Black Water Rising by Attica Locke Read Free Book Online Page A

ain’t returned none of the messages I left.”
    “What club?”
    “The Big Dipper, out 45.”
    Jay nods, motioning for her to leave the message slips on his desk.
    Then he picks up the line. “Rev.”
    “You know I wouldn’t bother you at work unless it was some thing,” his father-in-law says straightaway. His voice is hoarse this morning, overworked and strained. “Son, we got us a big problem.”
    Jay reaches for his pencil, thinking a kid at the church must have gotten himself in some kind of trouble. A bar fight or joy riding or maybe petty theft. One time, a girl, barely sixteen, knocked the front teeth out of her boyfriend’s mouth. Jay gets these calls from his father-in-law several times a month, usually with somebody’s mama crying in the background. He searches for a clean slip of paper to write down the facts, the kid’s name and where they’re holding him, already weighing what a trip to the station will do to his afternoon schedule.
    “You got some time tonight, son? Time we can talk?” Something in the Rev’s tone makes Jay pause. “What’s go ing on?”
    “I’d rather we talk in person. Can you come by the church tonight, sometime around seven thirty?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Good. We’ll see you then.”
    Reverend Boykins hangs up, leaving Jay to wonder who we
    is. He tries to go back to his work, but finds he can’t focus. It’s more than the cryptic call from his father-in-law. He’s also had trouble putting the newspaper article out of his mind, the one from yesterday’s paper. Before he left the house this morning, he actually tucked the newspaper clipping into his pants pocket because he simply couldn’t bring himself to throw the thing away. He’s had a few halfhearted thoughts of phoning the police. But to say what exactly? He doesn’t know that the gunshots they heard Saturday night have any thing to do with the shooting death in the newspaper. And no matter how hard he tries, he simply can’t picture himself walking into a police station and offering information that ties him to some other shooting... certainly not with his felony arrest record. Free advice he gives to any prospective client who walks through the door: don’t volunteer anything to a cop that he didn’t ask for in the first place. Keep your fucking mouth shut.
    He already checked the Post
    this morning, standing over his kitchen table in his shorts and bare feet. There was no more mention of a white male, shot twice in Fifth Ward. It’s as if the whole thing was simply forgotten, and Jay tries to convince himself that he can do the same. He puts his mind and body to work, diving into the mound of paperwork on his desk.
    The rest of the day passes in a blur.
    Eddie Mae gets a stomachache around four o’clock, the symptoms of which are very vague. She comes out of the bathroom wearing lipstick and fresh powder, asking if she can go home early. She practically skips out the door when he says yes. At a quarter to seven, Jay grabs his suit jacket and heads for his car.
    First Love Antioch Baptist Church is located on the northeast side of Fifth Ward, out by the railroad tracks, where the Ewell Line runs east-west three times a day like clockwork, shaking the church’s fake stained glass. The church is small and poor and set in the middle of a residential street lined with one-room shacks. Jay parks right in front. He lights a cigarette and stares at a gray house down the street. She would be nearing eighty, he thinks. The juror at his trial. He used to bring her things, a bag of groceries every now and then or flowers, any little thing just to say thank you. She’s been dead three years, and her people, the ones who stay in the house now, won’t hardly ever open the door. They don’t know Jay or what their grandmother did for him, the life she saved.
    He tosses his cigarette and steps out of his Buick, into the reckless path of a late-model Cadillac thumping by on the