The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Coover, Robert

  Earlier that night they’d grabbed the Coates kid, out wandering around drunk, and before using him to set the trap for the sheriff, they pumped him for information, learning about the parade the next day and the Brunist ceremony on the Mount planned for Sunday, which Royboy said his family wasn’t invited to but were going to anyway. Meaning the town would be busy with the Fourth on Saturday, giving the Wrath a certain freedom of movement out at the edges, and then the camp would be vacated for a while on Sunday, allowing them to pick up the big chunk buried in the wild part down there, a little known corner of the camp discovered by Nat shortly after his family first arrived back. Which his fatass brother and the Collins whore also evidently discovered for their sick games. Or God led them there to get what was coming to them. The O.T. God. Nat’s God. The Big One. The one at war with the N.T. wimp. Nat’s theology. Though he has come to appreciate Jesus as a man of wrath. A comicbook in Nat’s saddlebag shows how he was betrayed and rewritten, softened up to be sold to the crowd. They also learned from Royboy that Nat’s old man had got kicked out of the camp after what they did to the Collins girl (Royboy was giggling nervously at this point) and that Junior had later led an attack on the camp in which Royboy’s brother Aaron got a butt full of buckshot and everybody got arrested and Nat’s old man got beaten up in jail by some wop cops. Didn’t sound like Junior, but you never know what a little healthy scarring will do for you. Royboy also told them that the Collins girl was very sick and maybe possessed by the Devil, that old man Suggs had had a stroke and was in hospital, that some people had suicided themselves—one guy right in his shop window at high noon—and that there was a big fire one night at the used-car garage at the edge of town that didn’t happen by itself but which was better than the Fourth of July. Deacon had grinned in his beard and said: “Whoa! I love this place!”

  There were a lot of sirens on Saturday morning after they found the sheriff, so the Wrath kept their distance, using the day to gather up more of the nitro, case the area, deal with the defections. In spite of the blood oaths they’d taken, most of the Crusadeers who had joined them had split overnight, including Jesse Colt. Said they came to avenge their buddy Littleface, did that, they’re moving on. They don’t know dynamite and armageddons. So the Wrath is smaller, only a dozen or so, but it’s hardcore. Nat’s disappointed about Jesse. Dug his name, his style, thought of him as another Face. But he wasn’t. When they’re done here, they’ll hunt those deserters down, take retribution. After the sheriff’s car was hauled away, the mine hill was unoccupied for a time, so Nat, Juice, and Cubano took the occasion to roll in the back way and pick up the boxes buried under the tipple, but they discovered that the dog’s grave had been cleaned out and refilled with dirt. Just a single putrefied leg bone in there, like they were being taunted. Which meant someone was onto them, at least partly. After sundown, they withdrew into this state park. Stored their assets. Laid plans.

  Then today, once they’d made sure the Brunists were all over on the mine hill, they slipped into the camp quickly the back way they’d come before. There was a barbed-wire fence up, but they’d passed by and seen that and were ready with bolt cutters. Nat wanted them in and out of there in ten minutes. He led them to the place near the tagged tree where they buried the stuff, but it wasn’t there. Didn’t look like anything ever had been. Had he got the right place? Had the tag been moved? It was dark when they buried it; maybe things looked different. While he was puzzling this out, the old man turned up. Back in the woods some ways, half behind a tree. Cradling a rifle. “Over here, boys,” he said. “You’re looking for that nitro.” The Wrath’s guns were out, but Nat said, “Don’t shoot!” “That’s right. It ain’t my aim to shoot nobody less I have to,” the old man said. “I wanta make a deal. I don’t figure this is all of it, nor not alla you neither, so I don’t reckon I can stop whatever meanness you’re up to. All I want, Nat Baxter, is for you to promise not to come back here to the camp again and not to bother the people here.” “I can do that, old man.” No problem. Nat doesn’t want the camp. He wants the town. The world. “Awright. You’re a mean young hellion, Nat Baxter, but I trust you when you give your word. It’s back over here. I’ll show you, but no funny business. Don’t need your whole passel, just you and a coupla others. Maybe that one there in the fancy red boots and that older feller in the braid who looks sensible enough not to start up no trouble.” Nat started forward with Juice and Paulie, who always jumped into everything, wanted or not, Deacon’s pal Toad Rivers and old Buckwheat joining in as protection or just out of curiosity, but Houndawg hesitating, maybe because he’d been singled out, then Nat, too. “Wait a minute,” he said, feeling one of his headaches coming on. Like somebody saying no. Something was wrong. What was it? He was squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden pain needling his head like black lightning and it was like Littleface was there with a lock on him—he reached for Paulie’s shirt—“No, stop!” he shouted, and Houndawg’s gun came up, aimed at the old man, and just as he fired, the whole world seemed to heave up and hit him in the face.

  He couldn’t hear anything for a moment, couldn’t see, couldn’t even breathe. Thought he might be dead. But then he saw Houndawg, his leg half blown away, limp over to where the old man was. He’d set his gun down, was praying. Houndawg was carrying the high-powered rifle they’d appropriated from the sheriff and he pumped bullets from it into the old man’s head until he ran out, the head bouncing off the ground with each shot like a puppet. He started to load up again, but Deacon said, “C’mon, Dawg, you can’t kill him more’n you already killed him. We gotta tear ass, man!” Nat had a headache still, but it was a different kind. In fact he hurt all over, like he’d just had a forty-foot fall. He was bleeding, he knew, just like those warriors in the comicbooks, but he was on his feet, ready for whatever. Buckwheat, Juice, and Paulie were just a splatter of torn-up meat lying there in the cratered earth and Deacon’s tough old pal Toad was in bad shape, too, a big gaping hole in his middle parts. “I ain’t gonna make it,” he grunted. Blood was splashing out of him like from a broken hydrant. “Somebody fucken shoot me!” “He’s your bud, Deac, whaddaya think?” Baptiste said. Deacon looked over at Hacker and the doc shook his head and Deacon shot him. “Grab up the guns!” he said. There wasn’t much of Paulie left below the head; Houndawg sliced off whatever was dangling from it and took it with him. 666 wanted Juice’s red boots and Deacon, who’d been rifling Toad’s pockets, said, “You’ll have to take them with the feet still in, Sick. Hear them whoops out on the highway? Here comes the man!” And then they were running. When they reached the bikes, Deacon pushed him toward Toad’s new silver-and-blue-pearl ironhead with ape-hangers, like those on Houndawg’s bike, shoved keys in his hands, and said, “Time for a new sled, kid. Your burnt-out old warhorse is ready for the boneyard. This one’s bigger, faster, and it’s legal.” He only had a half-second to think. Glanced at Houndawg who was holding Paulie’s head and dangling bits by the hair. Houndawg nodded. “I’ll give ’em sumthin to chase,” Baptiste said and he snapped off his silencer and went roaring off, hammer down, in the opposite direction from where they were headed. “You got any ident, kid, leave it with your bike,” Deacon said, heaving his bulk into the saddle. “Toad is giving you his.”

  Goateed Hacker, his head capped by his goggles, comes by with some painkillers, stuff they lifted in a drugstore robbery a couple of states over. Nat waves him away. The wounds have been sterilized, bandaged, that’s enough. He hurts, but he doesn’t mind the hurt. Wants it while he thinks about what comes next. They’ve got some serious avenging to do. He refuses the whiskey getting passed around, too. Doesn’t like it, never will. Houndawg does likewise, but takes the painkillers and also some penicillin. His leg is torn up pretty badly. Hacker says it probably ought to come off, but he doesn’t know how to do that and won’t do it, and Houndawg says that’s just as well because he’d shoot him if he tried. Hacker’s not a real doctor, but he has picked up skills on the road, needing them
from time to time since mostly when you get in trouble, you can’t use hospitals. Things like applying tourniquets, digging bullets out, stealing the right medicines. One thing he does is give Nat injections against his migraines. They help but can leave him feeling wasted until they wear off. Drinking the blood of sacrificed animals works better. Not much Hacker could do today about the wounded except clean and bandage a few cuts and hand out painkillers. Brainerd had been holding the front door of the old man’s farm shack when it blew off and it broke some fingers, and Hacker, peering closely through his thick lenses, virtually touching the fingers with his nose, fitted the bones together and rigged a splint with whittled sticks and tape, Brainerd grinding a jawful of chaw and cursing softly all the while; that was Hacker’s big job of the day. Luckily it’s Brainerd’s right hand, not the one he shoots with.

  Teresita wants a second hole pierced in her right ear, and Hacker is able to do that. When Nat and the others raced away from the camp after the ambush, they made straight for the shack to warn Cubano’s team, but they were too late. They met Teresita and Brainerd and the others on the road, Teresita alone on Cubano’s bike. Got the bad news. They’d gathered up the dynamite they’d buried a couple of nights ago under the shack floorboards but forgot about the old stack in the woodstove. Cubano went back in to get it. “Musta been boo-bied,” she said. “That choza ain’ no more. Pile a fucken sticks.” She saw the bike Nat was riding, the blood on his face, and asked about Toad, and they told her about the four guys who’d got killed back at the church camp. She was upset about it, especially about Runt, even though Paulie had been an aggravation to her with his sexual craziness. Houndawg showed her Paulie’s head and she shook her head sorrowfully and crossed herself, though she’s not much of a Catholic and is even said to have killed a nun when she was younger. With her bare hands. She had also pocketed a body part: Cubano’s right ear, with the upside down cross in it. Now she’s going to wear two in the same ear as a kind of memorial to him. She started to throw the ear away when she cut the cross out of it, but Chepe Pacheco asked for it as bait for a trap. “Catch me a coyote. Como Cubano.” When Thaxton, trying to cheer her up, says she shouldn’t let it get her down—Cubano is probably up in Heaven trying to get into the Virgin Mary’s pants by now—Teresita says no way. “Cubano was a bad man. Beautiful, but bad. He gotta hope there ain’ no afterlife.” Teresita is a big-busted woman who wears tight sleeveless tees with pictures of a fierce Christ printed on them. She insists Jesus was a tough dude, a man of wrath who got turned into a creampuff by European faggots. That fits what Nat knows now. Littleface called Jesus the Joker, had a picture on his bike of the Joker with a halo over his head. When Cubano first brought Teresita around, Juice objected, saying he didn’t “want no fender fluff in the gang.” Juice was drunk, as he often was, and making jokes about fresh meat and back warmers and ground cover, thinking he was being funny, but he wasn’t. It was only insults. Cubano said, “I suggest you don’ fuck round with her, man.” “Yeah? Whaddaya gonna do about it, spic-shit?” “Me? I ain’ gonna do nothin’.” Juice made a move in his direction and the next thing he knew Teresita had him and he was up in the air and sailing. He rose up shaken but angry and charged her and up in the air he went again, coming down hard. He was really mad now and pulled a knife and Teresita smiled and said, “Ven, hijo de puta. Gimme that puñal. I use it. I have your machitos for supper.” Everybody was laughing by then and Juice was finally grinning too. “Praise Jesus, lady,” he said and put the knife away, raised his arms in surrender. “I believe!”

  Nat came to this park some years ago on a school trip. He remembered thinking at the time it was a great place to hide out, so he brought the Wrath here last night, figuring that going back to the old man’s farm shack, where they’d stayed the first night, was too risky. The park is outside the county, and easier to defend, too. Guerrilla turf. The massive rock formations form above-ground caves of a sort, offering up places to hide and stay more or less dry. As a kid, he thought, if the Rapture comes, they won’t find me here. He knows better now. As he should have known better about that old man. Some big mistakes today. Got sucked in. How many people would dig up a dead dog, looking for dynamite? He didn’t ask that question, but should have. He would have answered that the cops might, but that was about it. But why would they refill the hole? Probably they wouldn’t. So someone else was involved. They’d show it to the old man whose dog it was, ask him questions. They might have suspected him of stealing the stuff, hiding it there. But they’d see how straight he was, wouldn’t do such a thing and wouldn’t disturb his dog’s grave if he did. Besides, everyone knew who’d broken into the mine buildings. So then let’s say the old guy finds the pile buried at the camp. His stepdaughter got banged down there, he’d be snooping around. He puts two and two together. That’s the second lot, he figures, and there’s probably more. There’s some kind of strategy here, he thinks. Meaning they’ll be back. So he sets a trap. Still not clear why he refilled the dog’s grave, but maybe just respect for his dog. Or because he didn’t want anyone else to know about the ambush he was setting. Probably. If the cops knew, they would have stopped him, wouldn’t they? And it wasn’t exactly a turn-the-other-cheek sort of operation, so he couldn’t tell the other campers. If Nat had thought all this through, they might have avoided what happened. Or even turned the ambush back on the old man. Just didn’t think. That’s why all those guys left. Baptiste, too, who should have been back by now, his distraction maneuver just an excuse. They saw Nat as someone who walks his people into death traps. Out of carelessness and stupidity. Can’t let that happen again.

  Have to stay hard, too. Keep the purity. He had a soft spot for that old man. Thought they had an understanding of a kind. Made him too easy to con today. The old guy was trying to kill him and he couldn’t see that. Couldn’t see until it was too late how he was aiming straight at the old Warrior Apostles, who were down there in that field with Junior and the Collins bitch that day they did her. Four guys got killed because of that soft spot. Five. The old man got another of the Apostles at his old farmhouse, but he never knew it. Nat thought he knew that old man and what he was capable of and what not. Wrong again. Came close to making the same mistake with Royboy the night they brought the wrath down upon the sheriff. He didn’t have much choice, but Royboy did everything they asked him to do and more. He said he wanted to join their gang; he hated his old man and wanted to get out of this dump. He didn’t have a bike, but he’d steal some money and get one. Nat was tempted. He had known Royboy since grade school. They were in the same church. Their fathers were close and he knew what Royboy meant about hating his hardass old man and believed him. But he’d played slingshot war games in the street with Royboy, and because of that he knew him to be a bit slithery, and a coward when it came to a showdown. And now a loose-mouthed drunk. They were into something deadly serious here and they couldn’t risk a betrayal. “Do we let him go?” Toad asked. “No,” Nat said. “He’s just going to shoot at us or turn us in.” He was looking straight into Royboy’s eyes as Sick brained him from behind; together, they stuffed him in the trunk.

  And then last night he nearly went soft on those young kids. The Wrath surprised them when they turned up at the state park. They were still frantically trying to get back into their clothes. Everyone had a good laugh about it and made remarks about the girl’s body, which was less than perfect. The two of them apologized sheepishly and hurried away, heading for the parking lot, obviously scared. Big Deacon watched them go and said, “We better not let them leave the park.” “We can’t kill everybody,” Nat said. Deacon smiled his beardy smile. “Yes, we can.” Probably he saw the hesitation on Nat’s face. “I mean, it’s Last Judgment time, right? Timer’s running down. We’re just only giving these nice kids a head start to glory. And if we don’t, we gotta leave here now.” Nat didn’t say anything, so Deac nodded at Rupert and Sick and they drifted off together. Everything is God’s will, Deacon likes to say. Even when
that everything is something Deac has done or is doing. Great is the wrath of the Lord, he says with his Santa Claus grin, bringing the hammer down.