Description

Kituwah Falls, Tennessee, 2016. Three-year-old Ashley Sizer dies in her family’s driveway, under the wheels of
her father’s ’90 Plymouth. Her homemade doll lies propped against a clinker. Her father is high on Vicodin. Her
obituary says she walked into the open arms of the Lord.

Vane “Sarge” Walker reaches the driveway first. He is a Vietnam-era Army Ranger, a retired Forest Service
ranger, and a volunteer EMT. He has buried a wife and a son. He swears he will pull the pill mills out by the
roots by Memorial Day.

His granddaughter Samantha is valedictorian, a motocross racer, and a dead shot with a .22. When Bo Wruck
broke her collarbone on the track, she threatened to kill him. The school counselor gave her a choice: jail or a
journal. She writes to the children she hasn’t had yet.

Bo keeps a journal too. His stepmother manages a pain clinic. Bo collects the debts. “I ain’t much at writing
because I ain’t much at reading.”

The counselor sets a jar of jellybeans on the table between them. Most are fine, he says. One is poisoned.
Every unnecessary risk is another jellybean.

The money runs from Miami to Tampa to a quiet Cape Cod house in the Knoxville suburbs. The sheriff is paid.
The obituaries keep coming. Sarge and Ed Trent, the sheriff the pill vote put out of office, park a brown
Silverado across from the clinic and start counting.

In the Wrucks’ garage, three old men pass a bottle and agree on one thing: you can’t play half-ass with
rangers.

Everybody in Kituwah Falls is eating jellybeans