Brambleman (27 page)

She turned and shouted, “Will! When Jasper
Riggins die?” She nodded at the homes across the street. “They
built those right before the Olympics. He gone by then. Musta died
in ninety-four, mebbe. What you need?”

“I’m writing a book. About something that
happened to his cousin.” The woman raised an eyebrow and gave him a
Go On
look. “He was killed. Lynched. In Forsyth County.
”

Her eyes lit with a glimmer of recognition.
“Where Redeemer had that march.”

“Yes ma’am. Exactly so.”

The woman’s face filled with wide-eyed
curiosity. “When this man killed?”

“A long time ago. 1937.”

“Before the Olympics,” Will said, shuffling
up behind the woman. He was dark-skinned, with a wrinkled face. “I
had a great-uncle got lynched down by Valdosta,” he said. “Happened
’fore I was born. He was young. Got in a fight with a white man
over nuthin’. Whupped the man, and they couldn’t have that. Shot
him and hung him and sold picture postcards of it in the drugstore.
Heard they even cut up pieces for souvenirs.” He shook his head.
“Everbody knew who did it and that was fine by them. You could
lynch a black man and run for mayor. Didn’t make no nevermind.”

“What was his name?” Charlie pulled out his
legal pad.

“Henry Etheridge. On my mother’s side.”

“Back then, everbody knew someone it happen
to, or their family,” the woman said.

Charlie took notes. Since he had so little to
start with, he wasn’t going to ignore any information. He might
need a couple hundred pages of context (à la Thurwood Talton,
ironically) to flesh out the story. They were the Thompsons, he
learned, married forty-two years. “So you knew Jasper? Do you know
if he had any relatives?”

“He kept to himself, mostly. I don’t remember
meetin’ any of his kinfolk.”

“A woman named Minnie Doe? He talked about
her in an interview.”

Mrs. Thompson shook her head slowly. “Don’t
recall the name. He didn’t have a woman I know of, and he live
there a long time. Someone came to look after him sometime. That
might be who you mean.” The couple conferred for a moment, mumbling
names, tossing them out one by one until all possibilities were
gone. “Don’t think he had kids. Maybe his niece.”

Charlie chatted for a few more minutes before
he left. He gave them his phone number in case they thought of
anything or ran into anyone who’d known Jasper. Discouraged, he
drove off.

* * *

After breakfast the next morning, Charlie
listened to the tape a third time and tried to transcribe Jasper
Riggins’s gummed-up dialect. He found himself guessing much of the
time. There was another problem: The old man’s fifty-year-old
memories weren’t even firsthand. His was the collective knowledge
of the family. Thurwood had made a note to contact the daughter,
Minnie, but Charlie could find no sign that he’d succeeded. The day
after the Riggins interview, Talton died. Thanks a lot,
Thurwood.

So now it was Charlie’s turn. The phone book
listed one M. Doe with an east Atlanta address on Arcadia Avenue,
only a few miles south of Bayard Terrace. He sat for a moment at
Talton’s desk considering the consequences of failure before
grasping at this straw. Taking a deep breath, he dialed. An
automated voice told him the number had been disconnected. He
cursed and hung up, worried that she’d died while he was working on
Flight
. It would be just like God to trip him up like
that.

Early that afternoon, he left to check the
address after making sure Kathleen took her medication. “And no
faking,” he scolded, wagging a finger as she gulped her water.

“Stop that,” she said. Showing remarkable
quickness, she reached out and grabbed his finger with her free
hand. She gave him a one-eyed squint. “How long have you been
staying here?”

“Since the beginning of the year.”

“Really? When do you have to leave?”

“I’m not exactly sure.” He extricated his
finger from her grip and grabbed his computer satchel.

“Well, stay as long as you like.”

“OK.” He gave her a big smile on his way out
the door.

* * *

Arcadia, a side street filled with close-set
bungalows in an older neighborhood near Memorial Drive, was
undergoing a dose of gentrification, giving it a combination of
rundown and renovated housing. As Charlie drove down Arcadia, birds
chattered, a car alarm blared, and a child squalled on a
screened-in porch. He found M. Doe’s address and pulled to the curb
across the street. A Georgia Power Company truck was parked in
front of the house; a uniformed worker knelt before an electric
meter on the side. The small yard was manicured, and empty
flowerbeds beneath the windows had been neatly mulched. Two
rosebushes were in bloom.

The front door opened and an oval-faced black
woman with wavy silver-gray hair peered out at the truck. She
seemed about the right age, but Charlie couldn’t tell for sure. She
wasn’t terribly overweight, but her body appeared to have settled
comfortably in on itself. She stepped off the porch and onto the
sidewalk, building up speed as she passed the rose bushes. She
confronted the utility worker, waving her arms and shouting, “What
are you doing, cutting off my power? I pay my bills!”

Charlie slumped behind the steering wheel and
watched the woman harangue the man. Without ever opening his mouth,
the utility worker returned to his white pickup truck, her eyes
burning into his back. He drove off, shaking his head as he glanced
at Charlie.

Exiting the van in his industrial clothes and
carrying his satchel, Charlie looked like he might spray for
termites or survey her lot. He cleared his throat. “Good
afternoon.”

“What do you want?” she yelled. “I’m not
giving up my house! Get off my property!”

Charlie stopped in the middle of the street
and held up his hand to signal peace. While this was clearly a bad
time to wrangle an interview, there might not be a better one,
especially if she faced eviction. “I’m not here to cause trouble,
ma’am.”

She glared at him in disbelief. He saw anger
mixed with dignity. Mainly anger, though. Charlie shielded his eyes
from the afternoon sun. “Are you Minnie Doe?” he asked, resuming
his approach. “I want to talk about Forsyth County.”

She regarded him suspiciously. “Minerva.
Nobody calls me Minnie anymore. And why would I want to talk about
Forsyth County?”

He stopped. “I’m writing a book about a man
named John Riggins. Died in 1937.”

“Riggins is my maiden name.” Her eyes
narrowed further. “How’d you find me?”

He took a step forward. “I looked you up in
the phone book after I listened to an interview with Jasper
Riggins.”

She put a hand on her sagging bosom. “Lord,
he passed on more than a decade ago.”

“So did the man who interviewed him. I was
finishing a book on what happened in Forsyth County back in 1912,
and I stumbled across the tape.” Now Charlie was on the sidewalk,
just a few feet away from the woman, who stood with her arms on her
hips, appearing at least temporarily interested in what he had to
say.

She fanned herself as beads of perspiration
appeared on her forehead. “John Riggins was my father. Died before
I was born. Murdered.” The last word hung in the air, ugly and
alone.

“Yes ma’am, that’s what I understand. He must
have been very brave to stay in Forsyth.”

“You’re writing a story about it seventy
years later?”

“Yes ma’am. It’s important.” At ease with the
weirdness of his task, Charlie felt no further explanation was
necessary. Certainly not if he could get his foot in the door
without one.

“And you want me to talk to you about
it.”

“If that’s all right.”

“It’s not.” She turned and walked away. Over
her shoulder, she said, “Got other things on my mind.”

He followed slowly up the sidewalk. She
stepped onto the small porch and eased into a weathered wooden
rocker, which took up nearly half the available space, with the
welcome mat and potted plants taking up most of the rest. Looking
down on him seemed to calm her. She rocked for a moment before she
spoke again. “What did you say your name was?”

He smiled hopefully. “Charles Sherman.
Charlie.”

“You’re a reporter.”

“Yes.” He reached up to hand her a clipping
of Crenshaw’s eight-month-old article. “I finished that book. Now
I’m writing about your father.”

She looked at the story, then glanced at his
face like she was checking an ID. “Well, as you may have noticed, I
can’t help you right now. Can’t even invite you in. Power company
cut me off even though I paid the bill. I always pay my bills.”

She leaned forward to hand the clipping back
to him. She had a gardener’s hands, clean but weathered and
short-nailed. Lined and familiar with work. A pair of dirty cloth
gloves lay beside the chair.

“Did you pay it this morning? Maybe they
haven’t credited—”

She waved off his assertion. “I gave the
money to Demetrious the day before yesterday to get the money
order, just like I did last month. Can’t find my checkbook. Didn’t
know I was late until they hung a cutoff notice on the door.”

“Who is Demetrious?”

“My grandson. I haven’t seen him since I gave
him the money to pay the bills.”

“Uh … maybe that’s part of the problem,”
Charlie suggested.

“Humph. Might be. He’s never done me this way
before, that I know of. But now I’m stuck. I don’t have a car
anymore.”

Charlie seized the opportunity. “I can give
you a ride to the bank or the power company.”

“I had to sell it to help pay my house note.
I took out a loan to get my roof fixed. Some men from Augusta. I
got a raw deal. Interest is high. Whoo-wee. They call them Irish
gypsies.”

“Oh. Them.”

“You heard about them?”

“They’re everywhere.”

“They need to be in jail.”

Charlie shifted his feet awkwardly, figuring
he’d stay until he was asked to leave. She gave him an irritated
look, then wagged a finger at the clipping. “Is that book getting
published?”

“Yes ma’am.” He pulled out a letter from
Joshua Furst he’d brought to prove his legitimacy and stepped
forward to offer it to her.

She glanced at the letterhead without taking
it. “So you’re writing about my father. Hmm. It’s important because
it happened up in Forsyth County … after they said we all got run
out, is that it?”

Who could say these things
? “I started
working on it yesterday. I have no idea where it will take me.”

She rocked. After what seemed to Charlie like
an eternity, she spoke. “Call me crazy, but I believe you. I had a
dream that someone would come to me about my father.”

“When?”

She shut one eye and looked at the tiny
porch’s ceiling with the other. “I don’t know. But it’s fresh in my
mind.” She looked back at him. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m not. I can’t explain why, but I was
meant to do this.”

She mulled the statement for a moment. “All
right. I’ll take that ride. Need to pay the phone bill, too. Wait
here.” She went inside. Charlie rushed to the van and cleared off
the passenger seat, then the floor, moving papers and tools so that
she could sit beside him.

Minerva came out clutching her purse and
climbed into the van. She stared at the monkey wrench on the floor
between them. “I thought you were a writer. Looks more like you’re
a plumber.”

“I’m a handyman on the side,” Charlie said.
“Mouths to feed.”

“I heard that.”

The engine grumbled to a start and Charlie
drove off. He took her to Citizens Savings to get cash. On the way
to the power company office, she told Charlie that her father’s
cousin Jasper, a lifelong bachelor, had left her some money when he
died, but she’d spent it keeping her daughter out of jail and
trying to raise Demetrious. “Although that is proving difficult,”
she added, “since the boy doesn’t want to grow up. And now he’s
messed up the simple task of paying the utilities before they got
cut off. All I have is my pension and Social Security. I retired
early, never dreaming I’d be spending so much money raising other
people’s children.”

“What did you do before you retired?”

“I was a teacher. Atlanta schools. I’ll bet
you didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t, but I’m not surprised.”

“Why’s that?”

He laughed. “I’m just not. I don’t know why.
Maybe because you talk better than I do.”

“I take pride in my diction,” she declared.
“Now if I could only keep Demetrious from dropping out of school.
I’m afraid he’s beyond my help. When I get hold of him …” She
trailed off and looked out the window. Charlie saw defeat in her
eyes. The money she’d given the boy was likely long gone, spent on
nothing she’d want to know about.

“Well, what do you want me to tell you?” she
asked, turning her attention back to Charlie. “I’m not sure I have
much to share. Like I said, I never knew my father. He died before
I was born. Nine months before. Aunt Lizbeth told me I was the last
thing he did. I don’t remember my mother. Her name was Lettie. I
was the last thing she did, too. Died right after I was born. She
drowned.”

“I don’t know much about your mother other
than that. Your father died a terrible death, I’m afraid.”

“Hard to imagine.” She shook her head sadly.
“It always seemed odd that he was up there after everybody else got
chased out, though.”

“There were reports of a few others. But
we—Professor Talton and I—couldn’t prove they existed. I’d always
wondered if their names appeared on the census even though they
were gone, you know, maybe so the county revenue commissioner’s
kinfolk could farm their land without paying taxes, or something
like that.” He paused for a moment as he recalled that Talton’s
manuscript had originally listed two black residents in Forsyth
County in 1940, but the good professor had struck through that
number.