And he could take Bode Bonner out.
Like Bode, John Ed had grown up on a cattle ranch; unlike the Bonner family's modest five-thousand-acre spread, the Johnson family's land in West Texas spread over three counties and was measured in square miles rather than acres. His granddaddy had taken a hundred thousand head of cattle on the long trail drives north to the railheads in Kansas back in the 1800s. By John Ed's time, the trains had come to Texas.
But if his old man had been the Bick Benedict of his time, John Ed was the Jett Rink of his. After his dad died, he turned production on the ranch from Angus beef to black gold. Oil. Just as Texas had produced the beef the nation needed during his old man's time, Texas produced the oil the world needed during John Ed's time. Texas had so much oil that from 1930, when the great East Texas field was discovered, and for the next forty years, the Texas Railroad Commission controlled the price of oil-in the entire world-by controlling the amount of oil Texas produced. Texas sat on a sea of oil.
But the Middle East sat on an ocean of oil.
In 1960, the Arabs formed OPEC, modeled after the Railroad Commission. By 1973, Texas no longer controlled the price of oil; OPEC did. Americans stood in gas lines during the oil embargo because Texas no longer supplied the world's oil or even America's oil; the Arabs did. For the last forty years, the Arabs had controlled the price of oil in the world. Even in Texas.
"Took a lot of the fun out of the oil business," John Ed always said, "not being able to control prices."
So John Ed moved on to the next big thing: water. Just as a landowner in Texas owns the oil under his land, he also owns the water. And he can sell that water.
"Ninety percent of Texans live in the city now, and they're fast running out of water because they want their pools full and their grass green. They'll be drinking spit in twenty years, ten if this drought don't let up. Then they'll pay an arm and a leg for drinking water. My water. I bought up groundwater rights all across West Texas, figure I can pump that water out of the ground, pipe it to the cities, and turn a nice profit. Water's more valuable than oil these days. If you control water, you control Texas."
"I thought you already controlled Texas."
"Not all of it."
"What'll happen to West Texas without water?"
"Who cares? Ain't much to look at now."
"How you figure on piping the water to the cities?"
"I've got to build the pipelines, hundreds of miles. Problem is, I've got to acquire the rights-of-way from landowners. I can negotiate with a thousand owners and buy the rights-of-way, but that gets expensive and time-consuming. Or I can condemn that land… well, I could if I possessed eminent domain power as a common carrier, like my gas company."
His expression told Bode that he was about to ask the governor of Texas for a small favor.
"I need a special bill, Bode, that grants my water company common carrier status. I need the power to condemn land for my pipelines. I need you to twist a few arms-the speaker's and the lieutenant governor's-and get my bill passed."
"There'll be some political heat, if this gets out."
"Maybe. But the Professor said your latest poll numbers are high enough to weather some heat."
"You already talked to Jim Bob about this?"
"Yep. When he called about you boys coming out. He's your political advisor, isn't he?"
Bode nodded.
"So-can I count on you, Bode?"
Bode didn't like it-giving John Ed Johnson the power to take people's land for his water pipeline-but he needed John Ed's $20 million.
"You bet, John Ed."
"Appreciate that, Bode. I won't forget. Oh, tell Jim Bob I'll wire my twenty-five million campaign contribution over Monday."
"Twenty-five?"
John Ed shrugged. "After seeing your gal Mandy, I figured you could use a little extra spending money."
"Thanks." Bode drank his bourbon. "You know, John Ed, I appreciate the support you've given me as governor. If I made a run for the White House, would you back me?"
"Why the hell would you want to do that?"
"An adventure."
"Cheaper adventures to be had… Like your gal Mandy."
John Ed drew a breath on his cigar then exhaled sweet smoke.
"Buying the Governor's Mansion, that's a forty-million-dollar deal. Buying the White House, that's a billion-dollar deal. And turning a profit on that kind of investment is damn hard 'cause you got to buy Congress, too, and those bastards don't come cheap. Wall Street pays billions for Congress, every election cycle. Even I can't fund that for long-five billion don't go as far as it used to. You want to move up to the White House, you gonna have to get the big boys behind you. They write those kind of checks every four years without blinking an eye."
John Ed drank his bourbon.
"Hell, son, was me, I'd stick to being governor-for-life."
"I just think I could win, riding the wave."
"Wave? What wave?"
"The tea party."
John Ed snorted. "Pissin' in the wind. The money always wins in politics."
"I don't know, John Ed. The middle class is pretty fired up about the social issues-abortion, gay marriage, immigration."
"That's why they're stuck in the middle class."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, politics ain't about none of that social crap. It's about money. Rich people and poor people, we vote for the money. Poor folks vote for anyone promising to give them more money, rich folks for anyone promising to take less of our money. But the middle class, they take their Bibles into the voting booth-and that costs them money."
"How so?"
"Because while they're fretting over girls getting abortions and boys screwing boys, the politicians are stealing them blind. See, rich folks like me, we've got a lot of money individually, but not as a group. Hell, Obama could take every penny from every billionaire in America, and it wouldn't fund the government but for a few months, not when the Feds spend ten billion dollars every day. The big money's in the middle class. A hundred million folks working their butts off every day to put Junior and Sissy through college, that's where the income's at, that's the mother lode of taxes. Only way the government can spend four trillion a year is to tap the middle class. So the politicians keep the middle class occupied with that social crap-"
"While they steal their money."
"Exactly."
"Never occurred to me."
" 'Cause you're middle class. No offense."
Bode swallowed his bourbon. John Ed Johnson didn't pull his punches, and he wasn't a billionaire for nothing. Bode wouldn't turn his back on the old man, but he learned something every time they talked. It wasn't exactly a father-son relationship, but it was a relationship of sorts nonetheless.
"How 'bout another bourbon, Governor?"
The governor's wife sipped her wine. She and the doctor were sitting on the back porch of his house in rocking chairs. Pancho, the golden retriever, lay on the plank wood floor. Soft music drifted out through open windows. Mexico beyond the river seemed serene and peaceful at night. She had settled in to the guesthouse and cut her hair then showered and dressed in her new clothes for dinner. The doctor did cook. They ate grilled fish and drank wine. She had awakened that morning in the Governor's Mansion in Austin; she was now staring at the stars over the Rio Grande.
"This is my retreat from the reality of the colonias," the doctor said. He pointed up. "Look, see the eagle."