Black Water Rising

onto the boat’s deck.

Jay is bent over, his hands on his knees, trying to line up one breath after another, trying not to pass out. Out of the corner of his eye, he gets the first good look at the woman he carried across the bayou, the life he’s just saved.

She’s white and filthy.

There’s black dirt coating her skin, dead leaves clinging to her arms. She’s terrified, shaking, staring at a room full of black faces, each of whom is staring back at her. The boat’s cabin is still and quiet except for the AC unit buzzing in the window and the drops of water raining off their bodies, hers and Jay’s.

“He follow you?”

It’s his first question, before her name, before he asks if she’s okay.

She can’t, or won’t, speak. She sits on the edge of one of the folding chairs at the table, her teeth chattering, blue and yel­ low balloons swaying incongruously over her head. Bernie, in the other seat, reaches across the table for a stack of wrinkled paper napkins. She offers them to the stranger, who is soaking wet. But the woman won’t let go of her purse long enough to take one.

“Are you okay?” Bernie asks gently.

Jay’s eyes skim the woman’s body, her arms, her legs, her face.

She has not been shot, he sees right away. The skin beneath her neck is red and swollen, but Jay can’t be sure if that was his doing—when he grabbed her in the water—or someone else’s. Other than that, there isn’t a scratch on her. She looks up, aware that Jay is watching her, and tightens the grip on her purse, as if she half- expects him to make a clean snatch and run away with it. He senses this white woman is afraid of him. He ignores the insult, stuffing his rising anger, an emotion that will in no way serve him.

“Where is he?” he asks.

Still she doesn’t speak.

“Where is he?” Jay asks again, harder this time.

“I don’t know,” she says, opening her mouth for the first time, her voice sweet but raw, like a rusty church bell swinging on its hinge. “I ran, I just ran.”

Jay, still thinking there’s a gun somewhere close by, turns to the old man in the baseball cap. “Start the boat,” he orders the captain. “Now.”

The old man slips through the cabin door, and a few moments later, Jay hears the engine start. He turns back to the woman. “What happened to you?”

She lowers her eyes, her face taking on a hot, crimson color. She is too shamed, it seems, to look him in the eye. “He attack you?”

“Jay,” Bernie says softly. She shakes her head at her husband, a silent suggestion that whatever went on behind those trees, maybe this woman, terrified and shaking, is not ready to say it out loud, in mixed company no less. Jay nods, backing off, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the stranger. She lost her shoes some­ where in the water, but Jay can tell by the cut and fabric of her dress that it isn’t cheap. She’s also missing an earring. Its twin is round and gold with a diamond in the center. There’s a diamond on her ring finger too—right hand, not left—a rock three times bigger than the one Bernie is wearing. Her purse, the one she won’t let go of, has little G’s printed all over it. It’s Italian, Jay knows, like the ones those rich insurance company lawyers carry into the courtroom.

Eyeing the clothes and the rock, Jay asks, “Where were you?”

“Excuse me?” the woman says, a surprising edge in her voice.

“Where were you coming from?”

She stares at him blankly, as if she doesn’t understand the question, but Jay catches an unmistakable flash of recognition in her copper-colored eyes. He thinks she knows exactly what he’s asking: what was a woman like you doing in a neighborhood like this, ’round about midnight, alone?

She cuts her eyes away from Jay, turning to Bernie instead. “Is there a washroom I can use?”

Bernie points to a swinging door across the room. It stops short of the floor, offering little privacy except for a small painted sign that says occupied, a smiley face drawn inside the O. Bernie offers the paper napkins again. The woman is slow to move, her body stiff, like a broken doll, held together at this late hour by sheer will, as if she’s afraid that any tiny motion might break her in two. And she won’t let go of her purse. Bernie reaches for the handbag, as if to set it on the table for the woman. But the move startles her. She lets out a small cry in protest, her eyes alight with a kind of panic. Bernie lets go of the purse instantly, and the bag tumbles from both their hands. They all watch as it falls onto the floor, landing with surprising softness. Its mouth open to the room, the purse, Jay sees, is empty. It contains nothing, not a lipstick case or a book of matches, not even house keys or a few coins. Like her missing shoes and earring, it seems the contents of the woman’s purse were lost somewhere in the bayou. Lost, or dumped, he thinks, the word occurring to him unexpectedly, lodging itself stubbornly in the back of his mind, like a sharp pebble in his shoe.

Bernie and the woman reach for the purse at the same time.

“Don’t touch it,” Jay blurts. “Don’t touch a thing.”

Just leave it alone, he thinks.

The woman picks up her bag. She stands, turning her back to them, and slips behind the bathroom door. Jay can hear the metal latch catch on the other side. The old man is now lean­ ing against the cabin door, smoking another cigarette, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He nods toward the white woman, her legs showing beneath the bathroom door, then looks at Jay and shrugs. “Ain’t nothing to do now,” he says. “Just ride her on in, I guess.” Jay watches her in the rearview mirror.

She’s in the backseat, eyes closed, turning her diamond ring over and over, fingering the icy stone as if it were a talisman or a rosary, something to bring luck or a promise of redemption. They’re only a few blocks from the central station. They ride in silence, the stranger in the back and Bernie in the front passen­ ger seat. Jay keeps the Buick Skylark at an even thirty-five miles an hour, careful not to draw any undue attention. He’s keenly aware of the irony, his fear of being stopped by cops on his way to a police station. But driving a strange white woman, whose name he never got, at this time of night, in this city, makes him edgy, cautious. He wouldn’t have offered to drive her at all if Bernie hadn’t insisted. His clothes are still wet with the stink of the bayou.