Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

The sad fact is that he has never known how to read the other sex — a huge failing. They’ve always been a total mystery to him, one of the few left in his life, and given his skepticism about mysteries in general, he should probably let go of this one as well, get over all that dumbass awe and respect for girls that make him such a sucker. He’d thought Elaine was different. And, well, hell, she is different. No snatch-grabbing kitchen clinch for Elaine; no clinch of any kind. She’s married to the fucking sky. He saw she’d changed the moment he laid eyes on her that night at evening prayers under the dogwood tree. For one thing she was staring straight at him, and she never used to do that. Not in hatred, but not like she was glad to see him either. Or like she even recognized him. More like: what is that awful thing? She’s taller now, taller than he is, and skinnier than ever, hunched into herself like she always was, yet at the same time more fixed and sure of herself somehow, less afraid. Or maybe she’s still afraid but accepts now what she’s afraid of. A kind of haunted look. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but when Darren and Billy Don showed him that book of photos from the Day of Redemption (it excited him to see her standing there on the Mount, near naked with the tunic pasted against her thin little body, but it also pissed him off that these guys could look at her like that), he saw again that wondering, tentative, nervous yet wide-eyed and tender innocence that he had loved. It said: Help me, I need you. What he aches for. Gone now. When he looked into her eyes yesterday while making a hash of trying to say goodbye, he saw someone else. Someone who wasn’t someone exactly, but more like one of those religious statues with painted eyeballs. Scorpion-stung.

The damp predawn air is full of birdcalls. He recognizes many of them but doesn’t know what names to attach to them. Except the robins, which are always first to start the breast-beating, if in fact they ever stop. Earlier, there were crickety sounds, but they’ve gone quiet. Now and then, the burp of a frog down by the swollen creek, where the trickle of water over its stony bed can be faintly heard. Muffled cracking sounds; some animal prowling about down there on the other side of the creek maybe. Once, he heard Colin crying out in the night. Not for the first time this week. Always sounds terrified. Colin finally opened up to him a couple of days ago. In a manner of speaking. Even though he seemed to have forgotten for the moment who he was talking to. Fucked-up boy full of wacky ideas, which some of the equally wacky cultists here take as visionary. He told him about a weird dream he’d had of Jesus on the cross with his dick lopped off and spouting like a garden hose, Colin holding himself all the while so as not to lose what he had. He also said he’d been talking with their old schoolteacher, Mrs. Norton, the flaky lady who lured them into this madness, and when Pach’ expressed his surprise and asked where, Colin said here. She sometimes visits me at night. Oh shit, man, Pach’ said, unable to stop himself. Colin froze, his eyes widening as if in terror, and that was the end of that. Luckily, he has the preacher’s wife to take care of him, though that arrangement doesn’t seem all that healthy either. She keeps Colin penned in most of the time, treats Pach’ like an alien invader with a rabid disease. Someone was moving around down there in the dark. Might have been her. Also a light sleeper.

He hears a peep that sounds half human. Down in the valley somewhere near the creek. What they used to call Bluebell Valley. Lonesome Valley now, for whatever reason. “Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley” probably. Nobody else can walk it for us. Hell no. Maybe that animal down there just caught its Sunday morning breakfast. The other birds stop their racket for a second, the pause broken by the hoot of an owl. And it occurs to him in that brief silence what he’s been missing: the wail of train whistles, the rumble of freight cars rolling along on steel rails. From the camp you could sometimes even hear at night the loading of the coal over at Deepwater No. 9. Instead, far off somewhere, those motorbikes, probably drifting away. Those trains just another reminder that time moves on, things change, you lose some things, get used to it. Kids born today will never know that they ever went through here. The sky has lightened just enough that he can begin to make out the contours of the mine hill. The Mount of Redemption. He doesn’t want to look at it. Makes him sick. Time to piss and go.

Halfway down the hill he meets Ben Wosznik climbing up. They have often run into each other in the early dawn hours, Ben still living by his old farmer routines, Pach’ unable to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, prison having taught him never to lose consciousness completely. Inspiration Point is a place Ben and some of the others often come to pray, and he asks Pach’ if he’d care to join him now. He’d like to tell Ben what he really thinks about prayer and religion, but instead, loving Ben and unable to hurt him, he only says he has to be by himself right now.

Which leads Ben to ask, “You been up here all alone?”

“Yeah. Who would I be with?” The question rankles him, hitting a sore spot — hadn’t Ben seen the mess he’d made of things? — but it also troubles him. He woke up this morning from a hangover dream about Elaine in which she passed by his van like a ghost and disappeared, and he wonders now if that was really a dream. “Listen, Ben, I gotta tell you, though don’t tell no one else till I’m gone. I’m moving on. I’m glad I came, and it was great to see you again, but I just don’t feel like I belong here anymore.”

“Well, I’m real sorry to hear that, son. We was all sorta hoping… If it’s on accounta Elaine, maybe she just needs a little more—”

“Elaine? She hates me. She told me so. It’s about the only thing she said to me all week. But it’s not just her. You’re about the nicest guy I know, Ben. I wish you were my dad. But I don’t believe what you believe. Not anymore.”

It’s hard to read Ben’s expression in the dark behind his beard. There’s pained disappointment in it and a kind of old-man bafflement, but also resignation. And affection. “Well, Carl Dean, I hafta hope you’ll come back to us. I’ll pray for you and pray God takes care of you, wherever you are. We’ll miss you, son.” And he lifts his arms for an embrace. During which, Pach’, trying not to break into unmanly tears as their beards entangle, his own still damp from the shower, thinks: Ben’s a believer, the man can’t think past that. Another week and he and Ben would have nothing to say to each other. Sad. Maybe it was better to have an old man who puts you off the whole idea of dads forever. The kind he had. Then you don’t set yourself up to be let down.

It was the night before last when Elaine came over to his van on her way home from the Friday prayer meeting, which he’d skipped, to tell him to go away. He hadn’t expected that. It was bombing down rain, and he’d thought he was safe. She caught him having a beer. Seeing her standing out there in her soaked tunic, hair streaming down her face, took him back to the last time they were together, really together, standing in the storm on the Mount of Redemption, holding hands and waiting for the end of the world, and he set the beer can on the dash and stepped out in the rain to join her. Felt apprehensive, yet vaguely hopeful. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he said he was sorry. “Why did you come back?” she demanded. “Please go away!” What could he say? The beer drinking really didn’t matter, he could see that. This was something else. He swallowed, and trying not to look down at her wet body, said he came back because he loved her and thought that she loved him. “That’s stupid. I never did. I was shook up because of my dad dying and all that was happening and I didn’t know what I was feeling. You took advantage of me.” Her voice was breaking and she seemed to be crying, but maybe it was only the rain. There was thunder and lightning, wind in the trees. It was quite a scene. Finally, maybe because he was hurt and wanted to hurt back, he got up the nerve to say that he came back to try to rescue her from all this goddamned craziness. That she should leave it now and go away with him, and she cried out, “I hate you, Carl Dean! You’re as bad as they say you are!” and ran away to her trailer, where her mother was watching from the steps, also getting drenched. Thunder crashed. A fucking nightmare.