Branches

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.)