The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  “Hey now, that’s the number one toppa the charts idea a the week, Patti Jo. I got my K’s fer the night. Jist one more set, so’s they’ll feed us. I’ll cut it short. Kin you sing?”

  “I can almost carry a tune if it’s not got any more notes than ‘Jingle Bells.’”

  “Okay, how bout ‘Honky Tonk Angel’? It’s silent movies in here. Let’s jist have us some fun.”

  …

  “I really liked singing with you, Duke. That was fun.”

  “Me, too. You ain’t got a very big voice, but it’s purty.”

  “Oh, I’m not a real singer. But you help. Best night I’ve had since can’t remember when. I feel so good I almost feel bad. You’re some kinda lover, too.”

  “Not mostly. I can genrally raise enough wood t’do the dirty, but cep fer the little spurt at the end, I don’t git a whole bushel a kicks outa it. But you’re sumthin special, Patti Jo. Took me clean outa my mizzerbul beat-down self. How long y’been doin’ that?”

  “Since I was twelve. My father did me in my confirmation dress. That’s how I know I was twelve. I don’t remember much about it, but I do recall the blood on the starchy white skirt and worrying how I was going to get it out before we had to go to church.”

  “And that was when your mama split.”

  “Well, yes, about that time, but I don’t think him raping me was the main cause of it. She’d married this good-looking Italian high school football star who’d turned into a fat drunken bully like a prince into a toad, and finally after fifteen years or so had got fed up with him. Him and his quick fist. He always had this sick grin on his face when he hit you, and it was what you remembered even more than getting hit. She always said her only regret was that the mean sonuvabitch never got killed or crippled in a mine accident. But finally he did. I don’t know if she was sorry about that or not, but probably not. Probably she went out and got drunk like it was a birthday party or something.”

  “I had this guy I useta play ball with. He was a pitcher like me, and though he couldn’t throw as hard, he was trickier and sharper—he could smash a fly on a barn door at sixty feet—and he actually got a brief sniff at the big time. He was specially good at a inswingin’ curve so sharp it could break batters’ fingers on the bat, but that was his undoin’ cuz them batters got pissed off and begun sendin’ line drives straight back through the mound, aimin’ at his dome. He was too quick fer ’em but eventually they nailed his pitchin’ shoulder and he ended up workin’ in a doughnut factory. But the point a my story is his ole man had been a sarge in the army, had got shot up and had, you know, one a them hinged meathooks fer a hand, and he used it to terrorize everbody, includin’ the guy’s ole lady, who went completely crackers from the thing and finally stuck her head in the oven, and his two sisters who was both somewheres round twelve or so like you was. He’d snap that claw over their shoulder from behind, push ’em to their knees and threaten to stick that hook up ’em and do a lot more damage ifn they didn’t take it and shut up. Well, the guy noticed his old man was beginnin’ to cast lustful looks his way, too, and he figgered it was time to git his little butt on the road. So he waited until one day the ole fella was humpin’ one a his sisters and he had a good look at his backside with everthing floppin’ and he took his baseball and sent in a hummer that crushed the ole guy’s maracas. The sonuvabitch was in a unholy rage and come roarin’ at him t’kill him, but the kid was waitin’ fer him with a live wire that he calmly handed to the steel hook and walked away, leavin’ the ole man dancin’, and went off into the world t’seek his fame and fortune. Ain’t that the berries? Whattaya laughin’ at?”

  “Your stories are always so funny, Duke. Why aren’t my stories funny like that?”

  “Probly cuz yours are true.”

  “Aren’t yours?”

  “Some parts. ’Djever have any kids?”

  “I got pregnant a few times. A lotta miscarriages, if that’s what they were. Had the weird feeling sometimes my dead sister was killing them off. Who I thought was my dead sister.”

  “Ain’t none of ’em lived?”

  “I don’t think so. I think I would of remembered that.”

  “Well, I sure ain’t fixin’ t’make new ones, good lookin’, but I wouldn’t say no to encorin’ our duet. I’d like t’try it agin, as the song goes. One more time.”

  “Sure. Move it on over, Duke, and come on in. You sing the high part this time, honey, I’ll sing the low.”

  I.6

  Sunday 12 April

  “I don’t like the man,” John P. Suggs says plainly. “Never did.”

  “Well, his conversion seemed genuine,” says Reverend Hiram Clegg, the plump silver-haired bishop of the State of Florida and president of the International Council of Brunist Bishops, who was present on the Night of the Sacrifice and witnessed that conversion. Reverend Clegg, the most successful of all the Brunist missionaries, has arrived at the Wilderness Camp today with two busloads of pilgrims from his Fort Lauderdale congregation, the first of hundreds of Brunist Followers expected later this week, and this little Sunday afternoon meeting in the church office has been called to talk about the logistics of all that and about the anniversary celebrations and dedication ceremonies next Sunday. It is, however, the imminent return of Reverend Abner Baxter, who is expected the day before those ceremonies that now has their full attention. Debra has been included in this meeting because of her knowledge of actions likely to be taken by city and state officials, and she is eager to exhibit the kind of thoughtful serenity that has been all too lacking of late (she doesn’t know why she said those things at the Easter prayer meeting, it was as if she were under a spell—that holy ecstasy maybe that she’d been seeking, but it was terrifying, and she found herself suddenly coming like an impassioned bride in front of everybody). She has only the dimmest recollection of Reverend Baxter, though she has been aware of the anxiety he arouses and learned more about him during her shopping trips with Clara. “The man then stayed on here a time and suffered more than any of us from the persecution, escaping only when incarceration became imminent,” Hiram continues. “And he has been intransigent in the vigorous propagation of the Brunist faith. He might not be the man you once knew.”

  “He was the one who struck that girl with his car and killed her, was he not?”

  “That would seem to be the case,” replies Hiram, whose people are presently getting a tour of the camp conducted by Darren and Billy Don. “If one ignores divine intervention. It could equally be said that God called her to His bosom and thereby launched our true religion, Abner Baxter merely His instrument of the moment, in the manner of Saul of Tarsus.”

  John P. Suggs grunts and shakes his burry head at that.

  Ben would seem to agree with Mr. Suggs that Reverend Baxter is a troublemaker and apt to be disruptive (“There’s no music in him,” he says and Debra feels she understands exactly what he means), while Clara, like Hiram, is more inclined to be conciliatory and respect Baxter’s loyal ministry on the grounds that not to include him, and with open arms, would amount to a failure of their mission, and that is Debra’s thinking, too, though her only expression of this has been the occasional nod while Clara is speaking.

  “I have known Red Baxter a very long time,” says Mr. Suggs, whose own short-cropped white hair was probably once red, “since back when he was an atheistic God-hating communist. He has condemned me to hell or worse many times over. He is a power-grabber, a parasite, and a renegade firebrand. If he moves in here, he’ll just bring trouble.”

  “Well, people moving in is surely a worry,” Clara says. “And not just Abner and his folks. This is a home for our movement, but not a home for people. We are mighty grateful, Hiram, for putting your congregation into motels. You can tell by the way things are out there that we ain’t set out for heaps of visitors. Soon as we’re done, all us living here will be heading out again on our missionary travels, except for them who run the office and keep the place in order and receive visit
ors and the like.” That’s me, Debra thinks, a little shocked at witnessing her life, its critical turning turned, spread out before her suddenly like a dummy hand in bridge, a win still possible, but not hers to play, she at best a kibitzer. Tour guide. Outsider still. “But I know, no matter what we’ve told them, a goodly number of these folks coming to the dedication got no place to go afterwards. They ain’t even sure there’s gonna be a afterwards. They figure they’re here till God calls them to glory. And I don’t doubt but what Abner and his people are thinking the same way.”

  “I would not want to see that man residing here,” says J. P. Suggs.

  “Well, I don’t know what we can do about it should he put it in his head to stay, seeing as how he’s still the bishop of West Condon.”

  “That was a mistake,” says J. P. Suggs. “I suggest you name a new one.”

  “Why are we so certain he wants to abandon his mission in the field?” asks Reverend Clegg. “He, too, may be inclined to think of this campsite development as a ceremonial home and central office, useful to him in the same way it is to the rest of us.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” says Ben.

  The fear of Reverend Baxter’s return leads to a discussion of the harassment of the camp the last couple of weeks by the locals, and Mr. Suggs says they’d best get on with fencing the camp off and patrolling it with armed guards. “I’ll bring a work crew over. We’ll use barbed wire.” This idea does not find favor with Clara, for it does not fit her notion of the movement’s frank openness and universality: “The Rapture ain’t gonna happen only here at the camp. Them people need to be saved, too. Maybe they want to be. Maybe they’re like little kids who say no when they mean yes.” Debra too is dismayed at the idea of an armed camp, hating weapons of all kinds, but the men seem to accept it as inevitable, and Mr. Suggs explains how he will help. Clara glances her way as though to say: We shall see about this.

  She and Clara did this week’s grocery buying over at the shopping strip outside Randolph Junction in order to avoid West Condoners, but while her keys still worked, Debra wanted to make a quick trip to the Presbyterian manse, so they risked a drive into West Condon on the way back. Clara said that now the word was out, it was anyway better to meet them head-on and not be afraid, though she probably was afraid. On the way to the manse, they swung by the charred foundations of Clara’s old home. Still much as it was five years ago, just more overgrown, the exposed basement filling up with weeds, leaves, litter, a sapling or two. “Like an untended grave,” Clara said, gazing out the car window. “I loved that basement, and I miss it now. And the big porch we had out front. Ely would write his thoughts, setting out there in a old wooden rocker we had. That burnt up, too. They never found who done it. They left a burnt black hand in a shoebox by the door, and everbody said that was the name of a old Italian gang, while others blamed the Klan or the Satanists. At the time I imagined the hand was my dead husband Ely’s and considered he mighta burnt our house down hisself as a hard message that all that was in the past, the Rapture was coming, Elaine and me we had to leave home and go out into the world to bring sinners to Jesus afore it was too late. Well, I was just so upset. Losing Ely was the worse thing ever happened to me, other than my boy getting killed in the war. Ely’s hands was not burnt and he never lost one. Only the leg.”

  Mr. Suggs informs them now that, based on conversations he has had with the Deepwater mine owners, it appears the West Condon authorities have been anticipating they might try to gather on the mine hill next Sunday and are planning to bring the state police out to close off access as they have done in the past. Clara wonders if, given the growing hostility toward them in the area, they should hold their ceremonies here at the camp instead, but Hiram reminds them that his people are counting on gathering out there on the nineteenth; that is mainly why they have come here, to reach the Mount of Redemption and learn first-hand from personal witnesses about the events of five years ago. These are the Followers, mostly elderly retirees, who have raised much of the money for the electrification of the camp, and they have come a long hard way to be here. They have even brought along their own tunics, purchased from the company that, thanks to Hiram’s initiative, now officially supplies them. Clara sighs and nods. “They’re right. It don’t make sense to be smack next to the Mount on such a day and not go there.”

  “Whose legal jurisdiction is that mine?” J. P. Suggs asks. “I think it must be the county’s. I will speak to Sheriff Puller. Cavanaugh more or less owns the governor, but the governor is a weak man and I am sure he would like to stay out of this. We could give him cause to back off, leave it in the sheriff’s hands. Besides, the owners of that mine are desperate to sell, and they know I am a prospective buyer.”

  “Well, we could simply finesse them,” Debra suggests, aware, even as she speaks it, that that verb may not be familiar to the others. “I mean, we could all go out there the day before and just stay on. We could set up tents and have a big campfire and hold an all-night vigil like they used to do on Easter Eve. If we are already there, the very worst they can do is force us to leave, but they might not want the negative publicity of that.”

  This idea gets general approval. Saturday is after all the Night of the Sacrifice. They all gathered on the Mount around bonfires on that night, too, before what happened happened. Hiram says he’s not sure all night on a hillside without adequate facilities is the best thing for his oldtimers, but once the hill is occupied, they could return to the motel, and if there is any sign of official resistance, they can be awakened and bused back out there. Mr. Suggs says he will see if he can get the washhouse latrines at the old mine reopened for the weekend. “Also,” Hiram adds, “I think my good friend, the mayor of Randolph Junction, might wish to join us on the Mount on Sunday. There will be news media present. Any attempted arrests could then be the cause of much local embarrassment. He will be among us here tonight and we can discuss it with him.”

  On such a positive note, the meeting draws to a close, but not before Clara speaks, as she did on their shopping trip, of her dream of a proper Brunist tabernacle church to be built on camp land, or even on the Mount of Redemption if it can be acquired, something Mr. Suggs is already working on. He acknowledges this news with a nod as all turn admiringly toward him, and points out that this weekend’s ingathering is a valuable opportunity for fundraising to this purpose. He promises rough architectural sketches by Saturday, but swears all to silence about his negotiations for the hill, lest they be compromised. This is warmly agreed to and Clara says, “Hiram, do you reckon you could say a few words about it tonight at the special ceremonies?”

  When Hiram Clegg smiles, he shows all his teeth, and they are very white.

  After the meeting, Debra slips away from the busy Main Square and takes a walk along the creek to the arched wooden footbridge that in turn leads to a path through overgrown brambles and a thick stand of trees into an open weedy place full of high grass and wildflowers, a hidden corner of the camp she has so far kept secret from the Brunists. In the old church camp days, she used to come back here to get away from the children and collect her thoughts and on sunny days to open up her shirt and let the hot sky make love to her in the old creation myth way, in the same way that God made love to Mary: sweetly, gently, immaculately. With all the strangers voraciously prowling the camp, she can’t risk that today (well, she undoes a button), but the sun on her, lying in the grass, brings back warm memories of it. Everything was so easy then, her life seemingly so sensibly and comfortably structured. An illusion of course, like so many that life throws up, projections on a screen that seem real but vanish when the bulb burns out. She is learning to free herself from such fantasies, to make her own life, redeem her own soul. Uncertain times lie ahead, but she’s doing what’s right and everything will work out—she feels certain of it. It has to. True, she has done a rather dangerous and scary thing, but the world is dangerous and scary, and, if anything, she feels safer out here among these kind peop
le than in that cruel and stupid town, living with that cold unappreciative man.

  Not that Wesley was not important to her. He was, and there was a time she loved him dearly, or thought she did. She was without direction until he came along, rescuing her from the tedium of boring college courses and giving her a role in life: the minister’s wife. She sometimes felt like she was in a movie and that was her name, not Debra Edwards, who was merely the actress who played the part. Wesley back then was both fun and serious, always a bit distracted, but thoughtful and loving with a playful sense of humor, and she lived for the little games they played and the good deeds they did, waiting for the children to come. But they never did. And then the possibility that they might withered away as Wesley got more and more absorbed in his pastoral duties, his sermon writing, his engagement with the dismal insignificant affairs of the town, his golf playing, his locked-away whatever. As her body filled and sagged and her hopes for children faded, she had to make do with the church nursery, summer camps, her projects for troubled teenagers. Sometimes after christenings and baptisms, she had to slip into the cloakroom where the choir robes were hung and have a cry. But then came the April night her husband and his friends kidnapped Colin Meredith from the cult and brought him to the manse. She immediately recognized the tearful orphan boy as the beautiful and sensitive son she never had. It was she who found him later that night, lying naked in the bathroom with his wrists slashed, and saved his life. Wesley’s decision after that to commit the boy to a mental institution, just when he most needed the sort of love and nurturing that only she could provide, was the beginning of the end.

  She can hear a meadowlark somewhere, quite nearby, asking its persistent question, which sounds like “What more must I do?” Debra is determined to play her part to the full, to surrender utterly to the Brunist community and to what they call the Spirit, just as she did on Easter night, no matter where it leads her, no matter how embarrassing. She wants desperately to believe as they believe and do as they do and become wholly one with these people to whom she has pledged the rest of her life, yet she knows she still has not achieved it. She is still Mrs. Edwards. When the Florida buses pulled in today after church, the visitors poured out to embrace old friends—Clara and her missionary team had visited the Florida congregation on more than one occasion in the past and had brought about many conversions—and, though she was politely introduced as the camp director, Debra felt very much excluded. Mrs. Hiram Clegg, another West Condon disaster widow, then joined other women in a visit to Mabel Hall’s caravan, where, as Debra understands it, other forms of prophecy are entertained, and where Debra has never been invited. Not that she would know exactly what to do or how to behave, finding suchlike as horoscopes and tea leaves a bit silly. She shares this with Clara, who rarely goes there either, though Clara does trust Mabel’s intuition and often follows her advice. But the snub hurts. Even Colin with his strange ways is more welcome than she. As one of the original twelve, he was warmly embraced by all the new arrivals, most effusively by Reverend Clegg himself, who came limping down out of the bus to hug him, his pale blue eyes atwinkle with tears. When they asked about Colin’s friend, Carl Dean Palmers, Colin told them that he was still in prison, where he will be kept for the rest of his life in solitary confinement, and they all sighed and commiserated with him about that and promised to pray for Carl Dean and for his release. There are some young guitar-plucking teenagers in the Florida group and they immediately made friends with Colin and the office boys, and they all went off together, leaving Debra feeling ever more bereft even as the crowds welled up around her. Lonely amid the many: Is this part of her fate, too? What more must I do?