Black Water Rising

He turns and leaves without kissing her good-bye.

He checks the .38 in his glove compartment. It’s in a small leather case underneath his registration papers, the only gun for which he has a permit. It would be illegal to have the .22 in the car or else he might have brought that along too. Reverend Boykins said he thought the gunmen had gone, but there is no way of knowing if they’re coming back, and Jay has no intention of walking into an ambush. The late-night drive is unsettling, the air kind of heavy with the knowledge that this is trouble’s hour. Jay pushes in the car lighter and rolls down his window. He lights a ciga­ rette and thinks about his wife.

She was just a kid when they met, thirteen years old when her father brought her by the courthouse, the day the verdict came down. Jay remembers getting dressed that morning, leaving his cell for the last time, either to go home or to the Walls in Hunstville. And he remembers the judge’s warning. There were to be no outbursts in the courtroom, no matter the verdict. Then, adding his own two cents, the judge said, “I don’t have an ounce of respect for you, boy. The nigra issue is an important one in this country. But you boys goin’ ’bout it the wrong way. And that’s all I’m ’on say on it.”

Jay remembers looking at the jury box, at the black lady in particular, the one who stayed down the street from First Love Antioch Baptist Church. She wouldn’t look at him. She was in black from head to toe, and she had her head down, hands clasped around a wrinkled handkerchief, her lips moving slowly.

She was praying.

Jay threw up right there in the courtroom.

He managed to get his head between his legs, so most of it

spilled out across the floor. Black coffee and some chunks of white bread they’d served him in lockup. Some of the church ladies in the back stood up. So did members of the press. Rever­ end Boykins was sitting behind Jay, with his wife and two daugh­ ters. He put a hand on Jay’s shoulder. Jay remembers turning around. He was shaking his head, trying to say something, ready to make his bargain with God, the Rev as his messenger. But he couldn’t get any words out. He couldn’t speak, for days, it would turn out. He was finally out of speeches.

The Rev whispered in Jay’s ear. He spoke of God and faith. He’s got you, son. He’s not gon’ let you fall.

The judge made them all wait until a maintenance crew could

be located in the building. They lugged buckets and mops into the courtroom, cleaning up Jay’s insides in front of everybody. He was long gone by then, lost in the swamp and stink of his fears, steeling himself against what he thought was inevitable.

But the verdict, when it came back, was not guilty. The judge read it twice, as if he didn’t believe it either. The lady in black, his angel, was weeping. She held her thin, prayerful fingers up to the ceiling, up to the sky and the Lord on the other side, to thank him, as it was clear she didn’t trust her vote on a piece of paper, didn’t trust white folks’ doing. She dabbed at her eyes with an eyelet handkerchief; then, finally, she looked at Jay. Despite the noise in the courtroom, he thought he could hear her heartbeat, soft as a whisper in his ear. She gave him a small nod, just as simple and courteous as if they had passed each other on the street. Then, one by one, the jurors were led out.

He doesn’t remember the faces in the courtroom, doesn’t remember meeting the reverend’s family or his future wife. He doesn’t remember the parting words from the judge. He looked in the gallery for one face, and when he didn’t see it, he was ready to go. He walked out of the courtroom with maybe thirty dollars in his pocket and no place to stay. He walked around the city for hours, and then days. He spent six dollars seeing Beneath the Planet of the Apes twice, eating popcorn for lunch and dinner; he slept in MacGregor Park one night. His third day out of jail he had breakfast at a Wyatt’s cafeteria, eggs and coffee. Then he took the bus to St. Joseph’s Hospital downtown. When the admitting nurse asked what was bothering him, he wrote down on a piece of paper: I’m tired.

The next time he met Bernadine Boykins he was in his last year of law school. She was a senior at the University of Hous­ ton, a school he hardly recognized anymore. By 1977, the stu­ dent population was over 10 percent black, and the dorms were fully integrated. There were an Afro-American studies program and classes in Chicano history. The only activists left on campus were the feminists, white girls who felt entitled to everything.

He’d seen Bernie around the church, times he went by to pay his respects to her father. He thought she was cute, but just a kid. In truth, Evelyn, Bernie’s sister, was probably, at the time, more to his liking. There was something kind of solid about her looks. Jay hadn’t been with a woman in a long time and thought it best to start with one who might not mind taking the lead. To this day, he’s pretty sure that’s what the Rev and Mrs. Boykins had in mind when they invited him for dinner one Sunday; they were trying to set him up with their eldest girl.

But five minutes into the meal, he knew he could never make it with Evelyn, who was pouting about the heat, pouting about her lips, and couldn’t someone pass her a better piece of chicken. After dinner, he took a cigarette on the porch, and Bernie brought him a glass of tea, floating a slice of lemon on top. She sat on the porch steps, pushing her skirt between her knees, and asked him if he’d seen Cooley High, what kind of music he liked, and if he’d ever been roller skating. Then she asked if he’d like to go out with her sometime.

“I’ve had a crush on you since I was thirteen years old,” she said.

He couldn’t explain, even then, why this moment grabbed him so, why it hit him at the knees. It was about the sweetest thing he’d ever heard, offered up with such sincerity, such sim­ plicity. Bernie was so at ease with her feelings, and Jay admired that, was drawn to it even. He took a good long look at her that day. She was nearly twenty by then and shapely, with soft brown eyes and a heart-shaped face that looked up at him, waiting for some answer. He told her he’d have to ask her father. She laughed out loud, showing her long, white teeth.

They dated off and on that summer. She was answering phones at a dental office on the north side of town. He had a car by then and would pick her up sometimes when she got off work. They went to the movies mostly, held hands in the dark. She helped him study for the bar exam, made up flash cards even though she didn’t understand half the terms she was writing on them. And a couple of months into his first job—handling traf­ fic tickets and DWIs at a low-rent shop across the street from a municipal courthouse—Bernie told him to go out on his own if he hated the job so much. “Do your thing,” she said.

He got to thinking that he loved her.

She held him up in ways he had never expected from a woman. So he married her. She moved into his small one-bedroom apart­ ment and never once complained. She loved him in an uncom­ plicated way, not at all weighed down by false expectations. She seemed to understand the limits of his emotional fluency, the things he simply could not, or would not, talk about.

It was a good fit for him. So much had changed in the world in so few years, they were almost of two generations, though he was only seven years older than she was. And he liked it that way. There were things about his past he didn’t want to be reminded of. With Bernie, he could start new. He went along with her friends, made do without any of his own. And over the years, they made a pact, unspoken but as real and present in their mar­ riage as the furniture in their apartment, the bed they slept on every night: she didn’t ask questions. About his trial, where he got those guns, why they never saw his mother at Christmas or Thanksgiving. But lately, the baby coming and all, she seems to want something more from him. He can’t bear to disappoint her, but he won’t be pushed into places he’s not willing to go. That was never a part of the deal.