A Swollen Red Sun

by Matthew McBride

  “No, I reckon you can’t trust nobody who smokes that shit. But I don’t smoke that shit. And right now, you gotta trust me cuz I’m all you’ve got.”

  Jackson nodded.

  “How they get this shit inside the prison? They got a guard?”

  Jackson nodded.

  “And who might that be?”

  “Listen, man, I ain’t no rat.”

  “No, Jackson, you ain’t—and for that I do respect you. Tell ya what: you stay off that pipe, and I may even letchya mow my lawn.”

  Jackson showed Banks a dirty grin and thought for a minute. “It’s this guard, man, Ray Hall. He’s the brother to Jerry Dean’s cousin’s wife.”

  “Jerry Dean’s … cousin’s … wife?”

  “Yes, sir, that’d be Darlene. She’s been writin’ Wade Brandt letters. Least that’s what I hear.”

  “She’s writin’ Wade Brandt letters?”

  “That’s what Jerry Dean says. And if you’re curious as to how that came ta be, I can tell ya right now. Save you the trouble of wonderin’.”

  “Save me the trouble, then.”

  “It was her brother, the guard.”

  “Was, huh.”

  “Yeah, Ray. He set the whole thing up, introduced ’em. And he’s a strange one, too; Jerry Dean’ll tell ya. Says he went ta Ray’s place one morning ’n’ when he stepped on the front porch he saw Big Ray walk through the kitchen in a dress. So Jerry Dean knocks on the door. Few minutes later, Ray opens it. Says he’s been sleepin’, but Jerry Dean said he forgot to wipe the rouge off his cheeks.”

  Banks scratched his chin and shook his head and reached for his can of chew.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you boys?”

  Jackson didn’t know. “Jerry Dean says Ray must’ve gotten too comfortable puttin’ things in his anus. Somehow that must’ve opened up a whole new side to ’im.”

  Banks shook his head, thrown off balance by the news. “Where can I find this sick bastard?”

  “Hell if I know,” Jackson said. “But Ronnie and Darlene live out at Helmig Ferry. Sometimes he goes out there.”

  Banks nodded. “Uh-huh, Helmig Ferry. And why don’t that surprise me?”

  “Listen, man, all I know’s Wade’s gettin’ outta prison this week. Hell, it might be tomorrow. Hell, man, he may already be out. But all I know’s that’s got everybody worked up.”

  “Who’s everybody?”

  “Hell, man, I dunno. It’s got your boss worked up, ’n’ that’s got Jerry Dean worked up.”

  “What’s Wade gettin’ outta prison have to do with anything?”

  Jackson shrugged. “Mister, I don’t know. It’s the sheriff. I think he’s got big plans. Wants to run for governor or somethin’. Jerry Dean says he wants ta be done with this business once ’n’ for all ’n’ he’s tyin’ up loose ends.”

  “Jerry Dean told you this?”

  “He told me some, cuz he talks when he’s wired, but some conclusions I drawed on my own.”

  “It’s them conclusions you drew on your own that I’m worried about.”

  Jackson almost looked offended, but kept going. “Listen, man, I think maybe Wade’s had enough. He just wants outta the life, same as me. Least that’s what I gather.”

  “What’s Jerry Dean think of him wantin’ to go straight?”

  “I don’t think he gives a shit, man. He just does what the sheriff tells him—but the sheriff, he don’t like it none. You ask me, I think they might kill ’im.”

  Banks closed his eyes. “Sweet Jesus. All of this killin’ over crank.”

  “They say they cain’t trust ’im.”

  “ ’Course not. He knows too much. Now he’s a liability.”

  Jackson shrugged and looked out the window. “Sounds like we’s all liabilities.”

  Banks had managed to extract more information from Jackson than he’d expected. “You done good, convict.”

  Jackson ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth and caressed his top gum.

  “Am I free to go now, man? Cuz, listen, I know what happened to your guy up there ’n’ I’m real sorry ’bout that. I just want outta this mess. I’m done with crank. Done with everything, except alcohol, cuz that ain’t outlawed yet. But that’s it. I’m just gonna drink from now on—and I won’t drive, neither. I just wanna sit at home and drink and work on lawnmowers, man. I know my way around them small engines and shit.”

  Banks told him to go. Keep his nose clean. “I don’t have to tell you not to talk about this.”

  “No, sir, you do not. Far as Jackson Brandt’s concerned, none of this ever happened.”

  “And you best be done with crank. Not many tweakers get a second chance.”

  “Oh, I am done, mister. That’s a promise. I won’t never do crank again.”

  He left his meeting with Banks and drove six miles to a gravel road and parked his mama’s van on the shoulder and removed the key. C & K Towing sat to his right. Through a half-mile of dense woods, more or less, though Jackson Brandt had never been a good judge of distance.

  He walked through a ditch and stepped over sagging strands of rusted barbed wire and made his way through the woods. The trees were naked and bare limbed and offered modest cover. So he hid behind cedars, of which there were many, strewn throughout the property in small abundant patches. Humming above him was a three-phase power line, loved by the birds that picked berries from cedars and shat them and produced new cedars, so that they had accumulated throughout the area and, over the years, produced a tapestry of green that never had a leaf to shed.

  They provided good cover on a fall afternoon. Jackson took his time and walked leisurely, until he found the beginning of an ambitious junk pile. Small things did their best to trip him. Old fenders and hoods and axles. Motors and transmissions. There were cars that were wrecked beside cars that weren’t.

  Jackson squatted in leaves. He was close to the shop, and he was cautious. Couldn’t hear anything or anyone. No voices or music, no sound of air tools. He did his best to watch for people, though his focus was the cooler. His mission: find the contents of the shed. That crank was his pot of gold, waiting at the end of a piss-yellow rainbow.

  There was a Toyota pickup with a window AC unit in the bed that Jackson thought he knew. It looked like the one from Fish’s shed. He squinted and looked as close as he could, but from that distance it was pointless.

  When he saw a Snap-on toolbox with a dent in the lid, he knew that he was close. His heart rate began to soar. Palms slick with sweat. Casually—and with great attention being paid to the fact that whoever worked at C & K was probably on a lunch break that was soon to end—he took a few quiet steps across slick stones lacquered with years of oil stain and crouched beside a stump.

  He lay on his belly and crawled, in broad daylight, on an imperative mission to find the cooler. He fought off thoughts of Banks pulling up and focused on the crank.

  And then he saw it, on its side. By an air compressor that didn’t work.

  Jackson crawled faster, and less cautiously, until he was hunched and fast walking. Stooped over. Head glancing from his left side to his right side. And then he was there, standing beside it. Jubilant with emotion but unconvinced it was true. Afraid when he opened the cooler, the crank would be gone.

  He squatted to the gravel and stood the cooler up and removed the lid. Hands trembling. And then it was there, in front of him, all the crank he could dream of.

  His face lit up with wonder.

  Jackson stood and grabbed the cooler and ran before he could stop himself from it. It felt good to have this. The crank was a blessing. He would sell it and buy something nice for his mom.

  Buy a place for himself and Raylene. Because the more he thought about that cooler, the more he thought about the life he could give her now that he had it.

  He stumbled from the woods, sure that Banks was waiting, that all of this had been an elaborate ruse.

  But it wasn’t, and Banks was not there wai
ting for him with handcuffs.

  Jackson climbed in his mama’s van and set the cooler in the passenger seat and started the engine and put the shifter in gear and pulled on to the road.

  Jerry Dean woke up in a slick gleam of sweat. He’d dreamed about his mama. They bounced around when he was young. He’d grown up in some rough places and he never knew his daddy, but his mama said he’d been a vicious man.

  She was raped when she was fourteen, and Jerry Dean was the result. She let him know that early on and reminded him often. His mama was a drunk. She’d come home from the bar with cum stains on her shirt and make Jerry Dean rub her feet.

  Some nights, in the haze of drunken moments, she’d come onto him. And most nights, he’d resisted. But then she disappeared. Ran off with a truck driver named Papa Bear, and the last time Jerry Dean saw her, he was young.

  But in his dream, they’d been a family—at a long table—and his daddy was a handsome man, well tailored. His mama was slim and elegant and beautiful.

  It was a Norman Rockwell painting had they not been in a mobile home.

  And then Jerry Dean woke up with a hunting knife in his gut. He turned and brought himself slowly to a crouch and looked out the window. The sun was bright. He reached for the Eagle and stood painfully and hoped nothing fell out of his stomach.

  He reloaded his gun and opened the back door and walked down the steps. Stood in the mud. It was cold. Wind bitter and sharp. He looked for dogs and saw Mama’s legs sticking out from beside the house.

  He walked to the shed with the gun held in front of him. He felt alive in the cold, like there was a strong chance he might survive. Olen’s Dodge was in the shed, and Jerry Dean prayed there was a key.

  Then he saw the truck. Junior had removed the doors and the hood.

  Jerry Dean was relieved to find a key, but that simple asshole had removed the seats. He would be forced to drive the truck on a five-gallon bucket, and the only one he found held remnants of the pig he’d slaughtered just the other day.

  He returned to the truck and dumped out the pig guts and set the bucket on the bare metal floor. Lifted the shed door. Thought about the pound of crank in the Reverend’s lab, but knew he could always come back.

  But first, there was that knife in his midsection. And before that, there was the ford he would have to cross on a five-gallon bucket if he wanted to make the hospital.

  He already knew what he would say. There’d been a pumpkin-carving accident at his cousin’s place. They would have no reason to doubt him. Long as he didn’t pull up in a stolen truck without doors or a hood.

  Jerry Dean climbed into the truck and lowered himself carefully to the bucket. The top was small and his ass hung over the sides. When he started the truck, the shed filled with diesel smoke and he revved the engine and relaxed. Breathed a sigh of relief and pulled out of the shed and cut deep tracks in the mud.

  The storm would be great for his plants. One good soaking before he picked them.

  Good Lord, it would be a glorious crop.

  When he turned right, he bounced through a deep hole that tested the truck’s suspension and the bucket slid out from under him and he fell on the floor. He could not see to drive. He hit the key and killed the engine.

  The truck bucked as it came to an abrupt halt, and Jerry Dean stood and reached for the bucket. He set the bucket down and planted himself on it and pulled the seat belt tight across his chest. As he turned the key, a Rottweiler of considerable size ran to the passenger side and jumped in. Lips pulled back, teeth gnarling.

  Jerry Dean, seat-belted and trapped, reached for his gun as the dog attacked. He fought him with his left arm and unholstered the Eagle with his right. Shot the Rott in the stomach. Blood sprayed the inside of the windshield, and the dog fell dead on the floor.

  Jerry Dean started the truck and pulled away. More dogs ran toward him.

  “Come on, you motherfuckers.”

  He shot at a dog but missed. Blood ran down his arm in every direction. He aimed and shot again, and the mutt went down. To his right, another dog ran alongside the truck and tried to jump in. Jerry Dean slowed, and when the dog jumped up, he killed it.

  He shifted into second and the ground was slick and the truck slid. Jerry Dean could drive no faster. With every bump, the knife moved, and when the knife moved, it cut a little deeper.

  Beside him, a brindle pit ran up to his door. He aimed and shot, and the pit fell to the ground and howled and became food for the other dogs. Jerry Dean could not believe all the dogs he’d killed. His ears rang. He hoped he hadn’t damaged his hearing.

  He got to the bottom of Goat Hill, and the girl lay dead in the mud. He looked down at the knife and cussed her. He should have waited in the basement and shot them all.

  Jerry Dean straddled her body with the tires. The rush of water was strong, and it was deeper than it was the last time he’d crossed. The hood would have gone under if there had been one. The inside would fill with water and pass through the cab. He gripped the wheel.

  Why’d that dumb son of a bitch take the doors off?

  He pulled the belt tight and gritted his teeth. Looked down at the knife and the dead dog. Spat. The pain he felt was immeasurable. He could not believe he was still alive.

  Take a lot more than a knife wound to stop Jerry Dean.

  With great reluctance, he engaged the four-wheel drive and pulled into the ford. The sound of the water was thunderous. He eased the truck into second gear and pushed the pedal down. Water slammed him from the side and blew the bucket out from under him. He jammed his feet into the floor and pushed his back against the cab. The Rottweiler disappeared through the open door, and he saw the gutbucket bobbing downstream.

  The force of the wave was great, and the water from the ford was freezing. Jerry Dean squeezed the wheel with all he had. The might of the water pressed against the bone handle, and he howled in maddening pain. He stomped the pedal and the fenders went under and the engine was submerged in creek water—but the Dodge pulled hard and the tailpipe pushed a gush of black smoke under the waves.

  The truck bucked and jumped and the ass end slid off the ramp, but the weight of the Cummins held the front end down. Both wheels burrowed deep into gravel and pulled the truck from the ford.

  Jerry Dean saw a rutted field of hacked cornstalks and felt his life seeping from the wound. He could feel nothing below his chest. When the darkness came, he relaxed his grip on the wheel and slumped over, but the seat belt held him up and the truck ran for a hundred feet before it met the cornfield and lurched to a stop and the engine died.

  Kent Pace was a pumpkin farmer in the low bottoms of the county. After the creek broke its banks and the flood came, he found the bed of an old pickup truck in his yard. He grabbed his son, and they rode the four-wheeler to check the fence lines for breaks and to discover what new adventure the storm debris had brought.

  Kent followed a road of deep mud to the edge of his field, and they climbed off the machine and walked toward the creek. There was a heap of metal around the bend, wedged between a tree and an overhang of ancient rock that jutted from the bluff.

  He held his son’s hand and they walked toward the truck and he saw there was a cab. It was the front of the truck that belonged to the back of the truck in his field.

  There was a dead boy floating inside.

  Kent crouched down and studied him. Stood and raised his hand to shield the sun. Looked up the creek to Valentine Ford. Set his son on the four-wheeler and used his cell phone and called the police. Told them his name. Where he lived. There was a body in his backyard that washed down from the ford.

  “It’s strange,” he said. “Only one place to cross up past me, ’n’ that’s Goat Hill.”

  Farmer Pace said they’d better send somebody. He had a bad feeling about that truck.

  The Reverend scaled the sandstone wall of rock and crawled through the woods. His eyes were swollen from the tears he’d shed. He’d lost a wife and one son. Was betr
ayed by another—Jerry Dean Skaggs. So many times he’d wanted to tell him: I’m your father, Jerry Dean. This here path you must take.

  It was a righteous path that led to untold glory.

  But Jerry Dean was a sinner and a nonbeliever. The Reverend would need to convert him. Wash him free of lust and want. Baptize him at daybreak in the waters of the ford.

  But things had not worked out that way. Any plan he’d had for salvation had failed.

  Butch raised his fists to the sky. “Jerry Dean,” he yelled, “how could you betray me?”

  The Reverend climbed rock hills and stumbled through washed-out ditches. Shivering from the cold. His shirt torn from his body in the flood. The sun was distant and gave little heat.

  Below he heard sirens. They had found Jerry Dean, and somewhere poor Junior lay drowned. His new wife’s body had fallen by the water’s edge, and the Reverend yelled for Mama. His broken voice echoed in the holler.

  Mama had betrayed him, too. Shot his wife in one of her fits. She’d been known to have them. She’d killed his first wife, too. Jerry Dean’s mom. She’d been the first one he’d taken, years after he had raped her and given her a son. He swore one day he would have her again, so he waited for her to raise the boy. Then he kidnapped her and brought her home and locked her in a cage.

  But Mama’s insecurities boiled over, and jealousy got the best of her. One day while the Reverend went to town, Mama shot her with a pistol and fed her body to the dogs.

  Mama promised him she’d changed, but the Reverend was a fool to believe it.

  He struggled for breath and climbed until he found a well-trodden path used by hogs. It was heavily furrowed, and the mud holes filled with rain. He leaned against a tree to rest, and a loud noise crashed behind him. The Reverend held his breath, made his body still. Something behind him grunted loudly.

  The Reverend looked from around the tree at a wild hog that hadn’t seen nourishment in a great while. It came at him with yellow eyes and a thick rancid froth at its mouth and slammed him from the side.

  The Reverend cartwheeled through the air and landed on his stomach, wind forced from his chest. He heaved, tried to stand, but the hog snorted and rammed him with its head. Drove tusks through yielding flesh.