Boca Chica lay two hundred miles southeast of Laredo.
They left in the pickup truck just as the sun rose over the Rio Grande and drove south on U.S. Highway 83, the river road. The river ran south from Laredo for almost a hundred miles, then veered east on its zig-zag journey to the Gulf of Mexico; the highway followed the river. Their journey would take them to Colonia Nueva Vida.
"You didn't kill that girl," she said.
Marisol Rivera had died at five and been buried by sunset in the small colonia cemetery. There was no police investigation, no autopsy, no news report, no obituary in the local newspaper. There were only tears.
"Or your mother."
Jesse did not speak for several long miles. She worried that she had overstepped with him, mentioning his mother. But he finally spoke.
"My father did not want me, and my mother died having me. Dying is a way of life on the border, I know that. But I cannot understand why God made it so."
"He didn't."
He stared at the road ahead for a time before he again spoke.
"You are right. I forget. There is no god on the border."
They rode in silence for many miles.
Jesse Rincon had made this journey many times during the last five years, only Pancho to provide company if not conversation. Driving the river road through the brown borderlands, he often contemplated his life and the choices he had made, and always he would revisit his choice to return to the colonias. His medical school classmates would be well into their private practices by now, well into families and financial success. What would his life be like now if he had made the same choice? Wife and children… a nice house in the suburbs of Houston or Dallas or perhaps Austin… vacations to the ocean or mountains twice each year… teaching soccer to his son or daughter… his sons and daughters, for he had wanted a big family, perhaps because he had only his uncle growing up. All those dreams he had envisioned as a child in Nuevo Laredo and as a student at Jesuit and Harvard, and he knew that was to be his life.
But then he came home when his uncle died.
He buried his uncle in Nuevo Laredo then drove back across the river and out to Colonia Angeles to visit his mother's grave in the little cemetery. There he had cried for her and for himself. He felt alone in the world.
He stood to leave but heard a shrill scream from a shanty where women had gathered. They told him in Spanish that the woman inside was having a child, but the baby was stuck and the midwife could not turn the baby. The woman and child would surely die. He ducked inside the shanty and saved mother and child.
He knew then that this was to be his life. Coming home to the colonias had not been a choice, any more than one chooses where to be born. But still he had questioned his path in life, this harsh life on the border.
But not that day.
That day the governor's wife rode next to him. Their paths in life had intersected on the border. And he no longer felt alone in the world.
"Do you make this journey often?"
Lindsay decided to break the silence.
"Once a week before. Now, perhaps twice a month. But never at night. Highway bandits."
"Bandits? In America?"
"On the border, it is-"
"I know. An entirely different world."
Pancho sat between them, the windows were down, and a hot breeze blew through the vehicle. Lindsay stared out at the desert landscape that seemed endless and vacant. Until she saw blue water.
"That is Falcon Lake," Jesse said, "where the American on a jet ski was murdered by the cartel. The Mexican government sent an investigator, but the cartel killed him, too. No more investigators came after that. The border runs down the middle of the lake, but Mexican pirates often cross over and rob American fishermen."
"Bandits and pirates?"
He shrugged.
"But they say the bass fishing on the lake is very good."
They drank coffee from a thermos and drove through border counties called Zapata and Starr and Hidalgo and small border towns named Rio Bravo and Roma where the river and highway both turned east "Back in the fifties," Jesse said, "Marlon Brando came here to film the movie Viva Zapata. I have never seen it. But these counties became famous when the votes of dead people here elected Kennedy and Johnson in nineteen-sixty."
— and La Joya and Mission and Alamo and the landscape gradually changed from the scrub brush of the desert to the fertile delta land of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, lush and tropical with palm trees and bougainvillea, lemon and lime orchards, cotton and cane fields, orange groves and grapefruit orchards, and humid air that seemed to stick to her skin. They followed the river all the way to Brownsville at the southernmost tip of Texas.
"The river wraps around three sides of this land and creates a peninsula. There are over one hundred colonias in the county, some completely surrounded by Brownsville, but the city will not annex them because they would not add to the tax base. Ah, we are here."
Jesse braked to a stop in front of a small white structure that appeared identical to the clinic in Colonia Angeles.
"Four hours, that is not a bad time."
It was just before eleven.
"I trained a nurse/midwife to work here. Sister Sylvia, she is a nun."
Lindsay wrapped a green scarf around her head to cover her red hair.
"Will she recognize me?"
"Who would expect to see the governor's wife in a colonia outside Boca Chica?"
They got out and went to the front door where a sign was posted: EL PROHIBIDO EL PASO. DANDO A LUZ.
"Yesterday there was death," Jesse said. "Today there will be life."
Pancho found a shady spot outside. Inside they found a sparkling clinic offering an antiseptic scent, six women in labor, and Wayne Newton's voice on a boom box.
"Sister Sylvia, she likes Wayne Newton. I am not sure why."
The clinic had been arranged like an old-time labor-and-delivery ward. Three women with bulging bellies lay in beds lined along one wall and three more along the opposite wall. There were no privacy curtains, but there was much moaning and groaning and occasional curses in Spanish. The joy of labor.
"No epidurals in the colonias," Jesse said.
A round, gray-haired Anglo woman wearing blue latex gloves, a colorful scrub top, and a big crucifix hurried over to them. She had a stethoscope around her neck and a relieved expression on her face.
"Doctor, thank God you have come. Six women, I could not do this alone."
"Sister Sylvia," Jesse said, "this is Nurse Lindsay Byrne. She works with me now. She is Irish."
A reminder to use her accent. The women greeted each other.
"Sister Sylvia normally delivers two or three babies each week, but six in one day, that is a bit much even for her. That is why she called me." To Sister Sylvia: "Any breeches?"
"No, thank God."
She made the sign of the cross.
"Okay, let us wash up and see what we have."
Jesse and Lindsay went over to a sink in the back and scrubbed their hands with surgical soap then put on latex gloves. They followed Sister Sylvia to the first woman. In this case, child.
"I've arranged the mothers by age," Sister Sylvia said. "This is Delilah Morales. She is fourteen. She is expecting her first child."
She did not look up from her iPhone. She was texting. Her nails were long and painted red. Her perfume overwhelmed the small space.
"We are close enough to town for cell phone service," Jesse said. To the girl, he said, "Hello, Delilah. I am Dr. Rincon. I will be delivering your baby today."
Like a waiter at a fine restaurant.
" Gracias. "
She groaned against a contraction. After the pain had passed, she resumed texting. Jesse put his hands on either side of her belly and felt for the baby.
"Delilah, I must check your dilation, to see how close you are to delivery."
She did not respond so Sister Sylvia put Delilah's left leg in a stirrup, and Lindsay did the same with her right leg. Delilah's full attention remained on the iPhone. Jesse put his hand between Delilah's legs. That got her attention.
"Hey! What are you doing?"
"I must check your cervix."
"Well, don't do it down there!"
Jesse chuckled. "That is where your cervix is. I have to feel it, to see how dilated it is, to know how close you are to delivery."
"With your fingers?"
"I am afraid so. It will not hurt much."
"I do not let men touch me down there."
One of the other women across the room laughed.
"You sure let Gustavo touch you down there or you would not be here now!"
"?Callate la boca! "
"Girl, do not tell me to shut up!"
"Ruby," Sister Sylvia said, "she is Delilah's mother."
"They're both pregnant?" Lindsay said.
"Yes. Ruby will become a mother and a grandmother today."
"Okay, ladies," Jesse said, "no fighting. It is, uh, not good for your babies." Back to Delilah. "I am a doctor. I have delivered many babies. I know you are scared since this is your first baby, but trust me, I know what I am doing. Okay?"
She shrugged and went back to texting. Jesse inserted his fingers into her vagina.
" Dos."
Two centimeters. Her cervix had opened only enough for him to slide one fingertip in. Delivery would occur at about ten centimeters. Delilah's labor would continue for some time. Sylvia recorded the information.
"Where are the fetal monitors?" Lindsay asked.
"We have no monitors, no sonograms, no incubators, no epidurals-"
"What do these women rely on?"
"Us. And prayer. Right, Sister Sylvia?"
She crossed herself again. They repeated the procedure with the other women. Rosie Ochoa was seventeen and having her second child; she was saying a rosary and was dilated six centimeters. Griselda Guzman was nineteen, dilated five centimeters, and crying silently through the contractions; this would be her first child. Marcela Vasquez was twenty-one, six centimeters, and having her third; her eyes were closed and an iPod was plugged into her ears. Luisa Chavez was twenty-eight and five centimeters; this was her sixth child. And Ruby Morales was thirty-seven and about to deliver her fifth child-soon. She was dilated eight centimeters.
"Okay," Jesse said, "Ruby will deliver first, and then Rosie, Griselda, Marcela, and Luisa will deliver close together, so let us move them to one side, in case we are delivering four babies at once. Delilah, she will be last and the most difficult."
"Why?" Lindsay said.
"Big baby and small hips." He blew out a breath. "It will be a long day."
They pushed Rosie and Griselda to the other side of the room and swapped them out with Ruby.
"No, no, no!" Delilah said. "Do not put my mother next to me. I do not want to listen to her."
"If you had listened to me, you would not be pregnant at fourteen."
Delilah groaned with a contraction.
"Remember the pain, child."
"Ladies," Jesse said in mock reproach. "Sister Sylvia, you watch that side, Nurse Byrne will watch this side. Let us eat lunch."
The promise of new life seemed to lift Jesse's spirits. He went to the small refrigerator at the back.
"Sister Sylvia, did you bring me shrimp poor-boys?"
"Of course. Six, in case we are here into the night. With the red sauce you like."
They checked that the mothers were comfortable then sat and ate lunch.
"Oh, Doctor," Sister Sylvia said, "Alexa Hinojosa, the newspaper reporter, she stopped in and asked me to have you call her the next time you are here. She is very pretty. She and you would make beautiful babies together."
The moment turned awkward, so Lindsay changed the subject.
"Where are the husbands?" she asked in a low voice.
"Not husbands," Sister Sylvia said. "Fathers. Except Ruby, she is married."
"The others aren't?"
"No. I am afraid that marriage is no longer a prerequisite to parenthood, in Hollywood or the colonias."
Two thousand miles north, Bode, Jim Bob, and Ranger Hank stood on a sidewalk in Manhattan. They had flown into New York that morning and checked in at the Plaza. After lunch, Mandy took the campaign credit card and the kids to Macy's. Jim Bob, Bode, and Hank took a cab. The Professor now spread his arms to the building rising in front of them as if it were a cathedral.
"The country was on the brink of disaster, we faced the same fate as the Roman Empire, but this place single-handedly saved America."
They were standing out front of the Fox News building.
"Tea party TV, Bode. Don't fuck it up."
"Ruby, you were born to have children," Jesse said.
"Yes, all you must do is catch. I have the wide hips. My mother, she also had such hips. Together, we have now made twelve children. And no epistle."
"Episiotomy."
" Si. We are baby factories…" She grunted. "Let me push this bebe out."
She did. Jesse sat on a rolling stool at the foot of her bed. Lindsay stood next to him. The baby's head crowned and emerged from the birth canal.
"Catch my baby!"
He did. He held the baby's head with his left hand. Lindsay handed him a rubber syringe. He inserted the syringe into the baby's mouth and suctioned mucous and water. The baby's shoulder emerged next, and then the baby just fell into Jesse's waiting hands. Lindsay held a sterile towel out, and Jesse placed the baby on the towel. He suctioned the baby's mouth and nostrils. The baby took his first breath of air and cried. His voice and the smell of new life filled the clinic.
"Ruby, you have a fine new son," Jesse said.
Lindsay wiped the baby while Jesse clamped and cut the umbilical cord. Sister Sylvia came over with a warm blanket and took the baby. She wrapped him like a papoose and placed him in his mother's arms.
Three hundred fifty miles north, Eddie Jones sat slouched on the couch in Jim Bob's office in the Governor's Mansion, drinking a beer and watching the governor on a cable talk show on Fox News. Ranger Roy drank a root beer, the kind without caffeine. What a boy scout.
On the television, the boss was saying, "If you subsidize corn, you'll get more corn. If you subsidize Mexicans, you'll get more Mexicans. If you tell Mexicans that babies born in the U.S. will be American citizens, you'll get more anchor babies. And we have-six hundred thousand in Texas the last decade."
"So you were a merc in Iraq?" Ranger Roy said.
Roy was wide-eyed, like a kid talking to his baseball hero.
Eddie nodded and gestured at the television. "Hank's in New York guarding the governor-why aren't you there guarding the governor's wife?"
"She's not in New York."
"She stayed here?"
"She's not here, either."
"You're here, and you're her bodyguard."
Roy now looked like he might cry.
"She ran off."
"Whoops."
Roy drank his root beer like a man drinking whiskey to drown his sorrows. He swiped a Texas Ranger sleeve across his mouth.
"Guess you weren't around much, before she left."
"Nope." Eddie drank his beer. "She got another man?"
Roy shook his head.
"She wants to be useful."
" Useful? What the hell does that mean?"
Roy threw up his hands.
"How should I know? I've never been married."
"Hell, I've been married, and I don't know."
"Where's your wife?"
"Living with another man. I went to Iraq, she went to divorce court."
Eddie Jones was ex-special forces when he had hired on as a "private contractor" to the CIA in Iraq, which sounded better on the evening news than "mercenary." The pay was great, the work fit his skill set, and the independence refreshing after twenty years in the army. But one incident involving civilians, and Eddie found himself unemployed and unemployable. Hard to explain that sort of thing on a resume.
"I'm worried about her," Roy said.
"My ex-wife?"
"The governor's wife. I don't want nothing bad to happen to her."
On the television: "Governor, you're not at all worried that that Mexican drug cartel might seek revenge?"
Eddie pointed at the TV.
"Roy-you best worry about the governor."
Jesse Rincon rolled on the stool from bed to bed, from birth to birth. Four babies were born within minutes of each other. Only the most difficult birth remained.
"?Hijo de la chingada! " Delilah screamed with the pain.
The fourteen-year-old child was not ready to have a child. But have it she would. The baby was coming, ready or not. They gathered around her bed. The wall thermometer registered ninety degrees. The windows were open, and the fans were blowing, but only hot air. Everyone sweated.
"She is dilated eight centimeters," Jesse said.
Delilah screamed as the next contraction began.
"It hurts!"
"Remember that the next time Gustavo wants to romance you," her mother said.
"Not helpful, Ruby," Sister Sylvia said.
"?Jodale! "
"Listen to the mouth on her," Ruby said.
"It is just the pain talking," Jesse said.
"No, she talks like that all the time."
The contraction passed, and Delilah breathed as if she had just run a sprint. Sylvia wiped her sweaty face with a wet towel and gave her ice chips to suck on.
"The first birth can be difficult," Sister Sylvia said, "but it will end soon."
"When?"
"Soon."
"Keep your legs tight together next time," Ruby said.
"But, Mother, if I do, the baby cannot get out."
"Not now. With Gustavo."
Delilah screamed again. The next contraction had already begun. She shouted in Spanish, "I will never have sex again!"
The three Texans stepped out onto the New York City sidewalk.
"That went well," Bode said, "until he brought up his bullshit word for the day. He just wanted to prove he's smarter than me. Who the fuck knows what fatuous means?"
"Foolish or silly," the Professor said.
"Who?"
"That's what fatuous means."
"Oh."
The Professor slapped Bode on the back.
"Don't worry about it. Palin makes up her own words, and tea partiers don't care."
"?Empujon! "
Jesse sat on the stool at her feet, Lindsay stood next to him, and Sister Sylvia stood at Delilah's head. The other mothers nursed their babies and watched.
"Crowning."
The baby's head crowned but did not come out.
"Big baby, small hips," Jesse said. "Hand me the block. Time, Sister."
Jesse had anticipated a difficult delivery, so he had prepared a Pudendal block. He took the hypodermic needle and injected the numbing medication into her vaginal wall. Wayne Newton was singing "Danke Schoen."
"Scalpel."
Lindsay handed him a sterile scalpel. He performed an episiotomy.
"One minute, Doctor," Sister Sylvia had said.
"Forceps."
Jesse took the forceps and maneuvered them into the birth canal and tried to guide the baby out. Delilah dropped her iPhone.
"Two minutes, Doctor."
"We have got to get this baby out."
Delilah turned her head to Sister Sylvia and vomited.
"Doctor!"
"It is okay. Just make sure she is not choking. Delilah, I need you to push hard."
"I cannot."
"You must."
"No."
"Push!"
"Delilah," Ruby yelled, "you push that baby out or I am going to come over there and push it out for you. Now push!"
She pushed.
"?Carajo! "
The baby's head cleared the birth canal.
"Good, Delilah," Jesse said.
The amniotic membrane still covered the head, so Jesse tore it with his fingers, releasing the fluid onto the towel in his lap.
"The cord is around the neck… clamp."
Lindsay grabbed two clamps and handed one to Jesse. He clamped the cord. She handed him the second clamp; he clamped the cord again. She handed him surgical scissors; he cut the cord and unwrapped it from the baby's neck. Without looking at her, he held a hand out; she placed a ball syringe in his hand. He suctioned mucous from the baby's mouth and nostrils.
The baby did not breathe or cry.
Jesse suctioned again, but still nothing from the baby. The shoulders were stuck in the birth canal. Jesse rotated the baby enough to allow the shoulders to clear; the baby slipped out into his hands. It was a girl. Delilah breathed out as if her life had just been saved.
But her baby's life had not yet been saved.
Lindsay held out a sterile towel. Jesse put the baby on the towel then held her in his lap. He suctioned again then rubbed her back. She still did not breathe. He gently slapped the bottoms of her feet. Nothing.
He stood and kicked the stool away. It rolled across the clinic until it struck the far wall.
"Hold her."
She took the child. Jesse leaned over and began mouth-to-mouth. He blew soft breaths into the child. Lindsay realized she was crying, and the clinic had fallen silent except for Wayne Newton singing and Rosie saying the rosary. Sister Sylvia crossed herself again.
"Breathe!" Jesse shouted.
The baby breathed. And cried. Loudly.
"Now I know that is my granddaughter," Ruby said.
Sister Sylvia took the baby in a warm towel. Without thinking, the governor's wife embraced Jesse Rincon.
An hour later, Delilah said into her iPhone, "Oh, Gustavo, our daughter, she is beautiful. I love you so much."
"God help me," Ruby said.
It was just after six.
"It is too late to drive back to Laredo tonight," Jesse said. "Border bandits. We will drive back tomorrow morning."
"Jesse," Lindsay whispered, "I can't be seen in Brownsville."
"We will go over to the island. There is a small motel I know."
Jesse went to each mother one last time. Lindsay said goodbye to Sister Sylvia, who hugged her like a mother.
"I am sorry, Nurse Byrne."
"For what?"
"For mentioning the pretty reporter to the doctor."
"Why?"
"I did not know that he was already in love."
"He is?"
Sister Sylvia patted her shoulder. "Yes, he is. But you wear a wedding ring… and your husband is the governor." She smiled. "I like Oprah."
"He was on Oprah? "
"Yesterday. But do not worry, I will keep your secret."
Sister Sylvia wanted to say more.
"What is it, Sister?"
"He is a very good man, the doctor. Please do not hurt him."
They drove east to Port Isabel where the smell of the sea came to them on the breeze.
"Why do these poor women have more babies?" Lindsay said.
Jesse sighed. "I do not know. Perhaps because the church says it is God's wish. Or perhaps because the government will pay for the babies. Or perhaps they hope an American baby will keep them in America. Or perhaps they just think a baby will make life on the border better. Of course, it will not."
Lindsay's spirits stayed low until the Gulf of Mexico came into sight. They drove over the Queen Isabella Causeway toward the tall condo towers and hotels on the distant island silhouetted against the blue sky.
"We are over the Laguna Madre… Mother lagoon."
They drove onto South Padre Island and along a palm-tree-lined boulevard past condos and hotels and restaurants and surf shops that fronted the beach. They turned into a small motel. Lindsay stayed in the truck while Jesse checked in. What if he took only one room? Would she insist on a second room? Or would she…? She had been without romance for a very long time, since politics had seduced her husband. She missed it. Romance. Jesse returned, got in, and handed her a key.
"Our rooms are down at the end. Nothing fancy, but clean."
They had brought overnight bags just in case. She cleaned up and changed into a white sundress. She had sweated through her green scarf so she pushed her red hair under a yellow scarf and topped it off with a sun hat. She went outside and found Jesse waiting; he wore jeans, sneakers, and a black T-shirt.
"There is a good seafood cafe down the beach. We can walk."
She removed her sandals and walked barefooted through the wet sand where the tide died out. On the horizon shrimp boats returned with the day's catch. Surfers waited for one last ride, and a lone fisherman stood in the surf with a long pole. Joggers and fellow walkers passed them; a few took curious second glances at her. She almost didn't care. Pancho raced ahead, clearing the beach of seagulls and brown pelicans and blue herons that had lighted on the sand. The air was wet and filled with salt, the sea breeze fresh and cool on her face. The Gulf of Mexico lay smooth and blue before them, and the sun set in front of them in shades of yellow and orange. She felt like a girl on a first date. Like lovers without the lovemaking. But she was neither.
She was a forty-four-year-old woman married to the governor of Texas.
She very much wanted to kill this old man. She hoped each time that he would have the heart attack during sex. She wondered if she could fuck him to death. Was that possible? Rosita Ramirez did not know, but she was willing to try.
Six hundred twenty-five miles west of South Padre Island, John Ed Johnson rolled off Rosita. Seventy-one years old, and testosterone still oozed from every pore in his body. Always had. He sat up, grabbed his bourbon from the nightstand and then the remote, and turned on the television.
"Hey, look there, Rosita. The governor's on TV."
On the television, the governor of Texas said, "Hell, Dave, I shoot first and ask questions later."
John Ed and the studio audience laughed.
"But you shot him in the back."
The governor nodded. "Twice. So he didn't file a civil rights complaint."
John Ed bellowed with laughter.
"Why?"
"Because he wouldn't turn around so I could shoot him in the front." After the laughter died down, the governor's expression turned solemn, and he said, "Look, Dave, those men were armed and dangerous, they beat the little girl, and they pointed guns at her. That made them bad guys. And in Texas, we shoot bad guys."
More applause.
"Now, Governor, did I read correctly that one of the bad guys got away? The guy that worked at the ranch? Aren't you worried?"
"Nah. That hombre, he's sitting in Mexico somewhere tonight, drinking a Corona."
Fifty meters outside the bedroom window, Manuel Moreno squatted and peered through high-powered binoculars at Senor John Ed and Rosita.