Brambleman (47 page)

Charlie and the lawmen stepped outside into
the cold night air. Two deputies stuffed the suspect into the back
of the second of two patrol cars double-parked on Castlegate. Then
came a high-speed blue-light trip north on Georgia 400. Apparently
he was a high-value target, given the manpower devoted to his
arrest. Even so, Charlie hoped he could post bond that night and go
home, though the taxi fare would be huge. Oops. His wallet was
still on the kitchen counter. As were his meds and cellphone. At
least he had his keys. They would come in useful if he ever made it
back.

Who to call? The one person he should be able
to count on was most likely part of the conspiracy. Even if she
wasn’t, it had been months since he’d spoken to Susan. And he
recalled that she’d already stated she wouldn’t bail him out of
jail.

Although the Novocain had worn off and he
could speak normally, Charlie continued to take advantage of his
right to remain silent. He assumed someone had given the sheriff
his address after the hit job failed, but the lawmen seemed to know
nothing about him, except that he’d pissed off Ike Cutchins, which
apparently put him in good company. He learned that the two
deputies he rode with had, over the years, served three criminal
trespass warrants on the old man’s behalf—two on hunters who had
merely stepped over the wrong fence.

The squad cars pulled into the parking lot of
the Forsyth County Jail, a low-slung building across the street
from the courthouse in Cumming. A metal garage door rattled up and
the car pulled in. The door rattled down on chains behind him, and
Charlie realized this was the real deal, dungeon-wise. At the
booking desk, Sheriff’s Captain Morgan told Charlie, “We have you
as a flight risk. You’ll need a bond hearing.”

“What does that mean?” Charlie asked.

“Means you’re staying here tonight.”

“How long can you hold me?”

“Seventy-two hours. You’ll be out in the
morning, most likely.”

Charlie was taken to a cluttered room,
fingerprinted, and photographed. When Morgan asked what had
happened to him, Charlie stood mute. “Note his existing injuries,”
Morgan told the booking deputy. “We don’t want to get blamed for
someone else’s doing.”

Afterward, the young deputy gently pushed
Charlie into a room with a phone, closed the door, and stood
outside. Forsyth’s newest inmate picked up the receiver and felt a
burst of butterflies in his empty stomach. Who does a hermit call
at a time like this? He didn’t know anyone he could impose upon,
even to save his ass. He couldn’t ask Dana for help after all he’d
put her through that day. Besides, her number was in his
wallet.

He had to call someone. “Don’t be a pussy,”
he said as tears of self-pity welled up. “So you don’t have
friends. You must have at least one ally. Think, think, think.”

Charlie snapped his fingers, even though it
hurt. Angela.
Ironic, eh
? He hoped he remembered her number,
though he was by no means sure she’d help him. He guessed correctly
and got her answering machine. He made an impassioned, rapid-fire
plea: “Angela, I’m in the Forsyth County Jail. They’re holding me
without bond on bullshit charges that are part of a vendetta
against me because there are
certain people
who don’t want
the truth to get out. I need to hire Sandra. If you could get a
message to her, I’d appreciate it. This is my one phone call, so if
Sandra can’t represent me, could you get in touch with an attorney?
Please help. Of all the jails in the world, this is the one I do
not
want to be in. I repeat: I do
not
want to be
here, so please—”

Beep
. “Thank you for your
message.”

After that, Charlie exchanged street clothes
for an orange jumpsuit. He hated that color. It reminded him of
Tennessee’s football team. He was placed in a large gray and white
holding cell, joining two DUIs and a wife beater, all Caucasian.
Charlie lay awake on his green mat, staring at the bars. Over the
next few hours, a dozen more prisoners shuffled in. As his
medication wore off, the pain sharpened. To keep his mind off his
misery, Charlie tried writing a prison novel in his head,
tentatively titled
Nobody’s Bitch
. After a couple of hours,
his brain grew tired of the literary effort. Shortly after he dozed
off, four noisy drunks were thrown into the cell, now full to the
max. So much for moving to Forsyth County to escape crime.

He slept fitfully, waking when the pain from
his injuries intruded on his oblivion. In a semi-conscious state,
he saw visions: signs of a coming Apocalypse, when the wicked would
pay for their sins in the fiery pit, the righteous would smite
their own sons and daughters, and then take their parking spaces.
There would be bats aplenty in his Apocalypse, and for some reason,
a groundhog. He realized he wasn’t taking Armageddon seriously, but
the pain that lingered in his thigh and jaw made it hard to
properly concentrate on the End Time, and even more difficult to
sleep.
How much brimstone could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck
could chuck brimstone
?

* * *

Charlie looked up and saw a jailer holding a
folded-up
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
outside the cell.
“Sherman, looks like you got your name in the paper.”

Bleary-eyed, Charlie rolled off the mat and
shuffled toward the deputy. “Can I see?”

The jailer laughed and walked away, leaving
Charlie to wonder: Why would a misdemeanor arrest merit a newspaper
story? The answer: Uncle Stanley, of course. If the varmints
couldn’t kill him, they’d discredit him by throwing him in jail.
Then they’d kill him—but only after showing him that no one would
miss him.
Nice touch
.

And to think he’d been on the verge of
success. Now this, his ruin. All his money would go to fight these
charges. The varmints would win. He’d end up with nothing. After a
few hours in jail, he understood perfectly why inmates, lonely and
abandoned, hanged themselves. He didn’t understand why every time
he worked through his life equation, he ended up dead, one way or
another. But there he was.
Mental note: Get rich, buy
friends
.

While other prisoners made bail, Charlie
stewed. Apparently he was pariah to local bondsmen. Again, he
blamed Uncle Stanley. The cell’s TV was broken, and other than
asking twice for a newspaper (to no avail), Charlie kept his mouth
shut. Still no word from Sandra. Then again, why would an
African-American woman want to set foot in Forsyth County?
Obviously, he’d wasted his phone call. After all, his relationship
with Angela was nothing more than a series of battles, truces, and
one-sided deals. She probably wanted him to rot in jail. But surely
not in Forsyth, where her father, too, had suffered. She would
resent the irony enough to do something about it. Wouldn’t she?

Shifts changed. Day turned to night in
Charlie’s windowless world. More prisoners came: meth dealer,
probation violator, burglar, girlfriend beater. None talked much.
Instead, they slept. When fatigue overcame his pain, Charlie joined
them in slumber.

Wednesday morning came, and still no word on
his release. Ridiculous! Surely someone was trying to get him out.
If not, why go on living? Damn. Zeroed out
again
. The
jailers fed Charlie and barely noticed him otherwise. That night,
he ran a fever. His wounded leg had swollen, straining the sutures
and oozing pus. He shivered, shook, and sweated through the night.
When the lights came on, he was haggard and pale. He’d barely
spoken a dozen words since he’d been brought in. Now he felt too
weak to talk.

Several other prisoners were released to a
bail bondsman. Meanwhile, Charlie lay in a heap on his mat. After
pondering his situation for a while, he decided (yet again) that he
couldn’t go on. The problem wasn’t just being in jail. What made it
worse was the knowledge that everyone outside was content to leave
him there. He had a blanket, and though tall, he was clever. But
there were still a half dozen inmates lounging around in the cell.
First he’d rest. Then, as soon as he was alone …

* * *

As it turned out, Charlie was no more
successful at ending his life than his enemies had been. Actually,
he never got around to trying. Thursday morning, a young,
fresh-faced deputy ripped his baton along the cell door’s bars.
“Get up! Time for your bond hearing, Mr. Famous.”

Bleary-eyed, Charlie squinted at the deputy
and staggered to his feet—disheveled, weak-kneed, and burning with
fever. “I’m sick,” he groaned.

“You’ll be out soon, and you’ll be someone
else’s problem.”

Charlie declined to eat breakfast, and a
little while after a trusty took his tray away, Deputy Strayer
cuffed Charlie’s hands in front of him and led him to a white van
outside. Charlie winced and put his shackled wrists over his eyes
to shield them from the sun, which seemed overpowering, even as a
wintry wind cut through his jail uniform. He tripped over a parking
curbstone and fell to his knees, yelping in pain. The deputy
grabbed Charlie’s arm and pulled him up, then helped him into the
van. The door slammed shut. Charlie, alone in back, marveled at the
growing spot of blood on his pants leg where his sutures had
popped.

The van crossed the street, circled the
courthouse, and backed up to a door. “Looks like you’re going to be
even more famous,” the deputy said over his shoulder, through the
mesh. “Bunch of reporters from Atlanta to cover you. So be cool.”
Charlie dropped his head in shame.

Strayer came around and opened the rear door.
“What the hell did you do?” he yelled.

“I’m hurt,” Charlie mumbled, his jumpsuit leg
now covered with blood.

Strayer was joined by a young deputy, who
stared open-mouthed at Charlie as a stream of journalists rounded
the building’s corner, pushing, shoving, and jockeying for position
between the van and the courthouse entrance. Charlie was befuddled
by the cameras. How did he merit this kind of coverage? When
deputies pulled him out, Charlie hit another curbstone—God, he
hated those things!—and fell on the pavement again. He broke the
fall with his hands, popping more sutures.

“We gotta take him to the hospital,” said the
younger deputy.

A middle-aged sergeant forced his way through
the crowd. “After the hearing,” he said. “We gotta get through the
media circus first.”

Two lawmen grabbed the prisoner around the
waist and half-carried him into the building while reporters barked
questions Charlie didn’t comprehend. After taking the elevator, the
three men burst unceremoniously into a second-story hearing room.
It was packed with people, mostly young women, several of them
black. Journalists poured in after them. Charlie saw Angela
standing along the back wall. And there was Sandra Hughes, sitting
at a table in front. A bolt of energy ran through him. The
sisterhood had come to his rescue!

Crenshaw, the newspaper reporter who’d
interviewed Charlie at the coffeehouse a year before, sat on the
front row along with some TV reporters. Cameras on tripods lined
the far wall. The deputies led the prisoner to his stout,
short-haired African-American attorney, who was conferring with
three earnest-looking white women in dark business suits leaning in
over her table. Looking gruff and purposeful, they whispered and
shuffled papers. All four lawyers looked at Charlie in amazement
and horror, then turned in unison to stare at the deputies, who sat
Charlie in a chair and backed away like he was a suspect
package—instead of a packaged suspect.

“You made it!” Charlie cried in amazement. “I
was afraid—actually, I just … wow.” He looked around. “How does an
arrest for theft by taking draw this kind of attention?”

Sandra looked at him like he’d come from
another planet. “God, have they been beating you?”

“I got shot. But you wouldn’t know that.”

“Are you kidding?
Everyone
knows.
Somebody took a picture of you coming out of a window. You looked
like
The Terminator
. It’s actually pretty cool. You kept
your shades on.” She pulled a copy of Tuesday morning’s paper from
her briefcase to show him the front-page photo. Above it, the
headline: “Writer Missing after Shooting.” “You made
The New
York Times
and the
CBS Evening News
. We thought you’d
died until Angela found your message on her machine. We alerted the
media, forcing them to set this hearing. She also brought her Intro
to Sociology class for moral support. You’ll be happy to know you
are now extra credit.”

“Wow. I’ve never been extra credit
before.”

He turned to wave at Angela, who gave him a
clenched-fist salute. His spirits were rising. He had some fight
left in him, after all. There were things people needed to know,
and he was the one to tell them. “Why has it taken so long?” he
asked. “Where have you been?”

“I’m sorry.” She gave him a hangdog look. “I
didn’t hear from Angela till late Wednesday.”

“She doesn’t check her messages very often,”
he said glumly.

“I know. But I worked all last night, and I
brought reinforcements. Charles, this is Debra Biello of the ACLU,
Karen Janus of the Georgia Criminal Defense Project, and Callie
Wollcroft with Prisoners of Conscience.”
Sotto voce
, she
said, “They’re considering declaring you a political prisoner. I’m
sure they will after what we’ve seen here.”

Charlie nodded to the women and held up his
shackled hands. They all complimented him on his first-class
suffering, then Ms. Biello handed him a Kleenex for his oozing
hand. “That’s some book you wrote,” she said, pointing to a copy of
Flight
on the table. Seeing people leaning forward, taking
notes, he grabbed the book with his bloody hand and posed with it,
in case anyone wanted to take a picture. Several flashes went
off.