Brambleman Read online

  The hills that ringed the gallows formed a natural amphitheater, and by mid-morning, 8,000 people had gathered. They waited eagerly and burst into loud cheers and Rebel yells when Dent and Oscar were marched from the courthouse and led up the steps. Sheriff Wright tied blindfolds on both of them, then asked if they had any last words. Rankin family members were present to hear Dent confess his crime and Oscar protest his innocence. The nooses were slipped around their necks and tightened. Wright stepped back. Two deputies pulled levers simultaneously and the condemned men’s necks snapped as they plummeted through the traps at 11:05 a.m. It was the county’s first legal execution in fifty years. Forsyth residents went home happy, since a public hanging was the next best thing to a lynching. The cadavers of Dent and Oscar were sold to a medical school.

  Many people thought the hangings brought this sordid chapter of local history to a close. But it wasn’t over yet. The day after the execution, prosecution witness Jane Oscar was shot in the head in Atlanta’s West End, reportedly by a white man. A few days later, a white Forsyth landowner who had spoken out against the anti-black violence was ambushed while driving a wagon back from Gainesville and beaten to death. Neither killing was solved. By the time the 1912 harvest was over, virtually all blacks had fled Forsyth County. Media coverage devolved into a spitting contest between Atlanta and Forsyth County; each community accused the other of being a pack of lawless racists. Carswell pointed out that “no innocent Negro was killed in Forsyth County,” whereas in Atlanta’s riots of 1906, white mobs had murdered scores of blacks who simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  By 1913, the true nature and scope of Forsyth’s tragedy had become brutally clear. White women, some of them from the finest families, were forced to do their own cooking and cleaning.

  What happened did not go completely unnoticed at the state Capitol. Brown’s successor, John Slaton, specifically addressed the horrors of Forsyth and other counties in his 1913 address to the General Assembly. However, there would be no legal recourse for those who fled the violence and intimidation.

  Talton argued that what happened in Forsyth County was a microcosm of and precursor to the Great Migration. Many Southern blacks first moved from the country to towns, then later to the North. They were pulled toward cities like New York and Chicago by the lure of better jobs and a better life and pushed away from the South by enforced poverty and rampant persecution. Eventually, Northern blacks would become an important constituency of the urban politicians who voted to pass civil rights legislation. Talton called this “poetic justice, though insufficient.”

  A handful of blacks stayed on in Forsyth, but their numbers eventually dwindled to zero. By 1920, only thirty African-Americans lived there; by 1940, only two—although Talton had marked through this number with a pen in the manuscript. By 1980, they had officially disappeared from the county.

  Meanwhile, Atlanta grew, and 38,000-acre Lake Lanier was impounded on the Chattahoochee River in the 1950s, submerging much of Forsyth County. Over the succeeding decades, local land prices rose as more and more people bought homes along its shores. Civilization’s encroachment brought sporadic acts of violence, since succeeding generations of Forsyth County whites remained vigilant. Black truck drivers returned to Atlanta depots reporting they’d been fired upon while trying to make deliveries in Cumming. Unsuspecting black families were chased away from Forsyth County’s beaches on Lake Lanier when they came to picnic or swim. In 1980, an urban Boy Scout troop packed up its pup tents and rushed back to Atlanta at midnight after the young campers at Lake Lanier were threatened by men wearing white hoods.

  At the time, the brother of one of these scouts was a student of Dr. Talton’s at Georgia State. His unsettling tale about that nightmarish camping trip piqued the professor’s interest. Having researched the case of Leo Frank, Talton recalled Governor Slaton’s remarks and started working on an article about Forsyth County’s violent past.

  It turned into something more. Talton tracked down children of black victims and interviewed them. Unfortunately, no transcripts of the 1912 trial existed, only the damnably inaccurate and incendiary newspaper coverage. While only one county history had been published, Talton found a few unpublished memoirs and letters written by black farmers who had fled. Most old-time locals were tight-lipped, but Talton located two unapologetic white octogenarians willing to talk.

  Talton found something especially intriguing. County records of black land holdings had been destroyed in Forsyth County’s 1973 courthouse fire, which had been set by arsonists. However, a radical attorney hoping to file a lawsuit on behalf of a black landowner’s daughter had made photostats of these records in 1972. Talton tracked down the man, whose client had died. The lawyer gave Talton the papers in hopes that the good professor could use them to open the issue of reparations for all those who had been dispossessed.

  Talton took six years to cobble together his account—along with the many other things he knew—and write a huge, unwieldy manuscript. In June 1986, he finished it and sent copies to academic publishers, then sat back and collected rejection letters. His manuscript was, according to one editor, “comprehensive to the point of being burdensome.” To another, it was “incomprehensible.”

  Then the tide of history seemed to shift Talton’s way. (And this part Charlie was already familiar with, having lived through it.) In December 1986, Dan Greene, a martial arts instructor in Gainesville, learned of Forsyth County’s sordid past. He contacted civil rights firebrand Redeemer Wilson, who never backed down from a fight. “Redeemer could scare the sheet off a Klansman,” a colleague once boasted. Greene met with Wilson to plan a “Brotherhood Anti-Intimidation March” in honor of Georgia’s newly enacted Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. Soon after that, Talton got a call. “Get you some walking shoes and march up to Forsyth with me,” Redeemer told his old colleague from the civil rights movement. Talton went.

  And after he suffered that fatal conk on the head, his work became an orphan, only to be adopted nearly two decades later by a man who thought Talton’s baby was, well, ugly.

  Charlie knew it was necessary to chronicle America’s racism at its ugliest and most absolute. And it was impossible to ignore the grim, supernatural force shoving him forward. After all, this was Old Testament stuff, to ignore at his peril. People had died, boils had festered, a building had burned, an innocent television had fried, and a tattooed girlfriend had fled into the night. Even the old lady had been smoked, and this was her idea. Ink had turned to blood on his contract and Charlie’s life was forfeit upon failure. At this point, it was impossible not to take it seriously.

  Still, he didn’t know how to turn Talton’s doorstop into a real live book. He felt overwhelmed by the monumental … shittiness of the writing. Editors who rejected Flight from Forsyth had been too kind. Charlie lost track of the times he’d fallen asleep reading the damned thing. There was no coffee strong enough to keep him awake through Chapter Eight, “The Agrarian Movement in Forsyth County and Environs.” Talton’s environs included the England of seventeenth-century agriculturalist Jethro Tull—with a footnote discussing the rock band of the same name.

  The book began with the Blue Ridge Mountains breaking away from Georgia’s Piedmont, and this geologic pace continued throughout. Chapter Forty-Eight was titled “Aftermath”; Chapter Forty-Nine, “After the Aftermath”; then came the Epilogue and Afterword. Charlie suspected Talton had been one of those professors who kept right on lecturing past the bell, not caring whether his students missed their next class.

  How bad was it? Twenty chapters passed before Martha Jean was assaulted. And there was a chapter on Leo Frank, who, while noteworthy, didn’t belong in the book, since he never set foot in Forsyth County and died in 1915. Furthermore, Talton’s journal entries indicated he didn’t trust his sources. He wrote about “a plethora of inaccuracies and contradictions” in contemporary newspaper accounts and the many lies people swore to be the truth. Talton’s narrati
ve had several loose ends, along with stuff that just didn’t make sense. Flight from Forsyth was overlong, incomplete, boring, sometimes nonsensical, and perhaps wildly inaccurate. In technical terms, a megaturd. No wonder God had threatened to kill Charlie if he gave up, since the unlucky editor would have seriously considered fleeing the project if he only had to give up an eye or an ear.

  But there was a good story buried in that manuscript, running like a vein of gold through solid rock, and he had to figure out a way to mine it.

  Chapter Six

  Charlie rummaged through Talton’s file cabinets, hoping to find a grand and unifying piece to the puzzle, something that would help him assign a meaning to the madness—historical and supernatural—he was now mixed up in. Besides notes, drafts, and articles, he found a nasty letter from a Forsyth County man, more rejection slips, Talton’s dissertation, several audio cassettes, and a large manila envelope labeled “John Riggins, Forsyth County 1930s” dated January 23, 1987—the day before Talton died. Charlie had noticed Riggins’s name handwritten in red on the manuscript’s last page. The 1930s? Charlie wasn’t going there, not when he already had to cut the manuscript by more than half. He set the sealed envelope atop the file cabinet and promptly forgot about it.

  Charlie pulled the contract from the wire in-basket and glanced over it again. It smelled funky-bad and—this was truly weird—his signature was wet. He shuddered in horror. The damned thing was bleeding! He borrowed an old pot from the kitchen and tossed the contract in it, then clamped on the lid. He made a mental note: Buy resealable container and have contract tested for DNA.

  * * *

  At dawn, Charlie awoke consumed with the brilliant idea that he should be promoted from editor to coauthor. After all, it would take a mighty struggle on his part to save the book from oblivion. Besides, due to its grotesque and seemingly supernatural flaw, the stinking contract, with its bloody clause, was rapidly approaching illegibility. He figured this might work to his advantage, since the original terms were dissolving, and he who remembers best …

  He proposed this change to Kathleen over morning coffee. She was not impressed. “No way,” she said. “You’re not coming in and taking Thurwood’s place.” She gave him a look that caused him to back off quickly, just in case she still had some mojo left.

  “OK, OK. I was merely—”

  “Thurwood put ten thousand hours into the book. All you’ve done is cash a check.”

  “Sorry I brought it up.”

  Chastened, Charlie retreated to the study and got to work. Due to a recent fortuitous development, certain matters were more time-sensitive than others. Hank Sherrill had told a reporter named Bill Crenshaw at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Talton’s book, and Crenshaw had called Charlie to set up an interview. Charlie wanted to contact Forsyth County sources for information before they read about him in the lyin’ Atlanta newspaper, labeled him a meddlesome outsider, and refused to help, as so many had done with Talton. After all, folks up there were still sensitive about having the county’s ultraviolent history dredged up. Charlie had seen this aversion to the past in 1987 with his in-laws, and he suspected that older butt cheeks would tighten all over Forsyth when word got out that a Yankee named Sherman was coming to town to finish the Commie professor’s book.

  Hoping to make some headway, Charlie called Cecil Montgomery, longtime chairman of the Forsyth County Heritage Foundation. Once, when he was bored to tears up at Varmintville, Charlie had read the man’s “View from Mount Montgomery” column in the Forsyth County Sentinel. He remembered a picture of a dapper fellow with curly hair and a bow tie. Montgomery was more a genealogist than a historian, but Charlie hoped the man could put him in touch with someone whose ancestors had letters or first-hand accounts of events in 1912. It was worth a try.

  Montgomery answered the phone pleasantly, but when Charlie told him what he was doing, the man’s tone turned frosty: “I met Talton. Never cared for the man. I rather hoped his book died with him.”

  “Ah, c’mon, that’s harsh,” Charlie said, trying to sound jovial. “It doesn’t deserve to die. Besides, it could be a good thing for the county.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  Desperate to salvage the conversation, Charlie blurted out, “I’ve got Forsyth connections, you know. I married Susan Cutchins. State Representative Cutchins is my uncle.”

  “Why would someone who’s kin to the Cutchinses have anything to do with a history book?”

  Ignoring this slap at his in-law’s lack of intellectual curiosity, Charlie pressed on. When he asked Montgomery about the correspondence of a man named Horton Anderson, the man’s tone dropped from frosty to one best measured on the Kelvin scale.

  “Those are private records, and no one will open them up to you,” Montgomery told him.

  Before Charlie could ask if they could have a cup of coffee and talk about county history in general, Montgomery cut him off: “I’m sorry. I won’t be able to help you on this. It’s just not something I care to do. However, I’d be happy to look over what you’ve got.”

  I’ll bet you would, you plagiarizing old fool. “Great. Thanks for the offer. I’ll be sure to send you a copy of the book when it’s published.” Charlie hung up and muttered, “If you pay full price, bitch.”

  Twenty minutes later, his cellphone trilled. Someone calling from a number he didn’t recognize. “Hello,” he said.

  “Charlie. How ya been? That’s good, that’s good.”

  Charlie hadn’t said how he was doing, but he knew the caller didn’t care. It was State Rep. Stanley Cutchins, a.k.a. Uncle Stanley. The old Reagan Republican barely tried to get along with Charlie, and for the record, hated reporters. He’d grunted in disgust when he first met Charlie back in 1986 and learned his niece’s bridegroom worked for a newspaper that had won a Pulitzer for exposing pork-barrel spending—$3 million of it in Cutchins’s district.

  “Hey, Uncle Stanley. That didn’t take long. How’s the view from Mount Montgomery?”

  “I ain’t mounted Montgomery, but yer welcome to try.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t like me. Not one little bit.”

  “That’s what I hear. I guess you’re wondering why I called.”

  “Not really.”

  “Cecil called me, sayin’ you’re stirrin’ up trouble, mixin’ the family into it.”

  Time for a brush-off, since Uncle Stanley’s twang hurt his ears. Speaking quickly, Charlie said, “Oops, I left something on the stove. Gotta go. Say hey to Aunt Liz.”

  “Wait a minute. What you got? What years you coverin’ anyway?”

  “It’s Forsyth County. I think you can figure it out.”

  “Don’t start a war you can’t finish.” Stanley’s tone was ominous, even threatening.

  “War’s over.”

  “That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell ya. What’s done is done. Don’t go diggin’ up what’s laid to rest.”

  “We’ll talk. Come see us,” Charlie said, though he certainly didn’t mean it, just like Uncle Stanley never did when he invited Charlie to his house on the lake.

  * * *

  Montgomery not only called Uncle Stanley but also apparently warned everyone in the county who might have assisted Charlie. Over the next two days, the increasingly frustrated writer was told, “Sorry, can’t help you”; “It’s just not something I care to do”; and “Those are private records, and I’d rather not open them up.” Others simply hung up. After a dozen calls, Charlie quit his solicitations. No sense being a damn fool about it.

  Still, if Uncle Stanley and the other white folks up there didn’t like what he was up to, then it must be worth doing. Actually, their opposition made Charlie’s mission seem even more intriguing and important, rejuvenating him and giving him heart just when his will was flagging. That’s just the way he was—at heart a contrary sort, who thought that finishing a dead professor’s book about a county that didn’t want the publicity seemed like a right contrary thing to do. Besides, he’d
die if he didn’t do it. There was always that.

  * * *

  Beck and Ben fought all the way back to Thornbriar from the supermarket. Charlie, busy herding them into separate time-outs, didn’t notice Susan standing in the darkened front hall, hands on hips, glaring at him with eyes afire. He bumped into her. “Oh, excuse me. Bought groceries. Gotta get them out of the van.”

  She followed him outside. “You didn’t tell me the thing was about Forsyth.”

  “Thing? You didn’t ask.”

  “Uncle Stanley called Mom all riled up because you’re trying to finish some dead professor’s book about what happened way back when. I guess they’re talking about 1910.”

  “1912. See, you’re from there and you got the year wrong.”

  “Anyway, they both called me. They want me to look at it, see what it says.” Her expression suggested that she knew it was an unreasonable request but he should grant it, anyway. He’d always liked that look. Feisty as hell. The sex was very energetic when it started with that look, but this time she wasn’t being the least bit friendly.

  “It’s a hefty piece of work, so it says a lot. There’s the murder.”

  “It was a rape and murder.” As a native Forsyth Countian, she was duty-bound to point that out.