“I didn’t do what you think I did,” Cynthia says to him finally, what she dragged him all this way to say. “I just want to get that straight right now.” Her voice is shallow, not quite shaking, but damn near. “I didn’t set you up, Jay.”
He’s standing a few feet from her, his back against one of the metal posts of the swing set. He nods in her direction. But it doesn’t mean anything. What she said doesn’t change a thing. “What if you did, Cynthia?” he says. “What if you
She thinks about it for a long time. Then, softly, she says, “Probably not.”
“Well then,” he says. “You see my dilemma.”
“I was a kid, Jay. I was a scared kid.”
“So was I,” he says. “The difference is . . . I was in a jail cell.”
When she looks up again, their eyes meet only briefly. She turns and looks over her shoulder toward a black Lincoln Town Car parked across the street. A driver, in uniform, tips his hat to the mayor. The walk was choreographed, Jay realizes, for them to end up here, for her to have a safe out. She lingers for a few moments by the tree trunk, crunching pine needles underfoot. “You really going to do this thing?” she asks, meaning the lawsuit.
“Yes.”
Cynthia nods.
Before she turns toward the waiting Town Car, before she says her final good-bye, she regards him for a good long while, a faint smile on her lips. She is remembering him too, maybe, remembering Jay Porter at his very best.
When he gets home, Evelyn is the last of the family left at the apartment. She’s looking at the news on channel 2, eating a slice of buttered bread and drinking one of his beers. She nods at Jay and tells him his wife is lying down in the bedroom. He peels off his jacket and tie on his way to her.
Bernie is lying on top of the covers when he walks in.
The air-conditioning unit is shaking in the window.
His wife, somewhere between asleep and awake, lifts her head off a mass of pillows under her neck and calls out a “Hey,” light as a feather blowing across a warm wind. Jay kicks off his shoes and shuts the bedroom door. He crosses the room and lays himself next to her on the bed, still in his work clothes. He buries his nose inside a favorite nook, the space between his wife’s neck and shoulder, which smells milky and sweet. Her breath falls into a soft, whistling key. A few minutes pass in silence.
Jay lies in bed thinking about his father.
As he feels himself start to drift off to sleep, he puts one hand on Bernie’s belly and gets a sudden image of his father’s hand on his mother’s womb, a lifetime ago. His only true contact, their only hello. He tries hard to remember. He tries with all he’s got to recall the sensation from the inside, to remember what he can, in reality, have no way of ever knowing . . . what were his daddy’s hands like? His body jerks across the sheets, fighting the inevita ble slip into darkness. Here, on the edge of sleep, just before the final descent, Jay feels, for the first time in his life, a reassuring weight across his chest, a caress, a man’s touch, a sudden faith in things unseen ...
My thanks go first to my editor, Dawn Davis. Thank you for believing in this book and especially in me as a writer. A very big thank-you to my agent, Richard Abate. This book grew by leaps and bounds because of your candor and insight. Thanks also to Brian Lipson for reading an early draft and pointing me in so many right directions, and to Bob Myman for your friendship and advocacy. Special thanks go to Michelle Satter, Lynn Auerbach, Ken Brecher, and Bob Redford for my summer on the mountain, the lessons of which are with me still. To my father, Gene, thank you for accepting phone calls at all hours to answer my many questions about Houston and the civil rights movement. Thanks also to Argentina James for arranging my tour of the Port of Houston, and to Captain John T. Scardasis for explaining the culture of the longshoremen’s union. To my mother, Sherra, who always gets the first read, thank you for dreaming with me. And a heartfelt thank-you to Mrs. Odell C. Johnson, my earliest inspiration. I also wish to thank my sis ter, Tembi, for her sharp suggestions and her deep and abiding faith in me, and also my brother-in-law, Rosario, for finding the gentlest way to ask me some very tough questions. And I will always owe a debt of gratitude to Julie Ariola for teaching me to hold everything lightly. Likewise, this book would not have been possible without the unyielding support of Cheryl Arutt. Thank you for reminding me to trust myself. Special thanks also go to my daughter, Clara, for waiting until Mommy had at least a first draft before showing your beautiful face. And finally, to my hus band, Karl, who has more patience than any man ought to, there simply aren’t enough ways to say thank you. Your love has been a light in my life, helping me find my way.
ATTICA LOCKE is a screenwriter who has worked in both film and television. A former fellow at the Sundance Institute, she is currently at work on an HBO miniseries about the civil rights movement. A native of Houston, Texas, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
www.atticalocke.com
BLACK WATER RISING. Copyright © 2009 by Attica Locke. All rights reserved under International and Pan- American Copyright Conventions.
