Nashville: The Mood (Part 1)

by Donald H. Carpenter

  Foxworth had never really liked him especially well, although he tolerated him because his daughter seemed to love him. It had been a natural thing to offer him a route to success in the firm, for the family’s sake, although there had been a dearth of offers from major law firms around the state. While Matoguwu was plenty competent enough, in Foxworth’s mind he lacked motivation and drive, and seemed to only want to work the minimum number of hours required. The two had drifted in that pattern for more than five years now.

  Foxworth, who liked being in control of any situation, and normally managed to do so, felt a sort of tension in his stomach. He not only was wondering what Matoguwu was up to, but Foxworth had been on bad relations with his daughter for about three weeks. The two had had a lengthy argument, in his office, over some money issues, and he and his daughter had not spoken since that time. Foxworth’s wife had attempted to call her, but his daughter had not returned the calls. Now, he wondered if the meeting with Matoguwu meant more bad news, that the family tensions were going to continue to rise rather than settle down.

  The administrative personnel had largely cleared out of the office, but a number of the attorneys were still present, and Foxworth could see them coming and going down the halls. He heard Matoguwu’s voice suddenly, exchanging pleasantries with co-workers far down the hall. He heard the voice growing louder, and he knew he was approaching. Then he was at the doorway, a somewhat large man, with shining black skin and a flashing set of teeth. Matoguwu had what many would have called a wonderful smile, but Foxworth had always hated it. It had always seemed false to him, and had compounded their never-comfortable, and now slowly-deteriorating relationship.

  “Hello, Morris.”

  “Hello.”

  “How did your day go?”

  “It was OKWhat was it you wanted to see me about?”

  Matoguwu shifted a little uncomfortably, then walked to the chair across the desk from Foxworth and slowly took a seat. “It’s about Jill.”

  Foxworth sighed, looking out the window, away from Matoguwu. There was just something about the guy, he thought. “Yes, I thought as much. Is she ready to apologize yet?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you about that,” Matoguwu said evenly. “I came to tell you that she’s been missing for over a week.”

  Foxworth spun around, forgetting any reserved demeanor he might have wanted to project. “What do you mean?”

  “She walked out a week and a day or so ago. Just walked out of the house one night. She said she was going away for a while. I didn’t pay it much attention; she’s done this several times before. But after she was gone more than a few days, without hearing anything at all from her, either by phone or e-mail or text, I thought I’d better come tell you.”

  A limousine headed from the airport towards downtown wove its way through traffic, stopping occasionally when the flow broke down. The occupants of the car were the city commissioner for business development, Bill Knight, and three visitors from Connecticut. The three visitors were looking to build a plant in the general Nashville area, not necessarily in the city. They had been communicating with the city commissioner for some time, and were now making an exploratory trip. It was hard to peg the three men, either by their names or by their appearance. Two of them looked as if they could be of Middle Eastern origin of some sort, but Knight knew enough to know that he couldn’t distinguish among the different groups from that region; they did blend together in his mind. The other man seemed more American in accent and general look; he could have been Jewish. They were from central Connecticut, not exactly next to New York City, but close enough by the standards of other regions of the country.

  Knight was used to businessmen from larger areas of the country seeming more worldly, more gregarious, even more open-minded than many of the local businessmen, but these three seemed very conservative—very quiet, not prone to volunteering much in the way of information. They had probably asked Knight at least ten questions between the airport and this point, without ever venturing a single opinion of their own. Once they had asked a question, and Knight had begun to answer, they simply sat back and listened quietly without interjecting any other questions, or comments, until he had finished speaking.

  Traffic was moving very slowly at this point. Everyone in the car was silent, until one of the men in the back seat asked, “How long has that been open?”

  Knight turned to look where the man was pointing, off to the right. A sign proclaimed: World’s Largest Adult Bookstore.

  “It’s one of our eyesores around here,” Knight said, shaking his head. “We’ve tried everything, but the law seems to be in their favor. We’ve tried zoning ordinances, we’ve tried putting pressure on them behind the scenes, monitoring their activities inside, and all that. But nothing has worked.”

  “Has it been here long?” another man asked.

  “Yes, it’s been here as long as I’ve been in Nashville, more than twenty-five years. I guess it’ll be here after I go.”

  A period of silence followed, and traffic began to pick up just slightly. The car moved past the adult bookstore, a large building located in an industrial area adjacent to the interstate highway. Knight cast his glance in that direction, without turning his head back again, looking to see what was going on around the store. The streets around the bookstore were quiet, but Knight knew that was because it was broad daylight, and early in the morning, too. He knew that from late afternoon through the rest of the evening and overnight, down to around sunrise, activities of all sorts picked up quite a bit in that area. He looked straight ahead. He didn’t really even like to think about it.

  “Does Nashville have a large adult entertainment industry?” the man in the passenger seat beside Knight asked.

  Knight sighed heavily, and shook his head slightly. It was a question he had heard before, and he always hated it; he wished he could wish it away, so he would never hear it again. He’d even thought about taking incoming visitors a different route from the airport, so that they wouldn’t have to pass the large adult bookstore along the interstate. Unfortunately for him, alternative routes from the airport were either much longer, or went through some less than stellar areas of the city. There was no good alternative.

  “We have our share,” Knight responded finally, sounding weary. “You understand it’s not a subject I like going into.”

  “I understand. But I’d still like to know.”

  Knight glanced to the right. The man’s face was completely impassive, almost stony. It was difficult to read his motives in asking the question. Did he want to know just out of curiosity? Did he like visiting adult establishments? Or was he concerned about them? Worried that family members of employees at any future site his company developed would object to them?

  “We’ve had everything at one point,” Knight said. “I talk a lot about this with police officials, and other civic leaders. At one time, when I first got here, we had a whole stretch south of the city that had houses of prostitution operating openly. They had been there more than forty years; it was a tradition that seemed to go with the music industry. There were pockets of those types of places in half a dozen other areas of the city, too, but the major one was on this stretch south of the city.

  “Then, about ten years ago, the city had the idea to use zoning ordinances to close those establishments down. Many of them weren’t up to code, and it would have been costly to bring them up to code. They still could have done it, and continued in business, but they were either too dumb or too cheap to do so. So we went in and shut them all down; any place operating openly that someone could walk in, we shut them downAnd they never reopenedOf course, now there’s a lot of prostitution operating off the Internet”

  “Are there many adult bookstores here?”

  “There are a few. Not that many. This one is the most prominent by far; the others tend to be in seedier parts of townThe problem is they have the law on their sideThis one, the one that we just
passed, has been sanctioned in the past for allowing certain activities to go on there. I won’t go into what they are, but they have been fined or otherwise sanctioned. But their excuse is that these are patrons doing this on their own, not part of their operating policy, and it’s up to the police and the city to control that type of activityWe think they sanction it, because it draws more business of the sort they want, but it’s hard to prove sometimes”

  “How about strip clubs?” one of the men in the back seat asked.

  Knight struggled to hide his irritation at the question, at the continuing questions on the subject. “Yes, we have several of those, at least seven or eight, probably some I don’t even know about. We’ll pass at least one before we turn off up here. They have the law on their side, also, although the last few years we’ve been able to pass a few things that control what goes on in them. The dancers have to keep a certain distance from the customer, and so onBut it’s a never-ending struggle.”

  One of the men leaned forward, as if for emphasis. “Nashville seems to have a different side than we thought.”

  “I hope you don’t allow that to negatively influence you,” Knight replied, and it was clear he was embarrassed by the whole conversation, not necessarily because of the activities being discussed, but because it was being discussed with prospective business investors. “I realize we have our share of these things, but every city over a certain population is going to have them. I assure you we have everything under control here, as much as it can be controlled. But no large city can eradicate all of this kind of activity; it just goes with the size of the population. I often thank goodness we’re not near a military base, like Clarksville sixty miles away. They gets this type of activity, and a worse variety of it as well.”

  The man in the back settled back into his seat, and the ride continued. A prominent sign indicating exotic dancers appeared up on the right, and the four men passed it without comment. Knight chose not to even turn and look at it, although he let his eyes wander again up to the sign as they approached it and passed it. He hoped the subject was closed, but he had a bad feeling.

  As May moved by, a certain stillness settled over Nashville. It was difficult to describe, and most people felt there was sort of a calm atmosphere that had descended, seemingly for no reason at all. Violent crimes seemed to take a noticeable dip, although they didn’t disappear completely, the temperature was moderate, winds were calm, and there was no rain for a period of time. Everything seemed really still, and quiet. People began to talk about it, and the talk that rippled through the city was more noticeable than any other natural phenomenon.

  A billboard quietly appeared on Dickerson Pike, on the north side of the city. It asked the question:

  What’s Happening to Nashville?

  People wondered what the question meant, and after a while, they began to wonder what the answer was, or would be. No one knew who had placed the billboard, and the billboard company, which was located in Chicago, would only say that its records were confidential, and that it could give out no information about the buyer.

  The mayor was asked about it in press conferences, more times than he liked, and other city officials were asked to comment on it. The newspaper wrote an editorial about it, trying to straddle the line between amusement and curiosity; it clearly didn’t know what the truth was.

  He lay there in bed, in the darkened room, looking at the ceiling, and all other sounds, sights, and other details faded away. He wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone how rapidly that had occurred, but it was a phenomenon that he was well familiar with. He had always been somewhat fatalistic, he knew that, and this was one more manifestation of it.

  The room, already dark, seemed to grow completely dark, and he began to see the violent imagery. It was indirect, but it seemed to be a slashing motion, as if someone was slashing at him with a butcher knife, except that he couldn’t actually see the knife, the hand, or the arm. It was more that he sensed those movements and sensations, and knew automatically that they were directed at him. The details had changed from time to time, but it was always a violent action directed at him by someone, and he could never see who it was.

  The slashing went on for some period of time, he didn’t know how long, and it was followed, strangely enough, by a sort of condemnation process, whereby he knew that he was being condemned verbally for his actions, but he couldn’t actually hear the voices or understand the words. He knew there was nothing to do but take it, and he knew it would grow worse and worse and worse, until it reached a point where he thought he could not take it any longer, and then it would mercifully end. And that’s what happened.

  “You didn’t hear a word I said,” the woman lying on the bed beside him said. She had been staring at the ceiling herself, but now she turned onto her side facing him and placed a hand onto his chest. “You must really have gone far, far away.”

  He looked over at her, and cupped her left shoulder with his hand and pulled her closer. “Yes, I guess I was. It happens every now and then.”

  “It happens quite a lotI’ve noticed it a number of times since I’ve known youWhere on earth do you go during those stretches?”

  He smiled very briefly and turned to look back at the ceiling, or at least the place where the ceiling met the top of the wall. “Far, far away, like you said. We all have a place we retreat to sometimes.”

  “I guess so. I guess it happens to me sometimesWhat does your wife do when you do that?”

  “Let’s not talk about her.”

  “OK.”

  “I’ll try to concentrate more on you, and not let myself drift away. I know it must be irritating to you.”

  “No, not irritating. I’ve just wondered about it, that’s all. It can be very noticeable when you don’t answer a word I’m saying for ten minutes. I noticed it right away the first time, but I never dreamed it would happen again, or as many times as it has happened.”

  “How often has it happened?”

  “Five or six at least.”

  He smiled at her and slowly closed his eyes. The room was very quiet; he couldn’t even hear the sound of traffic outside. If he held his own breathing and listened very carefully, he could barely hear her breathing to his left. She liked to talk, but she also went into silent stretches that could last ten to twenty minutes, as if she was waiting for him to respond to whatever she had been saying at length.

  He opened his eyes again; she was looking at him. She had an amused look around her lips. He had often seen it, and it seemed to occur mainly when she studied him silently. He had sensed that she was curious about him, and if he reflected on it he became aware that she had gotten quite a bit of information about him during the time they had known each other. He wondered, as he often wondered, whether he had given away too much, too much that could one day come back to haunt him.

  “I always enjoy seeing you, my dear,” he said, pulling her slightly closer to him. “I always feel rested and uplifted after I’ve seen you.”

  “Yes, me—and Sandra, and Jamie, and Tonya, and JulieDo you tell them all the same things?You know the girls do tend to talk”

  A look of concern flashed quickly across his face, and disappeared just as quickly. “Yes, you talk too much. All of you. I should never say anything that is factually correct to any of you.”

  She laughed, very genuinely, involuntarily, as if it had come out before she could even restrain it. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it. The girls do talk among each other, but they probably have better ethics than most of the people you meet in day-to-day life. They have too much to lose by talking too much. That is, if you’ve kept your standards high”

  He closed his eyes again, continuing to cup her shoulder with his hand. “Yes, I have. And I’ve followed your advice a few times, as you no doubt know.”

  “YesSo you never told me—how did you happen to become a minister?”

  m.Net