A Swollen Red Sun
A Swollen Red Sun by Matthew McBrideI received an free e-book Advanced Reading Copy from NetGalley for fair review. It was a 'don't start reading if you can't finish in one sitting' kind of book. I gave it a Five Star.
It's a story where almost all the characters are despicable representations of human beings. Their dialogue runs true to the deep rural south. The town is being destroyed by low life meth makers. Jerry Dean Skaggs is one of them.
They live in run down trailers.
Olen Brandt an old farmer is just trying to live out his life minus his beloved wife. He quotes: "Things you acquire on this earth are meaningless once you're alone, & memories become the currency of choice."
..."the humidity a wet veneer that coated his aged & withered body with cold sweat....It was hell getting old. Things that used to work, didn't. Things that did work barely worked at all."
"Frost had come & killed what it could & wounded everything else."
Fish, Jerry Dean's partner in crime found out his wife was cheating on him. "He thought about his wife & his cousin, & those thoughts birthed hurt, the deepest he had ever felt. It metastasized within him until the hurt that became anger had become cancer, & it surged through his body like electricity, killing everything that lived inside."
Deputy Sheriff Dale Banks is in Jerry Dean Skaggs trailer. He looked down at the "litter box filled with th fresh coil-shaped droppings & kicked the box hard--sent it into the wall--in a powerful exlosion of gray rock-turd dust. He took a deep breath feeling both relief & disappointment."
"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 scattered across the floor.
He knelt down & looked closely & saw that it was money. Thousands stacked in bundles wrapped in plastic.
He scooped it all up before he could think to do otherwise, all that he could find, & shoved it in an orange & black dufel bag that said go dutchmen!
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 cookin meth in a child's bedroom. Banks tossed the duffel bag on the front seat."
He felt he needed the money more to help care for a special needs daughter & for college funds for his other children. He had always been an honest cop & a good man. He attempted to walk the straight & narrow path. Now he faced a moral dilemma of major proportions & potentially lethal consequences.
Olen Brandt had to pick up two tanks of anhydrous ammonia from Cuddy's Farm & Supply.
"He watched the fading sun go down from the old man's porch, where it fell behind the barn in a pink death & burned into a purple ball that became night."
Sheriff Herb Feeler's description: "an aging cowboy with grand ambitions to go places he never went."
When Jerry Dean found the money missing he was desperate. He had to find a way to get it back. His judgment is lacking in the actions he takes. The meth heads sit around discussing how their lives will improve only to forget about any changes once they get high.
"Jerry Dean Skaggs dealt with a family who cooked crank with the anhydrous he supplied. Stange knoll dwellers from Goat Hill. A hard vicious man named Butch Pogue who was violent & 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 Alcoa & had repented of his sins Now he called himself a reverend, though Jerry Dean thought that was far from true.'
