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 . . .