Black Water Rising

says contritely. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

“I know,” she says, carrying the plates to the kitchen sink. Kwame starts for the front door. He stops once and turns to

Jay. “People look up to you, man. Always have. Hell if I know

why. But people listen to you. They trust you, Jay,” he says. “I’m

not sure you always see that.” He shoves his hands into the pock­

ets of his gray carpenter’s pants. “I just thought you might want

to help.” He nods good night to Bernie, then sees himself out.

They’re in bed by seven thirty, both exhausted by a litany of things the other doesn’t understand. Jay finally got the thermo­ stat down to an insanely expensive seventy degrees, and Bernie takes in the cool air like a sedative. She can sleep only on her right side these days, so they’ve switched their usual sleeping positions. Jay presses into Bernie’s backside, still in his trousers, too tired to fully undress. He lays a hand on her belly and feels a faint swishing beneath the skin, the timid movements of a new­ comer. He rubs his wife’s stomach, which is tight as a drum. He taps his fingers on her belly. It’s just a hello. I’m here. I got you.

Bernie cups his hand in hers. “If you want to do this thing with Kwame.”

“I don’t.”

“If you want to do anything, Jay, that’s all you. Don’t put it on me. I’m not the one trying to stop you.”

“I know,” he says.

“Do your thing,” she says, her voice slowing down to a sleepy crawl.

Chapter 17

On the first full day of the longshoremen’s strike, Jay wakes up to the smell of rain. The ashy black clouds outside his bedroom window threaten to split wide open, to bury the city beneath an angry deluge. He manages to get into the office before the first drops fall. But by midmorning it’s coming down so hard that he and Eddie Mae leave their desks and go into the waiting area to watch the summer storm through the front windows. The lights in the office flicker a couple of times, and Eddie Mae goes to look for some batteries for a flashlight. Jay keeps his post by the windows, watching the rain dancing in the wind, like sheets blowing on a line. He used to love storms like this as a kid. He and his sister would make jelly sandwiches and lie on the floor in the den to watch Howdy Doody all day or catch a couple of Roy Rogers westerns back-to-back. Sometimes on stormy days, their mother would make them tomato soup or grits with but­ ter and sugar. She would teach them to play hearts or bid whist. She could be like that some days, sweet and attentive, when their stepfather wasn’t around. She could make you feel like you were really something.

Jay pulls himself away from the windows long enough to take a call from Dana Moreland, the hooker. “You’re a hard man to get a hold of,” she says right away. “What’s the deal on this thing anyway? I gotta know, ASAP. I got some personal things going on, and I need to know how much I can expect out of this.”

Jay doesn’t mention the $7,500. “Let’s just be patient for now,” he says. “And see how this thing plays out in the next week or so.”

Dana makes a hmph sound under her breath.

“Remember, if you get nothing, I get nothing,” he says.

“I’m not taking nothing. That’s not even in the cards, baby.”

Eddie Mae pokes her head into the office. Jay sits up in his chair, thinking it’s Rolly Snow on the other line. He told Eddie Mae first thing this morning to put Rolly through immediately, the moment he calls. Jay is still waiting on some word about Elise Linsey. But Eddie Mae is in the doorway to tell him that his father is in the waiting room. Jay leans back in his chair and looks into the other room where Reverend Boykins is standing by the door, shaking rain off his coat.

His father. Right.

The hooker is going on and on about money she owes to some dude who stays down in Corpus, something about him fixing the carburetor on her truck and paying her rent last month, plus she wants to buy shares of a little oil-and-gas outfit down south or maybe get into the real estate game. This is, after all, her big break. “Dana, let’s just get through this next week, okay?” He hangs up the phone.

To Jay’s surprise, his father-in-law is not alone. Darren Hayworth and his father shuffle in behind Reverend Boykins. All three men are slick with rain. Reverend Boykins plops into the only open chair. Winded, he pulls a monogrammed handker­ chief from his suit-coat pocket and dabs at his face.

The elder Hayworth unzips the top half of his school district uniform, and it occurs to Jay that he took off from work to be here. From inside his uniform, Mr. Hayworth pulls out the front page of today’s Houston Chronicle. The paper is folded in thirds and dark in spots where rainwater soaked through his clothes.

“We saw it this morning,” he says.

Jay looks at the paper, his eyes sweeping across the main head­ line: “Dockworkers Walk.” Underneath there’s a picture from yesterday evening’s press conference, the dockworkers and rep­ resentatives from OCAW standing together.

Mr. Hayworth turns to Darren. He nods his head in Jay’s direction, nudging his son to say something. Darren, always less spirited in the presence of his father, shuffles his feet a few steps forward. With his good arm, he points to a face on the bottom half of the page. The newspaper photo is smudged with finger­ prints, the ink getting pulled in every which direction, sweat and rain blurring the picture. Still, Jay can make out the image of a white man with puffy, pockmarked skin and oversize glasses. His sideburns are long and curling at the ends. The picture is accompanying a substory about the OCAW vote and its history of labor solidarity. The caption identifies the man as Carlisle Minty, Vice President, OCAW, Local 180. “That’s him,” Dar­ ren says.

“Who?”

“The one in the truck the night I got jumped. He was just sit­ ting there watching them beat me, ordering them to do it.” Jay reads the caption again. OCAW. Vice President. “Are you sure?”

“If my boy says it’s him then that’s all I need to know,” the elder Hayworth says, folding his arms across his chest.