Brambleman

by Jonathan Grant

  “No cops,” Charlie murmured sleepily as a freight train rumbled by. “I get it now.”

  Chapter Twenty

  His hair damp and sheets sweaty, Charlie woke from a dream of drowning. The loft’s vague shadows seemed unfamiliar, but the sound of a MARTA train clacking by comforted him. His back and leg muscles were red-hot clothes hangers beneath his skin, and his knees were busted hinges, but his fever had broken, and the pain from his wounds had subsided. A remarkable recovery.

  The radioactive orange jumpsuit lay rumpled on the floor, looking like the man inside had vaporized. Would the sheriff charge him with stealing it? Charlie didn’t care; he would keep his trophy, stenciled with that dark, magical lettering: 1Forsyth County Jail. When American Monster was published, he’d pose for his author’s photo in it and have the last Georgia chain gang laugh. Anyway, it was a fair trade for the shipping department clothes still in Cumming. He threw the blood-stained uniform in the washing machine along with his battle-tested duster.

  The kitchen was trashed: dirty dishes in the sink, old food and bloody bandages on the counter. He cleaned up and brewed coffee, reveling in quotidian tasks that marked his return to normalcy. While eating eggs and a bagel—practically the only food left in the place—he looked at notes and reporters’ business cards that had been slipped under his door. One said, “Fight the Power! Peace, Kim #416.”

  He fired up the computer and checked the Atlanta newspaper’s website for news. “Writer Missing: Law Agencies Under Fire” was the top story, accompanied by that fortuitous, perhaps lifesaving cellphone photo of Charlie with a cop’s boot on his head. Thank you, Alphonsus Hester, wherever you are. The picture’s poor resolution didn’t hide the defeated look of a whipped dog in Charlie’s eyes. He’d been shamed, humiliated, and dominated, and now the world knew it. This pissed him off and pushed his blood pressure back to a proper boil. He wanted to fight back.

  Fortunately, there was plenty of ammunition out there—and shots were being fired. His story had gone national, even international, and Redeemer Wilson had proposed a prayer vigil for him. Crenshaw’s article was replete with quotes from Sandra, law professors, and civil rights attorneys expressing their outrage at his treatment. Rep. Stanley Cutchins claimed no knowledge of the dispute between his father and his niece’s estranged husband. A photo of Pappy’s house showed a “no trespassing” sign by the driveway. And there was this lovely sentence: “When asked what Sherman had stolen, Isaac Cutchins threatened to kill a reporter.” There was a sidebar story (“Forsyth Book No. 1 on Books.com”) and an editorial blasting the GBI, Forsyth County sheriff, and Canton police for their mistreatment of a man “most likely hiding from assassins, not warrants … although one has to wonder if there isn’t a connection.” Cool. Charlie hit the print button.

  The story in Tuesday’s paper had identified his feckless assailants as Forsyth County meth dealers. The shooter’s name: Robert Suches. Someone with that last name had been in the mob that killed John Riggins. “Suches it is,” Charlie muttered.

  And the brilliant part: Through it all, Charlie Sherman remained a man of mystery, whereabouts unknown, his survival in doubt. He’d be the hottest interview in America. Once upon a time, he would have done anything for this kind of attention, but now he didn’t want the scrutiny—mainly because he was too burned out for a news conference, and furthermore, he wasn’t sure what to say.

  He was still Googling himself when his cellphone rang. Seeing it was a New York number, he took a chance and answered it.

  Fortress’s young publicist was on the line. “Charles Sherman! My God, you got shot and arrested. You’re like our most famous author right now,” Heather Schwartz gushed. “We’re inundated with interview requests, in case you didn’t see my e-mail. Oh, and we sold an excerpt to the Atlanta paper. It was weird. Your editor said it was a boring chapter, mainly a list of land documents and stuff.”

  “Oh.” Those would be the records Crenshaw had long coveted. “Wait. Who’s my editor?”

  “Joshua.”

  “I thought Joshua got fired.”

  “We’ve got three Joshuas. Well, two now. By the way, the book’s selling out everywhere. People want to know what got you shot and arrested and tortured or whatever. We’re going to a second printing. Oh, and the Times is reviewing it. You’ve already been on the front page twice. This is so exciting!”

  “Yay,” Charlie deadpanned.

  “I’m e-mailing you like sixty interview requests. You take care of them, OK? And send me stuff I can use for a press release about you being shot. And arrested.”

  “I got assaulted, too.”

  “Were you raped in jail?” she asked, sounding hopeful.

  “No, just run-of-the-mill police brutality.”

  “Somebody said there’s a picture with a cop’s boot on your head. Was that posed?”

  “Uh, no. Not that one. The mug shots were, though.”

  “Send us something, anyway. We’ll issue a statement. And congratulations! This is so awesome!”

  “Thanks.” He hung up and broke out laughing so hard he fell out of his chair, causing himself more pain.

  Next, Charlie listened to the saga play out over his cellphone’s voicemail. First Angela, from Wednesday night, apologizing for not playing his message. Then Sandra, excitedly saying she was calling in her human-rights allies “because the Forsyth sheriff won’t return my calls and that place is an American gulag.” Then, late Thursday morning, after he’d been taken by Finch and Drew, a WTF call from Sandra. She’d called again Thursday night: “God, Charles, where are you? What have they done? I’ve demanded that the governor call out the National Guard to search for you!”

  There were more calls: Jean, his oldest friend from his new life, worried and crying. Dana, on her way out of town Thursday night, saying, “You’ve manufactured enough publicity to get on the bestseller list.” Laughing! A wonderful laugh, too. Nothing from Susan. But she didn’t have his number. With good reason. Yet they found him, anyway.

  And a recent one from Barbara Asher: “Charlie? Charlie?” she cried out in anguished hope. “Are you alive? There’s an article about you in the Times. This is absolutely insane! Your sales must be through the roof! I’m putting Monster up for auction. Call me when you’re out of intensive care or solitary confinement. There’s so much more to do. Editing and a new ending. Without you around, who would do it? Publishers don’t have real editors anymore. Please, please, don’t die on me, darling.”

  His e-mails included the usual junk along with a “semi-desperate” plea from Crenshaw for an interview. And one from Atlanta Week editor James Hadford: “Charlie—We’ll pay you $2,000 for your first-person account of whatever the hell’s going on. By the way, we mailed a check for your last article.”

  Charlie was out the door in a flash. He found an envelope from Hadford in his vestibule mailbox. Five hundred bucks. Cool. He snuck a peek through La Patisserie’s back door. A painter was lettering the bakery’s new front window. There was a rack inside, by the door, with free copies of Atlanta Week. He was reluctant to show his injured face in the shop after causing so much chaos there, but he snuck in anyway and snatched a copy, retreating undetected. He stood in the garage admiring the front-page promo: “Georgia Diaspora: Forsyth’s Blacks are (Finally) History.”

  A bus rumbled by, reminding him of his brush with death. He shuddered, realizing that this wasn’t over. American Monster was far from being published, and he was still in danger. Then he realized that Minerva might be in danger, too. He needed to see if she was OK. Should he call her? No. She’d hang up on him. He needed to pay her a visit, even if she slammed the door in his face. He returned to the loft, got his coat from the dryer, and rushed out. He slipped on his shades and raised the duster’s collar to cover his damaged ear as he walked past two news trucks parked on the sidewalk. After spending twenty minutes searching for the Volvo, he found it on a side street with two parking tickets stuck under a wiper and a tow-away not
ice plastered on the driver’s window.

  On the way to Minerva’s, he called Sandra. Her assistant shrieked, “Mr. Sherman’s alive!”

  Sandra came on the line. “Charles! Are you all right?”

  “I am now.”

  “They wouldn’t tell me where you were, then I got a call from a reporter. They had pictures of you getting stomped. I called the Canton police and they claimed they had no record of you.”

  “They let me go. It was just a courtesy stomp.”

  “How’d you get home?”

  “I walked to Alpharetta and caught MARTA. Or maybe MARTA caught me.”

  “You should have called me. We were worried sick. Now the Justice Department is involved. I talked to the governor for twenty minutes yesterday afternoon. He promised a full-scale search.”

  “He lied,” Charlie said. “I walked along the main road for thirty miles. I was out there for eight hours. I wasn’t hard to find.”

  “He was probably hoping you’d get hit. Do you realize how much media this has gotten?”

  “Yeah. The paper’s running an excerpt from the book Sunday. The New York Times is reviewing it. I’ve got sixty-five requests for interviews, last I checked.”

  “Hell, Charlie, I’ve got forty. We need to go on the attack.”

  “I don’t want to do anything today. Maybe Monday. I don’t know what to say, anyway.”

  She hesitated. “All right. You must be exhausted. Should I tell people you’re all right?”

  “That seems like a bit of an overstatement, but go ahead.”

  “OK. Call me. Oh, by the way … maybe this isn’t the right time, but I promised Angela I’d mention it. She wants to renegotiate the contract on the book.” Charlie flinched. The car swerved to the left. “And your wife called.”

  The car swerved back to the right. “Really. What does she want?”

  “She’s worried about you,” Sandra said, sounding surprised. “You should call her.”

  Actually, Charlie had been talking about Angela, but there was no point in getting into that now. “Thanks for the warning. And thanks for bringing the legal army.”

  “I’ll bill you. Thank goodness you’re a bestselling author now, so you can afford it, right?”

  Charlie laughed, but stopped when he hung up, since the prospect of forking over a bunch of money to Angela didn’t amuse him all that much.

  Minutes later, he parked in front of Minerva’s house and rang the bell.

  She opened the door, gasped, and stepped back. “First I hear you were shot, then the next thing I hear is that you got yourself arrested, then you disappear. You all right?”

  “More or less.”

  She examined his face, tut-tutting at his injuries. “So what brings you back to my doorstep, Mister Bad Penny?” she asked, distrust in her voice.

  “Came to see how you were doing. I figured if I was having troubles, you might be, too.”

  She sighed, stepped inside and gestured to the sofa. “Come on in. I’ll make tea.”

  When she returned from the kitchen, she sat in her chair and regarded him this way and that. “Looks like you didn’t get shot up too bad.”

  “I’ll be all right.” He nodded toward Flight from Forsyth, which sat on the table by her chair with a bookmarker stuck in the middle. “You’ve been reading it.”

  “I’m halfway through. Terrible stuff. What happened, not the writing. Writing’s good.”

  “Thanks. How’s Takira doing?”

  “She’s at school.”

  “Heard from Demetrious lately?”

  She looked out the western window. Before Charlie could break the awkward silence, the tea kettle whistled. Minerva went to the kitchen, returning with cups on a tray. “Tell you the truth,” she said, seemingly apropos of nothing, “I gave up on you.” She sat and took a sip. “There have been things happening. About that farm.”

  Charlie took a sip of bitter, unsweetened brew, then put down the cup. “Did you get an attorney and file a lien on the property, like I suggested?”

  “You were shot,” she said, casting her gaze on the floor. “What time of day did that happen?”

  “Monday morning. About ten, I think.”

  “At noon that day, some men—lawyers—came by with papers.”

  “Really.” Charlie sat up straight.

  “Of course I didn’t know what had happened to you at the time.”

  “What were their names?”

  “Jackson and Stout. That’s the law firm. The men had a quitclaim on land in Forsyth County. They wouldn’t say it was my father’s, but obviously it was, because they were willing to give me twenty thousand dollars to sign it.”

  “How’d they know to find you?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  “Hmm.” Charlie had already come to suspect that the evildoers had found Minerva after finding him, perhaps picking up his trail at Kathleen’s funeral. That pissed him off. He couldn’t even mourn folks properly anymore. “Damn. You didn’t sign it, did you? Because that land is worth millions—”

  She held up her hand to silence him. “I told them I’d think about it. Unfortunately, Demetrious and his friend came in while they were here. I didn’t want to tell the boy what was going on, especially not with that P-Dog—” she sneered at the name “—standing there. Demetrious got upset and started yelling how this was about the book you’re writing. One of the men told Demetrious this was grown-up business and for him to run along and mind his own.”

  She sighed. “Now you know Demetrious can’t stand to be dissed, he calls it, and really, the man had no business saying that since this isn’t his house. The boys have a problem with white folks anyway, but these two men … well, P-Dog acts the fool and pulls a gun!” She threw up her hands. “This isn’t even an ounce of his business, and he’s yelling that they’re trying to cheat us—like it’s his money, can you believe it?”

  Minerva fanned herself with her hand before continuing. “Anyway, Demetrious and he start carrying on, saying they’re stealing what is rightfully ours. The boys are shouting to get out before they kill them. Let me tell you, those men left in a hurry.” She paused and looked down. “I told the boys they had no business doing what they did. I should have told them to get themselves gone.”

  Her eyes widened. “Not ten minutes later,” she said, her voice high and indignant, “The law comes and takes Demetrious and P-Dog away. Now his friend is nothing but bad news, and this isn’t the first time Demetrious has been in trouble, and with a gun, well—that’s not good at all.” She shook her head. “I expected to get a phone call from him, but not a word. The next day, I saw your bloody face in the paper and found out that you’d disappeared. That’s when I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That it was over. Things weren’t going to work out the way I’d hoped. And it wasn’t safe to fight about it. While I’m trying to get Demetrious out of jail, calling lawyers—and I can’t even find his mama, but Shaundra is a whole ’nother story—the men come back, real confident now. They say they can make the boys’ problems go away, drop charges, clear the record, if I just sign the quitclaim.” She laughed ruefully. “They’d pay me ten thousand. Half what they’d offered before.”

  “That’s extortion!” Charlie cried.

  “Well, I’ve got to look out for mine. I took the money. I had to. There’s going to be some big bills coming with the baby. And now Demetrious is out of jail. Not that he’ll stay out.”

  “Oh, Minerva,” he said, unable to hide his disappointment in her.

  Anger flashed across her face. “Don’t you ‘Oh, Minerva’ me. Looked like they got rid of you. Those men said there wasn’t going to be a book, and even if there was, it wouldn’t matter, because they’d fix it so nobody would believe anything you said. Next thing I know, you’re in jail, then you’re all bloody on the news yesterday, then you disappear again. I figured they put you on a chain gang, or did you like they did my father.” She shook her head.<
br />
  “I wish you hadn’t signed the quitclaim.”

  She stood up. “Well, that happens to be my business. And what would you have done besides give me free advice that would keep my baby in jail? Don’t know why I’m explaining myself to you,” she huffed. “Anyway, you got your story. That’s what’s important to you, and that’s all I’ve got to say.” She held up her hand to fend off his arguments.

  Obviously, it was time to go. Charlie stood up. “Did you get the name of the cops?”

  “No,” she snapped, then added, “They were dressed in suits, like detectives. They said they were GBI.”

  “Really.” He took a sip of bitter brew for the road and left, mumbling apologies for their awkward reunion.

  Minutes later, Charlie pulled into the parking lot of a Memorial Drive convenience store next to a check-cashing service crowded with workers on payday. He was thirsty, but when he saw the news rack—and the photo of his head under a boot—he opted for the grisly souvenir instead. As he fed change into the machine, a derelict rushed up with his hand out. Charlie turned away and retreated to the car, ignoring the panhandler’s pleading eyes.

  He laid the paper on the seat beside him. Only then did he see the front-page story by Crenshaw he’d missed on the Internet due to his obsession with himself: “Forsyth Farm Sells for $22 Million.”

  “Shortly after 3 p.m. Thursday,” the article stated, “retired farmer Isaac Cutchins of Coaltown took time off from feuding with Charles Sherman to become a multimillionaire.” Crenshaw reported that Department of Transportation Commissioner Robert Mann had been “actively involved” in pursuing a portion of the parcel for development of the Outer Perimeter highway. The rest of the land would be used in a major retail development. “While Cutchins, who has repeatedly threatened reporters with bodily harm, refused comment on the sale, his son, Rep. Stanley Cutchins (R-Cumming) called it ‘a blessing.’ However, a spokesman for GrassRoots Georgia called the sale ‘a blatant conflict of interest.’”