‘Anahuac’ case challenges lawyer’s legal skills and preconceptions
Houstonians who spare a thought at all for Anahuac might know it as the site of Texas Gatorfest every September. The specimens in last year’s Great Texas Alligator Roundup topped out at 12½ feet; Texas country studs Aaron Watson and William Clark Green provided the tunes.
But this tiny seat of Chambers County, tucked unassumingly into the northeastern corner of Galveston Bay, is a big name among Texas history buffs. Located in what is now Fort Anahuac Park, the same kiln that imprisoned future Alamo commander William B. Travis in the early 1830s also plays a key bit part in “Anahuac,” William D. Darling’s second straight novel set along the swampy Trinity River bottomlands. (It follows “Morgan’s Point,” published in 2016.)
“Anahuac” has been out a little while, but it’s worth seeking out for those who occasionally find the Texas criminaljustice system as entertaining as it is infuriating. (Lacking a publisher, the book can be ordered via Amazon or local merchants Brazos Bookstore and Murder By the Book.) Darling, an assistant district attorney in mid-’60s Houston, writes with a good-ol’-boy gentility that cuts through the legalese, even as his protagonist’s benighted misogyny is somewhat less than charming.
Our hero, Jim Ward, has a touch of unfrozen caveman lawyer about him, to invoke that old “SNL” sketch featuring the late Phil Hartman. Flashing back to his days as a law student, Jim muses “there was hardly a woman in sight except the undergraduates who studied in our law library hoping to get an MRS degree. It never occurred to me to wonder why.”
If only he were joking, but alas.
The TV attorney of choice for both Jim and the author seems to be Perry Mason, but “Anahuac” plays out closer to an extended episode of “Matlock” — if Andy Griffith had a brassy British co-counsel and was defending an early-’70s version of Joel Osteen, that is.
Subtitled “A Texas Story,” “Anahuac” begins in the fall of 1972, a time when Jim’s views on feminism and femininity are evolving rapidly. He’s married to Cooper, whose father owns a chain of small East Texas newspapers, besides dabbling in the oil bidness. He has a fairly large fortune — enough for him to lean on his daughter about producing an heir, an idea Cooper is not exactly thrilled about. For his part, Jim wouldn’t mind a kid.
On top of that, currently his marriage is on thin ice after a recent misadventure that ended with him and his old friend/ new partner, Wells Wilson, driving Wells’ Jaguar XKSS off the Lynchburg Ferry into the Houston Ship Channel and with Jim nearly succumbing to an assignation with his college sweetheart, now a high-profile reporter with Channel 2.
No sooner are Jim and Wells toasting their new law partnership with Wells’ wife, Aurora, a British expat recently relocated from the federal prosecutor’s office in New York, than the firm is charged with representing an Arkansas radio evangelist accused of murdering an ornery Anahuac rancher named Sarita Jo Franklin.
Flashy and foreign, Aurora could not be more out of place; she decorates her brand-new office in the firm’s La Porte headquarters with a mural-size photo of the Manhattan skyline. Her personality is mirrored in her choice of automobiles: a yellow Porsche that, Jim notes, “made beautiful sounds unheard from American cars.” ( Jim is more of a Lincoln Navigator man himself, though his love of “The Graduate” leads him to fantasize about driving an Alfa Romeo.)
Their murder suspect, the Rev. Randall Clay, is an early proponent of the so-called “prosperity gospel,” the branch of Christianity that preaches that material and spiritual wealth need not be mutually exclusive. Contributions to his rapidly growing radio ministry are not tax-deductible because, his business manager says, “even Randall thinks it’s God’s will that we keep the godless government out of God’s business.” This preacher is a real piece of work — either a shrewd operator, a front-rank Christian soldier or both.
But is he a murderer? Shortly after her nephew threatens to put Sarita Jo in a Beaumont nursing home, she signs over her estate to the Rev. Clay, who turns up in Anahuac shortly thereafter. Then, she turns up dead. The reverend is found kneeling over her body by Chambers County sheriff ’s deputies, who aren’t the biggest fans the Bill of Rights ever had. Then the Rev. Clay’s followers descend on Fort Anahuac Park for a 24-hour prayer vigil. Of course, Cooper and Jim’s ex-girlfriend reporter are all over the case, too.
Besides finding a way to free the Rev. Clay from the sheriff ’s clutches, “Anahuac” is really about Jim’s twofold struggle to assert his independence from his father-in-law — who holds his wealth over Jim and Cooper like a gilded sword — and retain his masculinity while adapting to a strange new environment; namely, the peculiar concept of practicing law alongside a woman. But as the reverend’s case wears on, he comes to understand that there’s no way he’s going to win without Aurora’s help.
Strangely enough, the identity of Sarita Jo’s real killer is almost beside the point; depending on the reader, it’s a loose end Darling may or may not have satisfactorily tied up. Looming much larger by the end of “Anahuac” is the January 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which in its own spoiler-free way can’t help but clear up Jim’s inchoate enlightenment even more. He’s kind of a slow learner, but time is on his side.