Nashville: The Mood (Part 9)

By Donald H. Carpenter

Is Nashville simply Music City? The capital of Tennessee? A state of mind? A sea of corruption? A world of happiness, ordinariness, hypocrisy, vicious gossip, and political skulduggery? Where politics, religion, sex, academics, and crime cross paths in such a way as to be almost indistinguishable? Enter a world of uninspiring public officials, soulful prostitutes, scheming professional classes, and tormented preachers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald H. Carpenter
• Release date: Jan 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463090367

Donald H. Carpenter

Donald H. Carpenter is a former certified public accountant who is the author of six books: Dueling Voices, I Lost It At The Beginning, 101 Reasons NOT to Murder the Entire Saudi Royal Family, He Knew Where He Was Going (?), Man of a Million Fragments: The True Story of Clay Shaw, and LANNY. He is currently working on a fictional series about Nashville.

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NASHVILLE: THE MOOD

PART 9

by Donald H. Carpenter

Copyright ©2020 by Donald H. Carpenter

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All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

Cover design by Charles Hooper

Printed in the United States of America

NASHVILLE: THE MOOD

PART 9

Winter was effectively over in Nashville, but not quite over. The first day of April saw a bitter cold day, with temperatures dropping to close to thirty degrees, a steady drizzling rain that enhanced the cold, and a twenty to twenty-five mile an hour wind that began overnight and remained constant throughout the day. People in the city, who had several weeks earlier put away their heavy sweaters and overcoats, retrieved them again and prepared for a miserable day.

Violent crime around the city, which had been on the rise for a year or more, seemed to be hitting new levels of danger. When one read the local newspaper, it was difficult to come away with an impression of safety in any particular part of town. Anyone stopping at a convenience store after dark, and even sometimes in the daytime, was running a risk. Anyone who got out of their car in a shopping center parking lot was in danger, however slight or large. The time of day mattered, as did the distance one parked from the main stores, but no one was immune. There were incidents in broad daylight—carjackings, armed robberies, assaults up to and including rape.

None of those incidents were unique, and those types of things had occurred every year in recent history. However, the boldness of many of the acts was getting people’s attention. There seemed to be no safe time or space, even if the odds against being attacked at any one time were slight.

A citywide commission set up by the mayor the previous year had recently reported on the rising levels of crime, noting the many incidents that had occurred, but had not really proposed any solutions that anyone could agree on. It was just a case of criminals attacking people at particular times and places, and it was just a matter of preventing them somehow or catching them somehow. On the prevention side, no one had a clear plan. On the punishment side, no one could think of any major changes. The commission wound down its work with a broad-based report that seemed destined not to be acted upon.

A traffic study was underway, to be completed in two months or before, but had you asked anyone in Nashville, they could have guessed the answer: Traffic was increasing, beyond all previous levels. The report, when released, would note that. In fact, it would dwell upon that point, a point that was so obvious it didn’t even need to be stated once. People were cynical about the ultimate conclusions, not because of what the ultimate conclusions would be, but because everyone felt that everyone already knew them.

Road construction was a major factor in traffic as well, and the report would soon note that road construction around the city had increased over the years, and had been maintained at high ongoing levels for a long time, way longer than was typical for an average set of road projects within a large city. Everyone knew about road construction, because they lived with it daily. But the citywide commission had to report upon it before anything could be considered as a solution to the problem.

Late in the afternoon, at a small brewery located near The Gulch, two men sat having a beer. One of them was a lawyer, in practice for almost forty years. His practice had never been terribly successful, but he had found additional work as a lobbyist, often representing community organizations and private clubs. He had also done some work representing the adult entertainment industry in the city, which had a strong presence over the years in various forms, but had been whittled back in recent years through lawsuits, city zoning ordinances, and Federal prosecutions.

His companion was an administrative employee with the city Convention and Tourist Bureau, a young man of just under thirty. He had moved to Nashville a dozen years ago, as a recent high school graduate from rural Indiana, to attend Belmont University. After graduation, he had begun work with the City Planning Commission, then had moved on to several other governmental entities before settling into his present job two years earlier. He had met the attorney through overlapping circles within city government, and the two had established a social calendar of sorts that saw them meeting periodically for informal discussions about the state of city affairs.

The two often held wide-ranging conversations over beers about what was going on in the city, and their tongues tended to become looser as the afternoons and evenings progressed. The young man saw it as a learning experience, learning from the older man, but the attorney saw it in the same way. The young man had insider information, such that it was, and that’s how the attorney made his living, and had for several decades.

The young man had met the mayor a handful of times, always in the presence of at least several others. He had been very impressed with the mayor, and spoke openly of his admiration to him. The attorney, on the other hand, had been on the wrong side of local history. He had opposed the mayor in his initial campaign some years earlier, and although he had stopped campaigning openly against him in successive races, he never hid the fact that he was not an admirer of the current mayor. Word of this had, of course, filtered back to the mayor, and although it was not known of any specific action he had taken or attitude he had formed, anyone who knew the mayor at all could have told you there either had been some ramifications, or would be at some day of reckoning. The mayor rarely forgot.

But the two men were respectful of each other’s opinions, even when they differed sharply. The young man gained access to an entire several-decade history that he would have had to research or ask around about from person to person over a length of time. He knew he was getting a filtered history, but at least it was a benchmark from which he could gauge future opinions, to the extent he received them.

The attorney loved to hear about any meetings the young man had attended, especially if they involved elected officials, or appointed officials in key posts, anything to do with regulation, zoning, funding for private organizations—anything to do, really, with ongoing city affairs.

What is the mayor thinking about the proposed relaxation of drug laws? the attorney asked, holding his beer aloft as if he was getting ready to propose a toast, but without doing so. I assume he’s all for it.

The young man shook his head and sipped on his beer. Not necessarily. They tell me it’s not that simple. The mayor generally opposes the law as proposed, but he could accept parts of it, especially those dealing with pot. Supposedly, some of the council members are trying to rewrite it to suit the mayor, and work out their version with the original supporters before getting back to the mayor with it.

Well, that sounds like him, too, the attorney said sarcastically. He never takes a position on anything. There’s never anything that’s been proposed where he comes forward and wholeheartedly supports it. He always hides behind the idea that it just needs changes here and there, and then the whole thing gets tied up for ten years, or never comes under consideration at all.

You’re just being too hard on the mayor, the young man gently scolded the attorney. You always tend to think of things in the worst possible way about the mayor.

The attorney started to grumble, but the young man cut him off, No, no, really. I mean that in the best way. You have a point of view, and I don’t mind you stating what that is. It’s a legitimate point of view. But you are generally negative toward the mayor; there’s nothing really that he does or could do that would meet with your approval.

The older man began to feebly protest, then checked himself and began to chuckle. He took a long swig of his beer and looked at the young man for a long time. That’s why I like talking to you. I can express myself, and it’s never personal with you. You’re a good listener. And when you come back with something I disagree with or don’t like, at least I know that you’ve listened to what I said.

The two of them whiled away the remainder of the afternoon in the same manner. Outside, dark clouds had formed all over the city, and it looked like things were going to get pretty bad. The young man could see the wind kicking up; dust and debris were readily visible in the air, having been picked up along the street. He could see the hair of long-haired women blowing freely, and those who walked by seemed to indicate that a chill was very much in the air, and had caught some of them without adequate covering.

Shortly before they began to think about leaving, the rain started, very slight at first, then gradually increasing to where a gentle sound from the outside began to penetrate to their booth. The two of them delayed their parting, but it was