Brambleman (41 page)

Now he only had fifty bucks left in his
checking account. He desperately needed money. Across the street at
Java Joe’s, he called Fortress.

“Mr. Furst no longer works here,” said the
woman who answered Joshua’s extension.

“Who is my editor, then?” Charlie asked,
stomping the floor in frustration and rattling the table, sloshing
coffee on his legal pad.

“That depends. Who are you?”

“Charles Sherman. I wrote
Flight from
Forsyth
.” Silence. “You are publishing it, aren’t you?”

“Could I put you on hold?”

“No! Absolutely not! I demand—”

Click
. Charlie listened to
The
Impossible Dream
for three minutes before hanging up. He feared
he’d entered into a contract with the very worst sort of devil, one
who refused to keep its end of the bargain. In other words, a
publisher.

* * *

Facing grim financial prospects, Charlie had
to sell
American Monster
. Fortress was out of the question,
due to lack of interest (or editor) and its abominable payment
policies, which vacillated between slow pay, no pay, and what, me
pay? He needed an agent to protect him from such deadbeats.
Following a marathon espresso-driven indexing session for
Flight
at Java Joe’s, he wrote a query letter that, due to
his increasingly paranoid state, read somewhat like a Nigerian
confidence e-mail:

Dear ____________:

I have been shot and my house has been
ransacked twice. I need to send what I’ve written someplace where
the people who are looking for me can’t find it. Perhaps I could
pay you a storage fee. But I have heard you are a bright and
resourceful agent and recognize an excellent opportunity when you
see it. I will finish my book by the time you read this letter and
I am quite sure it will sell a million copies, maybe more. It is
all true and documented. There are things I can’t say yet, but when
the time comes I will turn my evidence over to the authorities.
First I must tell the story and force them to do their jobs. Their
ancestors are involved, so good luck with that—this is what I tell
myself.

This is the true crime I have documented in
American Monster
: My wife’s grandfather, Isaac Cutchins, 95,
lynched a black farmer in 1937. Then he raped the dead man’s wife
and stole his victims’ land, which is now worth $20 million. The
woman who was raped gave birth to a light-skinned daughter, whose
life is plagued by her seventeen-year-old gangsta wannabe
grandson.

By the way, Cutchins raped his oldest
daughter 150 times while he sent his wife and other children out
for ice cream during the early 1950s. That’s six hundred cones! The
victim showed up at her mother’s funeral to spit on the dead
woman’s face and curse her father to hell. My wife and I stopped by
the dry cleaners and missed it, but I tracked down the woman and
heard her terrible nightmare story.

This is the family I married into, and
American Monster
is the story I was chosen to tell the night
I agreed to edit a dead man’s book—
Flight from Forsyth
, soon
to be published by Fortress, I think. I have built a strong case
and the killer knows it. When I confronted the man on these issues,
he tried to kill me. His family—my family—has turned against me.
I’ve been banned from seeing my children. I am on the run. I write
this letter from a coffeehouse with a liberal electric outlet
policy and it closes in ten minutes, so I must be brief. I know
this all sounds insane, but it is the story of murder and greed and
it’s all true. I’m an excellent writer. Read the sample I’ve
enclosed. You will see for yourself. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Charles Sherman

* * *

The next day Charlie rewrote the query,
making it more coherent, though it still wasn’t completely sane. On
the way to Java Joe’s that gray, cloudy morning, he stopped to
consider his image in a plate glass window. He was turning into a
ghost—or, upon further reflection, a zombie. He had dark circles
under his eyes and looked gaunt; he’d lost more than fifty pounds
in less than a year—although that, in an of itself, was a healthy
thing. It was his psyche that was suffering most. Living on the
street had exacted its toll in sleeplessness and constant hunger;
his drifter’s loneliness grew heavier on his heart each day.

But there was work to do. He printed
American Monster
’s first three chapters at a copy shop and
mailed them with his semi-sane letter to Barbara Asher, the only
literary agent who had not rejected
Thoracic Park
.
(Actually, she’d never responded, but Charlie took his omens where
he could find them.)

He received a letter that day from Fortress
demanding the galleys and index. Angry, he called the company; the
receptionist refused to put him through to the publisher. Charlie
hung up, convinced he’d seen the last dime from that hellbound
outfit. Still, he’d finish
Flight from Forsyth
because it
would have his name on it and prove he existed, matters of no small
importance to a man in danger of falling off the face of the
earth.

* * *

Having worked double-time to put the final
touches on
Flight
, Charlie grunted in triumph as he shoved
the galleys and index into a big envelope. After he mailed them to
his publishing company, that worthless pack of bastards, he turned
his full attention to
American Monster
, where his head and
heart already were. He wrote quickly and well, even obsessively.
His fingers flew over the keyboard like he was Chico Marx playing
piano.

He was protective of his
Monster
, of
course. He wasn’t just the book’s author, he was also its
bodyguard, Secret Service, and Army of One. He locked away notes,
hid copies of disks and flash drives, and e-mailed chapters to
himself, leaving them safely on Hotmail, he hoped. He shadow-boxed
in preparation for throw-down time, and when he came across a
dinged-up aluminum baseball bat at the Goodwill Store, he bought
that, because if he had to go down, he’d go down swinging.

His attempts to contact the living relatives
of John Riggins’s other lynchers yielded three denials, including a
terse, awkward one from Cecil Montgomery, who wanted to know where
Charlie was calling from, two “no comments,” and an anonymous death
threat, all of which he wrote into the story. Forsyth County
officials weren’t very helpful, either. Tempting fate, Charlie had
tried to contact District Attorney Eric Stockwell to talk about the
case, but the prosecutor didn’t return his calls. (Charlie thought
that was weird. After all, he was jailbait. Didn’t Stockwell know
or care that the sheriff’s office was holding warrants for his
arrest?) He’d mailed questions about John Riggins’s death to Pappy,
with a copy to Uncle Stanley, requesting a written e-mail response
to his Hotmail address. If he got none, then Pappy’s denial, lie,
and spit would be the family’s final word on the matter.

Unless, of course, they killed him. Then
Trouble would have to dig around in a Dumpster for another writer,
wouldn’t he?

* * *

After a parking attendant called the cops on
him, Charlie fled Atlanta again, traveling even farther south than
Clayton, hiding in Butts County, of all places, camping out in a
state park, cooking hot dogs on a black-grated grill, and rubbing
his hands together over it like it was his very own barrel fire. He
refused on principle to roast marshmallows until his children
returned to him.

As winter approached, Charlie had the park
mostly to himself. Sometimes he slept in the van, other nights in
the tent he’d pitched for appearances’ sake. Fueled by instant
coffee, Gatorade, peanut butter sandwiches, fresh fruit, and yogurt
smoothies, Charlie wrote and edited almost constantly. For a break,
he’d go for a walk with his computer, talking to bare trees and
fearless squirrels. Sometimes he’d rent a boat and, ignoring the
danger involved, row the laptop back and forth across the park’s
lake like he was on a cheap date. The ascetic writer had become
closer to his computer than the most fervent porn junkie. After the
sun set, he kept writing and editing until words became blurs on
the screen.

One day, while he was out for a walk, a state
trooper came by and checked out his vehicle at the campsite.
Charlie hid behind a pine tree and watched. After a few minutes,
the trooper drove on. It was good to know the license plate hadn’t
been reported stolen.

Nevertheless, he packed up his tent and
vacated the park, shifting even further south, down to Indian
Springs State Park in Middle Georgia. Along the way, he saw a
likely looking Caravan, so he switched plates again.

Sitting by a campfire, he finished the first
draft of
American Monster
, concluding with this
epilogue:

As I write these final pages, I am homeless.
I have been banned from seeing my children. I cannot afford an
attorney. Whether this account ever sees the light of day is out of
my hands now. I made a solemn vow, a covenant, to do this, as
distasteful as it has become. It is important, because
people—living and as yet unborn—need to know the truth about their
past. The problem isn’t so much that, as Shakespeare put it, “The
evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interr’d with
their bones,” but that the evil becomes the unchallenged norm, and
is eventually mistaken for good. The lie becomes the truth.

We ignore the past and think that those who
suffer do so because of some inferiority on their part, and we take
strange comfort in that. And when we prosper we are certain we are
blessed due to our innate goodness and superiority. Our ignorance
of history and refusal to take responsibility for the past—as well
as our acceptance of unfair benefits we derive from it—allow these
evils to thrive.

Five minutes later, he began his rewrite.
Time enough for rest in the grave
.

* * *

On the verge of completing his third and
final draft, Charlie drove up to Decatur to check his mail and
found a letter from Barbara Asher. “Is this for real?” the agent
wrote. “You seem very strange, but the samples are great! Mail me
the manuscript and I’ll look at it over the holidays, if you give
me an exclusive.”

“Yessss!” Charlie shouted, pumping his fist
in the air, jolting the slacker clerk from his customary
elbows-on-counter torpor.

He didn’t go back to Indian Springs. Instead,
he spent the night in a Decatur parking lot. On the cold, overcast
morning of December 24, he finished work on the 275-page manuscript
in the special collections room of the Decatur library, completing
it a week ahead of his self-imposed deadline.

He went to the bank and rented another large
safety deposit box so that he could stash his most crucial papers
Flight from Forsyth
and all of those for
American
Monster
. Desperate to see a friendly face, he drove over to
Virginia Highlands and lugged a duffel bag containing his writing
gear into Bay Street Coffeehouse. The place was decked out with
wreaths. Charlie breathed in the doubly invigorating mix of pine
and coffee. Jean rushed around the counter to hug him. “Where have
you been?” she cried out. She wrinkled her nose at him, but she was
too polite to mention why.

“Finishing another book,” he proclaimed. “I’m
done.”

“So soon? How prolific of you!” She stepped
back and frowned. “You’re skinny now.”

“Yeah. I’ve got authorexia.”

“You.” She smiled, showing a dimple in her
chin he’d never noticed before.

“I need to borrow a cup of electricity to
print it up.”

She laughed. “Sure. By the way, people have
been asking about you. I don’t remember who, though a couple of
them acted like detectives.” She gave him her most potent gaze, her
head cocked to the side. “I told them I know nothing. Nothing!”

“Good.” Charlie hoped he didn’t look as
scared as he felt right then. “I’ve been hiding out. But that part
of my life is just about over. I’m looking for a place,” he said,
trying to sound properly ambitious.

“Where have you been staying?”

“Here and there.”

She pursed her lips, appearing deep in
thought. “I know a guy who wants to sublet his loft. I’ll talk to
him.”

“That might work,” he said, although he had
no idea how it would, since he was flat broke and thousands of
dollars in debt. He gave her his phone number, anyway.

Coffee was on the house in celebration of his
grand achievement—and in recognition of his poverty, which, he
assured Jean, was about to end. “Somebody owes me money,” he
explained.

Charlie finished printing the manuscript
shortly after noon and slipped the manuscript into a box and
hand-printed the address. He asked Jean to watch over his stuff
while he went to the post office, where he stood in line behind
procrastinating holiday shippers.

Roxanne, the postal worker Charlie knew best
and trusted most, took his package. He turned away from the
counter. When he looked at all the holiday-numb people behind him,
he realized he’d completed his mission. It had nearly killed him,
but he’d done it. His knees shook and he almost fell to the floor
as a wave of joy and relief swept over him. Feeling holy and
humble, he returned to the coffeehouse and packed his gear into the
duffel. When he went to the counter to thank Jean and wish her a
happy holiday, she pointed overhead at mistletoe hanging from a
pipe, then pecked him on the lips.

Grinning broadly, he hauled his gear out to
the van in the back lot. And now to rid himself of the horrible
burden of the blood-soaked contract—and Trouble the Terrible,
hopefully. Although he’d stashed the vat in the storage unit, it
always seemed to rest on his shoulders, pushing him down and
forward all at once. How heavy it had been, how it made him
stagger! He could already feel it lifting away into the sky as he
drove off to the Store-All.