by Mark Gimenez
When the game had turned against you.
THREE MONTHS BEFORE
TWENTY-FIVE
Jesse Rincon ran the river at dawn on the third day of June. Pancho vaulted down to the riverbank to chase a jackrabbit, so he followed the dog down. He ran east along the hardened and cracked dirt bank toward the rising sun. He could not restrain a smile. She had come back. To the border. To the colonia.
To him.
He wanted desperately to go to her now, while she lay in bed, and to feel her body next to his, to wrap his arms around her and to be one with her. But now was not the time. She was still a married woman.
That day would come, but he would not dwell on it now. He would enjoy this day he would have with her as if it would be his last. And what a glorious day it would be. The sun now rose over the Rio Grande in the east where the sky was clear and held the promise of a He stopped.
He looked down. His shoes no longer tread on dry ground. Water lapped at his feet. He smelled a strange scent-the scent of rain. He turned back to face west. The distant sky was a dark black over the Chihuahuan Desert. There was rain in the desert. It seldom rained on the border, but when it did, a flood often ensued. Drought and flood, that was the weather cycle of the border. Rain in the desert ran fast and hard across the sunbaked dirt as if it were concrete, fast and hard to the arroyos that emptied into the river. He now studied the river. The water moved rapidly that morning.
And it was rising. Fast.
He climbed the bank and ran to the guesthouse. He banged on the door until the governor's wife answered in her night clothes.
"Hurry! The river is rising."
"A storm comes from the desert."
The rain fell gently at first. The wipers swept the water from the windshield without difficulty. Pancho rode up front with them.
"But we need rain," Lindsay said. "It hasn't rained since I've been here."
"Yes, rain is good, but too much rain too fast is not good."
The rain picked up strength. By the time they arrived at the colonia, the rain came down in sheets. The wipers could not keep up. She could barely see out the windshield. Jesse parked at the clinic.
"This will soon be mud," he said. "If the river comes over the bank, the entire colonia will flood. You will be safe here, in the clinic." He pointed at the tall cinder blocks on which the small building sat. "The water will not rise three feet here."
"Where are you going?"
"To the river. Storms like this, they happen only once every few years. The children do not understand how dangerous the river can be. The rain collects in the desert then empties upstream. The river can rise fast, too fast to escape, if the children are playing in the river. Three years ago, we had such a storm. Two children drowned." He braced himself for the rain. "The children, they cannot swim."
"I'll go with you."
"No. It is too dangerous. You stay here."
Jesse and Pancho got out on the driver's side and ran through the rain to the river. Lindsay hesitated then pushed her hat down on her head and followed. When they arrived at the river and Jesse turned and saw her behind him, he was not happy.
"Go back!"
She held her ground. Her mud. She pointed down at the river where a dozen children played in the rain and the river as if they were at a water park.
"?Salga del rio! " Jesse yelled to the children. Get out of the river.
They did not hear him, or they did not listen. They continued their play, as if the rain were a blessing from God. Jesse slid down the muddy bank to the river and went to them. Lindsay could not hear him over the rain, but he gestured to the low bluff where she stood. The children reluctantly obeyed. He herded them to higher ground then sent them home. He pointed down at the river and yelled over the rain.
"See how rapidly the river moves now, how fast it rises. It is up a foot since we arrived. They would have all drowned."
They turned to walk back to the clinic, but Pancho barked. They turned back; the dog stood at the edge of the bluff and barked down at the river. A small boy was stuck in the river. The water was to his waist now.
"The mud!" Jesse yelled.
He slid down the muddy bank again. He waded into the river and to the boy; he reached down and yanked the boy's feet free of the mud. He picked the boy up and carried him to the bank. He held him high so he could get a handhold. Lindsay knelt and reached down for the boy. She grasped his wet hand, but she could not lift him.
"I'll come up then pull him up!" Jesse said. "Hold him."
He climbed to the top of the bluff then knelt and reached down for the boy "Jesse!"
A wall of water swept around the bend of the river like a tidal wave. The water hit the boy and pulled him free of her grasp. He fell into the river. Jesse grabbed her, or she would have followed the boy into the river, then he jumped up and ran downriver, searching the water for the boy. She ran after him.
"There!"
She saw a bobbing head being swept away. Jesse ran fast to catch up then dove into the river. Pancho followed him. Lindsay ran downriver after them. She saw the boy thrashing wildly… then going under… and rising again… screaming with fear… Jesse swam after him, propelled forward by the river… Pancho followed his master… she ran and ran until… she did not see them again.
They were gone.
She collapsed to the mud. And cried. And on this border where there is no god, she prayed.
"Save them! Please, God! Save them!"
"Dive in!"
The Mexican consulate had located next of kin for all the children except Miguel, Alejandro, and Josefina. And they now stood next to Mandy on the limestone ledge of the Barton Springs Pool just south of downtown wearing swimsuits and expressions of doubt after dipping their bare toes into the frigid water. The spring-fed pool remained at a constant sixty-eight degrees year-round.
"Come on in!"
Two Texas Rangers book-ended the kids; two others manned the entrance and two more the far side of the pool. They had advised against an outing to a public pool as an unnecessary security risk-"Governor, if El Diablo can send two choppers into Fort Davis and take his son's body from the morgue, what can't he do?" — but the governor of Texas was completely unconcerned. Absolutely unafraid.
Because God was Bode Bonner's bodyguard now.
Bode Bonner had never been a religious man. He had gone to church as a boy to make his mother happy and as a man to make his wife happy, but he had never gone to make himself happy. Religion had never touched his life, like, say, football had. He had never really and truly believed in God, that God was a real and present force in his life. Sure, his reelection campaign theme was "faith, family, and schools," but that was just politics-until that day at Kerbey's. Father and daughter surviving an assassination attempt by Mexican hit men had been a religious experience.
And it had made Bode Bonner a religious man.
After the assassination attempt, Becca had moved back into the Governor's Mansion. She was too afraid to return to school. Or to leave the Mansion. She lay in bed all day watching cable TV and texting. She had always been an outdoor person, but now she refused to leave the safety of indoors. Bode tried to talk to her, but he hadn't known what to say to make her feel better. To make himself feel better. Truth be known, the assassination attempt had rattled him. Scared the hell out of him. The idea that a drug lord in Nuevo Laredo could order three hit men to cross the border, purchase machine guns at a gun show in San Antonio, and travel north to Austin to assassinate the governor of Texas-and that they had come within a fraction of an inch of putting a bullet in his head and in his daughter's head-had unnerved him. He had not made a single public appearance since that day. Father and daughter had both lived in fear.
Until that day.
In the month since the assassination attempt, he had thought little about politics and a lot about life: The Meaning of Life. Death. Religion. God. Bode and Becca were alive; Hank and Darcy were dead. They had all occupied the same sma
ll space in front of the large plate glass window, but two had survived and two had died. How could that be? How could they have been alive and vibrant human beings one second and lifeless corpses the next second? How could life be so tenuous? Fragile? Fleeting? He felt guilty for being alive. "Survivor's remorse," they called it. Lying in bed each night, he had tried to come to terms with his survivor's remorse and make sense of the situation.
He couldn't.
And he had worried. The worries had become a part of him; he felt the worries with each breath he took. That he might soon die. That his daughter might also die if she were with him in public. He had been consumed with such worries for weeks. But then he woke at three that very morning, and the worries were gone. Because he woke with a sudden knowledge: It was a miracle.
God had saved Bode Bonner.
How else could his survival be explained? Two men wielding machine guns and firing at him from twenty feet away- they had fired sixty bullets! — yet not a single bullet had struck Bode or Becca. There was only one explanation: God had protected them, put up a spiritual shield that the bullets could not penetrate. God did not want them to die. He did not want Becca Bonner to die, and He did not want Bode Bonner to die. He would not allow Bode Bonner to die. Consequently, while that lunatic El Diablo had tried to kill him and might try again, he now lived without fear.
Bode Bonner had been bulletproofed by God.
But why? Why had God saved him? The answer came to him that morning as well: God wanted Bode Bonner to be the next president of the United States of America.
He had experienced a religious epiphany.
Of course, he had kept that epiphany to himself. He hadn't uttered a word of it aloud to anyone, not even Jim Bob. Especially not the Professor-he had always had an atheist bent about him, so he would simply scoff at such a notion. Truth was, Bode himself would have scoffed at the notion just two months before-before that day in the Davis Mountains. He had considered the meaning of his life leading up to that day in the mountains and all the days leading up to the assassination attempt, but he could not get his life's picture focused in his mind-until he had snapped to a sitting position in bed at three that morning and cried out, "Yes!"
At that moment, the picture had come into focus.
It had been no mere coincidence that he had gone hunting for an African lion on John Ed's ranch, that he had been there that very day, on that ridge sighted in with a dangerous game rifle at the very moment that Josefina had attempted her escape from those cartel thugs-that his life and her life and their lives had intersected at that exact place and time.
God had put him there.
God had saved him from the assassination attempt at Kerbey's.
Because God had chosen His candidate.
God wanted Bode Bonner to lead America-to be the leader of the free world. That's what He did when America was threatened. Of course, he could hear the nonbelievers saying, "God has more important things to do than pick the next American president."
Really?
The world is God's creation but America is God's country. God watches over America because America represents everything God had hoped his little experiment called mankind could achieve. America was God's hope for His world. God had handpicked George Washington to lead the new America, Abraham Lincoln to preserve America, Franklin Roosevelt to save America from the Nazis, Ronald Reagan to save America from Communism-now God had handpicked Bode Bonner to save America from the Democrats. In His divine and infinite wisdom, God had reached down and plucked him from obscurity as a state governor and put him on the path to the White House. God wanted Bode Bonner to be the next president of the United States of America.
So God would not allow harm to come to him.
Bode understood that now. He had nothing to fear. He could walk the streets of Austin, he could jog around the lake, he could make public appearances, and he could swim in Barton Springs Pool without fear of assassination. He was again the old Bode. A better Bode. A bulletproof Bode.
"You guys gonna get in or not?"
Mandy dipped her toe into the water again.
"Not." She turned to the kids. "Who wants ice cream?"
Freeze your butt off in the frigid water or get down on some Rocky Road? That was not a tough choice for the kids. They skedaddled up the sloping bank to the concession stand. Mandy followed. She was wearing a black bikini, and Bode couldn't help but notice that she had put on a little weight. Her tight abs seemed a little loose, her lean thighs a tad less lean, her round bottom a bit rounder. But then, what did she expect? You can't eat a triple chocolate ice cream cone with the kids every night and keep your girlish figure.
Lindsay did not know how long she had lain there, how long she had cried or how many prayers she had said, but the rain had stopped and the sun had appeared when she raised her head. She wiped her eyes clear of the rain and her tears and looked to the east. Downriver.
She saw a man, a boy, and a dog.
They walked on the bluff toward her. She pushed herself up and ran to them. She stumbled and fell twice, but she did not stop until she threw herself into Jesse Rincon's arms.
TWENTY-SIX
Jesse stopped the truck at the gate in the border wall. Two Border Patrol agents stood guard. The one named Rusty walked over to Jesse's window. Lindsay averted her face.
"Mornin', Doc. They're waiting on you."
"Who?"
"More TV folks. You're getting pretty famous these days."
It had been a week since the storm. They river had quickly returned to normal and the land to drought, as if the storm had never happened. They cleared the gate and drove down the dirt road and into the colonia. They found a TV truck parked outside the clinic with the satellite boom extended high into the sky-"More of Mayor Gutierrez's Mexican Mafia," Jesse said-and Inez waiting out front. She was wearing her faded blue dress and way too much make-up.
"She hopes to be discovered," Lindsay said.
"In this colonia? "
Inez hurried over to the truck with a frantic expression on her face.
"Doctor, you must hurry! They have been waiting!"
"That morning show interview?"
"Yes! Live on national TV!"
"But, Inez, you do not have a television."
"I can dream."
They got out of the truck. Lindsay threw the satchel over her shoulder and walked down the dirt road. Jesse watched her, a moment too long for Inez's liking.
"Doctor! Hurry!"
She grabbed his arm and pulled him inside.
Jim Bob Burnet's office smelled like McDonald's. Eddie Jones had brought breakfast that morning. They now ate Egg McMuffins. Eddie had come to Austin to lay low after those incidents involving civilians in Iraq, which was fortunate for Jim Bob; he would soon collect on his insurance policy.
Spread across his desk were magazines and newspapers from around the country with Bode Bonner's image on the front cover and front page. And each story cited James Robert Burnet, Ph. D., as the genius behind the Republican machine in Texas, the man with his finger on the pulse of politics in Texas. "The next Karl Rove."
Bode Bonner had transcended politics. He now occupied that rarified airspace of an American icon. He had survived an assassination attempt by Mexican hit men in broad daylight, and he had shot and killed his three assailants. It was a scene straight out of a Hollywood action-thriller. Bode Bonner was a real-life American action-hero.
Which worried Jim Bob Burnet.
Because while the American people loved their heroes, the American press loved to bring their heroes down. Especially a conservative Republican hero. The liberal media would not allow a Republican hero to succeed in politics today. They would attack him-or her, in Sarah Palin's case-relentlessly. She's stupid, she's inexperienced, she's racist, she's dangerous. The press knew that if they repeated a lie a hundred times every day for a hundred days, it became the truth. Then that flock of sheep known as the American people would believe it. Know it. Vot
e it.
It was a short journey from man of the people to scorned by the people.
They were a fickle crowd, the middle class. The rich and the poor shared the same motivation when it came to politics: money. The poor voted to get more money from the government; the rich voted to keep more money from the government. It was that simple for them. But the middle class, their motivations were more complex, more fluid, more fickle. They didn't vote on money alone. Sometimes it seemed as if they voted on everything but money: abortion, gun control, gay marriage. Family values. Social values. Christian values. American values. The rich and the poor worked overtime to destroy any social values still standing in America, so the middle class voted to restore those values. Which had proved an exercise in utter futility, but that had not stopped the middle class from trying.
Every election.
Consequently, pollsters across America constantly tried to find the pulse of the middle-class voter, which usually proved impossible. Their views changed daily, hourly, apparently in response to the latest story on the evening news or Entertainment Tonight. But one response to the polls that came through loud and clear: the middle class demanded a presidential candidate who portrayed family-social-Christian-American values, whatever that might be at the moment.
Not someone who betrayed those values.
So Jim Bob had examined Bode Bonner's middle-class values index and found it lacking in three distinct areas: (a) his daughter was a lesbian; (b) his wife had left him; and (c) he had a twenty-seven-year-old mistress. He could explain away (a) and (b), but Mandy Morgan was simply too gorgeous to explain away. Middle-class men might envy Bode Bonner, but their middle-class wives would hate him. And they would not vote for him. He would lose the election because of her. If Mandy Morgan were exposed as Bode Bonner's mistress.
