Black Water Rising

anxiety masked as ill tempera­ ment. Jay closes the lid on the trash can, deciding then and there he won’t tell her about the newspaper article. It’ll only upset her, and for no good reason he can think of. Besides, he’s still hoping it’s nothing.

Chapter 3

Eddie Mae pokes her head into Jay’s office, where he’s been working since seven o’clock this morning. She leans against the door frame, kicking at a piece of carpet that’s coming up on the floor, holding a stack of pink message slips. Her wig is red today. Which means she’s in a bad mood. Or a drinking mood. Or she’s got a date to play dominoes after work. Jay can’t remember which, can’t keep up with Eddie Mae’s changeable temperament. He wants her to leave the messages on the left corner of his desk like he’s taught her to and leave him to his work. He does not want to give her the idea that he’s gon’ stop everything every time she walks into the room. Eddie Mae is cheap labor—no paralegal training and not a day spent in secretarial school—but she’s costly in other ways. She won’t let him alone half the time, always checking up on him and henpecking about what he eats for lunch. She’s a black woman and a grandmother, no matter the tight polyester tops that tug against her chest, and she treats him like a son or a nephew. She seems to sense something in Jay that needs caring for.

“Your father’s on the phone,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

“Mr. Boykins. He’s waiting on line two.”

His father, right.

Jay sets his pencil down. “You find the witness in the Cum­

mings thing?”

“I’m working on it,” she says, scratching at the wig’s scalp,

getting to hers underneath. “I know where she work, but the

dude at the club won’t give me her phone number, and she ain’t

returned none of the messages I left.”

“What club?”

“The Big Dipper, out 45.”

Jay nods, motioning for her to leave the message slips on his

desk.

Then he picks up the line. “Rev.”

“You know I wouldn’t bother you at work unless it was some­

thing,” his father-in-law says straightaway. His voice is hoarse

this morning, overworked and strained. “Son, we got us a big

problem.”

Jay reaches for his pencil, thinking a kid at the church must

have gotten himself in some kind of trouble. A bar fight or joy­

riding or maybe petty theft. One time, a girl, barely sixteen,

knocked the front teeth out of her boyfriend’s mouth. Jay gets

these calls from his father-in-law several times a month, usually

with somebody’s mama crying in the background. He searches for a clean slip of paper to write down the facts, the kid’s name and where they’re holding him, already weighing what a trip to

the station will do to his afternoon schedule.

“You got some time tonight, son? Time we can talk?” Something in the Rev’s tone makes Jay pause. “What’s go­

ing on?”

“I’d rather we talk in person. Can you come by the church

tonight, sometime around seven thirty?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. We’ll see you then.”

Reverend Boykins hangs up, leaving Jay to wonder who we is. He tries to go back to his work, but finds he can’t focus. It’s more than the cryptic call from his father-in-law. He’s

also had trouble putting the newspaper article out of his mind,

the one from yesterday’s paper. Before he left the house this

morning, he actually tucked the newspaper clipping into his

pants pocket because he simply couldn’t bring himself to

throw the thing away. He’s had a few halfhearted thoughts

of phoning the police. But to say what exactly? He doesn’t

know that the gunshots they heard Saturday night have any­

thing to do with the shooting death in the newspaper. And

no matter how hard he tries, he simply can’t picture himself