Hide and Seek

Charles Brambury had lived on 621 East Oak Street for thirty-three years. Within the span of that time, he had fathered three marvelous children, changed his career once, and painted the kitchen three different shades of blue. Many joys, and much sadness, had transpired within those four walls; a half-lifetime (as he was still certain he would live another thirty years) of heartache and triumph and all of the mundane in-between that life is comprised of. He had worked primarily as a banker: a job that had offered security, a fairly comfortable lifestyle (along with an excellent retirement plan), and a sense of monotony that had positively bored him to tears. He was sure he would never forget the night he had been sitting at the kitchen table with Donna, utterly despondent in who he was and what he was doing. She had stopped him halfway through a midlife crises diatribe, grasped his hand tightly and told him, "It's okay to change direction, Charlie. The only thing stopping you, is you." Looking back, it seemed so obvious. But she had been good like that; always pointing out what was staring him right in the face when he was too blind to see it. 

So the trajectory of his life shifted. Gone was the nine to five and the forty-five-minute commute down the interstate every day; in its place was the freedom of the open road and the open-ended uncertainty of what the next route would bring. His daddy had been a trucker, gone for days and weeks at a time, and when he was young it had seemed like the most fantastic job in all the world. "I don't want you to be like me," his daddy had always said. "Always gone, never here with the family. You need to go to school, Charlie. Make good choices and create a better life for yourself, 'cause no one else is gonna do it for you." And he had been good like that; always putting others, especially his family, above himself. 

But life wasn't always as easy as Daddy had made it seem. Charles had learned to be wary and watch his back, especially in the heavily white university he had attended. He didn't want to stand out nor fit in as some frat boy's token black friend. He just wanted to make his family proud, even if it was to his own dissatisfaction. Because family came first, like Daddy had always said. Such notions had become more formalized in his mind when he met Donna, and knew deep down in his soul that she was the one he wanted to provide for. And he had done just that: he'd gotten a good job, just like Daddy had wanted. He bought a house in a fine neighborhood, the kind of place he and his brother used to steer clear from on the walk back from school n case the white ladies saw them and got scared. And he had raised his own children with the same values, to always put their family and wellbeing first, even in the face of adversity and strife. It wouldn't always be easy, of course. But the important thing was to try. 

So when Daddy had died unexpectedly (from a heart attack, they had said), it had changed something in him somehow. Like the air gone out of a balloon, Charles had lost his passion for the life he was living. A good life, yes - but not the one he'd originally wanted. The man he had loved and respected more than any other was gone, and the glossy lobby floor he walked across every morning didn't seem to shine so brightly anymore. He had always wanted to be like his father, and this just wasn't it. Donna had understood that, God bless her, right up until the day she passed (from an aneurysm, they had said). So the last ten years of his working life, he had instead shifted to the life Daddy had never wanted for him, and that was following in his footsteps. Driving that delivery truck from town to town, working long hours and spending many a dark, cold night sleeping behind the wheel of that vehicle in a parked lot somewhere. But he had provided for his family and had many an adventure too. Met all sorts of people, seen all kinds of sights and wonders like the stars on a cloudless night and the vastness of the American prairies. 

Yes...Charles Brambury was certain he had lived a good life. One that he hadn't wanted anything more from, up until the night of October 18th, three years back. That's when the police had come (just to ask some questions, they had said). A body had been found on the I-27 corridor, along the very same route he had driven about one month prior. Charles was certain he would never forget the look on Donna's face when it had been made clear that he was a suspect, when the officer had made an offhand comment about how truckers certainly do know their way around backroads - how they meet all sorts of people, prostitutes included. "It can get lonely on the road," the officer had stated, staring right in his eyes as if there was something there he was trying to find. "That's all we're saying." But whatever they had sought that night they just didn't get, and even as he had watched the patrol car pull out into the darkness he couldn't help but think I didn't do anything. This has got to be the end of it. 

It was what he'd been thinking up until February 9th, the following year, when they'd shown up again - this time to arrest him. 

Donna had been devastated, crying, as they cuffed his wrists behind his back and wouldn’t even let her say goodbye. “He didn’t do anything!” she had cried, her pain-stricken horror falling on deaf, deaf ears. His own muted shock had failed to subside as they’d hauled him curbside, to the blinding flash and riotous chaos of the damned media now swarming around his house. At the time, it hadn’t made any sense at all – at least, not until he learned who the victim was.

Her name was Sarah Leigh Harper and she was the famed child of Alexander Harper, a man who had made his fortune in the stock market. The poor girl had been raised being denied nothing, drugs included, and it had paved the way for a spiral into a life on the streets when her father finally cut her off. Those details, of course, were imparted to Charles later thanks to his lawyer. He was certain he would never forget the look on Donna’s face when she had come to visit him, her face twisted in despair, as she tapped the newspaper she was holding ferociously. “They make you out to be a monster,” she had spit, “picking up women off the side of the road to maim and torture while this girl was nothing but a saint, an innocent.” The media always had that power, he had told her. The power to sway the court of public opinion long before any real jury of his peers would come to know the sordid details.

The story had blown up, of course. His name and his face had overrun the headlines as the ruthless killer who had mindlessly slaughtered the hitchhiking daughter of the country’s top stock broker. “They’ve got nothing on you, Charlie,” his lawyer had assured him. “Nothing but circumstantial evidence.” Like the timing, they had said – that she had disappeared on the night of September 16^th in a town called Evans Point, the very same town he had ended his route on. And the method of murder, they said – blunt force trauma to the head, likely caused by being thrown outside of a moving vehicle. Nonsense, utter nonsense, he’d been assured. But then again he was a black man, accused of murdering a white girl, and he wasn’t blind nor stupid when it came to how that fable usually ended.

“You ready?” his lawyer was asking him now. The day was bright and sunny and warm, and it remined him for some reason of the day he had graduated college. Something about the time of year, perhaps, or maybe it was the sight of the glistening dew that was spotting the manicured grass of the courtroom’s front lawn.

“I’m ready,” he nodded, though his stomach was in knots and then he suddenly found himself wishing that Donna was here. That he could see her beautiful face upon walking into that courtroom, and know that no matter what fate awaited him within the next thirty minutes, she would be there. She’d always be there. He muttered a silent prayer and hoped she was looking down on today’s proceedings. At least in some small way, he could still hold her within his heart.

Charles Brambury wasn’t entirely sure what he should be feeling as he was led down the same carpeted path to his place at the defendant’s table. It had taken the jury three days to reach their verdict, and both sides had decided that that was to their favor. All he knew was that the people who had decided his fate today had to be pulled from other counties because the story had skyrocketed to such insane renown. But he had never thought that mattered, really, because there wasn’t a single person in this county or the one over who didn’t know exactly who he was and what he was being accused of.

“All rise,” came the standard announcement he had heard countless times over in the course of this ongoing hell. He couldn’t help but think of his Daddy as he watched the judge make his way behind the bench. Make good choices and create a better life for yourself, 'cause no one else is gonna do it for you. He wished he had listened now. Daddy had been right all along.

It's okay to change direction, Charlie. Donna’s sweet voice now. He could still hear those words, and wondered dimly in the back of his mind how differently this might have all panned out had she never said them. He’d been a good man, a good father. Never hurt a soul. And yet, the whole of his life that he had so cherished and held dear, in that sweet little house on 621 Oak Street, had still led him here, to this moment. To this courtroom.

The judge inquired of the jury if they had reached a verdict, and they replied in the affirmative.

They make you out to be a monster.

Charles closed his eyes, heart heavy. He wished it were possible to go home. To fill his head and his heart with some new memories, maybe ones that didn’t hold such finality to them. But just like he could still hold sweet Donna near, he chose to do the same with the life he had created – the one he had made for himself, and alongside her. This perhaps didn’t need to be the end. Maybe he could paint the kitchen again, a sweet summer yellow this time. Something that reminded him of hope, and better times, and the world he used to live in.

The world he thought he had known…

“We the jury, in the case of the state of Georgia versus Charles Brambury, do find the defendant…”