And then something turned inside him. He pulled the new mirror from his pocket. He looked into it and saw a misshapen black face, dull-eyed and thick-lipped. He dropped the glass and reached down to grab a chunk of granite twice as big as his fist, then chased after her as fast as he could, his determination growing.
* * *
When Charlie woke, he realized he’d had a wet dream—a consequence of living as an ascetic. And now he knew things that had never been written, having seen the outrage, seen it whole. More than that. He’d lived it. He’d committed it. He’d given that little bitch what she deserved. Whoa. Steady, Charlie. He shook his head to clear it of that nasty thought and groaned at the repulsiveness of what he’d experienced.
It had been more than a dream. It was all too real. He sat up and considered taking a cold shower. Too late for that. He pulled the chain on the bare bulb, then stood up to stretch. It was 4:00 a.m. He stripped off his soiled sweat pants and stumbled to the can. He gave himself a cold-water wash, toweled himself off, and threw his clothes atop the sleeping bag on the cot. He would have to wash the whole mess.
Usually he didn’t give a second thought to his dreams, but this time he recalled everything and couldn’t go back to sleep. Something burned inside him. He slipped on jeans and tiptoed up the creaking stairs to the kitchen. He groped for and found the red bag of coffee beans on the counter. He started to fill the grinder, then realized he’d wake Kathleen. He took the coffee downstairs and poured beans into his palm, tossed them in his mouth, and chewed them like peanuts. He fired up his computer, then took a swig of water from the bottle he kept in the cooler beside his plastic milk crate. He sloshed the liquid around to wash down the grounds.
Although he’d never been an artist, he grabbed a piece of paper and, using his Waterman with black ink, sketched Martha Jean’s face. It turned out better than he had any right to expect, given his lack of skill. If he could find a photo of her, he’d know whether he was on the right track. Going on what he remembered seeing in the mirror, he drew a picture of Bernie Dent, that ugly little bastard. Then he drew the rock, for good measure.
After that, Charlie took a deep breath and started typing. Rather than fading, the dream became more vivid with every keystroke. It was exceeding strange, what was happening, but he seized on the idea that the dream was divine compensation for his recent loss—and just the break he needed. He didn’t like channeling a mentally handicapped rapist, but who was he to question such a gift? What else could he do?
He’d need further corroboration before he could fully weave its details into the text, of course. And he’d keep Talton’s footnotes in the manuscript, to lend authority to his account. But the story’s telling was shifting now, and it was going to be good. No, make that fantastic.
Chapter Eight
Dawn peeked into the dungeon as Charlie finished transcribing his terrible dream’s rich detail of grit, smoke, dust, lust, and pain. He collapsed on his cot, but after a few minutes he rose and took his laptop upstairs. He made coffee and migrated to the study, where he edited Talton’s manuscript for another four hours, until bolts of pain shot from his fingertips to his neck, commanding him to stop.
He wasn’t done for the day, however. Sunday evening, after returning from the Y and refueling with coffee, Charlie plunged back into the manuscript, his slate-gray shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, eyes gleaming with manic energy. For another six hours, he attacked Talton’s lumps of coal, compressing them into sparkling diamonds on the page. He could now see the book clearly and whole, running like a river through his mind—from the background of the attack on Martha Jean to Redeemer Wilson’s second protest march in 1987, the one Talton didn’t make. At the rate he was working, he’d have a package for Fortress in no time.
* * *
He breathed the dust of a commandeered 1910 Oldsmobile as it raced out of Gainesville with Bernie Dent trembling in the back seat. He chased after the accused murderer-rapist along with thirty-eight other mob members, whose names he knew. The would-be lynchers yelled and screamed and kicked rocks in a frustration bordering upon sexual. It took them a few minutes to fully comprehend that their prey was gone. Then they scattered, shouting curses and threats: “Damn nigger!”; “Next one won’t be so lucky!”; “We’d be better off if they was all dead.”
Suddenly, he was someone else, trudging through the September night into Cumming, the earth falling away behind each footstep, hurrying him along, until he reached his destination. He stopped and waited; the sun rose and burned his face. He smelled rotting meat and swatted at a horde of flies buzzing around his head. On a dusty street, he stepped over the tobacco-spit that had spattered on the courthouse steps like raindrops in hell, passing through a lingering crowd that longed to do the devil’s work. Soldiers ringed the building, standing at parade rest with fixed bayonets. He smelled horse turds and heard stray dogs barking at a bitch in heat. He wiped his brow; his sweat was muddy. He took notes for the piece he’d be filing on “The Georgia Troubles” for The New York Times. God, he hated this little cow town.
At 4:00 a.m., the courthouse door melted into darkness. Charlie kicked out of his sleeping bag and started writing. The power cord dangling from the overhead socket swayed back and forth as he tapped keys, going at them like a jazz piano player on meth.
Before he knew it, four hours had passed.
Upstairs over coffee, he told Kathleen to take her meds. She angrily refused. “Those pills are part of the control system Angela has,” she declared. “You shouldn’t be a part of that.”
There was a special place in hell for the controllers, he knew. “OK,” he said, having no time to argue. He left her sputtering vague incantations, apparently trying to get her smite back on.
That morning, Charlie drove the van up to Forsyth County. The place grew uglier every time he saw its malignant, incurable growth. Houses appeared like mushrooms after rain. In Cumming, he felt a pang of doubt as he pulled into the parking lot of the county’s modern, one-story library. He’d traveled fifty miles like a heat-seeking stalker to find something that in all likelihood didn’t exist. But his hunches had a supernatural twist now, which made following them an adventure, no matter the outcome.
The library, which had just opened, was empty except for a mother and daughter in the children’s section and an old woman returning her serial alphabet mysteries. A plump, pretty librarian with dark hair and gold-framed glasses stood at the checkout counter. “May I help you?”
“Yes ma’am. I’m doing historical research on Forsyth County and I was wondering if the library had any photographs from 1912.” He sensed a pair of eyes fix on him.
At the end of the counter, an older, heavy-jowled librarian wearing glasses on a beaded chain regarded him suspiciously. “Your uncle,” she told the younger woman.
“Cousin, actually,” the young librarian said. “We just call him uncle.” Turning to Charlie, she said, “’Cause he’s old. He runs the local historical society.”
“What’s his name?”
“Cecil Montgomery.”
The older woman looked away. Charlie whispered, “He’s no help.”
The younger woman, looking to be in her mid-thirties, wore a white V-neck sweater. She smiled sheepishly and glanced over at the other librarian before returning her gaze to Charlie. “What do you need?” she whispered back.
“Have you ever heard of Martha Jean Rankin?” When she nodded, he said, “I need a picture of her. She died in 1912.”
She looked at him critically. “I thought I recognized you. You were in the paper.” She wrinkled her face in perplexity. “Do you drive a truck?”
“No. I just wear cheap clothes.”
She giggled, drawing a warning glance from her colleague—apparently the alpha librarian.
“You married Susan Cutchins,” she whispered.
“I knew that. But how did you?”
“This used to be a small town. My name’s Lillian Scott.” She looked around. “
There aren’t any 1912 pictures here.” Leaning forward, she whispered, “But I have one. I’ll bring it tomorrow. Will you be here?”
“I’ll make a point of it.” He turned on his heel and walked out before he further irritated the older librarian. “Troll,” he muttered under his breath as he passed by her desk.
* * *
That night, Charlie edited the chapter covering the lynching of Ted Galent. Following a ten-page discourse on capital punishment, Talton had written that Galent, had he been properly charged, would have faced the relatively minor offense of concealing a crime. Instead, “Galent was shot to death in his jail cell, beaten to a pulp, and strung up on a telephone pole in the center of town and set afire, disrupting communications throughout the town and causing unnecessary inconvenience to Cumming’s wealthier citizens.”
Charlie inserted a subhead: Lynching Disrupts Phone Service. After that, he took the laptop downstairs along with marked-up manuscript pages and turned on the bare bulb overhead. He fell asleep while rereading the chapter, still wearing his work clothes and glasses; the papers slid off the sleeping bag into a pile on the floor.
* * *
He sat on a rickety chair taking dictation from a dying man in a bed. The stench of shit filled the room, which was crowded with mismatched old furniture. He gagged, momentarily breaking the pen’s contact with paper. The dim-eyed man lying in his own filth saw this and stopped talking, then licked his lips with a gray tongue and croaked, “You need to get all this down. ’Cause it the damn truth.”
“Sorry.” The scribe turned to open the window, but as he placed his hands on the frame, he felt the bitter cold. He turned back to his clipboard. The dying man stared at the ceiling and began talking slowly: “I, Joshua Logan, being on my deathbed, do solemnly swear that I am a sinner and I beg the good Lord to forgive me for the things I done wrong. I took part in the killing of a man named Galent in the year of our Lord 1912 and the taking of another man’s farm that same year. I have farmed the land as my own ever since, but because it is not my land by any lawful act, it is not mine to give to my heirs. Though they may not see it that way, the land belongs to a nigger named Buck Smith, who was run out of town. We burned his cabin and drew lots to see who would get his land. I won. And then there was Riggins. Ike Cutchins is the one to answer for that, more than me. You make sure you write that down.”
While Logan was talking, a woman with a weathered face came in with a pitcher of water, placed it on the bedside table, waved her hand in front of her nose, and left without pouring any into the empty glass beside it.
Logan motioned for the scribe to put down his pen. “We was all of us caught up in that thing with the Rankin girl,” Logan wheezed. “But it wasn’t just that. Niggers was doin’ better than we was. I was a sharecropper and it didn’t seem right. Some of us just hated ’em. Lots of rich folks liked them better than us. Then old man Carswell said how if we got rid of niggers we’d be rid of crime. He was mad ’cause his family couldn’t own ’em anymore. I didn’t even know I was gonna take the land when we did it. Had to hire a lawyer—Samuel Jenkins—to make the title look good.”
Logan paused and licked his parched lips, needing water. Some meanness inside the young fellow kept him from giving it to the old man, however. Logan dictated a few more sentences, then said, “Lemme see what you wrote.” He took the clipboard and read silently before saying, “Gimme the pen.” He scrawled his name. “I don’t need to say no more. I’m prayin’ to the Lord—”
His speech was interrupted by violent spasms. Logan flopped around on the bed, and his eyes popped wide open. His face turned purple. It looked like he’d offended God so badly that the Lord was strangling the son of a bitch. Then Logan was still. “Aunt Lilly! Aunt Lilly!”
The woman came in and regarded Logan carefully, then took his pulse. “He’s dead,” she declared, dropping the hand. She then slapped the corpse’s face hard with the back of her hand. “Been wantin’ to do that for the longest time. Cee, you need to get rid of that letter.”
“Yes ma’am.” They both retreated to the kitchen, where the fireplace burned brightly. The scribe threw the sheet into the flames and asked the woman, “Anything more you need me to do?”
“Don’t tell a soul. Nobody needs to know what he said. Not ever. This land’s all I got—”
“I know.”
She gave him a sullen gaze. “Don’t have much choice, do I?”
“Not for me to say, Aunt Lilly.”
“You run along and tell your parents. After they take the body away, I need you to come back and help me get rid of the mattress. Guess we burn it.” She wrinkled her nose. “Now I got to wash him off before they come. Seems like I pay good money for the funeral home to do it.” She considered the issue, then shook her head. “People will talk. Best I do it.”
“You want us to say a prayer for him?”
“Ain’t no point, where he’s goin’.”
He shuddered when he saw the cold hatred in her eyes. “I understand.”
When he stepped outside into the blustery cold, he recalled that he was due at choir practice in an hour. He realized that his name was Cecil, but his friends called him Monty. He also felt a pang of longing for the high school football team’s quarterback, but he would have to keep that to himself. “Oh my goodness,” he said as he trotted off, “I’m gay.” But that word didn’t sound right to his ears, not in 1953.
* * *
Charlie typed Logan’s confessional scene, including the letter, into his laptop. Although Logan’s name didn’t appear in Flight from Forsyth, Talton had interviewed Buck Smith’s son Isaiah. It was the work’s most gripping passage. And now Cecil was helping, despite his antipathy to the project. Charlie chuckled with glee.
He went upstairs to look for blank stationery. He could hear Kathleen moaning through her own dreams, sounding both intriguing and unladylike. Thurwood must be visiting. He found a sheet of paper that appeared to be the right size, then returned downstairs and rewrote the note using his closed laptop as a backboard. Due to overwork, Charlie was troubled by a knot at the base knuckle of his right ring finger. His grip on his fountain pen was cramped, the penmanship scrabbly—not his own. It was a tricky proposition, using a first-hand account from a lyncher and land-stealer, especially since the letter had been burned, but he’d think of a way to use it. Everything came to him so easily now. Such is life in the realm of the professionally weird.
* * *
Charlie drove past Cumming, continuing northwest, figuring Joshua Logan lay in the graveyard of the First Church of Varmintville, since the Second Church hadn’t been built until the 1980s. Less than two miles from Pappy’s farm, he pulled into the gravel parking lot of the fading clapboard church. He zipped up his parka and ambled toward the unfenced cemetery. Weeds had overgrown the plastic flowers that adorned the graves; his work boots crunched dried stalks as he conducted his search.
The throaty roar of dual glasspack mufflers shattered the quiet. Charlie recognized the sound. His chest tightened as he ducked behind a tombstone. An instant later, Momo’s red monster Chevy pickup truck—General Nathan Bedford Forrest—rolled by less than fifty feet away. Charlie knew that Momo, who had threatened to kill him the last time they’d seen each other, kept a gun handy.
The truck’s big V-8 engine chugged lethargically at the stop sign before it roared off in the direction of Pappy’s house. Charlie stood and dusted off his knees, trying to convince himself that his Caravan was invisible. He glanced at the tombstone he’d been hiding behind.
Joshua Logan
Born July 12, 1888
Died Feb. 3, 1953
GONE TO HIS REWARD
Nice delphic touch. And a single headstone. He searched for the wife’s grave but found no marker for her. Charlie remembered the vicious slap from his dream. The lonely grave was further confirmation that his vision of Logan’s death was true, so true. Clearly, the miracle shouted down the fraud.
* * *
Lillian Scott, sitting at the reference desk, looked up and smiled at Charlie as he approached. Wordlessly, the Forsyth librarian opened a drawer and produced a manila envelope. “You wanted to see this, I believe,” she said, pulling out a heavy sheet of paper and turning it to face him. Shocked, he held up his drawing, which he’d smuggled in under his parka. She stared at it wide-eyed. “It’s the exact same picture!” she said, drawing the unwelcome attention of the library troll. “My great-grandma drew that picture. How’d you get it?”
“I … uh—”
“Looks like the original, except that the paper’s new.”
“And cheap, unfortunately. I drew it from a copy. I inherited some stuff,” he whispered.
Leaning forward, she confided, “I inherited some things, too.”
“Really? What?”
“Some old journals and letters from back in the day. I haven’t really read them, but there might be something there.”
“I’d like to see them.”
She looked at the other drawing he’d placed on the desk. “That’s the killer, isn’t it?”
“You tell me.”
Before he could stop her, Lillian summoned the library troll, who stiffly walked over and hoisted her chained glasses upon her nose as she regarded the picture. “Bernie Dent,” she declared.
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