A Swollen Red Sun Read online

  Jackson asked Jerry Dean if he was sure about this thing that they was about to do.

  Jerry Dean looked up. “Don’t start in with that pussy bullshit. It’s too late ta pull out now.”

  “No, it ain’t.”

  “Oh yes, it is. That old bastard’ll be roundin’ that corner in a hot minute. You best get your head right. Make sure you can drive this truck.”

  “My head is right J.D., and you know I can drive this truck. Long as this piece o’ shit don’t break down.”

  Jerry Dean looked over, balled up his fists. “Them’s fightin’ words ’n’ you know it. It’s a goddamn Chevrolet.”

  “Whatever, man. Just hand me that pipe.”

  Jerry Dean handed Jackson the pipe and he sprinkled powder in the bowl and struck the torch and inhaled the smoke. They waited for the old man to come.

  Olen Brandt spent the day on his Allis-Chalmers tractor, feeding hay in round bales to the cattle on his 240-acre ranch outside of Mount Sterling. The weather was backward in every way that it could be. One day, it rained and got cool; the next, it was hot and sticky, the humidity a wet veneer that coated his aged and withered body with cold sweat. Even in summer, he kept a flannel at arm’s reach.

  It was hell getting old. Things that used to work didn’t. Things that did work barely worked at all. His hands throbbed and took turns falling asleep. Lately, his bladder was failing him. He always had to piss, but when it came time for the pissing, the urge left as quickly as it had come. Sometimes he was too late and wet himself before he got off the tractor. He’d been forced to take precautions.

  “Don’t worry,” his doctor said. “You’re eighty-one years old. Feel lucky you can still drive a tractor.”

  But that was easy for him to say. He was thirty-one. He wasn’t the one in diapers.

  “Come on, girl,” Olen called to his Australian shepherd, Sandy, and closed the gap to the bottom forty. He pulled the homemade fence across gravel, the one he’d built twenty-five years ago with barbed wire and old posts. “Come on, girl,” he said again.

  Sandy was getting up there in her own years, but the one comfort Olen took was knowing he would go before she would. That was one less body he would have to put in the ground. One less face—animal or human—he would have to say good-bye to.

  At the same time, those particular thoughts grieved him the most. Kept him up at night, long after he should be in slumber. If he died, what would happen to his girl? His Sandy. She was all he had left after he’d lost Arlene to cancer.

  He had one departed son, waiting with his mother, and another son as good as dead: locked up in a cage he might never get out of for a crime he surely did.

  Olen climbed back on the tractor and slipped the long handle forward, easing off the clutch, and she purred, smooth, and black diesel smoke poured from the pipe as he goosed the throttle.

  The hill ran steep and rough with knots and undergrowth and fathead stumps, some rotten and dead, but strong. Olen followed his usual path with Sandy trotting behind as the sun spread wide to his right with swaths of butter-yellow patches and bursts of pink flavor among blue.

  The skin stretched tight over his smoke-gray jaw, and silver hair lapped above his ears. What little hung over blew when the wind came.

  When he reached the peak and the rough ground became smooth, he eased up on the lever and worked the gas, and the diesel relaxed, but the smoke pipe still pumped an oil cloud that the wind took and fed to the sky.

  Sandy ran to the chicken house, as was her custom, and chased the last two wandering hens into the small abode where they roosted. Olen pulled the tractor into the building and stopped in the doorway. He peed in the dirt as the sun disappeared behind his barn.

  He should have been gone already. Had to pick up two tanks of anhydrous ammonia from Cuddy’s Farm & Supply. Should have left an hour ago, but he got preoccupied in the low bottoms. Cutting brush and fixing fence. He’d make the run tomorrow. Get there in early evening, have plenty of time to visit his old friend Tom Cuddy.

  It was late. Olen was tired, and he could not see worth a damn at night.

  He closed the shop doors, then met Sandy at the chicken coop and closed his girls in.

  “Good night, ladies.”

  Then he saw his stud rooster in his spot, head under wing.

  Beauregard was the biggest, most spitefully malicious rooster in Gasconade County. A powerful Brahma just shy of knee height and a solid twelve pounds. Olen should have peppered him with birdshot years ago but could not bring himself to do it. He had no need for a rooster, but Beauregard’s strange personality kept him spared. Insurgent, renegade behavior and attitude radiated from his authoritative struts and scratches, and Olen came to find the fowl avant-garde and eccentric in ways he never thought capable in poultry.

  Beauregard was more of a guard dog than a rooster. He would not let visitors out of their cars. He would attack the UPS man on the rare occasion that called for one to arrive. He had attacked a surveyor and a veterinarian. He once attacked a county assessor—a glorious act that made Olen proud.

  Olen stood outside when company arrived and did his best to act surprised when it happened, but Beauregard was a master of stealth, and it was only a matter of time before he showed up ripe to ambush.

  Olen Brandt was a farmer who loved his tractors and his land. He’d developed a strong appreciation for the little things life gave back. Small, unnecessary observations that remain useless until you are old. The little things only a fool would enjoy.

  It was the love of a good dog and the hate of a bad rooster that kept him alive.

  Deputy Banks climbed the steps to the sound of blood pumping in his ears, and it blocked out everything else but the warmth that spread across his cheeks. He banged on the front door and hoped he didn’t fall through the porch.

  “Gasconade County Sheriff’s Department. Open this door now.” He smashed the door with his left hand. Glock in his right. “I’m comin’ inside, I am armed, and I swear to God I’ll shoot, so don’t make me do it.”

  Banks threw the door open, then stepped back and waited for action that did not come. He produced his Maglite and held it in front of him below the gun. Scanned the dark room and reached up with his left arm and found the switch. Banks reminded whoever was listening he was armed. Said he was prepared to shoot and meant it. Warrant or not. Justified or not. He’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six. He was not going to die in a mobile home that smelled like cat shit.

  Banks flipped the switch and the room filled with cheap thirty-watt light. The only thing Banks knew was adrenaline. Pumping hard. Rushing through his veins. His mind was a series of dull mechanical throbs that vibrated in waves and bursts in a uniformed rhythm. Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

  His mouth spoke words he could not hear over the sound of his heartbeat.

  Banks kicked the toys and the stuffed animals out of his way and took hard confident steps to the kid’s room. He might find Jerry Dean high or drunk. Or he might find a twelve-year-old with a handgun.

  A cat sprang into the hall causing Banks to jump, and the floor shook hard, maybe even the whole trailer, as the cat ran back to the bedroom where it came from.

  Banks looked down at the litter box filled with fresh coil-shaped droppings and kicked the box hard—sent it into the wall—in a powerful explosion of gray rock-turd dust. He took a deep breath, feeling both relief and disappointment.

  Still, he could not let his guard down. Getting in was half the battle. Now his mind switched gears, sped up; he got to thinking about all the ways this could end. Jerry Dean might be on the front porch, waiting.

  Everything had happened fast. He hadn’t had time to think.

  Now, he was thinking. He remembered the car was unlocked. Key in the ignition.

  There was a shotgun on the front seat, loaded and ready to fire.

  Banks looked down at the cat and swore. He should have just left when he was able.

  When Banks turned to leave
, he saw several packages on the floor, wrapped in clear plastic, wrapped tightly with rubber bands holding them together. They’d been buried in the bottom of the litter box that he’d scattered across the floor.

  He knelt down and looked closely and saw that it was money. Thousands stacked in bundles wrapped in plastic.

  The deputy tried to move, but his shoes had bonded with the floor. Banks strived to take it all in but had to focus on the fact there might be a man outside he would have to kill who stood between the mobile home and the police car.

  Then he did the first thing anyone would do. He got down on the floor and rooted through that cat shit. He’d seen big wads of cash before in similar situations. He’d seen a drug bust at Cave Hill that netted more than a hundred thousand. But that was a few years back, and this looked like more, or at least just as much, though it was impossible to tell at the moment.

  He scooped it all up before he could think to do otherwise, all that he could find, and shoved it in an orange and black duffel bag that said GO DUTCHMEN!

  He took deep breaths and pushed the fear aside. Focused. Walked from the bedroom and stepped out the front door and took quick strides to his car.

  He knew he was wrong to do it but could not stop. It was too easy to justify why he deserved the money more than Jerry Dean, a tweaker cooking meth in a child’s bedroom.

  Banks tossed the duffel bag on the front seat. The shotgun was still there. Keys where he’d left them. Skoal on the dash.

  He vacated Helmig Ferry as the night came and didn’t see oncoming headlights until he got to Bay, a town of maybe thirty-five people. He radioed Gasconade Central and told them to show him off the clock.

  They said be careful. See him tomorrow.

  He ignored the nervousness inside him and drove to the only place he could think of to hide the money.

  Bo Hastings hit two triples and a double before the pain in his back became so great he had to take to the bench. He was sweating profusely from the Percocet he’d taken before the game.

  Bo’s back had snapped like a dry piece of kindling when that beast drove his hooves into his spine. He never should have lived. Never should have walked if he did live.

  But Bo was a survivor with a champion bloodline that went back four generations of law enforcement. The call was an inevitable one he’d fought his whole life.

  After the accident, being a cop was all he had left. He was a broken man with limited options, and the shoes he was meant to fill were clearly defined by each generation that wore them—his father being the generation that ruined the legacy his grandfathers worked so hard to create.

  Bill Hastings kinked the chain in a way that could not be unkinked.

  “You OK, babe?” Becky wrapped her arms around her man, but he pulled away.

  “I’m sweaty, hon.”

  She smiled and said she didn’t care. Said his sweat was sexy.

  Then she laughed. Loud and infectious. Her friends laughed, too. The high school volleyball coach patted Bo on the back and told him he had his hands full.

  The man who owned the lumberyard grinned and walked up to the plate.

  All of them laughed. Everyone loved Bo Hastings. He was the all-American boy.

  They smoked crank until it got too dark to see what was burning and what was scorching, and finally admitted to themselves that the old man wasn’t going to make the run. Jerry Dean blamed Jackson. Told him he should have known.

  “How would I know? I’m sittin’ here with you, ain’t I?”

  “Cuz he’s your uncle?”

  “Yeah, well, ain’t no need ta remind me ’bout that, Jerry Dean.”

  The old Chevy cranked slow but finally turned over, and Jerry Dean smashed the gas pedal. The lifters rattled as the old truck lurched from the woods and crawled up to the asphalt. Jerry Dean clutched it, found second, and the worn-out bastard coughed and sputtered, then pulled strong like a good Chevy ought to.

  He had a mess on his hands if they did not get those tanks. The kind of mess a man got hurt over if things went wrong. People he ran with were hard people from the hills and the woods. He had partners to consider.

  Jerry Dean Skaggs dealt with a family who cooked crank with the anhydrous he supplied. Strange knoll dwellers from Goat Hill. A hard vicious man named Butch Pogue who was violent and cruel. More so than Jerry Dean had ever thought to be.

  Butch had killed a man once. Done time for it. But he found the Lord in Algoa and had repented of his sins. Now he called himself a reverend, though Jerry Dean thought that was far from true.

  Jerry Dean knew he was wading in the devil’s pond with Butch Pogue. Even the deputies didn’t venture up Goat Hill without good reason.

  He hit third and wondered if he should go back to his trailer. His boat was upriver at his cousin’s, the place Jerry Dean parked his truck in case he had to run.

  His day had gone to shit in a hurry once he’d seen those pigs at his trailer, but even with a busted door, they could not go inside. Not without a warrant.

  He wasn’t concerned about the stash in the litter box, either. Not even a cop would look there.

  They drove back roads to the sounds of Jamey Johnson bawling through the speakers, and Jerry Dean reached for a half joint in the ashtray. He looked at Jackson and dusted off the roach. “We gotta make some kind of move if he don’t get them tanks.”

  Jackson shook his head.

  The radio lights blinked and the CD player died momentarily, then returned to life, and the cab filled up with a quick burst of orange. Jerry Dean lit the joint and puffed a few quick hits to get it going. He took another and handed it to Jackson, who ignored it.

  “Take it.” Jerry Dean held his hit up high in his chest. Jets of smoke shot from his nose as he spoke and held his breath at the same time. “C’mon, take it.”

  Jackson reached for it, and Jerry Dean pulled it away.

  “Fuck you, then.”

  Jackson knew better than to arouse the demon inside Jerry Dean. He’d split Jackson’s lip into a bloody mess last week with a hard fist. Jackson knew Jerry Dean was quick to anger when he was drinking or tweaking. Knew some things were best let go.

  Jackson finished his beer and threw the can out the window. He slipped his mask down over his face and watched the cherry glow to his left. They rode back to town with sparse conversation.

  Olen poured a cup of strong coffee and watched long dandelions bend and sway in the fields below the window. The east was yellow, and it welcomed the day with promise. Particles of dust and dog pelt swam in the hot air he passed through as he stepped onto the porch.

  His hummingbirds fought and ate and hummed. He watched them have conversations without words. Just tweets and pecks and squawks that told stories he would never know.

  The air tasted like corn smelled, and the ground was a blanket of leaves. A pair of Canadian geese flew above the house, and Olen smiled. Wished he had back all the things he’d lost through the years. Some memories were miles away, but others never left. Memories of her, in the garden: pulling and picking and raking and hoeing.

  Her beautiful hair, when it was blonde and wavy, with full curls that bounced off her shoulders like velvet springs. She went shorter as the years passed, then grayer. Then it was gone, and she was not the same Arlene he had loved for fifty-nine years, four months, and eighteen days.

  She was a small, frail skeleton with loose skin, and part of her died in his arms every day. But Olen held her hand until the end. She was tormented with intolerable pain. Yet all he could do was watch and cry and wish that God would take him instead of her.

  She died on a Tuesday morning.

  He woke up in the recliner the hospital had placed beside her bed. There was a doctor and a nurse in the room. The machine was loud, and the sound it made was flat and continuous. He knew that she was gone. She had waited until he fell asleep before she left him.

  He did not cry; he just looked out the window until the room was empty. And then it was the two of
them. Him alive and her dead. He should have held her hand when she disappeared into that heavenly void, but he’d been sleeping.

  He never had a chance to say good-bye.

  Olen lost a war with emotion and stared through the glass. There was hard rain and wind and a sky filled with light, but he never saw a rainbow.

  Deputy Dale Everett Banks woke before the sun and walked out the back door to piss. The wind was cool. It came from the east in a constant push and brought with it the first weak specks of light.

  He’d stayed up until 2:00 a.m. Couldn’t sleep. Woke up twice to take leaks—not that he couldn’t have waited; he just wanted to come outside and stand there. Think.

  He felt bad about the money. Drug money though it was. He’d stolen it, and that knowledge played hell on his conscious. One way or another, he had to give the money back. But he couldn’t give it back. Or wouldn’t give it back. He had tough decisions to make before things went wrong. Country people, dirt-poor from birth, did not lose that kind of money, even to the law, without trying to get back what was taken.

  When Jerry Dean came, and eventually he would, Banks had to be ready.

  After the obligatory pot of coffee, he packed his first dip of the morning and went to the back porch to watch the golden orange sun crest slowly. Bacon frying and hard snaps of fat and grease popping in cast iron called him from the kitchen.

  They’d bought an old cabin of rough battered logs and fixed it up over five long years of weekend remodelings and countless vacations spent cutting cedar. They hammered and hung drywall and ran electrical and did plumbing. Added two rooms on back and a laundry, with a loft above it all where they watched the stars at night through a skylight window.

  Everything felt right when Banks closed his eyes.

  “Dad, Mom says c’mon in here. Breakfast’s ready.”

  Banks nodded, sucked that last tuft of minty black for all it was worth, worked it dry, then dug it out with the tip of his tongue and let it fall in a spent clump on the grass. “Tell ’er I’m comin’, Jake.”