Black Water Rising

by Attica Locke

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 297

  “Waiting on you,” she says, sipping her tea.

  He was a fool, he thinks, to ever let her out of his sight. He can hear voices inside the house, the clinking of silverware and plates. He smells garlic and fried onions, stewed tomatoes and collards brewing on the stove. But he is in no hurry to leave this spot, this moment with his wife.

  “You’re late,” she says.

  “I know.”

  “Everything all right?”

  He knows he will not lie to her, not ever again.

  “I don’t know, B. I don’t know.”

  Bernie rests the glass of iced tea on the swell of her belly. “I’m tired, Jay.”

  Jay pulls gently on her toe. “I want you home, B, I do.”

  It’s a humble proposal. More so than even his first. He sits at her feet, not even a bunch of flowers in his hand. His greatest promise, to keep her safe, an empty one at best. Bernie scoots herself to the edge of the swing, the wood creak­

  ing beneath her. Jay helps her to her feet. She kisses the tip of his chin, the place she can reach. He holds the screen door open for her, letting flies in the house. As she passes the threshold, she whispers in his ear, “Kwame’s here.”

  Time he steps in the house, Evelyn wants to know about the girl.

  To her, the whole thing is like something off an old episode of Barnaby Jones. She wants to hear about the detectives and what they wanted with Jay. She gets all this out before they’re even seated at the dining room table, before grace has been said. Jay looks to his wife for some guidance. But she is no help. She gives him no more than a light shrug, a suggestion that she will neither 298 Attic a L o c ke

  restrict nor sanction his storytelling. He can talk his way out of this one himself.

  Luckily for Jay, no one else at the table is even listening. They’re hardly paying attention to Evelyn or Jay. The strike is the real guest of honor this evening. It has been invited to a place at the table along with everybody else, seated somewhere between the Reverend and Kwame Mackalvy to his right. Soon as grace is complete and the meal officially commenced, Kwame and the Rev start in on the dockworkers’ plight and the fate of the strike, outlining, between bites of roast chicken and greens, which strategies have worked for the men and which ones haven’t. Kwame is still hot on his idea for a citywide march. He traces the route plan on top of the linen tablecloth, using his silverware and place setting to lay out a mock-up of Main Street downtown. Jay is sitting way on the other side of the table, near his wife, Rolly’s refrain running just under his breath: This don’t have a thing to do with you.

  Bernie asks the men about the march, how they think it’ll help.

  Kwame wipes at his mouth with his napkin, dismantling part of Main Street. “The port commission is holding an open meet­

  ing on Tuesday. They’re getting all the parties together, see if they can’t push a resolution on this thing.”

  “Unions, stevedores, oil folks,” the Rev jumps in. “They’re all going to be there. That’s the plan, at least,” he says. Adding,

  “The press and the mayor’s office, business leaders . . . they’re going to have the place full that night.”

  “And that’s the day we walk,” Kwame says, sucking down a belch. “We start downtown,” he says, placing his napkin back on the table, somewhere between the old Rice Hotel and the back side of Market Square Park, as far as Jay can tell by the crude map.

  “We start to the south, by Foley’s Department Store, at eleven, Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 299

  so that we end up here,” he says, pointing to Mrs. Boykins’s crys­

  tal salt shaker. “At twelve noon, we want to be at city hall. We want as many eyeballs on us as possible. We want the city to stop and take notice.”

  “This is do or die for these boys,” the Rev says, his voice a husky whisper. He peels his black-rimmed glasses off the bridge of his nose, and for the first time, Jay notices the puffy halfmoons under his father-in-law’s eyes, the strain this is taking.

  “I’m just worried they won’t hold on. A lot of these young ones, they don’t remember what it is to fight.” The Rev looks up, nod­

  ding at Kwame and Jay, as if they are the sons he never had.

  “I’m talking about even before your time, boys. My time, you understand.” His voice cracks under the weight of it, the mem­

  ory of harder times. “It was a fight, day in, day out. It wasn’t no choice.”

  The whole table has come to a standstill, all eyes on Reverend Boykins.

  “You okay, Daddy?” Bernie asks softly.

  The Rev manages a smile. “I’m all right, Bernadine.”

  “The plan is to take this fight all the way,” Kwame says, continuing his rant. “From downtown to the port commission meeting.”

  “You’re going to walk from downtown to the port?” Evelyn asks, sounding exhausted by just the thought of walking any­

  where in August.

  “The Rev and I are working with some local churches, to get busses downtown, something to carry everybody the rest of the way.”

  “You got a permit for the demonstration?” Jay asks. “They’ll nail you on that if you don’t. They’ll shut you down before you make it a block or two.”

  How quickly it all comes back.

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  “ I put in the application this morning,” Kwame says tersely. “I have done this before, you know.”

  “Yeah,” Jay says, nodding.

  He folds and refolds the napkin in his lap.

  Kwame doesn’t want his help anymore.

  This, after all, doesn’t have a thing to do with Jay. Mrs. Boykins stands to collect their plates, carrying them into the kitchen. A few minutes later, she returns with a peach cob­

  bler and a fresh pot of coffee. Kwame turns to Reverend Boykins.

  “You talk to Darren Hayworth about getting together before the port commission meeting?”

  Reverend Boykins nods. “We’re asking the president of ILA to arrange a sit-down with OCAW, to get this whole Carlisle Minty thing sorted out for good.”

  “What happened with the kid?” Jay asks.

  Kwame and Reverend Boykins, their voices stopping short, lips drawn tight, like heavy drapes, turn to look at Jay. His ques­

  tion, his very presence at the table, is treated with polite suspi­

  cion. Neither man answers right away.

  “Darren . . . the boy in the sling,” Jay says, thinking he needs to clarify.

  “What about him?” Kwame asks.

  “What’s going on with that? You moving forward on some­

  thing?”

  He looks back and forth between the two men, trying to fol­

  low what’s not being said. But from his chosen place at the table, at such a distance, most of it is lost on him. “Is the kid okay?”

  “Darren’s fine,” Reverend Boykins says, laying his napkin across his dessert plate. “He’s handled all this pretty well, if you ask me.”

  “I think it’s terrible what they did to that boy,” Mrs. Boykins Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 301

  says, dabbing at crust crumbs gathering at the corners of her mouth.

  Jay looks at Kwame. “So what’s your next move?”

  “Cleanup,” Kwame says.

  “I don’t follow,” Jay says, again looking between Kwame and the Rev.

  “Well, your mayor came through with the police all right,”

  Kwame says.

  “She did?”

  “She did.”

  And because Jay still doesn’t believe it, he asks again, “She did?”

  “Several officers have been assigned to investigate,” the Rev says.

  “We got cops coming out the sky now,” Kwame says. “Sud­

  denly, they’re tripping over themselves to help.”

  “They came to take a statement from the boy,” adds the
Rev.

  “Even drove out to the scene with him. And they interviewed Carlisle Minty, went and stopped him on his job at the Cole refinery, out on the channel.”

  “He denied everything, of course,” Kwame says.

  “The policemen have said they’re going to turn over every stone.”

  “Cynthia did this?” Jay asks, with an uneasy mix of doubt and hope. His whole adult life, he’s wanted nothing more than to be wrong about one woman.

  “The problem,” his father-in-law says, “is now that the story’s out, we’re having a hard time controlling these men on the picket line. They feel lied to. They went into this thinking OCAW was backing them through and through.”

  “What do you mean ‘now that the story’s out’?” Jay says. 302 Attic a L o c ke

  They all turn to him and stare.

  “Where you been the last couple days, man?” Kwame asks. You don’t want to know.

  “ You didn’t see it, Jay?” his wife asks.

  “Evelyn,” Mrs. Boykins says. “Go bring your father today’s paper.”

  “She went on TV, Jay,” Bernie says. “I watched it at Ev’s.”

  “The mayor held a press conference announcing an investiga­

  tion into the beating,” the rev says.

  “What?”

  Evelyn returns from the kitchen with the newspaper tucked under her arm. She hands the paper to her father and plops down into her empty seat, sucking on a slick sliver of baked peach. Reverend Boykins licks his fingertips, flipping through the news­

  paper. When he finds what he’s looking for, he passes the article to Jay. Jay looks down at a photo of Cynthia Maddox at city hall. The headline: Mayor Pushes for Investigation into Union Beating.

  The lines underneath: A high-ranking member of OCAW is under investigation for the beating of a black member of the ILA on the eve of the strike.

  Jay stares at her face in the paper, the pale eyes, the reassur­

  ing smile. It’s a brilliant move, he thinks. She goes on television acting like an advocate for labor, a tireless defender of black men unfairly and unnecessarily beaten, when it’s clear to him that the press conference’s real goal is to undermine the power of the labor coalition and let business leaders in the city know that the boys on the docks won’t hold out much longer.

  Just wait and see, her smile says.

  “She just told the whole city that we got a big, big problem,”

  Kwame says.

  “A lot of the men, Jay, white ones too, feel like they were led Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 303

  into the strike under false pretenses. If OCAW isn’t really with them, they don’t see a way to win this thing,” the Rev says. “And, frankly, I don’t either.”

  “Why did this Minty guy do it?” Bernie asks.

  The Rev shakes his head, shrugging his thin shoulders. Jay looks up from the article, the picture of the mayor. To his father-in-law, who once stood at Jay’s side just as he stands by these workers now, Jay says, “I’m sorry.” Because he, of all people, should have known Cynthia better.

  C h a p t e r 2 3 It’s not until sometime after midnight that he starts to get angry. The mayor, his ex-girl, is only half of it. More immediately, it’s the man in the black Ford who’s still stalking through Jay’s mind; it’s the mystery of who was behind the threats on his life. He can’t stand the idea of being played with, being treated like a dog thrown a bone. He resents the pull of the money, the power he assigned it, the ways he imagined the hand that dealt it held dominion over him. He’s angry with himself for cowering, for not going to the police from the very beginning, as a free man, an innocent man. He is so ashamed of the way he’s behaved, so ashamed of his fear, that he feels actual rage toward a face he can’t see—the one who sent the man in the black Ford, the one who wanted him scared, who was counting on it. The anger feels Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 305

  good, landing on his tongue, dissolving like a warm, bitter pill. He feels the rush, the high, and remembers anger’s power, its ability to clear the head. Unable to sleep, he sits up in bed next to his wife, watching her breath rise and fall, thinking of the one thing that is perfectly clear in his mind, the one thing he’s absolutely sure of: if he can solve the mystery of who tried to kill Elise, he will know the identity of the person who’s after him now. More than once, the old man in High Point occurs to him as a possible suspect. Though, at least initially, he couldn’t tell you why. It’s less logic, or a story worked out in his head, and more lawyerly intuition. He was, after all, a onetime criminal defense attorney. He used to deal in motive for a living. His suspicions about the old man are circumstantial at best. As a game, Jay presents the prosecutorial case in his head, the reasons why Erman Joseph Ainsley could have had a hand in the attack on Elise Linsey’s life. He rereads the article in the Chronicle, marking the highlights. There’s the description of Mr. Ainsley’s rage at “real estate folks from Houston.” There are the charges of harassment by Mr. Ainsley against members of his community (threatening phone calls and the like), indicating a propensity for violence, or at the very least a shaky mental state. And maybe most important of all, there’s the fact, stated openly in the newspaper article, that Mr. Ainsley had obtained Elise Linsey’s home address—a sign that he either had contacted her or intended to.

  Then, just like the old days, Jay tries to tear down the state’s argument, piece by piece, just to see if he can: Anger doesn’t mean murder, else we’d all be in jail, this lawyer included.

  He would pause here, waiting for the jurors’ smiles. The harassment mentioned by the prosecution, Jay would add, is no more than one neighbor’s word against another’s. The 306 Attic a L o c ke

  state has entered no evidence that law enforcement was called or legal complaints made against Mr. Ainsley.

  And as to Mr. Ainsley being in possession of Ms. Linsey’s home address, well, I believe some of you might likewise be in possession of that information, or anyone else who has a phone book for the city of Houston in their house.

  He would pause again, letting the jurors take in this last bit. But of course the strongest counterargument Jay can think of is that he doesn’t know where a retired mine worker would get

  $25,000 to blackmail him.

  The old man sounds more like a kook than a criminal, a man more likely to take his fight to Washington than to an empty field alongside Buffalo Bayou. But then again, Jay knows firsthand what frustration with one’s government can do to a person. Many people have taken up arms over far less. Maybe in the end, Ains­

  ley decided Elise Linsey, as a representative of the Stardale Devel­

  opment Company, was an easier target than Ronald Reagan. It may only be a circumstantial case against the old man, but absent any other workable theories about who wanted Elise Lin­

  sey out of the picture, Jay comes back to Erman Ainsley again and again. He can’t, for the life of him, get the Chronicle article out of his mind. He can’t forget the phone call with the reporter, Lon Philips, the mention of Ainsley getting a lawyer, or the empty building on Fountainview where Stardale’s offices are supposed to be.

  He can’t shake the idea that there’s more to the story. So just a few days after Rolly’s advice that he back away from a bad situation, Jay loads up the Skylark with ten gallons of unleaded at $1.39 a pop and heads out toward Baytown, his .38 snug in the glove compartment. His only plan is to talk to the man. But if it comes down to it, Jay plans to make his message heard loud and clear: he and his family are not to be touched. Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 307

  He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going—not his wife or Rolly or Eddie Mae—and it’s not until he’s about twenty miles east on the I-10 that he starts to think that was maybe a bad idea. He is lately coming to the conclusion that secrets, in and of them­

  selves, are dangerous. He makes a vow to call his wife when he gets to High Point.

  The town is a few miles southwest of Baytown on the Trinity Bay shoreline, which is
north of Galveston Bay and Texas City and the Bolivar Peninsula. Baytown itself is a Gulf city of the classic model, balmy and thick with vegetation. There are rubber plants and banana trees, sandy-colored palms and butter-colored houses, arched high on stilts. They look like rows of startled house cats. The houses have white or blue shutters, all weath­

  ered to a soft gray by the constant breath of warm, salt-cured winds, and almost every other house has a motorboat anchored in its front yard. People come to retire here. The ones who can’t afford to live in Galveston or just don’t want to. Galveston, with its ancient town center full of bead shops and pubs, too closely resembles the tourist trap and liberal cesspool of New Orleans for some. Baytown is where good Christians come to retire, cow­

  boys and refinery workers who made good, saving 15 percent every two weeks their whole working lives. There are American flags waving hello to passersby and more crosses in more front windows than Jay can count. It’s not a place he wishes to stay any longer than he has to.

  He passes through Baytown, turning south on Farm Road 219. A green highway sign puts him eight miles outside High Point.

  Eight treeless miles of prairie and marsh, the land dotted every half mile or so by shallow ponds and snowy egrets lying in wait. The air is softer out here, more forgiving. It’s a good ten degrees cooler than it is in Houston.

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  The first thing Jay notices coming into High Point is the rise in elevation. It’s no more than a few hundred feet. But along this flat Gulf coastland, driving over an anthill can feel like climbing the side of a mountain. Jay feels the pull of gravity on the back end of his car as he drives over the swollen landscape. At the crest, he can see all the way to Trinity Bay, drilling ships and pleasure boats tiny in the distance.

  Main Street is easy enough to find. A simple turn off FM 219, and he’s in downtown High Point, driving past the elementary school and a hardware store and a United States post office, which looks, inexplicably, closed at three o’clock in the afternoon. A lot of the storefronts are either empty or have their windows cov­