Brambleman (60 page)

After checking news coverage on the Internet,
Charlie shuffled downstairs to buy a paper, first peeking around
the corner of the garage entrance. The coast was clear—at least
there were no pickup trucks. He ran to the box, quickly slipped in
coins and snatched a copy, then trotted back to the vestibule,
humming through his teeth, and tapping his foot nervously while
awaiting the elevator.

Safely back in his loft, he read Crenshaw’s
front-page coverage of his news conference: “Wealthy Forsyth Farmer
Accused of 1937 Lynching.” The photo of Charlie highlighted his
scar. Another picture showed Momo’s monster truck in front of
Pappy’s house along with three
No Trespassing
signs and a
crudely lettered notice stating
Violaters will be shot
!
Forsyth District Attorney Eric Stockwell was dismissive of
Charlie’s claims, saying, “A finger in a jar doesn’t make a case.”
But Charlie didn’t expect much sympathy from that quarter, since
Stockwell had refused to return Charlie’s phone calls about
American Monster
in December. There was also a promo blurb:
“Coming Sunday: A Look Behind the Book—The Cutchins-Sherman
Feud.”

“Reruns,” Charlie muttered.

* * *

Charlie spent the rest of the morning looking
for a new loft. Everything he saw was too big or too small; nothing
was just right. He missed having Armand, his faux bodyguard, to
talk to. When he checked his voicemails after lunch, there were
thirteen messages, mostly from reporters—and one from Matthew
Steele, inviting Charlie to appear on his TV show: “Of course,
we’ll have some Cutchinses on, too. Think of it, Mr. Sherman! An
episode dedicated to families who lynch, and the courageous in-laws
who expose them!”

The trashiest of trash TV. Charlie groaned in
distaste and shouted, “Oh, hell no!” at his new cellphone.

That evening, he cruised bookstores and held
impromptu signings, accepting business cards with private numbers
written on them from a couple of fine-looking young women. He
thought that perhaps his curse was about to be broken.

Late that night, Charlie returned to
Castlegate and parked his BMW in the garage. Rather than face his
lonely loft, he walked out to the street. Traffic was sparse and
the night was balmy; some of the day’s stifling heat had
dissipated. Charlie gazed at the few stars he could see over
downtown. La Patisserie had been closed for several hours. A few
far-off voices called, and when he stopped to listen, he heard the
reassuring rumble of a midnight bus and the throaty gospel of the
barrel-fire guy who lived near the MARTA station. A freight train
rolling slowly through downtown blew its horn.

Feeling restless, Charlie started walking. A
block south, on the right side of the street, the flickering neon
sign for Max’s Place beckoned him. He’d never been inside before
and decided to check it out. He listened to soles of his Cole-Haans
slap the sidewalk, proud of their echo in the still night air. When
he reached Max’s, he hesitated before pulling the door’s long
wooden handle. It was weird to walk into a bar after so many years
of sobriety. But things were different now. He’d proved he could
handle just about anything, hadn’t he? A drink wouldn’t be that big
a deal. Besides, Max’s was the only place open to him right then,
so there he was.

Charlie stepped inside to a blast of cold air
and funky old R&B, the Bar-Kays’
Holy Ghost
. Max’s was
nearly empty and a soft reddish glow permeated the place. The
carpet smelled of old beer and stale cognac. He glanced at a couple
in a corner booth and stepped to the bar. “What’ll ya have, buddy?”
asked the bartender, a stocky black man with a knife scar on his
face. He gazed appreciatively at Charlie’s rose while awaiting his
order.

“Budweiser.” The word just came out. Sounded
right. “Yeah.”

The bartender placed the bottle on the
counter. Charlie slipped him a ten and stared at the beer. A woman
in a sleeveless green dress was slouched over a drink a few stools
over. She took an interest in Charlie when his change came back.
“Hey, baby,” she cooed.

When he glanced her way, she gave him a
bleary-eyed smile. She had chocolate-brown skin. Her hair was
teased out and unruly, and her make-up seemed misapplied, as though
her mirror didn’t function correctly. She was swaying to the music
in a burlesque of seduction. Charlie thought she might have been
attractive if she’d kept herself up—but she’d still have that
tattoo. He squinted at her. Had she been beaten? Was she crying?
Most likely she was a junkie or alcoholic. Maybe she was crashing
off crack. He drummed his fingers on the bar, letting them inch
toward the bottle.

“Shaundra, leave the gentleman alone,” said
the bartender, scrutinizing the mug he was drying. “He don’t need
your nonsense.”

She ignored him and bumped down the bar
toward Charlie, stool by stool. When she was close, she reached out
and touched his cheek, brushing his blue polo shirt. “What happen
to you face?”

“Got shot,” Charlie said, pulling away from
her and picking up the beer.

“My kinda man.” She laughed, flashing a
gold-tooth smile.

When he looked into her eyes, there was
something familiar and terribly wrong about them. They were small
and beady, following him everywhere, looking for a chance to bore a
hole through him. Creepy. Evil.

“You dress good. You smell good,” she said,
leaning in close. “Wanna party with me? You look like you need a
date. No doubt.”

The whiff of beer in his nostrils, the woman
coming in on him like a crow on roadkill—all this was wrong.
Without taking a sip, Charlie set down the bottle and pushed away
from the bar, leaving his change laying there.

“Shaundra workin’ her magic again,” muttered
the man in the booth, who then broke out laughing.

Moving quickly, Charlie stepped outside.
Feeling like he’d dodged a bullet, he shuddered in relief in the
warm night air. The woman staggered out behind him, her heels
clicking on concrete. “This ain’t over,” she declared. “You and me
need to have some fun. Do some business. You a businessman,
right?”

He crossed the street, walking faster with
each step. She shouted out after him. “I ’member now! I know you! I
know you! You owe me! Come back, honey! We can work it out.”

Everyone knew Charlie. That was his problem.
He quickened his pace and ran back to his loft. Once inside, he
looked in the mirror and pounded his fist on the wall beside it.
Through gritted teeth he said, “You’re an alcoholic, motherfucker.
What part of that don’t you understand?”

* * *

Charlie dreamed of waking at 4:00 a.m. He
heard a revolver’s cylinder spin, and the next thing he knew, he
was holding a gun to his temple. Beck and Ben were watching him,
waiting to take their turns with the gun. A pile of cash lay on the
table in front of him. Three men also sat at the table, strangers
all, their faces lit by a dangling bulb in a dank, dark-cornered
room. “Your turn,” the bald man said, then nodded to the children.
“Or theirs.”

When the alarm rang at 5:00 a.m., Charlie
awoke terribly confused. Where had he been the last hour? He hit
the clock’s button and looked around. The doors were closed. He
touched his chest. He existed. He stuck out his foot. The floor was
there. The shadow of a tree limb danced on the ceiling. The shadow
was real.

Maybe it was a witching-hour dream, maybe it
wasn’t. In any case, Charlie wanted to call Thornbriar and check on
Beck and Ben, but he worried that Susan would use any ill-timed
communication as evidence of stalking and get the restraining order
reinstated. But he had to know the kids were all right. He was due
at Channel Six’s studios at seven o’clock for a live interview with
Atlanta Dawn
host Charlene Guy. That gave him enough time to
shower, don his new khaki suit, grab a cup of coffee at the bakery,
and drive to Thornbriar—not to stalk, of course, but just to check
and see that everything was OK.

And so he found himself slowly driving past
the house at 6:10 a.m. A BMW larger than his sat in the driveway.
Had to be a 528i. Jet black. Paid for with his child support, no
doubt. Wait a minute. Why wouldn’t she park it in the garage? He
drove on to the stop sign down the street and circled around in the
intersection, then backtracked. As he passed by the house again, a
gray-haired man in a suit was stepping out the door. Susan, in a
bathrobe, kissed him.
Harold
?
God, he was old
.

Charlie felt his face burn and fought the
urge to slam on the brakes. However, he’d taken his foot off the
gas, so he was just coasting away. What should he do? What could he
do? The little skank was out there cheating on him publicly, with
impunity! At the Hanover stoplight, he dialed Muncie’s cell.

“What the hey,” said the groggy lawyer.

“I want a detective to trail my wife.”

“Why?”

“I’m countersuing on grounds of adultery. I
need documentation, I tell you!”

“What time is it?” Muncie groaned. “Oh, no.
Stalking is bad, Charlie. You’re not outside your wife’s house
right now, are you?”

“Of course I’m outside her house. Otherwise,
I’d be inside it and that would be even worse.”

Muncie spoke slowly, as if to a child.
“Charlie, how far away are you from your wife right now?”

“Infinitely far,” Charlie replied.

* * *

Charlie arrived at the Channel Six studio
expecting a friendly interview, since he’d never heard of a guest
segment on that show turning ugly.
Atlanta Dawn
host
Charlene Guy smiled warmly at Charlie when she introduced him to
the city’s largest morning audience, but the interview quickly
became adversarial. Charlene started by asking if Charlie was
involved in drug trafficking. He laughed off the question and
mentioned the racist death threats he’d been receiving recently.
She parried by asking about his “conflict of interest” in writing
about his family. The interview went downhill from there: Charlene
told him twice to lower his voice, and on one occasion, he
suggested that she didn’t know what she was talking about.

He staggered out of the studio greatly
displeased with TV news, his cheating wife, and life in general.
“Six minutes of hell,” he called the interview on his way out the
door and into the sunshine. Another performance like that and he’d
have to get out of town—maybe even move to Canada. In a voice
hoarse from all the talking he’d done during the past few days,
he’d said some ugly things about the varmints, but he meant every
word, especially when he declared that Representative Stanley
Cutchins “is a bad joke Forsyth County voters have been playing on
the state of Georgia for the past two decades”; “Isaac Cutchins is
a thieving murderer”; “My wife’s divorce petition is filled with
lies”; and “The governor? Don’t get me started on
him
.”

Charlie consoled himself with a leisurely
breakfast at Midtown Diner. He’d just paid the check when he felt
his cellphone vibrate. It was Crenshaw. He considered ignoring the
call, but their relationship had reached a tipping point, and
Crenshaw now gave
him
useful information half the time.
Charlie took a deep breath and stepped outside. “What do you want?”
he growled, hoping he sounded friendlier than he felt, but not
caring much.

“What do you have to say now that your
monster’s dead?”

“Say what?”

“Isaac. Cutchins. Is. Dead.” Silence. “You
don’t know? My deepest condolences,” Crenshaw added with mock
sincerity.

“Shit.” Charlie grimaced at his tasteless
response.
Think, think, think. Say something appropriate. Hmm.
Difficult
. “What was it? Heart attack, stroke? Both?”

“Lead poisoning.”

“Lead poisoning,” Charlie repeated dully.

“Bullet in the brain. Through it, actually.
Last night. Messy, from what I hear.”

Charlie resisted the urge to shout,
I
didn’t do it
! “He was
murdered
? Wow.”

“No. The family says it’s a suicide. You’re
to blame, you’ll be happy to know.”

“No. Absolutely not. Pap—Ike Cutchins would
never kill himself. That’s not in his nature.”

“Your mother-in-law—Evangeline Powell … she
still is your mother-in-law, right?”

“Never heard of her.”

“Cut the shit. I’m just checking to make sure
you haven’t snuck off and gotten your divorce yet.”

“Oh, you’ll know when that happens,” he
assured the reporter.

“Fair enough. Back to the dead guy. Your
mother-in-law says, and I quote here, ‘Daddy heard about that pack
of lies coming out about him, and he couldn’t live with being
slandered. That man’—and here I’ll insert your name, since she
refused to say it—‘may as well have stuck the gun to my daddy’s
head and pulled the trigger himself.’ Now,
that
’s a money
quote. What say you?”

“I say it’s a homicide.”

“Really, you think somebody read the book,
got pissed off and came up here—”

Charlie thought about Aunt Shirley.
Say it
ain’t so, Shirlene
! “No, I’m not saying—wait. Are you up there
now?”

“Yeah. Your in-laws just finished putting on
a show for the cameras. Representative Cutchins was there, and then
Tant or Taint—

“—Tantie Marie. It’s actually Marie Hastings.
His sister.”

“Whew. Thanks. I had her down as Stanley
Cutchins’ wife.”

Charlie broke out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Crenshaw demanded. “Oh,
the Pulaski stuff.
She’s my sister, she’s my daughter, she’s my
wife
.” He made a sucking noise through his teeth. “I’m not
going there. Hey, there’s this huge, hulking guy with a monster
truck. Everybody calls him Momo. That’s Rhett, right?”

“Rhett Butler Hastings Jr.”