“Texans!” he roared, raising the hair on the napes of a hundred necks.
For a long moment he said nothing else.
He let the legislators simmer in the juice of that holy word, which evoked visions of endless vistas of lush cattle range, the golden wheatlands of the Panhandle, the spuming oil rigs of East Texas, leggy Cowboys’ pompon girls, fresh shrimp from the Gulf, haute couture from the Galleria, line-camp camaraderie, eagles silhouetted against the sun, and that indelible image of the immolation of the Good at the Alamo fighting the forces of Evil. The word hung in midair. His eyes were on far horizons, as if the word had floated away from his lips and had come to rest somewhere way out there, like a guiding star by which mankind fixed its course.
For that long, long moment there was silence, an eerie silence, as if he spoke to an empty chamber. Then someone broke the spell with a rebel yell, and suddenly the capitol exploded with the thunder of shouting and deafening, sustained tumult.
At that moment, Cherokee Tom Traynor could have run for God and won by acclamation. Wistfully, he reminded himself to use the device-which in fact had been no device at all, but merely a pause to give himself time to think of something appropriately solemn to match the gravity of the occasion-during his next campaign … if there ever would be one, after the Russians.
He raised his hand for silence. After a few moments he got it.
“Texans are not strangers to peril,” he began, in quiet tone. “We have had famines, hurricanes, Indian massacres, outlawry, dust storms, floods, range wars, foreign invasions. Some we have won, some we have lost. But we have never run away from adversity, never shirked battle. We’ve fought for our freedom on many past occasions, and it looks like,” he went on, his voice rising, “if you ladies and gentlemen concur, that-”
He was drowned out in a flood of acclaim.
The governor raised his hands.
“. . . and it looks like we’ll have to do it again. We won’t run away, and we won’t surrender, for we know that those who won’t fight for their liberty don’t deserve it. Besides, the odds are right: Texas against everybody else in the world!”
He waited for the laughter and cheering to subside. Then his tone became serious once more.
“Fighting for what’s right has been the basic philosophy of Texas ever since this beloved land was first hacked out of the wilderness by men who valued their independence and self-respect more than they did their lives. We, their sons, must be worthy of those men.
“Is it possible for free and self-respecting men to submit to the indignities and foul ingratitude and blatant criminality that the Russian Seventeenth High Seas Fleet heaped upon the good people of San Diego, in the name of friendship? I say to you no! We will not submit. We will not-”
This time the cheers were louder, even more frenetic than before.
Cherokee Tom, a medicine man expert in taking the political pulse, recognized the fever signs of willing submission to messianism. This moment would be the pinnacle of his career. Never again would he command such support; if only he could freeze-dry it for the senatorial campaign in 2000 . . .
“All my life I’ve been a patriotic American,” he went on. “But I was born in Texas, and have allegiance to this great state as well. God forbid that I should ever have to choose between the state and the nation. Certainly, that choice need not be made today, for when I say that I, Cherokee Tom Traynor, will fight and die for my State of Texas, I am also fighting to protect the best interests of the United States itself, which the Russians seek to destroy.
“We cannot defy our president. We cannot allow our land and our daughters to be ravished by the Russian serf. Then what can we do? We can do this: we can inform the President of the United States that we refuse to allow the Russians into Texan waters, and that if they come, we will fight. One part of the nation cannot be at peace while the other is at war, you’ll say. True- and therefore we further say that the moment a Russian man-of-war enters Texas’s territorial waters, it will be fired upon. And at that instant the Sovereign State of Texas will secede from, and declare its independence of, the Union.
“The choice devolves upon our president. Does he want Texas to remain in the Union? Then he must tell the Russians to refrain from sullying our shores. Does he wish to sue for a craven peace with the Russians without the encumbrance of a restive Texas? Then he will bid us farewell and Godspeed, taking no responsibility for our actions.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I recommend to your consideration a bill, a declaration of independence of the Sovereign State of Texas, to become effective the moment the Russian fleet invades our waters. This bill gives to us, and to the President of the United States, the widest scope for action for our mutual benefit. It also narrows the choices of Russia to two: war or peace.”
No cheering punctuated the conclusion of his speech. When he stepped down from the dais, a reflective silence closed about the chamber. For the remainder of the morning that mood prevailed, as the legislators debated the issue.
At noon, with twelve members voting nay, and one abstaining, the two houses overwhelmingly approved the draft bill for the independence of Texas, conditional upon the outbreak of hostilities between the State of Texas and the Soviet Union. . . .
At nine o’clock that cloudless night, an hour after sunset, Governor Traynor went on television. His appearance had been announced at ten-minute intervals since early afternoon. It was estimated that fully 97 percent of the population of Texas would be watching.
His speech was dignified and brief, with none of his customary imagery and rhetorical flourishes. He spoke of the Russian menace. He gave a resume of his remarks in the Statehouse that morning. He noted the resolution by both houses of the Texas legislature calling for immediate succession from the United States of America and the promulgation of the Second Republic of Texas in the event of Russian incursion into Texas’ waters. Then his voice became grave.
“It is for us, your representatives, to propose. It is for you, the people of Texas, to decide. At this moment, in geosynchronous orbit 38,000 kilometers above Texas, the lenses of TexComSat 23-LBJ are focused on us. In exactly five minutes”-he consulted his watch- “at 9:25 p.m., all power-generating equipment in the State of Texas, except for emergency facilities, will be cut. The state will be in total darkness.
“Those who favor Texas remaining in a union that submits to the Russian yoke-if any such there be- will step outside into the night and show a light. A match’s flare, a flashlight, even the glow of a cigarette, will be picked up and registered by TexComSat 23-LBJ and relayed to Earth for instant tabulation. I say again: anyone who wishes to remain a citizen of a craven, misguided, gutless United States will step outside, and in his loneliness show his feeble beam.”
He paused.
“At 9:35 p.m.,” he resumed, “just fourteen minutes hence, all those in favor of a proud, independent Republic of Texas, ready to fight anybody and everybody who denies us the honor we will die to preserve, will step proudly out into the velvety blackness of the Texas night and light the lamp of freedom. . . .”
At nine-twenty-five, there were brief, isolated flashes of light from one end of Texas to the other. More often than not, they were followed by even briefer flashes as indignant Texans, their firearms at the ready for such expressions of disloyalty, zeroed in on the dissidents and let fly. As a test of loyalty toward the United States, it was a candle snuffed out in a high wind.
At nine-thirty-five, firehouse sirens wailed in every city in the state, and people poured out of houses and apartment buildings. From the Rio Grande to the Oklahoma Panhandle, from the borders of Louisiana to the sands of New Mexico fifteen hundred kilometers away, the state was ablaze with the light of impending battle in twenty million defiant ayes of Texas.
6 JULY 1998
President Wilson Wynn had left instructions to be awakened the moment the Texas referendum results were in, and shortly after midnight he was.
The frown of his political counselor, Manuel Silva, told him all he needed to know. It was what he expected. A spellbinder like Cherokee Tom Traynor, the lessons of the Civil War forgotten in an appeal to state pride and states’ rights, the colossal arrogance and stupidity of the Russians during and after the fleet visit to San Diego . . . The result could scarcely have been otherwise.