Pleasantville (35 page)

My god, Jay thinks again, if Parker could swing any one of them
away
from Axel, if she could reach into traditionally black precincts throughout the country, for that matter, and pluck out the registered Democrats with the slightest tear in their liberal fabric, a weak thread that could be pulled until the stitches came apart, could she, four years from now, swing them for a Republican candidate? If you could take Pleasantville from a Hathorne, you could do anything.
They're trying to break Pleasantville
. And damn if they didn't have help.

The car
is a surprise, still idling there.

He was sure she would have left him here, abandoning him at the worst time, as she had done nearly thirty years earlier. But Cynthia, of all people, is right here when he needs someone most. He has no car, no other way out of here, back to his real life, before Aguilar and T. J. Cobb, before the Hathornes and this mess of a trial, when his daughter was still safe. He opens the rear passenger door of the Town Car and collapses into the
leather seat. The car is filled with gray smoke, swirling from the end of the cigarette in Cynthia's shaking hand. She looks pale, her blond hair lank in the warmth of the car, the smell of her sweat mixed with the woodsy scent of her perfume, looking at this angle like the girl he once knew, the one who leaned across the cab of her green Ford Econoline truck and kissed him at dawn. She's staring out the tinted window. “I told you not to fuck with Sam.”

“Where's my daughter, Cynthia?”

“I don't know.”

Turning from the window, she leans forward, tapping the back of the driver's seat. “Get him out of here now,” she says before turning to Jay, who leans forward, elbows on his knees, his head in his sorry hands, and weeps.

The Sam Hathorne
that the people of Pleasantville rarely get to see resides in a five-bedroom colonial on three-quarters of an acre on North MacGregor Drive. The house sits on a bend in the winding road, with a view, through a parklike stand of trees in the front yard, of the landscaped path along Brays Bayou. MacGregor Drive, north and south, is lined with palatial homes owned almost exclusively by moneyed blacks who took over the neighborhood after segregation and its hand tool, deed restrictions, were outlawed. They were suddenly free to leave places like Pleasantville for something better, for there is always something better, and soon the first black families were moving to MacGregor–running out the Jews who'd built the homes, who had themselves been run out of WASPy
River Oaks–and leaving empty properties along Pleasantville Drive, Norvic, Ledwicke, and Guinevere, homes that were then bought up by the likes of Jelly Lopez and Bill Rodriguez, Patricia Rios, Arturo Vega and his family. It was a snake that bit its own tail, the way some things changed only to remain the same. Sam's driver, Frankie, answers the front door. Inside the foyer, the dark wood floors gleam under the twinkling light of a teardrop chandelier overhead. Jay hears Sam's voice coming from the great room. Down the hallway ahead, he can see the length of Vivian Hathorne's toned calf and the pointed heel of her left shoe dangling off the edge of a leather couch. They have gathered in the living room, the whole family, all except Axel, who is still at the central police station downtown, coordinating from there a citywide search for Jay's daughter. Cynthia pushes past Frankie into the house, down the hallway, and into the living room. When Jay enters behind her, he tells everyone–Vivian, Ola and Camille, Delia and Gwen–to get out. “Not you,” he says to Neal. “And definitely not you,” he says to Sam, who is in the same dove gray suit he was wearing before court was abruptly halted this morning. He takes off his wire-rimmed glasses, slowly wiping the lenses with a handkerchief embroidered with the initials SPH. He doesn't say a word. Vivian stands, a drink in hand. “What's going on here?” she says to Sam when she sees Jay and Cynthia eyeing him, when she senses the electricity running under everything.

“If you could give us a minute,” Cynthia says.

Vivian turns to her husband and whispers, “What did you do?”

“You're drunk, Viv.”

“Come on, Mom,” Ola says, leading her mother from the living room, looking nervously over her shoulder as her three sisters follow her out. Frankie stands guard by the front door, as if he's expecting another intrusion any second now. In the living room, it's just Neal and Sam, Cynthia and Jay.

“Where's my daughter?”

Neal looks from Jay to his grandfather, then back again, confused. “Axel's still at the station. I'm sure we would have heard by now if he knew something.”

“I'm asking
you
, Sam. Where is my child?”

Sam carefully folds his handkerchief, then slides his glasses back on, taking time to adjust the stems, to smooth the tightly coiled hairs along his temples. Jay crosses the room, closing the gap between them by pressing his face close to the old man's. “I will kill you, Sam, understand? I will kill you with my bare hands if you don't tell me right now where she is.”

“I don't know where she is.” Sam shrugs, the gesture as cold as the ice cubes he drops, one by one, into the bottom of a crystal glass resting on the bar behind him. “Cobb is a loose cannon.” He starts to pour a finger of whiskey, but Jay knocks the glass, the whole bottle, out of his hand. It shatters on the parquet wood, the brown liquid creeping across the polished floor, seeping into the fringe of an Oriental rug in the center of the room. “He was supposed to scare you, that was all,” Sam says.

“By going after my kid?”

“No,” Sam says softly. “I told you, he's a loose cannon.”

Cynthia falls into the nearest chair, her hands landing in a perfect prayer position. They are, even now, still shaking. “You have to fix this, Sam. Fix this.”

“Did you know?” Jay asks her.

“Not about this.”

Neal, taking in the scene, unsure of what exactly he's seeing, turns to stare directly, pleadingly, at his grandfather. “What are they talking about, Pop?”

“Ask him,” Jay says. “Ask Samuel P. Hathorne, HNIC, Mr. Head Nigger in Charge, ask him how he sold out his own people, his own family even.”

“What?”

“Why'd you do it, Sam? What did Parker promise you?”

“You don't know what you're talking about, don't know a thing about what I've done for Pleasantville, for my family, for every colored person in this city, including
you
. It's easy to stand on the outside, son, raising a fist, not so easy to get close enough to power to twist a wrist, to work this city from the inside out. Those folks out in Pleasantville have never wanted for anything on my watch. So don't talk to me about selling out. I know what I'm doing here.”

“As long as you're the one sitting on top, the one holding all the cards, folks lining up to kiss your ring, to have you take their walk to the big house for them, coming back to deliver crumbs, streetlights, an elementary school–”

“Don't you dare! You haven't earned the right to speak to me like that. I was out there marching these streets when you were in short pants. You late ones think you invented struggle, invented the right to stand up to something.”

“That's right, Sam, you and I were both out there once. We both marched for something better, for
change
, but you're not letting it happen. We're sitting here four years from a new century, man, and you're still trying to run it like we're standing still, putting up a black candidate, when behind the scenes you're planning to keep everything business as usual.” He thinks of his old comrades, his running buddies during the Movement. Bumpy Williams, shot up by the feds in 1970. Marcus Dupri, lost to drugs and the Texas penal system a long time ago. And Lloyd, Kwame, whose heart gave out before he got to see a brother get within arm's reach of running the good ol' boy city of Houston, Texas. They didn't die for this shit, he tells Sam. “Did you even want Axel to win? Or if he loses, do you get to hold your place in line, stoking the flames of Axel's loss as proof that black folks can't win, that they can't have
nothing without you? You at the head and everyone else walking two steps behind. Isn't that what A.G. said?”

“You leave him out of this.”

“Where the hell is Cobb!”

“You've got to have a number,” Cynthia says, “some way to reach him.”

Sam looks at Jay. “Leave A.G. off the stand, and we'll talk about it.”

Jay lunges at Sam, straight for his throat.

Neal has to pull the men apart.

“Drop A.G. and we'll talk.”

“Pop!”

“You don't need him, Neal, you don't,” Sam says, damp desperation on his face, sweat on his brow, spittle in the corners of his mouth. “You saw the state's case, how weak it is. You can close the trial without him. I'll protect you, no matter what happens, I promise, son. You're
mine
, Neal,” he says, claiming the boy against everything, as if that could stem the fallout of his betrayal.

“What are you so afraid he's going to say?” Neal whispers.

Jay's cell phone rings.

He yanks it from his pocket, checking the screen. It's a number he doesn't recognize, one with the new area code 281. He looks at Sam, as if this is it, as if he's prepared to force Sam to negotiate a hostage release. He answers the phone, nearly collapsing at the sound of the first word: “Dad?” It's Ellie. She's crying.

“Are you okay?”

He can hardly hear her for the noise in the background: car horns and loud music, someone yelling in the distance. “Where are you?” he says.

“I don't know why he grabbed me like that,” she says.

“Where
are
you?”

“I don't know,” she says, crying harder. He listens to the street noise in the background. She's outside somewhere. “Are you on a pay phone?” he asks, turning to Neal to tell him to get Axel on the phone right now. “Start describing everything you see, Ellie, especially street signs. If you see a cop, flag him down. I'm going to put out a countywide bulletin right now. But I'm on my way, El. I'm coming to get you right now, do you understand? Ellie? Ellie?”

The line is dead.

Jay starts for the front door, Cynthia right behind him. Outside, they climb into the back of the waiting Town Car. She's on the phone with a contact at the FBI by the time her driver pulls away from the curb. She reaches for Jay's hand and he lets her take it. Ellie calls two more times, each call shorter than the last, but she's finally able to give him a street name, and how she got there. She ran from Cobb the second they were through the courthouse doors. She used the crush of downtown pedestrians as cover and then jumped on the first city bus she saw, too frightened to get off until she was miles and miles from downtown. “I'm scared he's coming back,” she says. “I'm scared, Dad.” It takes an hour for them to find her on a street corner halfway out to Missouri City, hovering in the vestibule of an abandoned medical supply company. He opens the door before the car stops, and she runs to the curb, throwing herself into his arms. They stand for a long time on that street corner, the blue Town Car idling nearby, just holding each other, the front of Jay's shirt soaking up her tears. “I got you,” he says.

They spend
two hours at the police station downtown–Axel standing close by while Ellie is interviewed by two detectives–before Jay is finally allowed to take her home. Cobb is apprehended that afternoon, at a pool hall around the corner from
the address on his driver's license. He's arrested without incident while Jay is across town, getting his daughter settled in at the house. He is loath to ever leave her again. But Ellie, who is leaning into Lonnie on the couch in the den, with her aunt, Evelyn, on the other side of her, swears she'll be okay.

“I won't be long,” he says.

He kisses his kids and walks out the door.

Neal agreed to meet him, but not at his house. He doesn't feel safe there. He doesn't feel safe anywhere anymore, he says. He's at the bar when Jay walks into the Marquis II on Bissonnet, a few blocks from Neal's house. He's drinking a Texas Tea, running the black straw through the soup of ice cubes and liquor. He's not talking much, but Jay came for the answer to only one question. “It's your deal,” he tells Neal. “Your case and your life,” he says, waving off the approaching bartender. This won't take more than a few minutes.

“I can't tell you what to do, not on this one,” he says.

And Neal nods because he understands the logic of it. He went to law school after all. But it doesn't help him one bit. “He used you, Neal.”

“I know,” he says, looking down at his drink, losing interest fast.

He nods, to himself more than anyone else. “Do it,” he says.

Next up:
Allan George Hathorne.

On day five of the trial, and after a lengthy conference in Judge Keppler's chambers, the agenda of which was a single item–a long apology and explanation from Jay, complete with a police report regarding the attempted abduction of his daughter at the hands of a felon–they are back on the record in the matter of
State of Texas v. Neal Patrick Hathorne
. Reese Parker claimed a hardship–regarding her time, not her conscience–as
the reason she could not appear again in court on such short notice, and Jay, who had only one last question for her, gladly accepted an affidavit signed by Ms. Parker, clarifying some confusion she'd had on the stand (and so as not to appear that she had perjured herself). Yes, in addition to her work for the Wolcott campaign, she
was
doing some freelance consulting work with the PAC America's Tomorrow. Yes, she
did
know about the bayou development flyer. And,
yes
, she hired Alicia Nowell and paid her two hundred dollars in cash over the course of a week to paper the flyers all over Pleasantville, which in and of itself was a violation of state campaign laws, since the work was not reported to any governing agency. It lacked the pomp and circumstance of the same being said into a microphone, echoing from the witness stand across the entire city. But it was evidence now. And Jay would take it. Lonnie was in the back of the courtroom, writing everything down. Ellie, thank god, was back in school, in second-period trigonometry.

A.G. walks into the courtroom, hunched over and squinting, kind of, as if he's just stepped out of an after-hours club into the harsh white of daylight, his pockets full of empties and regrets, his legs unsteady beneath him. He keeps looking around the courtroom, as if he's never been inside one before, as if he doesn't know where to look or where to find his son. Neal almost stands when he enters, forgetting himself, and where they are and why. He watches his father walk to the stand. Twice, A.G. asks the bailiff if he's going the right way. He's wearing a black blazer, something out of Rolly's closet that's too tight through the shoulders. The cuffs of his pants drag behind him on the floor. He takes an oath to tell it like it is. Straightening his spine, he adjusts himself in the chair.

His famous hands, they're shaking.

“Morning, Mr. Hathorne.”

“Good morning, Mr. Porter.”

“Mr. Hathorne, do you know the defendant, Neal Hathorne?”

“Yes, sir,” he says, his gaze finally landing on Neal. “He's my son.”

At the defense table, Neal lowers his head. Jay hears a soft exhale. Behind him in the gallery, his grandmother Vivian cries softly. Axel holds his mother's hand. They are the only two Hathornes in court this morning, though the presence of A. G. Hats on the stand has brought out quite a number of surprise guests. Fans, Jay guesses. Young white boys in homemade T-shirts with a bootleg mock-up of the Peacock Records logo on the front. Plus music reporters from the
Chronicle
and the
Times-Picayune
in New Orleans. And a good number of the “original 37,” the families who founded Pleasantville. Arlee Delyvan is here. Jim and Ruby Wainwright. Elma Johnson and her husband. But also Jelly Lopez, who appears to have cut out from work to see this, a piece of his neighborhood's history on display. Jay, facing the witness stand, asks Mr. Hathorne if he's ever gone by a different name, and when he nods and says, “A. G. Hats,” the white boys in the gallery, blues geeks every one of them, nearly break into applause. The stage name is a segue into his career, which is a segue into his current job as a janitor and all-around helper at the Playboy Club in Third Ward–an explanation, if one is needed, as to why a man of his background, from such a well-respected family, is so employed. “I like to be close to the music,” he says on the stand. And Jay nods and walks him right up to the night of Tuesday, November fifth of this year, when Neal walked into his father's club. “He come in a few minutes after eight o'clock that night.”