Three: It appears the two haven’t spoken in almost twenty years. The last anyone remembers A.G. around the neighborhood, or around his father for that matter, was back in the late seventies, when the old-timers out there really started to see the neighborhood change. “First, it was the freeway that cut through, and then the chemical companies that moved in,” he says, nodding his head at Jay, the man currently wrapped in a fight with ProFerma.
When the waitress arrives with the food, Rob tears into the ribs first. Chewing, he reaches for a stack of white napkins on the table. “Well, really it was integration, I suppose, that started it.” He nods at Jay again, this too being a subject he knows a thing or two about. “When there wasn’t any other place to go, Pleasantville, Fifth Ward, they were a haven for black folks, but Pleasantville especially. Teachers, doctors, a few principals, Pullman porters, and business owners. Nice houses, nice cars, a little place that was all their own. Did you know Louis Armstrong used to stay in Pleasantville when he came to Houston? Dinah Washington? Joe Louis used to stay with a lady right over on Ledwicke? Back in the day, when black celebrities came to segregated Houston, there wasn’t that many places they could go. You could stay in a cramped boardinghouse somewhere, or Houston’s finest Negroes would open their doors for you out in Pleasantville. All-night whist games, good scotch, bathtub gin if that was your thing, blues on the hi-fi. It was a party, what I understand. Between the money and the names, the strong sense of community, every politician from here to Austin on their personal Rolodexes, Pleasantville was untouchable. But now, with the old guard dying off–excuse me for saying so, but it’s true–and young black folks with a little change in their pockets picking neighborhoods that would have been closed to them a couple of decades ago, MacGregor and Meyerland, Bellaire, and such . . . Pleasantville is gone, at least the way it was.”
“Sad,” Lonnie says.
“Why?” Rob says, wiping his mouth. “ ’Cause people who look like me are moving in?” he says, gesturing toward his vaguely Chicano features, his wide, bright brown eyes. He pushes the ribs aside for the carne asada.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You really looking to return to an America that birthed a place like Pleasantville?” he says. “Jim Crow is what made that neighborhood possible.”
“Still sad,” Lon says, picking at the label on her beer. “It’s still a loss.”
“For some. Opportunity for others.”
He fingers a charred green onion lying limp along the inside of his corn tortilla, angling it to ensure it plays a central role in his next bite. “The ‘mighty 259’ is going to look mighty different ten, fifteen years from now,” he says, digging into the asada, leaning over the table so the meaty juices and chunky bits of salsa slop onto the paper lining of the red plastic basket instead of into his lap.
“If there even is a precinct 259 in ten, fifteen years,” Lonnie says.
“My people vote,” he says, swallowing.
“Just ask Johnetta Paul,” Jay says wryly.
“Surprised she hasn’t started conducting campaign stops in Spanish.”
Lonnie shakes her head. “I’m talking about a threat from the outside.”
She’s talking, actually, about the flyers, the implied threat to Pleasantville from a development along Buffalo Bayou. Rob rolls his eyes. “There is no threat. That development has never gotten off the ground, and it never will. The flyers, that was just Wolcott scaring the old folks out there, who, when it comes to land use and the slow encroach of development, have been burned before.” Then, remembering to whom he’s talking, he cringes at his choice of language. “Sorry,” he says to the plaintiffs’ lawyer, before adding, “And either way, Axel is not a pro-development candidate. He really means all that ‘a safe city is a prosperous city’ stuff. It really is his top priority, dealing with crime.”
“Which is the Chronicle’s worst nightmare,” Lon says, smiling faintly, very nearly enjoying the publisher’s perceived misfortune. “Three hundred and sixty-five days of running crime stats on the front page. ‘How’s the Mayor Doing?’ ‘Can Former Police Chief Meet His Goals?’ That shit does not sell newspapers.”
“Or attract business,” Rob says before taking another bite, talking with his mouth full. “It only becomes a daily reminder to investors to spend their dollars elsewhere, on a city with fewer problems.”
“No wonder the paper is pushing for Wolcott from the inside,” Jay says.
“Even though they publicly endorsed Axel.”
“There are two elections going on. The fiction in the Chronicle and the real story on the ground,” Rob says, sucking down the foamy swirl in the bottom of his beer bottle. “Looks like I’m the only one who picked the wrong horse.”
“They’re setting Axel up for a fall,” Lonnie says.
“You talked to folks in Pleasantville about A.G.?” Jay says, circling back.
Rob shakes his head, washing down the taco with his beer. “I was under strict orders not to. Most of what I got was from Sam himself, Vivian a little bit.”
“What about Axel?”
Rob shakes his head again. “I was under orders.” He burps softly, then reaches for the opening of his black messenger bag, unhooking the brass buckle with one hand. “There were, surprisingly, a lot of records to pull at the Hathorne Community Center. The women out there, they’ve saved everything. Newsletters, team rosters, and elaborate directories, listing residents street by street, their kids’ names, birthdays. Plus hundreds and hundreds of photographs from community meetings, parties, voter registration drives, even photos of the fight to stop the 610 Freeway from cutting through the neighborhood. The archives are open to the public.” He pulls out a few photocopied pieces of paper. “The story of A. G. Hats is as thin as they come, more myth than anything, a story that begins and ends with Belle Blue, his lone solo album. I was trying to put together what happened after he stopped playing.”