by Dave Daren
“You’re our lawyer, aren’t you?” he asked as opposed to a standard greeting. The man looked like he needed a pot of coffee, stat.
In the mess of toys behind him, I caught sight of a child with a pink bow in her hair making two Barbies have what looked like a rapt conversation. I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corners of my mouth as I looked back up at James.
“Archer,” I reminded him. “Are you aware of the defamation lawsuit Abraham Knox is leveling against a few residents of the neighborhood?”
I watched as he took a long moment to process what exactly I’d said. James scratched the back of his head and ruffled his thick, dark hair. He looked to be around my own age and just as tired. He opened his mouth to answer but that tapered into a yawn before he could get so much as a sentence out.
“Sorry,” he yawned out again. “That one kept me up all night. But the… the defamation… thing? That’s what was on the news last night, right?”
He gave a quick gesture back to his daughter as she continued to play with her dolls before turning his focus back on me. He leaned his head against the door, as if that would help keep him awake. Even through the grainy screen door, I could see his dark circles.
“Yes, on Channel 6,” I said. “Though, I’m sure the other stations picked it up, too.”
James rubbed the heel of his hand against his eyes as he struggled to understand the purpose of my visit.
“So… what?” he asked. “Are you here to see if he’s suing us, too?”
I appreciated a man that didn’t beat around the bush, and I felt myself nod in appreciation.
“Not quite,” I admitted. “I’m here to see if you’re withdrawing from the case.”
Something seemed to flash across James’ face, and he straightened up.
“Look...” he began with a heavy sigh.
He glanced back at his daughter again before taking a step forward, and as he did so, I took one back. James slipped out of the screen door to stand closer to me.
“I get how important this shit is, I do,” he breathed out and kept his tone even and low, as if his daughter would understand the conversation. “But Marisol and I have Gabby to think about. I heard the stuff they were saying about the people here last night. I know the type of shit men like that say about men like me, and I can’t let that affect Gabby.”
He had the look of a desperate man about him, and when I looked at James and his daughter, I felt the same punch to the gut that I felt when I first met Clara. I swallowed the lump building in my throat and nodded again.
“I get it,” I assured him, “I do. But the things Knox is trying to get away with could hurt Gabby. It already affected you and Marisol once, didn’t it? Two kids in the neighborhood have developed leukemia, and plenty of others have gotten really sick.”
I watched as James’ eyes moved from me to Clara’s house across the street. So, he knew about Emma, then, which meant he knew the sort of things the water pollution could do.
He looked back through the screen door to Gabby as she played on the living room floor. He turned his focus back to me and gave a nervous sigh.
“I know,” he admitted. “I know that. Mari and I are scared shitless. We’ve been using those big jugs of water to bathe her. Hell, a good chunk of our paychecks go to buying the water we’re already paying the city for. I just… I gotta talk to Mari about it. We didn’t have time this morning before her shift.”
He scrubbed his palms over his face again, and I could feel the anxiety pouring off him in waves.
“You’re staying on the case, then?” I asked as I watched him wrestle with whatever emotions were warring inside of him.
James gave a slow nod and exhaled. He looked toward Clara’s house again, and a pained expression crossed his face.
“Yeah, for now, at least,” he replied. “I’ll call if we change our minds. I gotta get back inside, though, so, I’ll... I might talk to you later, I guess?”
And with that James disappeared back inside the house and left a clattering screen door in his wake.
I exhaled a heavy breath of my own as I walked down the front walk and back to the sidewalk that ran in front of the homes. I quickly tapped an added note next to Ramirez’s name on my list. The next house on the list was one over on the same side of the street, and so I started down the sidewalk.
As I walked, I took the time to really look around the area. It was obvious no one had done any sort of maintenance in the neighborhood in some time. The sidewalk had completely narrowed and cracked away in places, leaving rogue patches of grass to take its place. Even in the places where the concrete consistently stretched, it hadn’t been laid properly. Some chunks sat higher than others and left small lips that would trip up any unsuspecting persons.
I rapped on the Terrace residence’s door. I’d only spoken to them once before, but Lindsey and Kevin Terrace and their fourteen-year-old son William who, in the last two years, had developed a skin condition, had eagerly agreed to join our suit during my first canvas of the neighborhood, and I hoped they kept that same energy now. Like the Ramirez residence, no one answered on the first knock.
I didn’t let myself get discouraged and knocked again. Unlike the Ramirez residence, however, no one came to answer on the second knock, or the third, or the fourth, or even the fifth. I couldn’t help the frown that slowly began to creep its way onto my face as I made my way back down the front steps of their home.
Behind me, I heard an ever so faint click, as if someone was latching a lock. The pit in my stomach that had threatened to gape open all morning grew a little wider. I shouldn't have eaten that muffin, and now I was dealing with the repercussions.
I gave a shake of my head, but I couldn’t let this setback bother me. Maybe they’d already spoken to Brody on the phone? Even as I foolishly proposed the idea to myself, I knew the chances of it being true were slimmer than I’d like to acknowledge.
I moved on from the Terrace house with the list of homes on my phone as a guide and spent the next handful of hours crossing out names, adding details, and knocking until my fist ached as I paced around Piney Crest.
Not every house was a bust, and I had to focus on that, as opposed to all the houses that were. Plenty of people answered me, but no one wanted to talk, and when I asked them why it was they were acting so skittish, or if maybe there was a better time to speak, the answers I got were all different, but all unbelievable.
Goddamn Knox and his lawsuit. It was my own fault for diving into the case the way I did, without any sort of regard to who I was going up against, but that didn’t make this turn of events anything less than infuriating.
I finally made it to the last residence left unchecked on my list. I was glad I had remembered to charge my phone the night before, even in my fugue state after I watched the broadcast, or else I’d have been up a creek without a paddle. And around here, I did not want to be in the water too long.
I felt some bit of reassurance that the last name on my list was that of the Harrison residence. Nora had been the first person I’d spoken to on my grand tour of the neighborhood with Clara, and I was foolishly optimistic that she may actually want to speak with me, or at the very least, that she wouldn’t let me stand on her doorstep knocking until my fist bled.
I tucked my phone back into my pocket as I walked up the familiar walkway to the front door. I remembered the quietness with which Nora had spoken last time as she tried to let Alvin rest. I knocked with a gentle touch, just loud enough to be heard without resorting to the sort of desperate pounding I’d felt like using all morning.
I rocked back and forth on my heels as I waited for any signs of life inside the Harrison residence. I reached up and gave another gentle rap on the door. I didn’t see the curtains sway or hear any hushed tones just behind the door to encourage me to stay and knock a third time, but I considered it anyway.
But I didn’t want to risk waking anyone, and so, I dropped my fist from the air and gave a lon
g, weary sigh as I stepped back from the door. To my surprise, it was then that it pulled open.
Whoever had opened the door only left enough room for me to see their eye and a sliver of their frame past the shiny metal chain that still appeared to be locked onto the door.
“Nora?” I questioned slowly as I furrowed my brow. It looked like her, but given how little she’d been willing to open the door, I couldn’t be too certain. My head cocked to the side in mild confusion at the cloak and dagger behavior.
“I can’t talk to you, Archer,” she said without any sort of quiver in her tone. But that didn’t matter because I could still see the flash of fear in her wide, brown eye.
“Nora, are you alright? Is something wrong? Is Alvin okay?” I tried again and stepped closer to the front door.
To my surprise, Nora took a step backward to match my own. The move seemed reflexive, like she hadn’t intended to mirror my action, but now I could see just a bit more of her face. Somehow, she looked worse than the first time I’d seen her.
“Alvin’s fine,” she said in that same low, cautious voice. “But you need to leave.”
The firmness with which she said it nearly frightened me, and I felt my brow furrow as I tried to make sense of her sudden change.
“Are you...?” I tried again and took one more step closer to the front door to try and close a little more of the distance between us.
I tried to remember if the Harrisons’ had been one of the residences on Knox’s chopping block, but I was coming up empty. Nora didn’t retreat any further, though I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. Instead, she stared at me with her wide, sleepless eyes.
“I can’t talk to you, Archer, I already told you that.” she said. “I’m fine, but you need to leave.”
This time, I did catch the faint shake at the tail end of her words. I raised my hands in surrender and took one step back, then another. If she said she was fine, I’d have to respect that, even when I could clearly tell that she wasn’t.
“Nora--” I began, but she promptly cut me off.
“We’re withdrawing from the suit,” she said simply, and the words cut through me like a knife.
I opened my mouth but no sound came out so I closed it and tried again.
“You’re dropping out?” I asked as I tried and failed to wrap my head around what she’d said to me. “But--”
“Life is already hard enough with Alvin sick how he is,” she cut me off again. “We can’t take a potential lawsuit thrown at us, too. I can’t put him through somebody dragging our names through hell and back, because our good names are all that we’ve got left. Our names and this damn house.”
I wanted to ask her a thousand more questions, to try and drive home just how insane it was to pull out of our suit just because of some turbulence. But I didn’t even have the chance.
“Goodbye, Archer, thank you for trying, but I need you to leave,” Nora said, and to punctuate her sentence, she slammed the front door shut. I heard the deadbolt lock as the final blow.
Chapter 7
I walked back to my car with a sense of dejection I couldn’t shake. Even though the blow hurt, only a few residences, the Harrisons’ included, had backed off from the suit. I tried to ignore the fact that I had no idea what sort of consensus Brody might have arranged back at the office.
I sent off a quick text letting him know that he didn’t need to make the trek out to Piney Crest, and that I was heading back. I didn’t include the bad news about the people we’d lost. That didn’t feel like the sort of information I should share over text, not because I was paranoid that somehow Knox had a way of reading my private text messages, but because it felt like the coward’s way out.
My car along the curb was a welcome sight after the last few hours of walking through the foul-smelling neighborhood. I might have been going crazy, but I could swear that Piney Crest was smelling worse and worse with each visit. The thought was not comforting.
I clicked my fob once, then twice, and then slid into the driver’s seat. The extra air fresheners hung over the rearview mirror, the little ones shaped like pine trees you could find at every gas station across the country, and jostled with the shift in weight as I slammed the door shut.
I gave myself a moment to breathe and mourn the loss of headway in the case before I turned my car on and began creeping my way over the potholes and out of Piney Crest.
The drive between the office and the neighborhood stretched on in silence. I didn’t bother turning on the radio because I needed to be lost in my own thoughts for a while. There was always a backup plan if you tried hard enough to look for it, and I had to believe that logic was still true.
I couldn’t let my hopes sink too deep just yet, either, because I didn’t know what a judge would even accept as the proper number of residences for a class action for a neighborhood this size. Maybe we could split the number even further by having each individual file, as opposed to each household as a unit, but that felt too much like splitting hairs, and I couldn’t imagine any judge in their right mind approving a tactic like that.
I glanced out the window as I drove to watch the scenery blur by like strokes from a paintbrush. Texas was beautiful, and while it hadn’t been the reason I’d made the move from Mesa to Crowley nearly a year ago, it had certainly helped keep me here, even when things were looking dire, and they certainly looked a little dire now.
I pulled up along the curb outside the Landon Legal office and gave myself another moment in the parked car to compose myself. I still thought I looked a bit like a mortician in this get-up, and now it felt like I was about to take part in a death march. After I took a deep, and according to my mother supposedly, calming breath, I pushed open the car door and unfurled myself up onto the sidewalk. My legs still ached from having been cramped in the car most of the day before.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and made my way to the front door and didn’t let myself hesitate any longer before I shouldered my way inside.
Not much had changed since I’d left Brody and Evelyn to their own devices. Evelyn sat with her perfect posture at her makeshift desk in the back corner of the room, and Brody had taken up position in my chair at the desk with the receiver of my landline cradled against his ear. The phone nearly disappeared in his large hand.
He straightened when he saw me, but I could tell it was more out of curiosity to the news I carried than shame for having stolen my chair. I’d done everything right by the neighborhood, hadn’t I? At least, I had until Knox came into focus on the scene with his damn defamation suit and more money than God to throw a wrench in our smooth sailing plans.
Evelyn perked her head up as well, and swiveled in her seat to look at me. She took in the look on my face and bored her steely-gray eyes into mine. I shifted uncomfortably at the laser focus and threw myself down into the chair across the desk that Brody had abandoned to avoid continuing Evelyn’s staring contest.
I dragged a palm down my face and let out a heaving sigh as I watched Brody nod, then nod again, and then nod a third time, before he slammed the phone back into the cradle so hard the desk shook. I jumped at the suddenness of the movement and stared at him with wide, questioning eyes.
He rubbed a large hand at his mouth and dislodged a few specks of blueberry muffin from the corner of his lips. I didn’t have the energy to care that he’d gotten blueberry muffin mess all over my desk. Between my lack of sleep and lack of good news, I felt dead on my damn feet.
“I’ll assume the call went poorly,” Evelyn deadpanned.
Neither Brody nor myself looked at her to acknowledge the comment, but she didn’t seem too bothered by this. I think she was more than enough of an audience to appreciate her own jokes, and I think she knew as much herself. Evelyn sighed and gave a shake of her head.
“Well, I can already tell that your last few hours weren’t any better than ours, Archer,” she succinctly summarized. She folded her thin hands along the top of her filing cabinet desk and f
ixed me with a questioning look, even though she hadn’t asked a question.
“You would be correct,” I assured her with another heavy sigh.
“Allow me to add to the misery, then,” Evelyn said. “The judge said we need twenty residences signed on for the class action suit to move forward. Any less, and we are dead in polluted waters.”
She sighed and gave a shake of her head, while Brody looked like his head might explode as his tanned skin turned a mottled, upsetting shade of red. I was marginally concerned that he was going to work himself into some sort of heart attack. Could people force themselves into heart attacks? The thought didn’t exactly fill me with comfort.
“In person, I lost three residences, which puts us at twenty-three left,” I said as I pinched my nose. “Brody, how many did you lose?”
I looked up at him and for the first time since I’d walked back into the office, he looked almost hopeful. Brody cleared his throat and glanced down at his pad.
“Well, I lost three too,” he began with a clear tentativeness in his tone. “And there was someone I just haven’t been able to get in contact with at all. Uh, here.”
Brody took a moment to flip through the pages of the yellow legal pad to his right. Each page was covered in his dark, heavy chicken scrawl. He finally stopped on a page and traced his way down the lines with the capped end of his pen.
“House 1398, the Morrison residence,” he said. “I couldn’t get anyone to pick up the line. Did you have any luck in person?”
I frowned as I lowered myself into thought. I reached into my pocket to pull my phone free and began to scroll through my list of names I’d kept during my increasingly upsetting walk through the neighborhood. But, next to the bullet point that read Morrisons’ 1398 - cancer, I had marked another note. Try to contact later.
“They dodged me, too,” I admitted and looked up at him. “So long as they stay on board, we’re alright. Let’s wait a bit longer before we bother them on the phone again. I don’t want them blocking our damn number.” I didn’t even have the heart to laugh at my own joke.