Yocke wanted to talk. Like most writers, his head buzzed with words. Sooner or later he had to spew them out so that he could have room to think about something else. “Being a revolutionary is very romantic,” he said. “It isn’t for everyone. The hours are brutal, you can get seriously hurt or dead, even if you win you’ll be a pauper, and you’ll probably wind up unhappy with whoever emerges from the chaos as the head dog. Sooner or later the optimistic revolutionary becomes the disillusioned veteran. If he is still above ground.”
“Was this your column that won’t get printed?”
“Yeah. Good solid stuff.”
“So, Jack, are you willing to kiss your pension, 401(k), Mazda sports car, and Washington condo good-bye and sign on for the voyage? Are you ready to pledge your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor?”
“Not yet, Admiral. I’m working up to it. Soetoro is dragging me to it by the hair. He’s dragging a whole lot of people there. If Soetoro doesn’t stop this shit pretty soon, there is going to be a major explosion.”
“He thinks not.”
“Barry Soetoro is a damn fool. President of the United States, and he doesn’t know Americans.”
On Thursday, the twenty-fifth of August, Jack Hays and his wife, Nadine, rode a helicopter from Austin to Sanderson, Texas, where a funeral home had Joe Bob Hays laid out. JR and his brother, Fred, and Fred’s wife and eldest son were there. The grandson was only four. JR had been divorced for the past ten years. His ex-wife had custody of their children. The wife had had an affair while her husband was in Afghanistan, and divorce followed. She didn’t remarry. The kids were teenagers now and knew everything about everything. JR wrote them a note about their grandfather and mailed it, and that would have to do.
The sheriff, Manuel Tejada, was there with some of his deputies in uniform. One of them, a man with bright, garish yellow and green tattoos that started at both wrists and ran up his forearms, took the time to shake JR’s hand and tell him how sorry he was. “Knew your dad,” he said. “Good man.” His name was Romero, according to the silver name tag he wore over his left shirt pocket.
The sheriff, his deputies, the mayor and county commissioners lined up to shake hands with Governor Jack Hays. Funerals aren’t normally places to talk politics, but they were very worried about terrorism and martial law and asked Hays what it meant.
“Washington hasn’t said much. We’ll know more soon,” was his stock answer. Actually, he was lying. Washington had sent him a directive that ran over a hundred pages. He had scanned it and turned it over to the attorney general for comment. His aides had run off some copies. He gave a copy to Ben Steiner and one to Charlie Swim, and told them to keep their mouths shut. He had taken another copy home and he and Nadine had read it.
As he stood listening to the preacher drone on, he was thinking of some of the major points in the directive. In effect, Soetoro and his administration were deputizing the state government to enforce their orders in Texas. That was Nadine’s verdict as she read the thing. She was an archaeology professor at the University of Texas and considered herself middle of the road politically. In Texas, that put her a little left of center, but not much. At the university, that made her a conservative oddity among the faculty, most of whom didn’t think much of her husband either.
Hays glanced around. Against the back wall stood two Texas state troopers in uniform who had flown out to Sanderson in the helicopter with him. They were now his official bodyguards. This morning he asked them point-blank: “What will you do if federal agents try to arrest me?”
“They better come a-shootin’,” the little one said. He was the senior man. The other man merely nodded.
“I doubt if it will come to that,” Jack Hays told them, “but it might.”
“You’re our elected governor. Ain’t nobody in Washington gonna drag you outta the state house. Period.”
“Thanks.”
“Them guys and gals at the FBI office in Austin, some of them are Texans too. If they get orders to come and get you, they’ll call us first. They promised.”
After the service, Jack and Nadine stood on the lawn and watched the funeral home personnel load Joe Bob’s coffin in a hearse. JR and Fred and his wife were going to follow the hearse to the ranch, where Joe Bob would be interred beside his wife, who had died of cancer ten or eleven years ago. No, Jack Hays thought. Twelve years ago. Damn, but time slides right along.
Before they closed the rear door of the hearse, he went over to the coffin and touched it. “Good-bye, Uncle Joe Bob.” He started to say more but choked up. “Good-bye,” he whispered and walked away.
“Drug smugglers,” Nadine said as they walked to the helicopter, which was a block away in the courthouse square. Texas flags hung everywhere, from windows and poles mounted on buildings. “They killed him,” she said, “and now their poison is ready for consumption all over.”
“Ready to supply the addicts and recreational users who don’t give a damn about violating the law or who gets killed,” Jack Hays muttered, “as long as they are having a good time.”
“Why haven’t we sealed that border?” Nadine asked.
“We tried,” he shot back. Nadine knew that. He had tried and the federal government sued and the judges said only the feds could control the border. We have to leave it open so the illegals can get in, Jack Hays told himself. Can’t take a chance on pissing off the Latino voters. And all those illegals who Soetoro wants to turn into voters. Hays was in a foul mood. Drug smugglers, now Soetoro and his martial law. It’s a hell of a world we live in.
His cell phone rang. He looked at the number. His aide.
The engine on the helicopter began to make noise.
“Yes.”
“The Houston police got troubles. A riot broke out several hours ago in the projects. They are burning cars and building barricades. Doing some looting. Some black congresswoman is shouting into microphones about the racist right-wing conspiracy trying to keep people of color down.”
He was tempted to order her arrested for inciting a riot, but that would only pour gasoline on a fire. “I’ll be back in Austin as soon as I can,” he told the aide. “Get out the riot plan and act on it.”
“Yes, sir.”
He got in the back of the helicopter with Nadine; the two troopers climbed aboard after them.
Jack saw JR watching as the machine lifted off.
After the interment, Fred Hays and his wife and son shook hands with JR, got into their car, and started driving back to Dallas. Fred and JR had just inherited a twenty-two-thousand-acre ranch in a very dry corner of Texas, and now didn’t seem to be the time to discuss what they were going to do with it. Fred and his wife were schoolteachers, had two kids, and needed every dollar they could get. Neither wanted to live along the Rio Grande miles from civilization — if Pumpville, Texas, was civilization. Fred had grown up on that ranch and that was precisely the place he wanted away from when he went to college. He had never come back except for brief visits. And his parents’ funerals.
JR, on the other hand, had spent too many years in Iraq and Afghanistan to look at desert chaparral with affection. The ranch was a big, windy, dry place, and in August hot as the doorstep of Hell with the fire doors open. His grandfather had settled here way back when because the land was cheap. It wasn’t worth much now, either. His father had stayed because he loved it, and he had gone broke there. Oilmen had drilled some exploratory wells yet never found anything. Probably never would. The place was mortgaged for the fence and exotic animals. If JR and Fred didn’t sell it, they’d need to find a way to make money to pay the bank. Hosting hunters was probably the only way.