"Remember when I bagged the wildebeest?"

"I do indeed," Jim Bob said.

Bode and Jim Bob had hunted together since middle school.

"A thousand feet out, one shot to the head." Bode held an imaginary rifle, sighted in the wildebeest head through an imaginary scope, and squeezed an imaginary trigger. "Boom."

"That was a good shot," Jim Bob said.

"That was a great shot."

The memory of which almost brought a smile to Bode's face. Almost. But after killing so many creatures, the thrill of the hunt had also waned. The hunts had all started to seem the same. Like sex. There were only so many positions and places to have sex, just as there were only so many creatures to kill. Hunting. Sex. Football. Politics. He had always found fulfillment in those manly pursuits. But now he found himself searching for something more. There had to be something more. He sighed.

"Why am I in this office?"

"It's the Governor's Office. And you're the governor."

"But why am I the governor?"

"You're a Republican in a red state."

"No-what is my purpose in being governor?"

"To get reelected."

Jim Bob choked back a laugh.

"Wait, I lost count-is this your third or fourth midlife crisis this term?"

Jim Bob shook his head then tossed the newspaper on the desk and gestured at the headline: BET ON BODE.

"You're a hard man to please, Bode Bonner. You just won the Republican primary with one hundred percent of the vote, and you're not happy?"

"No one ran against me. Where's the thrill of victory in that?"

The State of Texas had held the Republican and Democratic primaries the day before. But Republicans didn't fight each other in March, and Democrats didn't win in November. The Democrats hadn't won a statewide election in Texas in twenty years.