Branches - Hardcover

Cullin returns (Whompyjawed, 1999) to gritty west Texas where lawmen, like Sheriff Branches, can be mean as hungry rattlersand, to judge by this case, almost as complex. Branches tells his story in short, uneven lines of print centered on the page, leaving wide-open spaces spreading off to either side. This, one would conclude, is poetry, though in Cullins hands its wildly uneven indeed, swinging from tin-eared ludicrous (Havent had a bit to munch / since lunch, / and even then / it wasnt much) to character-abandoning profound (My conclusion: / Man is made / of infinite arrogances, / a multitude of stupidities). As the reader first meets him, Sheriff Branches is sitting with his back against the well of an old homestead (twenty-two miles / into the heart of isolation) that, it turns out, is where his own mean-fathered childhood was spent, the place since burned to the ground (by the vengeful Branches himself). Whats happening just now, however, is that somebody is down in the well, splashing around / like a minnow and screaming for help as Branches sits there thinking things over. Whos in there? Well, its Branches stepson Danny. Howd he get there? Well, Branches heaved him into join the two decomposing Mexicans whom he did the same with some time before. And why did he drop Dannyor the others, for that matterin? And whatll he do next? These, undoubtedly, are questions best for readers themselves to find the answers to, and in their quest theyll also find out what Branches talks about when he talks to his gun (Gun, / I hope youll forgive / what Ive done), what he did to a gay man, to a lady traveler, and how much he loves being home / all cozy and relaxed after a sad days work. Still, says Branches, sometimes / its all so meaningless / I cant stop my brain / from flooding out my ears. Yes, something like that. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A smalltown West Texas sheriff is the antihero of Cullin's quietly chilling short novel in verse. Pacing the desolate, burnt-out ruins of his boyhood home 22 miles from town, Sheriff Branches (a minor character in Cullin's previous novel, Whompyjawed), catalogues his misdeeds and probes his conscience. On the surface, he is a solid family man, devoted to his wife, Mary, and looking forward to a cozy evening at home eating beef burritos and watching America's Funniest Home Videos. But as Cullin reveals almost immediately, Branches has killed his stepson, Danny, pushing the teenager down a well on the deserted property and emptying his Colt Trooper MK III after him. At the bottom of the well, the decaying corpses of two Mexicans already bear witness to Branches's homicidal instincts. Danny, a budding neo-Nazi, may have committed a crime of sorts. But Branches's other victims--and their numbers multiply--are guilty of little more than crossing the sheriff's path. Nevertheless, Branches remains a remarkably sympathetic character, the balladlike strains of his narration counteracting the grisliness of his actions. Cullin is adept at blending the affable and the sinister, and while this hybrid effort is just a simple song in a minor key, as such it succeeds admirably. Film rights to William Finnegan. (Mar.)
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