A Swollen Red Sun

by Matthew McBride

  The Reverend sucked air and hollered and ribs broke loose from their cage and punctured lungs.

  He rolled to his side and began to stand when the hog threw his head down and butted him. Knocked him back to the mud and crushed bones in his face. Wild sounds came from the beast as it bit him.

  Another boar came running, and it charged the hog that had attacked the Reverend. There was a powerful conflict of brawn. Hogs crashed to the mud. Fought with their heads and plunged tusks into hide.

  When the Reverend tried to stand, he was free. But he stood in great pain and bled abundantly from the wound. Broken ribs floated inside his lungs. He coughed, and blood burst from his mouth in a luminous mist and stained the leaves.

  He made his way up the hill, and when he passed the pen, he saw his dogs were free. He found two dogs in the driveway. Both dead. He shook his fists and cursed Jerry Dean—and then he saw Mama, beside the house. The dogs had eaten the parts of her face that had not been shot off.

  The Reverend limped into the shed and returned with a can of gasoline. He saturated the shed and made a wet line to the house. Doused the kitchen and the living room and took a seat in his chair. His family was gone. They waited for him on the other side.

  He reached beside him and picked up a glass pipe and poured crank in the bowl. Leaned back in his recliner and kicked over the gas can with his foot.

  He struck the butane torch and burst into flames and burned in his chair. The fire gave voice to his powerful screams, and the house burned up around him.

  And there was no God waiting on the other side to call him home.

  Banks called the station and said he would not be in for a while; he was taking a few days off. They said that was fine. They understood. Deputy Trent Tallent would fill in for Banks. He said he could use the hours.

  Banks looked into Sheriff Feeler a little closer and did not like what he saw.

  Herb was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. That much Banks knew. Herb had a wife and a son—and according to Jackson, as well as his own detective work, a girlfriend he kept on the side.

  Her name was Sue Ann Johnston. She was thirty-six but looked fifty-six, had two busts for possession and a face that showed a road map of drug use. She had a daughter that her mama raised and a tattoo on her wrist.

  It was a butterfly that had been poorly constructed. Or perhaps it was a flower; Banks couldn’t tell. But she had looked at him queerly when he entered the Fuel Mart in his uniform and bought a can of Skoal.

  Banks met her cautious stare with his own and wondered if she knew. About the money. Or the kid. Would she call Herb Feeler as soon as Banks left and tell him where he was? He compared evidence with instincts and allowed his curiosity to drive him. He had a thousand questions but no one to ask.

  How deep into the rabbit hole had he stumbled?

  Banks dug a little deeper and learned she was kin to Jerry Dean. He smiled to himself as the pieces fell in place. They were a cluster of lowlifes that ran in circles. Some connected by blood, some connected by drugs.

  But once Herb’s political ambitions had come calling, he’d wanted to put his thug life behind him. Either way, Wade was a millstone once he was free. Now the kid was gone. So was Bazooka. Wade might be next. Which left Jerry Dean, and Banks wondered if Herb didn’t have plans for him as well. One way or another.

  Banks had a bad feeling about Herb Feeler that kept gettin’ worse. He would do what it took to keep his pockets swelled. He had a ranch to pay for—and a wife and a kid and a crank whore—and the salary of an elected official in Gasconade County would only stretch so far.

  It was easy to see how things had happened. Banks knew that as well as anyone.

  But Herb had killed the kid. Banks knew it and could not forgive him. He also knew he’d best act fast before Herb started thinking about ways to get rid of him. Because sooner or later, if he hadn’t already, he would.

  Jerry Dean Skaggs woke up in a hospital bed with his hand chained to the railing and a colostomy bag attached to his gut. It had been a long two days. The memories of what he’d seen and felt were dim. There’d been an ambulance ride and bright lights and strange voices. Doctors wearing masks.

  But the rest was a blur of bewilderment and painkillers.

  He took a deep breath and winced at the pain and watched dark fluid drain from under his gown. It filled a clear plastic bag that hung from his bed. He could not believe he was alive. He smiled despite the handcuffs and the bag and hoped he could make a deal.

  Herb Feeler was the man they were looking for. Jerry Dean had done no wrong.

  Except for stealing the truck and the tanks and killing those dogs. Then he thought about Mama and winced. Then he remembered the Desert Eagle and hoped it was lost in the ford.

  A man walked through the door and introduced himself. His name was Dr. Chadwick. He said Jerry Dean was lucky.

  “How you figure that, Doc?”

  “Well, you’re alive, aren’tchya?”

  Jerry Dean closed his eyes. Said that might be true, but things could always be better.

  He looked down at his colostomy bag.

  “You got a few people wanna talk to you, son.”

  Jerry Dean nodded. “Reckon I do.”

  “You feel like talkin’?

  “Reckon I don’t.”

  The doctor said, “OK.” He checked the numbers on a machine and grabbed a clipboard and left the room. Told Jerry Dean he didn’t blame him.

  Jerry Dean had spent the whole morning thinking until he’d come up with a plan. He would not talk without his attorney. Not that he had one or could afford one. But that was the best he could do until he figured things out. Perhaps he would represent himself. Be his own attorney, and if he lost, he would demand a mistrial on the grounds of inadequate council. Jerry Dean knew a thing or two about the law.

  This was not his first rodeo.

  The best idea he came up with was just to play dumb, which would not be too hard. He’d say he smoked crank with the Reverend, long into the night, until the Reverend had finally lost it. Then he’d shot his wives and drowned his son. He’d even killed his dogs.

  Son of a bitch was crazy. Jerry Dean had been lucky to survive.

  That was a good plan. He’d done his best to save the girl. He would paint himself a brave man. Maybe the town would, too. He’d get a pardon from the mayor. Or a key to the city, however that worked. After all, he was bringing down a crooked cop. Maybe he’d be famous. Do interviews. He thought about a piece of land he would buy and the double-wide he would put there. Hell, he could pick up Earl Lee’s place cheap, now that he wouldn’t be needing it. He could buy it from Bay Bank for a song.

  And then he thought of all those beautiful pot plants waiting for him to harvest.

  Jerry Dean smiled again at the thoughts of his future. Smiled so hard it hurt. He’d do his best to lead by example from here on out. And perhaps one day, when this was all said and done, and the fame had worn down and the dust had settled, he would find himself a new girl to replace the one he’d lost. Enjoy the hero’s status that bringing down police corruption would provide.

  He coughed and his gut filled with pain and the bag moved. Jerry Dean closed his eyes as he floated toward a deep siesta and dreamed the dreams of champions.

  Wade Brandt left prison a free man and made a promise to himself never to return. He was leaving Algoa for the last time and never coming back.

  He had made that promise before—and inside he’d done what it took to survive—but this time, he swore, was different. He would walk out those gates a changed man. Into the arms of the woman who had saved him, through her letters and her phone calls. She had even sent pictures, though in them she’d been younger and prettier and substantially thinner.

  Wade Brandt left Algoa in faded Levi’s that threatened to slide off, a pair of steel-toed boots, and a T-shirt advertising Snag’s Pool Hall that read LIQUOR IN THE FRONT, POKER IN THE REAR. It was his favorite shirt when he went in, but
since he’d lost weight it was a size too big.

  He passed the main gate and a thin black guard with skin stretched tight across his face warned him not to come back. Then Wade stepped into that harsh golden sunlight and what he saw stopped him in mid-stride like a brick wall.

  Darlene was waiting. She had parked in a handicapped spot and was perched on the front of a 1977 Bonneville like a hood ornament. There was a GPC with at least three inches of ash fused to her lip. She blew him a kiss with lips the color of red paint, then dropped her GPC on the parking lot.

  When she stood, the whole car moved and he saw a mess of hair that had been many colors at many different times, though none of those colors ever seemed to fully wash out. Darlene had a solid frame with shoulders as wide as her brother’s and a face just as fat.

  Wade, almost reluctantly, climbed into her Pontiac and saw a case of warm beer between the seats. A set of pink fuzzy dice hung from the rearview mirror that looked like they’d been dragged behind a garbage truck.

  Darlene had him by a good hundred pounds. She told him she and Ray were twins. Then she pulled from the parking lot in the Bonneville and left dark plumes of smoke behind her.

  Wade was nervous and looked over his shoulder. When he asked Darlene where they were going, she didn’t tell him. She just handed him a beer, which he accepted and opened and drank. He looked out the window as she rambled and smoked. Told him how she liked it rough. Hinted at the promise of the night that was to come.

  She shook pills inside a brown pharmaceutical bottle and asked him if he wanted a bennie.

  When they left Algoa, Herb Feeler was behind them. In his four-wheel drive. There was a score to settle and a job to do. Wade Brandt would have to go. Darlene would, too, unfortunately, unless he came up with something better.

  Herb Feeler was playing this part by ear, but murder-suicide was an option. It would be a stretch and he knew it—because two suicides in one week was asking a lot of the people—but Herb Feeler was sure he could pull it off. Make it look like Wade Brandt was a psycho. Just another convict society had run through a garbage disposal.

  Darlene went to a dump called Bud’s Place where the best room in the house was sixty dollars and room service was nonexistent. The television worked when it wanted, and the carpet smelled like hobo piss. But the bed was soft, and he spent the first night doing things to that woman that only three years in prison could make a man do. The first time they made love; he rolled off of her and puked in an ashtray. He told her it was the nine hot Stags he drank on the way to Bud’s Place.

  The next few pokes went a little smoother, though she was a bit rough with him at times. When she’d said she liked it rough, she had not been lying. Darlene pinned him to the bed and used her size to her advantage. Manhandled him in ways he had not expected—ways reminiscent of how prison life could have been had he not been a fighter, and had he not been protected by the outside world, an advantage spearheading a crank operation inside the joint had afforded him.

  Herb Feeler sat in the parking lot and lingered. Watched Wade Brandt go through parked cars after dark and take what he could carry. Herb smoked and listened to country music while he honed his Buck Knife on an Arkansas stone and waited.

  He thought about the way things had been going. Once Wade Brandt was dead, Herb was free, and the future belonged to him. The connections he’d made in Jefferson City were finally paying off.

  But he could not have something sneak up behind him a year or two down the road. Nor could he have some countrified dipshit popping up on his radar. Asking for a favor, or threatening to expose him. Herb had worked too hard to see that happen. Any strings connecting him to methamphetamine were cut.

  They left Bud’s Place the next evening with an extra forty dollars and a hot new pistol. He’d found the gun in a station wagon with a bumper sticker that read TED KENEDDY’S CAR HAS KILLED MORE PEOPLE THAN MY GUN!

  He looked in the mirror at the cut above his eye where Darlene had hit him with the ashtray once he’d had enough. She was crazy; he could see it. As he drove, she sat beside him, texting her husband. Telling him who she was with and what she had done.

  He rubbed his finger along the cut and took a big gulp of rum. Darlene squeezed his leg and crammed a handful of diet pills down his throat. They’d been eating them nonstop, and that was the primary cause of all that fornicating back at Bud’s Place.

  Wade raced the Pontiac at a high rate of speed as they blew down the back roads of Gasconade County. He hadn’t driven in years, but the wheel felt natural in his hands. This seemed to excite Darlene and she yelled for him to go faster, so Wade jammed the gas pedal to the floor and they listened to the Pontiac choke. The carburetor gagged, and the car pumped an oil cloud of thick black smoke as the motor screamed and pleaded and tried not to blow up.

  Everything was fine until they took a corner outside Bland in the wrong lane and the right front tire blew off the rim.

  Darlene screeched as the wheel dropped onto the asphalt and began grinding down. Sparks flew up into the window and peppered her big freckled arm.

  Wade yelled and yanked the Bonneville to the shoulder.

  “My Bonnie,” Darlene cried.

  He pulled over once they found good shoulder and hoisted the bottle upright. He finished off the rum and asked Darlene if she had a jack.

  She grabbed him and hugged him, but he pushed her away and told her she smelled like sweat.

  “You got a spare in this beast?”

  Darlene said she did, and Wade walked to the back and slid her key in the hole, but Darlene never got out. She fired up a GPC instead and blew a mouthful of smoke out the window.

  In the trunk, he found bags of dirty clothes and cat litter and a box filled with sex toys. There were leftover Happy Meals and half-eaten pizzas. He did not see a spare.

  “It’s there,” she promised.

  He set the box on the roof and dug a little deeper and found a semi-bald tire under a pile of dirty whites that no amount of laundering could ever sanitize.

  He rolled the tire to the front of the car and went back for the jack. The trunk was deep, and it was packed with clothes and trash. The stench of garbage in the afternoon heat took his breath away.

  Herb Feeler had followed them in his Dodge Ram. Toothpick between his teeth and a smoke behind his ear. He’d been waiting for his chance to confront them and would give Wade Brandt his terms: return to Algoa for stealing a handgun, or pistols on the shoulder.

  Herb knew Wade had a burner. Had watched him swipe it from the wagon.

  It was the convict’s choice and it did not matter to Herb which decision he made, though a gunfight was right up his alley, and a dead witness was the best kind.

  Once that fool had a blowout, Herb saw an opportunity. Set his plan in motion. Pulled up behind Wade and climbed out of the truck and made his way to the Pontiac.

  Wade Brandt was on his knees when the sheriff walked up and gave him a hard look with his eyes.

  Herb stood in front of the Bonneville, and Wade’s pulse hammered his ears.

  His mind was on fire from two days of sex and Stag and Benzedrine.

  “Y’all’s goin’ a little fast back there, huh, speedy?”

  He looked up and met Herb Feeler’s eyes. Said he knew it was a matter of time until he found them.

  Sheriff Feeler stood over him as tall as he could like a good ol’ boy and grinned. “Didn’t take long.”

  “Now, Herb, I just want you to know that I’m done with that life.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do. Fixin’ to go ’n’ see my dad right now.”

  Sheriff Feeler shook his head no.

  Wade opened and closed his fists and swallowed hard.

  The sheriff read his expression. Held the palm of his hand against the butt of his gun.

  Told the outlaw, Make a move.

  Wade saw the Bronco pull up behind Sheriff Feeler and heard brakes squeal as its driver applied pressure. It came to a
stop and parked at an idle with the engine running.

  Herb recognized Banks and relaxed his stance, though he kept his hand on the gun.

  Banks brought the Bronco to a stop, though he kept it in drive. Foot on the brake, glasspack exhaust rumbling. He said all that was required with the look of unspoiled vengeance he wore so well.

  Herb met his eyes and matched Banks an angry scowl of his own. The air was electric. The pressure incredible. Everyone within that odd circle knew they could die.

  Wade, on the ground, tire tool in his hand, watched nervously. And waited. And hoped and prayed, after all he had done and been through, not to have it end this way. Not like this. Shot on the side of the road like a dog by the hand of a redneck coward.

  Darlene was terrified for the first time in her life. She missed her husband and her kids and their trailer. It wasn’t much, but it was theirs. Bought and paid for, and no one could ever take it from them.

  How she longed for that security. How, at that moment, no place in the world had ever sounded as appealing. The drone of the river and the boats. Ronnie was dirty, but good. Honest for a meth cook. He was a family man, to the best of his abilities, and he had always loved Darlene.

  If she survived the afternoon, she would return to their trailer. Beg Ronnie to take her back. Promise to be a good mom and a good wife and hope he could forgive her.

  She was scared and missed home and was no longer having fun.

  Herb knew Banks would be a problem, but he had not expected this. Why couldn’t the prick have just stayed home? Now it would come down to the thing he never wanted. A shoot-out with a good man who should have kept his mouth shut.

  He said, “You dumb—”

  Banks drew the cap and ball revolver, quickly and unexpectedly, and fire belched from the barrel and the Bronco filled with smoke. Now it was done. Banks used the gun Olen Brandt had planned to give the son who’d died, to save the son who’d lived.

  Wade heard the gunshot, and Herb dropped flat on his back. Arms splayed out, hands open. Face smashed in and blackened. A hole had been bored through his forehead that smoke escaped from in a gush.