Bio

Some with Bran’s meth-cooking background might blame their behavior on bad upbringing. Bran doesn’t offer that excuse. His parents -Malcolm and June Maddox – are salt-of-the-earth Nebraska farmers, active in their church and the PTA, who attended all the school plays, ferried their kids to hockey, softball and basketball practice, and proudly sent them all off to college. His brothers, Greg and Hugh are an accountant and a schoolteacher respectively. His sisters Gwen and Megan are a doctor and IT Director of a small automotive parts manufacturer. Baby sister Lynn seems the one most likely to take over the family farm.

“It’s almost embarrassing how good a childhood I had,” Bran would say. “My Mom baked chocolate chip cookies and made pancakes, and my Dad knew how to hug his sons. I went to the prom with my high school sweetheart and we broke up without any hard feelings.” If someone were to ask how he ended up with a B.S. in chemical engineering from Drexel, but failed to complete his Master’s, he would answer that it happened because (a) book larnin’ wasn’t, in the end, something he particularly enjoyed and (b) meth-cooking was much more lucrative. He started it in college, and started squatting in an abandoned warehouse to expand his operations – and as a place to house the number of stray dogs and cats that he came to take care of.

His close-cropped hair just covers the scar from the gunshot he took to his head. The shooting had nothing to do with his meth business. Instead, it was a random mugging of a bystander and a stray shot that put him in the hospital for three weeks. Fortunate in more ways than one – no permanent damage (that anyone can spot, anyway), and no need to try to explain to the cops or his parents that he was shot by one of the dealers he supplied. One of his users – Jamie Murray – slipped in one day to reassure Bran that he would take care of the animals.

After Bran came out of the hospital, looking at the world with Awakened eyes, he tapered off the meth-cooking. But he still supplied – and supplies – Jamie out of a sense of obligation.

Note: This photograph used under Creative Commons license.