Brambleman Read Online Free PDF

supposed to
tell anyone about him, by the way.”
    Even if Charlie wanted to talk about Trouble,
what could he say about a thunderstruck stranger who suddenly
appeared during his life’s lowest moment and offered him salvation
in the form of a scam? No, he wouldn’t have any problem keeping his
mouth shut. And while he didn’t understand what was happening, he
realized that, no matter how weird it seemed, he was getting a
second chance of some sort. So, there it was: stay here, or walk
back into the night.
    Charlie listened to the rain, which had just
started falling harder. “All right. Show me the book.”
    She led him into the study and pointed to the
massive manuscript on the fine old desk—three times the size of any
of the novels Charlie had written. “Sit down.”
    Charlie took a seat. “Ma’am?”
    “Yes, dear?”
    “Are you sure you’re not afraid of me?”
    “Oh, quite sure. You’re the one. I know that
now.” She smiled. “And you fit just right at the desk.”
    While Charlie looked through a pile of
rejection letters, she talked about her husband. “Thurwood was
murdered. They never caught the racist who hit him on the head with
that … thing he threw. That’s what caused the blood clot that
killed him. My dear husband would still be alive today … ” She
trailed off, tears welling in her pale blue eyes. She jabbed the
air with her finger. “It was a beer bottle. I won’t forget
that.”
    She pointed at the wall, but Charlie didn’t
look up, absorbed as he was in the task of figuring out what kind
of work the professor had written. Kathleen went to the kitchen to
fix coffee. After reading two pages of Talton’s dry-as-dust
introduction, Charlie glanced up and saw the newspaper clipping
Kathleen had pointed at. He positioned the lamp to spotlight the
yellowed paper taped to the wall. It was dated Sunday, January 18,
1987. The photo showed a crowd of white rowdies taunting civil
rights marchers. It was an ugly-looking bunch: the great-great
grandsons of Confederate deserters, their faces grim under baseball
caps like the one Trouble had pitched into the flames. One man wore
a Confederate soldier’s slouch hat. A bareheaded boy in the
foreground had a serene, inbred look. Beside him, poised like a
baseball pitcher on his follow-through, was a huge, round-faced
youth who glared at the camera. His face was encircled by ink, with
the hand-lettered caption: “J’ACCUSE!”
    Charlie groaned in disgust and disbelief. He
knew the guy. Oh, he didn’t just know him. The asshole was family—a
varmint, Susan’s cousin, Rhett “Momo” Hastings, Jr. In the
foreground, two steps away from a ducking Redeemer, stood Talton,
raising his hand to his head. Charlie cursed Momo (who had once
nearly killed him, too). “You bastard, I can’t believe you followed
me here.”
    But there they were. Charlie briefly
considered telling Kathleen that he knew the guy who threw the
thing, then decided against it. After all, what could he say? There
was nothing anyone could do now. Besides, cause and effect didn’t
jibe. An old man keeled over a week after he was conked on the
head. That wasn’t exactly murder in his book. Anyway, that was
twenty years ago. Momo had done time for his misdeeds back in 1987.
Just not for this one.
    And so, with nothing else to do and nowhere
to go, Charlie settled in with the cup of coffee Kathleen had fixed
for him and began reading Talton’s work. He was vaguely familiar
with the events of 1912 and knew that, nearly a century later,
locals were still tight-lipped about them. He certainly remembered
the two 1987 marches, which had been major media events. During the
second one, Charlie and Susan had opened up their home as a refugee
camp for Susan’s Forsyth County kin, who fled the invading civil
rights protesters. With characteristic gall, Charlie had pointed
out to his mother-in-law Evangeline that, unlike black
sharecroppers in 1912, she could return to Forsyth any time