Pleasantville

by Attica Locke

  “Well, there’s some out there, Jay, who ain’t happy with the way things are going. I think a lot of folks, myself included, thought we’d be further along in the process by now. Ruby and I, we’ve been lucky, least as it goes with the doctors and stuff. There’s some up to the north side of the neighborhood got their kids on inhalers now, in and out of clinics. And I know you know this stuff too. But my house, others on my street, the money we paid to fix things, my roof, resodding the lawn, the repaint on my wife’s car and mine, that’s money we’re not seeing back.” Mr. Wainwright picks up his glass, as if he forgot it was empty, and then sets it down again. Under the bare bulbs of the Diamond Lounge’s main room, the white hair against his deep brown skin makes a halo effect. “I put my faith in you, and that’s good enough for me, but there’s some out there that are feeling strung along.”

  They’re not the only ones, Jay thinks.

  He’s put out his own money too. Nearly thirty thousand to test the soil and the water out there, another fifty grand to two researchers at Baylor to study the long-term medical effects of the chemical burn on adults and children, and over a thousand hours at forty-five bucks a pop for an investigator to take plaintiff and witness statements, the same woman he used in Arkansas for the Chemlyne trial. Not to mention money he’s loaned to more than a dozen families in Pleasantville, newcomers, ones who bought in late to the neighborhood, who still have young kids, college to pay for, braces, school trips and summer camps, piano lessons and new shoes every six months, the ones who can’t easily afford to cover what insurance won’t. While they wait for settlement checks to start rolling in, Jay has paid out of his own pocket to patch their roofs, redo drywall damaged by the fire hoses, or pad out the rent money needed for a temporary apartment while repairs are done on their homes. Pleasantville is his entire practice now, and he’ll go broke if he can’t settle it soon.

  The truth is . . . he’s planning to retire after this. Ellie’s college and Ben’s, pay off the house, the whole bit, and then he’s going to sit down somewhere for a few years, take as long as he wants to figure out what the point of any of this has been, what grace he’s meant to make of his flesh and bone, the breath that won’t stop, even if his wife has none. He’s going to lie down somewhere and wait. Jay is forty-six now, which might as well be sixty in black man years. Kwame Mackalvy had a heart attack last year, was in the hospital for a week afterward, scared out of his mind. Jay took him peanut brittle and copies of The Nation and Jet, shook the man’s hand when he left and said they’d get together real soon. Kwame, still Lloyd to Jay, his old running buddy, he’d hung on long enough to get released from the hospital, only to drop dead in his front yard two days later. Bernie’s dad had a prostate scare this summer. Penny, Jay’s baby sister, is on three different medications to lower her blood pressure. It’s hard some days not to view life as little more than the space between diagnoses, the rest between twin notes of tragedy and catastrophe. And Jay doesn’t want to spend his knee-deep in other people’s problems.

  He hasn’t told Eddie Mae yet, hasn’t said the words out loud to himself.

  But he’s through practicing law.

  He reminds Jim, “We got ProFerma up to seven-point-five in just the last few months.” It’s another bullshit number, he knows, and one that had taken at least ten meetings to get to. He is actually trying to reach fifty million, to come close to what he did with the Cole case, what he still, for personal reasons, considers his proudest moment as an attorney. Fifty million would mean over seventy thousand dollars for each family. It isn’t enough, but nothing ever would be, and seventy grand could patch a house, pay off medical bills, even get a kid to college. The trick is to arrive at that number without a trial.

  A trial he can’t do.

  He just doesn’t have it in him anymore.

  He never really got over Arkansas, his last big case, those months and months he spent in court while his wife, unbeknownst to him, was dying at home. And for what exactly? It’s hard not to look back and see the whole thing as a waste. How do you bill a client for the hours you should have been by your wife’s side, for time you can’t get back?

  This infighting among plaintiffs, different views on how to proceed and impatience at the glacial pace of the legal system, that’s to be expected, and he tells Wainwright so. “No, this is bigger than that,” Jim says. “There’s a group of them, Jelly Lopez and Bill Rodriguez, they’re talking about going with another lawyer. I wanted to say something last night, but it wasn’t the right time.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “They’ve already met with someone.”

  “Who?”

  Jim reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a folded Post-it note, on which he’d carefully printed the name. “Ricardo Aguilar.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  But it explains something strange ProFerma’s lawyer said during their last meeting, a lunch at Irma’s downtown. Drunk on Patrón, his slim, pinkish face sweating from the heat of raw chiles and the buzzing neon signs, he’d boasted that he happened to know the community’s bottom line, and it was less money than Jay was proposing, even suggesting some folks might take as little as a few thousand dollars and a buyout of their property. At the time Jay took it for a bluff, but now he wonders if ProFerma has been illegally talking to someone behind his back.

  Mr. Wainwright nods to the gentleman behind the bar, raising his glass for a refill. Jay takes a second pull on his Michelob. Jelly Lopez, Jules to his employers at ConocoPhillips, where he works as a drilling supervisor, was one of the last to sign on as Jay’s client, filling out the plaintiff’s forms in Jay’s office, his wife clutching her purse in her lap while he asked five questions for every two on a page. Why did Jay need to know this about him? Why did Jay need to know that? What did his annual income, his medical history, or his wife’s family’s educational background have to do with the fires or getting ProFerma to pay to replace the air ducts in his house, to clean the water his kids drink? He’s high maintenance, to put it mildly, but certainly not the worst Jay’s ever seen. He was in a hurry to see somebody pay for what was done, and Jay understood. Jelly and Bill Rodriguez are neighbors. They share a fence on Berndale, and their kids are in the same preschool class. Bill’s son was diagnosed with asthma in April. “I wouldn’t have put much stock in it, some of the new folks just wanting a say in how things are done,” Jim says, “not wanting to feel hemmed in by all our voices, the old guard, folks who’ve been in Pleasantville for some forty years, since we were younger than them. You know we vote on any and everything out there, even what color to paint the trim on the community center. But majority rule don’t feel much like a democracy if you’re always sweating from underneath it.” He gives a nod of thanks as the bartender pours another glass of Ezra Brooks. Overhead, the music coming through the speakers slows. They’re playing a Texas favorite now, A. G. Hats, the first track off his album, Belle Blue, the only one he ever recorded. A run of black keys, followed by the familiar voice, thick and slow as honey. See, dreams the only thing I got, the onliest way I know how to live . . .

  “But this thing is gaining a little steam,” Jim says. “And not just with folks like Jelly and Bill.” From his other back pocket he pulls a letter-size piece of paper folded in thirds. He holds it out for Jay. “This has been making the rounds since before the election. Might have come out of Acton’s campaign, or more likely something Wolcott had her people send out.”

  It’s a flyer, printed on a mimeograph machine, the kind that used to reside in every school and church office in the country, making loads of smudged copies. There is probably one collecting dust in a back room at the Pleasantville community center right now, and it occurs to Jay that the author of this flyer must have known that too, as this leaflet was clearly designed to appear as if it originated within the community, as if a group of concerned citizens were reaching out to their own. The words are in black and white, but fuzzy around the edges. Ther
e are exclamation points going all the way down the page, starting with the heading across the top.

  WHO IS REALLY LOOKING OUT FOR THE CITIZEN

  OF PLEASANTVILLE!

  BEFORE YOU CAST YOUR VOTE!

  DEMAND AN ANSWER FROM AXEL HATHORNE

  ABOUT HIS SUPPORT FOR THE

  BUFFALO BAYOU DEVELOPMENT PROJECT!

  AND

  WHAT IT MEANS FOR OUR FUTURE!

  THIS COUDL BE THE MOST IMPORTANT VOTE IN

  PLEASANTVILLE’S FUTRE!

  “What’s the Buffalo Bayou Development Project?” Jay asks.

  “It’s another stab at the River Walk thing, turning the banks of Buffalo Bayou into a city showcase, with restaurants and shops, boat rides up and down the bayou.” Jay cringes at the memory of his own boat ride on Buffalo Bayou fifteen years ago, the late-night leap to save a drowning woman, an act of chivalry that nearly got him killed. But he doesn’t know how a development deal miles up the bayou would affect the neighborhood of Pleasantville.

  “Who knows?” Jim continues. “But folks are skittish. They told us the freeway would modernize things.” He’s speaking of 610, the Loop that circles the city’s center. “But that only boxed us in on all sides, all these plants and factories moving to the area, in our backyard. Who knows if ProFerma would have set up shop here without the highway being built? Development in this city is like a cancer, spread every which way, eating everything in its path. They start talking hotels, restaurants, tourist pulls, all up and down the bayou and out to the Ship Channel, and who’s to say they won’t tear right through the back side of Pleasantville? The bayou’s not even a mile from us.” He stares into his glass. “We should never have let those factories in, should have laid down in the streets against it, like we did with the freeway. We should have fought it.”

  “And you asked Axel about it, the bayou thing?”

  “Yes, we did, at the candidate forum last weekend.”

  “And?”

  “And,” Jim says, sighing, “I hate to say, but he sounded like the rest of them, like any other politician coming out to court our vote. The flyer’s got folks jumpy, worried, like maybe Axe isn’t telling everything, not until the runoff.”

  “You really think that of him?”

  “Not before this,” Jim says, tapping the flyer with his index finger. “We all want this lawsuit wrapped up before our property values go down any further, Jelly and them too. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Jay, why you’re vulnerable in this thing. There’s some out there want to settle and then sell and get out of Pleasantville for good. It ain’t me, but Jelly and them are putting real pressure on the rest of us to reach a resolution sooner rather than later. Apparently, this Aguilar thinks he can walk us for ten million right now.”

  Jay does the math in his head, frowning to himself.

  “What’s Bill Rodriguez going to do with thirteen thousand dollars ten, twenty years from now when his kid’s asthma turns into something worse?” For Jay, it’s always about the kids, the main ones who suffer from our choices long after we’re gone. Any deal that doesn’t look two generations ahead is useless. It might put a Cadillac in the driveway, but it won’t secure a future.

  “More like sixteen thousand,” Jim says. He’s done his own math too.

  “How’s that?”

  “Aguilar says he’ll drop his commission to twenty percent.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “Jelly knows him. They went to UT together.”

  A 20 percent commission on a ten-million-dollar settlement, that’s a cool two million. And Ricardo Aguilar is making a grab for it. It’s against the rules of the Texas State Bar Association to proposition another lawyer’s clients, but Aguilar could always say it was Jelly who reached out first, which as far as Jay knows is exactly how it went down. “We’ve been wanting to get Axel alone on this issue,” Jim says. “Without Sam and the young fellow, Neal. But Axe is running for mayor of Houston, not Pleasantville, and he’s all over the place these days. And then this thing with the girl happened, and, well, it just got lost.”

  Jay folds the flyer, tucking it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

  “I appreciate you sharing this with me.”

  “Like I said, I like you, Jay.” He picks up his drink, finishing it off. “But Jelly’s already circulating a petition, getting signatures on the issue of seeking new counsel. There’s only so much I can do to slow this down.”

  He looks at Jay under the harsh white lights of the club.

  It’s Jay, he suggests, who will have to save his own ass.

  “My next scheduled sit-down with ProFerma’s lead counsel isn’t for another month,” Jay says. “I can move that up, go at them more aggressively.” Jim nods, liking the sound of that. “They’ve been dicking around with the numbers, excuse my language. But I have an evidentiary strategy in mind, some cards I was holding until we got closer on the numbers.” Jay is bluffing a little, just to make clear he isn’t sleeping on the job. What he doesn’t need right now is a rumor about a development deal making his clients skittish and apt to take less than they deserve. “You let the word get back that I’m on this thing, and that no one should be too fooled by flashy promises. A lot of times these guys say they’ll take a lower commission fee, and then jack it up to forty percent when there’s a trial.”

  “At least he’s willing to talk about a trial.”

  There it is, out in the open.

  Jay’s trepidation about, or downright fear of, standing in a courtroom again–it’s not as well hidden as he thought. “There’s not a one of us don’t know what you been through this year,” Jim says. “But the families out there, myself included, we’ve been through a lot too. We need a fighter, son.” He reaches into the pocket of his jeans for his wallet. From inside, he pulls several bills, leaving the bartender an extra ten for his time. To Jay, he says, “You still have my vote.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Jay watches him go, the bar’s padded door swinging closed behind him. The bartender offers him another beer, but Jay shakes his head. The first one left him feeling foggy and loose limbed, weak against the wind that just blew through him. He’s never lost a client before. Lord knows he can’t afford to start now.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jon K. Lee will have to wait, Jay thinks, as he walks to the Hathorne campaign headquarters, one block over on Travis. The volunteers are out this morning, a line of them wearing long-sleeved T-shirts, a deep, patriot blue, with the slogan HATHORNE FOR HOUSTON! in white. A staffer, a young black woman in braids, is handing out stacks of door knockers, glossy leaflets to be left on front doors across the city. The leaflets show Axel’s picture, an image of the candidate surrounded by a handful of men in blue. The Houston Police Department endorsed him in the general, and there is every reason to assume it will back him again in the runoff against Sandy Wolcott, the D.A., who easily scored the endorsement of the Harris County sheriff. The battle of the law-and-order candidates has made for one of the oddest campaign seasons in Houston’s history. Inside the storefront’s glass doors, there are more volunteers at a phone bank in the front part of the office. At a square of four card tables pushed together, they sit on folding chairs, copies of the county voter rolls splayed out in front of them, each volunteer hunched over a script and a telephone. Jay can hear their one-sided conversations: Hi, I’m ______, and I’m calling to ask for your vote for Axel Hathorne. Mr. Hathorne is a Houston native, and the first African-American police chief in the city. For nearly forty years, he’s fought to keep our streets safe.

  “Can I help you?”

  Jay turns to see the staffer with the long braids, pulled in a ponytail off her face. Coming in from outside, she’s got a large, bricklike phone cradled against her ear as she bends down to dump a surplus of leaflets into an open cardboard box. Standing upright, she rolls up the sleeves of her fleece pullover, eyeing Jay with more than a little curiosity. In his suit and tie, he stands out among the jea
ns and khakis, sneakers and T-shirts in the office. Nor, in this getup, would he ever pass for a member of the press. “You Detective Moore?” she says. The mention of a police officer catches Jay off guard, and before he can correct her assumption, the woman, moving fast, eager to check one more thing off her list, walks to a dented metal desk a few feet from the makeshift call center. “The station said you’d be by,” she says, holding up a finger to slow a staffer headed her way with a clipboard. “I’m the field director,” she says to Jay. “Marcie normally handles Neal’s schedule, along with Axel’s. But Tuesday, Election Day, everything was get out the vote, and I actually put together the schedule for that day.” She hands him a spreadsheet with detailed blocks of times and locations, and the names of the campaign’s key players, including the candidate himself. “It’s about what you’d expect, nothing out of the ordinary. There was one thing, though,” she says, her brow wrinkling.

  “Tonya!”

  Down a roll of thin carpet comes Marcie in acid-washed jeans and a Hathorne T-shirt, walking from the back offices, which are really just a series of cubicles set apart by fabric dividers. She’s breathless, damp with sweat. “Melanie Lawson at Channel Thirteen wants to tape a segment with Axel, history in the making, maybe some stuff with his dad, that sort of thing, to air after the debate tomorrow night, but they have to get a crew over here today to tape.”

  “They’re at the Hyatt all day, doing debate prep.”

  “Neal on his mobile?”

  “Yes.”

  Marcie turns, noticing Jay. “You were at Sam’s last night.”

  “What?” Tonya says, looking confused at first and then panicked. She smiles tightly, eyeing the campaign schedule in Jay’s hand, but too timid to ask for it back in front of Marcie, her superior, for all Jay knows. In fact, the more anxious she seems, the more curious Jay is to know what exactly is on that schedule. He folds it and tucks it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Just came for a bumper sticker,” he says, grabbing a blue HATHORNE FOR HOUSTON! decal from the corner of a call-center desk, before walking out and heading for the Hyatt.