Nightman: A Novel

"Call me the night man.  That’s what I am mostly.  Course, I work some in the daytime, too, cleaning houses for my special customers—nice folks who live in a pretty part of town.  But mainly I work at night…. 
“I’ve got keys to more offices and homes in this town than I can count.  People come to work in the morning and find their offices all shiny—windows cleaned, trash cans emptied, … rugs vacuumed, and, oh yes, the occasional wrapper from a hurriedly opened condom scooped up neatly from underneath a desk.   Like magic.  I guess it makes people feel like no matter what they do, there’s always somebody to make things right by morning."

Such is the life of janitor Braxton Bragg, black man in the capital of the Confederacy, and great grandson of a white Confederate general.  Despite the apparent dullness of his job, what he faces behind locked doors ranges from the embarrassing to the life-threatening.  Braxton’s dark, sometimes humorous commentary exposes the seamy underbelly of this Southern city—as well as the secret sins of the white elite—and takes us through ten days and nights of mystery, danger and surprise. 

“…You never know what you’re gonna find….”

About the Authors:

James Pendleton is an emeritus member of the creative writing faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University.  His plays have been produced across the U.S. and in Europe, and his last book was Missing Pieces.  Jerome Johnson operates Johnson’s Janitorial Service and works in and around Richmond, Virginia, where he is also sexton of Emmanuel Episcopal Church.