Brambleman (50 page)

His hair damp and sheets sweaty, Charlie woke
from a dream of drowning. The loft’s vague shadows seemed
unfamiliar, but the sound of a MARTA train clacking by comforted
him. His back and leg muscles were red-hot clothes hangers beneath
his skin, and his knees were busted hinges, but his fever had
broken, and the pain from his wounds had subsided. A remarkable
recovery.

The radioactive orange jumpsuit lay rumpled
on the floor, looking like the man inside had vaporized. Would the
sheriff charge him with stealing it? Charlie didn’t care; he would
keep his trophy, stenciled with that dark, magical lettering:
1
Forsyth County Jail
. When
American Monster
was
published, he’d pose for his author’s photo in it and have the last
Georgia chain gang laugh. Anyway, it was a fair trade for the
shipping department clothes still in Cumming. He threw the
blood-stained uniform in the washing machine along with his
battle-tested duster.

The kitchen was trashed: dirty dishes in the
sink, old food and bloody bandages on the counter. He cleaned up
and brewed coffee, reveling in quotidian tasks that marked his
return to normalcy. While eating eggs and a bagel—practically the
only food left in the place—he looked at notes and reporters’
business cards that had been slipped under his door. One said,
“Fight the Power! Peace, Kim #416.”

He fired up the computer and checked the
Atlanta newspaper’s website for news. “Writer Missing: Law Agencies
Under Fire” was the top story, accompanied by that fortuitous,
perhaps lifesaving cellphone photo of Charlie with a cop’s boot on
his head.
Thank you, Alphonsus Hester, wherever you are
. The
picture’s poor resolution didn’t hide the defeated look of a
whipped dog in Charlie’s eyes. He’d been shamed, humiliated, and
dominated, and now the world knew it. This pissed him off and
pushed his blood pressure back to a proper boil. He wanted to fight
back.

Fortunately, there was plenty of ammunition
out there—and shots were being fired. His story had gone national,
even international, and Redeemer Wilson had proposed a prayer vigil
for him. Crenshaw’s article was replete with quotes from Sandra,
law professors, and civil rights attorneys expressing their outrage
at his treatment. Rep. Stanley Cutchins claimed no knowledge of the
dispute between his father and his niece’s estranged husband. A
photo of Pappy’s house showed a “no trespassing” sign by the
driveway. And there was this lovely sentence: “When asked what
Sherman had stolen, Isaac Cutchins threatened to kill a reporter.”
There was a sidebar story (“Forsyth Book No. 1 on Books.com”) and
an editorial blasting the GBI, Forsyth County sheriff, and Canton
police for their mistreatment of a man “most likely hiding from
assassins, not warrants … although one has to wonder if there isn’t
a connection.”
Cool
. Charlie hit the print button.

The story in Tuesday’s paper had identified
his feckless assailants as Forsyth County meth dealers. The
shooter’s name: Robert Suches. Someone with that last name had been
in the mob that killed John Riggins. “Suches it is,” Charlie
muttered.

And the brilliant part: Through it all,
Charlie Sherman remained a man of mystery, whereabouts unknown, his
survival in doubt. He’d be the hottest interview in America. Once
upon a time, he would have done anything for this kind of
attention, but now he didn’t want the scrutiny—mainly because he
was too burned out for a news conference, and furthermore, he
wasn’t sure what to say.

He was still Googling himself when his
cellphone rang. Seeing it was a New York number, he took a chance
and answered it.

Fortress’s young publicist was on the line.
“Charles Sherman! My God, you got shot
and
arrested. You’re
like our most famous author right now,” Heather Schwartz gushed.
“We’re
inundated
with interview requests, in case you didn’t
see my e-mail. Oh, and we sold an excerpt to the Atlanta paper. It
was weird. Your editor said it was a boring chapter, mainly a list
of land documents and stuff.”

“Oh.” Those would be the records Crenshaw had
long coveted. “Wait. Who’s my editor?”

“Joshua.”

“I thought Joshua got fired.”

“We’ve got three Joshuas. Well, two now. By
the way, the book’s selling out everywhere. People want to know
what got you shot and arrested and tortured or whatever. We’re
going to a second printing. Oh, and the
Times
is reviewing
it. You’ve already been on the front page twice. This is so
exciting!”

“Yay,” Charlie deadpanned.

“I’m e-mailing you like sixty interview
requests. You take care of them, OK? And send me stuff I can use
for a press release about you being shot. And arrested.”

“I got assaulted, too.”

“Were you raped in jail?” she asked, sounding
hopeful.

“No, just run-of-the-mill police
brutality.”

“Somebody said there’s a picture with a cop’s
boot on your head. Was that posed?”

“Uh, no. Not that one. The mug shots were,
though.”

“Send us something, anyway. We’ll issue a
statement. And congratulations! This is so awesome!”

“Thanks.” He hung up and broke out laughing
so hard he fell out of his chair, causing himself more pain.

Next, Charlie listened to the saga play out
over his cellphone’s voicemail. First Angela, from Wednesday night,
apologizing for not playing his message. Then Sandra, excitedly
saying she was calling in her human-rights allies “because the
Forsyth sheriff won’t return my calls and that place is an American
gulag.” Then, late Thursday morning, after he’d been taken by Finch
and Drew, a WTF call from Sandra. She’d called again Thursday
night: “God, Charles, where are you? What have they done? I’ve
demanded that the governor call out the National Guard to search
for you!”

There were more calls: Jean, his oldest
friend from his new life, worried and crying. Dana, on her way out
of town Thursday night, saying, “You’ve manufactured enough
publicity to get on the bestseller list.” Laughing! A wonderful
laugh, too. Nothing from Susan. But she didn’t have his number.
With good reason. Yet they found him, anyway.

And a recent one from Barbara Asher:
“Charlie? Charlie?” she cried out in anguished hope. “Are you
alive? There’s an article about you in the
Times
. This is
absolutely insane! Your sales must be through the roof! I’m putting
Monster
up for auction. Call me when you’re out of intensive
care or solitary confinement. There’s so much more to do. Editing
and a new ending. Without you around, who would do it? Publishers
don’t have real editors anymore. Please, please, don’t die on me,
darling.”

His e-mails included the usual junk along
with a “semi-desperate” plea from Crenshaw for an interview. And
one from
Atlanta Week
editor James Hadford: “Charlie—We’ll
pay you $2,000 for your first-person account of whatever the hell’s
going on. By the way, we mailed a check for your last article.”

Charlie was out the door in a flash. He found
an envelope from Hadford in his vestibule mailbox. Five hundred
bucks. Cool. He snuck a peek through La Patisserie’s back door. A
painter was lettering the bakery’s new front window. There was a
rack inside, by the door, with free copies of
Atlanta Week
.
He was reluctant to show his injured face in the shop after causing
so much chaos there, but he snuck in anyway and snatched a copy,
retreating undetected. He stood in the garage admiring the
front-page promo: “Georgia Diaspora: Forsyth’s Blacks are (Finally)
History.”

A bus rumbled by, reminding him of his brush
with death. He shuddered, realizing that this wasn’t over.
American Monster
was far from being published, and he was
still in danger. Then he realized that Minerva might be in danger,
too. He needed to see if she was OK. Should he call her? No. She’d
hang up on him. He needed to pay her a visit, even if she slammed
the door in his face. He returned to the loft, got his coat from
the dryer, and rushed out. He slipped on his shades and raised the
duster’s collar to cover his damaged ear as he walked past two news
trucks parked on the sidewalk. After spending twenty minutes
searching for the Volvo, he found it on a side street with two
parking tickets stuck under a wiper and a tow-away notice plastered
on the driver’s window.

On the way to Minerva’s, he called Sandra.
Her assistant shrieked, “Mr. Sherman’s alive!”

Sandra came on the line. “Charles! Are you
all right?”

“I am now.”

“They wouldn’t tell me where you were, then I
got a call from a reporter. They had pictures of you getting
stomped. I called the Canton police and they claimed they had no
record of you.”

“They let me go. It was just a courtesy
stomp.”

“How’d you get home?”

“I walked to Alpharetta and caught MARTA. Or
maybe MARTA caught me.”

“You should have called me. We were worried
sick. Now the Justice Department is involved. I talked to the
governor for twenty minutes yesterday afternoon. He promised a
full-scale search.”

“He lied,” Charlie said. “I walked along the
main road for thirty miles. I was out there for eight hours. I
wasn’t hard to find.”

“He was probably hoping you’d get hit. Do you
realize how much media this has gotten?”

“Yeah. The paper’s running an excerpt from
the book Sunday.
The New York Times
is reviewing it. I’ve
got sixty-five requests for interviews, last I checked.”

“Hell, Charlie,
I’ve
got forty. We
need to go on the attack.”

“I don’t want to do anything today. Maybe
Monday. I don’t know what to say, anyway.”

She hesitated. “All right. You must be
exhausted. Should I tell people you’re all right?”

“That seems like a bit of an overstatement,
but go ahead.”

“OK. Call me. Oh, by the way … maybe this
isn’t the right time, but I promised Angela I’d mention it. She
wants to renegotiate the contract on the book.” Charlie flinched.
The car swerved to the left. “And your wife called.”

The car swerved back to the right. “Really.
What does she want?”

“She’s worried about you,” Sandra said,
sounding surprised. “You should call her.”

Actually, Charlie had been talking about
Angela, but there was no point in getting into that now. “Thanks
for the warning. And thanks for bringing the legal army.”

“I’ll bill you. Thank goodness you’re a
bestselling author now, so you can afford it, right?”

Charlie laughed, but stopped when he hung up,
since the prospect of forking over a bunch of money to Angela
didn’t amuse him all that much.

Minutes later, he parked in front of
Minerva’s house and rang the bell.

She opened the door, gasped, and stepped
back. “First I hear you were shot, then the next thing I hear is
that you got yourself arrested, then you disappear. You all
right?”

“More or less.”

She examined his face, tut-tutting at his
injuries. “So what brings you back to my doorstep, Mister Bad
Penny?” she asked, distrust in her voice.

“Came to see how you were doing. I figured if
I was having troubles, you might be, too.”

She sighed, stepped inside and gestured to
the sofa. “Come on in. I’ll make tea.”

When she returned from the kitchen, she sat
in her chair and regarded him this way and that. “Looks like you
didn’t get shot up too bad.”

“I’ll be all right.” He nodded toward
Flight from Forsyth
, which sat on the table by her chair
with a bookmarker stuck in the middle. “You’ve been reading
it.”

“I’m halfway through. Terrible stuff. What
happened, not the writing. Writing’s good.”

“Thanks. How’s Takira doing?”

“She’s at school.”

“Heard from Demetrious lately?”

She looked out the western window. Before
Charlie could break the awkward silence, the tea kettle whistled.
Minerva went to the kitchen, returning with cups on a tray. “Tell
you the truth,” she said, seemingly apropos of nothing, “I gave up
on you.” She sat and took a sip. “There have been things happening.
About that farm.”

Charlie took a sip of bitter, unsweetened
brew, then put down the cup. “Did you get an attorney and file a
lien on the property, like I suggested?”

“You were shot,” she said, casting her gaze
on the floor. “What time of day did that happen?”

“Monday morning. About ten, I think.”

“At noon that day, some men—lawyers—came by
with papers.”

“Really.” Charlie sat up straight.

“Of course I didn’t know what had happened to
you at the time.”

“What were their names?”

“Jackson and Stout. That’s the law firm. The
men had a quitclaim on land in Forsyth County. They wouldn’t say it
was my father’s, but obviously it was, because they were willing to
give me twenty thousand dollars to sign it.”

“How’d they know to find you?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Hmm.” Charlie had already come to suspect
that the evildoers had found Minerva after finding
him
,
perhaps picking up his trail at Kathleen’s funeral. That pissed him
off. He couldn’t even mourn folks properly anymore. “Damn. You
didn’t sign it, did you? Because that land is worth millions—”

She held up her hand to silence him. “I told
them I’d think about it. Unfortunately, Demetrious and his friend
came in while they were here. I didn’t want to tell the boy what
was going on, especially not with that P-Dog—” she sneered at the
name “—standing there. Demetrious got upset and started yelling how
this was about the book you’re writing. One of the men told
Demetrious this was grown-up business and for him to run along and
mind his own.”

She sighed. “Now you know Demetrious can’t
stand to be
dissed
, he calls it, and really, the man had no
business saying that since this isn’t his house. The boys have a
problem with white folks anyway, but these two men … well, P-Dog
acts the fool and pulls a gun!” She threw up her hands. “This isn’t
even an ounce of his business, and he’s yelling that they’re trying
to cheat us—like it’s his money, can you believe it?”