The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  Homesick Uriah agrees to go with them, but his buddy Hovis has not turned up in the trailer park—he’s a bit slow, probably he didn’t understand what was happening—so Uriah goes trudging back up through the sticky brown mud in his old rain slicker and soft-billed cap to search for him. Outside the Meeting Hall, he finds big television trucks and tents and camera equipment and cars parked everywhere, even on the grass and in the flower beds, and crowds grown so thick he cannot squeeze into the hall, but he has a key to the kitchen service entrance off the back parking lot and he lets himself in that way. The kitchen is jammed up with people, too (his heart sinks a little, thinking about the hard labor they’ve put into this building, and how little these folks respect it), but over their heads he can see young Darren in the main hall addressing the gathered faithful, spelling out the peculiar signs that have marked this time and place for momentous events soon to happen and indeed already happening, as Uriah has often heard him do, though never so sure of himself as now. He speaks of the voice in the ditch and the headless biker and the double sevens and the emptied graves and the sightings of Christ Jesus, and along with everything else, he tells them what that sick man who was supposed to be the Prophet Bruno said last Sunday before the terrible explosion in the camp: “Dark… Light.” He says it has many meanings but it was partly an astonishing prophecy of that blast itself just minutes before it happened, and this is because of what Uriah and Hovis told him later about dynamite used in the mines sometimes being called “black lightning.” Darren was amazed. “Why, that just fits!” he said, and Uriah and Hovis felt proud, but of what they weren’t sure. Darren, who has grown up some since his early days here as Clara’s office boy, is wearing his belted white tunic with a golden medallion on a chain around his neck and carrying a mine pick like a kind of staff, just like the Prophet in the picture, the very image of a young holy man, his bright blond curls standing out around his ears like a halo. The boy has a quiet, spellbinding way of speaking, giving the impression he knows what he’s talking about, even if there is some question about that among most of Clara’s people who have known him longer. But these are not Clara’s people. These are the Followers who have been traipsing around in the fields after Abner Baxter, a whole army of them, brazen and hungry, wet, raggedy, and ready for whatever, including the Rapture and the violent upheavals of the Apocalypse, if that’s what’s next. Uriah supposes that if so many of his people are here, Abner cannot be far behind, and, sure enough, there’s a parting of the masses at the main door like the folding back of the Red Sea, and to loud applause and cheers and “Bru-no! Bru-no!” chants, in strides the Brunist bishop of West Condon with all the fiery purpose of a short red-headed Moses, thick jaw a-jut, a few cameramen and photographers sliding in in his wake as though he were towing them, and in his booming voice he calls everyone to prayer. You could hear him all the way over on the Mount of Redemption. That man can squench thunder, as they say where Uriah hails from. Darren sometimes talks over Uriah’s head in his college-boy way, but he can certainly follow Abner, who is more like those hellfire preachers and union organizers Uriah and Hovis had known and followed all their lives back home. Where now, though the weather’s no better there than it is here, Uriah longs to be. If he’s going to have to slop around in mud while waiting to get raptured, he’d rather it was West Virginia mud. He tries to remember why he came up here. He pulls out his fob watch to study it, but as usual forgets what time it is as soon as he pockets it again.

  “Are ye ready for the Glorious Appearing? Are ye ready for Christ to return?” the Reverend Abner Baxter asks with his freckled fist in the air, his flushed face wet from the rain, and he is met with an affirmative roar. Abner’s bitter years in the wilderness have come to an end. There were times when he would speak and no one would listen, times when his embraces would be met with blows. Times when, as Paul said, “no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.” He has been hounded cruelly from town to town, has been shot at and pelted with stones and even with cow dung, attacked by night riders, betrayed, cursed, imprisoned, beaten, and deserted by family and fellow believers alike. About the only hardship he has not shared with the Apostle is shipwreck. On the other hand, Paul had no sons to lose or turn against him. In his intransigent faithfulness to the awesome and punishing Word of God, Abner has suffered the abomination of desolation as spoken of by Daniel the prophet and has been brought close to utter despair, but now, tempered by adversity, his faith annealed, it is he who will lead the holy remnant to glory. It is a word that fills his throat: Glory! “There must be a Day of Wrath,” he declares in a voice trembling with urgency, “when sun and moon and stars is darkened, and the Heavens is rolled together and the earth is shook!” As he looks back on his years of tribulation, he understands the tender generosity of the Lord’s wrath, the ferocity of His love. He can, like the Apostle Paul, now speak of these things with an eloquence born of terrible suffering and unyielding faith, and he does so here in the crowded Meeting Hall. “Bru-no! Bru-no! Bru-no!” the Followers chant. He recounts for them the horrors (another word that fills his throat) of the Final Days, many of which they have already suffered, and the blessings of the Heavenly kingdom that awaits them on the other side of their ordeals, which is not unlike the workers’ paradise he once imagined before his conversion to the true faith. “All things are cleansed with blood,” he cries, “and apart from the shedding of blood there is no remission! These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass!” The Followers are shouting his words back to him, calling for divine judgment, and some commence to speak in tongues. The earthly kingdom of Christ is imminent; the assembled believers can feel it, they have only to go out and pledge their eternities to it.

  “He will come in power and great glory and I tell ye, the time is now! The Millennial Kingdom as announced by the Prophet Bruno is at hand!” thunders Reverend Baxter and Dot Blaurock bellows back: “Amen, brother! I seen Him! He’s walking around out there right now! Hallelujah!” Her kids all shout out high-pitched amens and hallelujahs, too, all except little Johnny who passes a bit of wind in his sousaphone way, young zealot that he is, and then begins to howl, his howls drowned out, however, by echoing hosannas and amens at full throat from all those around her, God bless them. Abner raises his fist and shakes it. “But the blessed Mount of Redemption, which is rightfully and needfully ours, has been sealed off from us! The Antichrist is usurping God’s rightful place of worship and is desecrating the Temple!” There are shouts of outrage and dismay, and Dot joins in, even though the temple that is being desecrated is really only the idea of one. She has joined up with a lot of these revelational groups over the years and this is the best it has ever got. Young Darren now coolly lays out the plan of action: They’ll leave here and form up at the base of the hill, where the mine road turns off from the main road. “Give others a ride if you can! But we’ll wait for those coming on foot!” Then, with the Brunist Defenders serving as marshals (Dot has volunteered herself as a Defender, but they have not yet taken up her offer; well, they’re busy, she’ll just be one anyway), they will all march peacefully up to the tabernacle as outlined on the hillside, where they will hold a church service in memory of their fallen friend and saintly Brunist Founder, Ben Wosznik, so horribly murdered while heroically defending their Wilderness Camp home. And, yes, they can take their guns with them—this is America, it’s their right. “We won’t use them except in extreme self-defense, but we won’t be intimidated either.” Darren says they have spoken with the new sheriff and he will do what he can to ease their way, but if there is trouble they should follow the leadership of Reverend Baxter. Who—fist raised again, shouting out “Glory!”—bulls forward. With that, the crowd turns and follows him noisily out the front door. “Glory!” they shout. Maybe the television crews weren’t expecting this, for some of them fail to get out of the way in time and are fairly trampled by the sudden brass-footed rush to the exit. Dot herself feels
chunks of camera gear crunching under her boots as she clambers out of the hall, Johnny in her arms, Matthew, Mark and Luke following at her heels. “Christ Jesus, here we come!” she shouts, but then she has to pause for Markie to take a wee-wee in a rain puddle. Even with all eternity to go jump into, the boy can’t wait.

  The camp is suddenly aswarm with people piling into their vehicles and pulling out, wheels spinning in the mud and horns blaring. Down at the emptying trailer park, Ludie Belle looks out her trailer window and says, “There they go! The weather’s still ketchy, but it’s fairin’ up. Looks like it’s time to shuckle outa here.” Cecil and Corinne step out through the dying drizzle, start up their camper truck, and squeeze out through the congestion, waving at everybody. Hovis has turned up finally, but Uriah who went looking for him has not come back. Hovis remarks that Uriah is a mite slow and easily confused and may have got caught up in the general movement toward the hill, he’ll go find him. He asks again where they are meeting up and he says he thinks he can remember that. Billy Don says he’ll go along with him because he wants to use the office phone. Wayne and Ludie Belle take Mabel along to Clara’s trailer to explain why they have to leave the camp, but when they get there, they discover that Elaine is gone. “She cain’ta got far,” Wayne says and he goes looking for her. “Whatever passes,” Ludie Belle calls after him, “you be back here in ten minutes, hear?”

  When word gets back to town that the Brunists are on the move toward the mine hill, Police Chief Dee Romano informs the mayor’s office, then calls Ted Cavanaugh at the bank to let him know, and he and Louie head out there, leaving Monk to mind the shop, lamed-up Bo Bosticker having gone home to get some shut-eye after his night duty. The mine hill is not really in Dee’s jurisdiction, though it is no longer in the county sheriff’s either—it belongs now to the state troopers who took it over Sunday night after the dynamite blast at the camp—but Cavanaugh expects it of him. He asked Dee to tell the troopers on duty there to hold their ground until he gets there, and to let them know the governor and National Guard units were on the way. Dee radioed ahead to be sure some troopers would actually be there when he arrived. As he’d anticipated, they were all over at the scene of the explosion, having coffee under the tent. They said they didn’t understand what the connection was between the blast at the camp and the empty mine hill. Dee doesn’t exactly understand it either but said he’d explain it to them when he got there, and meanwhile these were the official orders from the governor. There are a lot of cars on the road out to the mine, so he turns on the sirens and roars past them, thinking that if he were not a Romano and all that ties him to, he’d just keep on going.

  The banker has arrived early after the long holiday weekend, while the tellers are still setting out their stalls. He’d planned to confront the backlog he had been avoiding, but now, after Romano’s call, he’ll have to holster up and get out to the mine. It has not been a good weekend. He has lost his intern (he is hurting, he’ll get over it), his son is not speaking to him, his embittered wife is increasingly caustic and befuddled by drugs and religious confusions, private armies have been forming up, stirring old local ethnic animosities, his Fourth of July celebrations were something of a shambles, underscored by the brutal murder of the sheriff, and his attempt to reason with the cult fanatics was a fiasco. He has to hope that Bruno recovers from his seizure, or he’ll have more problems on his hands. On top of all that, his fraternity brother in the FBI has confirmed Nick Minicozzi’s underworld connections (knew that, damn it; ignored it); the goddamned news media are back in numbers, determined to make everybody look like idiots, lunatics and criminals; and his own weak policies and lack of personal oversight have damaged the bank’s fiscal stability. Meanwhile, the violence is escalating and the various police units are incompetent in dealing with it, if not obstructive in some cases. The town has been overrun by a gang of vicious killers associated with the cult, and except for those who blew themselves up at the church camp and that abandoned farmhouse, they all got away without one of them being caught. Maybe they’re being hidden at the camp by the cultists. As soon as Ted has that thought, he knows it to be true. Meaning they may have more dynamite over there. He’ll demand a complete search and a shutdown of the camp, which is now a crime scene. National Guard units are at last on their way to support the state and local police, but they should have been here weeks ago; it took the murder of a lawman for Governor Kirkpatrick to take Ted’s warnings seriously. The pompous ass is driving in sometime this morning with his political entourage; Ted intends to meet it. He sees by his desk calendar that the new Presbyterian minister is also due today. Can’t deal with that. He calls Jim Elliott and tells him to meet the man at the bus station, take him to the church, show him the manse, get him settled in. Name’s Jenkins. Make him feel at home. Stay off the gin until you get the job done. He signs four foreclosure documents, approves the drafting of eight others, freezes all accounts with overdrafts, hauls on his shoulder holster, and calls Maury Castle at the mayor’s office, telling him to arm himself and meet him out at the mine hill. Immediately.

  Sally Elliott is also headed to the mine. By way of Tucker City. Billy Don has called from the church camp to say he’s finally taking her advice and leaving, but he wants to see her before he goes. That’s really great news, she’d said, and they agreed to meet in forty-five minutes, the time it will take her to bicycle to the Tucker City drugstore. He’d told her that the Brunists are now led by Reverend Baxter with Darren at his side, and they had just left the camp to march over to the Mount of Redemption and challenge the state police there. Billy Don and the others were taking Mrs. Collins and her daughter with them when they leave, only hoping (he said with a nervous laugh) they’re making the right decision and the Rapture isn’t really coming. She said, “Don’t worry, Billy D—it’s the right decision.” Since the Saturday night downer when Tommy abandoned her to a night alone on bloody sheets, penniless and carless, blaming her for taking him to that hotel on purpose, cursing her loudly in front of all those opened doors as he stormed away, she hasn’t felt like writing, has been drawing instead. Smoking till her lungs hurt and drawing. Hands and ears. Eyes, mostly angry. The kitchen coffee pot, her shirt hanging over a chair back, the family cat. She sat for an hour in front of a mirror and tried to draw her vagina, but it was too depressing and she tore the page out and burned it. Then, using the Polaroid shot she had taken of the bloody hotel bedsheet, she recreated the design with colored inks, looking for some larger scene to arise from it in the way that Vasari described the painting of epic battle scenes from studying the pattern of spittle on a wall. This led her nowhere. Spittle was apparently more inspiring. When Billy Don called, she had been thinking about hopping on her bike and doing some sketching around town—the corner drugstore, abandoned train depot, backside of the derelict hotel—and his call brought to mind the old Deepwater No. 9 tipple and water tower, and that has become her project of the day. She scratches about for all the money she can find to give Billy Don, stuffs Tommy’s camera and some pencils and charcoals in her backpack, and gets on the road to Tucker City.

  Charlie Bonali, founder and boss of the Knights of Columbus Volunteer Defense Force, is not privy to events out at the mine hill, he’s only guessing, but with the area sealed off by the state coppers after the nitro blast, he supposes the Brunist crazies will have to contest that and they’ll be protected by Smith and his white supremacist militia, who are Charlie’s real targets. He calls young Naz Moroni and tells him to arm the Devil Dogs and get them out there for the party. Moron says his nonno died overnight, the old guy he was named after, and he’ll probably get dragged into family stuff, but he should be free until something like suppertime. Before going out, Charlie will drop by St. Stephen’s to have a word with old Father Bags. Charlie is not religious, but he understands the Church’s power politics and identifies with it. From the Godfather Pope down, it’s like the syndicate. He’ll let Baglione know that the Brunists are on the warpath a
gain and tell him about the K of C Defense Force in case the church might want to hire a couple of professional guards. He’ll also offer to restart and manage Bingo nights at St. Stephen’s and provide protection for it. Charlie’s old man is already out on the front porch, watching the rain fall and jawing with Sal Ferrero, a fellow member of the losers’ club, who nevertheless has brought breakfast by for them all, gift of his hens. They’ve been talking about the death of old Nonno, who was their dead pal Angelo’s old man, but now the subject of the pending foreclosure comes up, as it always does with these two whiners. It’s also a problem for Charlie. The money from the city has dried up, the rumor reaching him that they’re pissed about his busting the banker brat’s nose without first taking his badge off, and he’s not sure where he can park his bod if his old man loses the house. As for his whore of a sister, sprawled half-naked at the phone in her nightshirt, she does indeed seem to be filling out a bit in the belly, so maybe there’s some hush money to be made there.