A Swollen Red Sun (13 page)

She sat flat against the headboard, sleep in her eyes and hair full of tangles. A child beside her, his son. Screaming, eyes open. He called out for his dad.

Fish lowered the shotgun and turned from the room and ran—out the back door, down the steps. Inside, his wife was screaming—calling out his name.

Fear raced through his body, pounding his ears. Fish stopped and leaned against the rough bark of a shag hickory and puked.

He was shaking as he put the gun on safety. He stood and breathed deeply and ran to his truck in the blackness. So late it was early, with no light above him. A sky without stars.

Another second and he would have shot his son.

Fish talked to himself as he drove. Windows up, radio off. He thought about what he had done, and what he hadn’t. Fish closed his eyes and watched that fat bastard tumble to the floor—dumb look on his face with chunks of fat blown from his chest, dead with a hard-on in drawers with a skid mark.

Fish passed the bank and took Route W, turned right. Drove a mile and crossed a bridge and turned on Little Bay Road. Parked his truck behind a gravel pile.

Fish grabbed his bolt cutters and his ski mask and his shotgun and walked through the woods. To the bank. Through a dry creek bed that had not seen rain in months. He climbed a white picket fence that ran for two miles and cost more than his trailer.

He walked slowly, like a man unconcerned with traffic.

Fish got to the bank and circled around it. His shed waited where the repo man left it. He had pushed it off his rollback truck and let it drop onto the gravel.

Fish snapped the chain and stepped inside—but everything was missing: his tools and his workbench and the vise he’d mounted to it; his grinders and his welder
and the cooler where he kept his crank
—worth two thousand dollars—enough to get their trailer back.

Enough to get Raylene back since he hadn’t killed her.

Fish stumbled in the early light and tripped over debris in a futile attempt to find it. His Igloo cooler was the only thing in the world that mattered. Fish dropped to the floor and cried with his head in his hands. Sweated and swore. Laid down on the floor and slept.

It was the sounds of life that awoke him. Birds chirped on a telephone wire above the shed. A passing car blew its horn. There was a swing set in motion at the house next door and the voices of children playing.

Fish came to his feet and pissed in the corner. There were tools here and there. A yellow newspaper and old batteries and two broken fishing poles. A light beam pushed through the window and stirred dust in the air.

On the floor, he saw the ax that belonged to his dad. Thirty years old, with a chipped blade, a missing chunk from the handle where the old man hit a stump.

Fish picked up the ax and studied it. He thought about his life and his wife and his dead cousin. About the options he had left, which were few.

There were memories in his life that never existed, with a family that could have been. But everything went wrong. His sister died and his mother died and his dad became a monster.

“What in the hell’re you doin’ in here? What in God’s name, Kenny Fisher?”

She startled Fish and he jumped. Ms. Vivian Dixie: late seventies, white hair, never married. She owned the bank and the store, and she worked six days out of seven.

She had taken his trailer and his shed and his wife and his sons.

Fish stood, trembling. The shed smelling like warm piss behind him.

“You got no right to this stuff—
it belongs to the bank
—and I let that boy with the tow truck take what he wanted. That was his price for haulin’ it.”

She looked down at the lock that was dangling. “My God, Kenny Fisher, you’re trespassin’. I done called the law… . Now you owe me a new lock.”

Fish stepped forward and swung the ax. Used his shoulders and swung hard and sank the blade between her eyes.

Her face popped like a decaying log and she dropped to her knees, life exiting her body like a
swoosh
of foul wind.

He released the ax and she fell on her back—legs bent beneath her, face pushed in like a rotten pumpkin, ax jutting like a growth.

Fish stood motionless, looked down at his hands. Calloused and dirty and blood splattered. Then he looked at her. So small and so broken. A lifeless carcass, nothing more. It was grotesque—her body—the way it had contorted. Her age-spotted hand, reaching. Bent fingers. Like she tried to crawl out of her skin.

He stood there for the longest time and thought, watching the blood flow. It poured from her white hair and ran toward the lowest wall of the unleveled shed.

When Vivian Dixie had called the police, Scott Winkler was on duty. Ten minutes from Bay, he held his foot to the floor. If Kenny Fisher had come for his shed, then there’d be hell to pay. He was out of his mind with rage, and surely high on crank.

Winkler called for backup. Thought things might get tough. The bank had uprooted the trailer just as soon as Fish went to jail. It was a coordinated effort with the police, and they had kept Fish for as long as they could.

When Ms. Dixie saw her chance, she took it. Struck while the iron was hot. C & K Towing hooked up to the trailer and winched the shed onto a rollback.

Fish came home to a dead-end road littered with bags of trash. His worldly possessions were a truck with four bald tires and a pair of old Wranglers stuffed in a Walmart bag.

Winkler drove fast and the engine screamed, but he kept the sirens quiet. Didn’t want Fish to hear him coming and give himself away.

Deputy Winkler pulled into the lot and put the car in park. Sat there. He did not see Fish or Ms. Dixie or anything out of place. He opened the door and spun sideways and climbed out of the car.

When Fish heard gravel crunch under tires, the anger that never quite left him returned, overpowered him. As he stomped from the shed, Winkler climbed from his car and closed the door.

Fish raised the shotgun and squeezed the trigger but nothing happened.

Winkler, caught off guard, yelled and dove to the ground.

Fish, more surprised than anything, had never been more embarrassed. It stunned him to realize that after shooting his cousin he’d forgotten to cock the 12-gauge.

Winkler, flat on his belly, with a clear view of legs, fired four rounds into both cowboy boots and put Fish to the ground.

Winkler stood quickly and watched Fish. Rolling in the dirt and screaming.

He thought about shooting him again. Wanted to and still might.

Fish, climbing to his knees, slowly, and in considerable pain, looked down and saw one foot spun backward and both boots filled with meat.

“Put the gun down, you motherfucker,” Winkler yelled.

Fish saw only black and white. His whole body burned.
His feet were gone
.

“It’s over, Fisher. Now come on, man. Put down that gun.”

Fish was sweating and bleeding, but he had just enough strength to rack the 12-gauge and place it under his chin. Reach down with his thumb and push the trigger and take a shotgun blast to the face.

Winkler stood by the car in shock. Took a few steps forward and stopped.

Fish had blown the top of his skull off, and there were parts of it on the shed. The blast had removed his face and tore his head in half. There was nothing left but red bones and teeth and skin that looked like pizza once you scraped the meat off.

Winkler walked backward toward the car and collapsed in the seat and used his radio to call in. Told Gasconade County through code words what just happened. He couldn’t believe he’d almost died, and he couldn’t believe Fish killed himself.
He’d just done it
.

“Hurry up,” he told them.

“Sit tight,” they said.

Everyone was coming.

The air was cold when Bazooka opened his eyes. It was daylight. Mid-morning. Sun poured through the window and bathed him in warmth.

He rolled over. Tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Wide awake. He may as well go to town for supplies. Stop by the turkey farm and fill his gas can with water.

He walked unsteadily out the back door onto cinder-block steps and pissed into a patch of poison ivy. Already thinking of the tin and the weed, he stumbled inside and took a seat on the couch and fired up a doobie. Looked on in wonder at the plants drying inside his trailer, obsessed with potential profit and the derby car it would provide.

It had been a long road to the Firecracker 5000. Many years he had bought and saved and toiled—collecting cars and various parts: engines and radiators and transmissions—and now the time was upon him. There was a Lincoln Town Car beside his trailer with a roll cage, five-point harness, and a power plant under the hood—soon to be rebuilt by the best mechanic in the county.

With the new engine and his hunger and his raw determination, the potential for success was apparent and the possibilities for his future were endless.

The road to town was rough. Pigg Hollow was a buffet of potholes in a variety of depth and size. The front end of the truck lunged through a furrow and the windshield popped.

When he got to the bottom of Hog Trough Road, he met Jerry Dean in his beat-up Chevrolet.

Bazooka pulled up next to the truck and turned off his engine.

“Was just on my way to see you,” Jerry Dean said. “We got us a serious problem.”

He told Bazooka what had happened. One of two cops had taken the money. Or maybe both cops had taken the money and split the jackpot. Either way, fifty-two grand was all they had. It was a green light to cook and sell and transport dope without being pulled over.

It was also
his
share of the profit. What Bazooka had been waiting for. The money for the 460 Big Block that would destroy its way to victory.

Bazooka punched the windshield of his truck and spiderwebbed the glass.

“Calm down, Red.”

“We gotta get that money, J.D. I gotta derby car ta build for the big spring smashup. Hell, it’s less than six months away—and this bein’ the Firecracker 5000 we’re talkin’ about. I been waitin’ all year for that one. Hell, I been waitin’ a lot longer’n that.”

“Yeah, Red. I know,
I know
.”

He looked up the hill. “And that old trailer I got’s just fallin’ apart. Got my whole future tied up with this deal.”

“Uh-huh. Mine too, Red. And don’t forget my trailer ain’t no better’n yours.”

Bazooka Kincaid stared at Jerry Dean. Asked what they should do. “This is some bad goddamn timing, you know that?”

“Surely, I do.”

“Not to mention we got more crops to pull. Sumbitch, it’s gonna frost next week—hell, it dropped down in the forties last night.”

“I know man, it’s gettin’ close. And once they frost, they’re done.”

Bazooka got loud and ejected a burst of spit out the window with his words. “So what in God’s name you suggest we do? Cuz you do not seem too worried.”

Jerry Dean shook his head like he understood. “I got this figured out. It’s a hell of a plan, trust me.”

“What’s that?”

Jerry Dean asked Bazooka Kincaid if he had any weed.

“Up yonder.”

“Let’s go ’n’ get high. We’ll talk about it.”

Bazooka Kincaid said OK
and turned his truck around and followed Jerry Dean up the hill.

They sat at a picnic table made of rotten wood and Jerry Dean laid out a plan for his associate. “Now, Red, you’re ’bout the only man in this world I trust … and you know that.”

Bazooka lit a doobie and pulled a few quick hits and passed it.

“Cuz I got some shit to tell you. I been thinkin’ ’bout this for a while now.”

“What’s that?”

“Just chew on this for a minute, will ya?
See … you think about it,
we’re
the ones goin’ through all this trouble—truck-jackin’ people ’n’ whatnot. Shit, Red, that’s the biggest risk right there. We need to be at the other end of this deal.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean,
we’re
the ones need to be up top on that hill.”

Bazooka thought about that and watched Jerry Dean babysit the joint. “We need to be on what hill?”
he asked. “Are you
high
? I’ll be goddamned I step one foot on that hill. I’d rather light my cock on fire.”

Jerry Dean held the joint between his shit-stained fingers, and Bazooka watched the paper burn down while smoke drifted from the end. Bazooka didn’t like that, good weed they had worked so hard for being wasted. He snatched the joint from Jerry Dean’s clutch. “Goddamn, Bogart. Hand it back.”

Jerry Dean caught himself staring at the ground and shook his head. Told himself snap out of it. “Anyways, I been thinkin’ here, Red. That Reverend’s crazier than a coon dog with two peters. I cain’t say as I trust that sumbitch no more at all. Hell, yesterday I thought he might just as soon kill me as drive me back ta town.”

Bazooka said he understood. “That Reverend’s nutty as fuck, but damn if he ain’t the best cook I ever seen.”

“And that there’s no lie, the man
is
good, Red.
That
I will give him. But he’s fucked up in ways I cain’t describe.” Jerry Dean tapped the side of his head with a finger.

“I know,” Bazooka said. “You don’t have to tell me. I did time with the man.”

“I reckon you did,” Jerry Dean said. “How could I forget?”

Bazooka Kincaid had drawn time in Algoa a good ways back. He’d gotten out near the same time Jerry Dean went in. Bazooka had done four years for armed robbery. He and Wade Brandt were robbing Cracker Barrel restaurants and using the proceeds to finance a derby car. They were planning for the Firecracker 5000. An annual event Bazooka had spent the better part of ten years trying to attend. Up north, it was a four-hour drive, but the payoff was a cool five grand and the bragging rights that came with the title.

They had a solid plan and they were original. Robbing gas stations wasn’t worth the payoff and banks were too risky—both lessons Wade Brandt would eventually learn the hard way—so Bazooka came up with a fine idea one Sunday morning.

They’d been up for two days when they stopped to refuel in Franklin County. The gas station shared a parking lot with a Cracker Barrel.