The Governor's wife

by Mark Gimenez

  Bode had drunk too much bourbon with John Ed the night before. But Rosita's strong coffee and breakfast of migas and spicy salsa had slapped his mind clear. Not as clear as the blue sky, but sufficient to hunt. He leaned the rifle against a rock and drank more coffee from the thermos Rosita had filled. April mornings a mile up in the Davis Mountains still got down to freezing, so Bode wore a hunting jacket over a denim shirt and a western-style leather holster packing his matched set of Colt Walker. 44-caliber six-shooters just like Captain Augustus McCrae carried in Lonesome Dove. He couldn't strap on the six-shooters in the city, so he couldn't pass up the opportunity in the country. He loved being out of the city and in the country and on the back of a horse, only the smell of gunpowder and cigar smoke in his nostrils. They had gotten up at five, eaten breakfast, and met Manuel out back with the horses saddled and their guns loaded. Mandy was sleeping in.

  John Ed Johnson wore only a bathrobe when he quietly opened the door to the guest bedroom. Across the spacious room he saw a mass of blonde hair emerging from the comforter on the king-sized bed. He walked over and dropped his bathrobe then lifted the comforter and climbed aboard. He sidled close to the naked backside of the governor's aide. She stirred.

  "Bode?"

  "Guess again, honey."

  She jumped back against the headboard and clutched the comforter to her body.

  "Mr. Johnson!"

  "John Ed."

  "Mr. Johnson-what are you doing?"

  "I thought we might play while the governor's away."

  "I'm not a plaything, Mr. Johnson!"

  "Aw, I doubt Bode would mind."

  "I mind. I love Bode, and he loves me. I would never cheat on him."

  "Not even for a million dollars?"

  "Not even for a million dollars!"

  Odd. That usually worked.

  "Well, hell, guess I'll go climb into Rosita's bed."

  John Ed slid out of bed and put on his bathrobe.

  "The governor's in a helluva lot more trouble than he knows, having a woman who's not his wife in love with him."

  Lindsay Bonner opened her eyes onto a different world. She was waking up alone again, but not on the day bed in the sitting room in the Governor's Mansion in downtown Austin. She lay in a soft bed in a small guesthouse situated among a stand of palm trees only a few hundred feet from the Rio Grande and Mexico beyond.

  Had she really done this?

  She was a forty-four-year-old woman. She was the mother of an eighteen-year-old college student. She was a married woman and had been for the last twenty-two years. She was the governor's wife.

  Whose husband was probably fit to be tied right about now.

  But she had done it. She had escaped the crowds and cameras, the press and politics, the Governor's Mansion and the governor's wife. All of that was her husband's adventure. She had embarked on her own adventure. Her own life. A life that would have meaning.

  Lindsay Bonner would make a difference.

  She jumped out of bed and showered in the small bathroom. Then she dressed in her new clothes: the yellow peasant dress, green scarf, wide-brimmed hat, and pink Crocs. But no make-up. She looked at herself in the mirror. She barely recognized the woman looking back at her.

  Here on the border, she was not the governor's wife.

  Jesse Rincon ran the river, as he and Pancho did each morning. But that morning was unlike any before.

  The governor's wife lay asleep in his guesthouse.

  Five years now, he had resigned himself to a life without fame or fortune or love. He had never sought fame or fortune. Love was a different matter. He had often hoped for love. And now love was upon him. But for how long? How long would she sleep in his guesthouse? How long would she work with him in the colonias? How long before she left him? These questions threatened to darken his mind, but he refused them entry.

  He stopped short.

  Jesse Rincon vowed at that moment, standing in Texas and staring at Mexico as the sun rose over the Rio Grande, that he would not look beyond each day. He would live each day he had with her as if it would be his last, because one day it would be.

  Bode slid the rifle into the leather scabbard secured to his saddle. They mounted their horses and rode off. They would leave the hog for the vultures that were already circling overhead. Hank and Manuel took the lead twenty yards ahead. Manuel Moreno was a short, wiry man, perhaps forty but possibly fifty. He carried a two-way radio linked to the lodge. Jim Bob carried a satellite phone. Bode Bonner was the governor of Texas, and he sure as hell didn't want to be lost and stranded on this ranch, twenty-five square miles of the most beautiful and brutal land in Texas.

  "John Ed ambushed me with that eminent domain bill last night, said he talked to you about it."

  "Yep."

  "You knew he was gonna ask me for help getting it through the legislature?"

  "Yep."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Would you have told John Ed no and forgone the twenty million if I had?"

  "No."

  "That's why I didn't tell you."

  "He's giving us twenty-five."

  "That'll put us over forty-five million. Good work."

  "Still, Jim Bob-next time, tell me."

  They rode on in silence. The air was cold, and the wind was down. The sky was big and blue, the mountains brown and low. Hawks and peregrine falcons soared on the currents above, and cool spring water bubbled out of the earth below. Named in honor of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, the Davis Mountains were part of the Chihuahuan Desert that extended up from Mexico. The lower elevations were in fact desert, hot and dry and dotted with prickly pear and cholla cactus and creosote bush and giant yuccas and enough agave plants to supply several tequila factories. But the climb into the higher elevations brought blue grama grass and clear spring creeks and forests of Ponderosa and Pinon pine and even silver aspen. They called this land a "sky island." Bode had made the journey to these mountains many summers; while the rest of Texas suffered the hundred-degree heat, the mountains offered a cool oasis. The clean air soon eased his irritation at his political strategist. He could never stay mad at Jim Bob Burnet. They had been inseparable since fifth grade. Bode had rescued Jim Bob from bullies, and Jim Bob had saved Bode from math and science. They needed each other back then, and they still did today.

  "I asked John Ed if he'd support me if I made a run for the White House."

  "And?"

  "Said he couldn't afford it."

  "He didn't lie. Supreme Court threw out the campaign finance law, so the next presidential campaign's going to cost each party a billion dollars, and that's real money, even for John Ed."

  Jim Bob inhaled on his cigar and seemed to ponder the mountain sky. When he spoke, he was the Professor.

  "A presidential run, Bode, it's brutal. Physically and mentally. Campaigning every day for two years, studying policy like you're cramming for a world history final so you don't come off an idiot in the debates, getting demonized by the left-wing media searching for every woman you ever dated to see if they'll claim sexual harassment… They're pit bulls with press passes. Why subject yourself to that?"

  "It'd be a hell of an adventure."

  "Could be a hell of a disaster."

  "The thrill of victory or the agony of defeat… That's why we play the game."

  The Professor puffed on his cigar.

  "You're a full-blown type-T personality, you know that? T for thrills."

  "Never denied it."

  "We did a research study at the school, why men go into politics."

  "So why do we?"

  "Power, fame, money, thrills… and younger women, of course."

  "Politics offers a man the complete package without the need for post-season knee surgery."

  "If you win."

  "One big play, Jim Bob."

  The Professor exhaled cigar smoke.

  "Bode, you've got a good thing going, governor-for-life.
Don't fuck it up."

  Bode responded with a grunt.

  "Hell," the Professor said, "look at the upside. You couldn't shoot an African lion if you were president."

  "True."

  "And you sure as hell couldn't bring Mandy along, the press corps follows the president everywhere."

  "Which would be a definite drawback, especially on the longer flights."

  The Professor chuckled.

  "I told her we'd drive into Marfa for lunch at the Paisano Hotel," Bode said. "She's dying to see where Elizabeth Taylor slept when she was out here to film Giant. And she wants to shop, says she gets the shakes if she goes more than twenty-four hours without buying something."

  "Women."

  Jim Bob shook his head.

  "See, Lindsay's like us, that's why she went down to the border."

  Bode had informed Jim Bob that Lindsay had gone down to the border to work as a nurse in the colonias — and that she knew about Mandy.

  "But Peggy, she was just like Mandy… well, except for the looks… and liking sex."

  Jim Bob and Peggy had married at twenty-five and divorced at thirty. She lived in California with their daughter. Bode's daughter was a lesbian who would never give him a grandson, but it could be worse: Jim Bob's daughter was a Californian.

  "I tell you Fran got accepted to Stanford and Caltech? I'm trying to talk her into coming to UT. Be nice to have her around again. I miss that girl."

  "Why the hell would she go to Stanford or Caltech if she can go to UT?"

  Jim Bob shrugged. "An education?"

  "But their football teams suck."

  "She doesn't play."

  "She could be a cheerleader."

  "She wants to be an engineer."

  "Train?"

  "Environmental."

  "See, that's what living in California does to kids."

  Bode hoped for a laugh or at least a smile, but got neither. The Professor's expression turned down, as if he'd been denied tenure, and Bode knew that if he didn't get Jim Bob's mind off Fran, the melancholy would set up camp and dog him for days.

  "So you were saying about Peggy?"

  Jim Bob had loved Peggy with the desperation of a man who had had few opportunities for love, but she had left him for a richer man, a man who could give her the life she wanted. Bode knew that talking about Peggy would only get Jim Bob pissed off, a more favorable mood on a hunting trip than melancholy.

  "Oh, yeah. So I asked Peggy one day-this was back when I was in grad school and already plotting the Republican takeover of Texas-before Rove beat me to it-and we were living in that little rent house just off campus-I said, 'Honey, what do you want to do with your life?' She said, 'I want a big house on the lake, a Mercedes coupe, a country-club membership, a…' I said, 'No. That's what you want in life. But what do you want to do with your life?' Well, she looked at me like I was fucking crazy, and she said, 'That is what I want to do with my life. I want to live in a big house on the lake, drive a Mercedes coupe, play tennis at a country club…' "

  "What's your point, Jim Bob?"

  "My point is, that's the basic biological difference between men and women: Men want to do things. Women want to have things. Which is why men and women don't understand each other, don't get along with each other, and don't stay married to each other. For us, it's all about the doing. Achieving something. Leaving our mark on the world. For them, it's all about the having. Acquiring something. Making their girlfriends jealous." Jim Bob puffed on his cigar and blew out smoke rings like a fucking Indian sending smoke signals. "We want to kill a big furry creature; they want to buy a fur coat."

  "So what's all that got to do with Lindsay going down to the border?"

  "She's not a normal woman like Peggy or Mandy. She's more like a man than most men. She doesn't give a damn about having things, she wants to do things. She wants her life to have meaning."

  "What, you're an expert on my wife?"

  "I've known her as long as you have."

  Jim Bob pointed his cigar to the distant sky.

  "Look-an eagle." He stared a moment then said, "Still, I can't believe Lindsay went down to the border by herself. That's fucking crazy. And nursing in the colonias, s hit, she might bring something back."

  "What, like a Mexican?"

  "Like a disease."

  "She's got all her shots."

  "She ain't a heifer, Bode."

  "She's a stray."

  "You knew that when you married her, a liberal from Boston."

  "Why can't she be happy shopping at Neiman Marcus like other women?"

  "Because she's not like other women."

  "Most women want desperately to escape the border," the doctor said. "But you come to work here."

  "I don't shop," Lindsay said.

  "Ah. That explains it."

  "I could never go out in public like this in Austin-these clothes, no make-up, no Ranger Roy."

  "But why? You look very pretty. And your clothes, it will be nice to have some color in the colonia."

  "The cameras. They're my constant companion, so I have to look perfect. The press thinks everything I do is for the cameras, that my life is scripted for a political purpose, that I'm not just getting coffee or going to the gym or teaching kids to read. I'm campaigning. Most politicians' wives live for the cameras. But I hate the cameras."

  "There are no cameras in the colonias."

  They had eaten breakfast tacos-scrambled eggs, refried beans, and salsa wrapped in wheat tortillas-in the doctor's kitchen and were now driving to Colonia Angeles in his old pickup truck. Pancho rode in the back. It was Saturday.

  "Doctor-"

  "Please. If we are going to work together, you must call me Jesse."

  "Jesse. And I'm Lindsay Byrne from Boston. So you work weekends?"

  "I do not play golf." He smiled a moment but the smile didn't last long. "The truth is, I have nothing else to do."

  They soon turned off Mines Road and onto the dirt road that led to the border wall. When they arrived at the big gate, no Border Patrol agents were in sight.

  "They're not here to let us in," Lindsay said. "How will we get through?"

  "Key code."

  Jesse got out. She fought the wind and followed him to the gate. On the wall was a key pad.

  "Wait," she said. "An American citizen has to enter a key code to travel from this side of the wall to the other side? From this America to that America?"

  "Uh… yes."

  "How does that work?"

  "It is easy. See, I punch in the code-six, three, one, nine-"

  "No. How does it work when the police need to come to the colonias? They have to get out and punch in the key code?"

  "Oh. The police do not come to the colonias."

  "What about ambulances?"

  "They also do not come."

  "Fire trucks?"

  "No."

  "Oh. Well then, I guess a key code works just fine."

  "You love her?"

  "I'll always love Lindsay."

  "Mandy."

  " Mandy? I'm old enough to be her… It's not like that."

  "She know that?"

  Bode assumed she did. Why would a gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old girl fall in love with an older man? An older man had an affair with a younger woman for one reason.

  "My wife doesn't want to have sex with me."

  "Hell, Bode, if you wanted sex, why'd you get married?"

  Jim Bob was amused by his own words.

  "When I vetoed that children's health insurance program," Bode said, "she moved out of our bedroom, sleeps on the day bed in the sitting room."

  "Yep, that was a mistake. She's got a blind spot when it comes to kids."

  "You told me I had to veto it, to stand up to Washington's unfunded mandates."

  "True, but it was a mistake if you wanted sex with Lindsay. Course, Mandy's not a bad replacement player."

  "I had lots of opportunities, but I never cheated on her, till she left o
ur bed. Now I can't stop."

  "It is habit forming."

  "My wife stops having sex with me because of politics, but I'm not supposed to have sex with anyone else because I'm married? Why's that fair?"

  "It's not."

  "Why should I feel guilty?"

  "You shouldn't."

  "Then why do I?"

  "Because that's what women do to men. But, hell, Bode, you don't have to feel guilty anymore-she knows about Mandy."

  The man's twenty-seven-year-old mistress had been discovered by his wife, and she had run off to the border. What would happen when the politician's twenty-seven-billion-dollar budget deficit was discovered by the voters? Would they run off, too?

  "Why would she do that over politics?"

  Jim Bob puffed on his cigar. "It's the hero syndrome."

  "The what?"

  "Hero syndrome. You've been her hero since high school. Now you're not."

  "I'm not?"

  "Hate to be the one to break the news."

  "Helluva lot easier to be a hero on the football field. Now she wants me to fix up the colonias for a bunch of Mexican squatters."

  "You can't do that. You gotta take a hard line on immigration or that tea party wave will drown you."

  "That's what I told her. She said it's not about politics, it's about the children. Can you believe that?"

  "She's always been a bit naive."

  "What if she doesn't come back?"

  "She'll be back. She'll get tired of the border and come crawling back home."

  "What if she doesn't come back because of Mandy?"

  Jim Bob didn't answer for a time. Then he said in a soft voice, "Peggy had an affair… I still would've taken her back."

  Bode did not look at his old friend. Instead, he felt old.

  "My dad got prostate cancer at my age, died at fifty-five. Every year I get my physical, I sweat out the PSA results."

  "All men do. I had a biopsy two years ago."

  "On your prostate?"

  "PSA was elevated. Turned out to be a false alarm."

  "You never told me."

  "Did you want to know?"

  "Well, hell, yeah, I wanted to know. You're my best goddamn friend." He shook his head. "Shit, Jim Bob, you don't tell me nothing anymore-John Ed's bill, your biopsy… What was it like?"

  The Professor puffed on his cigar.

  "It wasn't the most fun I ever had."