“That’s enough now,” says Tub Puller, hands on his gunbelt. But it is not enough. The Brunist bishop of West Condon is rediscovering his own lost self. The long, hard years on the road have taken their toll, but he is home again. He can feel within him once more the power of God, and that power, he knows, is of indignation and wrath. He brushes past the sheriff, raising his fist at the town dignitaries, just as Reverend Konrad Dreyer of the Trinity Lutheran Church, perhaps having hesitated a moment too long, touches the brim of his straw and steps forward to attempt to speak on behalf of the West Condon Ministerial Association.
“But WOE unto the wicked! Your day of reckoning is come! That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of ruin and desolation! Your blood shall be poured out like dust, and your flesh like DUNG!” Reverend Dreyer, who fully understands these apocalyptic yearnings and is eager to reassure the cult of the Association’s basic support for the freedom of all Christian religion, and indeed other religions as well—the Jewish faith, for example—nevertheless finds himself somewhat overawed by Reverend Baxter’s fiery passion and clenched fist (good Heavens, does he mean to strike someone?), and he staggers back into his own footsteps, banging into a cursing cameraman. It might have been better, he thinks, to have expressed the Association’s views in a written letter. “In the fire of His jealous wrath, all the earth shall be consumed, for a full, yea, sudden end He will make of all the inhabitants of the earth! As the whirlwind passes, so will the house of the wicked be no more! But the tabernacle off the upright shall flourish!” Reverend Baxter gestures up the hill behind him, hearing the murmured “Amens” roll like ripples of subdued thunder as several drop to their knees. There are many new people here today, they have large expectations, he is speaking to them, telling them what they have been waiting to hear, he is of them, and they of him. He raises both arms like a conductor, whereupon strains of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” can be heard, as if on cue, like a call to arms—though it is not “The Battle Hymn,” it is one of the Brunist songs: “O the Sons of Light are marching…” Reverend Dreyer, who has been called here by his banker friend as a Christian leader, understands much of the present moment’s dynamics, at least all that regarding religion, for he has made a study of sectarian conflict, which he believes to be due, at root, to a small but specific set of irresolvable philosophical paradoxes that need to be accepted as conundrums and not be allowed to divide men on the basis of what cannot be differing truths but only differing opinions—or, rather, like most seeming paradoxes, single truths identified by the very contraries they contain. This does not seem to be the right moment to explain this, however. “For, verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall LIVE! All that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of DAMNATION!”
“Sounds as how Red here is fixin’ to dump us all down the bottomless pit!” declares Johnson. The volume on the P.A. system has been cranked up too high and he has to shout over the screeching feedback.
“I done worked that shithole,” calls out one of his companions, the ex-miner Steve Lawson, weaving about on his big feet. “We shall see the cities crumble and the earth give up its dead!” the Brunists are singing over the shrieking P.A. “For the end of time has come!” A state police helicopter, which has been coming and going all day, is back again, clattering overhead. The banker points up at it and speaks in the mayor’s ear. “And, hell with it, boys,” Lawson shouts. “I ain’t a-goin’ back down!”
That draws whoops and loud ay-mens from the drunken hecklers, but these fools are of no concern to Abner Baxter. Soon enough they will grovel. Nor does he have time for paradox or conundrums, did he know of such speculations; in fact, he has never used either word in all his long life, rich in high-minded rhetoric as it has been. His eye is fixed firmly on the end time, on the coming day of glory and of retribution, and thus on eternity. Has been since the day he abandoned godless communism—redemption not displacing justice, but simply redefining it. “Hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!” the Brunists are singing. Those who know the words are shouting along. “Hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!” There is less feedback now, but the helicopter is swooping lower, chopping up the sung words. Mouth-filling “glory” gets through the racket, “grace” does not. Abner does not have Hiram Clegg’s silver tongue or Ely Collins’ quiet persuasiveness, but he does have power. He has exhorted the multitude in vast open spaces and has been heard. He knows what they want to hear, because it is what he wants to hear: Blessed are the true believers for they shall enter straightways through the gates into the holy city, while outside the gates are dogs, and sorcerers, whoremongers, murderers, idolaters, and blasphemous foulmouthed imbeciles such as these, and do not doubt it, they shall know eternal torment! He raises his fist and cries out: “And I heard a great voice outa Heaven, saying—“ but he is interrupted by another loud roar, this time on the mine road: it is his banished son and leather-jacketed friends, and little Paulie, too, and they stop him cold.
The motorcyclists, led by the redhead, leave the road and, heads down over their handlebars, dip into the ditch and up again as if rising from the bowels of the earth, then come gunning straight up at them over the patchy grass, as though to plow suicidally into their midst. None of them wears a helmet, except for the wildly grinning boy on the back of one of the bikes, his arms locked tight around the driver, an older man with a gray braid. The panicking crowds at the foot of the hill scatter in all directions, believers and nonbelievers and those who don’t know what to think. Abner’s daughter Amanda, squeaking in fear, has squeezed up behind him and is clutching his hand again. “Is that your son?” demands John P. Suggs. “Whoopee!” howls Cheese Johnson, grinning his wide gap-toothed grin, as his pals abandon him at full boozy lope, Steve Lawson confusedly on his hands and knees. “Hammer down, boys!” And Cheese extends his arms to one side as though dangling a bullfighter’s cape. “Those are the bastards who attacked me!” shouts the banker to the sheriff and police chief, pointing, while backing away and bracing himself. “Hang on, Runt!” shouts the biker with the gray braid, and all five hit their brakes simultaneously and skid into a screaming two-wheel slide, kicking up clouds of dirt, spraying the fleeing onlookers with shrapnel of slate and cinder, the short hairy one with the tiny face stopping just inches from Johnson’s planted feet. “Fucken A!” Johnson laughs, and pumps his fist in front of his crotch, and the hairy biker returns the grin, but as if in miniature. The redhead rights his motorcycle and with a wide swing of his arm flings the head of a dog at Abner Baxter’s feet. They all scramble out of the way as though the ghastly thing might explode—all but the impassive John P. Suggs and Abner himself, who is frozen to the spot, staring in horror at the bloody head his son has hurled at him. Ezra Gray, nose down, screaming at his wife to push faster, is being wheeled uphill, where the mayor and fire chief, wheezing heavily, are already standing amid the Brunist faithful in a state of dumb amazement. Two of the other bikers take aim and throw the decapitated carcasses of a pair of white doves like fluttery little footballs. Their wings open in flight and they come more to resemble tattered paper airplanes. “Help!” squeaks the Chamber of Commerce secretary, ducking, though ducking the wrong way and, as he falls, he catches one of the headless birds square in the face. “Gosh Almighty! What the heck is happening?!” The other dove lands in Ezra Gray’s lap, a perfect throw. “Touchdown!” whoops the wild-eyed biker with the blue headband and the haloed skull tattoo on his bare shoulder. “Oh dang it to shoot!” Ezra cries and starts yelping hysterically, his wife Mildred plucking the dead bird from his lap and calming him down while he curses her bitterly. The Lutheran president of the West Condon Ministerial Association, who finds himself already some distance away from all these happenings and still moving at some speed across the open field,
decides that, though he has contributed little to the day’s proceedings, he will contribute no more, while behind him, back at the hill, the banker is yelling: “These are the sorts of people you have brought here, Suggs!” “They are not of us,” replies the mine owner coldly. And then, with diabolical howls and raised fingers, the bikers roar away, Chief Dee Romano firing over their heads, to what purpose he does not know. Not to stop them, to be sure, maybe just to make them go faster. And as quickly as they came, they are gone, just a distant hollow rumble lost in all the other noise. John P. Suggs, turning to the sheriff, growls, “I don’t care how you do it, Puller, but I want those hoodlums locked up or run out of here. And I want this hill secured. Now.”
The loudspeakers are screeching and the helicopter, lifting away to follow the bikers, is still blanketing the hillside with its thuppety-thup rattle, but the songs and shouting have ceased. All are staring at the dog’s head. Graybearded Ben Wosznik walks slowly down the hill, his somber wife following a few paces behind. He picks the head up and cradles it. He stands there a moment, gazing out on the distance into which the bikers have just disappeared, and the helicopter as well, his fingers absently scrubbing the dog’s skull behind the ears. Someone turns off the squealing P.A. system and a sudden hush descends. People emerge quietly from the tents to gaze down upon the scene at the foot of the hill. Muttered prayers can be heard. A boy’s hysterical whimpering. The mayor and fire chief, surprised to find themselves up among the believers, step gingerly back down the hill. The cameramen, their fallen equipment recovered, are filming the dog’s head in Ben Wosznik’s arms. “Rocky,” someone whispers in answer to a reporter’s question. “Oh, him, you mean? Wosznik. W-O-Z…” “Man, oh man,” groans the Chamber of Commerce secretary, wiping at the blood on his face. “This is really crazy!” Which will be that night’s area TV sound bite. “I don’t think this is legal,” the bank lawyer is saying to the sheriff. “See me about it tomorrow, mister. Right now, I got a job to do. You got thirty minutes and then we are gonna seal off the access road and arrest anyone who don’t belong here.”
Angela Bonali wants advice about giving in. “How much have you given in already?” her friend asks. They have decided to drive past the mine hill on the way home from the park to see what’s happening. “Well, just about everything.” “You might want to hold something back.” The hill is still full of tents and little white spots all over it like cotton tufts, but they can see crowds streaming away from the bottom. Maybe everything is already over. Police car lights are flashing. Maybe not. Angie doesn’t care. Tommy really does like to try everything, but she always just wants one thing: Tommy on top of her and inside her, his weight falling on her softly. She loses herself then, and it’s magic. Everything else requires a kind of skill, and that means having to think too much. “Do you? Hold back, I mean?” “No, but I’m not trying to keep a man.”
Angela had just had her second bath of the day and was applying blush and mascara for at least the third time when her friend from the bank called and invited her for a Sunday drive. “I had a date and got stood up,” she said. Her friend is older, nearly twenty-five, but very sexy for her age, and Angela can’t believe anyone would stand her up. But she could think of nothing else to do except have a third bath, and she had a whole afternoon to kill before her big date tonight, so she happily accepted, changing into jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers, and head scarf to protect her new hairdo and bouncing out to the car when it pulled up at the curb. Floating on air, she is. They drove over to the park on the river with the giant rocks. Angela felt like climbing up on them all and rubbing herself against them, especially after her friend pointed out one with a little bump on top that looked like a gigantic circumcised peter. “It’s divine!” she said (a sinful thought about the founding of the Church occurred to her and made her giggle and cross herself), and her friend said, “Well, yes, I guess it is.” Angela was just so madly, hopelessly, deliriously in love, and she couldn’t stop talking about it. “It’s just the greatest thing!”
Her friend smiled but did not seem convinced (well, she was having a bad day), so Angie changed the subject and told her the gossip going around that their boss has taken a lover. “I don’t really blame him. His wife is in awful shape.”
“But what if you were not at your best, and Tommy took a lover?”
“I hope I’m always at my best.”
“Speaking of the devil,” Angela says now, though it has been a while since they have done so, and points toward what her friend has just called “that sad little furor” over by the mine hill, where their boss can be seen walking away with the mayor and the police chief. He is very important. The most important person she knows. And he is also Tommy’s daddy, which makes him nearly the most important man in the world. But he does not seem happy. Her friend decides it’s time to drive on, not wanting to get mixed up in all that. “Can you imagine?” Angie says. “Those crazy people want the world to end!”
“I’m sorry,” her friend says.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. Talking to myself. I’ve been angry. I’m not angry anymore.” She sighs, winks somewhat sadly at Angela. “I just wish the world were other than it is.”
“Oh, not me! I love it and I never want it to change!”
Priscilla Tindle stops the car at the edge—herself also at the edge of something—of an open field across the way from the mine hill. She has so dreaded this trip, is full of dread still. Distantly, through the trees bordering the field on the other side, they can see crowds pouring away, police lights flashing, can hear the sirens. “Look, Wesley! Something bad has happened! We could get arrested!”
“Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
Jesus speaking. “Whithersoever” is a favorite of his. He likes to show off all that King James lingo, Wesley preferring the Revised Standard. She knows why Wesley wants to go there. He has been ask ing over and over and she has always found an excuse, afraid of those horrible people and of Wesley’s horrible wife. He doesn’t know yet about the money, but he wants to get his car back, and his ruined golf clubs, which were in the trunk. He wants to stop the woman from signing anything that would put him in danger. And when that grabby pig cleaned out the manse, she took the orange juice squeezer, and some of Wesley’s favorite old shirts, which that crazy boy has probably inherited, and his hot water bottle, which he needs for his lower back pain, not being quite up to some of Prissy’s routines. Prissy is helping him work that pain away with stretching exercises, but she has pushed him a little too hard and he could really use that hot water bottle now. For the past couple of days, he has been walking around in the sitting position. Her poor dear lamb. Lambs. But as to why his indwelling Christ wants to go to the hill, it’s something of a mystery to her. He says he wants to tell everyone the Apocalypse has already happened, just as he said it would, and this is it, so they should all just go home.
There is a man hurrying toward them across the weedy field. It is the Lutheran minister Reverend Konrad Dreyer. He looks rattled and disheveled and is without the straw boater he always wears. “They’re throwing dead animals around over there,” he gasps. “It’s getting pretty ugly.” This is what she wanted to hear. She offers Reverend Dreyer a lift into town, Wesley thankfully not objecting, and on the ride the minister describes the wild scene he had just witnessed, Wesley listening with a wily, knowing, yet impatient look on his face, a look she has come to dread. “I must say, Wes, it does cause one to reconsider the whole ecumenical movement.”
“Does it? I suppose, Connie, that you believe in the usual Christian notion of a benevolent God working His unfathomable will in Heaven and on earth, with worldly self-sacrifice the path to the Heavenly kingdom, spiritual peace lying on the other side of suffering, the whole idea of immortality being validated by our desire for it, like our desire for food and water.” Prissy is impressed. She hasn’t heard Wesley speak so
sensibly since that memorable night she joined him in the bathtub. “That, and the redemptive power of my sacrifice. Christ’s sacrifice. Am I right?”
“Well, that’s a simple way of putting it, but, sure, something like that.”
“Well, all that’s completely stupid. It’s nothing like that. If that’s what you think, you’re as crazy as those people back there.” Oh oh, thinks Prissy. “God’s one tough hardballing cookie, my friend—about as benevolent as cancer. Just look what He put me through. His son, I mean.”
Reverend Dreyer in the rearview mirror looks nonplussed. “Wes, is everything all right?”
“All right? Well, I’ve been driven out of my church and home and made more or less unemployable, they’re trying to get me locked up, my wife has run off with a sick boy to live with those lunatic zealots and has taken our car and everything we owned, I’m reduced to sleeping on the floor in somebody else’s garage, but other than that, sure, everything’s fine. How about yourself, Connie?”
The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel Page 29
