Brambleman

by Jonathan Grant

  Well, they did now. Charlie’s gaze froze on a brown envelope he uncovered near the center of the table. Hello. “Joshua Logan” was written on it in thick black ink. The lyncher and land stealer of 1912. He of the deathbed confession, dictated to a young Cecil Montgomery and promptly burned. Unless—

  No. Nothing like that in the envelope. But he could now see handwriting samples and signatures from both men. Get while the getting’s good, Charlie told himself. As he scanned a letter from each man, he stifled a laugh, worried that an outbreak of glee would alert Lillian to the true nature of his mission and the pending danger to her family’s good name.

  After that, he sought more documentation for his main story, but no worries. It was all around. He was practically whistling when he found this letter:

  June 6, 1937

  Dear Horton,

  Just to keep you posted on the Cutchins-Riggins problem. Here is the latest. On the night of June 3 Ike Cutchins showed up at John Riggins house with a homemade gasoline bomb and threw it on the porch. Riggins stepped outside, picked up the bomb, a canning jar stuffed with a burning rag, which had failed to explode. He threw it after Ike, who was running away down the road as fast as his stubbly little legs could carry him.

  Unfortunately, there was a casualty. Ike’s fyce, who apparently possessed a fair deal more courage than his master, stayed behind to bark at John. When the jar hit the road, it blew up, and a piece of flying glass so mangled the dog’s back leg that it had to be amputated.

  Sheriff Ware told me this after both parties reported their own versions of the incident and demanded that an arrest be made. Riggins must understand that a white man has more rights than a nigger will ever have.

  Yours truly,

  Lucious

  Lillian fixed ham sandwiches for lunch. By then, Charlie had scanned thirty pages into his laptop. “What exactly are you looking for?” she asked as they ate in the newly remodeled kitchen, complete with granite counters, maple cabinets, and black appliances. “Like I said, I haven’t read that stuff.”

  “Local color,” he said in his best deadpan. “The sort of things that make a story come alive.”

  That seemed to satisfy her, but as it turned out, she was interested in something else. As they chatted amiably, she told Charlie with a shy smile, “There isn’t a man in my life, at present.” She also said that she considered his separation “the same thing as a divorce.” He took these statements as a warning, along with her tendency to reach over and touch his hand when she laughed at his jokes.

  After lunch, Charlie kept reading, but didn’t find anything of particular interest until his eyes fell on a partially blacked-out journal entry by Anderson on October 13, 1937, the day after the date on the back of the lynching photo: “Yesterday marked the death of (name redacted) at the hands of (several names redacted), and especially (name redacted), who started all this. I am not happy about it, but the nigger had to argue, so he died.”

  While Charlie was staring at this entry, the phone rang. Lillian took the call in the kitchen. A few seconds later, he heard her mention his name, which was precisely when things went wrong.

  “Oh,” Lillian said. “I didn’t know. Nobody ever told me that.” She became more apologetic and agitated. Finally, she said, “Yes, Cecil.”

  Shit. Montgomery.

  When Lillian returned to the dining room, Charlie glanced up and flinched when he saw the look on her face. “You have to leave,” she said between gritted teeth.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Logan’s coming. He’s won’t be happy,” Lillian said. “It’s best for you if you’re gone.”

  “Who’s Logan?”

  “My brother. I’m not telling you anything more. You’re a snake.” She hissed the last word.

  “Sorry,” Charlie said, doing his best to look confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do,” she said. “Why else would you be sitting at my table, taking notes?”

  He glanced around at the papers. All those sources, all that history … fading before his eyes. But at least he now had more damning information on the old man. Charlie cleared his throat and gulped. “Tell … Logan that I’m not working on 1912 anymore. This is a Cutchins thing I’m doing now.”

  She glared at him, arms folded across her chest.

  He closed his computer, unplugged the scanner, and quickly packed up his stuff. With his gear in his hands, Charlie turned to her and said, “I’ve got a job to do. That’s all it is.”

  “Like I said, it’s best that you go. I’m only giving you this warning because I don’t want blood on my carpet. And delete whatever you put on your computer. You don’t have rights to use it.”

  “Goodbye.” Charlie marched out of the house and quickened his step. He opened the van door and tossed his equipment on the floor in front of the passenger seat. As he drove off, he cast a glance back at Lillian’s house and shook his head mournfully at the history he’d left behind. When he was a half-block away, a blue Ram pickup sped by going the opposite direction, running a stop sign. Racing the engine, its driver turned toward Lillian’s house.

  “It’s good to be gone,” Charlie muttered as he drove off. As for deleting the copies he’d made on his computer, she’d have to take that up with his boss.

  Of course he felt badly, but his mood brightened when he realized how much treasure he’d rescued from behind enemy lines. What occupied his mind on the drive back to Atlanta were those blacked-out names. How could he learn the lynchers’ identities? Maybe Lucious Fervil also had a horny great-granddaughter.

  He crossed the line into Fulton County and breathed a sigh of relief. Soon afterward, his cellphone trilled. He was glad it was Joshua Furst at Fortress, but his relief was short-lived. “What the hell is going on down there?” his editor asked. “I haven’t even finished reading the manuscript—it’s absolutely fantastic, by the way—and people are already calling me. You’re really stirring up trouble, and I say that with the greatest admiration. Some guy named Cecil called demanding to see everything you’ve written. Then some woman called to say your life is in danger and gave me her number. Your first groupie. Ha, ha.”

  “Uh, thanks. Don’t let Cecil Montgomery see the manuscript. And it’s not about him, anyway. I’m working on something else. What’s the woman’s name?”

  “Wouldn’t give it. Just a number.” Joshua rattled it off.

  “Hang on,” Charlie said, tossing the phone on the passenger seat, pulling out his pen, and writing the number on the back of his left hand. He picked up the phone and checked with Joshua to make sure he’d got it right. “OK, thanks.” Charlie hung up.

  He dialed as he drove past the first sign of civilization, the North Springs MARTA station. No answer.

  A minute later, a call came in. “Hello,” he said, trying not to sound agitated.

  “You called me,” a woman’s voice declared.

  “I did? Oh. Did you leave a message with my editor?”

  “Is that you, Mr. Sherman?”

  “Yes. And you are—”

  “You don’t need my name,” she said in an accent torn between drawl and twang. “I got some information for you. I wanted to warn you, but your editor wouldn’t give me your number.”

  “Warn me about what?”

  “Logan Scott is looking for you.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Charlie said. “What’s his problem?”

  “He was nervous about something ‘that damned writer’ is working on and said his uncle’s gonna kill his sister. I said, ‘What writer?’ And he said, ‘The one working on the dead man’s book about 1912.’ He ’bout had a conniption on his way out.”

  “The dead man’s book.” Charlie liked it as a title. Maybe for his memoir, if he wasn’t careful. “Now … who’s his uncle?”

  “Cecil Montgomery.”

  “You mean his cousin.”

  “He said uncle.”

  “Whatever. And they were talking about me?”


  “Not by name, but I knew it was you. I been followin’ you. Saw an article earlier this year. I Googled you about a book deal, then I called Fortress. I didn’t think the guy was going to help me out. Glad he got in touch with you.”

  “You told him my life was in danger?”

  “Logan carries a gun. Probably end up shooting himself, though, like his cousin did down in Atlanta last Christmas.”

  Charlie’s sphincter clamped shut. He was stunned into silence for a moment, then attempted a recovery: “Wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Got into it with a guy at a Pancake Hut. I figure he had it comin’. Anyway, Logan works for the county. He’s an auxiliary deputy, thinks he can arrest people.”

  “Does he work for the sheriff?”

  “No, the planning—you don’t need to involve me in this.”

  The planning commission. That would make Scott one of the county bigwigs. And Joshua Logan’s farm was out there near the proposed superhighway, too. Lillian’s family probably had as much at stake as Pappy’s clan did. “No, of course not. Uh, thanks for the warning, I’ll certainly—”

  “You married a Cutchins.”

  “That’s true.” He stared over traffic into the blue sky. A smile crossed his lips. “We don’t get along so well anymore.”

  “I figured as much, if you’re working on what I think you are. So Evangeline Powell’s your mother-in-law.” She cackled. “What do you think of her?”

  “A little goes a long way,” he drawled.

  “I hear you. Her act got old with me a long time ago.”

  “So what is it that you think I’m working on?”

  “I figure you’re writing a book about the Cutchinses and by now you know they’re all evil and crooked as snakes. Stanley Cutchins cheated me on my insurance. Told me the policy he sold me covered my boat, even charged me for it, and then I found out the hard way it didn’t. He knew what he was doing, and it cost me dearly. Now one of their own is going to do it to them. If that’s not poetry, I don’t know what is. But you need to be careful. There’s people up here who have worked for generations to keep this quiet. But some of us think the Cutchins’ time of ridin’ high needs to come to an end, what with the news about the farm.”

  “I saw that there’s an option of a million dollars on the land.”

  “Purchase price be twenty times that. If you know how they got it, you know it’s not right.”

  “OK. You called me, and I got a feeling you want to help. Is there something else you’d like to share?” He still wasn’t sure exactly what she knew, and he didn’t intend to tip his hand.

  “Yeah. Get in touch with Danny Patterson. Lives on Crooked Hollow Road. Know where that is?”

  “I’ve been by it a few times.”

  “My daughter’s best friend—his niece—takes care of him. If you talk to him, he might have something to tell you. But be quick. He ain’t gonna be around much longer. Got cancer real bad.”

  “What will he tell me?”

  “I don’t know what he’ll tell you, but he seen it.”

  Bam. Charlie felt like he’d been shoveling in the dirt and just hit something hard. “It?”

  “The thing itself. He’s your eyewitness, Mr. Sherman. I gotta go. People can listen in on these cellphones. Good luck,” she whispered. “I hope you nail their butts to the wall.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Charlie drove on Crooked Hollow Road for several miles before he found a gray mailbox with “Patterson” painted on it in crude red letters. Atop a hill, an old two-story house stood at the end of a long, two-track grass and gravel driveway that cut through an overgrown pasture. No cars or pickups. It was a scenic view, if you didn’t look too closely, but Charlie could see signs of decay even from a distance: peeling paint, torn screens, plywood on a window, and a sagging roof adorned with a dish antenna.

  It was a sunny October day and the air was still; leaves from oaks and poplars dropped straight to the ground. Across the road, behind him, stood a new subdivision. A half-mile away, work had begun on yet another one. The clanking union of a front-end loader and a dump truck broke the morning stillness. The van’s tires crunched and popped along the driveway. Charlie parked beside the house, climbed out with his satchel, slammed the door, and shouted, “Hello!”

  He didn’t trust the broken stair railing or front porch to hold his weight (or the porch roof not to collapse on him), so he walked around the house and knocked on the kitchen door. He heard a chair squeak, then slow thumping. The door opened and a grizzled, wild-haired, and rheumy-eyed old man in a ratty pale blue bathrobe stood before him, giving Charlie the blankest stare he’d ever seen. Underneath the robe, the man wore a frayed T-shirt and graying briefs. A tube from his nose connected to an air tank on a two-wheeled cart he pulled behind him. The man’s free hand hung trembling uncontrollably.

  “Mr. Patterson?”

  “I doan wanna … buy anything,” the old man wheezed. “Ain’t got … money.”

  Charlie spoke quickly. “I don’t want to sell you anything. I’m working on a book about Forsyth County. I understand you know what happened to a man named John Riggins, and I wondered if you might be willing to talk about it.”

  The old man gasped, either in surprise or for breath. “Ain’t heard that name … in a long time. Someone finally caught … up to it. So that’s … what it’s all about.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Been a car … parked down the road … past day or so.” He pointed feebly toward the side of the house. “Ain’t there today. Not so far as I see, anyway. You know anything … ’bout that?”

  “No. But people have expressed an interest in what I’ve been doing lately. I can say that.”

  “What you mean?”

  “They broke in and stole a bunch of papers. They didn’t find what they were looking for.”

  “What they looking fer?”

  “A land title and this.” Charlie pulled out the lynching photograph from his satchel. “You ever seen it?”

  Patterson stared, his mouth open slightly, his wheezing almost a whistle. “No.”

  Charlie’s spirits sank as he put back the photo.

  “But I remember … ’em takin’ it.”

  Charlie’s spirits bounced back. “Go on.”

  “Don’t suppose … you got smokes.” Patterson pulled a bloody handkerchief from his robe pocket. He weakly coughed up a red patch of phlegm and spit it into the cloth, then tucked it away.

  “Afraid I don’t.”

  “Come inside anyway.” Patterson let him in, apparently as starved for company as he was for nicotine. Charlie followed him as he slowly shuffled to the kitchen table and sat down in an old metal-legged chair with a torn vinyl cushion, the oxygen cart pressed against his leg. Charlie remained standing.

  A TV blared away in the living room, which it shared with a hospital bed. A pile of dirty dishes sat in the sink and more were scattered across the table. There were competing stenches: a backed-up toilet or septic tank, rotting food, and/or a dead animal under the house. Charlie doubted that Patterson could smell any of it.

  “I heard that land’s gettin’ sold. That picture … worth a million dollars,” said Patterson.

  “More than that,” Charlie said, raising his voice to be heard above the TV’s din.

  “All right. This is somethin’ … needs to be told. Nuthin’ nobody can do to me now. I’m dyin’. Cancer. That’s what the tube’s for.” He pointed to his nose.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Uh, mind if I turn off the TV?”

  The old man nodded. “Go ahead.”

  Charlie went into the living room. The Matthew Steele Show was on. Trash TV of the worst sort. Two mothers were pregnant by their sons-in-law, and their daughters sat beside them. The graphic at the bottom of the screen said, “She’s my half-sister, she’s my step-daughter!”

  Charlie shook his head in disgust.

  “You got to turn off the VCR, too. That’
s an old show I was watching”

  “Oh. OK.” Charlie turned off the machines, then stepped to the front window and looked out. “Where was the car parked?”

  “Down the hill … under some trees.”

  Charlie saw a wide, flat shoulder on the road about a quarter-mile east. No sign of a stakeout. Returning to the kitchen, he sat down across from Patterson, pulled a small digital voice recorder from his shirt pocket, and cleared a spot for it on the table.

  “Excuse the mess. My niece … supposed to come by … and help me. Hasn’t been here … for a week. I’m runnin’ outta food. She probably … shacked up with somebody … met in a bar … and forgot about me.”

  “I can get you something after we talk.” Charlie realized how cold that sounded, especially since he meant to say it that way.

  “Something from … Pancake Hut. I’ll trade you … interview for eggs ’n grits.”

  Charlie grimaced at the mention of his least favorite restaurant. Nevertheless he said, “Sounds like a deal.”

  “I just turned eighty-two … Longer than most … nonsmokers. Outlasted … everybody. Wife … kids. Now all I got … is that niece … lucky she comes by … once a week.”

  “I’m going to turn on the recorder now.” Charlie pushed the Rec button.

  “I reckon … I got to do this,” Patterson said.

  Charlie reckoned he did.

  Patterson began in his wheezing rasp. “OK. It was 1937 … my birthday, October 12 … just a few days ago.”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Nobody pays any attention … anymore. But you don’t need to hear … ’bout that. I was playin’ hooky to celebrate. Bad year. Weevils was everywhere. We lost half our crop.”

  Charlie pointed to the window and swept his hand around. “On this land?”