Black Water Rising

tie all of a sudden. She gives him a cool smile, letting him know that she’s on to him, country girl or not.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” he says.

“You ain’t out here tryin’ to get him to sell his place?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Hmph,” the woman mumbles, studying Jay. He can tell she hates to be wrong about things. “What do you want with Ainsley anyway?”

Jay pointedly ignores the question. “Is there a map somewhere that I can look at?” he asks. “Or maybe you could point me to a gas station.”

“Personally, I wouldn’t listen to a thing that man has to say, but some people are hardheaded, so . . .” She sighs and points out the front windows of the cafe, beneath the gingham cur­ tains. “Take Main back to 219 and head south, like you’re head­ ing to the water. The next exit you see, get off and go to your right. There’s a line of houses out that way, right off the highway. That’s where Ainsley stays. You can’t miss it,” she says. “He’s out by the old mine.”

The exit sign for the Crystal-Smith Salt Company is still by the side of the highway. Its lettering is cheerful, red, white, and blue. And a contrast to the otherwise drab surroundings. There are tufts of weeds growing around the buildings at the salt factory, which Jay can see from the highway. The exit Wanda instructed him to take leads him onto a street called Industry. The factory, or what’s left of it—empty buildings and crabgrass and a couple of shabby-looking trailers—sits to the right. The mine itself, Jay understands, is belowground, beneath the black asphalt he’s rid­ ing on now, deep below the earth’s surface where briny seawater sloshes inside underground caverns and rock salt practically grows on the walls. The salt caverns, or salt domes, as they’re sometimes called, are a natural part of the Texas coastline, where the Gulf and land meet.

Just across the street from the old factory is a neighborhood of modest one-story homes. The houses are older white clap­ board structures with pitched roofs and wooden porches. Jay imagines this is where the first workers at the Crystal-Smith Salt Company settled nearly a hundred years ago, and where Erman Joseph Ainsely has taken his last stand.

Forrester Road is marked by a small street sign that looks like it was peeled off a tin can, rust creeping around the edges. Jay makes a right, taking note of the house numbers, counting down from 63. He passes empty driveway after empty driveway. Number 39 is the second-to-last house on the right, the only one on the whole street with curtains in the windows and grass clippings in the front yard. Jay recognizes the front porch from Ainsley’s picture in the paper. He remembers the American flag and the petunias in the box planter.

Jay takes the .38 from his glove compartment and tucks it into his waistband at the small of his back, pulling down his suit jacket to cover the bulge. The window above the box planter is cracked open. Jay hears a television playing loudly inside the house, tuned to a game show, if he had to guess by the constant stream of canned applause. There are pale yellow curtains in the front window and a few oddly shaped tomatoes or apples resting on the windowsill. A Chevy pickup at least fifteen years old sits in the driveway, next to a station wagon. The homey feel of the place doesn’t sit right with Jay. For some reason it makes him uneasy. He wants to get this over with.

Standing on the front porch, Jay wipes his slick palms on his pants legs, then pulls back the screen door, holding it open with his foot. He knocks on the front door, twice. Through a glass window cut in the wood, Jay tries to get a glimpse inside the house, cupping his hands against the glare of the South Texas sun and pressing his face against the glass.

On the other side, he sees a pair of eyeballs staring back at him.

Jay, startled, pulls back from the window. The screen door slips from behind his foot and slams hard against the door frame. Then the door to 39 Forrester opens. From behind the mesh wire of the screen door, Erman Joseph Ainsley pulls a baseball cap low over his weathered forehead, a hood over his cool blue eyes. He stares at Jay a long, long time, one hand on his hip, the other leaned up against the wooden door frame. Jay can hear a television behind him. Wink Martindale is calling for another X on the board. Ainsley keeps his hand on the door, protecting his property, his little piece of something in this world.

“Who are you?” His voice is phlegmy, moist with age.

“My name is Jay Porter.” He waits to see if the old man recog­ nizes the name. “I’m an attorney, Mr. Ainsley, from Houston.”

The old man moves in for a closer look, coming so close to the screen door that the bill of his baseball cap makes a line of indentation into the netted mesh. He narrows his blue eyes in Jay’s direction. “A colored lawyer?” he asks.

Because it’s the easiest answer and because he doesn’t have time to rehash the entire civil rights movement on this man’s front porch, Jay says, “Yes.”

The old man nods, as if this is perfectly acceptable to him.

He pushes the screen door open in a wide arc, opening the house to Jay. “Well, come on then,” he says. “I guess you’re as good as any other.”

He turns then, motioning for Jay to follow, before disappear­ ing into the house.

The darkness inside is disorienting. It takes a frightening amount of time for Jay’s eyes to adjust. He can make out Ains­ ley’s shadow moving through the house, but little else. He doesn’t know where he is or what the old man has in store for him. Jay, on instinct, reaches for the .38 at his waist. He walks down a long hallway, wandering into the blue light of a television set. It’s streaming in from a nearby room where, to Jay’s surprise, a woman sits in a seashell-scooped armchair, a pile of yarn in her lap. She glances up from her knitting needles, studying Jay over the half-moons of her reading glasses. He angles the gun in his hand so that it hides in the shadows behind his back. Whatever she makes of Jay, this stranger in her home, her expression is impassive, or uninterested. She nods her head to the left. “He’s in the kitchen.”

The applause on the television reaches a fevered pitch.

The woman goes back to her knitting.

Jay backs into the hallway, sliding his hand along the wall, feeling his way around to the other side of the house. In the kitchen, he finds Ainsley standing in front of the open door to the refrigerator. “I guess you want some water, a glass of tea or something,” the old man says.

The air in the kitchen is thick and un-air-conditioned. The room smells of Mentholatum and vanilla extract. There’s a can of Postum resting on top of at least a week’s worth of newspa­ pers, spread out across an oval- shaped Formica table.

“I’m fine,” Jay says, hanging in the doorway.

The old man shrugs.