Black Water Rising Read online

  “Right,” Jay says, rolling his eyes at being compared to a pimp. Outside in the parking lot, Bernie asks, “How’d I do?”

  The Big Dipper sign is flashing over her head, next to an ani­

  mated neon painted lady who’s opening and closing her legs, on beat, every three seconds.

  “You were perfect,” he says.

  She eases her way into the Buick, balancing one hand on the car’s frame.

  “You washed the car,” she says, noticing for the first time.

  “This morning.” He shrugs coolly. No big thing. He closes the car door and walks around to the other side. There’s a late-model Ford LTD on Jay’s side, black and long. Jay is careful not to scratch it with his door. Inside the Buick, Bernie asks him to turn up the air-conditioning. He makes some halfhearted complaint about gas prices—$1.37 at the Exxon on OST—but turns up the AC full blast anyway. “What was that one about anyway?” Bernie asks. She’s picking at a tear in the beige seat cover.

  Jay looks through the windshield, watching as I-45 slows to a crawl. The rusted pickup truck in front of him has a native houstonian bumper sticker pasted across the back window of its cab. The driver is propped up on twenty-inch wheels, smok­

  ing a cigarette out the window, looking at the tangle of taillights spread out before him. The traffic problem in the city has only gotten worse in the last year or two, as the city’s population reaches nearly three million. And still the people keep coming, hundreds by the week, from all over the country, spreading out into new housing developments that pop up like mushrooms in Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 87

  this humid city. They come with dollar signs in their eyes and too many episodes of Dallas ringing in their heads. They come chasing oil.

  The guy in the truck honks his horn twice. But the traffic doesn’t move.

  “That girl back there? What was that all about?” Bernie asks.

  “She’s a witness.”

  “To what?”

  “It’s just a case, B.” The details of which he’d just as soon keep to himself.

  Traffic picks up after the I-45/610 split.

  Jay puts on his right-turn signal, wanting to ease over in time for the 59 exit that’ll take him to Fifth Ward and Bernie back to her father’s church, where she was typing the programs for Sunday’s service when he picked her up before the interview. He looks in his rearview mirror, searching for an opening in the next lane. The Native Houstonian is behind him now, one lane over. Jay waits for the truck to pass, then moves over to the right lane, pulling right in front of a black late-model Ford. He studies the car in his rearview mirror.

  At first he can’t make sense of it, why the sight makes him so ill at ease.

  Then he remembers the strip club’s parking lot. There was a Ford LTD, black like this one, parked next to him. And now here’s one again, some fifteen miles down the freeway, riding right behind him.

  Jay rolls down the driver-side window, sending a hot gust of exhaust into the car. He adjusts the side-view mirror, pivoting the glass just so, until he can, through smoke and freeway dust, make out a rough image of the Ford’s driver: a white man wear­

  ing sunglasses and a tie, with close-cropped hair. The driver is smoking a cigarette, which he, just then, throws out of his win­

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  dow. Without signaling, the man abruptly changes lanes, jump­

  ing out from behind Jay and into the next lane over, cutting off a blue station wagon in the process. As the Ford passes Jay on the left, the driver turns in his direction, looking right into the car, looking right at Jay. It’s no more than a few seconds, but it’s just long enough to anchor the feeling in Jay’s gut: someone is tailing him.

  As the freeway splits, concrete parting ways, the black Ford continues on 45 North as Jay veers right onto the exit ramp for Highway 59. He tries to make out the Ford’s license plate num­

  ber, not watching where he’s going. He almost rear-ends the car in front of him. Bernie puts her hand on the dash, bracing her­

  self. She turns and looks at her husband, the sweat coming down his face. “Roll up the window, would you, Jay? It’s got to be at least ninety degrees outside.”

  Jay does as he’s told, and it’s suddenly quiet in the car again.

  “What is the matter with you anyway?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Bernie snaps off the radio. “You been acting funny, Jay, for days.”

  This would be his shot, he realizes. His chance for a confes­

  sion, to tell it all: the article in the paper, his trip to the crime scene, and his fears about being connected to a murder. But he doesn’t mention a word of it. “It’s just work, B.”

  He reaches over and pats her knee. Bernie looks down at his hand as if someone had laid a cold fish in her lap. She lifts the hand, returning it to its owner, then turns and stares out the window on her side, watching the cars in the next lane. There’s something she wants to say to him, and he can tell she’s search­

  ing for the right tone. “You don’t talk a lot, Jay,” she starts. “I knew that when I married you. You don’t talk about your mother, your father, and you sure won’t talk about your sister.” She sighs, Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 89

  the sound a kind of sad whistle through her front teeth. “But it’s six years now, Jay, you and me. I guess I thought you’d have let me in by now, that’s all.”

  She turns the radio back on, lets the music fill the space between them.

  “I have a doctor’s appointment on Friday,” she says finally.

  “Can you take me or should I ask Evelyn?”

  “I’ll take you,” he says.

  “Fine.”

  The rest of the ride back is stiff.

  He drops Bernie off in front of her father’s church, but doesn’t go inside. He takes surface streets back to his office, checking his rearview mirror every few seconds. He thinks of the black Ford and the guy behind the wheel. White, early forties maybe. A suit and tie, sunglasses, and close-cropped hair. In a late-model American sedan. A good description of a cop if he’s ever heard one.

  Back on West Gray, near his office, Jay drives around the block two times before going inside. He checks every car in the alley out behind his building. There’s no sign of a black Ford, and he starts to seriously consider that he made the whole thing up, that he’s seeing things, his old paranoia flaring up again. He doesn’t trust his mind the way he used to, not the way he did when he was young, so sure of everything. The car in the club’s parking lot. It was black, yeah. But was it a Ford? He only looked at it for maybe a couple of seconds. It could have been an Oldsmobile or even a Cadillac. And the guy driving the Ford, Jay would have remembered him inside the Big Dipper. White men like that, the ones who look like cops or feds, he never forgets. He can’t afford to. There’s no way that guy was in the club with him. That much he’s sure of.

  He makes his way into his office, reminding himself that he’s 90 Attic a L o c ke

  done nothing wrong. He heads straight for his desk, ignoring the pink message slips in Eddie Mae’s rhinestone-covered hand, and makes a cursory effort to tackle the papers on his desk. But the words blur on the page. His eyes are no good today. He feels another headache coming on, and, because there is no other rem­

  edy at hand, he takes two swigs from the open bottle of PeptoBismol in his desk. Wanting something stronger, he opens a pack of Newports hiding in the back of the drawer. He lights the last cigarette in the pack, right there at his desk, kicking the door to his office closed when Eddie Mae starts coughing in the hall. He buys another pack on the way home, stopping at a filling station on Almeda. He’s got half a tank as it is, but the prices at this Shell station are a good ten cents a gallon cheaper than the PetroCole by his house. Jay leaves the nozzle hanging out of the Buick and goes inside to pay: $7 on number 2, a pack of Newports, and a carton of milk because Bernie called him at the office asking if he wanted macaroni and cheese for dinne
r. He’s walking back to his car when he sees a black Ford LTD parked across the street. Jay stops cold in the middle of the gas station’s parking lot, feeling the milk cool against his side, the paper bag wet and soft with condensation. There’s no one behind the wheel of the Ford. Jay looks to his left and right, scanning the faces in the parking lot, looking for a white man, early forties, suit and tie, close-cropped hair. He sets the milk on the roof of his car and crosses Almeda on foot, wanting a look at the Ford’s license plate:

  texas. klr 592.

  There’s no city seal on the vehicle, nothing to mark it as offi­

  cial.

  Jay walks along the side of the car, peering through the win­

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  dows. There are paper cups and fast-food bags on the floorboards and a tape recorder on the front seat, next to a legal pad. Pressing the sides of his palms to the glass to shield the late-afternoon sun, Jay tries to make out the tightly coiled handwriting.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Jay turns and finds himself face-to-face with a large black man who’s carrying a greasy take-out bag that smells of fried chicken and mustard greens.

  “I know you?” the man asks.

  Jay holds up both hands to show he means no harm.

  “Naw, man, I don’t know you,” he says.

  “Then I guess you best get the fuck away from my car.”

  “Sorry, man,” Jay mumbles, backing away and into the street, almost walking into the front end of a Honda hatchback going thirty-five miles an hour on Almeda. The driver punches his horn. Jay staggers back to his Buick. He pulls the grocery bag with him into the car, resting the carton of milk in his lap. Through the windshield, he watches the black guy across the street sliding into the front seat of the Ford LTD, which, on sec­

  ond glance, Jay realizes, is dark blue.

  C h a p t e r 8

  Sometime late, after midnight, Jay opens his eyes, sure he’s heard something, a noise inside the apartment. He turns over in dark­

  ness, but can’t make out the lines on the clock by his bed. He reaches for his gun. He’s up and into the hallway in a matter of seconds, into the kitchen before he realizes the phone is ringing. The noise he heard. It rings a second time. Jay flips the light switch and looks at the clock above the stove: 2:37. The phone rings again. This hour, the news can’t be good. He fears this is the moment he’s been dreading.

  “Jay.”

  His wife is standing behind him in the doorway, her faded brown robe around her shoulders. She’s staring at him: blood­

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  shot eyes, hair mashed to one side, a .22 in his hand. Her look is something past concern. She actually seems afraid of him. The phone rings again. Bernie goes to answer it. Jay picks it up first. He turns his back to her and clears his throat, speaking into the phone with a clear, calm voice, one he uses for juries . . . and cops.

  “This is Jay Porter.”

  “Son, you got to come out here.”

  It’s his father-in-law, wide awake.

  Jay feels relief at first, thinking this is another legal service call, another kid in trouble. He sets the gun on the kitchen table, reaches for pen and paper.

  “You hear me, Jay?” his father-in-law asks. “They shooting out here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They shot up a house on Market Street, man’s wife and kids sleeping in the next room. By a miracle, a sheer miracle, they wasn’t hit.”

  “Who? Who’s shooting?”

  “ILA.”

  “Jesus,” Jay mumbles, forgetting for a moment who he’s talk­

  ing to.

  Then he asks, “How do you know for sure it was—”

  “They’ve been harassing these boys all week, son, after every meeting. The union’s gon’ vote on this thing soon, and some of the ILA are bent to see it come out their way. This boy here, man’s house I’m in, he’s been getting calls all week, saying what they gon’ do to him and his family if he votes for the strike. There are shells everywhere, broken glass right in the man’s liv­

  ing room.”

  “You call the police?” Jay asks. He glances at his wife, not wanting to alarm her, knowing she’s listening to every word. 94 Attic a L o c ke

  “We’re waiting on ’em now. But we’re not gon’ see this go down like the last time. They got to take us seriously this time. We need a lawyer down here.”

  “Now?”

  “They almost killed the man, Jay, his wife and kids, you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The police have got to know there’s gon’ be some repercus­

  sions if they don’t do their part to protect these men. You under­

  stand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jay looks at his wife, wondering how he’s going to explain this to her, him leaving at three o’clock in the morning. “It’s your father,” he whispers.

  Bernie seems to understand at once. He doesn’t belong to only her.

  She turns and pads softly out of the room.

  She’s sitting up in bed when he gets off the phone. He returns the gun to its hiding place beneath his pillow, then puts on the same clothes he was wearing only a few hours ago. “Union boys are running into some trouble,” he says, his voice thin with fatigue. “I’m driving out to the north side.” He slips on his dress shoes, putting on the costume, knowing he ought to at least look the part.

  “You got to stop this, Jay.”

  No shit.

  Only she’s not talking about the phone call, him leaving in the middle of the night. “You can’t grab a gun every time the phone rings,” she says. “I can’t have this around my kid, Jay.” Then, a whisper, “I won’t.”

  “Don’t start that now.”

  “You’re not right, Jay.”

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  He stands in the middle of the room, eyes on his shoes. Bernie looks up at her husband, her voice halting. “You’re not . . . right.”

  Jay slides his wallet into the back pocket of his slacks.

  “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he says.

  “I figured that part out already,” his wife says. He turns and leaves without kissing her good-bye. He checks the .38 in his glove compartment. It’s in a small leather case underneath his registration papers, the only gun for which he has a permit. It would be illegal to have the .22 in the car or else he might have brought that along too. Reverend Boykins said he thought the gunmen had gone, but there is no way of knowing if they’re coming back, and Jay has no intention of walking into an ambush. The late-night drive is unsettling, the air kind of heavy with the knowledge that this is trouble’s hour. Jay pushes in the car lighter and rolls down his window. He lights a ciga­

  rette and thinks about his wife.

  She was just a kid when they met, thirteen years old when her father brought her by the courthouse, the day the verdict came down. Jay remembers getting dressed that morning, leaving his cell for the last time, either to go home or to the Walls in Hunstville. And he remembers the judge’s warning. There were to be no outbursts in the courtroom, no matter the verdict. Then, adding his own two cents, the judge said, “I don’t have an ounce of respect for you, boy. The nigra issue is an important one in this country. But you boys goin’ ’bout it the wrong way. And that’s all I’m ’on say on it.”

  Jay remembers looking at the jury box, at the black lady in particular, the one who stayed down the street from First Love Antioch Baptist Church. She wouldn’t look at him. She was in 96 Attic a L o c ke

  black from head to toe, and she had her head down, hands clasped around a wrinkled handkerchief, her lips moving slowly. She was praying.

  Jay threw up right there in the courtroom.

  He managed to get his head between his legs, so most of it spilled out across the floor. Black coffee and some chunks of white bread they’d served him in lockup. Some of the
church ladies in the back stood up. So did members of the press. Rever­

  end Boykins was sitting behind Jay, with his wife and two daugh­

  ters. He put a hand on Jay’s shoulder. Jay remembers turning around. He was shaking his head, trying to say something, ready to make his bargain with God, the Rev as his messenger. But he couldn’t get any words out. He couldn’t speak, for days, it would turn out. He was finally out of speeches.

  The Rev whispered in Jay’s ear. He spoke of God and faith. He’s got you, son. He’s not gon’ let you fall. The judge made them all wait until a maintenance crew could be located in the building. They lugged buckets and mops into the courtroom, cleaning up Jay’s insides in front of everybody. He was long gone by then, lost in the swamp and stink of his fears, steeling himself against what he thought was inevitable. But the verdict, when it came back, was not guilty. The judge read it twice, as if he didn’t believe it either. The lady in black, his angel, was weeping. She held her thin, prayerful fingers up to the ceiling, up to the sky and the Lord on the other side, to thank him, as it was clear she didn’t trust her vote on a piece of paper, didn’t trust white folks’ doing. She dabbed at her eyes with an eyelet handkerchief; then, finally, she looked at Jay. Despite the noise in the courtroom, he thought he could hear her heartbeat, soft as a whisper in his ear. She gave him a small nod, just as simple and courteous as if they had passed each other on the street. Then, one by one, the jurors were led out. Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 97

  He doesn’t remember the faces in the courtroom, doesn’t remember meeting the reverend’s family or his future wife. He doesn’t remember the parting words from the judge. He looked in the gallery for one face, and when he didn’t see it, he was ready to go. He walked out of the courtroom with maybe thirty dollars in his pocket and no place to stay. He walked around the city for hours, and then days. He spent six dollars seeing Beneath the Planet of the Apes twice, eating popcorn for lunch and dinner; he slept in MacGregor Park one night. His third day out of jail he had breakfast at a Wyatt’s cafeteria, eggs and coffee. Then he took the bus to St. Joseph’s Hospital downtown. When the admitting nurse asked what was bothering him, he wrote down on a piece of paper: I’m tired.