Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

There was no tea, so Ludie Belle made her a cup of instant coffee and then left for a while, but some of the others remained, crying and praying and talking to each other as if she and Colin weren’t there, speculating on what might have happened. When Ludie Belle came back, she said she’d gone to the office and phoned Bernice and also Mr. Suggs and told him to bring the sheriff and then called Duke L’Heureux and some of the others to come out right away, and she shooed the other women out (“Something’s on fire!” Glenda exclaimed, and Ludie Belle said, “Ain’t nuthin but a little bonnyfire,” shutting the door behind her) and closed the windows and tsk-tsked that Debra had let her coffee go cold. She said she should lock the door and get some private time, so as to recollect herself and settle the boy down. Before that could happen, Ben Wosznik stopped in still carrying his shotgun, to thank her and see how she was and to ask if there was anything she could tell him. She tried, but she still couldn’t speak. She only started crying again, and Ludie Belle said Sister Debra was still in a state of shock, that they should maybe wait until after Bernice got out here, and she asked him if Young Abner told him anything. Ben said that the boy was out cold when they found him and the only thing they could get out of him after they’d dipped him in the creek to bring him around was that it was his brother Nathan who cut him. “What was he doin’ with them bloomers on?” “I don’t know. Was it them motorcycle boys down there?” Ben asked, turning toward her, and, still crying, she nodded. “Carl Dean’s panel truck is parked out front and he ain’t nowhere around. Was he there too?” She was confused about this, but she nodded again, and Ludie Belle said Duke told her on the phone that Carl Dean was drinking last night at the motel with the bikers and left with them. Ben stood there slump-shouldered for a moment, shaking his old head, and then he and Ludie Belle left, Ludie Belle giving her a sympathetic hug and telling her not to worry about church this morning, everybody would understand.

With everyone gone and the door locked, Colin, still trembling and whimpering softly around his jawbreaker, has crawled out of his bed and into her lap on the nursing chair. She holds him close and strokes his hair and tries to pray, but cannot summon the words for it, feeling more distant from God and Jesus than at any time since she first moved to the camp. Of course, she is grateful to have survived — it was a kind of miracle really, so it could be said her prayers have been answered. But why has she been obliged to witness such horror in the first place? She sees again the long knives, the snarling cruelty on their shadowy faces, hears the dismaying sounds behind her, the grunting, the sinister laughter, and finds that she is crying again. It was terrible, but there must be a reason. She has not always been a good Christian and has often been a doubter of the stories that get told, but that God is purposeful and that His purposes are loving she has never doubted. She sees it in the birds, the flowers, the way a tree grows, the way the stars are born and take their places. If God is not purposeful, then nothing means anything, and that is an unbearable thought. And if He is not merciful, then He is a kind of monster, and that would be like saying the sun is cold and bad is good. God is God and cannot escape his own self-definition. I am that I am, He said so. Wesley taught her that. God, as he used to say, is not free, which is of course a very Presbyterian remark. From the Brunist point of view, God has a story to tell, but humans, through their actions, help him to write it. It’s mostly a happy story, but it has its gruesome side, and maybe she has been given a glimpse of that. The basic plot is all laid out and irreversible — it’s almost as though, in some other notion of time, it has already happened — but the details are obscure, only hinted at by prophecy, and the characters are interchangeable. One cannot choose to be among the communion of saints, but one can seek to be.

In her old life, her frivolous empty-headed one, the Book of Revelation was an inconvenient and somewhat hateful tag-on to the gospel of love, one that never fit her view of things, but it surges through Brunism like the swollen creek through the camp. God and His living metaphors: let him who has eyes see. She is learning. Loose the four angels, He said. Actually, there were five of them this morning. The fifth angel in Revelation is the one given the key to the bottomless pit, isn’t that right? The one who bosses the other four and whose kingdom is full of darkness and pain? And there were more angels in the prophecy. More to come? Does this make any sense? Was God speaking to all of them through Elaine’s ordeal with Debra as His witness? She thinks of herself as an unlikely receptacle for prophetic knowledge, but the same could be said of Giovanni Bruno. She will read that book again and think about it and share her thoughts with the two boys, who are better at understanding such things than she.

The shouting outside has died down. Deeper quieter voices have prevailed. The thought of leaving this cabin and facing the world again, even the little world of this camp, is almost unbearable, but she will have to do that. As for the larger world, it is beyond their reach, for they are penniless; what they have is this little cabin. Perhaps she will heat up some water and give Colin a soothing bath in the new washtub. Something worshipful to do in place of Sunday service. It would soothe her, too. Colin sighs tremulously or moans softly from time to time, but he has stopped shaking and may be asleep, and she has stopped crying, too. She has made a nest for him with her body, her broken-winged dove. Though he is cuddled up tight, gripping her breast as though to keep from falling, his thin white legs are asprawl, and she knows that they present an image not unlike that of Jesus being held by his mournful mother after His descent from the cross. Except that Colin, though as pale as the dead Jesus and not very well, is very much alive. He lets go of her breast now and takes her hand off his hip, where it had been resting, and slides it to his penis. He often sleeps this way when he crawls into her bed, his penis soft then, his underwear damp and sticky. It’s not exactly right, but it always makes him feel calmer and she thinks of it as a necessary sedative and a kind of therapy. This morning, though, his underwear is dry and his penis is stiff, like a wooden clothespin. She wraps her hand around it as he wraps his hand around hers. He makes sudden little jerking movements, gripping her fist, and then there is a hot warm flow—“Mother!” he whispers, “Oh! Mother! I love you!”—then sinks away, sound asleep, dead to the world. Debra, cupping his wet pouch protectively as a mother might her newborn’s tender little head, is crying again.

The King is in his counting house, but no money to be counted. The Wizards have it all. By magic? No, their magic couldn’t pull a coin out of your ear. Probably he just left the back door open. He can’t think of everything. The war is not going well. Treasure Mountain is under attack, its guardian dragon having wandered off in pursuit of succulent maidens. A serious error of judgment, but some things can’t be helped. The forest has fallen to the Cretins, the King’s counselors are bickering confusedly among themselves, and when the Jester, somewhat soused on the royal mead, remarks that the Castle has been caught out like a maiden with her drawbridges down, he is banished to the fields to practice his jokes on the sheep and share their mange and foot rot.