Black Water Rising

single hotel that served workers who came from as far as

Beaumont and Port Arthur to work two- and three-day

shifts at the mine. The hotel has since closed. Two small

cafes on High Point’s Main Street are also considering

closing.

“It just ain’t enough people here no more,” says Wanda

Beasley, a woman in her early fifties who favors hot pink

jogging suits and Keds sneakers. She’s been running her father’s restaurant, the Hot Pot, for twenty years now. “I’ve

never seen it this bad.”

Most of the houses in Mr. Ainsley’s modest neighbor­

hood are boarded up. Ainsley’s newest beef is with the

real estate developers who are canvassing the town and

buying up acres and acres of residential property. “If

somebody comes around offering me some money, you

can believe I’m gonna take it and get the hell out of here,”

says one resident in between bites of Wanda’s “famous”

Frito pie.

It’s this lack of town loyalty that gets under Ainsley’s

skin.

“They sold out,” he says.

His crusade started with the local city council, then his

state representative, then his congressman—writing

letters, calling their offices incessantly, demanding help for

his struggling town—but these days Ainsley directs almost

as much of his energy toward his own neighbors. Two or

three days a week, he stands in front of Wanda’s place and

passes out flyers, warning people against talking to any real

estate folks from Houston.

Some people in the community consider him a menace.

He’s being blamed for a rash of strange, late-night phone

calls in town—lots of heavy breathing and abrupt hangups. A number of townsfolk think that Ainsley is making

the calls to scare the residents he feels are contributing

to the problem. But when presented with the accusation,

Ainsley responded with a single harsh word, “Hogwash.”

He doesn’t seem to care that he’s alienating the very

people he claims to be trying to help. He just wants the

world to know what’s going on in High Point. From his

personal Rolodex, Ainsley offered this reporter the name and home addresses of the former owners of the CrystalSmith Salt Co., as well as the name of a real estate agent representing the Stardale Development Company, based in Houston, which has already bought twenty homes in High Point. Pat Crystal and Leslie Smith offered a writ­ ten statement thanking Mr. Ainsley for his dedication and years of service to their company, adding that the closing of the salt mine was simply an economic decision. Elise Linsey, the real estate agent, could not be reached for comment.

Through the floorboards, Jay hears Mr. Johnson’s television set come on.

A few seconds later, he hears the opening theme song to AM Magazine, a locally produced morning news show, which his neighbor often listens to at full volume. The song means it’s half past six. Jay is still drunk. In a minute, he will get up, make a pot of strong coffee, and call his wife. For now, he remains sunk into the couch, staring at the article.

He doesn’t know which is more interesting. The fact that Elise Linsey was, at one point, working for a well- financed real estate development company. Or the byline at the top of the page. The name catches his attention right away. It’s familiar to him even before he can exactly place where he’s seen it.

When it finally comes to him, the name, it pushes him up out of his seat.

Because the man who wrote the article about Erman Joseph Ainsley and the closed salt mine is the same man who left the note for Elise Linsey at her doorstep—the note that Jay found by chance, days before her arraignment, before her court case had even made the evening news.