Brambleman (78 page)

“I think it’s selfish and greedy to pray for
things. I’ve already got what I need. So, if you don’t mind …”

Charlie started to get up. Trouble grabbed
his arm. The angel’s eyes lit up with angry fire, and his voice
trembled with rage. “Shut up and listen, fool! Did you think we’d
let you see all the things you saw and allow you to just walk away
a free man when you’re no longer either? What you thought was the
curse is the miracle! Talk about making the blind see.
Sheesh
. With you, it’s impossible.”

Charlie gave him a glum look. “Great. Tell me
what I won.”

“What you
won
.” Trouble snorted. Again
he looked to the skies, holding out his palms, as if to say
See
what I got to work with here
?

“All right. What I prayed for.”

Trouble addressed the sky. “He doesn’t
remember. That’s how important it was to him.” He shook his head
and turned to Charlie. “When you were seven, you were outside your
house, running up and down the sidewalk, flapping your arms,
praying that you could be an angel so that you could find your
father. We were never quite sure what you meant, but in any case,
like I said, it was an interesting prayer. And the fact that we
didn’t know what you meant made it—and you—even more interesting.
There are very few humans who are a mystery to us. By the way, your
wife is the same way. We weren’t sure what she meant by ‘no woman
would have you’ so we treated it as ‘no woman could have you.’ I
think.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Varmints. Varmints and
fools. That’s what they give me to work with.”

Charlie thought for the moment. “Actually, I
do remember what I prayed for. To be a bird.”

“Nope. Angel.”

“Pretty sure I wanted to be a bird.”

“Too late now. Well, you’ll be different,
I’ll say that much.” Trouble glanced down at the water bottle.
“Don’t need that anymore.” He stood and brushed back his stringy,
greasy hair with both hands. Charlie heard a bus in the distance
and stood, too.

“One last thing. I remembered what I was
going to tell you.”

“What’s that?” Charlie asked.

“The night we met. I said I was going to tell
you two things. I only told you one.”

“What’s the other?”

“Hell is overrated.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Alrighty then. Time for the elaborate
ceremony, replacement part,” Trouble said, looking Charlie in the
eye. “Here’s to knowing who you are. You’re it.”

He touched Charlie’s chest and disintegrated,
clothes and all, falling into a neat, cone-shaped pile of
grayish-black dust. In an instant, the huge flock of crows
descended and began devouring Trouble’s remains. Acting on
instinct, Charlie reached into their midst and grabbed a handful of
Trouble. Out of professional courtesy, not a single bird pecked
him. The birds kept coming, and Charlie backed away, his expression
a mixture of wonder and horror. In less than a minute, they had
finished and flown off in all different directions. The only thing
left was a shiny piece of metal in the center of a bare ring of red
earth pecked clean of grass. Charlie bent down and picked up the
key. He reached into his pocket and felt the key Redeemer had
refused to take from him that day he fixed the church door. It was
warm to his touch. The one he’d just plucked from the ground,
Trouble’s key, was cold.

A horn honked. He turned and saw the MARTA
bus in front of his house. With his fist clenched, he ran back to
the house and locked the door. As he crossed the lawn, he looked up
to the sun, which smiled down on his ravaged face.

The bus doors opened as he approached. The
driver, a familiar-looking middle-aged black woman, wore a short
wig and sunglasses. “Hey,” Charlie said. “You got your job
back!”

“I was only at Family and Children Services
for a day,” she said.

“Ah. Cool. So I need to go—”

“I know where you’re going.”

Charlie climbed aboard. The bus was full of
passengers, all of them like him in one way or another. A man with
long white hair was also missing an eye. A woman whose face had
been badly burned smiled at him. A man’s artificial leg stuck into
the aisle. These were a bunch of hard cases—wingless,
untrustworthy, scarred by life on earth, forced to ride the bus.
And now he was one, marked by shotgun blasts, clubs, nails, and
chains: Brambleman, born of Trouble, and as different from the
other as day from night, new from old. He stood in the aisle, since
he was the youngest one of all, this being his birthday. Now both a
Thursday and a Tuesday child, he braced himself for the ride
ahead.

The bus lurched forward. The others stared at
their newest colleague expectantly as he stepped toward the rear.
He held up his fist. “This is what’s left of Trouble,” he shouted
above the diesel’s roar. “I’m taking him with me to the holy
place.”

“You’ll need to transfer to the Memorial
Drive bus,” the driver shouted back.

* * *

Trouble’s key didn’t work, but Charlie’s did.
After all, it was his door.

Redeemer Wilson once told Charlie, “It’s not
just what
they did
that matters. What
you
do matters
more.” Finally, he was ready to take those words to heart and act
on them. With the money he’d earned from his books, he bought both
the Holy Way House and the Hunger Palace from Redeemer’s widow with
the stipulation that the buildings’ names and purpose would not
change. He hired a social gospel preacher, since that’s what the
Holy Way House required, and persuaded Lucinda Persons, Redeemer’s
fierce black kitchen manager, to return to her old job.

Then he set about making repairs.

Early one summer morning—a Monday, just as
Redeemer would have liked—Charlie was working alone, replacing the
church’s broken windows. He turned to his tool chest to get a pry
bar, and when he looked up and squinted into the dawn, he saw
someone hobbling toward him with the aid of a cane. Charlie stood
and watched as a woman approached across the weedy, graveled lot,
carrying a black garbage bag over her shoulder. She wore a dirty
old tan coat and shapeless blue pants along with an oversized
yellow sweater. She winced as she stepped on the rocks, for there
were holes in her shoes. He realized that he had seen her before.
Attached to the front of her coat was a name tag that said Lil
Bit.

She started begging as she drew near.
“Please, sir. I ain’t got a place to stay and nuthin’ to eat. I
heard you was the one to come to. I lost my job.”

“Where’d you work?” Charlie asked, already
knowing the answer.

“Pancake Hut.”

“What happened?”

“They got sued and went bankrupt. They didn’t
treat people right.”

“Is that so,” he said, pursing his lips.

“Yup. I came down here because I heard
Redeemer had this place and maybe—”

“Redeemer passed on. Maybe I can help you get
back on your feet.”

“I was hopin’ I could get
off
my feet.
I been walkin’ all night.”

“Tell you what. I’m setting up the food
kitchen, and I need people to work it.”

Lil Bit brightened. “I been cooking and
waitressin’ for people all my life.”

“Not all of them.” He wagged a finger at her.
“This time, you serve everyone.”

“Yes sir.” She looked up at him in surprise.
“Do you know me?”

“Of course.”

She stared at him like he’d performed a
miracle.

“Meanwhile,” he said, “you can have my
brown-bag lunch and take a bed in the big building until you find a
place of your own. You’ll report to a lady named Lucinda. And if
you have a problem with that, it will be your problem. I assure
you.”

“Thank you so much.” She grabbed his right
hand and kissed it. “You’re an angel.”

“Shhh. Don’t tell anybody. I’ve got a
reputation to uphold.”

* * *

It took half of Charlie’s earnings from both
Flight from Forsyth
and
American Monster
to get
Redeemer’s operation up and running again. Which was, he figured,
as it should be, since a deal is, after all, a deal.

On Thanksgiving Day, the Hunger Palace was
filled with people enjoying the bounty that Charlie and Susan had
coerced and cajoled from Atlanta’s wealthiest percentiles. Under
Lucinda’s watchful (and sometimes baleful) gaze, Lil Bit and the
everyday people on the serving line dished out turkey and dressing,
sweet potatoes, beans, pumpkin pie, and other hearty fare. Susan
helped keep the line of hungry people moving, and Beck, Ben, and
Wyatt wiped down tables. Romy did what she did best, moving through
the crowd of homeless and poor, blessing everyone with her tattered
old wand. All the news anchors had already finished work for the
day, since Charlie had told them they could come in to volunteer at
dawn or they’d be turned away at the door.

After conducting a contentious interview
outside with a pack of reporters who wanted to rehash his sordid
past of drug-dealing, international espionage, and footnote faking
(Redeemer would have been so proud of him), the man in the shipping
department uniform returned to the serving line. He leaned against
the wall and watched with satisfaction as Lil Bit spooned a healthy
dollop of mashed potatoes on a black man’s plate.

Romy swung by, tapping him on his leg for the
third time that day, singing a song about her daddy: “There was a
man in my home town, and he was wondrous wise …”

There came a tapping on his left shoulder. He
turned to see Lucinda giving him her
storm’s a comin
’
look.

“We got some attitude back there in the
kitchen,” she said. “And you better get a new dish machine by
Christmas.”

“OK,” Charlie said. “I’ll take care of
it.”

He entered the kitchen, passing through the
double doors Trouble had once electrified against him. He heard
groaning coming from behind a mountain of pots and pans. The new
dishwasher, a one-armed man hired last week, was overwhelmed by his
work.

“How’s it going back there?” Charlie shouted
out.

The fellow—slight and ponytailed, wearing
faded and frayed jeans—looked up at him through thick glasses.
Without saying a word, he gestured helplessly with his arm at the
six-foot-tall stack of cooking utensils. “I’ll never be
finished.”

“True. But we can get these done.”

And so Brambleman rolled up his sleeves past
the scars, pushed the faucet to stop the drip, and started
scrubbing pans alongside the poor fellow, having learned what
Trouble could never admit: There is such a thing as Grace.

Acknowledgments

In more than one way,
Brambleman
is an
outgrowth of my work on
The Way It Was in the South: The Black
Experience in Georgia
, my father’s award-winning magnum opus.
Tragically, Donald L. Grant died without seeing his life’s great
work published. That task fell to me, his youngest son, due to the
urging and assistance of my mother Mildred B. “Jeanne” Grant. (As
it turned out, a history professor and a librarian make a pretty
good combination.) Working on Dad’s book was a life-changing
experience for me, and I certainly wouldn’t have written this book
if I hadn’t been involved with his. While both my parents are gone
now, I think of this as their book, too. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

I’m also grateful to the members of my
writers’ group who helped me tweak my work in progress: Leslie
Brown, Juanita McDowell, and peerless reader Ricky Jacobs. And I
want to give a special shout out to Anthony Mattero, who believed
in the book.

Writing the book turns out to be only half
the fun, so I owe a debt of gratitude to my far-flung production
team: proofreader/editor, Wendy Herlich, eBook formatter L.K.
Campbell, designer Jerry Dorris at AuthorSupport, and photographer
Matthew King (for taking such a cool cover picture). I can think of
no higher praise for Wendy than to tell you that she skillfully
handled extended dialogue between a Transylvanian and a man who’d
just been shot in the mouth.

As always, thanks to my wife Judy, who bears
with me. She’s read
Brambleman
a few times already, and she
may yet be surprised at the end result. My daughter, Laurel, was in
first grade when I started writing this book full-time. As a
college sophomore, she helped me finish it.

DeKalb County librarians at Embry Hills,
Decatur, Dunwoody, and Tucker branches have always been helpful on
this and other endeavors, including raising two children. And I
would be remiss if I didn’t express my appreciation to the Forsyth
County Sheriff’s Department for their hospitality and Forsyth
County librarians for their assistance while I was researching the
book.

Because the song had such a great influence
on
Brambleman
, I want to express my appreciation to Eric
Bazilian for writing
One of Us
, and to Joan Osborne for her
magnificent rendition of it.

Finally, a special note in memory of civil
rights pioneer Hosea Williams (1926-2000), Unbought and Unbossed.
H
1
is work lives on
through the charity he founded forty years ago, Hosea Feed the
Hungry and Homeless (HFTH). To learn more and see how you can help
or to make a donation, visit
http://www.hoseafeedthehungry.com
.

About the Author

Jonathan Grant is an award-winning writer and
editor (
The Way It Was in the South: The Black
Experience in Georgia
), and
Brambleman
is
his second novel. His previous novel,
Chain Gang
Elementary
(also published by Thornbriar Press), tells the
tragicomic story of a war between a reform-minded PTA president and
an authoritarian principal.
A Thousand Miles to
Freedom
, his screenplay based on the real-life adventures of
escaped slaves William and Ellen Craft, was recently optioned to
Hollywood.