True Allegiance

He hesitated until his local state assemblyman began calling for new environmental reviews of all drilling. The way Bubba figured it, he had no choice—his livelihood, and the livelihood of his workers, was at stake. He ran. He won. And he kept on winning. Turned out that his blunt nature and blustery personality worked great. His first campaign slogan: “Don’t Let ’Em Hornswoggle You.” In his opening campaign speech, he named the three top environmental officers in the state and read off how much they’d received from lobbyists for the environmentalists—and how much those environmental groups received from global competitors like the Saudi government.

Bubba Davis played politics like he played football: he pushed the line. The press called it “swagger.” He just called it the Texas Way.

Now, though, the governor of Texas’s face lit with rage. The man who had once picked up fellow soldiers and thrown them over his shoulder in distant rice paddies had turned to soft fat. Since Marge died, Bubba Davis drank too much, smoked too many cigars. And when he got angry, his face turned candy-apple red.

At the moment, his face looked closer to lobster crimson.

“Well, go fuck yourself then,” he spluttered, slamming the phone down on his carefully crafted maple desk.

He looked up. “Oh, hey, Ellen. Glad you’re back.” He walked over and wrapped her in a bear hug. “Ain’t nothin’ to say ’bout Brett. Except that he’s a tough, mean son of a bitch. If anybody can get his way out of that one, it’s your old man.”

Ellen nodded curtly, then sat down on the nearby settee. She didn’t want to talk about Brett, even with Bubba. “Governor, what’s the story here? My e-mail has been overflowing. I’m getting panic messages from the rest of the team.”

Bubba planted himself heavily on the flowered couch across from her. “I’m putting more troops on the border.”

“You know that’s just for show.”

“Not this time, it ain’t.”

Ellen felt an uncomfortable cringe rise in the middle of her stomach. “What do you mean, ‘this time’?”

Bubba scratched at the back of his neck awkwardly. “You’ve seen the people outside. They’ve got a right to expect that they’re safe in this state. That’s why they elected me. It’s why they keep electing me.”

“And you are keeping them safe, Governor.”

“The hell I am. Have you seen the crime statistics in El Paso? Used to be one of the safest cities in the state. Now it looks like goddamn Phoenix. I’ve got kidnappings. I’ve got killings. I’ve got local police in a tizzy, and I’ve got citizens pledging to go rogue if they don’t get satisfaction from the government.”

A shadow of a weary smile crossed Ellen’s face. “So what else is new?”

“I’m not going to stand for it anymore.”

“What can we do? You saw what they did to Vivian. And the feds hamstrung us.”

“Not anymore.”

The cringe became a pit. “What are you planning?”

“I’m going to give them the authority to shoot, Ellen,” Davis said softly.

She couldn’t stop herself before the words came out: “You must be out of your mind.”

“I’m not. I’ve only been out of my mind to think anything would change. I talked to Prescott yesterday. He’s stonewalling me. Threatened to send the feds against us, to arrest our boys, to arrest me, if I do a damn thing to stop this war. And it is a war. I knew Vivian, too, Ellen. I recruited her to the office. Knew her from when she was a little girl and took piano lessons with my wife. That funeral was the last one I’ll be a party to.”

“No, it won’t,” Ellen said. “Not if you do this. It’ll just be one among many. Do you think Prescott is bluffing? It’s just what he wants. He wants another Waco. And even better, a Waco created by one of his chief political opponents. Who do you think will stand with you? The media? They’re in his pocket. Even your own allies will desert you. They’ll call you a secessionist, a rebel. They’ll string you up and you know it. Your allies are your allies right up until they’re not.”

“No,” Bubba said slowly. “I don’t think that’s right.”

“Oh, really? What’s going to stop them? That little mob outside?”

“That little mob,” the governor of Texas said, “isn’t so little. I’ve got polls right here that say that seven out of ten of ’em think we ought to militarize the border.”

“That doesn’t mean they’ll stand up to feds if Prescott gets mean. Polls don’t mean a thing when the rubber hits the road. Hell, polls were in favor of the Afghanistan War, until things got tough. And Brett found out how bad things can go when the public abandons you.”

Bubba Davis stood up, began pacing, his boots thumping on the carpet. “What do you suggest I do, Ellen? We arrest border crossers, and the president just releases them. He just doesn’t give a damn about us down here. We’re political playthings for him, a convenient enemy so he can run his party-building scam, calling us racist rednecks.”

“And you want to hand him that label on a silver platter?”