without complications. He put his hand inside her vagina and spread his fingers, trying to create room. One tiny foot appeared. Now the other. And the legs. The buttocks emerged next, then the back, and then… the head did not follow.
The baby was stuck.
Jesse did not pull. He waited. But he could not wait long because the baby's head would compress the umbilical cord against the birth canal. The baby could suffocate. Jesse slid his fingers deep into Alma's vagina and along the baby's face. He found the nose then pushed his hand back against the canal to create space so the baby could breathe. He waited. And sweated. Alma screamed. He heard the clinic door open, but with his hand inside Alma, he could not raise his head enough to see in the mirror on the wall.
"Inez, where have you been? Wash your hands and put on gloves. Hurry."
He heard the water running. But neither the scent he now inhaled nor the voice he now heard belonged to Inez Quintanilla.
"Is it breech?"
Jesse froze. Was it his imagination or was it really her voice? He slowly turned to the voice… to the governor's wife, standing there in full, pulling on a white coat and latex gloves. The first thought that entered his mind as he sat there with his hand in one woman's vagina while he stared at another woman was, She changed her itinerary. The second thought was, Yes, there truly is such a thing as love at first sight. Alma screamed again.
"Yes."
"We need to get her to a hospital."
"No money and no time-the baby is here."
A few minutes later, he breathed in the scent of birth. Dr. Jesse Rincon delivered his 1,164th baby. He still had never lost a mother or child during birth.
John Ed Johnson carried himself with the bearing of a man accustomed to getting his way. He was seventy-one years old and stood six feet three inches tall just as he had when he played defensive end for the Longhorns back in the late fifties and early sixties. He sported a bald head that was now covered by an LBJ Stetson; he wore a plaid flannel shirt, khaki pants, and brown round-toed boots. He boasted a net worth of $5 billion. Often.
"Governor."
John Ed greeted Bode Bonner with a big smile and a strong handshake as soon as he got out of the Hummer his host had sent to pick them up at the airstrip.
"Damn, John Ed, you're still strong enough to break a halfback in two."
"Those were the days."
John Ed had led his team in tackles, sacks, and opponents' broken bones. He could have gone pro, but the pay back then didn't merit his time. He had majored in oil: how to find it, drill it, produce it, sell it, and get rich off it. For the last fifty years, he had done exactly that. He slapped Bode on the back but his eyes went to Mandy.
"And who's this little gal?"
Mandy stuck out her manicured hand and offered her perky professional pose.
"Mandy Morgan, the governor's aide."
"And what exactly do you aid him with?"
"Whatever he requires."
"I like the sound of that."
John Ed greeted Jim Bob and Ranger Hank then led them into the lodge. John Edward Johnson's hunting lodge was not a rustic cabin with Spartan accommodations. It was a twenty-room log structure with an indoor hot tub, swimming pool, sauna, billiards room, bowling alley, tennis court, skeet range, concierge, private chef, and Hummer driver.
Oil had been good to John Ed Johnson.
"This here's Pedro," John Ed said by way of introducing the middle-aged Latino who greeted them at the front door. "Anything you need, Governor, you tell Pedro, he'll take care of it."
"Lunch is served, Senor John Ed," Pedro said.
"Hope you folks are hungry," John Ed said. "Rosita's cooked up a mess of Mexican food special for the governor of Texas."
They followed John Ed through the foyer and into a great room with a two-story wall of windows offering a majestic view of the Davis Mountains. The room featured a manly aroma from the wood and leather and animal heads on the wall and a full-grown grizzly bear stuffed and standing there as if about to pounce on its prey.
"Shot that big bastard up in Montana," John Ed said. "Right between the eyes."
The Johnson ranch comprised twenty-five square miles, the entire perimeter of which was surrounded by a twenty-foot-tall game fence. Inside the fence exotic game roamed freely. Outside the fence Mexicans tended to the grounds, cleaned the lodge, and cooked the food.
"Here's the menu," John Ed said.
They sat at a dining table made of mesquite and set for lunch. Bode scanned the menu expecting to read his choice of entrees and desserts. Instead, he read "Alpine Ibex?" Mandy said. "For twenty thousand dollars? That's an expensive lunch."
John Ed threw his head back and laughed.
"Where'd you find this gal, Bode? I like her." He turned to Mandy. "Honey, that ain't the lunch menu-that's the hunting menu." John Ed read from the menu. "Addax Antelope, six thousand… Dama Gazelle, ten thousand… Roan, twenty thousand… Bongo, thirty-five thousand… Cape Buffalo, fifty thousand…"
Bode scanned down the menu: American Bison, Arabian Oryx, Nubian Ibex, Sable, West Cauasian Tur, Wildebeest.
"You raised your price on the wildebeest since I bagged mine," Bode said.
"Yep," John Ed said. "Course, it didn't cost you nothing then, and it ain't gonna cost you nothing now."
"Appreciate that, John Ed."
"Least I can do for good government."
Jim Bob held up his iPhone.
"John Ed, you still don't have cell phone coverage out here?"
"Hell, Professor, there ain't no cell towers from here to El Paso."
Hank's eyes lit up when a pretty young Latina wearing a colorful peasant dress and carrying a serving tray entered through swinging double doors. She placed platters of beef-and-cheese enchiladas, refried beans, tortillas, and guacamole on the table then returned with cold bottles of Dos Equis beer. When she leaned over the table, John Ed swatted her bottom. Bode caught her grimacing on the way out, and a disturbing thought shot through his mind: Did Mandy grimace when he wasn't looking? But he quickly drowned that thought with a long drink of the Dos Equis.
"Rosita, she's a fine little cook," John Ed said. "Found her down in Lajitas, working in a little cantina. Figured she was too pretty to waste away there, so I brought her up here. She's a cute little gal, just turned twenty-one." He lowered his voice and leaned into Bode. "She'll even do room service."
He winked.
The thought of a seventy-one-year-old man with a twenty-one-year-old mistress made Bode a bit nauseous. Then he thought of himself, a forty-seven-year-old man with a twenty-seven-year-old mistress. Was the only difference between John Ed Johnson and Bode Bonner twenty-four years and five billion dollars?
Four hundred miles down the border, Lindsay Bonner cradled the newborn child. She had given birth once and assisted in many emergency childbirths and had never ceased to be amazed by the miracle of life.
"?Esperanza es americana? " Alma the mother said.
"Yes, she is an American citizen," the doctor said in Spanish. "I will sign the birth certificate to prove it."
Alma smiled through her pain.
"You did a wonderful job, Doctor," Lindsay said.
He wiped sweat from his face.
"I could not have done it without you, Mrs. Bonner."
They regarded each other a long moment, until the clinic door burst open, and three brown and armed men entered. One was bald; they were dressed in black outfits, like soldiers. Their expressions were hard.
"Turn away, quickly," the doctor whispered, "so they do not see your face."
She sat on the stool next to the examining table and faced the wall. In the mirror, she saw another man enter the clinic. His expression was not hard. He carried himself in a manner that combined elegance and personal authority; from the way the others regarded him, he was an important person here on the border, perhaps a politician. He was tall and handsome with a goatee and jet-black hair even though he appeared middle-aged. He wore a loose shirt and slacks that draped like silk. His cologne scented the clinic. He recoiled at the sight of the blood on the doctor's lab coat and gloves.
"What happened?" he asked in Spanish.
"Breech birth."
The doctor apparently knew the man, but he kept his distance. He removed the latex gloves and tossed them into the trash basket.
"Are they okay, mother and child?" the man asked.
"Yes."
" Bueno. I have a girl and two boys. Born in the USA. Houston. The poor gringos, they come south to Mexico because they cannot afford American doctors. Rich Mexicanos, we go north to America for better healthcare. Odd, is it not?" He seemed to have amused himself. "So, Dr. Rincon, I have heard much about you. It is an honor to finally meet you. You went to Harvard?"
"Yes."
"Go Crimson." He smiled; his teeth were perfect and white. "I grew up poor and dreamed of escaping poverty by playing American beisbol, but I could not hit the curveball. So I went to Harvard on a minority scholarship. I am no longer poor."
"What brings you to my clinic?"
"To thank you."
"For what?"
"For saving my son's life."
"Your son? " The doctor frowned. "The boy? A month ago, with the gunshot?"
" Si. My first-born, Jesus." He shrugged. "The boy was careless."
"How is he?"
"Oh, he is fine. I sent him away." He gestured to the north. "To Tejas. To become a man."
"No complications?"
"No. I had nurses with him twenty-four/seven. He is a strong boy. He recovered quickly. I have been shot three times myself. We are a hardy breed, Mexicanos."
"Then what do you need from me?"
" Nada. It is what you need from me."
"And what is that?"
The man held a hand out to his men; the bald soldier slapped an envelope into his hand, which he then held out to the doctor. He took the envelope, opened it, and removed a stack of green bills.
"One hundred thousand dollars," the man said. "Is that a fair compensation?"
The doctor stared at the money, then sighed and handed it back to the man.
"You know I cannot take your money."
The man's expression seemed pained, almost as if his feelings had been hurt.
"I understand, Doctor. Perhaps you will accept these gifts."
He snapped his fingers. The armed men went back outside and returned moments later with their arms full of large boxes. They stacked the boxes on the floor and returned for more. After several trips, a dozen boxes sat on the floor of the clinic.
"What is all this?" the doctor asked.
The important man pulled a switchblade from his back pocket and released the blade. He cut the tape sealing a box and opened the top. The doctor looked inside then reached in and held up a stethoscope.
"Supplies, surgical instruments…"
"Medicine."
The man sliced open more boxes. The doctor pulled out cartons of medicine.
"Penicillin, amoxicillin, tetracycline… Botox? "
The man shrugged.
"How did you acquire all this?" the doctor said.
"That is of no concern, Doctor. This is payment for my son's life. Gracias. "
In the mirror, Lindsay saw him turn to her. She ducked her head.
"And thank you, Nurse. Jesus said you treated him with much kindness. I will not forget."
She did not acknowledge him. But she looked into the mirror in time to catch the man winking at the doctor. He lowered his voice.
"I like the red hair on a woman, too."
He snapped his fingers again, and he and his men headed to the door; but the man turned back.
" Hasta la vista. "
Until we meet again. He disappeared through the door. Lindsay stood and carried the child over to the doctor.
"Who was that?"
The doctor hesitated a moment before he said, "That was El Diablo."
"You devil."
Mandy was in a naughty mood. Two girlie drinks and that gal turned randy. She performed a little striptease, dropping her thong and flinging it across the room with her foot, then stepped down into the hot tub holding her pina colada aloft. The warm water made her skin flush pink, which rendered her even more attractive. She slid over to Bode and sat on his lap then kissed him. She tasted of coconut and rum and smelled of his teenage years. She sipped her drink with one hand and reached down with her other hand and stroked him. It was too late to shoot anything that day, so he had swallowed a Viagra pill with his third Dos Equis. Now, between Mandy's skilled hands and the little blue pill, Bode Bonner had a pretty fair erection working when someone knocked on the door.
" Senor gobernador? "
Pedro.
"Yes?"
Pedro cracked the door and spoke without entering the room.
"A phone call has come for you. Ranger Roy? He is on line five."
Bode searched the room and found the phone on a small table between a chair and a towel shelf.
" Gracias. "
Pedro shut the door. Bode climbed out of the hot tub and walked the few paces to the phone. The lodge was too isolated for cell phone service, so it was either land lines or satellite phones. Bode grabbed a towel and wiped sweat from his face then put the receiver to his ear and punched the blinking light.
"Yeah, Roy?"
"Uh, Governor, we, uh… we can't find your wife."
"The hell you mean, you can't find my wife?"
"She took off in your Suburban soon as you took off in the Gulfstream. We haven't seen her since. It's almost dark. We can't get her on her cell phone."
"Aw, hell, she's probably down at the homeless shelter."
"We checked."
"Food bank?"
"Nope."
"AIDS clinic?"
" Nada."
"Oh, I know-she's probably at that elementary school in East Austin."
"It's closed."
"Goddamnit, Roy, you're supposed to be her fucking bodyguard!"
"Yes, sir."
"Which requires that you know her whereabouts at all times, in order to guard her body."
"Governor, you know I'd never let nothing bad happen to Mrs. Bonner. They'd have to kill me first."
His voice cracked. Bode sighed.
"I know, Roy."
"But don't worry, Governor, we're pretty sure she wasn't kidnapped."
" Kidnapped? Why the hell would you think she's been kidnapped?"
"We don't."
"Then why'd you bring it up?"
"Uh, in case you were thinking it."
"I wasn't. But I am now."
"Oh."
"Find her, Roy."
Bode hung up and looked down. He wasn't really worried about his wife being kidnapped, but he had lost his erection just the same.
Lindsay Bonner felt terrible. No doubt Ranger Roy was frantic by now, the governor's wife disappearing without a trace. He had probably already called the governor. That would have been a difficult call for Roy. She'd call him later that night when she returned to Laredo. There was no phone service in the colonias.
"We would celebrate with a caramel macchiato," the doctor said, "but there is no Starbucks here in the colonias. Can you believe that?"
The doctor smiled at his own joke. He poured her a cup of the coffee he had brewed at home and brought to the clinic in a tall thermos.
"When the helicopter took the boy away that day, I knew he was special. But El Diablo's son? I would never have dreamed that."
"Would you have saved him if you had known?"
"Of course."
"Will you keep all the medicine and supplies?"
"Of course. I did not make a deal with the devil, Mrs. Bonner. The devil simply made a gift-and not to me. To the people in the colonias."
"The congressman said he gives away a billion dollars every year."
"Yes, that is what they say."
"So you didn't know him before today?"
"Everyone on the border knows of El Diablo. But I had never met him or even seen him. The Justice Department put a bounty on his head, so he does not often venture to this side of the river."
He sat back and studied her. She knew the question he wanted to ask.
"Well, Mrs. Bonner, if you have come back for the census forms, Inez has helped over one thousand residents fill out the forms, but I have already mailed them in."
"I didn't come back for the census forms."
"Then for what?"
Now she studied him.
"Did you always want to be a doctor?"
He sipped his coffee.
"Yes. My uncle raised me in Nuevo Laredo. When I turned sixteen, he secured my admission to the Jesuit School in Houston. He told them I would make a good priest. But I wanted to be a doctor."
"I wanted to be a nurse."
"You are a fine nurse."
"No. I'm the governor's wife."
"Yes. You are indeed."
"But I want to be a nurse again. Your nurse."
" My nurse? Here, in the colonias? "
"Yes."
"Why not in Austin?"
"Because in Austin, I'm the governor's wife. Everywhere in Texas, I'm the governor's wife. Everywhere except here."
"You want to work here in the colonia? The governor's wife?"
"No one knows me here, and no one will know me."
"I will know."
"But only you. No one else will know. Not even your assistant."
"Inez seems never to be here anyway. But your red hair-Mrs. Bonner, everyone in Texas knows the beautiful governor's wife with the red hair."
She tried not to blush.
"What if El Diablo had recognized you just now?"
"I'll cut my hair short and hide it under a scarf. I won't wear make-up."
"But one day, someone will recognize your name if not your face."
"I won't be Lindsay Bonner. I'll be Lindsay Byrne. My maiden name. An Irish nurse from Boston. I'll even speak with an accent."
"You were born in Boston? How did you end up in Texas?"
"My father was a doctor at the VA hospital in San Antonio."
"And is he still?"
"No. My parents are both gone now."
"I am sorry. I am also broke. I cannot afford to pay you."
"I have money. I need a purpose. Doctor, I can help you."
He drank his coffee and considered her plan. He frowned.
"Have you had your shots?"
"Yes… I think."
"Mrs. Bonner, a life on the border is a harsh life indeed. Have you truly thought this through?"
"I have."
"And where will you live?"
"Oh. I hadn't thought about that."
"If you go to a hotel in Laredo, you will have to show your ID, give them your credit card. Word will get out fast that you are living here on the border. If you rent a house or apartment, someone will recognize you. You cannot live here in the colonia, it is not safe."
"You live here."
"No. I live on the other side of Laredo, on fifty acres overlooking the river. My uncle had no children, so he left that land to me, and the small houses on it."
"Houses?"
"The main house and a guesthouse."
"Is anyone living in the guesthouse?"
"No, but-"
"Would you like a tenant?"
"The governor's wife, living in my guesthouse?"
"No. Your nurse."
She had been certain he would readily agree to her plan, but he did not. He stared at her, and she knew he was asking himself if she was just a rich woman running away from her boring life.
"Doctor, I'm not running away from my life. I'm trying to have a life."
"In the colonias? "
He stood and wandered about the clinic. He dug into one of the boxes El Diablo had brought and raised up with a carton of scalpels. He placed the carton on an empty shelf. He then went over and opened the front door and stood in the doorway.
Jesse Rincon gazed out upon Colonia Angeles. Six thousand patients. One doctor. A nurse would be a godsend for the patients. And for the doctor.
The governor's wife had come back.
But for how long? How long could she tolerate the harsh life of the colonias? How long before the wind and the dirt and the death and the hopelessness crushed her spirit like that empty beer can lying in the dirt road? How long before "I can help" became "I can't take it anymore"? How long before she called it quits and ran home to her old life in the Governor's Mansion? To the governor?
Those questions he asked himself. But the answer to each question was the same, and he already knew the answer: one day she would leave. About that he had no doubt. But there was one question that Jesse Rincon could not answer, a question that would not be answered until that day came, when the governor's wife left him: Was it truly better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?
"Doctor?"
His shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. He turned and walked back to her.
"Go home, Mrs. Bonner."
He sat down behind his desk and began packing his bag.
"But I thought-"
"This is not a Junior League project, Mrs. Bonner. This is life on the border."
"I'm not here for that. I'm here because I care."
"About these poor people? Why?"
"Because someone has to."
"I do."
"You can't do this by yourself."
"I have for five years."
"I can help you."
"For how long? A day? A week? Maybe a month? Then the stink and the dirt and the death will beat you down, and you will run home to Austin, back to the Governor's Mansion where you belong. Go home, Mrs. Bonner."
"You need a nurse… and I need to do this."
"Why? Because you had a fight with the governor and now you need to prove something to him?"
"Because I need to prove something to myself."
"And what is that?"
"That my life can still have meaning. That I can still make a difference." She fought back the tears. "That I'm not too old to be useful."
He stared at her, as if trying to see into her soul. He finally stood.
"Okay. Are you hungry?"
Bode bit into the thick juicy steak. He chewed with the intensity of a man still pissed off at his wife for ruining a sexual encounter with his mistress-and harboring a nagging worry that his wife had been kidnapped. After Ranger Roy's phone call-and despite Mandy's best efforts-he could not recapture the erectile moment. He chased the steak with a swallow of bourbon. Pedro entered the dining room with a portable phone in hand.
" Senor gobernador — Ranger Roy, he has called again."
Bode took the phone and answered.
"Well?"
"We found your wife, Governor."
Lindsay Bonner wrapped the green scarf around her head and tucked her red hair underneath. She then put on a wide-brimmed straw hat. She checked herself in the mirror and smiled.
She was no longer the governor's wife.
They had stopped off at an outdoor market in Laredo on the way to the doctor's homestead on the other side of town. She shopped for clothes to wear as Nurse Byrne; he shopped for groceries. He said he cooked. Latino music played and Spanish was spoken; it reminded her of their vacation to Acapulco years before. She held a yellow peasant dress against her body and looked in the mirror. She turned at the sound of girls giggling; the doctor stood surrounded by several pretty young Latinas. They flirted and took cell phone photos with the handsome doctor. He really was something of a celebrity on the border. Lindsay now appraised herself in the mirror. She sighed. She was still lean and slim and even considered the glamorous governor's wife; but she was not a beautiful young girl anymore. She was a forty-four-year-old woman.
Her cell phone rang.
"What the hell are you doing down on the goddamn border?"
Bode had stepped out of the dining room. Waiting for the call to ring through, his blood pressure had jacked up to mini-stroke levels. Still, he felt relieved when his wife answered-but his anger and the alcohol quickly took over.
"Are you drinking?"
"No… yes."
He could never lie to her, except about Mandy.
"How'd you find me?"
"GPS. Your cell phone."
"My phone? "
"Cell phones are just tracking devices that make calls."
"You tracked my phone?"
"The Rangers did. So what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm nursing."
"Who?"
"No. I'm going to work as a nurse."
"In Laredo?"
"In the colonias."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Lindsay, that's crazy!"
"Maybe to you, Bode. But not to me."
"You're the governor's wife."
"Not down here."
"Go home, Lindsay. Now."
"No. I'm staying here. Give my best to Mandy."
The line went dead. He stared at the phone. Shit.
Lindsay stared at her phone a long moment then looked up at the doctor looking at her. His arms were full with two bags of groceries and his face with the awkward moment.
"She's twenty-seven. Mandy."
Which made the moment even more awkward.
"So," he said with a forced smile, "let us have dinner."
"I hope you bought wine."
The governor of Texas downed his bourbon. His third. He needed hard liquor after learning that his wife knew about his mistress.
"That sonofabitch can carve up a cow faster'n those raptors in that dinosaur movie," John Ed was saying. "I get Manuel to run a dried-up cow inside the game fence every week or so. That big ol' lion sniffs her out in no time, hunts her down, pounces on her, rips her apart. Damnedest thing I've ever seen."
Mandy, Ranger Hank, and Jim Bob had gone upstairs. Mandy needed her beauty sleep, Hank needed his sports fix on satellite TV, and Jim Bob needed to plug his laptop into a landline like a patient on life support. Bode and John Ed had gone into the study to drink Kentucky bourbon and smoke Cuban cigars.
"You sure you want me to shoot your lion?"
"There's more where he came from. Course, you gotta track him down and get close enough to put a bullet in him. Maybe two."
John Ed puffed on his cigar.
"Manuel, he'll have the horses saddled and your guns packed, ready to ride at dawn. He's a good tracker. He'll find that lion for you. Used to be the foreman on a game ranch outside Guadalajara, big place catering to Americans. Then the cartels took over the country, so Americans stopped going south to hunt-they became the hunted instead of the hunter. I needed a place to hunt, so I turned this land into a game ranch, hired Manuel. Been with me five years now."
"He legal?"
"Hell, no. None of my Mexicans are legal." John Ed chuckled. "While back, me and Manuel, we're riding the range in the Hummer, he asks me, ' Senor John Ed, is Obama going to make me a citizen?' I said, 'Why the hell do you want to be an American citizen?' He says, 'I want to vote.' You believe that? I bring him up here, give him a job, place to live… now he wants to vote. How's that for gratitude?"
John Ed Johnson had come of age back when men were men and women were cheerleaders and Mexicans did the hard work and kept their mouths shut.
"Life was simple back then," John Ed said. "Oil, cattle, and Mexicans doing what they were told and didn't expect us to educate their kids or make them citizens."
Bode knew better than to get John Ed started on Mexicans, so he diverted the conversation.
"You riding out with us in the morning?"
"Nope. Man my age, I sleep in. You and Jim Bob have fun. Me and Mandy, we'll have a long breakfast." He winked. "You know, I never lost my testosterone. Most men my age, they need a pill to get it up, if they can. Not me. You?"
" Me? Hell, no."
Bode said it with such conviction he almost believed himself.
"I still wake up every day with a hard-on," John Ed said, "which is why I sleep in… usually with Rosita. I enjoy sex in the morning."
John Ed Johnson had a reputation for being a horny old bastard, chasing skirts all across Texas and plowing through four wives. He was currently between wives if not skirts. But being a self-made billionaire-and not in computer code that no one understood, but in cattle and oil that everyone understood-he had achieved that larger-than-life legendary Texan status, the kind of man kids would read about in their Texas history class one day, like LBJ and H.L. Hunt. A Texas politician could never have a better friend-if you always said yes-or a worse enemy-if you ever said no. You did not want to be on his bad side. As Jim Bob said, "That's a dark place indeed." John Ed had contributed $20 million to each of Bode's last two campaigns-there was no limit on campaign contributions by individuals in Texas-and Bode was waiting on his $20 million check for the current campaign. John Ed Johnson had put Bode Bonner in the Governor's Mansion.
And he could take Bode Bonner out.
Like Bode, John Ed had grown up on a cattle ranch; unlike the Bonner family's modest five-thousand-acre spread, the Johnson family's land in West Texas spread over three counties and was measured in square miles rather than acres. His granddaddy had taken a hundred thousand head of cattle on the long trail drives north to the railheads in Kansas back in the 1800s. By John Ed's time, the trains had come to Texas.
But if his old man had been the Bick Benedict of his time, John Ed was the Jett Rink of his. After his dad died, he turned production on the ranch from Angus beef to black gold. Oil. Just as Texas had produced the beef the nation needed during his old man's time, Texas produced the oil the world needed during John Ed's time. Texas had so much oil that from 1930, when the great East Texas field was discovered, and for the next forty years, the Texas Railroad Commission controlled the price of oil-in the entire world-by controlling the amount of oil Texas produced. Texas sat on a sea of oil.
But the Middle East sat on an ocean of oil.
In 1960, the Arabs formed OPEC, modeled after the Railroad Commission. By 1973, Texas no longer controlled the price of oil; OPEC did. Americans stood in gas lines during the oil embargo because Texas no longer supplied the world's oil or even America's oil; the Arabs did. For the last forty years, the Arabs had controlled the price of oil in the world. Even in Texas.
"Took a lot of the fun out of the oil business," John Ed always said, "not being able to control prices."
So John Ed moved on to the next big thing: water. Just as a landowner in Texas owns the oil under his land, he also owns the water. And he can sell that water.
"Ninety percent of Texans live in the city now, and they're fast running out of water because they want their pools full and their grass green. They'll be drinking spit in twenty years, ten if this drought don't let up. Then they'll pay an arm and a leg for drinking water. My water. I bought up groundwater rights all across West Texas, figure I can pump that water out of the ground, pipe it to the cities, and turn a nice profit. Water's more valuable than oil these days. If you control water, you control Texas."
"I thought you already controlled Texas."
"Not all of it."
"What'll happen to West Texas without water?"
"Who cares? Ain't much to look at now."
"How you figure on piping the water to the cities?"
"I've got to build the pipelines, hundreds of miles. Problem is, I've got to acquire the rights-of-way from landowners. I can negotiate with a thousand owners and buy the rights-of-way, but that gets expensive and time-consuming. Or I can condemn that land… well, I could if I possessed eminent domain power as a common carrier, like my gas company."
His expression told Bode that he was about to ask the governor of Texas for a small favor.
"I need a special bill, Bode, that grants my water company common carrier status. I need the power to condemn land for my pipelines. I need you to twist a few arms-the speaker's and the lieutenant governor's-and get my bill passed."
"There'll be some political heat, if this gets out."
"Maybe. But the Professor said your latest poll numbers are high enough to weather some heat."
"You already talked to Jim Bob about this?"
"Yep. When he called about you boys coming out. He's your political advisor, isn't he?"
Bode nodded.
"So-can I count on you, Bode?"
Bode didn't like it-giving John Ed Johnson the power to take people's land for his water pipeline-but he needed John Ed's $20 million.
"You bet, John Ed."
"Appreciate that, Bode. I won't forget. Oh, tell Jim Bob I'll wire my twenty-five million campaign contribution over Monday."
"Twenty-five?"
John Ed shrugged. "After seeing your gal Mandy, I figured you could use a little extra spending money."
"Thanks." Bode drank his bourbon. "You know, John Ed, I appreciate the support you've given me as governor. If I made a run for the White House, would you back me?"
"Why the hell would you want to do that?"
"An adventure."
"Cheaper adventures to be had… Like your gal Mandy."
John Ed drew a breath on his cigar then exhaled sweet smoke.
"Buying the Governor's Mansion, that's a forty-million-dollar deal. Buying the White House, that's a billion-dollar deal. And turning a profit on that kind of investment is damn hard 'cause you got to buy Congress, too, and those bastards don't come cheap. Wall Street pays billions for Congress, every election cycle. Even I can't fund that for long-five billion don't go as far as it used to. You want to move up to the White House, you gonna have to get the big boys behind you. They write those kind of checks every four years without blinking an eye."
John Ed drank his bourbon.
"Hell, son, was me, I'd stick to being governor-for-life."
"I just think I could win, riding the wave."
"Wave? What wave?"
"The tea party."
John Ed snorted. "Pissin' in the wind. The money always wins in politics."
"I don't know, John Ed. The middle class is pretty fired up about the social issues-abortion, gay marriage, immigration."
"That's why they're stuck in the middle class."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, politics ain't about none of that social crap. It's about money. Rich people and poor people, we vote for the money. Poor folks vote for anyone promising to give them more money, rich folks for anyone promising to take less of our money. But the middle class, they take their Bibles into the voting booth-and that costs them money."
"How so?"
"Because while they're fretting over girls getting abortions and boys screwing boys, the politicians are stealing them blind. See, rich folks like me, we've got a lot of money individually, but not as a group. Hell, Obama could take every penny from every billionaire in America, and it wouldn't fund the government but for a few months, not when the Feds spend ten billion dollars every day. The big money's in the middle class. A hundred million folks working their butts off every day to put Junior and Sissy through college, that's where the income's at, that's the mother lode of taxes. Only way the government can spend four trillion a year is to tap the middle class. So the politicians keep the middle class occupied with that social crap-"
"While they steal their money."
"Exactly."
"Never occurred to me."
" 'Cause you're middle class. No offense."
Bode swallowed his bourbon. John Ed Johnson didn't pull his punches, and he wasn't a billionaire for nothing. Bode wouldn't turn his back on the old man, but he learned something every time they talked. It wasn't exactly a father-son relationship, but it was a relationship of sorts nonetheless.
"How 'bout another bourbon, Governor?"
The governor's wife sipped her wine. She and the doctor were sitting on the back porch of his house in rocking chairs. Pancho, the golden retriever, lay on the plank wood floor. Soft music drifted out through open windows. Mexico beyond the river seemed serene and peaceful at night. She had settled in to the guesthouse and cut her hair then showered and dressed in her new clothes for dinner. The doctor did cook. They ate grilled fish and drank wine. She had awakened that morning in the Governor's Mansion in Austin; she was now staring at the stars over the Rio Grande.
"This is my retreat from the reality of the colonias," the doctor said. He pointed up. "Look, see the eagle."
The bird glided on the currents back and forth between Mexico and America.
"Does the reality ever make you question your choice to work in the colonias? "
"Sometimes. But it is a useless question to ask. This is where I belong. My life will play out on this river."
They were silent for a time, just the sounds of the river and the night. Then the doctor spoke.
"Back before the Mexican War-what the Mexicans call the American Invasion-steamboats ran up and down the Rio Grande."
"It doesn't seem deep enough."
"It is not now. The river often runs dry before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico. But before the dams and the droughts, the river was deep and swift and wide. Ferries and steamboats ran the river. I often sit here and imagine what life on this river was like back then, when all of this land was Mexico, before the history of the border turned bloody. And wrongs beget wrongs."
He stared toward the river a long moment before he spoke again.
"History runs deep here on the border. Much deeper than the river."
That night in South Texas, the governor's wife went to bed happy. In West Texas, the governor went to bed with his mistress. Neither knew that their lives were about to change forever.