Brambleman (2 page)

Charlie was left sputtering by the attack.
“Hey. Just … wait a minute—”

“Cool down,” said the white cop, laying a
hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

“Chill out,” said the black cop, pushing him
toward the door.

“Just go,” Susan said. “Porn freak.”

So there he was, down and out. With his van
blocked in by two squad cars in the driveway, Charlie stomped off
into the jaws of a winter thunderstorm. After walking a mile in the
rain, he came to the Hanover Drive overpass at Interstate 285.
Consumed by both rage and despair, Charlie had a George Bailey
moment as he stopped on the bridge and stared out through the rain
into traffic. Yes, this seemed a fitting end, since his suicidal
father had, on a lonely evening long ago in Missouri, embraced his
own
Goodnight, Irene
moment and jumped in the river to
drown—or at least to disappear forever.

And then something strange happened. As he
stuck his left leg over the tubular guard rail and gazed out
through the rain at the oncoming traffic, he saw a transit bus
nearly sideswipe a gasoline tanker. An instant later, the tanker
spun out of control at sixty miles per hour on the rain-slick
Interstate beneath him. In cart-before-horse fashion, the eastbound
tractor-trailer became a trailer-tractor. Its headlights flashed on
the median wall, then swept across the windshields of the vehicles
behind it, then spotlighted the noise barrier beyond the right
shoulder, and finally returned to illuminate the highway ahead as
the rig regained its proper configuration, having narrowly avoided
crashing into the swerving bus and several other vehicles.

Not only had the truck spun out without
wrecking and miraculously come back under control, but Charlie
would swear he’d seen someone riding on the outside of the truck.
For an instant, he’d glimpsed a man standing on the truck chassis
between the back of the short-haul cab and the front of the tanker
trailer.

Fascinated, Charlie removed his leg from the
rail and ran across the bridge to see what would happen next. He
put his hands on the cold, wet rail and leaned over to watch as the
vehicle pulled to the shoulder and shuddered to a stop, air brakes
squealing and gasping. A few seconds later, the driver jumped from
the cab. Through the hum and whiz of traffic, Charlie thought he
heard the man retching. But there was no sign of the
truck-surfer.

Suddenly he realized that if he killed
himself, he wouldn’t be able to see weird stuff like that anymore,
which would be tragic. Also, shame crept into his heart. After all,
jumping off a highway bridge into traffic was one of the most
socially irresponsible methods of suicide imaginable. At the very
least, he could come up with a way to do it that didn’t snarl
traffic for hours. So he decided to mull things over instead.

Having temporarily given up on giving up, he
hiked through the rain up the hill to Pancake Hut, where the
waitress—Lil Bit, according to her nametag—refused to acknowledge
his existence and pour him a cup of coffee. Usually he wouldn’t set
foot in the place. Pancake Huts were notorious for discriminating
against gays and blacks, and Charlie was a liberal, of sorts.
However, at the moment, he needed shelter from the storm, not
political correctness. Anyway, he was white, so what was up with
Lil Bit’s cold shoulder? It was just a diner, damn it! With a “74”
on its inspection certificate!

Perhaps the restaurant sensed his disrespect,
for the place had turned against him the instant he walked in the
door. One of the young drunks in the booth behind him called
Charlie “’tarded” when he took his seat. The other muttered,
“homeless fuck.” Obviously, these were not his people: One wore a
camouflage hunting outfit and the other a red baseball cap adorned
with a Rebel battle flag and the words “Fergit, Hell!” And they’d
been cooing insults at him ever since. Of the four other people in
the place, only the cook had failed to show his contempt for the
soggy newcomer. (Then again, his back had been turned the whole
time, so maybe he had.) In any case, having just survived and
escaped his own worst impulses, Charlie now felt trapped in this
Pancake Hut of Hate.

The rain quickened, pattering on the roof
like a manic drummer. Charlie lowered his hand and raised it. The
dripping had slowed, so he waved to get the water molecules in his
cuff moving again. Lil Bit, standing behind the counter just a few
feet away, continued to give him the alert indifference only the
best truly bad servers have mastered. She’d wait on him, all
right—to leave. When he recalled a news story about a homeless man
who’d been fed cleaning fluid by a Pancake Hut cook, Charlie
thought that maybe it was better if they didn’t serve him after
all.

Well, she was stuck with him, since Charlie
had nowhere else to go. He didn’t even have his wallet, just a
ten-spot he’d stuffed in the pocket of his sweat pants weeks ago.
Enough to pay for food, if Lil Bit would notice him.

The drunks escalated their insults.
Apparently, having failed to charm any women at the topless bar
across the street, they were now intent on kicking some ass before
they called it a night. “Come on, turdface, step outside,” the
Rebel said. “Just you and me. We’ll go a few.”

Charlie was big, six feet four inches, but he
was in his forties, overweight, and relatively nonviolent, so he
ignored the invitation. He just wanted some coffee. He didn’t even
care if it was good, so long as it was hot and not laced with
ammonia or bleach. After that, he’d figure out how to survive the
night. Or maybe, if he got a chance, he’d make a run for it.

Right then, he decided that no matter what,
he wasn’t going home, not until Susan got down on her knees,
apologized for what she’d done, and begged him to come back. Which
might not happen for a while. Or ever.

His thought was punctuated by a flash that
lit up the sky. As the lights went out, a loud boom rocked the
diner. The guy in camouflage drawled, “What the hell?”

As the diner’s occupants murmured in concern,
another bolt landed just behind the building with a blinding flash.
A few seconds later, Charlie noticed a greenish-yellow glow through
the rearmost side window—like some kind of radioactive fire.

The lights flickered back on. The rain let
up.

His antagonists, apparently having short
attention spans, refocused on their ham, eggs, and grits, so
Charlie decided to take the opportunity to slip outside, check out
the fire, and mosey off into the night, thereby avoiding the
whupping he’d been promised. He slipped off his stool unnoticed as
his antagonists grumbled and chewed.

Charlie stepped outside. He walked around the
diner and saw something on fire behind the building. Whoa. Make
that
someone
. Fighting panic, he ripped off his soaking wet
bomber jacket and tossed it over the prone figure, putting out the
flames and raising a cloud of acrid, funky-smelling smoke and
steam.
Whew
.

The poor wretch lay motionless. Charlie
picked up his coat and saw a six-inch-wide hole in the back of the
victim’s black leather jacket. Sure that nobody could survive a
direct hit like that, Charlie reached for his cellphone … which
he’d left at the house. Damn it. He’d have to go back inside and
use the pay phone to call 911, which meant facing those
assholes.

He debated the issue for a moment, looking
back at the diner, then into the night. Out of the corner of his
eye, he saw signs of life. The victim’s fingers drummed the
concrete.
Shave and a haircut, two bits
. The body folded in
on itself, fetus-like, and then jackknifed open with alarming
speed. Charlie watched in amazement as the once-dead creature
rolled over on his back and started to rise, yawning and stretching
as he did so. His eyes fluttered open, showing rolled-up whites.
Charlie yelped in horror at the zombie-thing, now standing in a
crouch.

“Do not be afraid. I’m here to help,” the
fellow said in a raspy voice crackling with static.

“I’m not afraid,” Charlie claimed as a deep
chill swept through his body. “Just curious.”

The guy he’d given up for dead held out his
arms as if to suppress applause, then coughed out smoke. Shaking
his head, he wavered unsteadily on his feet. He was short, with
long, unkempt, iron-gray hair, and looked old beyond his time, like
a wizened drug freak, scrawny old biker—or jazz trumpeter Chet
Baker near the end of his days. He removed his jacket and examined
the hole, which was bordered by a circular scorch mark. He sniffed
it, said a rueful goodbye, and tossed the garment over his back
into the Dumpster.

The stranger staggered around briefly but
wouldn’t let Charlie touch him, contorting to avoid a helping
hand—as if he was an extraordinarily clumsy Neo dodging bullets in
The Matrix
. “You do
not
want a piece of me,” he
warned. “Not when I’m fully charged.”

Charlie caught a whiff of the fellow and
nearly gagged at the stink of homelessness—and something worse. The
lightning must have triggered multiple excretory functions,
yielding a horribly vile stench that could knock out a skunk at
thirty paces.

As he stood with mouth agape, the stranger
stared at Charlie with coal-black eyes. “What do you want, a
friggin’ wish for saving me?” He broke out cackling. “Go ahead.
Make my day.”

Charlie, nonplussed, managed to say, “I
should call 911 and get help.”

The stranger waved off the idea. “No cops.
We’ll handle this ourselves. That’s the rule.”

Obviously, the guy’s brain was fried. Charlie
shook his head. “I’m confused. Didn’t you—”

“Walk here? Yeah. ” He pointed toward the
Interstate. “From there. Nearly had a wreck. Truck driver saw some
fool asshole about to jump off the bridge and lost control of his
vehicle. My job to come in and save the guy. Trucker, that is. Used
all my power.”

He looked at Charlie knowingly, but the fool
asshole had no response to that.

“So I was looking for food,” the stranger
continued. “But it takes days to build up energy that way. Mighty
inefficient. Just when I’m feeling low—voltage, that is—I get
myself a charge, and I’m good to go. Circuit breaker boxes work
too, but you rarely get useful instructions from ’em. Less natural,
I guess you’d say. Plus, you don’t want to do what the power
company tells you, do you?” He studied Charlie’s blank face. “Well,
maybe
you
do. I don’t.”

The rain started coming down harder. Charlie
shook his head and said, “Let’s get you out of the weather.”

“Let’s get me out of this weather,” the
stranger agreed.

“What I can’t get over is, is … how the hell
did you survive?”

“Two things. Survival is never the issue for
me.”

Charlie waited, but there was no second thing
coming. “OK,” he said. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. If they’ll
serve us, that is.” He bent down and picked up his jacket, which
now smelled of smoke and homelessness in addition to already being
tattered, with a busted zipper. He tossed it in the Dumpster to
keep the other jacket company and gestured for the stranger to
follow. The old fellow started walking. It appeared to be a new
experience for him—he looked like a tightrope walker with cerebral
palsy. Horrible to behold. Charlie stepped toward him, but the
stranger waved off his helping hand, causing Charlie’s hair to
stand on end. By the time they reached the diner entrance, the
stranger had adapted to this mode of transportation, more or
less.

If Lil Bit was unhappy to see Charlie return,
she was horrified to see—and smell—his friend. She acknowledged the
newcomer’s arrival with a loud groan.

The Rebel laughed and punched his buddy.
“Retard got hisself a spaz for a pet.”

Charlie turned to address the men in the
booth: “This guy just got hit by lightning! Cut him some slack.” He
hoped that this strange news would break the ice and relieve the
antagonism that had been building up.

No such luck.

“You’ll think you been hit with lightning
when I’m through with you, bitch,” the Rebel said.

Charlie whispered behind his hand to his new
companion: “They’re looking for trouble.”

“Well then, today’s their lucky day.” The old
man regarded the drunks disdainfully, drawing murderous looks in
return.

Charlie shook his head at the stringy-haired
bantam’s bravado and slipped onto a counter seat. The stranger did
likewise. “Two coffees, please,” Charlie said, hoping this time
that Lil Bit would acknowledge his order.

Feeling a static charge in the air, Charlie
snuck a sidelong glance at his companion. Under the fluorescent
light, the guy appeared to be not just old, but also terribly
weathered—and abused. Veins threatened to break through the old
man’s paper-thin skin, which was darker than white and lighter than
black. His grubby, uneven facial stubble looked like he’d hacked at
it with an old knife, and he had the bloodshot, color-drained eyes
of an ancient alcoholic. And he smelled worse inside than
out—rotting teeth, with a hint of carrion. When Charlie leaned
back, he noticed long bumps—or ridges—under a tight, wet, and
remarkably unburned T-shirt that proclaimed
It’s Better in the
Bahamas
. Were those welts? Was this guy so old he’d spent time
on a chain gang? What kind of hellhole had the poor guy been in
where they flogged people? North Vietnam?

“What’s your name?” Charlie asked.

“I’ve got a better question,” the stranger
said. “Who are you?”

“Who am I? Charles Sherman.”

The stranger laughed. “Are you going to
settle for that?”

That was rude
. “Well, people call me
Charlie. How about you?”

“I’m not from around here,” the stranger
said. “And I’ve been places you’ll never want to go. Unless you’re
even stupider than you look.”