A Swollen Red Sun (12 page)

Fish bled for a day and thought he’d never recover. But that was because he would pick. He would pull the scab off while it was fresh and caress the pink scar with his finger.

His entire life was one long scar.

Fish sat back in the cab and drew another hit from the joint and watched a family float down the river. There was a man and two kids in a johnboat with a 35-horsepower Merc. He saw a beer cooler and some fishing poles. Memories being made they would never forget.

In a different life, that was
him
and
his
two kids, before he had failed them. Or him with his sister and dad, before his sister was cut to shreds and his old man turned to drink. Before his mom worked two jobs until the cancer ate her bones to powder and she died a pile of skin.

Fish watched them float and cast and talk. Watched them love one another in a way he had not been loved. It was a love that you read about in books or saw on TV—Dad baited Junior’s hook, and he
laughed
when it hit the bank. He didn’t drag his knuckles across Junior’s cheek like Big Fish would have done.

No, this dad was perfect. He grinned and shook his head and ran his fingers through Junior’s hair.

Fish pulled a deep hit in his lungs and held it and bumped the key and started the truck. He had to leave before he cut them down. The tires spun in the dirt as he turned and left the river. Relaxing his lungs, he set the joint in the ashtray and shifted gears. He had a few hours to kill. He thought about the shotgun and the ski mask and the crank. He thought about the banker and the cousin and the payback.

For the first time in a long time, Fish began to smile.

Butch Pogue Junior spent the afternoon taking Olen Brandt’s truck apart. He removed both doors and gutted the inside and placed the seat up against the wall to use as a chair. He thought about his daddy’s new wife. Thought about how strange she looked with that ball gag. Daddy warned her to keep quiet, but she didn’t listen. Daddy showed her.

But Junior was a good boy. He listened. When his daddy said to take that truck apart, Junior did as he was told. They could use the truck on the farm. Daddy promised to let him drive.

The Reverend walked into the shed with pig guts in his chest hair. Asked the boy if he’d seen Brother Jerry.

The group had spread out after the sermon. Junior went to the shed, and Mama took Daddy’s new wife out back for a shower in the garden hose.

The Reverend couldn’t find Jerry Dean.

Jerry Dean Skaggs was taken with the Reverend’s bride. He hid behind the woodpile and watched Mama spray her off. Looked on in stark horror as Mama washed the soap from the girl’s privates with want in her eye.

“Brother Jerry.”

Jerry Dean jumped at the sound of the Reverend’s voice and took to fast walking toward the dog pen.

When Reverend Pogue came from the barn, he was covered in pig’s blood with a shaker full of Jesus Juice and a rusty machete. “Jerry Dean,” he called scratchily.

His voice was gone. Throat raw and cracked like an old chunk of concrete.

The beasts in the kennel stirred dirt and dust and barked with ferocity. They gnashed their teeth as steel-braided cords and knots of sinew bulged under tight skin, their fur clipped short, the mass of brawny muscles popping and flexing and threatening to destroy.

“Where you been, boy?”

Jerry Dean was going a hundred miles an hour inside his head. The Reverend was insane. He would chop him into short pieces and toss them in the woodstove if he knew what he had done. He would not take kindly to Jerry Dean spying on his wife.

A red pitbull mix jumped at the fence. Jerry Dean saw it had one brown eye but the other was gone. It had a dash of strawberry-blond on its muzzle, and its chest was thick and wide.

“Sweet Wine,” the Reverend said.

“What’s that, Butch?”

“That’s Wine.”

The Reverend reached his hand into the fence, and Wine stopped barking. The dog nudged the Reverend’s palm and snorted, then barked. And then the other dogs fought for the right to lick their master’s hand.

The Reverend looked unhinged as he stood in the shadows. Told Brother Jerry it was time for him to go.

“We feed these animals meat.”

He turned and walked back to the barn.

The Reverend gave Jerry Dean a ride to the bottom of Goat Hill in a rust-bucket truck that didn’t seem fit to make the trip. They crossed the creek and water came up through holes in the floorboard and Jerry Dean had to lift his boots.

They drove the back roads until they found more back roads. Dust thick and red. The Reverend dropped Jerry Dean off a mile from his cousin Ronnie’s. Said there wasn’t no need for anybody’s kin to see.

Jerry Dean agreed readily. He wanted out of that truck.

He walked the long mile to his cousin’s in the sun and thought about his situation. He also had a partner to think about—Bazooka Kincaid—who had a derby car to pay for, and he would not let Jerry Dean forget it. The Firecracker 5000 was coming up, and Bazooka Kincaid aimed to enter.

Jerry Dean would have to see him soon. Then his thoughts shifted to the girl, the Reverend’s wife. Jerry Dean could not stop seeing her in his mind.

When he got to the trailer, there was commotion out front that he could see from a distance. Darlene had a laundry basket filled with clothes on the hood of a Pontiac Bonneville. She was screaming at Ronnie. Threatening to leave.

Her brother, Ray, was there, too. He was also screaming.

The fighting stopped when Jerry Dean walked up the driveway.

“Well, ain’t this just the icing on the cake, Ronnie Lee? If it ain’t your dumbass cousin. Same one tried to rape me.”

“You wish,” Jerry Dean said.

“You grabbed my titty and you know it.”

Jerry Dean brushed past them without words. He was tired. His body hurt, and his eyes burned from being awake. Said he was goin’ to bed.

Darlene shot Ronnie a look. “He ain’t sleepin’ in my bed.”

Ronnie said, “Now, you just wait a minute, Jerry Dean—”

“Fuck you!” Jerry Dean gave Ronnie the finger. “It ain’t her bed no more if she’s leavin’.”

Jerry Dean had to get sleep before his eyes caught fire. He also gave Ray the finger.

Ray laughed. “Don’t bring me into this, bud. But, hey, now that you’s here, we gotta talk.”

“Later.”

“You know Wade Brandt’s ’bout to get out, don’t ya?”

Jerry Dean grunted and swore. “I know this. Been lookin’ ta tell you the same thing.”

“Well, what’re y’all gonna do about it?”

“We’ll talk later.”

“It cain’t wait. I need a little o’ that Bob White, Jerry Dean. Them jailbirds is hot for it.”

“It’s cookin’.”

Jerry Dean threw the door open, and the room smelled like trash.

He walked to the back and took off his boots and lay down on the bed and slept.

He awoke the next day, and the house was quiet. He thought about the dreams he had. The ones he could remember. Dreams about the girl in the basement.

Jerry Dean shivered and felt strange in ways he was unaccustomed.

He sat up and stretched. Put on his boots and tied them and opened the door and left the room. Ronnie sat at the kitchen table with a roll of aluminum foil in his hand. His other hand held a Bic. There was sweat on his forehead and drool in his chin hair.

“Damn, it’s quiet in here. A man could get used to this.”

His cousin looked up. Nodded. Said he had bad news. That bitch Darlene was gone.

“She is?” Jerry Dean shrugged. “Well, good on you then, man. She’s a bitch if ever there was one. How you put up with that cunt bag long as you did, I’ll never know.”

Ronnie shrugged again. He picked up a scrap of tin foil off the table and passed it to his cousin. “Want a hit?”

Jerry Dean said, “You betchya,” and picked up the foil and held it to the light. He found the pile and tilted his wrist and struck the Bic. The powder smoldered. He inhaled the smoke through the plastic tube and held it and exhaled. A dense cloud that held the weight of chemicals hung in the air.

He lit the pile again and moved the tube across the foil—capturing every last wisp of smoke—and handed the foil back to his cousin.

“So where’d that old lady o’ yours run off to this time?”

“She’s stayin’ with her brother.”

“Uh-huh. That’ll last until tomorrow.”

Ronnie shook his head. “I know but”—he paused—“I think she might be seein’ someone. Caught her writin’ a letter the other day. I asked her about it, ’n’ she folded it up quick ’n’ stuffed it ’tween her tits.”

He looked at Jerry Dean. “I’m afraid she might leave.”

Jerry Dean grinned. “Well, you best enjoy this while ya can. Go out ’n’ get you a whore for the night.”

“Shit,” Ronnie said. “Darlene’d cut my nuts off.”

“She’ll never know.”

“Yes, she will. She’ll know.”

Jerry Dean thought about that. Said Ronnie may be right.

They polished off another foily and Ronnie drove him to Jackson Brandt’s trailer.

Bazooka Kincaid was a redheaded, short, stout fireball of a man with a beer keg chest and shoulders that stretched the length of a shovel handle. He swung the ax into a chunk of fence post. The sun beat down on him, and he swung the ax, again and again, until the cedar post was a pile of pink splinters in the dirt.

“You best finish up here, then move along,” Ned said.

Ned Barstow was a small, thin waste of space with pale skin that looked slick with sweat. He had Bazooka splitting old fence posts into small hand-wood for the potbelly stove in his office.

Bazooka swung the ax and sank the blade deep into a rotten stump that crumbled in dead black chunks.

“Load up that truck, Kincaid. Then get. Come back on Monday.” Ned picked at his nose with a pinky. “Best be on time, ’n’ don’t plan on leavin’ here none too early. We got us a hell of an order lined up.”

Bazooka Kincaid was a fifty-gallon drum filled with dynamite. His arms were like thick limbs of an oak tree, fat and hard at the shoulder, and they worked down to wrists the size of steel pipe that grew into wide, bulky hands strong enough to crush a man.

“You hear me, Kincaid?” Ned’s sharp voice was a splinter in Bazooka’s eardrum and a high pitch north of where it should be.

Bazooka nodded. Said he heard just fine. He’d be back to work on Monday. But Ned Barstow ignored him and walked back to his office and slammed the door.

A cool wind gushed in the bottoms and was felt by all. Trees blew and branches shook and leaves fell to the ground and crunched under Bazooka’s feet.

He walked to his truck, ax slung over his shoulder, eyebrows pushed tight, almost touching, save for a wrinkle that separated one from the other, a dirty pudge of skin like a break between two cornrows.

His truck, which had been ready for the junkyard when he bought it, hobbled from Barstow’s turkey farm as the sun hid behind clouds. Summer had come and gone; fall would be brief. He felt winter in the air. Tonight he would build a fire if he found the strength, though more than likely he would not.

Bazooka trudged through ruts and potholes, and the dashboard rattled and shook.

He slowed the truck to a roll and crawled through a washed-out section of county road that was a deep gouge across the earth, carved into the gravel and red dust.

He bounced through to the other side. Turned on Pigg Hollow and drove two miles of tattered weather-beaten path that grew to a trail and led to an old single-wide mobile home somebody had unhooked from the truck and dropped in the dirt. A mobile home somebody long before him resided in but now looked fit to burn.

There was a window missing in front and no curtains to sway in the wind. Leaves blew in the hole and covered the floor. Bazooka had no running water inside, and his well pump coughed and sputtered a brown stream that smelled like eggs.

He drank from a five-gallon gas can he’d bought new and kept for intake and showered with rainwater collected by the green and yellow buckets on his roof.

Bazooka Kincaid poured himself onto the couch and opened a beer and drank from the can, paused long enough to catch his breath, then drank until he finished it and tossed the can on a pile of empty cans.

By the third can, he felt something.

Bazooka reached beneath the couch and fingered for a green tin. He found it. Pulled it up onto his belly and opened it. There were a handful of joints inside. He selected one and jammed it in his mouth and lit it and drew small puffs and coughed.

Bazooka Kincaid was on fire inside. It was harvest time, and he was restless. He trusted Jerry Dean about as far he could throw a piano. But he needed money.

He pulled a hit deep into his lungs and held his breath. Thought about nothing in that moment. It was a dull gray moment without color. He held it as long as he could, and when his chest felt like it would burst, he released the breath and his cheeks swooshed, his lungs burned. He coughed and hacked up a mouthful of phlegm. Swallowed it and gagged and took another hit. His body ached from chopping wood, and the more wood he’d chopped, the more he thought about chopping up Ned Barstow.

Bazooka turned on his side and set the joint in the ashtray on the floor. The hours of this day were numbered. He wrapped himself in a blanket and closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Jackson Brandt was sleeping when Jerry Dean started hollering his name and pounding on the door. “Wake up, you shit dog.”

Jackson rolled over and stood up. There was a small bag of crank on his nightstand. He picked it up and looked for a place to hide it, but could not find one.

He set it back down and placed a CD on top of it.

He took a deep breath and opened the door. Jerry Dean was standing on his front porch. When the door opened, he pushed his way in and the first words to escape his lips were the same first words that always did. “Got any shit?”

Before Jackson could say no, Jerry Dean moved him out of the way. Stepped into the bedroom.

“Now, get out, you fucker. I ain’t got nothin’.”

Jerry Dean walked to the nightstand, the closest thing within arm’s reach from the bed. He looked over at Jackson, who looked nervous.

Jerry Dean picked up the CD and grinned.

“Well, how nice. Lookie what we got here, Mr. Jackson Fuckface. You’s holdin’ out on me, brother.”

Jackson walked toward Jerry Dean as he picked up the baggie.

“Mind if I lay me one out?” he asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll lay one out for you, too, boss.”

Jackson stomped down the hall. He took a piss and splashed water on his face. He thought about the shotgun. Thought about shooting Jerry Dean, then calling Banks. He thought hard about it.

Jackson walked back into his bedroom to find Jerry Dean had scratched out two lines of crank and snorted them both. He handed the CD case to Jackson. “Sorry, dude. I waited, but I didn’t know where you’d run off to.”

“
I was takin’ a piss!
”

Jerry Dean shrugged. “Well, sorry, man. I looked for you, I did.”

Jackson grabbed the bag of crank and folded it up and tied the top of the bag into a knot and stuffed it into the tiny pocket above the right-side pocket of his Levi’s.

“What do you want?”

Jerry Dean turned his head to the side. “Whatchya mean, what I want?”

His pupils were black ink stains that seemed to grow and expand as he spoke.

Jackson shrugged.

“Well, I come to get my truck, numbnuts. That ain’t a problem for you, is it?”

“It ain’t a problem at all.”

Jackson dug the keychain out of his other pocket and tossed it to Jerry Dean.

“Your mama’s lookin’ real good today, dude.”

Jackson frowned.

“Seriously, Jackhole, how big a gal is she? Four hun’ert fifty? Five hun’ert pounds?”

“That’d be ’bout my guess.”

“Boy, I’d love to get hold o’ somethin’ like that,” Jerry Dean said. “I’d pound the hell outta that big ass. I’d get up in there and knock somethin’ loose.”

Jackson said nothing.

“Hey,” Jerry Dean said. “Wonder when the last time was your mama had a hard rod stuck up her butthole?” He grabbed himself in a most revolting fashion.

Jackson took hold of the shotgun and raised it to Jerry Dean’s chest and blasted him onto the bed and into the wall. What lead missed Jerry Dean’s face made holes in the wood, and beams of light shone through and illuminated dust motes that mixed with the blood spray.

“Hey, dickhole,
you still with me?
”

Jerry Dean picked up a beer can that had been used as an ashtray and hit Jackson Brandt in the nuts. Jackson jumped and the can hit the floor. Ashes and bent cigarettes spilled on the carpet.

Jackson looked down at Jerry Dean sitting on his bed.
Alive
. No blood on the wall. No holes. The shotgun was still in the corner.

Jerry Dean stood. Told Jackson he looked like a zombie. “You need to get some sleep, dude.
That
I know.”

Jackson nodded. Jerry Dean was not shot dead. He was right there, though Jackson was not sure if he felt relief or disappointment.

“How’s about a bump for the road, old buddy?”

Jackson shook his head no.

Jerry Dean said that was fine. The Reverend had a batch cooking. Hell, it was off gassing by now. They’d be well supplied before long.

“That oughta give you somethin’ to look forward to,” Jerry Dean said.

Jackson said it did.

“Don’t worry ’bout none o’ this. ’Fore long, this shit’ll be all worked out, you’ll see.”

“What about the cop?”

“Yeah. What about that fucker?”

“Well, what about the money? How y’all plan on gettin’ it back?”

Jerry Dean thought about it. Said, “You oughta not concern yourself with that, sport.”

Jackson looked nervous. “But this shit’s about ta go sideways on us, Jerry Dean.”

“Jackson, you are correct. But trust me here. I got plans for that cop, all kinda plans. You’ll see.”

“Yeah, but you cain’t be killin’ no cop, Jerry Dean.”

Jerry Dean took a step back inside the trailer, but Jackson held his ground.

“Listen here, you cornholin’, sister-fuckin’ … I don’t even know what. We’s all ’bout ta find ourselves in a world of shit, you hear me? A world of shit, and somethin’s got ta be done.” He gut-pushed Jackson, made him take a step back. “I got me a business ta run, Jackson. And we don’t do somethin’ now ’bout this sitchuation, then we’s all fucked, and it’ll all be over but the cryin’.”

Jackson hemmed and hawed. “Well, what if you just deal him in?”

Jerry Dean gritted his teeth. Started yelling. “Oh, that’s a great idea. Then we got
two
greedy pigs we gotta deal with. ’Sides, this guy ain’t likely ta take that deal anyhow I don’t reckon.”

Jackson shrugged his shoulders and bit the scab on his lip.

“We’s all in the middle o’ this here bind, and I’m hear ta tell ya it cain’t end well for all of us.”

“Why not?”

“Cuz it cain’t.”

Jerry Dean turned and walked back outside and climbed in his truck and started the engine and backed out of the driveway.

Fish drove to a hunting cabin out at Brown Shanty and parked his truck beneath a hackberry tree with a smiley face painted on the side that faced the river. It was a visual landmark that told boaters they were close to Held’s Island.

He entered the cabin with a key that hung above the doorframe, to the right; it was far out of reach unless you knew where to find it, which he did, having seen Buck Ramsey use it when they’d cooked meth last fall. The key’s location had been insignificant at the time—but a guy like Fish had taken note of a thing like that. Never knew when an empty hideout by the river might come in handy.

Fish stepped inside with a Walmart bag that held his belongings and set the bag on the table. Removed a bottle of water and walked to the bathroom and prepared for the night to come. Found a sink and a used razor and shaved his face clean of scruff.

Decided he should rest.

Fish lay on a worn-out couch in the corner and finished the joint and slept until late evening. And he dreamed of Raylene. Dreamed he’d carried her body in his arms for a long journey. Into the deep woods.

He’d climbed the face of a rock-strewn bluff and held her above his head, then slammed her to the ground and broke her back across the boulders.

In the dream, she wore a red dress and she screamed when her backbones shattered.

Fish was aroused when he opened his eyes, but angry. Angry at the thought of being alone, but aroused at the thought of killing her.

He stood and dressed and stumbled in the darkness until he stood before the fireplace. Reached up to the mantel and found a candle. Once it was lit, he held it in front of him and walked toward the bathroom and pissed in the sink. Set the candle on the shelf and searched his reflection in the shadows. The mirror was dirty. He rubbed his crotch and bit his lip.

Fish adjusted the candle so he could see, then reached in his pocket and found
it
—the fix he’d been waiting for. The whore he had resisted for ten thousand nights.

An electric sensation gripped him as he held the needle. It was a powerful moment.

He looked down, arms in gooseflesh, thoughts of poison kisses in his veins.

Fish clutched the needle between his teeth and opened and closed his hands. Slowed his breathing and watched strips of lean muscle twist under thin skin.

His reflection: black and flamed and nonexistent.

Fish repositioned the candle, then pulled the baggie from his pocket and held it toward the flame and removed the twisty tie and dropped it on the floor and opened the bottle of water he set on the sink before his nap and poured just a drop in the lid and mixed in some crank and removed the syringe from between his teeth and took off the lid and stirred it and worked the plunger a time or two, then pushed it forward and purged the air from the tube and drew up a little meth inside the needle and held it up to his neck and pinched the skin with his free hand and slid the tip of the needle into the thin blue vein that ran across his collar bone.

And then he was free. He closed his eyes and felt the world detonate. It was warm and black and slow. Both terrifying and beautiful. It was everything he’d ever felt, all at once, and at that moment, no one else on earth had ever felt as good as him. There was an explosion inside his body that melted everything within him and charred his guts and his soul and whatever heart he had left. Numbness excavated a once shallow burrow to a now gaping depth.

Fish felt his body against the wall, behind him, slide to the worn linoleum. Feet straightforward in the darkness. Above him, high on the shelf: the candle. So small. Lonesome and burning, its flame flickering, caught in the mirror’s translucent glow. The light, so far away, like he was sitting on top of the earth and that flame was the sun. Its distance was immeasurable, yet close enough to dream of touching.

Every part of his body was hot and bendy, almost liquid. Like he would melt and run down the air vent in the floor like hot candle wax and coat the dusted patch of concrete below the crawl space in a warm human stain.

Fish left Brown Shanty in darkness. It was cold with the window down. He felt the crank inside his veins, loving him. Warm velvet that peppered his soul like a whirlwind of bug bites. His skin was more aware of sensation than it had ever been. Damp hairs on his arms felt like melting ice penetrating his flesh, cutting to the bone.

It was as though he was floating above the truck, looking down and seeing the truck, while he was also inside the truck, behind the wheel, looking up—seeing him see himself watching himself driving.

Fish could feel a trail of fire climb up his spine and spread across his back with deep, scorching burns. It gave him beautiful thoughts and sensations with clarity he had never known.

But he would need another shot, and soon; he was going to lose this quick.

However long it had been since the last shot he didn’t know. But clearly it had been too long. He breathed. His fingers opened and closed and relaxed their grip on the wheel. His shirt was very wet with sweat, and he could smell his stench, suddenly and completely.

He had to do this before he lost his nerve.

It was well past midnight when Fish parked on Hog Trough Road and walked a mile to the trailer. He admired the setup Early had. The kind of place a man like Fish could only dream of. There was real siding and a shingled roof. Skylights in the kitchen.

There was a part of him that did not blame her. But a part of him that did.

He walked up and stood beside the AC unit and looked through the window. Saw his cousin on the couch, hand buried in his filthy boxers.

How that wife of his could let him inside her Fish would never know.

He walked to the back door and reached for the knob and turned it. When it clicked, Fish slowed his breathing and pushed the door open and heavy boots stomped down the hall.

Early looked up as Fish racked the gun.

“Holy shit, no—”

Fish shot him as he stood, and the window blew out behind him. His cousin fell to the couch, and it rocked. Stuffing filled the air where the body landed.

Early rolled off the cushion, then fell to the floor.

Fish, scared and nervous, sweating profusely, turned and walked to the bedroom and kicked open the door. It was dark. There were loud, sharp screams in the blackness.

Fish reached for the light switch because he wanted her to see him. Wanted her to know that he was the one who shot his cousin, her lover, and know that he was the one who was about to shoot her.

“No, Kenny,” she screamed as the lights went on. Like she had known it was him already. Like she had dreamed he was coming to see her.