He always yearned for higher office.
"Texas was once an independent nation-and if Washington keeps messin' with Texas, we just might be again!"
She suddenly snapped out of her thoughts-the Lubbock Republicans sitting on either side of her were applauding the governor and glancing suspiciously at his wife. She was late with her applause. Again. She now clapped for her husband. He basked in the applause.
Bode Bonner had fallen in love with politics. It filled a need inside him. It fed his competitive instincts and enabled his ambition. It stole the romance from their lives. He had found something he loved more than her. It was painful enough for a woman to lose her man to another woman, always a risk when her man is in politics, but to lose her man to politics, that bordered on cruel. But seduced by politics he was. So he ran for the governorship. Texas had turned red and Republican, but Bode saw that it had also turned green, as in money from big business, that the State Capitol was no longer the seat of government, but instead a shopping mall where laws, rules, and regulations were bought and sold-and the people were sold out. But Bode Bonner had been different. He was a populist. A man of the people. He wanted to change things.
Now he wanted to get reelected.
She had campaigned with him that first election, crisscrossing the State of Texas in a pickup truck. It was romantic, it was fun, and it was important: Bode Bonner was going to make a difference. He promised change, and the voters put him in the Governor's Mansion. Election night was glorious, standing next to her husband, the governor of Texas.
But once elected, they descended upon him. People vested in state government: people doing business with the state, seeking money from the state, buying from the state, selling to the state, lobbying the state, controlling the state. People vested in the status quo. People who didn't want their world to change. The power brokers and lobbyists and lawyers entered their lives, and they changed Bode Bonner. He became what he had hated. He sold his soul for four more years in the Governor's Mansion. And she had aided and abetted him, the dutiful and loyal governor's wife.
And she was still living in his shadow.
He now grabbed the microphone and stalked the stage, no notes, no teleprompter, just Bode Bonner and a microphone, quoting chapter and verse of tea party politics.
"Washington is giving America away to Wall Street, to multinational corporations that outsource your jobs and in-source their profits…"
He could've been a preacher. The "Bode Bonner Hour" on Sunday morning television. So tall, so handsome, so articulate-an ex-football player, imagine that-but he wasn't real. He was just an image in a campaign commercial in his cowboy boots and hair sprayed in place. He was a cut-out cardboard figure you stood next to to have your photograph taken. That was not the man she had married. That was the politician Jim Bob Burnet had created.
She blamed Peggy.
Jim Bob had met and married Peggy at UT; Lindsay had been her maid of honor and Bode his best man. But Jim Bob had changed when Peggy left him five years later and ran off to California with their daughter, when she had decided that Jim Bob Burnet would never give her the life she wanted. Peggy was like that. Politics-winning elections-became Jim Bob Burnet's life. His obsession. As if he needed to prove to himself and to Peggy that she was wrong about him. But he couldn't do it alone. He needed Bode Bonner. So he took her husband and changed him.
Jim Bob made her husband a politician.
"But your voice isn't heard in Washington because you live in a red state and vote Republican, because you read the Bible and not the New York Times…"
Bode pulled out the pocket-sized Constitution he always carried and waved it in the air like Moses waving the Ten Commandments, a signal that he was building to the big finale, whipping the crowd into an anti-government, tea-party frenzy.
"Because you believe in Jefferson and Madison, not Marx and Lenin, free enterprise not freeloading, America not ObamaCare…"
He could fire up a crowd. He always said it was no different than firing up the football team before a game. This crowd was ready to play for Bode Bonner. To vote for Bode Bonner.
"This is our America! This is God's country! God bless Lubbock! God bless Texas! God bless America! And never ever forget: Bode Bonner's got your back!"
The crowd broke into wild applause and that familiar chant-"Bo-de! Bo-de! Bo-de!" — just as the crowd had chanted back when he had starred on the Longhorn team. Back then, she had joined in the chant from the spectator seats. But not today. For two terms, she had accepted her role as the dutiful loyal spouse. She had played her role, perfected her role.
But that had all changed now.
Her trip to the border had changed her. A month had passed, a month of public appearances and photo ops and volunteer work-but something was missing now. Or now she noticed what had been missing for so long. That day in the colonias had made acting a role unacceptable, living in someone's shadow intolerable, cheering from the sideline unbearable. She wanted to live her own life again. She wanted to be useful again.
She no longer wanted to be the governor's wife.
One man in the crowd did not clap or cheer or chant the governor's name, for he hated Bode Bonner with every fiber in his being. He was the state Democratic Party chairman, which is to say, the longest losing coach in the history of the game of politics. Twenty years he had gone without winning a statewide race in Texas.
With no end in sight.
Clint Marshall pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial for the mayor of San Antonio. Jorge Gutierrez had first won political office before Clint was born. He was the leading Latino in Texas, which meant he was the leader of the Texas Democratic Party. He answered on the second ring.
"Clint, how are you this day?"
"Terrible. I'm in Lubbock."
"Yes, well, that was your first mistake." The mayor chuckled. "What are you doing in Lubbock?"
"Stalking the governor."
"Ah. And what have you learned?"
"That our boy's gonna get his ass kicked in November."
"You just figured that out?"
"No-but I'm always hopeful. Or I was."
"There is no reason to hope, my friend, not for the Governor's Mansion. Not this election. But be patient. Our time will come. The governor-for-life will surely die one day."
He chuckled again.
"Maybe, but I'll be out of a job before then."
"Do not fret, Clint. No one in the party expects you to beat Bode Bonner."
"Jorge, the guy is fucking Teflon. We've got a twenty-seven-billion-dollar deficit, but no one blames him-hell, they don't even believe we have a deficit. We're suffering the worst economy in decades, and they don't care as long as they can keep their guns and watch Fox News on cable." He paused. "God, what I'd give for a good sex scandal in the Governor's Mansion."
The mayor laughed. "Clint, would you cheat on the governor's wife if she were your wife?"
"No."
"Even a Republican governor is not that stupid. Search for another scandal, my friend."
"Mrs. Bonner! Look this way!"
The cameras took aim at her like a firing squad, the photographers wanting a front-page photo called out to her, and the people reached out to her. She smiled for the cameras, but the crowds frightened her. The raw emotion. The mob mentality. The power her husband held over them. She eased closer to Ranger Roy, who towered next to her, protecting her, holding her door open and gently tugging her arm. One last wave, then she climbed inside the Suburban and breathed a sigh of relief.
She had escaped the crowd.
But her husband didn't want to escape. He loved the crowd. He thrived on the crowd. He needed the crowd as much as they needed him, cheering for him, touching him, taking photos with him, so desperate to breathe the same air he breathed. He shook hands and slapped backs and kissed babies-and a few women-until Jim Bob Burnet pulled him away and pushed him into the vehicle. But Jim Bob did not get in; he was not allowed in the same vehicle as the governor's wife. Ranger Hank shut the door and jumped in the driver's seat; Ranger Roy rode shotgun. They began a slow exit from the fairgrounds through a gauntlet of cheering Republicans. The governor of Texas had a big smile on his face and red lipstick on his cheek.