Black Water Rising (29 page)

“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?”

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 wherever 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 beginning. 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 sudden, 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 telling 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
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 double 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 facing 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
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 distance, 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—”

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.

“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 certainly 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 blouse.

Jay stands down below, on the grass with the other marchers.

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 longshoremen 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
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.”

Behind her, Kip smiles on the dais. Jay wonders which words are his.

“And I am not alone,” the mayor says. “The Maritime Association and the Port of Houston, the unions and the oil companies…we all want to see an equitable resolution to this thing, a way that everybody can win. I want us to reach Dr. King's dream, where race doesn't matter, where black men and white men can get equal pay and benefits, overtime and a chance at management.”

Jay doesn't remember that part of King's speech.

But it's no matter. The mere mention of Dr. King's name causes a knee-jerk reaction in the mostly black crowd. There's a sudden smattering of hand clapping and head nodding, an amen or two. Here it comes, he thinks. Here comes the seduction.

“And the only way for us to get there,” the mayor announces, “is to get rid of preferential treatment once and for all.”

The applause in the crowd grows from a smattering to a swelling wave.

“For as long as the stevedores are hiring and promoting on the basis of race, as long as anyone anywhere is picking people on the basis of their skin color, we all lose,” the mayor says. “As long as we continue to
see
race, we lose.”

The wave of applause spreads through the crowd on the mall, reaching such a fevered pitch that Cynthia actually has
to wait for it to die down before she can get out her next words. She plays the moment for all its dramatic effect, waving her hand in the air like a conductor, driving the people where she wants them to go. “If we play into that Southern stereotype, we run the risk of the world seeing Houston as backward and unsophisticated. We run the risk of driving away business. The future of this city depends on putting our best face forward, to let people know that Houston, Texas, is first class all the way.”

She pauses to look down at the print reporters scribbling in their notebooks, as if she wants to make sure that no one misses a word of what she's about to say next.

“The answer then, as I see it, is to remove the lens of race altogether,” the mayor says. “Now just this morning, Pat Bodine of the ILA, your union president, as well as Wayne Kaylin from OCAW, some members of the port commission and the Maritime Association, and Thomas Cole…they were all in my office. We were hammering something out, trying to come up with the right solution. And I'm happy to report that we reached some common ground in there. I proposed a resolution I think we can all be proud of. And it starts here at city hall,” Cynthia pronounces. “I am proposing to the city council, as early as next week, that the city of Houston adopt an official policy of race-blind hiring. There will be no more
skipping
over people because of their race, putting one group of people over another. That's where we've gone wrong in the past.”

Oh, she has them now, Jay thinks. This is what they've been waiting for. The words they came all this way to hear. He hears whistles in the crowd, sees a few women waving handkerchiefs in the air. The men clap and stomp their feet. Jay, at the head of the crowd, holds up a hand, as high as he can manage. He waves for them to stop, everything in his body telling them to wait.

Just wait.

“And,” the mayor says, “there will be no
advancing
people because of their race either. We will judge people by their merits, no more, no less.”

It takes a moment for the crowd to get it, for the catch to catch on.

For the dockworkers to understand what the mayor is really saying.

That her plan is to simply wipe the slate clean from this moment forward, to wipe out three hundred years of racial discrimination in a single afternoon.

The mayor's solution: let the problem self-correct.

Out in the crowd, the hand clapping stops short. The faces grow long.

Cynthia is so proud of herself, she is dangerously close to being smug.

“Now, when I proposed this idea to the unions this morning, to the stevedores and representatives from the port,” she says, “it took them no time to come to the conclusion that this was the right thing to do, that this was the right solution at the right time for this city.” She pauses, waiting for applause that never comes. “So it falls to you men now,” she says, putting the onus of this labor problem squarely in their calloused hands. “If the stevedores and the union leaders can come to a consensus on this, then the only question left is, when do you boys want to go back to work?” She looks directly into the TV cameras on the mall and smiles broadly. “The city is waiting, y'all.”

 

When Jay calls home about an hour or so later, Bernie complains that Rolly's got his feet up on her sofa. “Some bodyguard,” she mumbles under her breath. Jay asks if she wants him to come
home. She says no, “I know they need you there.” He asks how she's feeling, if everything's all right. Rolly, she says, “has been watching stories since this morning,” but she's glad she's not in the apartment alone. Jay tells her to hang in there, tells her that he loves her.

Outside the ILA union hall, he hangs up the pay phone.

Then he heads back inside, where a labor fight has been raging for at least an hour already, the men more divided than ever. The white ones came here today right from the picket line, their clothes pocked with sweat marks. Everyone in the room is hot and tired on their feet. Jay and the Brotherhood camp came here straight from the mayor's press conference at city hall, Jay driving his father-in-law and Darren Hayworth because the kid had asked him to come along. Reverend Boykins is still hoping for a sit-down with the union president and OCAW, and the kid, looking at Jay, said he wanted a man with him he could trust. It had been impossible for Jay, despite himself, to say no.

This ILA meeting was thrown together hastily, at Pat Bodine's suggestion. There's no microphone set up onstage today, no coffee or refreshments. The union president is up on the stage, alone, in a damp and wrinkled shirt. He waves down the hand of a white man right under the stage, saying, “Naw, I got to you twice already. Let's get some other voices in here.”

Another white man in front raises his hand in the air.

He's leaning his weight against the stake of his picket sign, which reads,
UNION STANDS FOR BROTHERHOOD
. When Pat Bodine calls on him, the man turns to face his union brothers, black and white. “I don't exactly see what there is to talk about,” he says. “I thought this is what we was looking for from the get-go.”

The applause in the room comes from the picketers, from the white dockworkers who, by their own choice, stayed far away from today's march. The picketers clap their hands and stomp
the posts of their handmade signs onto the meeting hall's linoleum floor. The marchers, the men of the now defunct Brotherhood of Longshoremen, shake their heads vigorously. “This don't make nothing right,” one of the black dockworkers says, followed by catcalls and claps from his fellow marchers. “This just puts us right back where we started.”

“Look,” one of the white picketers says, “if the stevedores say they'll stop hiring foremen on the basis of race, I don't get it…what more do you people want?”

“We want an equal shot, same as you,” Donnie Simpson says.

“I think what the mayor is saying is that a policy like this would level the playing field for everybody,” Bodine says. “There has never been an official policy like this on the books. It would be a huge step forward.” Then, sensing he's maybe offered too much of his own opinion, he adds, “In theory.”

“But see, that's the problem, jack,” Donnie Simpson says from the floor. “I can't
eat
on theory. You understand me? I can't send my kids to school on
theory
.”

There's an explosive response from the Brotherhood camp, men calling out, “That's right, brother,” and whistling loudly. Pat Bodine, onstage, tries to call on someone else to speak, but the marchers are slow to die down. Bodine puts his hands on his hips, exasperated at having momentarily lost control.

Reverend Boykins raises a hand next. This gets the black marchers' attention. They
shh
each other and wait politely for the Rev to speak. “I think what the men are trying to say is that the policy put forward by the mayor does not redress the wrongs that have already been perpetrated against them.”

“I'm sorry, Pat, but I got to say something here,” one of the white picketers says, a man in a dirty T-shirt, sleeves rolled up to his shoulder bones. “This is what I don't like about this,” he says, pointing to Reverend Boykins. “Y'all are listening to people who
don't have a damn thing to do with this union. Y'all are getting into all this political crap when the rest of us just want to go back to work.”

“We want to work too,” one of the black marchers says.

“But we got to get some black men in management right now,” Kwame Mackalvy says. The white union men turn to stare at this interloper in a colorful dashiki, a black man who invited himself into the dockworkers' broken family. “Now look,” Kwame says, writing policy off the top of his head. “If the stevedores were willing to say that the next, say, twenty or thirty foremen they hire over the next year will be black, or hell, Mexican even, then that's one thing. If there was something in place that said these companies
had
to hire so many blacks—”

“Well, wait a minute now,” the man with the rolled-up sleeves says. “Why should y'all get promised something we ain't guaranteed?”

“Putting some of us in management
right now
is the only way to make it equal
right now,
” Donnie Simpson says above the buzzing crowd. “Y'all had your time. It's our time now.”

“Let me see if I'm getting this straight,” the man with no sleeves says. “We stuck our necks out for you, walked out on the docks for you, and now you're saying that this whole time what you really wanted wasn't to be treated equal, but to be treated
better
than everybody else.”

“Fuck that,” one of the white picketers hollers.

“I got eight years on the job, eight years toward management. I'll be damned if I'm gon' stay on strike so a black man can come take my job,” one of the picketers says, letting his white poster board slide to the floor in defiance.

“You'd think people who say they're always getting discriminated against wouldn't want to turn around and do that to somebody else,” No Sleeves says. “Well, I don't think it's right. I didn't
think it was right when white folks was doing it, and I don't think it's right if blacks are the ones doing it either.”

The white men in the room applaud him loudly. Across the union hall, another man boldly drops his sign to the floor. Two more follow. It starts to catch on around the room. One by one, the white men drop their signs.

The black dockworkers seem stunned, hurt even.

Pat Bodine waves his hand over the crowd. “I will say this, men. It will not be easy to go back into that negotiation room and push for more than what's already been offered.” He looks out at the black dockworkers, talking as if the debate were already over. “This doesn't have to be a bad thing. Getting the stevedoring companies out of the habit of automatically putting whites first is not a little thing. We can build on that. Now look, we dragged OCAW into this with us. I don't know how much longer those men are going to walk with us if we're turning down what could be a workable solution.”