Black Water Rising

by Attica Locke

  ing, put out of whatever business is going on just on the other side of those doors. The phone has rung exactly twenty-three times, and each time, the secretary looks helplessly at Kip, ask­

  ing, “How much longer you think?”

  It’s a quarter after eleven when the doors finally open. A group of men emerge from the suite first, followed by Cyn­

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  thia, who is smiling broadly. The men dwarf her, some by as much as a foot. They encircle her like a fresh kill in the bed of a pickup truck, like they’re trying to decide which one she belongs to, who landed the final shot. Jay recognizes a few of them from their pictures in the paper: Pat Bodine, president of the longshoremen’s union; Wayne Kaylin, president of the oil and petrochemical workers’ union; Hugh Bowlin, of the Mari­

  time Association; and Darwood Becker, a commissioner with the Port of Houston Authority. The man to Cynthia’s right, the one who’s got a hand on her elbow, standing firmly beside her even as the others begin to disperse, is Thomas Cole, whom Jay has seen in person only once before, at the lunch with Luckman and J. T. Cummings. As usual, Cole is the only one in the room who doesn’t look particularly frightened.

  Cynthia is clearly smitten with him.

  As the others say their good-byes, moving on toward the elevators, Cynthia and Thomas stand facing each other, Cole bent over to catch the mayor’s every word. It appears the two are whispering to each other. When they pull out of their semiembrace, Cynthia flashes Mr. Cole a girlish smile. “We’ll do fine,”

  Cole says, patting her low on the back. “We’ll be just fine.”

  As he turns toward the elevators, Cole catches a glimpse of Jay, standing just a few feet away. His expression is flat. He is, after all, looking at a stranger. Still, Cole holds Jay’s gaze a hair past what is universally considered polite.

  “Can I help you with something?” Jay asks.

  Cynthia turns, noticing Jay for the first time. She looks nervous, eyeing the two men, sensing a tightness in the air.

  Cole never utters a single word. His eyes soon glide over Jay, like a stone skipping on water. He nods good-bye to the mayor and walks to the elevators alone. Once Cole is gone, Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 331

  Jay feels the energy in the room shift into a lower gear, as if the others had all been holding their breath in the presence of Texas royalty, no one more so than Cynthia. She quickly waves Jay into her suite without a bit of inquiry, as if she had invited him. Inside, she pulls a Carlton from her purse and lights it. She kicks off her black pumps and tells Kip, twice, to shut the door. She takes a hard pull on the cigarette, inhaling deeply and blowing the smoke through a toothy smile. She receives Jay without ceremony or politesse, treating him as an old friend. “I know what you’re thinking,” she says, misreading his expres­

  sion. “But I’m telling you, this is going to work out better for everybody.”

  She offers Jay a cigarette.

  He declines, hands in his pockets, keeping himself at a safe distance.

  “There is a way out of this mess,” she continues. “A way every­

  body can win.” She pushes herself off the front edge of her desk.

  “We just need the right person to present it,” she says, throwing her voice in a wide, encircling arc, inviting Jay into that We. As if they’re in this one together, comrades again.

  He remembers this Cynthia.

  The girl who would get hold of an idea and work it, over and over in her head ’til you could see sparks in those blue-gray eyes. He can tell by the look on her face now, the bright flash in her eyes, that she’s sitting on something big.

  “Are you going to the port commission meeting tonight?” she asks. “We could really use you on this thing,” she says. “I could really use you, Jay.”

  The phone on the mayor’s desk rings. From his perch at the back of the room, Kip answers the line. Jay hears him whisper into the receiver, the words lost in the distance.

  “I don’t see why you and I can’t put a lot of shit behind us, 332 Attic a L o c ke

  Jay,” Cynthia says calmly, almost casually, as if they were talking about something as mundane as an old card game that went sour.

  “If you came out tonight, if you stood with us, it would send a message to those men, to the Brotherhood camp, in particular, that we’re not— I’m not—out to hurt them. ’Cause I’m not, Jay. I’m not. And you of all people should know that.” She lowers her voice to a sweet drawl. “If you stand with me on this thing, Jay, maybe I can help you out too, you know, maybe get you out of that shithole of an office you call a law practice. I mean, you got a lot of talent, Jay. You just never figured out how to channel it.”

  “Fuck you, Cynthia.”

  “People listen to you, Jay.” She says it softly, almost wistfully, as if she’s never forgotten in all this time what drew her to him in the first place, as if she’s carried it with her a long, long way. “You just got to remember to speak up.”

  “You giving me advice now, Cynthia?”

  “I know you, Jay, better than anybody. Don’t forget that.”

  He can smell her perfume from here, woodsy and strong. It makes him think of pine needles and red clay, nights in the back of her pickup truck.

  “You haven’t forgotten me, have you, Jay?” she asks.

  “If only it were that easy.”

  Behind him, Kip hangs up the phone and they have an audi­

  ence again. The mayor is dry and businesslike all of a sudden.

  “I could really use somebody like you in this administration, Jay, as a liaison to some of the more diverse communities in the city.”

  Jay smiles bitterly at the offer, almost charmed by the audacity of it. So that’s what this is all about? She wants him to be her blackface.

  “If you stand with me—”

  “Cynthia, I don’t stand with you on anything.”

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  “Oh, come on, Jay,” the mayor says, quick to her own defense.

  “You know me. You know where I’m coming from.”

  “I know you sold out those men with that press conference,”

  he says. “You got management hovering like vultures, just wait­

  ing for the whole thing to collapse. That’s about all I need to know about where you’re coming from.”

  Cynthia shrinks away from him, her voice suddenly stern and cold, that of a woman refused. “Whether you understand it or not, Jay, I’m doing what’s best for those men. Because what’s best for this city, and this city’s economy, is what’s best for those men. When business wins, we all win,” she says, Reagan smiling over her shoulder. Jay can barely resist laughing out loud.

  “A strike,” Cynthia says, “is not helping anybody.”

  She plops down into the wingback chair behind her desk. The phone rings again. Behind him, Jay hears Kip pick up the line. Cynthia rests her elbows on the mahogany desk. “We’re losing tens of thousands by the day. Another month, we’ll be losing mil­ lions. You understand? This has got to stop.”

  “Cynthia,” Jay says, trying to slow her down.

  “This is one of the most prosperous times in this city’s his­

  tory,” she says, shaking her head somewhat incredulously, as if she’s only of late discovered that running a city isn’t nearly as much fun as she thought it would be. “And I’ll tell you what, the shit ain’t gon’ fall apart on my watch. I won’t let it, Jay.”

  “I didn’t come here to argue with you about this,” he says. He pulls his hands from his pockets, runs his fingers along the dark stubble that’s come up in patches along his jawline over the last few days. He’s shy with his words, which makes him seem more nervous than he intends.

  “Is this something to do with the girl?” Cynthia asks. Jay ignores the question, having decided before he walked 334 Attic a L o c ke

  in here that he would not say any more than he had to. “What do you know about the federal gove
rnment storing oil under­

  ground?” he asks. “In salt caverns on the coast?”

  Cynthia leans back in her chair. “What in the world are you asking me about that for?”

  “You were in Washington in the seventies. You were in Bent­

  sen’s office.”

  It feels odd to say it out loud. The first time they’ve acknowl­

  edged to each other this part of her life, the years after she disap­

  peared, the years after him.

  “I figured if anybody would know something about it. . . .”

  “Well, it’s not some big secret,” she says. “Not in the least.”

  “This was Carter’s deal?”

  “I’m guessing you’re talking about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?”

  Jay nods. Sure.

  “Well, what do you want to know?” she says with a shrug.

  “They passed a law in seventy-five, after all that bullshit with the Arabs. The point was to have the stuff on hand so we wouldn’t run into another crunch, you know. So, yeah, Carter’s administration had to implement it. The Energy Department started buying up oil in rather large amounts. And the question was where to put it. The salt caverns, Texas and Louisiana, they won.” She pulls her black pumps from the side of her desk and slides them back onto her feet. “This is all old news, Jay.”

  The phone on her desk rings again.

  “I didn’t know that much about it,” he says.

  “Well, you were in law school at the time.”

  He hates that she knows this, that she knows the facts of his life.

  “You know anything about them closing down salt mines?” he asks. “Or buying up real estate?”

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 335

  The phone lines on her desk start lighting up, one after another.

  “Well, if barrel prices keep dropping like they are, I’m sure they’re trying to buy up as much as they can and store it wher­

  ever they can.”

  “Right.” Jay nods absently, trying to think how this all adds up.

  “Why are you asking?”

  “You hear about any problems with this? Like structural problems? Underground?”

  Cynthia is still waiting for him to answer her question. Then, realizing his silence is all she’s going to get, she sighs.

  “The technology’s not that new, Jay. But the thing is, no one’s ever tried to store this much oil in salt caverns before, not in a program this extensive. There were some problems in the begin­

  ning. I mean, I heard some things.”

  “Like what?”

  She hesitates for a breath. “There were . . . explosions.”

  “Leakage?”

  “Something like that,” she says. Her words slow all of a sud­

  den, as if she’s not sure how much further down this road she wants to travel. “But look, if anybody gets hurt, if there’s any property loss, the government pays. Somebody always gets a nice big settlement. That’s the way I understood it, at least.”

  Jay thinks of the old man in High Point, the government tell­

  ing him there was nothing they could do. He thinks of Elise Linsey and the threat on her life, the Stardale Development Company and its empty offices, the man in the black Ford and the hush money—the spirit of secrecy running underneath this whole thing.

  “What is all this, Jay?” the mayor asks. “What are you into?”

  She stares at him a good while, her blue-gray eyes narrow­

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  ing slightly. She seems to take him in for the first time since he walked through the door, noticing the bruises on his face and neck. She rises slowly behind her desk and crosses the room to stand before him. “My God, Jay,” she says softly, tilting her blond head to one side. Gently, she reaches out and touches the marks on his face. Her fingertips are cool and dry. “You’re in something bad, aren’t you? Is it the girl?”

  “Cynthia—”

  “Don’t worry,” she says quickly. “I said I wouldn’t give your name to the D.A., and I won’t,” she says, adding, “but you got to do something for me too.”

  “Jesus, Cynthia.”

  “Help me with this union thing, Jay.” She’s desperate, beyond any sense of shame. “I need a win, Jay, something that says I can do this goddamned job. Or else they’ll make this bigger than it is. They’ll make it about my hair or my clothes or what I’ve got between my legs, as if that’s got a fucking thing to do with anything. They’ll tear me to pieces, and you know it. I need to win, Jay.”

  The phone has not stopped ringing.

  Kip is now standing at his desk. His expression is grim. “Ms. Mayor.”

  Cynthia looks past Jay to her assistant. The phone lines are all blinking, calls coming in on top of each other. Just then, the dou­

  ble doors to the suite swing open. The mayor’s secretary walks in from the waiting room. She looks at Kip first, then the mayor. “I think you ought to come see this,” she says.

  Outside the mayor’s suite, most of the staffers on the third floor are standing together in front of a wall of windows fac­

  ing east. As the mayor approaches, Kip and Jay behind her, the staffers part and make way for her. They nudge each other and whisper. They glance at Cynthia, and they wait. She looks out Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 337

  the window at her city and lets out a single, ragged gasp. Jay, behind her, elbows his way through the crowd, edging for a view to the east.

  At first, he doesn’t get it.

  He sees blue sky, the white sun. He sees the larger-than-life C-O-L-E letters on the buildings across the street. He sees the top of the public library, a piece of the federal courthouse, the city skyline that he knows so well.

  Then he looks down at the street below.

  There must be three hundred people on the street, maybe four. As good a turnout as he ever had, years ago. From a dis­

  tance, they move as one, like a river, a living, breathing stream pulsing through the heart of the city. They are coming right for city hall. At the sight of Kwame’s march, Jay cannot help his smile. It wells up from someplace inside him he didn’t know was still there.

  He can almost hear them through the glass.

  Clap, clap.

  The hands in the air.

  Clap, clap.

  The march of feet on pavement.

  Clap, clap.

  The rhythm that is in his soul.

  Cynthia, the girl he knew, would have been down there too once. But the mayor, the woman standing beside him now, looks absolutely panicked. She turns to Kip and asks how fast they can put something together on the mall in front of city hall. She asks him to call the Post and the Chronicle. She uses the word pronto more than once, barking orders at some of the other staffers. Before long, it seems that everyone on the third floor is on the phone. Cynthia turns to Jay. “If you had anything to do with this, I swear—”

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  Kip calls from a nearby desk, informing the mayor that the city news editor from the Post is waiting on the line. She shakes her head at Jay, giving him a look of reproach or terror, he can’t quite tell. Either way, she’s furious with him. Jay, on the other hand, is still smiling, watching as the mayor turns and runs back to her suite, skittering across the beige carpet in her high heels.

  C h a p t e r 2 5

  “No one understands discrimination more than I do,” the mayor says from behind the podium. Outside in the August heat, she’s removed her red jacket and rolled up her sleeves just in time for the camera crews. “As a woman working in politics, I have cer­

  tainly had to knock down my fair share of doors.”

  Click. Click.

  The news photographers snap away on the mall in front of city hall, where the mayor, to her credit, has managed to pull together a press conference in less than twenty minutes. She stands behind the podium, baking under the August sun, sweating through her makeup and the pits of her white b
louse.

  Jay stands down below, on the grass with the other marchers. 340 Attic a L o c ke

  He stands with Reverend Boykins and the kid Darren. With Darren’s father, Mr. Hayworth.

  With Donnie Simpson and his wife and their three kids, the two girls in matching halter tops, the little one asleep on her daddy’s shoulder.

  Jay stands with the dozens of dockworkers he met along the way.

  He stands with his old friend Lloyd.

  If Kwame Mackalvy is surprised to see Jay here, he keeps it to himself, offering Jay a brotherly nod and a place down in front if he wants it. Jay, feeling a part of something again, weaves through the crowd, feeling its restless energy. The men are almost punch-drunk with it. The crowd rocks back and forth, shifting its weight every few minutes, relieving aching feet. Someone is passing around an army canteen of cool water. Jay peels off his jacket and tie in the heat.

  Traffic has slowed to a standstill on Bagby, rubberneckers leaned out of their front windows, exhaust fumes choking what little oxygen hangs in the humid air. The mayor’s coiffed helmet is drooping by the minute, and Jay gets the feeling that she is courting this disheveled image, that she wants to let the long­

  shoremen and the news cameras see that she is not putting on airs here or concerning herself with her appearance. She is, Jay guesses, betting on the fact that when it comes to women, people often mistake homely for earnest. He is beginning to think she’s a better politician than he gave her credit for.

  “I want to let you know, first and foremost, that I stand with you,” she says. “Since this whole overtime issue came to light down at the port, I have been working tirelessly to see how this conflict can spin us all in a new direction. ’Cause as the city’s first woman mayor and a longtime supporter of civil rights, I will accept nothing less. We will move in a new direction or history Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 341

  will move all over us and leave us behind. We stand still at our own peril.”

  Click. Click. Click.

  Early in, the cameras are the mayor’s only applause. The marchers down below listen with their arms firmly crossed.

  “I don’t know about you,” Cynthia says. “But I want more for this city.”