by Mark Gimenez
" Senorita Becca, you have finally come home to Ramon."
She threw herself into his arms and hugged him tightly. Ramon's eyes cut to Bode, his expression asking if she was all right. Bode nodded. When Ramon released Becca, he turned to the children.
"And who are these ninos? "
"Miguel and Alejandro, and this little gal is Josefina."
"And would you ninos like to ride the horses??Montar caballo? "
The boys broke into big smiles-"?Si! "-but Josefina shook her head.
"I will make them vaqueros, Senor Bode, just as I made you. Come, Chelo has lunch for the travelers."
Becca and the kids led the way to the house. Ramon lowered his voice to Bode.
"These are the children from that day in West Texas?"
"The ones I still have."
"What you did that day, Senor Bode, that was a good thing."
They went into the house where they found Ramon's wife and the aroma of Mexican food in the kitchen. Consuelo-known as "Chelo"-came to Bode and embraced him.
" Senor Bode. I am very happy that you are not dead." She looked past him. "And where is the senora? "
When Bode had called Ramon to tell him they were coming, he only said that Lindsay would not be with them. He had not explained why.
"She's out of town."
Chelo looked into his eyes, then dropped hers. As if she understood.
"I have lunch." She turned to the children. "Come, ninos, wash your hands."
Everyone washed up in the kitchen sink and then sat at the table. Enchiladas, dark rice, and refried beans. Bode Bonner had grown up on Chelo's food.
His grandfather had built the hacienda-style house; his father had added on; Bode had put in the swimming pool for Becca and her friends. There were four bedrooms and four bathrooms, a great room with the kitchen at one end and the stone fireplace at the other, an office, laundry, and mud room. Bode had lived every day of his life in this house, except the four years he had lived in the UT football dormitory and the eight years in the Governor's Mansion. Ramon and Chelo lived down in the creek house. Lupe had lived with them until Bode had taken her to the Governor's Mansion. The four vaqueros lived in the bunkhouse. They ran five thousand head of cattle on the ranch. Some years they made a little money, some years they lost a little money. You didn't ranch cattle to get rich. You ranched because it was your life. What you knew.
After lunch, Becca took the kids swimming. Bode rode out with Ramon and Shep the dog. Bode's horse was named King. The big bay had been sired on the ranch and would die on the ranch, just as Bode's father and mother had died on the ranch. His sister, Emma, had died on the interstate, but she too was buried on the ranch. Bode and Becca were the last of the Bonner breed. When he died, the ranch would be hers. Given her sexual preference, Bode didn't figure on grandkids.
Who would take care of the ranch when Becca was gone?
They rode to the Bonner family cemetery where eleven white headstones stood. They dismounted and went inside the white picket fence under the shade of a tall oak tree. Bode's great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, mother and father, and big sister. Emma had been special. Blonde and beautiful, tough and smart-she had been the queen of the rodeo and the rodeo star. She was the Bonner who would make the family proud. Then she was gone. Then they were all gone. His sister when he was thirteen, his parents when he was sixteen. Ramon and Chelo had taken him the rest of the way to manhood. They had cheered him in the stands as if he were their own son. Ramon was a wise old man who had helped Bode the boy through the dark days. He had something to say.
"When Senorita Emma died, I knew more death would follow. After your madre died, and then your padre so soon after, you were lost… until the senora came into your life. Your path is with her. It has always been so."
Ramon mounted up and rode off to check on the herd in the west pasture. Bode rode on to the far hills, the highest point on the ranch. From there he could see the entire ranch-and the entirety of his life on the ranch. It had been a simple life, a good life, the country life. He had been happy living this life. He had been a boy here, until his father taught him how to be a man here. He had buried his mother here and then his father. He had married and become a father here. He had lived his life here. And the life he had lived here had been a real life.
Why had he left this life?
He had told himself back then that he was leaving to do good, and perhaps that was true at first. But there was no lying to himself now. His parents had put him on a straight path here on this ranch, but he had veered off course onto another path, one that took him to the State Capitol and then the Governor's Mansion and might even take him to the White House. Was that Bode Bonner's path in life?
He sat on his horse and pondered Ramon's words.
And he wondered if Bode Bonner had made the family proud.
He rode back to the house and joined the kids in the pool. He put on a good face for them, but the image of Mandy's face being blown off kept him constant company now. He still couldn't believe she was gone. Because of him.
He got out and sat in a lounge chair under an umbrella next to Becca. It was good to have kids playing in the pool again. They had wanted more children, but the pregnancy was difficult; the doctor said the next one could be dangerous. So Becca was an only child.
"I wish Mom was here," she said.
"Me, too."
"Do you really?"
He nodded. "We need her."
"You hurt her."
"I know."
"What are you going to do about that?"
"I don't know."
"Are you going to try to get her back?"
"I'm not sure she wants me back."
"You're part of her."
Josefina played in the pool. The therapist had helped her. Each day Bode saw the little girl emerge from the frightened soul they had rescued that day in West Texas.
"We need to buy her a new dress," Becca said. "Her yellow one is getting ratty, she wears it every day."
"Find her a new one in town."
"I don't want to leave the ranch."
Bode patted his daughter's hand. Josefina now climbed out of the pool and came over. Bode tossed her a towel. She wrapped the big towel around her little body then stepped to him and gave him a hug.
"What's that for?"
Becca had learned Spanish from Ramon and Chelo and the vaqueros. She translated. Bode had never bothered to learn their language. So he spoke Spanglish, the Tex-Mex butchered version, like a Texan cooking Mexican food. It was about time he learned the language.
"?Por que tan carinosa? " Becca said.
" Quiero ser tuya," Josefina said.
"She said she wants to be yours."
Bode frowned. "No, no, honey, it doesn't work that way in America. What those men did to you, that was wrong, okay? Men in America, we don't have little girls for our-"
"Daddy," Becca said. "She didn't mean it that way. She wants to be your daughter." She turned to Josefina: "?Hija? "
She nodded. " Si. Hija. "
Becca grinned at Bode.
"I always wanted a little sister."
"Lindsay, if El Diablo learns that you are the governor's wife, he will kill you before the sun again rises over the Rio Grande. You must go home."
"I am home."
Jesse and Lindsay got out of the pickup truck and walked into the house followed by Pancho. They placed the grocery bags on the kitchen counter next to the phone. The red message light was bright. Jesse hit the PLAY button and listened to messages from Mayor Gutierrez and Latino legislators and business people from around the state-all pleading with him to be the Latino who takes Texas back from the Anglos. The latest polls showed Jesse in a dead heat with the governor.
"Of course," the mayor said on the recording, "we might not have to beat the governor-for-life because he might not be alive much longer."
Jesse stopped the message and turned to Lindsay.
"Sorry. Gut
ierrez and these other old Latinos, they are of another generation. They are still angry over past injustices. They want to fight the Mexican-American War again. But fighting past battles again does not help the people today, here on the border."
"No," Lindsay said. "It doesn't help them at all."
"And the leaders from the state and national Democratic Party, they think if I beat your husband here in Texas, he could not win the presidency."
"Losing governors don't win the White House."
"But they are just using me to further their agendas."
"That's what they do."
"The Democrats do not care about the people here on the border any more than the Republicans. I am just useful to them. They just want me to take the governor's job so to save the president's job. As if the president needs me."
The phone rang. Jesse picked up the receiver and put it to his ear.
"Hello."
"Dr. Rincon?"
"Yes."
"Please hold for the president."
THIRTY-FIVE
German immigrants settled most of the Texas Hill Country in the mid-1800s. The liberal Germans settled in Comfort. They called themselves "free thinkers." They opposed slavery and the Confederacy during the Civil War. Twenty-eight of those Germans paid for their beliefs with their lives; they were ambushed and massacred by the Confederates in 1862.
Located forty-five miles north of San Antonio on Interstate 10, downtown Comfort-which is to say, the three blocks of High Street-consists of antique shops, a bed-and-breakfast, a small library, a restaurant called the Texas Bistro, and a deli/wine bar called High's on High Street. It was eight the next morning, and Bode Bonner stood at the corner of Seventh and High across from the old bank that was now a museum.
He did not look like the governor of Texas that day. No Armani suits and French-cuffed shirts or even jeans and starched shirts. He wore a knit shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers. His blond hair stuck out wildly from beneath a burnt-orange Longhorns cap pulled down low. He wore sunglasses. He hadn't shaved. He had woken at dawn, as he had always done on the ranch, but not because there was work to be done; because he had woken in a cold sweat from reliving Mandy's murder. He could not erase the image of her face exploding from his mind.
Chelo had already been up at the house, but Becca and the kids were still asleep, so she was holding off breakfast. He grabbed a cup of coffee then drove into the town where he had grown up. He was searching for something.
The man he used to be.
A loud noise startled Bode, but it was only an old pickup backfiring. He was as jumpy as Jim Bob these days. The town had not yet come alive; of course, you could stand in the middle of High Street during rush hour and not risk getting hit. To say life was slow in Comfort was like saying it was hot in Texas in August. Bode needed breakfast and more coffee, so he walked down to High's. He entered, removed his sunglasses, and made eye contact with the proprietor behind the counter; he recognized Bode, but only nodded then turned back to an old-timer ordering.
"And a scone."
The old man had white hair, a slumped posture, and a wood cane.
"Grady, you want two scones?"
"Why would I want two scones?"
"Because you already ordered one."
"I did?"
"Yep."
"I'll be damned."
The old-timer named Grady turned from the counter, leaned hard on his cane, and eyed Bode a long moment.
"You look mighty familiar," he said. "Like someone I seen on TV."
"The governor," the proprietor said.
"No," Grady said, "not the governor. Someone else."
Bode glanced over at the proprietor; they shared a smile.
"It'll come to me in a minute," Grady said. "You know he grew up here?"
"Who?"
"The governor. Helluva ath-a-lete."
"That so?"
"Yep. One game he scored six touchdowns."
"Seven."
"Or was it seven? Can't recall. Anyways, he don't come back much no more, wants to be president they say. Damn shame."
"That he wants to be president?"
"That he shot himself in the foot like that other boy wanted to be president, cheating on his wife."
Bode again glanced over at the proprietor, who averted his eyes this time.
"Saw it on Fox News."
"You figure that makes him a bad man?"
"Who?"
"The governor."
"What'd he do?"
"Cheating on his wife."
Grady shook his head.
"Nope. Makes him a selfish man. Man that don't think of no one but himself."
"What am I supposed to do when the president calls and says he needs my help? That he needs me to beat the governor so the governor does not beat him?"
Jesse and Lindsay drove to the colonia.
"What are you going to do?"
"What do you want me to do?"
"I don't want you to run for governor."
"Because of your husband?"
"Because of you."
"What do you mean?"
"It'll change you. Politics. It changes everyone it touches. For the worse. You're a good man, Jesse, too good for politics."
"How do you know this?"
"I've worked with you for four months now-"
"No. That politics will change me."
"Because my husband was a good man before he became a politician."
Bode Bonner had learned that he was special when he was twelve years old, when his superior athletic ability first became evident. Everyone-students, teachers, even grownups in town-assured him he was special. Often. Each year, the attention grew with his on-the-field exploits. By the time he was eighteen, that Bode Bonner was special was an accepted fact in town.
And in his mind.
That knowledge changes a boy. To walk into the feed store crowded with grown men and be greeted as if he were a god because he could play football, that changes a boy. Signing autographs when you're sixteen, folks wanting their photos with you when you're seventeen, college recruiters from around the country beating a path to your front door when you're eighteen: That becomes a part of you, like the blue of your eyes. It changes who you are, how you see yourself, how you view the world. Other people. Life. You start to believe that other people exist to serve you. That the world belongs to you.
It makes you selfish.
Ninety miles east in Austin, Jim Bob Burnet sat at his desk drinking coffee. Christ, Mandy's brains blown out and then Becca overdoses on sleeping pills. Now Bode, Becca, and the Mexican children had fled to the Comfort ranch. Jim Bob had elected to stay behind in Austin. He couldn't wait to leave Comfort when he was a kid, and he had never returned as an adult. And he never would. So he sat in his office.
With the blinds shut.
Bode Bonner had made a full recovery: the polls, the followers, the pledges to the Super PAC. They were all back. The scandal had been cremated with Mandy Morgan. The latest assassination attempt on the governor of Texas remained the number-one story in America. Reporters broadcast live from just outside the fence surrounding the Mansion grounds, almost as if hoping to catch the governor's expected assassination live, like a reality show. Jim Bob stood and stepped over to the window; he stayed to the side and peeked through the blinds. Satellite dishes rose high above a dozen TV trucks lining Colorado and Tenth Streets. The camera lights shone brightly. He returned to his chair and increased the volume on the television. The reporter outside was saying, "The governor of Texas remains secluded in the Governor's Mansion…"
He muted the volume. He would maintain the pretense that the governor was still in town with a steady stream of press releases and tweets. He picked up his iPhone.
At my desk. Won't let the devil himself keep me from working hard for the people of Texas.
"Cute."
Enrique de la Garza read the governor's tweet on his iPhone. He was one of the governor's twelve million follo
wers, not because Enrique cared what the governor was doing at any particular moment, but because he needed to know where the governor was in order for Hector Garcia to put a bullet in his brain. He started to put the encrypted cell phone to his ear and assure Hector that the governor was still in Austin, but A thought struck him.
The governor was not in Austin. He had left town. They were pulling the trick on Enrique de la Garza. He put the phone to his ear.
"Hector, the governor is no longer there in Austin."
"But, jefe, we have had twenty-four/seven surveillance on the Mansion. He is here. Yesterday, his caravan journeyed around town."
"No. It is a decoy. He is gone. Find him!"
All his dreams had been born on that field.
Bode sat in the stands at the Comfort High School football stadium. On that field he had discovered two things: his football ability and his ambition. His ability fueled his ambition. His ambition expanded his world beyond Comfort and the ranch. He began to believe that there was more waiting out there for him. That his life would be played out on a bigger stage. That he belonged on such a stage. All he had to do was surrender to his ambition.
And he had.
"That you, Bode Bonner?"
Bode turned to an old black man standing there. It took him a moment to recognize the school janitor from thirty years before. He had been old back then, but he was ancient now.
"Mr. Jefferson. How are you?"
"Older. You still the governor?"
"Yep."
"Thought they killed you?"
"They tried."
Hector Garcia and one of his soldados followed the Texas Ranger into the restroom at the small taco bar near the University of Texas campus. They had trailed the Ranger in the SUV from the Governor's Mansion to the restaurant: lunch break. It would be this Ranger's last lunch. When they entered the restroom, the Ranger was zipping up. His soldado blocked the door. Hector pulled his switchblade and released the blade. The Ranger turned from the urinal, and Hector pushed him hard against the wall and swiped the blade across the Ranger's face, bringing the blood.
