Black Water Rising

by Attica Locke

  It’s only marginally true. But Jay can see no reason to esca­

  late the situation by repeating verbatim any of the things she said. He played his part as the messenger boy. The end of it, as far as he’s concerned.

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 131

  “Now wait a minute, son. We still need you on this thing.”

  “Rev, with all due respect, I’m not sure you have much of a lawsuit here. You got the mayor herself saying she’ll make sure the men are caught. The problem is, you’re saying the boy doesn’t really know who did it.”

  “Not by name, but he saw them, Jay. Well, one of ’em, at least.”

  Jay sighs. The story seems to keep shifting.

  “Meet with the boy again, hear him tell it, what those men did to him.”

  “I can’t afford to take any more time away from my busi­

  ness.”

  “I understand, son, but they’re going to vote on the strike, this week maybe. They’re going to call it. Come out to the union meeting and let the boy point the man out. We’ll get his name, then take it to the mayor’s office—”

  “You don’t need me for that.”

  “You’re the one who has her ear. Now look, the lawsuit was just a tactic. The main thing is, we need her on our side, get the whole city behind us.”

  Jay sighs, feeling again that the rules keep changing. This is not my fight, he wants to say. This ain’t my deal.

  “I got a baby coming, sir,” he says. “I have to work.”

  “How did it go with the doctor?” the Rev asks.

  “He says Bernie’s looking real good, doesn’t expect any com­

  plications.”

  “Well, we’ll pray on that, son, that’s for sure.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jay says.

  He’s about to hang up the phone when his father-in-law pipes up again.

  “Think about coming to the meeting, son. This is history, you know.”

  132 Attic a L o c ke

  He’s been stalling on the hooker case. Between the union drama and his anxieties about the shooting death in the newspaper, he’s let his work slip. And time is not on his side. It was two days ago that he promised Mr. Luckman he would present the settle­

  ment offer to his client, but in truth, Jay’s been avoiding her alto­

  gether—not returning her calls and telling Eddie Mae to inform her he’s out of the office if she should drop by unexpectedly. He doesn’t want his client to know about the offer. Dana Moreland would probably think $7,500 was enough to retire on. Jay is still holding out for more. If he can come up with a witness who saw J.T. and the girl, he thinks he can scare five digits out of Cum­

  mings and Charlie Luckman. That in mind, he heads out to Gilley’s after sundown, this time dropping Bernie off at her sister’s, going it alone. It’s safer this way, he reasons, remembering the black Ford on his tail just two nights ago.

  And anyway, Pasadena, Texas, is not exactly a pleasure desti­

  nation.

  There’s a sign on Red Bluff Road as it crosses Highway 225, the major artery in and out of Pasadena, Texas. It’s a homemade billboard, white with hand-painted black letters. It’s been there for more than a decade. A relic, some could argue. A holdover from another time. The sign has faded some, taking a beating from hundreds of South Texas storms. But cruising along at a cautious speed on Highway 225, Jay can see the words quite clearly from his car window:

  PASADENA, TEXAS

  “PROUD HOME OF THE KU KLUX KLAN”

  Nearly every citizen in town, every cop and city official, including Pasadena’s mayor and the police chief, drives by the sign maybe two, three times a day, Jay thinks. On the way to the Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 133

  grocery store or work or taking their kid to the doctor. You can hardly get to city hall without driving past it. Folks on their way to church Sunday mornings see this sign every week, rising some fifty feet in the air, high above the buildings and trees. There has never been a campaign launched to tear the sign down, no arguments made in the local newspaper that perhaps this is no longer the time for such unapologetically racist fare, at least not broadcast so loudly. Hell, the city could just come in and break the sign down in the middle of the night if they were moved to. And yet here it is, lit eerily from below by city streetlights, the white of the billboard stark against the black sky. It still stands on high as the unofficial town welcome.

  Make sure you know where you are, boy. In an odd way, Jay finds the sign comforting. He has come to appreciate these kinds of visual clues. To see a Confederate flag flying outside someone’s home or in the back window of a pickup truck is about as accurate a warning system as a man could hope for, like the engine light coming on in your car a few miles before something may or may not blow up; it’s a caution before trouble starts, offering a clean window of time in which to make a run for it.

  He would not be out here now if weren’t for business. There’s nothing appealing about Pasadena, Texas. It’s flat land, cow pas­

  tures and overworked strawberry fields turned over for cheap housing, strip malls and liquor stores, gun shops and honky­

  tonks. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, a small-time country singer opened the world’s largest nightclub, capable of holding more rednecks in one location than Jay ever wanted to encounter in a lifetime. Mickey Gilley’s place made the city of Pasadena, Texas, famous.

  The dance hall sits on several acres, including the parking lot, which, at a quarter to ten, is filled with dozens of Chevy and 134 Attic a L o c ke

  Ford pickup trucks, most of which have a red-and-white Gilley’s bumper sticker above their tailpipes or pasted in the back win­

  dows of their cabs. There must be dozens of people huddled in groups outside the club. They’re getting an early buzz on, drink­

  ing beer out of coolers propped up in the beds of their trucks, lis­

  tening to Waylon Jennings or the Charlie Daniels Band on their car stereos. At the front doors, there’s a group of girls waiting in line, their hair feathered up to the brims of their pink-and-white cowboy hats. They’re popping gum and sharing a can of hairspray. They glance in Jay’s direction, nudging each other as he drives through the parking lot, where all eyes are on him: a black man in a crisp white button-down, no pearl buttons or tassels, no beard on his face or even a mustache, driving a Buick Skylark no less. He is clearly not one of them.

  Jay parks at the far end of the lot, the front end of his Buick tipping dangerously over the edge of a steep ditch that separates the gravel lot from the cars passing by on Spencer Highway. He has a sudden, bothersome thought of Jimmy’s cousin, an image of the old man driving off the side of the road, his body discov­

  ered in a ditch, just like this one. And he wonders, not for the first time, why Marshall told his girl he’d be home after cleaning the boat, but when Jay spoke with Jimmy, he complained that his cousin had left it a mess.

  He is about to open his car door when something hits the glass on the driver-side window, right by Jay’s ear. He jumps, thinking it’s a rock, that somebody is throwing stones at his car. He turns and sees a couple of roughnecks standing outside the driver-side door, one with his arms folded across his substantial chest, the other motioning for Jay to roll down the window. The man taps the window again with his pinky ring, a turquoise stone the size of a small biscuit. When Jay doesn’t respond fast enough, the one with the chest pushes his friend out of the way and taps on the Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 135

  glass harder. Slowly, Jay rolls down the window halfway. He can immediately smell the liquor on them, the sweat from a good day’s work. The one with the chest says, “You lost, boy?”

  Jay rolls down the car window a little more, far enough so the men can see the .38 sitting in his lap, where he laid it about a half mile outside Pasadena’s city limits. He puts a hand on the butt of the weapon. “I believe I’m all right . . . boy.”

  The one with the chest backs away first,
pulling his friend with him.

  Jay keeps one hand on his gun, watching their retreat in his side-view mirror. He takes his time getting out of the car, light­

  ing a cigarette. Then he makes the long walk across the parking lot, keeping his eyes straight ahead.

  At the front doors, there’s no one on duty who goes by the name of Clyde, and no one who’ll tell him if Clyde is anywhere on the premises. Inside, the club is as warm as a midday barbe­

  cue, even with air-conditioning going and ceiling fans whirling overhead. The dance floor, seemingly half a mile of parquet wood flooring, is a sea of cowboy hats, ducking and swaying. Jay can hear the thump and shuffle of boots across the wood floor. He counts three bars under the pitched roof, each with a line of cow­

  boys gathered, dollar bills folded lengthwise in their hands, wav­

  ing at the girl bartenders for 75-cent longnecks of Lone Star. Jay stands in the entryway, wishing he’d at least put on some jeans or a pair of boots and pretended to be some long-lost descendant of Charley Pride.

  People are starting to stare.

  He decides to start with the bar on his left, working his way to the front of the line. The gal behind the bar gives him a can of Gilley’s beer even though he ordered a Michelob. He imag­

  ines she didn’t hear him over the music, that or she’s fucking with him, or maybe Mickey makes all the girls push his brew. 136 Attic a L o c ke

  She pops the top for him, twirling the cap on her pinky finger, motioning to the next man in line. Jay sips at the beer; it’s thin and not to his taste. He pulls out a $5 bill and orders a Michelob, louder this time. He tells her to keep the change. She looks at Jay anew, raising an eyebrow. From the cooler behind the bar, she pulls out two sweating bottles of Michelob. She opens one and slides it to Jay, pops the cap on the other and takes a sip herself. She leans across the bar. “I don’t drink the shit either.” She winks at him, pocketing the rest of his change.

  He watches her work for a while, thinking he’s got an in. She moves with grace, able to fill one order while she’s tak­

  ing the next, making sure the women in line get served first. Her hair is stick straight and dirty blond, and she wears it straight down her back like Crystal Gayle. She’s older than the other barmaids at her station. There’s a weariness in her hips; too many years on her feet, he gathers. This is career work for her. He bets she’s in here at least five nights a week. The next time she’s down at his end of the bar, he asks her about Clyde. “He’s off tonight,” she hollers above the music, moving back and forth between the bar top and the cooler of beer. Jay orders another Michelob. “You got a phone number for him or something?”

  “Depends on why you’re asking? You’re not a cop, are you?”

  From his back pocket, Jay pulls out a Polaroid picture of his client, one he took the first day she came into his office. He lays the picture of Dana Moreland on the bar top, along with another

  $5 bill. “You seen her in here before?”

  “She a friend of yours?”

  “Something like that,” Jay says.

  The bartender nods at Jay’s wedding ring. “Your wife know you’re friends with a girl like that?”

  “So you know her then.”

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 137

  “I know what she and Clyde are up to, if that’s what you mean.”

  The line behind Jay is getting rowdy, pushing up against him.

  The bartender finishes the rest of her Michelob in two clean swallows. She goes back to taking one-dollar bills, pulling beers, popping tops. Jay tries to talk to her over the noise. “You seen her in here with him?” he asks, pulling out a smudged newspaper photo of Mr. Cummings, a shot of him with the other port com­

  missioners standing on one of the public wharves. The bartender snatches the picture from Jay on her way to the cash register.

  “Maybe,” she says.

  “He wasn’t one of Clyde’s customers, if that rings any bells.”

  “I said ‘maybe.’ ” She pulls the tab off two cans of Gilley’s beer, slides them down the bar to a couple wearing matching black-and-silver cowboy shirts. She crosses back to the cash reg­

  ister, studying the smudged newspaper photo, holding it next to the Polaroid of Dana Moreland. “Yeah, all right,” she says.

  “Are you sure?” Jay asks.

  “This one looks real familiar,” she says, pointing at Cum­

  mings’s picture. “I remember him not wanting to leave so early, getting huffy with Clyde.”

  “On the night of June twenty-ninth?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “You saw these two people together?”

  “I guess so,” she says, not sounding as sure as she did a moment ago.

  “And what about Clyde? You got a number for him or some­

  thing?”

  “Why? What’s this all about?” She leans over the bar top, smiling, her breasts mashed together under a pink-and-red Gilley’s T-shirt. “What’d she do?”

  138 Attic a L o c ke

  Jay puts another $5 bill on the countertop. He hopes she won’t ask any more questions. She pockets the extra money and reaches for a matchbook on the bar top. From somewhere in her water­

  fall of hair, she pulls a stub of a pencil and jots something on the inside flap of the matchbook. “Clyde’s number,” she says. Then, smiling, she adds, “And mine.” Jay actually feels himself blush. It’s after midnight by the time he picks up Bernie at Evelyn’s house. He’s whistling, in a good mood, and Bernie catches his spirit. She’s on the baby now, day and night. Since the last doc­

  tor’s appointment, she’s started packing her suitcase and scrib­

  bling baby names on the back of any piece of paper she can get her hands on—takeout menus and circulars from the paper, even paper napkins.

  “What about Donna?”

  He shakes his head, making a face.

  “Gayle?”

  “No.”

  “Angela?”

  “No.”

  “Ellen?”

  “Maybe.”

  They’re playing a string of Sam Cooke songs on 1430 AM. At first I thought it was in-fatuation, but ooh it’s lasted so long. Jay turns up the volume. “Don’t you have any boy names?”

  “Well,” she says. “I was thinking Jerome . . . for your father.”

  He’s always thought of his father as gone. It never occurred to Jay that his daddy might come back again, in some small, wholly new way. “Yeah . . . okay.”

  In the dark, across the torn front seats, he reaches for her hand. When they arrive at their apartment building, Jay lets his Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 139

  wife up the back stairs first, following behind, providing a buf­

  fer between her and the hard concrete, in case she should lose her balance. She goes into the apartment first, heading toward the bedroom. Jay stops in the kitchen and grabs the trash out of the step can. Alone, he walks it to the Dumpster in the alley out back.

  Over his shoulder, he hears his wife scream.

  Jay turns, dropping the bag at his feet. It splits open like a cracked egg, spilling coffee grounds and chicken bones. A light comes on in a neighboring apartment as Jay races up the stairs to his building. At the back door, Jay pushes his way into the kitchen, tearing the hinge loose from the wall. He runs to his wife, in their bedroom, in a panic over what he might find. Bernie is standing in the middle of the tiny room, staring at the bed.

  Jay immediately goes for his gun.

  He slides his hand under his pillow, feels the cool fabric beneath it but does not find his .22. He looks under the mattress and under the bed. But it’s gone. The look he gives his wife is ice cold. He’s furious with Bernie, thinking she moved it, taking it from him when they need it most, when this is what it’s for. He grabs a broken-off broom handle he keeps under the bed, gripping it like a baseball bat. He checks the bathroom, the hall closet, and the living room.

  His wo
rse fear—an intruder, someone lying in wait—passes. There’s no one in the apartment but the two of them. Bernie calls out his name, calmly this time, as if she were call­

  ing him in to dinner. Jay walks back to the bedroom and sees his wife standing stock-still, where she was. He stares at her, not comprehending. “What is it, Bernie?”

  She points to the bed, her hands shaking. He is looking so hard for a spider or a rat, what he’s by now suspected is the root 140 Attic a L o c ke

  of the problem, that he misses the bigger picture. It takes a moment for him to see the room clearly, like eyes adjusting to bright white sunlight after stepping out of a cool, dark shade. A few seconds, then finally everything comes into focus. On the bed, Bernie’s suitcase, the one she’s been packing carefully in bits and pieces for the last few days, is turned over, upside down, the clothes strewn across the bedspread and spilling onto the floor. Someone has gone through every piece of it, her panties and nightgowns and every magazine; they even opened an enve­

  lope with the doctor’s instructions in it, the name and address of the hospital.

  The dresser drawers are open. So is the drawer on his nightstand; a bottle of aspirin and a tin of hair grease have been fished out and thrown across the bed, along with his AM radio. The nightstand drawer on Bernie’s side has been pulled clean out of its socket. It’s sitting on the floor, along with paperback books and a spiral notebook that Jay didn’t even know his wife kept by the bed. Bernie looks at her husband. He’s sure she’s about to cry. He glances over at his side of the bed and sees his overturned pillow and the empty spot beneath it. It’s clear now that his wife didn’t move his gun. Someone came in here and took it. Bernie walks out of the room first, carrying her notebook. He finds her in the kitchen, checking the refrigerator of all things. His checkbook is still sitting on top of the stereo speaker in the living room. The television is there. And their books. Even a basket of folded laundry Bernie’d left on the couch. All of it untouched. The only thing he finds out of place is his wedding picture, one he had framed for their first anniversary. Someone has turned it facedown on the coffee table, pressing their noses to the glass.