Brambleman (29 page)

He showed Minerva what he’d found and asked
if she’d ever made a claim on the land.

“There was an AME preacher named McDougal who
tried to do something back in the 1970s. I gave him my information,
and he talked to a lawyer, but nothing ever came of it.”

“Was that in 1972?”

“Yes. I think so. How’d you know?”

“There was a courthouse fire about that time.
Some records were conveniently destroyed.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm, indeed. I think I need to take a trip
to Forsyth County.”

She bugged her eyes and grunted. “You can go
without me. Anyway, they’re not going to give it up. That’s how
they are. No offense.” She shrugged. “If you prove the land should
belong to me, you know what they’ll do, don’t you? Make me pay
seventy years’ taxes, that’s what.”

Charlie couldn’t say they wouldn’t. But
still, it was worth fighting for. “The land is worth millions in
the current market.”

As he was making a copy of the title, he
realized that this may have been what the burglars were looking for
back in January at Bayard Terrace. “Do you have a safety deposit
box?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You should stash this away for
safekeeping.”

“You really think the land’s worth some
money?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

Charlie finished copying and gave Minerva a
ride to the bank, where she tucked away the records. After that, he
returned to her house and dropped her off, then sped away to pick
up the kids, thinking about how to proceed with his investigation.
Obviously, the land grab was the central part of the story—and most
likely the murder motive. He knew Riggins’s farm had been located
in northern Forsyth but wasn’t sure exactly where. He needed to
find out who owned the land now. He snapped his fingers. Pappy must
have known John Riggins! Hell, everyone in Forsyth would have known
the only black man who lived within twenty miles. Whenever Riggins
went to town, a hundred eyes would have followed him, just waiting
for him to lunge at a white woman. Charlie wondered what pretext
they’d used to kill the man. Then again, when violent racism was
Forsyth County’s official policy, how clever did they need to
be?

Two weeks after finishing
Flight from
Forsyth
—and two days shy of the seventieth anniversary of
John Riggins’s lynching—Charlie was compelled to return to Cumming.
On a sunny day that seemed more summer than fall, he parked his van
downtown in a large lot near a poultry plant (where Hispanics now
flocked for jobs). Huge cooling units droned as he crossed Main
Street to the square and glanced at the modern red-brick City Hall
before turning his gaze back to the courthouse.

The brick courthouse had white-trimmed
windows that Charlie found irritatingly small, front and back
porticos with tall, spindly white columns, third-story dormer
windows, and a white phallic clock tower topped by a spike. It
replaced the old courthouse, which had burned down in November
1973—at the hands of a varmint, or the spouse of one, according to
family rumors. But he knew from working on
Flight from
Forsyth
that there had been several other suspects, and this
had always been a county of arsonists. (In the early 1970s, the
state fire marshal for North Georgia had declared that eighty
percent of his work was in Forsyth.)

Inside the courthouse, Charlie passed through
security and took the stairs down to the records room. Once there,
he watched as several white folks searched land records. They moved
quickly, plopping big red log books on counters and taking notes.
Charlie found the books covering 1917 to 1950. He suspected the
records he was looking for may have been destroyed for the same
reason Talton’s documents had been stolen from Bayard Terrace.
Therefore, he was both shocked and relieved to find two entries
under the Riggins name. One index item listed Thomas Riggins as
grantor on February 18, 1935 and (illegible) Riggins as grantee.
This was the transfer from father to son that Charlie already knew
about. He needed to find a later transfer. Then he’d trace the
title to the current landowner. His pulse quickened when he saw
that the information he sought was in Deed Book 12, on page
123.

Charlie pulled out the big book and flopped
its frayed cover open on the slanted tabletop. He took a deep
breath and leafed through pages, marveling at the permanence of
fountain pen ink. There it was, the description of the property in
Land District Three, in the northwest portion of the county. Sold
to—

“Fuck me,” Charlie said softly.
Bam
.
It was right there.

A man standing nearby chuckled. “Not what you
were looking for?”

“This … has been looking for me,” Charlie
mumbled, feeling dizzy.

—Isaac Cutchins for $500.

Right out there in public.
Damn, Momo’s
daddy missed a spot
. Then again, everything had been duly noted
and endorsed by the county clerk on October 17, 1937. All neat,
tidy … and bogus. John Riggins’s signature didn’t match the
signature on a letter Charlie had brought for comparison. The date
of death was October 12, 1937, according to the marking on the
photo and Riggins family recollections, but there was no official
record. Riggins had simply ceased to exist on that day. Charlie
lugged the book over to the Xerox machine and made a copy of the
transaction. Then he got the hell out of there.

Feeling that doom was his destiny, Charlie
trudged back to the van. The photo, which he had never examined
closely, waited for him there. On the verge of tears, he slid into
the driver’s seat and groped around behind him until his hand found
the manila envelope. His head hung as he pulled out the picture. It
had been there all along, of course. Something had simply prevented
Charlie from seeing the truth until now. But there was
twenty-five-year-old Isaac Cutchins, pointing to a lump of human
charcoal and claiming credit for the catch. The glint in his eyes
said,
Lookie here
!
Look what I caught
!

So this is why I’ve been chosen
,
Charlie thought. He threw his head back against the seat and stared
at the photo with melancholy eyes. It was all so clear: God wanted
him to destroy his world.

Then again, why did he think he’d been
working for God? God wouldn’t trick him into signing a deal like
the one that kept mutating on him, would It? No. Charlie feared he
was a pawn working the back end of an infernal contract—nothing
more than some kind of debt collector, with his own signature the
bloodiest of all. Whether he was working for God to punish the
wicked, the devil to close a deal, the ghost of John Riggins to
seek justice, or a stinky old trickster to settle a score, the
boiling blood gave him little choice.

But of course there was a choice. There is
always a choice.

Should he go to the Forsyth County sheriff
with this information? No. The idea was ludicrous even without
throwing Trouble’s admonition about cops into the equation. And
maybe this is why he’d said
No Cops
.

With grim resolve, he recommitted himself to
the task assigned, even if it meant doing the devil’s work. He
would make the same decision another Missouri boy once made on his
way down the river: “
I was a-trembling because I’d got to decide
forever betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied for a
minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, ‘All
right, then, I’ll go to hell
.’”

* * *

Now that he knew who he was up against,
Charlie rented a safe deposit box. No way would he allow a second
set of documents to be stolen. Then, after a few days spinning his
wheels and brooding, he returned to Cumming the next Monday.

“There you are,” said Lillian as he stood at
the library’s reference desk. “I haven’t seen you in
months
.” She wrinkled her eyebrows. “Did you finish the
book?”

“I did,” he said with a short nod.

“Congratulations!”

“Thanks. Now it’s on to something else.”

“So … you didn’t need to look at my
great-grandfather’s journal, after all.” She smiled sheepishly.
“I’m glad you didn’t depend on it. I was looking through it after
we talked about it, and there are pages missing—on 1912. I think
Mom cut them out with a razor. Probably in 1987. People were really
uptight back then, you know. Other than that, it looks complete up
to his death. He died in 1950.”

“Really?” Charlie said, trying not to sound
too interested. “I’d like to see it. I’m thinking about writing
more about Forsyth. It’s … an interesting place.”

“That would be good. We shouldn’t have our
reputation based on just one bad thing.”

“I agree,” Charlie said, wide-eyed. “People
should see there’s more to Forsyth County. Have you read through
it, by any chance?”

“No, I just looked to see if it was readable.
It’s at my house. I’m off Thursday. You should come by.” She gave
him a promising smile.

“Really?” he gushed. “That would be
great.”

She wrote her address and phone number on a
slip of paper and slid it across the desk. “It’s near here. Call me
first.”

Charlie pocketed the paper and glanced
around. He wanted to look at some 1937 newspapers, but a recent
edition of the
Forsyth Sentinel
lying on a table caught his
eye, and a front-page headline jumped out at him:

Investors Take Option on Cutchins Land

Southland Associates, a Memphis-based
shopping mall developer, paid a $1 million option on the purchase
of the 200-acre farm in Forsyth County belonging to Isaac Cutchins,
father of State Rep. Stanley Cutchins.

Richard Davis, a partner in Southland,
declined to discuss plans for the site, though he noted that its
proximity to the proposed Outer Perimeter “will make it
increasingly valuable in the years to come.”

Negotiations began late last fall, Davis
said. The option is good for a year …

Late last fall
. The varmints had
huddled around Pappy after Christmas dinner at Thornbriar, and a
hush had fallen over the room when Charlie entered. They must have
been talking about the money coming their way. Susan had been
sitting there, soaking it all in. Whaddya know, the next night, he
was out on his ass. And he’d been bouncing on the pavement ever
since.

There are no coincidences
.

“A year, eh?” Charlie muttered to himself.
“Let’s see what comes up between now and then.”

* * *

Lillian Scott lived near downtown Cumming, on
a side street just off Main, not far from the library. Her small
white frame house was freshly painted, with black shutters, neatly
trimmed shrubs, and a concrete driveway that looked like it had
been recently poured. In deference to its pristine condition,
Charlie parked on the street. Holding the scanner under his left
arm and his computer satchel in his right hand, he hit the doorbell
button with his left pinkie. Lillian answered the door in jeans and
a baggy sweatshirt, her brown hair cascading to her shoulders. She
looked cute. He smelled potpourri and sensed a trap. He warned
himself to be careful. Lillian’s great-grandmother had attempted a
liaison in the courthouse with that hapless attorney back in 1912,
so there was a possibility that horniness ran in the family.

“Come on in,” she said, grabbing his arm and
pulling him into the living room, which had landscape paintings on
the wall and a blue sofa with white lace arm covers. She pointed to
the dining room. “You can work in here.” Two cats—one black, one
black and white—entwined themselves around her legs. “You want
coffee?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“I’ve got some old letters, too, but I
haven’t read through them. If you see anything you can use, you’re
welcome to make copies.”

“Okie-doke.”

She poured Charlie a cup of coffee, and he
sat down with it at an antique table, where family papers had been
carefully laid out. He debated telling Lillian what he was looking
for, then decided against it. After all, he didn’t know if he could
trust her. Anyway, she didn’t seem that interested, since she
hadn’t read either journal or letters.

While Charlie worked, Lillian curled up with
a book in a living room chair. He pored over old correspondence and
soon hit pay dirt, becoming entranced by the story that unfolded.
This was the stuff of dreams (his kind of dreams, at that).

The dispute between Ike Cutchins and John
Riggins had been going on since 1935, when Riggins returned to farm
the family land, which had lain fallow since 1912. The feud was a
constant source of entertainment to the men who ran the county. The
letters from local justice of the peace Lucious Fervil to wealthy
landowner Horton Anderson, Lillian’s great-grandfather, born in
1886, would fill a chapter. (Talton had heard of this mother lode
of information and written about it in his notes, although without
any mention of Riggins.) Needless to say, Charlie was overjoyed to
stumble across it. The stuff was rich and gossipy, rife with
strife, as the feud escalated:

June 12, 1936

Dear Horton,

Here is the latest news on Ike Cutchins. He
wanted to swear out a warrant against John Riggins for cussing him.
He said Riggins called him a damn Cracker and told him to get off
his land. I asked him why would John-Boy do that? He’s a sensible
nigger. Ike must have given him cause.

He said it wasn’t my business. Ike always
has been a hothead and can’t stand that John runs a better farm
than him. “It ain’t right,” he says, “for a nigger to own land when
I don’t.”

Envy is the root of Ike’s troubles.

I refused to draw up a warrant. I looked him
in the eye and told him he’d have to handle this himself. That is
all for now. Keep your eyes wide open.