Cashed Out

by Michael Rubin

  The state capitol was straight ahead, a lighthouse of a building at the end of a broad boulevard. The marchers, who had been in a wide column, branched and eddied into the pathways that led through the memorial garden, walking around nine foot high azalea and camellia bushes and passing under the drooping giant oaks bearded with Spanish moss.

  The flowing tributaries recombined where the garden abutted the parking area and flowed onto the wide steps of the capitol. The marchers cascaded over the steps and filled the parking lot. They crowded up against one another as more and more of them poured into the confined space.

  Police guards kept the marchers back from the stand erected near the top of the steps, several stories above the parking lot. Klieg lights illuminated the microphone-laden podium. A multitude of loudspeakers hung from poles. Cameras sat atop tripods on the roofs of television trucks. Reporters were interviewing people in the crowd.

  To the right of the stand, a band was setting up on high wooden risers. Trumpets. Saxophones. Trombones. Guitars. Amplifiers. Keyboards. Drums. Technicians were doing sound checks.

  The band started playing the blues. A solid bass line. A strong beat. A song of love and loss. A wailing voice filled the air. The crowd clapped along in rhythm. Vendors with coolers hung from their necks squeezed their way through the throngs, hawking beer and soda.

  The first number ended in cheers and applause. This was just the warm-up for the speeches. The crowd called for more. The band started up again. Slower. More soulful.

  The dark of the evening brought with it additional humidity. There was not a trace of breeze in the air. A typical Louisiana summer night. A party atmosphere.

  A third number. Rock and roll. The band cranked up the volume and launched into a song designed to ignite the crowd. But I wasn’t watching the band. I was watching the podium. I had recognized Rad and Joleese up there. Weegie too. They were talking to each other with increasing intensity. Gesticulating arms. Emphatic hand movements.

  They retreated out of my line of sight.

  The band rocked on.

  There was a disturbance on the podium as the band wrapped up its song.

  Rad reappeared and started to approach the phalanx of microphones, but a half- dozen State Troopers surrounded him and blocked his way. Rad argued with the troopers but to no avail.

  The crowd began to boo the troopers. They were indignant and upset. They had come to hear Rad, and he was being usurped.

  The troopers confined Rad in one corner.

  Carter Herrington appeared from the other side of the podium and strolled unimpeded to the microphones. The crowd recognized him. A hiss began. It spread across the steps. The hiss quickly turned to jeers.

  “I know,” said Herrington, his amplified voice booming above the discontent, “you didn’t expect to find me at this gathering, and I wasn’t invited, but, as head of the Department of Environmental Health, I felt that it was my duty, especially when you come to the steps of this great building where my office is located.”

  The derision did not stop. Slurs and taunts were hurled. Little children, not knowing why their parents were yelling, gleefully joined in.

  Herrington was unperturbed. “It was my duty, because I came here to say something you’re not expecting to hear.”

  The crowd did not want to listen to him. Curses ricocheted off the capitol’s marble-clad walls. The protesting crowd surged forward against the police barricades.

  Large television lights snapped on, illuminating the dais even more brightly. Reporters strained to get closer, holding microphones in their hands. “You don’t have to listen, but I’m going to say my piece anyway.” No letup in the noise from the crowd.

  “You see this?” Herrington held up a sheaf of papers in his hand. “You see? These are pleadings my staff has prepared. Pleadings in the lawsuit filed by Mr. Doucet over here.”

  The tone of the milling thousands grew angrier. And louder.

  “The lawsuit seeks an injunction to shut down plants along the river.” Strong voices called for Herrington to get off the podium. “The lawsuit names DEH, my department, as a defendant.” The mood grew uglier the more he spoke.

  “It names me as a defendant.”

  The steps of the capitol were suddenly alive with thousands shouting in protest and raising their fists angrily. There was danger in their movement.

  “Naming me as a defendant was wrong. Naming my department as a defendant was wrong!”

  The crowd began to surge forward, up the stairs, breaking the barriers apart and trampling them. The policemen on the steps looked warily at one another as they tried unsuccessfully to restore calm. Some began to undo the safety snaps on their holsters.

  “IT WAS WRONG.” Herrington was shouting now. The amplification was not enough, and he wanted to be heard. “WRONG TO NAME ME IN THE SUIT. AND DO YOU KNOW WHY IT WAS WRONG? IT WAS WRONG TO NAME ME BECAUSE I

  SHOULD BE PLAINTIFF. YES, I SHOULD BE A PLAINTIFF, AND NOT A DEFENDANT!”

  There was a momentary pause in the chanting. A moment of disbelief.

  “YOU HEARD ME. THAT’S RIGHT! I SHOULD BE A PLAINTIFF ON YOUR

  SIDE OF THE CASE.”

  The movement forward up the steps ceased. The clamor began to lessen as increasingly larger groups strained to comprehend the meaning of these strange remarks.

  “ON YOUR SIDE. THAT’S RIGHT. I SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON YOUR

  SIDE.”

  Loud murmurs in the crowd. Was he saying what they thought he was saying?

  “I SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON YOUR SIDE ALL ALONG. AND SO . . .”

  The murmurs diminished to frantic whispering.

  “AND SO . . .” Herrington repeated, not as strident as before, working the crowd as it began to quiet down.

  “And so . . .” Herrington’s voice dropped again.

  The marchers ceased their movement. They listened expectantly.

  “And so . . . as of noon today, I ordered my staff back to work. I signed an administrative order, at three this afternoon . . .”

  Herrington hesitated dramatically, drew a breath, and allowed his voice to rise again to a crescendo. “At three this afternoon, I signed an order REVOKING ALL

  PERMITS FOR CAMELLIA INDUSTRIES TO OPERATE.”

  A moment of almost silence. Then, the crowd went wild again. But this time, there were cheers. The steps were filled with elation and hugging.

  Herrington paused cannily to let the effect sink in.

  Some of the television cameras quickly spun from facing the platform to panning the crowd, trying to capture the ecstasy of the scene.

  But I could see that, up on the podium, Rad and Weegie were not joining in the frantic exaltation that was enveloping the others. The two of them were conferring off to the side.

  The horde on the capitol grounds continued to celebrate. It took almost five minutes before some degree of order was restored.

  Only then did Herrington resume. “You have a right to celebrate. You have a right to cheer.” A speaker’s practiced effect. The cheers came.

  “But that’s only the beginning. My staff has been here working hard on this suit, and we’ll be filing papers with the court before the hearing this week. These papers.” He waved another hand-load of papers for the crowd to see. “These papers ask the court to realign DEH as a plaintiff in this suit and, in light of my permit revocation, grant a permanent injunction to shut down Camellia Industries once and for all.” The applause and acclaim began anew.

  Herrington stood there and beamed.

  Weegie and Rad continued talking on the side of the platform.

  “Now some of you may call people who work for the state ‘bureaucrats.’ And some of you may call us other names. But I call them all dedicated public servants. And they’ve been working here in the house that Huey built. Huey Long, our greatest governor. The greatest of populists. The greatest of road-builders and school-builders and

  charity-hospital-builders. A man whose tradition lives to this ver
y day.” Continued applause, now louder than before.

  “Remember what Huey Long did to the oil companies? He made them pay.” Murmurs of agreement.

  “Remember what Huey Long did to the utilities when he served on the Public Service Commission? He made them pay.” The crowd was being moved again.

  Herrington was in his element. “Remember what Huey Long did back then?”

  Answering voices in the affirmative from the steps, voices from those too young to remember but who knew the Long legacy.

  “Well, we’re going to do it again. You and me. We’re going to make those who soil our environment pay.” Loud applause.

  “We’re going to make those who pollute our rivers and streams pay.” Louder applause.

  “We’re going to shut ‘em down and shut ‘em up and make ‘em pay for the cleanup.”

  Again the crowd went wild.

  And, over the din, Herrington proclaimed, “They’re all going to pay. Starting with

  CAMELLIA INDUSTRIES!”

  Hands waved. Hats were thrown into the air. Children were hoisted up into the air on outstretched arms.

  Herrington looked at the band and raised his hand like a conductor, just as Huey Long had conducted the LSU Marching Band during football games. The music cranked up. It made the crowd even more boisterous and frenzied.

  Over the song, Herrington leaned into the microphone and yelled so that he was sure to be heard. “Y’ALL ENJOY THE MUSIC! I’M PLEASED TO BE PART OF

  THIS CELEBRATION.”

  And with that he waved broadly, stepped away from the podium, and plunged into the crowd to pump arms and politic.

  Chapter 73

  As the crowd celebrated, I kept asking myself why now? If what Taylor said was true – that Herrington had helped G.G. get and keep the permits – why switch positions?

  In any event, Herrington’s performance on the capitol steps was going to be the lead story on every late newscast tonight, the headline in every newspaper tomorrow, and would light up the social media universe. Herrington had given himself a perfect opening salvo should he declare early for the governor’s race.

  Herrington had disappeared from view. The camera lights that had been on him while he pressed flesh in the crowd had been shut off. Where had he gone? The State Troopers had retreated from the dais. That probably meant that Herrington was already inside the capitol.

  Rad approached the microphones. He motioned for the band to stop.

  The videographers in their jeans and tennis shoes pivoted, readjusting the equipment on their shoulders.

  “Listen, people, listen.”

  A guitar chord. A long drum roll. A cymbal crash.

  The crowd grew quiet. This was the start of the program they had originally come to hear.

  “Listen to the words of a great man,” Rad said earnestly. “Not the one you just heard from, not some head of some state agency, some politician trying to position himself to run for governor. Not the words of Livingston or Jefferson, whose comments on the Louisiana Purchase are carved into the walls of this building behind me. No, listen to the words of a really great man, Martin Luther King. He spoke words that still touch us today. I invoke his memory. You knew him. I invoke his words. You know them.” The crowd murmured its approval.

  “You know his words. You know what he said.”

  The approval grew into a “yes yes” that spread across the steps.

  “You know what he meant.”

  The crowd spoke back. Yes we do. Yes we know. Praise the Lord.

  Rad’s cadence became emphatic. “Martin Luther King said ‘I have a dream.’”

  The crowd applauded and echoed back “I have a dream.”

  “He stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking towards the Washington Monument and spoke of his dream.”

  The crowd amen’d back in agreement.

  “Tonight, we all stand on the steps of the capitol of a state that fought against the union. A state whose history is bathed in blood. The blood of my family . . . and the families of many of you here tonight. Blood extracted by whips and chains. Blood extracted by slavery and sin. Blood that watered the furrows in the fields of plantations. Blood that flowed like the river . . . from the slave ships to the slave masters. A state whose laws treated my great-grandfather and great-grandmother as legal ‘chattel.’ Chattel! The word itself is as noxious as slavery. Chattel! Mere property to be bought and sold. Chattel to be reproduced and disposed of, to be traded and profited on, to be thought of as anything but human.”

  “Tonight we stand on the steps of the capitol of a state that dares to inscribe on its walls these words.” Rad turned to look to his right, where a quotation carved in two-foot high letters was visible to all on the steps and in the parking lot.

  “These are the words of Robert Livingston, in 1803, in the slave territory of Louisiana, when it was sold from France to the United States, when people were still bought and sold solely because of their skin color. This is what he wrote.”

  Rad read it slowly. “‘The instruments which we have just signed will cause no tears to be shed. They prepare ages of happiness for innumerable generations of human creatures.’”

  “No tears to be shed? I shed tears every night of my life. For, if Martin Luther King had a dream, I have a nightmare.”

  The crowd didn’t expect to hear this. It listened intently.

  “I have a nightmare. Mothers and fathers, you know that when your children have a nightmare, you comfort them and tell them all will be better. But I have a nightmare. Is there no one to comfort me?”

  A few voices in the crowd called back. “I will.” “We will.”

  But they knew there was more. They knew he was building up to something.

  “Yes, I have a nightmare. It keeps me awake at night. It haunts my existence. It’s a nightmare of living in a state where blood still flows, but this time from internal bleeding caused by chemical exposure. It’s a nightmare of living in a state where the water in our rivers and bayous contains poisons that you can’t taste, that you can’t smell, that you can’t spell and can’t pronounce, but which cause the brim and the sacolet and muskrat and the beaver to sicken and die. Chemicals that cause those who exist to enjoy the outdoors to come to fear it. I have a nightmare.”

  The crowd responded. “A nightmare.” “Yes, a nightmare.”

  “I have a nightmare. It’s a nightmare of living in a time where people in positions of power, men and women we elect to represent us, are more concerned about those who give them money than about those who vote for them. Where the luster of the endless stream of coins that it takes to pay for advertising themselves and their elections blinds them to the needs of those whom they serve. I have a nightmare!”

  “Nightmare” responded the marchers. “Nightmare.”

  “I have a nightmare. It’s a nightmare of words meaning something other than what is said, words twisted and used. Did you hear that speech tonight from DEH Secretary Herrington? Did you? Well, what did you hear? You cheered him. You cheered him when he said he would shut down Camellia Industries. You cheered him when he said he would join the ongoing case – your lawsuit – as a plaintiff! But did you hear what he did not say? Did he say that he would shut down the other companies in the suit? Did he say he would shut down Big Mudcaster Enterprises or FlowPipe Chemi-Petrols? Did he say he would stop InDispoCo from hauling those poisons from plant to plant only to dump them on our lands or in our bayous? Did he say he would make those plants clean up the damage they’ve caused, or move to locations where they can’t harm our air and water, where they can’t harm our families? No! He didn’t say a word about that, did he?” The crowd gave Rad its rapt attention.

  “Did he tell you he would change any policies at DEH that let plants operate up and down the rivers and bayous with ‘permits’ on ‘permissible discharges.’ No! ‘Permissible Discharges!’ As if the state could give permission to anyone to dump poisons into the public waterways, into the very
arteries and veins of our state, only to find their way into the arteries and veins of your body, of my body, of the bodies of our children! He said nothing of the sort. He used words to mask the fact that nothing will change. Nothing! His words were as poisonous as the chemicals that course down the rivers and float upward into our air. I have a nightmare!”

  Rad’s eloquence intoxicated the crowd. They hung on his every word. They stomped their feet and shouted their approval.

  “Look at the plumes that rise from the industrial plants next to your homes. Observe the man-made clouds. Not clouds where angels gather, but clouds where demons dwell. I have a nightmare. I can’t rest. And I won’t rest until the state awakens to the realization that this lawsuit is only a start. The injunction we seek, which is broader than anything Secretary Herrington said he would agree to, is the opening through which we will pour the forces of righteousness! So I say to you here tonight, wake up from this nightmare and change this state! And I say to you watching on television, listening on radio, or being part of this gathering through Internet feeds and YouTube rebroadcasts,

  open your eyes and rid our state of this nightmare! Wake up! WAKE UP! WAKE UP . . . SO THAT YOU CAN ONE DAY DREAM AGAIN!”

  The crowd screamed. They yelled. They applauded. They cheered.

  Rad had more to say, and the people pushed closer up the steps just to be near him.

  But I didn’t have time to hear any more. I happened to look away from the capitol and toward downtown. Far in the back, the shoulders and head of a man towered above the throng.

  Frankie!

  I cradled my left arm with my right and walked briskly into the shadows.

  Chapter 74

  I was meaning to walk the three blocks to the levee, cross it, and then get down into the batture, the side of the levee facing the river. The batture was unlit, and there would be plenty of places to duck out of sight once I got there. Landings for tugs and supply vessels. Shacks on the docks. Stands of hardwoods in the muddy water. Mounds of driftwood stuck on the batture until the water level rose again and sent the pile spinning off downstream in the fast current.