Company engineers could come up with no cause. Wooten’s guess—that there was a flaw in the surge suppressor located a few feet below ground—proved uncharacteristically mistaken when it was found to have been knocked out wholly intact. The problem had to be deeper. As a precaution, he flooded the pipes around the blown lamp with polybenzenoid swellants, figuring that would effectively seal any leaking jute-and-rubber gaskets. Everyone thought that was that until, two weeks later, there was a second explosion, this one over a mile from the first. It was bad, sending a shard of glass inches past the face of a passing jogger. Once again, it was Wooten who put out the fire. And once again, the postmortem found nothing wrong, even after they dug up the light with a backhoe and shipped it to the forger.
Wooten began to suspect that the whole story wasn’t being told. Having worked around natural gas since he was fifteen, he knew there was no way those lamps would blow unless there was a structural problem. His suspicions had been reinforced by the next two explosions. Still no injuries or property damage, though he knew that was just a matter of time. The experts continued to profess mystification at the cause. The latest theory had come from some egghead in Chicago who claimed that the explosions resulted not from any technical defect but rather from a flaw in the system’s overall design, a theoretical anomaly in the distribution of pressure that caused random, unpredictable surges which no suppressor could control. The upshot being there was nothing to do but close down the whole damned deal. For good. But this would have left the city’s streets in darkness, an unacceptable situation, especially given the recent trouble. Besides, nobody wanted to admit there was a flaw in Barnaby’s design. So Savage had simply decided on a strategy of containment, hoping the thing would sort itself out.
Wooten remained skeptical. All this systems analysis seemed like so much hot air to him. If there was an anomaly it was in the lamp’s construction. Or maybe the piping. The thing to do was roll up your sleeves and put some tools on the problem. When he mentioned his suspicions to Austin he’d been told that there was no way the company was going to dig up six thousand lamps without hard proof. For now, the main thing was to keep it out of the press. Wooten was to handle all flame-outs personally. The fire department would be contacted only as a last resort. After all, EarthWorks still had Phases III and IV to complete. Nobody wanted potential buyers to think they were relocating to some latter-day Vesuvius.
Today’s fire proved identical to the others. That wagging tail of flame, the loose circle of citizens. Wooten grabbed the screwdriver he now kept on his dash. People made way for him with satisfied murmurs. This was the man. As he opened the hatch he could feel the erratic flow through the stem, two-second pulses that rattled the iron. Waves of heat washed over him, raising a sudden sweat on his back. He finally levered off the panel and worked the stopcock. The flame vanished with a gasp. After double-checking that there were no leaks, he stood and looked for a homeowner to reassure. His eyes fell instead on the unwelcome sight of Sheriff Ralph Chones trudging up the lawn. He walked in his usual hunched manner, as if his sizeable gut were slowly pulling him over. He wore a bright orange hunting vest over his uniform. A plastic coffee stirrer dangled from his mouth. He stared at the smoldering gaslight for a long moment before turning to Wooten.
“What’s that now, six?” he asked without preamble.
The lamp’s frame was ticking with the settling heat.
“Five.”
Chones shot Wooten a quick look, as if he wasn’t altogether convinced the foreman had his facts right. Wooten felt a quick pulse of annoyance. Though his relations with Chones were cordial, the sheriff always managed to let Wooten know that he didn’t necessarily take him all that seriously. There was a moment’s interlude that neither man seemed willing to break. The sound of an approaching siren finally did it for them.
“That’ll be the water truck,” Chones said, moving the stirrer through his mouth.
“Are they really necessary? It’s under control.”
“They were called,” Chones said, his voice flat.
Wooten stared at the sheriff, who wouldn’t meet his eye. The first shoots of gin blossoms colored his nose.
“But there’s no need for them now. Wouldn’t they be better off back at the station in case there’s a real emergency?”
Chones shot him another of those quick looks, this one suggesting impertinence. Wooten’s annoyance now verged on anger. This was ridiculous. If the fire department came then there would be a report. The press would hear.
“Come on, Sheriff,” Wooten said. “Give me a break.”
Chones raised his eyebrows, an inscrutable gesture he seemed happy to let stand. The siren drew closer. Homeowners watched. Wooten realized he couldn’t stop this on his own. There was only one thing to do, much as he hated to do it.
“Look, you want me to call Austin so you guys can sort this out?”
The triumphant expression on Chones’s face collapsed. He looked down at his feet, where the toe of his polished shoe began to worry the edge of a sod square.
“Nah,” he said finally. “Don’t bother Swope. Not on his birthday.”
Wooten smiled obligingly at the remark, though Chones was already walking back toward his prowler. Wooten watched him make the call. Ten seconds later the siren stopped. Wooten raised his hand in thanks. But Chones never looked back. He just drove off, leaving Wooten standing there, his big hand poised in the air.
It was after four by the time he got home. No meat loaf, no game, no beer. And definitely no nap. He tried to call Austin but the line was busy.
No matter—he’d tell him about the gaslight at the party. He took a long hot shower after that, letting the scalding water pound against the knotted muscles of his shoulders and neck. As he soaked he mulled over his discussion with Chones. Wooten knew the type only too well. Black man could tell them a lion was about to bite their ass and they’d look at him like he’d been at the Ripple. And then when they got bit they’d get mad at him for not telling them right. He’d hated invoking Swope’s name, though he knew that Chones, set to be named the city’s first public safety director come September, would do anything Swope asked. Besides, it wasn’t Wooten’s pride that was important. It was the company and the city.
A sudden, wicked thought came to Wooten. What if Holmes was right and Savage really did offer him the manager’s job? That first meeting with Chones after the announcement sure would be nice. Oh, he’d still offer him the job in the end. When all was said and done, Chones was an able lawman. But not until he made the man sweat a bit. Wooten savored the thought like he would a fine cigar, knowing that there was only a few minutes of sweetness in it. Still, it was nice to think.
A second thought hit him as he stepped out of the shower, something he hadn’t considered up to now. Something that made that fleeting pipe dream of revenge seem a lot more real. What if they had unexpectedly big plans for Austin as well? What if they were moving him all the way up to headquarters, leapfrogging him into a vice-presidential slot? That would leave Newton manager wide open. Maybe the rumor had been right. That would be perfect. A fitting reward for them both. He was tempted to call his friend right now and share his happy suspicions. It was, after all, his birthday. But he knew that to defy Savage was wrong, especially at such a delicate time. It would be foolish to jeopardize things by running his mouth. The conversation with Austin would have to wait.
Ardelia was at the sink when he came out of the shower. She was dressed in a bra and half-slip, arranging her face in front of the big mirror. He hadn’t told her about Savage’s call, either. He’d been waiting for the right moment. Wooten rode a cloud of steam toward her, placing his hands around her waist and nestling into the side of her neck.
“Mmmm,” she sang, closing her eyes and moving back into him. “You get your crisis sorted out?”
“Of course.”
“And how about the cake? Did you remember to call Sally?”
“Arrived in good shape.”<
br />
“You boys with your toys,” she said with mock disapproval.
“He’ll love it.”
“Of course he will,” she said. “It panders to his sense of grandiosity.”
“Not after I get through cutting it.”
“Joel’s back,” she said more somberly.
Wooten pulled away. Their eyes met through the mirror’s hazy mediation.
“Earl, you’ve been putting this off long enough.”
He turned and walked to the bed, where she’d laid out his clothes. After much discussion he’d decided on a navy blue blazer and gray slacks. White shirt, no tie. Ardelia would wear the sapphire dress she looked so fine in. Last year he’d felt so loud in his pea-green safari suit, even though the white men all dressed like Sonny Bono.
“Can’t it wait?” he asked helplessly.
“Earl, that boy is going to be in college in two months. A good school where every mother’s son is smart as a whip. And the last thing in the world I want him to be doing is sitting up there mooning over Susan Truax when he should be thinking E. comp and trig.”
She turned, her dander up.
“I mean, do you think those professors aren’t going to have their eyes on him? You think they’re going to say, Oh, that’s all right, son, we know you got a trashy—”
“Ardelia …”
“I’m sorry but yes, sweet as she is, trashy little honey back there in Maryland, so what we’ll do is grade you on a curve, young Mr. Wooten. Don’t worry about getting a sixty on that quiz, we’ll give you a B anyway, because we always make allowances for black boys coming in here dreaming about their blond girlfriends. Puh-leeze. And what if he meets some girl there who makes sounds a bit more sophisticated than popping gum? Black, white, whatever. What’s he going to say? Sorry, but my heart belongs to the girl who works at A & P?”
Wooten walked slowly across the room and silenced her with a kiss.
“What?” she asked as he pulled away.
“You are without doubt the biggest snob I know. You make Sally Swope look like Minnie Pearl.”
“I just want the best for Joel. You know that.”
“Of course I know that.”
Ardelia was staring at him, her eyebrows aloft in expectation.
“All right,” he said in his most beleaguered voice. “I’ll talk to him.”
Wooten took his time getting dressed. He was none too happy about this talk with Joel, especially after the fight they’d had on Tuesday night. It had come after a long day, what with the fish kill and his confrontation with Vota. And then, as if to add insult to injury, Ardelia placed yet another no-fat dinner in front of him when he finally made it to the table. As he poked at the steamed broccoli and poached cod, Joel mentioned something about Muhammad Ali. Wooten, his temper as foul as the water in Lake Newton, spoke before thinking.
“You mean Cassius Clay?” he asked, a taunt in his voice.
“I mean Muhammad Ali,” Joel answered sharply, taking up the challenge.
“Muhammad Ali. Spare me.”
“Boys, please,” Ardelia said wearily. “He’s just a prizefighter.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to call him,” Joel insisted.
“Says who? Not his mother and father.”
“Says the honorable Elijah Muhammad.”
“The honorable,” Wooten scoffed. “Tell you what. I could call myself Ali Baba and I’d still be me. Give me the honorable Joe Frazier any day.”
“You can have him,” Joel said. “Gorilla.”
Ardelia stiffened. The girls grew suddenly quiet.
“Young man,” Ardelia said, her voice vice-principal sharp.
Wooten put down his fork and pointed at his son.
“Let me tell you about Joe Frazier. The man works. He doesn’t run his mouth and call himself fancy names. Doesn’t hang around with a bunch of Chicago charlatans who think they’re in OPEC.”
“Blood pressure, Earl …” Ardelia sang.
But he continued: “Man does a job. Round one through fifteen. If he wins he takes his money. If he gets whupped he takes that money too. If that makes him a gorilla, well …”
Wooten caught himself when he saw the wounded look in Joel’s eyes. He realized that he didn’t want to fight with his son. Not about something as paltry as this.
“You’ve got to respect a man like that,” he said, his voice trailing off.
Since then, they hadn’t said two words to each other. Which was wrong, especially since Joel would be leaving home in just a few months. He had no real quarrel with his son. Joel was a good kid. A great kid. Sure, he had his moments of rebellion and lip. They had their fights about clothes and hair and music and that motormouthed Clay. But deep down they had respect. When Wooten saw some of the children his friends and colleagues had been stuck with, he thanked his lucky stars. It was just that he knew there were things in boys you couldn’t control. Invisible tides that swept into them when you weren’t looking out. Changing them. Making them do things that weren’t in their character. Which was precisely why he was worried about this Truax girl. His reasons for wanting Joel to ease off the relationship cut much deeper than Ardelia’s ambition. They didn’t have anything to do with what grades he got or how trashy the girl was. No, it was the old, deadly formula. Black men with white women—it was bad medicine. A cruel magic that could bring out the worst in everybody, especially, as hard as this was to admit, the boy. Wooten had seen it too often to let the good intentions of a man like Barnaby or the faithful love of a mother like Ardelia convince him it wasn’t so.
He finished dressing and walked down the long hall to Joel’s room. He had to rap twice on the door to make himself heard over the music.
“Yeah?”
Wooten entered. Joel was sitting on his bed. He wore a lavender T-shirt and flared jeans. His hair was teased out into the medium-length natural he now wore. He was studying an album jacket decorated with a pastel painting of some black man looking out over a desert, a big beam of light shooting from his eyes.
livin’ just enough
Wooten waited for a break in the song. Music was another sore spot between them. A few weeks earlier they’d been driving together when a song called ‘Patches’ came on the radio, a sentimental ballad about some down-home Negro whose momma tried to raise him up out of just the sort of hard times Wooten had known. It was sung in a quavering, mournful voice by a brother who knew the score. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Wooten’s eyes misted over. Big mistake. Joel, who noticed everything when it came to his father’s flaws, saw those clouded eyes. He said nothing at the time, though later Wooten heard him howling the song’s refrain up in his room with Teddy, the two of them caterwauling like the spoiled children they could sometimes be.
“May I come in?”
Joel shrugged. Wooten snatched the desk chair and spun it around so he could rest his arms on its back.
“Mind if I turn this down a bit?”
Joel shrugged again. Wooten put the stereo down a few notches.
“So what you got on tonight?” he asked conversationally.
“Might hang out with Teddy.”
“You coming to the Swopes’ party?”
“What, and watch a bunch of old people get drunk? No thank you.”
Wooten forced a smile.
“They don’t all get drunk. Just most of them.”
Joel shrugged again. Wooten cast about for a way into this.
“We never really got a chance to talk about that fight over at the teen center,” he said finally.
“Some jerks.”
“You get into it?”
Joel screwed up his face.
“Hell no.”
“I heard it was outsiders.”
“Depends what you mean by outsiders.”
“I guess I mean people from outside the city.”
“There were some of them. Kids from the Heights, too.”
“Were you with Teddy?”
“Yeah. He didn’t
fight, either.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. The idea of Teddy Swope throwing hands …”
Father and son shared a smile over this.
“Teddy’s a negotiator,” Wooten said. “Like his father.”
“Yeah. He negotiated his ass out the nearest exit.”
Wooten, happy to be bantering, let the curse go unchallenged.
skyscrapers and everything
“You going back if they open it?”
Joel shook his head.
“That’s a shame. I know Mr. Vine saw it as a place everybody can use.”
“Well, I guess Mr. Vine was wrong.”
Wooten let that go as well.
“Susan there?”
Joel looked up sharply. Then nodded.
“Must have been scary for her.”
Joel nodded warily.
“So how is Susan? Haven’t seen her around lately.”
“She’s been around. You just been working.”
get in the cell nigger
Wooten looked at the nearest speaker.
“What is this?”
“Stevie.”
Wooten listened for a moment, then turned back to his son.
“Joel, we have to talk about Susan.”
Joel waited. Not nodding, not speaking. Just staring at his father.
“Your mother and I think maybe things are getting too serious between you.”
“What does that mean? Too serious?”
There was a defiant, almost contemptuous note in his son’s voice. For a moment Wooten wondered if he might know something about the visits to 27. But he quickly dismissed the notion. Nobody knew about that.
“It means that you’re focusing your energies exclusively on her and not on other things,” he continued patiently.
“What things?”
“Well, there’s school …”
“It’s summer.”
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