The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Coover, Robert

  They briefly touch on the legal harassments. The city’s injunctions, he tells them, are dead in the water. If anything does stick, enforcement still has to go through Sheriff Puller and he has no intention of preventing the church from having free access to the hill. The threat of state and federal prosecutors is a red herring. Not going to happen. He says he has been working with a hotshot lawyer up in the city named Thornton who has taken a personal interest in their case and who assures him the charges of embezzlement and theft against the three women have no merit. What he doesn’t tell them is that Thornton said the cases are similar, but the Filbert/Cavanaugh case is winnable and the Edwards one is probably not. Mrs. Edwards is one of their most dependable and enthusiastic workers; he could not have done without her during this absence of Clara and Ben. She has given her all, but she may have to be sacrificed. If she takes a personal hit, the church may be let off and they can perhaps avoid forfeiting any of the property. He assumes, if she gets sent up and the Rapture happens, being such a loyal and devoted servant, Jesus will find her. There’s her troubled boy, but he’d be best off in an institution anyway. The one consolation is that their adversaries will never get the money. He hopes that will console her as well.

  With what little time they have left, they talk about next Sunday’s tabernacle groundbreaking and ceremonial cornerstone laying on the hill. He is bringing in heavy earth-moving equipment tomorrow. He plans to scar the earth in the shape of the temple ground plan with its encompassing circle and to fill the trenches with chalk. He is organizing aerial photography for news releases. Other ministries in the area have been invited, though few will attend. They’ll have to plan on Clara and Ben not being there. So someone should organize the hour-by-hour events. “Young Darren is working on that,” Mrs. Edwards says. They still have to decide which corner is the appropriate one for the stone, given its odd hillside construction. The back of the church, or top of the cross, will be buried in the hillside, while the front will have to be elevated. From the air, it will look like a Latin cross, but the shape of the building will actually be more like a squared-off Greek cross, each wing seven units long with the extra five units at the bottom part of the twelve-unit cross post filled out by broad full-width steps. Oakes wants to know what’s being used for the cornerstone. “We’ll be moving Ely Collins’ remains to the spot and using his headstone, a solid block of granite,” Pat says. “We won’t need the body for the ceremony; it can be brought later. Mrs. Collins has approved this. We already have the headstone. We’re adding a line to it with Sunday’s date. It’s with the engravers now.”

  There’s a knock on the door. “Lunch is ready, folks! Come and get it!”

  “Should start laying the foundations in a couple of weeks,” he says, rising, “and be ready to begin the actual construction of the temple itself by the end of summer.”

  The others look at each other with raised eyebrows, faint smiles. The end of summer! “It’s like a dream come true!” says Mrs. Edwards.

  III.3

  Sunday 31 May – Monday 1 May

  The municipal pool has opened this Memorial Day weekend and the kids are nagging at her to take them, but Dot’s pooped after the exhausting trip to the camp and back. Sunday dinners are a lot of work. Extra cots were brought in out there for last month’s big weekend and they were probably just going to be dumped somewhere and left to rust, so they did them the favor of carting a few of them back here to Chestnut Hills. She has fallen out on one of them. God has blessed them with these small gifts.

  “Come on, Mom,” says Luke. “This is the last day it’s free.”

  There’s that to consider. Not much is free these days. That pork roast may be their last. It was overcooked like everything else they serve out of that kitchen and she let them know that, not for the first time; she could teach them a thing or two, but they’re set in their southern ways. The rhubarb pie was sour, too, and begging for hot custard. You just don’t serve rhubarb pie without it. What’s wrong with these people? Then old man Suggs had the nerve to tell her that the meals and other privileges of the camp were for the workers only. If they are not there by 7:30 a.m. each day to begin work, they will not be able to share in the camp meals or other facilities. Is he kidding? How is she going to get Isaiah off the can at that ridiculous hour? Whatever happened to give to him who asketh you and the righteous showeth mercy to the needs of the saints? Is this a church, or what? Even finding all her kids in the morning, much less getting them washed and dressed, can take half the day. That old man should have a few to see what it’s like, he’d be making fewer stupid rules.

  “They got a big slide. Davey told me.”

  “Just let me get my wind, Luke.” Somebody should wipe the kid’s nose. Snot worming out of both her nostrils. Dot would make the effort but she has nothing to use except her skirt, which may not get laundered again soon. “Go get up a game of apocalypse in the back yard.”

  “Come on, Mom,” her oldest says. “You’re not tired, you just ate too much.”

  “I know, Mattie, but I figured if we weren’t going to be invited back, I’d better store up enough for the rest of the week, and now I can’t move.” It was a good thing she was already well tucked in when Suggs dropped the edict. She managed to make it back for thirds and a half before they took everything away, and she was able to share a whole pie with little Johnny, fortunately not his favorite delicacy, he being still mostly on the bottle. Custard, though, he would have loved.

  “Is that how it works? Storing it up?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.” She feels a good healthy snore coming on, Isaiah already at it in the back room of this little prefab—their fourth house since coming here, having used up the first three—but the kids won’t let her drop off. They keep poking and wheedling. “All right, all right,” she says finally, sitting up with a heavy grunt, and they jump up and down and let off squealing and whoopeeing sounds. Let them have their chlorinated dip—they’re all in need of baths anyway, and the pool should sterilize them for a few days, save her time in the long run. Maybe they could somehow make it out to the camp at least one day a week in time to earn their lunches and bring home a few bags full of leftovers to get them through some of the other days.

  How does a body survive in such a mean world? It’s not easy, especially with this gang of Blaurock ragamuffins. But Isaiah is a hard worker and strong and fearless, and he’s resourceful at picking up odd jobs, like taking dents out of fenders, lopping off dead tree limbs, pointing chimneys, caulking windows, getting squirrels out of attics and rats out of basements and on one occasion last week a cat out of a tree, though he did that one for free. He has a very Christian attitude toward dogs and cats and does not like to see them suffer, though in hard times past they have also sometimes eaten them. Isaiah’s not inclined to say much, he just wanders the neighborhoods locating problems, points and gives his price. And he comes cheap, so they always invite him back. He brings the money home, she buys food with it. When they run out, they visit a restaurant out on the highway somewhere, walking out without paying, her kids, well-trained, asking loudly just before if they can go out and play. She keeps a list of places and ticks them off as they use them up. These people make such huge profits, it’s a way of helping them tithe. Once, they made the mistake of going back to the same place twice, and on that occasion they had to check off not only the restaurant, but also the state. Which has been a nuisance ever since, it being one of those states in the middle that they always have to drive around to get somewhere else. Wandering one day through what the local Baxter people call Dagotown, Isaiah spotted an old Ford pickup on blocks, and after looking it over he offered to trade their Dodge for it, the old heap still running even if on its last legs, plus enough money to buy used wheels for the truck, part of which he earned by cleaning their gutters and unplugging their downspouts and getting rid of a tree whose roots were threatening the house foundations and sawing it up for firewood. A week or so later they had a ve
hicle twice as good, and one they could haul things in, though Isaiah had to make a few pieces out of scrap harvested from the truck bed, and visit some church parking lots to borrow the odd doobob or two he couldn’t manufacture himself. Not much room inside for the kids, but riding shotgun at the back of the truck is a big adventure for them. Isaiah’s next project is to build a camper unit for it. They can park it out at the camp somewhere. Meanwhile, they’ve been rotating through various Chestnut Hills properties, living among the cockroaches and mice, who seem to enjoy a comfortable life in this neighborhood, moving to a new house when the old one gets overtaken by filth and disrepair, trundling out to the camp for laundry, telephone, meals, prayers, and the occasional family shower. That will be harder now, though not impossible, she assumes. People having a way of letting her do what she wants if she’s insistent enough. But it’s no big deal anyway—anything that takes a coin Isaiah can make operate without. He can make slugs out of tin cans and roof lead and work magic with a bobby pin. Stuff they borrowed from the camp that they no longer need they have offered up in garage and yard sales, picking up pizza money. They also scrounge through other people’s rubbish, occasionally coming up with a usable or saleable item, though it’s a poor town and not much gets thrown away. They have better luck dumpster diving out at the shopping center; security’s not perfect out there, meaning they usually come away with a few small store samples as well, which they feel they deserve by virtue of the abstemious Christian lives they live.

  At the pool, they draw a lot of attention. Stares and giggles. Pointed fingers. The brat at the entrance who does the check-in and hands out the baskets for their clothes comes out now and tells them they can’t swim in their underwear, they have to have swimming suits. Dot tells her those are swimming suits, the latest models, and a good sight more modest than what some of these other little heathens out here are wearing, so lay off. Of course, it would have helped had they been clean, but kids are kids, right? The girl looks for help from the lifeguard perched over there on his high chair at the deep end of the pool, but he is surrounded by fawning young things who keep falling into the water and squealing that they can’t swim—save me, Tommy! The lifeguard’s a pretty boy, tall and good-looking, and doesn’t seem to care about little kids swimming in their underwear, and why should he, for pete’s sake?

  Now that she’s in here, Dot is thinking about having a plunge herself, fairly confident that her drawers are more or less immaculate. She had a heck of a time getting through the turnstile at the entrance and was afraid she’d have to keep an eye on her kids from outside the pool’s chain-link fence, but fortunately there was a gate in that fence, and when she insisted, the baskets girl found the key and let her in that way, though she didn’t seem happy about it. Happiness is not something Dot tends to provoke in others, she has noticed, though she’s a happy enough person herself. She sees that one of the half-naked creatures surrounding the lifeguard is that girl who is said to have sucked the life out of the old lady from Florida. Probably she ought to go over and pinch her to see if she’s real. There’s a pallor about her that does not look completely human, but then summer’s just begun. A lanky underfed thing. No way she can compete with those other young beauties, whoever or whatever she is, though that may not be what she’s doing there. She glances at Dot from time to time, maybe because she recognizes her, maybe for more sinister reasons, and once, while looking over at her, whispers something to the lifeguard. Like the devil whispering into the ear of the pious, though that’s probably an exaggeration, in his case at least.

  When Dot pulls her dress over her head, she catches a glimpse of the alarm on the face of the check-in girl, who goes ducking back inside the changing rooms building, and she sees that everyone has turned to stare at her. What? They never saw a fat lady before? Little Mark is standing at the edge of the pool with his underwear around his knees, peeing into the water. Markie never could hold it, was in diapers until only about a year ago. He’s cute, like that fountain in France or wherever that she saw on a used postcard once in a junk shop, but these dummies probably won’t make the connection, and most of them are scrambling out of the pool. The lifeguard steps down off his chair, no doubt intending to come over here, but just then Luke pushes another little kid off the top of the slide and he’s drowning. The lifeguard, there in a couple of strokes, plucks the spluttering creature out of the water and hands him up to an older kid, his big sister maybe. Which means that Luke, who is wheeing down the slide, is apt to have a problem of her own that the rest of them will have to share.

  There are sirens outside and Dot realizes the check-in bimbo has called the police. She hasn’t even got her toe in yet. The level of tolerance and understanding here is frankly disappointing. Mattie has taken another kid’s green dragon float away from him and the sissy has gone wailing to his mother. So now everyone is watching them. They’re the story of the day. Mattie is biting the rubber float, trying to puncture it. Two officers come in, sweaty in their dark uniforms, trying to appear officious but not succeeding. If there’s anyone who looks out of place here, it’s those guys, not her. The fat one with the Roman nose and three chins tells her to put her clothes on, dress her kids, and leave the pool. The older one tells him he thinks this is one of the families squatting illegally in Chestnut Hills. You know, Louie, he says. Them cultists. He’s chewing something, but it doesn’t look like gum. A nasty habit her own father had. It turns her stomach. She protests that it’s a public pool and a free country, but they don’t seem interested in this line of reasoning. Mattie, meanwhile, has successfully destroyed the green dragon. It floats flat on the surface like seaweed. Her kids are already up and moving toward the exit. They know when it’s time to leave a place. “May the good Lord forgive you,” she says. She tosses her dress and little Johnny over her shoulder, shoves Fat Louie into the pool, and stalks off toward the gate in the chain-link fence, which, she sees, the check-in brat has opened wide.

  They stop by the new unfinished campgrounds on the way home to see how Abner Baxter and his people are getting on and to take the wet things off and let the kids dry off running around in the afternoon sunshine for a few minutes. There were no sirens chasing them after they left the pool—they were too busy hauling Tubby out of the drink. “Hey, help!” she heard a girl shout over the splashy floundering on her way out of the gate. “My daddy can’t swim!” So Save-Me-Tommy had some heroics to perform, after all, if not the sort he might have preferred.

  The new campsite is fenced off with a strand of shiny barbed wire, NO TRESPASSING signs dangling every twenty yards or so. There is some well-digging equipment standing idle, a small temporary worker’s hut, some poles and big spools of wire cooking in the sun. Dot wonders if there’s anything there Isaiah can use. The campsite is otherwise empty, though there are a few people still camped out at the edges, including Abner and his family, using a tented extension to their old Plymouth station wagon. Jesus will recognize his true disciples by the rusted-out clunkers they all drive. Just the four Baxters now, the mental girl at Abner’s side, holding his hand; Young Abner behind his shoulder, sporting his new red bangs; Abner’s wife Sarah off sitting in the passenger seat of the Plymouth, looking like she might have been there for several days. The defection of their oldest daughter is the cause of much bitterness. One wonders who’s doing the dishes now. The big tent is still up from this morning’s sermon and prayer meeting, with folding chairs set out which she recognizes from the camp.

  Abner, scowling his scowl, says he is glad to see her, and others come to tell about their troubles and exchange God blesses. The sheriff has been demanding their driving licenses and car registrations or other proof of ownership on the grounds that there have been some recent car thefts in the area. This is absurd on the face of it because no one in their right mind would steal these cars. But some vehicles have been impounded and fines levied, jail threatened if the fines go unpaid. Some have just left the area, which seems to be the easiest way to get your
car back. They have been made to move their tents and vehicles several times, sometimes only across the road—a kind of day-to-day harassment meant to make them want to give it up and go look for a friendlier location. The mayor of Randolph Junction, said to be close to Abner and a tent-meeting regular, has offered just such a place, though without any services, and many have already gone there, but Abner is determined to stick it out here and some of his pals are standing by him. Now there are threats of warrants being issued, which probably means anything resembling weapons will be confiscated, including kitchen knives, screwdrivers, and lug wrenches. Dot fills them in on developments at the camp and the new rules meant to exclude any but the inner circle. “Even the new lavatory is locked up,” she says. “Can you believe it?” Ben and Clara and their daughter have not been seen since they left the camp over three weeks ago and will probably miss next Sunday’s ceremonies on the hill, which, Abner says after dropping his head for a moment at the mention of the daughter, he and his son have been specifically ordered not to attend. Abner says he is not sure he will obey this order. Young Abner nods solemnly at this, his bangs flopping on his forehead, which still looks raw under there. It turns out his brothers and their gang kidnapped him and dragged him to that field to torment him and dressed him in the girl’s underpants just to humiliate him. Dot adds a more detailed note about being excluded from the camp dining table, hoping someone will take the hint, but no one does. In fact, a couple of them have been nosing around the pickup and if there were anything there to steal, she figures it would be gone by now. Isaiah always sets a little money aside for shotgun shells and gas. Maybe there’s enough for a pizza. If not, well, they’ll have to test out the storage theory.