Pleasantville

by Attica Locke

  The state’s rebuttal, he didn’t listen to even half of it.

  As far as Jay was concerned, it was over.

  The jury walked out, and he left to wait it out at home.

  Neal went with his uncle and his grandmother and his father, A.G. Jay patted Neal on the back and said he’d be the first to know whenever Jay heard word from the courthouse. Lonnie went to her place to write, trying to get it all down on paper: America’s Tomorrow and the donors for George W. Bush, Reese Parker’s experiment in Pleasantville and the death of consolidated black voting power, which the Voting Rights Act and the tireless work of activists from Sam Hathorne to John Lewis to Dr. King to Diane Nash and James Bevel and countless others across the country had created, which people like Parker were now looking to poison from the inside. With help from Sam. He’d delivered Jay’s client files to Parker in exchange for her help greasing a just-good-enough settlement from ProFerma, which just happens to also be a major donor to her PAC. Lonnie’s already gotten calls from two different newspapers that are interested in the story. Sam, who had been careful to leave no paper trail, no phone records or letters or electronic mail of any kind, between himself and a Terrence Jerard Cobb, was, as Jay had heard through Lonnie, on his second interview with the Houston Police Department regarding the attempted kidnapping and the break-in at Jay’s office, this time without his elder son, Axel, as an advocate. He was spending the night, on his own, in an interrogation room. Rolly was home by now, convalescing in his girl’s arms. All this left Jay free to be with his kids. They had finally agreed it was time to tackle the tree.

  It’s Jay’s job to find the box of decorations in the garage.

  Ornaments, a tangle of lights, the angel from the clearance sale, it’s all out here somewhere, along with his fishing gear, the three-piece dinette set from their old apartment, Ellie’s first bicycle, and his son’s train set, which Ben doesn’t want anymore but had begged his mother not to throw away. There are some of Jay’s old law school textbooks and a quilt Bernie started and never finished and on the top, top shelf just past the garage’s side door, a white box with pages and pages of something Bernie was writing in her last year, which Jay is not ready to touch.

  And there’s Bernie’s car, of course.

  After he finds the Christmas stuff, in a cardboard box along the rear wall, he sets it all on the roof of his wife’s Camry and climbs inside. The air is dry in here, but without the film of dust covering everything else in the garage. It’s as it always was, the leather soft and clean, the radio still set to KTSU, the carpet on the driver’s side with the same mud stain under the gas pedal from the last time Bernie drove the car, the last appointment she was able to drive herself to, last September, a few days before Ellie’s birthday, when it had rained and rained and rained, Bernie stumbling into the house after dark, her whole body shaking. She knew then. He can still see the haunted look on her face and knows that she knew then what was coming. But she had soldiered on. For them, he wants to believe, and it’s true too, but he also knows she did it for herself. Just as he knows he’s got to do this now, to beg her forgiveness. “I’m sorry, B,” he says, sitting in the same spot he’s been in so many times this past year, nights he thought this was his way out, engine idling, garage door sealed shut, his way back to her. “I can’t wait,” he says. “I can’t sit out this life for you, Bernie.” He takes a deep breath, pulling in what’s left, the last he can smell of her, Dove soap and sandalwood. “I’ve got the kids, I’ve got Christmas, I’ve got the next day and the one after that.” He’s crying by now, the tears fat and warm, rolling down his chin as he lays his head on the steering wheel. He’s got to stay. Bernie said it herself. But what’s harder to admit is that he wants to. He asks her to forgive him for staying behind, speaking the words out loud inside his wife’s car, knowing, even as he does, that he’s only talking to himself.

  When he leaves the garage, lugging the box of decorations, he spots a white van parked on the street in front of his house, its rear bumper blocking part of the driveway, the words PLEASANTVILLE METHODIST CHURCH written beneath the back windows. He stares at the white van, his mind doing somersaults, as he turns for the house. Inside, it’s quiet, a thick silence. He hears nothing, not a single sound, even after he calls his daughter’s name. “El?” he says, setting down the box on one of the couch cushions. The TV in the den is still on, a rerun of 227 playing, the canned sitcom laughter echoing through the empty room. Jay doesn’t hear his son either. “Ben,” he says, turning off the TV and walking through the kitchen, where their dinner is still sitting on the table, plates of chicken bones and buttered rice, even though Jay asked Ellie to clear the dishes before he went out to the garage. He knows almost instantly that something is wrong. He walks into the living room at the front of the house.

  Ben and Ellie are on the couch, their knees touching, not far from the Christmas tree.

  Pastor Keith Morehead is standing in the living room, hovering over them. He’s in civilian clothes, black jeans and T-shirt, the front of which is stained with a dull grayish brown splotch. “That’s a pretty little family you got.”

  Ellie tries to explain. “I answered the door, and he pushed his way in.”

  She is gripping her brother’s wrist, keeping him as close to her as possible.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” Ben says, his lower lip trembling.

  “Ben, Ellie, go into the den.”

  Morehead shakes his head, weaving a little on his feet as he reaches out to grab Ellie’s wrist. He’s drunk, Jay realizes. The stain on his shirt is red wine.

  “Let them stay,” Morehead says.

  Jay steps between the man and his kids. “Ben, go with your sister.”

  “I said let her stay,” Morehead slurs, making a move toward the kids.

  Jay shoves him back, and it seems to loosen something in Morehead, giving him just the provocation he needs to unleash himself on Jay. He clocks Jay under his chin. Jay, stumbling back, hears his son shouting for Morehead to stop.

  Morehead hits Jay again, this time in the gut.

  Ellie runs for the kitchen phone, and that’s when Morehead reaches for something in his waistband. “Stop!” Jay screams. “Don’t move!” he tells his daughter. Morehead stands back, his hand still lingering under his shirt, fingering something Jay can’t see. “I just want to talk.”

  “Leave my kids out of it.”

  Morehead stares at Ellie and at the boy.

  He blinks his eyes a couple of times, as if he’s seeing double.

  Jay stands upright and tells his kids to wait for him in the den, but not before reaching out to squeeze his daughter’s hand, secretly pressing the keys to her mother’s Camry into it. She grips them as her dad looks over her shoulder, through the kitchen to the sliding glass door in the back. “Go,” he whispers. “Just drive.” Ellie, shaking, walks her little brother into the den.

  Jay turns his attention to the drunk pastor.

  Morehead sits on the edge of the embroidered sofa, pulling out the palm-size .22 automatic that was inside the waistband of his jeans. He rests it on his right thigh, eyes cast downward, to the carpet. “It was you, wasn’t it?” Jay says.

  “No,” he whispers as he starts to cry.

  “What I don’t understand,” Jay says, “why mess around with the girls’ parents, why hold their hands, knowing all the while what you did?”

  “I feel bad for them,” he says, tears falling. “You don’t think I feel bad?”

  “I don’t think you feel anything. Sidling up to the parents, that was all just a cover, just like calling in the story about Alonzo Hollis trying to kidnap a girl at the truck stop.” Local preacher, those were the words in Lonnie’s handwritten notes, words she copied, in quotes, from Resner’s file. It was a call that had come into the Northeast station last year, a message left for the detective; a police report was filed, but nothing came of it. “It was you.”

  “I said no!” Morehead says, standing, pointing
the .22.

  Jay, on reflex, raises his hands in front of his chest, trying to think his way out of the room, knowing what a fight with this man will cost him. This. This is why the last one was different, he now understands. Alicia Nowell fought. The other girls, they knew the pastor. He was their coach. They trusted him. But Alicia fought like hell. Morehead, as if following the same thought, lowers his head. He weeps openly. “Deanne and Tina, it wasn’t the way you think. It wasn’t nasty the way you think. It was something between us, something special. But I should never have touched the Nowell girl. I should have known better. But once I saw her . . . it’s like the devil got to whispering in my ear. It’s like I couldn’t stop. I got her in the van, got her all the way to the west side of the neighborhood when she ran. The lock in the back, it ain’t ever worked exactly right and she got out of the van and ran, straight into the weeds along the railroad tracks. I had to stop her,” he says, looking up, as if he expects understanding from Jay, compassion even, all while pointing the pistol at Jay’s chest. “Whatever it took, I had to stop her, right there by the railroad tracks. By the time it was done, I heard music coming from the church, choir practice, and I was too scared to move her that night. Then the cops started coming around, and I just froze,” he says, as if stunned by the entire sequence of events that led to tonight, the gun in his hand. “I just froze, and now I’ve got to fix this. I got to fix it.”

  “Taking me out isn’t going to change things,” Jay says. “Your DNA was under her fingernails. It’s locked in an evidence box downtown right now. I bet there’s traces of all three girls in the back of that van parked outside. If I put it together, you can bet someone else is going to be right behind me.”

  “You’ve ruined my life.”

  “I didn’t kill those girls.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt them!”

  Jay hears the garage door open, followed by the squeal of tires as Ellie backs out of the driveway at a fast clip, knocking over garbage cans and, by the sound of it, grazing the side of his Land Cruiser. Morehead looks panicked, not sure if it’s a car leaving or one arriving, a squad car maybe. Just as the headlights swing from the driveway and out onto Glenmeadow, Morehead turns, peering through the curtains, and that’s when Jay runs. He knocks the tree down as he goes, clumsily blocking the exit from the living room. He races to his bedroom, leaving the light off and feeling his way to the bed, to the pillow under which he left the .38, loaded. He hears a shot in the dark, burning the air, mere inches from his head. It shatters the window that faces into the backyard, setting off the sensor lights on the patio. When Jay swings around, Morehead is standing in the doorway to his bedroom, bathed in the sickly yellow light from outside. His right hand is shaking badly, the barrel of the gun jumpy and unpredictable. Something about seeing this killer, this coward, inside his bedroom, the room where his wife died, where so much was taken from him, sets Jay off. He raises the .38, pointing it at the preacher.

  But Morehead only smiles.

  It’s the wide, grotesque grin of a clown, makeup melting at this late hour, under the glare of the lights. “Please,” he says, begging. “Deliver me, Jay.”

  “Naw, man. There’s no way you’re getting off that easy.”

  Morehead’s expression hardens. He levels his gun, aiming.

  But Jay gets him first, a clean shot to the right side of his chest.

  Morehead drops the .22, falling back against the doorjamb and sliding to the floor. Jay crosses to the man’s feet, kicking the .22 out of his reach, his last move before he grabs the telephone to call the police. He sits on the side of the bed, watching trails of gun smoke curling in the air, as the phone rings and rings.

  Election Day

  TEXAS, 2000

  Axel Hathorne starts the day a clean ten points ahead in the polls, on track to win his third and, by city law, last term as mayor of Houston, Texas. The polls have just opened, and the Bush-Gore race is anybody’s guess, the two running neck and neck in every poll from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times to the Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News and USA Today, and several pundits on the cable news channels suggesting that it may be the closest presidential race in U.S. history. Jay still remembers Reese Parker’s prophecy: Four years from now, it’s going to come down to a handful of votes. She’s still working her magic, he’s heard, with her name popping up in a few feature articles in the Chronicle, about the inner workings of the Bush campaign–her involvement in “flyergate,” the stunt that tanked Sandy Wolcott’s career, reduced to a few sentences, nearly forgotten by now. But if Bush wins, she’ll be a star. Cynthia too. After Axel distanced himself from Cynthia during the runoff campaign and the election that put him in office, she went to Austin, taking a position at a lobbying firm with close ties to the capitol and then chairing the Bush campaign’s state operation this year. Jay hasn’t seen her since that day at Sam’s house. She sends him e-mails from time to time. He reads them, sometimes more than once, saving them in an untitled folder on his computer. But he never writes back.

  He’s at his desk this morning, typing notes for his opening statement, two index fingers attacking the keys. It’s still warm for November, and he’s opened his office window a few inches. He smells the garlic and chiles from the house next door, where a vegan restaurant opened last year. The Diamond Lounge is still around, thank god. He and Eddie Mae have their whole last day together planned out: a long lunch at Brennan’s, anything she wants, champagne and oysters Rockefeller, a porterhouse and lobster tails, and then beer and a little blues at the Diamond Lounge tonight. He can hear her down the hall right now, training the new girl in her own special way. For all Jay knows, they’re buying shoes online. He’s holding out hope that this newest hire will work. Eddie Mae has been trying to retire for two years now, but Jay has, until now, refused to let her go, wondering how he would find someone who can type and cook. Who, in this house (hers as much as it is his), will ever know him the way she does? But she bought a little house in Galveston last year, spending more and more time on the water, and when she came in last month and said, “Jay, honey, I’m tired,” he couldn’t think of anything to do but kiss her cheek and tell her that he loved her.

  This new one, Natalie somebody, he’s hoping Eddie Mae can have her up to speed before the trial starts later this month. She’s one of Neal’s students at South Texas, a young mom working her way through law school, taking classes at night. There may be something more to it, between Natalie and Neal, but it’s none of Jay’s business, and anyway he trusts Neal’s judgment, has actually come to like his former client. It was a case that nearly killed him, nearly sent Neal Hathorne to prison for the rest of his life, but, four years on, it’s just a story, one of many in his life–and one that just happened to end with the best cocktail party brag of all time, about the time he had Christmas dinner with A. G. Hats, played his record all night, and drank whiskey with the man. Neal, newly acquitted then, heard his father’s music for the first time that night, really heard it. And Amy, Lonnie’s girlfriend, her hands shook every time she had to pass A.G. the potatoes. Ben still teases her about it now. They’re having a viewing party at their place tonight, Lonnie and Amy, to watch the returns. Rolly is planning to come too, with lots of beer. But Jay promised Eddie Mae a night out and this one is hers. At quarter to eleven, she comes in, tapping her watch, reminding him that their reservation is for twelve sharp. Then she drops a heap of mail on his desk.

  “Ms. Ainsley called about her check.”

  “I’ll call her.”

  Dot Ainsley’s grandson, the dentist from Baytown, died two years ago, and she started having the biannual checks she receives from the Cole Oil settlement sent to Jay’s office instead of to the tin mailbox in front of her one-story house in Texas City. Jay takes the time to call her monthly, and when her checks arrive, he puts them in one of his office envelopes, with his return address, and then sends them to the very same tin box. She feels safer having them come from him.

/>   He settled with Cole Oil Industries about a month after the Hathorne trial, calling Thomas Cole at home and driving, alone, to the man’s house. If they could wrap this up for $35 million, in a structured payout, could they put an end to this for everybody, no more trials, no more delays? He was betting on what Charlie Luckman had said, about folks being afraid of what Jay might do, what he was capable of, and Cole had readily agreed to the terms, believing he’d singlehandedly brought Jay Porter to his knees, not knowing that this was Jay’s way of disposing of the case before Thomas Cole ever discovered Nathan Petty, the witness he had buried. It was twenty million less than Jay won in court. But if he forewent his fee, the money for his clients would be the same, even a little more. It was his self-imposed punishment for skirting the law. He could drag this thing out for another ten years, or he could finally get Cole to pay the people who needed the money more than Jay did.

  There’s a postcard from Ellie’s school in the mail, an ad for an art exhibit in Lafferre Hall, open to students and parents. It reminds him that he has to write her a check. Two hundred a month, they agreed on, just to help out, something to put on top of her work-study job. She’s in her first year at Lonnie’s alma mater, studying journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia. She called him this morning from her dorm room, excited to have voted in her first election. She’d voted for Gore, even volunteered at his local campaign office, answering phones and canvassing neighborhoods. Jay had bought and overnighted her a cell phone as soon he heard. He wrapped it in a sheet of his letterhead. Love, Dad.

  There are bills and bank statements to go through. Yet another America Online CD. There are store catalogs, an issue of Sports Illustrated, and coupons.