Black Water Rising (20 page)

“I get a minute with you, brother?” Kwame asks Jay. He's hopping on the balls of his feet, like a runner preparing for a sprint, itching for the gun to go off.

Jay's stomach is still raw, and his head aches.

He doesn't want this now, in his living room.

“We're getting ready to eat, Lloyd.”

“It's official,” Kwame announces. “As of three forty-five, the union is on strike.”

“Who called you?”

“Donnie Simpson. He heard it from Rickey Salles, who heard it from someone down to the church.”

“You want me to call Daddy?” Bernie asks.

Jay shakes his head. “What about OCAW?” he asks Kwame.

“They're in,” Kwame says, smiling.

“Teamsters?”

“Fuck 'em. We don't need 'em.”

We.
Right.

“ILA's preparing a statement for the ten o'clock news,” Kwame says, still talking. “I've already been in contact with Sylvia Martinez over at the
Post
. This is a chance to put our two cents in, put the story out there the way we want it.”

WE.

“Bernie and I are about to eat dinner, Lloyd,” Jay says.

“I'll be at the docks tomorrow morning, keep an eye on things,” Kwame continues, not at all getting it. The only “we” in this house is Jay and his family. “Kwame,” Bernie says from the kitchen. “Come on, let me fix you a plate.” Jay looks over the counter at his wife. She winks at him and passes him a handful of silverware. Jay sets the table for three. Kwame mumbles thank you, shyly taking a seat. Bernie scoops out the food from the Styrofoam containers, carefully dividing the portions, making sure that Kwame gets as much chicken as she and Jay, making sure he feels welcome. Grace is a simple two-sentence affair, Bernie mindful of at least one rumbling tummy at the table. Jay hasn't eaten anything since the vending-machine junk at the courthouse, and he's finished with his entire plate, including a little broke-off piece of corn bread, in less than four minutes and is left with no further distractions, nothing to provide a sensory buffer between himself and Kwame's ongoing rant. “I'm thinking of organizing a march,” Kwame says between mouthfuls of gravy and potatoes.

Bernie pushes back from the table, fanning herself with a paper napkin.

“You all right, B?” Jay asks.

“I'm hot, Jay,” she says, sticking out her bottom lip and blowing air up toward her nose, trying to cool herself with her own breath.

“I'll look at the box in a minute.”

Kwame stares across the table at Jay. “I want you in it with me, man.”

It is offered as tenderly as a proposal of marriage. “Just like the old days,” Kwame says. “You and me, bro? We show 'em how it's done?” His leg is pumping up and down under the table, making a faint rat-a-tat-tat and gently knocking the plates on the table. Bernie presses her hand firmly on the tabletop to stop it from shaking. Kwame stills his leg. The room is suddenly quiet.

“People need to remember we was about something once,” Kwame says.

“We were kids, Lloyd. We were just kids.”

“Aw, come on, man,” Kwame says. “Are you so far gone?”

“Let me ask you something,” Jay says. “This march you're planning…how much of this is about the longshoremen and how much is about you?”

“It's about all of us, man. ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' You remember that, don't you?”

“Answer my question, Lloyd. Really, man. Answer the question. Far as I know, you never worked a dock in your life. So what is this? What are you trying to do here? Is this just you needing some platform to stand on?”

Kwame stares at Jay, his old buddy, his comrade.

“You telling me you don't miss it, man?”

“Miss what?”

“Come on,” Kwame says, his tone wistful and unexpectedly soft and dry with longing. “We were really doing something back then, man.”

“I'm doing something now, Lloyd. I'm trying to raise a family.”

Bernie has kept her eyes on her plate, pushing her peas around.

“Ain't nobody trying to take this away from you, Jay,” Kwame says. “I'm talking about a march, a single afternoon.”

“I'm not interested,” Jay says. “It's not my deal.”

“Man,” Kwame says, shaking his head. “They really got to you, huh? They got you good. I guess you doing your twenty years on the house.”

Jay slaps his hand across the table, shaking the silverware.

“That's enough, Lloyd.”

Kwame picks up his napkin, balls it up and tosses it onto his plate. “I know you got your practice and everything, but I guess I always thought that when push came to shove, if the right issue came along, you'd be right there.”

“I'm not interested.”

Kwame nods. He's heard the message loud and clear.

“Man,” he says. “She really did a number on you, didn't she?”

Bernie wobbles to her feet then, loudly stacking the dinner plates without asking if anyone's finished and slapping away Jay's hand when he tries to help. Jay shoots Kwame a harsh look, and Kwame finally stands. “I didn't mean you no offense, Bernie,” he says contritely. “I wasn't talking about you.”

“I know,” she says, carrying the plates to the kitchen sink.

Kwame starts for the front door. He stops once and turns to Jay. “People look up to you, man. Always have. Hell if I know why. But people listen to you. They trust you, Jay,” he says. “I'm not sure you always see that.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his gray carpenter's pants. “I just thought you might want to help.” He nods good night to Bernie, then sees himself out.

 

They're in bed by seven thirty, both exhausted by a litany of things the other doesn't understand. Jay finally got the thermostat down to an insanely expensive seventy degrees, and Bernie takes in the cool air like a sedative. She can sleep only on her right side these days, so they've switched their usual sleeping
positions. Jay presses into Bernie's backside, still in his trousers, too tired to fully undress. He lays a hand on her belly and feels a faint swishing beneath the skin, the timid movements of a newcomer. He rubs his wife's stomach, which is tight as a drum. He taps his fingers on her belly. It's just a hello.
I'm here. I got you.

Bernie cups his hand in hers. “If you want to do this thing with Kwame.”

“I don't.”

“If you want to do
any
thing, Jay, that's all you. Don't put it on me. I'm not the one trying to stop you.”

“I know,” he says.

“Do your thing,” she says, her voice slowing down to a sleepy crawl.

On the first full day of the longshoremen's strike, Jay wakes up to the smell of rain. The ashy black clouds outside his bedroom window threaten to split wide open, to bury the city beneath an angry deluge. He manages to get into the office before the first drops fall. But by midmorning it's coming down so hard that he and Eddie Mae leave their desks and go into the waiting area to watch the summer storm through the front windows. The lights in the office flicker a couple of times, and Eddie Mae goes to look for some batteries for a flashlight. Jay keeps his post by the windows, watching the rain dancing in the wind, like sheets blowing on a line. He used to love storms like this as a kid. He and his sister would make jelly sandwiches and lie on the floor in the den to watch
Howdy Doody
all day or catch a couple of
Roy Rogers westerns back-to-back. Sometimes on stormy days, their mother would make them tomato soup or grits with butter and sugar. She would teach them to play hearts or bid whist. She could be like that some days, sweet and attentive, when their stepfather wasn't around. She could make you feel like you were really something.

Jay pulls himself away from the windows long enough to take a call from Dana Moreland, the hooker. “You're a hard man to get a hold of,” she says right away. “What's the deal on this thing anyway? I gotta know, ASAP. I got some personal things going on, and I need to know how much I can expect out of this.”

Jay doesn't mention the $7,500. “Let's just be patient for now,” he says. “And see how this thing plays out in the next week or so.”

Dana makes a
hmph
sound under her breath.

“Remember, if you get nothing,
I
get nothing,” he says.

“I'm not taking
nothing.
That's not even in the cards, baby.”

Eddie Mae pokes her head into the office. Jay sits up in his chair, thinking it's Rolly Snow on the other line. He told Eddie Mae first thing this morning to put Rolly through immediately, the moment he calls. Jay is still waiting on some word about Elise Linsey. But Eddie Mae is in the doorway to tell him that his father is in the waiting room. Jay leans back in his chair and looks into the other room where Reverend Boykins is standing by the door, shaking rain off his coat.

His father. Right.

The hooker is going on and on about money she owes to some dude who stays down in Corpus, something about him fixing the carburetor on her truck and paying her rent last month, plus she wants to buy shares of a little oil-and-gas outfit down south or maybe get into the real estate game. This is, after all, her big break. “Dana, let's just get through this next week, okay?”

He hangs up the phone.

To Jay's surprise, his father-in-law is not alone. Darren Hayworth and his father shuffle in behind Reverend Boykins. All three men are slick with rain. Reverend Boykins plops into the only open chair. Winded, he pulls a monogrammed handkerchief from his suit-coat pocket and dabs at his face.

The elder Hayworth unzips the top half of his school district uniform, and it occurs to Jay that he took off from work to be here. From inside his uniform, Mr. Hayworth pulls out the front page of today's
Houston Chronicle
. The paper is folded in thirds and dark in spots where rainwater soaked through his clothes.

“We saw it this morning,” he says.

Jay looks at the paper, his eyes sweeping across the main headline: “Dockworkers Walk.” Underneath there's a picture from yesterday evening's press conference, the dockworkers and representatives from OCAW standing together.

Mr. Hayworth turns to Darren. He nods his head in Jay's direction, nudging his son to say something. Darren, always less spirited in the presence of his father, shuffles his feet a few steps forward. With his good arm, he points to a face on the bottom half of the page. The newspaper photo is smudged with fingerprints, the ink getting pulled in every which direction, sweat and rain blurring the picture. Still, Jay can make out the image of a white man with puffy, pockmarked skin and oversize glasses. His sideburns are long and curling at the ends. The picture is accompanying a substory about the OCAW vote and its history of labor solidarity. The caption identifies the man as Carlisle Minty, Vice President, OCAW, Local 180. “That's him,” Darren says.

“Who?”

“The one in the truck the night I got jumped. He was just sitting there watching them beat me,
ordering
them to do it.”

Jay reads the caption again.
OCAW. Vice President.

“Are you sure?”

“If my boy says it's him then that's all I need to know,” the elder Hayworth says, folding his arms across his chest.

“That's him,” Darren repeats.

“This is what we always said we needed, Jay,” the Rev adds. “We just needed a name. Now…let the mayor put her money where her mouth is.”

Jay skims the article. In essence, it's an OCAW love song to labor struggle and solidarity among working people. Mr. Carlisle Minty is quoted throughout the piece, saying that the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union “garnered a strong majority vote in favor of a walkout with the ILA. And I, for one, believe in equal pay for equal work, that everybody ought to have equal opportunities to advance.” Minty goes on to say that he would not want a similar issue to divide his union, and therefore he and the other OCAW officers made a strong push to get behind the dockworkers.

Everything in the article, every word attributed to Carlisle Minty is in complete contrast to the violent picture Darren painted. Here, it says that Carlisle Minty is 100 percent behind the dockworkers…black or white.

Jay looks up from the newspaper article to Darren, looks into his eyes.

“You're
sure
?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You tell the mayor to do something about this or we sue,” the father says.

Jay walks through their argument in his head, pictures himself telling all of this to the mayor. He runs it down two and three times and comes across the same crack in the logic. “You know, if you make a big deal out of this, make some public pro
nouncements about this man, an officer in his union no less, beating up a young kid, spreading fear about the strike…you may end up sending the message that OCAW ain't really down with this after all, that they might not go the distance in a work-stoppage situation. You're already flying without the Teamsters. In a negotiation, it may weaken your position.”

“I don't want to cause no trouble,” Darren says in a childlike whisper, not wanting all this on his young head.

The elder Hayworth shakes his head. “I'm not backing down on this. The mayor said she needed a name, and we got a name. Somebody's got to pay for what they did. If the police won't handle it, I will. I know who it is now.”

“Wait a minute, now, wait a minute,” the Rev says. “We not doing things that way, hear?” The elder Hayworth keeps shaking his head back and forth, arms pressed so tightly into his chest that Jay wonders how he can breathe. The Rev turns back to his son-inlaw. “Now, you said the mayor was sympathetic to what these men are trying to do. Give her the man's name then. She said she would take it to the police. That's all we're asking.” Then he adds, pointedly, “For now.” His voice is firm and crystal clear. “You hear me, son? Let the mayor know we aim to be taken seriously on this.”

Jay nods. “I hear you.”

 

Cynthia agrees to meet him at an address downtown, surprising him when he calls by saying, “We need to talk,” before he has a chance to. He hangs up his desk phone and tucks the front page of the
Chronicle
into his jacket pocket. He steps out of his private office, telling Eddie Mae he'll be out for a while.

The streets downtown are like tiny rivers, the storm turning the city's center into a grid of muddy, shallow creeks, much like the bayous that give Houston its nickname. The rain has not
let up, not even a little bit. Jay squints through the wall of water coming down on his windshield, catching a clear snapshot of the road in front of him only once every few seconds as his wipers struggle to keep up. On his car radio, there are reports that some five hundred dockworkers are picketing with rain-soaked signs down at the port.

The address she gave is an alehouse on Travis.

Jay orders a sandwich inside the bar, which is full of dark wood and leather booths and smells like baking bread. He nurses a Coca-Cola while he waits for nearly twenty minutes, burning though two cigarettes, wondering what the mayor meant on the phone, what in the world she wants to talk to
him
about.

When Cynthia finally walks through the door, their eyes lock, and Jay feels a strange, helpless sensation, as if he's been struck dumb in her presence, as if he can't move. He feels a prickly heat on his skin. He doesn't know why she has this power still, to stop him in his tracks. Except that history is a funny thing. Fifty years from now, if they're still walking around on the planet, if they should bump into each other on the street or in a bar somewhere, it'll be just as this moment is now, like a key turning in a lock. They are each other's history, capable, with just a glance, of unlocking hidden truths. She is his witness.

Cynthia slides onto the stool next to Jay.

They're only a few blocks from city hall, but no one in the place seems to recognize her. Among the barflys and afternoon drunks, the mayor has found a little oasis of privacy. She knows the bartender by name. She orders a beer for herself and one for Jay. Some dark German brew that he would never have picked out for himself. But with Cynthia, this kind of shit comes with the territory. She steals a cigarette from Jay's open pack on the bar top. Her nails are bitten past the fingertips, he notices, the pink manicure flaking off at the ends. She inhales, blowing smoke up
into the air, the calf of her left leg brushing up against his. She doesn't move it right away. “I didn't think you'd see me again.”

From his jacket pocket, Jay pulls out the front page of today's
Houston Chronicle
. He spreads it across the scratched bar top, open to the photo of Carlisle Minty. “The guy in the picture,” he says. “He beat up the kid.” And then, because she doesn't appear to be following him, he adds, “The kid? The dockworker? I told you about him? Got beat up a couple of weeks ago?”

“Right.” She nods, catching up.

“That's the guy,” Jay says. “That's the guy who did it.”

Cynthia picks up the torn newspaper clipping.

Jay watches her eyes drop to the bottom left, scanning the article just as he'd done earlier this morning. He catches the wrinkle in her brow, can almost guess what she's thinking. When the mayor finally looks up, she has an almost comic look of incredulity on her face. She seems, honestly, on the verge of laughter. “You want to bring charges against the vice president of OCAW?”

“I want you to give this man's name to the police department, tell them what happened, just like you said you would. It's up to the D.A.'s office whether or not they want to bring charges.”

“But this doesn't make any sense, Jay. OCAW's all those men have, the only friend they've got. Why would Carlisle Minty go around beating people up, threatening the blacks to drop this walkout idea? Next, you're going to tell me he shot up that house on Market Street too?”

“Kid says this is the guy who jumped him. That's what I know.”

Cynthia tosses the newspaper clipping onto the bar top as if she's casting aside this whole ridiculous idea. “I
met
with Carlisle Minty, Jay. Trust me, he's on this strike thing, all the way. He's
supporting
the longshoremen.”

“Well, maybe that's his public face. Maybe in private he'd tell you something different,” Jay says, sipping his beer for the first time. The taste is bittersweet, the texture thick and warm. It makes him think of a kiss. It makes him hot about the neck and chest. “Isn't that how you politicians do things?”

Cynthia cocks her head to one side, studying his face, a thought just now occurring to her. “You don't particularly like me very much, do you, Jay?”

“I don't trust you. There's a difference.”

Cynthia nods, as if she can live with this, as if untrustworthiness were only a matter of perspective, and Jay is certainly entitled to his. But Jay has known her too long not to catch the subtle shift in her expression, like clouds passing over. There is something newly grim and regretful in her eyes. She's quiet a minute, pensive, rubbing out the orange, smoking tip of her cigarette, twirling the butt around in heavy circles inside the black plastic ashtray. “If you don't trust me, Jay,” she asks softly, “what are you doing here?”

Jay looks at the mayor, searching for traces of the girl he used to know, beneath the frosted tips and split ends, beneath the heavy makeup, which has, at this hour, begun to settle into the deep creases around her mouth. He can tell how hard she's trying to manage her image, and it makes him kind of sad.

“Hoping I'm wrong,” he says.

He taps Carlisle Minty's face in the newspaper. “This is your chance to make it right,” he says. “From this point on, you can't say I didn't warn you.”

“You should tell those boys to go back to work.”

“Why don't you tell them?” He stands, heading for the front door.

“They'll listen to you, Jay.”

“Yeah…the whole union is going to reverse their vote on my say-so.”

“You can stop this thing where it started,” she says. “Talk to the Brotherhood, get a new campaign going, get them to see this thing a different way.” Then she adds solicitously, “You could help me out a lot, Jay.”

“No thank you,” he says.

“You know, you're a fool to make this Minty thing public. Somebody could easily use this as evidence that the labor block ain't all that strong.”