Black Water Rising

Traffic picks up after the I-45/610 split.

Jay puts on his right-turn signal, wanting to ease over in time for the 59 exit that’ll take him to Fifth Ward and Bernie back to her father’s church, where she was typing the programs for Sunday’s service when he picked her up before the interview. He looks in his rearview mirror, searching for an opening in the next lane. The Native Houstonian is behind him now, one lane over. Jay waits for the truck to pass, then moves over to the right lane, pulling right in front of a black late-model Ford. He studies the car in his rearview mirror.

At first he can’t make sense of it, why the sight makes him so ill at ease.

Then he remembers the strip club’s parking lot.

There was a Ford LTD, black like this one, parked next to him. And now here’s one again, some fifteen miles down the freeway, riding right behind him.

Jay rolls down the driver-side window, sending a hot gust of exhaust into the car. He adjusts the side-view mirror, pivoting the glass just so, until he can, through smoke and freeway dust, make out a rough image of the Ford’s driver: a white man wear­ ing sunglasses and a tie, with close-cropped hair. The driver is smoking a cigarette, which he, just then, throws out of his win­ dow. Without signaling, the man abruptly changes lanes, jump­ ing out from behind Jay and into the next lane over, cutting off a blue station wagon in the process. As the Ford passes Jay on the left, the driver turns in his direction, looking right into the car, looking right at Jay. It’s no more than a few seconds, but it’s just long enough to anchor the feeling in Jay’s gut: someone is tailing him.

As the freeway splits, concrete parting ways, the black Ford continues on 45 North as Jay veers right onto the exit ramp for Highway 59. He tries to make out the Ford’s license plate num­ ber, not watching where he’s going. He almost rear-ends the car in front of him. Bernie puts her hand on the dash, bracing her­ self. She turns and looks at her husband, the sweat coming down his face. “Roll up the window, would you, Jay? It’s got to be at least ninety degrees outside.”

Jay does as he’s told, and it’s suddenly quiet in the car again.

“What is the matter with you anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

Bernie snaps off the radio. “You been acting funny, Jay, for days.”

This would be his shot, he realizes. His chance for a confes­ sion, to tell it all: the article in the paper, his trip to the crime scene, and his fears about being connected to a murder. But he doesn’t mention a word of it. “It’s just work, B.”

He reaches over and pats her knee. Bernie looks down at his hand as if someone had laid a cold fish in her lap. She lifts the hand, returning it to its owner, then turns and stares out the window on her side, watching the cars in the next lane. There’s something she wants to say to him, and he can tell she’s search­ ing for the right tone. “You don’t talk a lot, Jay,” she starts. “I knew that when I married you. You don’t talk about your mother, your father, and you sure won’t talk about your sister.” She sighs, the sound a kind of sad whistle through her front teeth. “But it’s six years now, Jay, you and me. I guess I thought you’d have let me in by now, that’s all.”

She turns the radio back on, lets the music fill the space between them.

“I have a doctor’s appointment on Friday,” she says finally. “Can you take me or should I ask Evelyn?”

“I’ll take you,” he says.

“Fine.”

The rest of the ride back is stiff.

He drops Bernie off in front of her father’s church, but doesn’t go inside. He takes surface streets back to his office, checking his rearview mirror every few seconds. He thinks of the black Ford and the guy behind the wheel. White, early forties maybe. A suit and tie, sunglasses, and close-cropped hair. In a late-model American sedan. A good description of a cop if he’s ever heard one.

Back on West Gray, near his office, Jay drives around the block two times before going inside. He checks every car in the alley out behind his building. There’s no sign of a black Ford, and he starts to seriously consider that he made the whole thing up, that he’s seeing things, his old paranoia flaring up again. He doesn’t trust his mind the way he used to, not the way he did when he was young, so sure of everything. The car in the club’s parking lot. It was black, yeah. But was it a Ford? He only looked at it for maybe a couple of seconds. It could have been an Oldsmobile or even a Cadillac. And the guy driving the Ford, Jay would have remembered him inside the Big Dipper. White men like that, the ones who look like cops or feds, he never forgets. He can’t afford to. There’s no way that guy was in the club with him. That much he’s sure of.

He makes his way into his office, reminding himself that he’s done nothing wrong. He heads straight for his desk, ignoring the pink message slips in Eddie Mae’s rhinestone-covered hand, and makes a cursory effort to tackle the papers on his desk. But the words blur on the page. His eyes are no good today. He feels another headache coming on, and, because there is no other rem­ edy at hand, he takes two swigs from the open bottle of PeptoBismol in his desk. Wanting something stronger, he opens a pack of Newports hiding in the back of the drawer. He lights the last cigarette in the pack, right there at his desk, kicking the door to his office closed when Eddie Mae starts coughing in the hall.

He buys another pack on the way home, stopping at a filling station on Almeda. He’s got half a tank as it is, but the prices at this Shell station are a good ten cents a gallon cheaper than the PetroCole by his house. Jay leaves the nozzle hanging out of the Buick and goes inside to pay: $7 on number 2, a pack of Newports, and a carton of milk because Bernie called him at the office asking if he wanted macaroni and cheese for dinner. He’s walking back to his car when he sees a black Ford LTD parked across the street. Jay stops cold in the middle of the gas station’s parking lot, feeling the milk cool against his side, the paper bag wet and soft with condensation. There’s no one behind the wheel of the Ford. Jay looks to his left and right, scanning the faces in the parking lot, looking for a white man, early forties, suit and tie, close-cropped hair. He sets the milk on the roof of his car and crosses Almeda on foot, wanting a look at the Ford’s license plate: texas. klr 592.

There’s no city seal on the vehicle, nothing to mark it as offi­ cial.

Jay walks along the side of the car, peering through the win­ dows. There are paper cups and fast-food bags on the floorboards and a tape recorder on the front seat, next to a legal pad. Pressing the sides of his palms to the glass to shield the late-afternoon sun, Jay tries to make out the tightly coiled handwriting.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Jay turns and finds himself face-to-face with a large black man who’s carrying a greasy take-out bag that smells of fried chicken and mustard greens.