"?Es America? "
Little Josefina stared up as cameras captured the moment. Bode felt a bit uneasy about this just being another photo op-this was the Statue of Liberty, after all-but how could he argue with the Professor when his poll and Twitter numbers continued their rapid climb into the stratosphere?
"Yes, honey. This is America."
She turned to him and tapped her chest. She wore the yellow dress.
"Ya soy yo una americana? "
The American consulate had been working with the Mexican authorities to locate the children's parents or next of kin. So far, they had found Javier's mother in Piedras Negras and Pablo's older sister in Ojinaga; they would fly home when they returned to Austin. And they had found the bodies of Josefina's mother and father in Chihuahua. They had known what the men would do to their pretty daughter, so they had put up a valiant fight. Which earned them each a bullet in the head. Josefina had no one back in Mexico. She knew it. Her eyes told him so.
They had returned to Laredo after noon, stopped off at the house to change, and then driven out to Colonia Angeles. Lindsay made her daily rounds without major incident, welcome after the previous day in Boca Chica. Her worries about her husband's safety had eased with each day; and Austin seemed distant here in the colonias. Like another world. When she returned to the clinic, she found Inez at her desk but Jesse gone.
"Where's the doctor?"
"He went to the movies."
"The movies?"
" Si. He goes every other Friday. Unless it is raining, then he goes the following Friday. But that does not often happen here on the border. The rain."
Bode and Lindsay Bonner had stood right there on their last trip to New York, for their twentieth anniversary. She had seemed happy that day. But when they had returned to Austin, he vetoed the funding for the children's health insurance program. And politics came between them.
"?Caramba! " Carlos said.
They had brought the kids up to the observation deck at the Empire State Building. The view from a thousand feet up was breathtaking. The kids pointed and spoke Spanish and seemed excited.
" Bueno," Alejandro said.
Emilio threw up.
"Was the movie good?" Lindsay asked.
Jesse had returned to the clinic late that afternoon. Inez had gone out back.
"What movie?"
"The movie you went to see."
"Oh. I did not go to see a movie. I went to get a movie. Tonight is movie night."
"Where?"
"Here. Every other Friday, we show a movie, outside, on the side of the clinic building. The white wall, it is a good screen. Come, I will show you."
They went outside where Inez was setting up an old reel-to-reel movie projector aimed at the side of the building. A long black extension cord ran from a plug on the outside wall of the clinic to the projector. A few residents were already staking out their places with blankets and lawn chairs, like Austinites gathering in Zilker Park for an outdoor concert.
"We have the only electricity in the colonia, so we pop corn and show movies twice a month. Instead of a drive-in, we are a walk-in. Tonight's movie is Viva Zapata. It is the story of the revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. He is a national hero in Mexico. As I said, Marlon Brando came to the border back in the fifties to film it."
"How'd you get it?"
"The theatre in Laredo loans the movies to me. I spoke to the owner's civic club, and afterward he asked how he could help."
When the sun set and the colonia was plunged into darkness, Inez flipped the switch and the movie played. The Spanish sound track was scratchy, but no one seemed to care. The night air carried the smell of popcorn and tesguino. The residents of Colonia Angeles ate and drank and laughed.
"Is this a comedy?" Lindsay whispered to Jesse.
"It is to them, an Anglo playing a Mexican hero."
Just then a bright light streaked fast and high into the night sky followed by a brief explosion, like fireworks. The children clapped.
The crowd cheered as if he had just hit a walk-off home run.
Bode stood on the pitcher's mound in Yankee Stadium surrounded by the Mexican kids. They all wore Yankees warm-up jackets and caps. The boys held hot dogs, and Josefina a fluffy pink cotton candy. She wore her yellow dress. They had met the players and conversed with them in Spanish. You couldn't slap the smiles off their faces. Especially Ranger Hank's.
"?Beisbol americano! " Miguel shouted.
Fifty-two thousand fans packed the stands. Yankees versus Red Sox with a national hero throwing out the first pitch on national TV. Bode reared back and threw a strike to the catcher. He smiled and waved his cap. The catcher handed him the ball and asked him to autograph one for him. Bode signed the ball then walked over to Jim Bob and Mandy with the kids. Mandy looked stunning in black tights and a black miniskirt and the baseball jacket; he hoped his wife wasn't watching his mistress on television. Jim Bob gestured to Bode's image on the big video screen in center field. Bode squatted down to the kids and pointed at the screen. They all turned to the screen and waved to the crowd.
Bode Bonner basked in the cheers.
"They cheer him. He is a murderer, but the gringos cheer him. Because he murdered Mexicans."
Two thousand miles south of Yankee Stadium, in the white compound in Nuevo Laredo, Enrique de la Garza stood in his office and stared at the image of the Texas governor on the television. It had been one week since that man had murdered his first-born son. One week knowing that he would never again see his son's face or hear his voice, never again laugh at his antics or teach him the family business, never again watch American baseball with him or play catch in the courtyard.
His son was dead.
His brother cried for him, and his sister cried for herself. She missed her big brother. As her father missed his son. The loss was unbearable. The pain unimaginable. The desperation he now felt seemed far worse than after his wife's death. Because her death was a mistake. But his son's death was murder.
He demanded justice for Jesus.
But there would be no justice in America. The governor would not be charged with murder; instead, he was hailed as a hero. Enrique had watched him on the morning shows and the news shows and the cable talk shows as he boasted of murdering his son: "I shoot first and ask questions later," he had said, and the gringos, they laughed. Now he was cheered as a hero at a baseball game. Regarded as a righteous savior instead of a cowardly murderer. A killer of Mexicans. Oh, how the gringos loved that. Remember the Alamo! Manifest Destiny! Once again, Americans murder Mexicans as they did during the Invasion. Once again, they take what is ours. Once again, we have no justice.
Once again, the Americans steal life from the de la Garza family.
Two hundred ten years before, the king of Spain himself had granted sixty thousand acres of land straddling the Rio Bravo to Juan de la Garza. Juan built a magnificent rancho with many cattle and vaqueros. Then the American president decided that God wanted the United States to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so he sent the army to take this land from Mexico. And take it they did, from here to California. Half of Mexico they stole from Mexicans. Then the president signed a treaty that set the Rio Bravo as the new border but granted continued title to Mexicans owning land north of the river. But the Americans wanted that land as well. They wanted it all. So the Mexicans were required to prove their title to land they had lived on for generations. "Your titles must be approved by the Texas legislature in Austin," the Americans said. "But we promise to give the titles back to you." The governor sent a commission to the border to collect the original land grants from the Mexicans. The commissioners put the titles in a trunk and the trunk on a boat for the trip up the coast; but the boat sank in Matagorda Bay. The commissioners, they survived, but the Mexicans' titles did not. An unfortunate accident, the commissioners said. Very sorry.
And then the Texas Rangers rode upon the Mexicans' land.
They put their guns to Juan de la Garza's head and demanded his signature on a deed-or his blood. Juan refused, and so he died on his land. As did many Mexicans. The river ran red with Mexican blood for many years. And when the killing stopped, the Americans owned all of the land north of the river. They stole our land and with it, our history and our future. The Americans sentenced the once wealthy de la Garza family to a life of poverty-until the great-great-grandson named Enrique de la Garza established the Los Muertos cartel to impoverish the Americans with the filthy drugs.
No, gringos, it is not about the money-it is about history and honor, venganza and justice, the past and the future. It is about Mexico and Mexicanos.
The history of the borderlands has now come full circle. That which you so coveted now comes back to haunt your soul. To enslave you to the evils of heroin and cocaine and marijuana. To impoverish you with poor people. The governor stood at the Statue of Liberty where Enrique de la Garza had also stood and read the inscription: "Send us your tired, your poor…" And we do. We will. We have. And more we will send north. Tens of millions more. To America. You once invaded us, now we invade you. You have impoverished us, now we will impoverish you. With our drugs and our poor. We will export our marijuana and cocaine and heroin and our hungry and illiterate and poor. Our poor will become your poor. Our poor will make you poor. Our poor will inundate your schools, your hospitals, your prisons, and your cities. This we have done to Texas. This we will do to America. Billions you spend on our drugs; trillions more you will spend on our poor. Drugs and poor people we send north that will impoverish you as you have impoverished us.
But there remains a balance due for what you have stolen from us-our land and our wealth, our history and our honor, our justice and our future. All that you took from us. And for that you owe a debt you will pay until the end of time. Only when there is justice will that debt be paid in full. And as God was his witness, there will be justice. For Mexico and Mexicanos. For Jesus de la Garza.
" Ya lo hice, jefe."
Hector Garcia entered with a broad grin.
"What have you done, Hector? Have you killed the governor, as I asked? No, you have not." Enrique pointed at the governor's image on the screen. "See, there he is."
"Uh… no. I have not done that."
"Then what have you done that you think would please me so?"
"The Predator drone-I have shot it down."
Enrique only grunted in response.
" Jefe, does that not make you happy?"
"My happiness, Hector, is now defined by a singular moment: when you walk into this office and drop the governor's head on my desk."