A Swollen Red Sun (4 page)

Fish set a plastic Tupperware container on his makeshift workbench and opened it and removed a large bag of crank. He looked at the glass pipe beside Jackson.

“That bowl cashed yet?”

Jackson stared at his hands, lost in thoughts Fish dared not attempt to contemplate. Fish kicked the leg of Jackson’s chair.

Jackson looked up, startled.

Fish pointed to the pipe and asked if there was a hit left. Told Jackson he had all day to make that lightbulb.

“Sorry, man. I’m on it.”

Jackson set the lightbulb down and put the pipe to his lips and held a torch to the bottom. A small cloud of smoke formed inside the bowl like a miniature tornado. Both were entranced, mesmerized by its beauty.

Jackson, watching it, waited until just the right moment, turned off the torch, and inhaled the smoke.

He leaned back against the toolbox, and Fish took the pipe from his hand so he could think. Fish held it to the light and studied brown stains from the scorched meth.

The shed smelled like sweat and crank.

“Fish?”

Kenny Fisher’s wife walked out the trailer’s back door, tired and frustrated. Or so she would have them believe.

“Shit,” he said.

Fish set the pipe inside the container and snapped the lid on tight. “I do
not
wanna hear her bitch.” He handed the container to Jackson and pointed to an Igloo cooler.

Again she called him.

“Whatchya want?”

“I’m runnin’ to Walmart. Then I’m gonna pick the kids up from Mom’s.”

Fish nodded. “OK, then. G’bye.”

He turned and closed the door and nodded for Jackson to return the crank, which he had just placed inside the cooler beside another, larger bag of crank.

Jackson returned it and bit his thumbnail and waited for another bowl.

Fish took the container and removed the lid and picked up the bag. It was white, with a subtle touch of bronze when the light hit the rocks. Carefully, he pulled a small chip that looked like ice from the bag and dropped it in the glass bowl. They were smoking the latest product Jerry Dean had cooked up with the Reverend.

Fish was a former associate of Jerry Dean and still helped out with the smurfing. Sometimes he cooked. But he was also a good customer. He would take the crank he bought—always pure and clean and better than any crank he had ever seen—divide it, remove half the bag, and crush up vitamins to replace what he’d kept.

Fish would
cut
the meth with the pills,
step on it
—and the crank was so good he could do it and still make money
and
retain an abundance of product for himself.

Fish held the pipe up to the window and lit the bottom with the torch and watched it fill with smoke. He let off the torch and took a slow pull—which was cool to his lungs and mouth—held it longer than he had to, then let it out and stared out the window. His thoughts immediately beginning to take hold of him—thoughts and observations. His shed was a mess. He needed to clean it. And he
would
clean it. Just as soon as this bowl was gone.

Then he looked out the small window at the mess that had become his yard. Dead grass and broken tree limbs and half a dozen cedars trees that had to go. And, now that he thought about it, there was a tree behind the mailbox that could go as well. It was the neighbor’s tree—but that didn’t matter. He’d be doing him a favor, way he saw it.

There was nothing Fish couldn’t do on crank
.

Jackson reached for the pipe. Told Fish that shit was good.

Fish nodded. Said it was the best batch yet, which was the same thing he said about every batch.

The two smoked crank and talked and thought. Jackson Brandt chewed his bottom lip with chipped brown teeth, teeth that had not seen a brush in weeks—
months
. His lip was red and raw and looked plenty painful. But Jackson kept chewing anyway.

Fish asked Jackson, “Ever get the feelin’ you know somethin’ ’bout somebody,” he paused, “but they don’t know you know?”

Jackson, suddenly nervous, shrugged. Stared down at the floor.

Fish, standing beside his workbench, looked down at Jackson. “Come on, now. You ain’t never had a feelin’ somebody was doin’ somethin’ behind your back … and they
think
you don’t know.” Fish pointed to his temple. “But you do—
you know
.”

Jackson agreed, though somewhat reluctantly, and unsure where the conversation was heading, reached for the pipe and held it to his mouth and lit the bottom. He took quick puffs until smoke jetted from the end, then lowered the torch and drew a long, slow breath from the pipe and held it. Closed his eyes and let the gray smoke bleed from his lips and go up into his nose and into his eyes and float up into his mess of straw hair.

There was a look in Kenny Fisher’s eyes that scared Jackson. Made him wish that just once he could smoke crank with a regular guy. A guy without uncertain eyes or bad tattoos or body odor. Or maybe just someone who wasn’t fucking crazy.

“C’mon,” Fish said. He leaned down, slapped Jackson’s shoulder.

“Let’s go for a ride.”

Olen worked the ancient tiller with calloused hands and a strong back, and the sun bore down and reddened what skin was left exposed after long sleeves and a wide-brimmed shade hat hid the rest. He let the machine do the work, and it turned the rough dirt into smooth, manageable soil. His garden would boast peppers and tomatoes of every shape and size, and cantaloupe and watermelon and sweet potatoes.

The dirt was worked into fine moist powder as he handled the machine and made rows wide enough to stand between. By 1:00 p.m., he took lunch, which was a ham sandwich and a bottle of Coke. Then he crawled onto the antique bed in the spare room where he took his naps. Arlene had called it his sleeping bed. Once Olen hit seventy years old, he found he could not make it through the day without recharging.

He was drawn to the bed. The one his boy had slept in every night for all of his eight years.

By 2:30, Olen was awake and had a pot of strong coffee dripping not a minute later. A half hour after that, he was feeding cows and moving them from one field to the next. He pulled the silver pocket watch from his bibs and checked the time. He had business in town to tend to, but he also had the last ten acres of the bean field to turn up by weekend. Tonight it might rain.

Olen studied the sky. Rechecked his watch. He could make a dent in that field if he started now. If he left by five, he’d be home by dark.

He called out to Sandy and pulled the Allis-Chalmers from the tractor building. Hooked up to the plow and raised the hydraulics and passed down the hill. Sandy ran ahead and then slowed down. She still had the heart to run, but she did not have the legs to carry her.

He crossed a slab that separated the low bottom from the thirty-acre patch of corn he’d combined, and Sandy found a spot beneath a pecan tree. Olen climbed down and ran his fingers through the dirt. It was dry. He looked up at the sky. Soft and blue with fat clouds.

Olen spat and climbed back atop the Allis-Chalmers and set the plow down in the lower forty and started cutting earth. Let his mind wander. These moments were the best he had left. Every field he plowed could be his last.

Olen knew that and respected it. Things you acquire on this earth are meaningless once you’re alone, and memories become the currency of choice.

Growing old is the most painful thing in the world.

Jerry Dean could not sleep with the sounds of doors slamming and kids yelling and babies crying. He stumbled from the bedroom and told his cousin’s wife she ought to show those crumb-snatchers a little belt leather every once in a while.

“I should, huh?”

“Best thing you could do.”

She flicked ashes into an ashtray that had started overflowing six months ago and everyone in the trailer had decided they’d grow the pile.

“Ever think about cleanin’ up around here, Darlene?”

Darlene was married to his second cousin, Ronnie. She was in her mid-thirties with a thick, corpulent body, cantaloupes for tits, and four kids who ran around the trailer unsupervised while she sat in her recliner and ate and chain-smoked and dreamed of all the places she could be but there.

“Well, ain’t you just an expert on child raisin’?”

“I know I got thumped on plenty by my mama.”

“Yeah, and look at all the good it done.”

Jerry Dean stood there covered in a dripping gleam of sweat.

“Nobody likes a smart-ass, Darlene.”

“Well, nobody asked you to come to my house and sleep in my bed now then, did they, Jerry Dean?”

He shook his head. “Where’s that brother of yours? I need to see him.”

Darlene had a brother named Ray who was twice her size. He was a guard at Algoa, and the key to another one of Jerry Dean’s business ventures, the middleman who smuggled in product for Wade Brandt to distribute.

Wade Brandt was getting out soon, and that was something they should talk about.

“I ain’t seen him,” Darlene said.

“What about Ronnie? He out playin’ chef or gatherin’ pills?”

“How the hell should I know? Ain’t seen him, neither.”

“Cut the shit, Darlene. You always know his whereabouts, so don’t play ta me like you don’t.”

“You’re so smart, why don’t you figure it out.”

Jerry Dean rolled his eyes. “Woman, how that cousin of mine puts up with you I’ll never know.”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, you’d like that now, wouldn’t ya, darlin’?” He stepped toward her and reached down and squeezed one of her big, sloppy tits.

Darlene slapped his hand away. Told him to get out before she told Ronnie what he’d done.

Jerry Dean walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge. “You be sure ’n’ do that, sweetheart. You tell him what mean old Jerry Dean gone ’n’ done.” He grumbled and gagged, then hacked up something from deep down and spit yellow in the trashcan. “Got anything ta drink in this shit hole?”

The bottom of her broken-down recliner slapped shut, and Darlene jumped to her feet, a GPC cigarette clenched tight between her teeth. The floor shook as she stomped from the living room. “You get the hell outta my kitchen.”

Jerry Dean held up a finger and nodded his head. He drank milk from the carton, and his sweat ran down the side.

Darlene started laughing when Jerry Dean realized the milk he was drinking had gone to sour and he spewed white chunks into the sink and dropped the plastic jug on the floor.

Darlene stopped laughing. “That milk went bad two weeks ago when the power got shut off. That serves you right, you dumbass. Now get out!”

Jerry Dean nodded and pulled his long, greasy hair from his mouth. “I’m goin’.”

“And don’t come back.”

One of Darlene’s brats sat on the arm of a second broken-down recliner, and Jerry Dean shoved him off backward and he made a thump on the floor.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, and walked out the door.

Jerry Dean looked up to an indigo sky filled with mushroom clouds while he motored down the Gasconade River and burned a joint. He did not care if the cops were waiting at his place or not. He’d had four hours of sleep. He was as good as gold.

Jerry Dean secured the boat and smoked his roach down to nothing and pitched it in the river. He weaved through a maze of debris and car parts until he got to the front door and stepped inside. The place smelled like cat shit.

“Goddammit, Little Buddy,” he said to the runt of a cat.

Jerry Dean saw the litter box turned upside down before he even closed the door. “No!” he yelled, and stomped down the hall.

His money was gone. Not that all of it was his—it was to be split between himself and his associates. Jerry Dean had just been holding it, waiting until the man he took orders from told him what to do.

“You crooked sons-o’-cocksuckers.”

Jerry Dean kicked Little Buddy when he walked up to rub and sent him airborne across the trailer. “You motherfuckers!”

He punched a hole through the cheap wall and his fist came out the other side. Buried his arm to the elbow in pink insulation.

It was all gone. Fifty-two thousand.

Jerry Dean hollered and cussed and punched more holes. He’d been robbed by the cops. The two from yesterday. Jerry Dean paced and swore. His partners would never believe him.

The fat cop had been Banks. Jerry Dean knew of Banks. A Southern Baptist shithead, but no thief. It must have been the young one who found it, the cowboy.

Jerry Dean walked back to the box and crawled through the litter for a second time, and his heart sank. He would not survive without the money. It was the bulk of their profits from a drug-smuggling operation that funneled meth inside Algoa. They were depending on it. Everyone was. If Jerry Dean had lost their money, then he was as good as dead.

Fish followed his wife from afar, in Jackson’s minivan, thinking she wouldn’t recognize them if they got too close—which they had on occasion—but Raylene broke speed laws with reckless abandon and swerved from lane to lane. Failed to use her turn signals and talked on the phone.

Fish was angry. He complained about the windshield. Shattered in the middle with a thousand cracks and no glass on the driver’s side.

“You could fix this with a scrap of plastic,” he said.

Fish badmouthed Jackson for his laziness. The wind in his face through the missing window was hot for the moment, but sure to drop toward frost-level by midnight.

Jackson kept quiet. Which made things worse.

Fish, overflowing with nervousness and uncertainty, grew a sick feeling inside his stomach.

Jackson, in the passenger seat, held the pipe in his palm tightly, content with his thoughts as he looked out the window at the fields of cut cornstalks on dirt slabs of earth. Windshield full of dust.

Jackson’s mind was slow from years of crank and he was easily misled. Jerry Dean knew this. So did Fish. But Jackson was a gatherer; he was resourceful. He knew where to find things no one else could.

When he’d hooked up with Fish, they’d met at a pharmacy where they’d both been buying pills. There’d been a mutual curiosity between them. How each knew exactly what the other was buying, and why. How, within minutes, they would be in their own cars, pulling bent sheets of tin foil from under the seat. Lighting it and smoking it. Needing just one hit before they drove to the next store.