Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Her present suffering may be having a similar effect. Chasing Tommy is an amusing diversion from what is now her writing life (yes, she has made that choice — this am who she am, bring on the dissonance and fuck the consequences), but putting up with nights like this, having to listen to her benighted townsfolk rattle insanely on in a suffocating school auditorium, suffering an infinite boredom sinking into total stupor, and not for Tommy’s sake, as she likes to pretend, but merely for the sake of her futile pursuit of him, is ratcheting up that pursuit’s value and her love for its object. Sally does not believe Tommy will ever show any interest in her, but she has to believe, against all odds, he will, else all she’s putting herself through will have been for nothing — even if, on one level, she doesn’t even like him, finding him an insensitive, spoiled, jock-strapped, self-centered nitwit. But, somewhat in the abstract, he’s also beautiful and she loves him. Maybe all the more so since he took her to the brink five years ago, like the Brunists got taken on their stormy hill — and more or less at the same time — then dropped her. Another failed prophecy: They both thought it was going to happen and it didn’t. And won’t. But will. I believe. Such are her vain expectations and the punishments she must suffer in their anticipation. But there’s a limit. When Tommy’s father remarks that it is religion that holds this community together and asks the Catholic priest and the Methodist preacher to lead them all in prayer, she butts out.

A few days later, over ice cream sundaes in the Tucker City drugstore, Sally tries to explain this new concept to Billy Don Tebbett, leaving out the spooky divine engineering bit — the principle being, if you can understand the mechanism, you can escape it — but Billy Don only pretends to listen. He did seem genuinely happy to see her again when they met outside on the street, grinning his flushed awkward grin while pulling self-consciously on his droopy mustaches and squeezing her hand when she offered it, but now he has withdrawn behind his sunglasses once more as if regretting that he has come here. They are regulars now and evoke amused glances whenever they enter; the people all go silent and look the other way, busying themselves with this or that, no doubt hoping to overhear something scandalous again, and it’s not in her nature to disappoint them. The fear of that may be what has made Billy Don apprehensive, or else it’s her Mark Twain tee, IF THERE IS A GOD HE IS A MALIGN THUG, which he’s staring at, though without the usual close-read. He’s probably aware of the actions being taken against the camp by the city, and maybe he associates her with them. She asks if something is the matter and he only shrugs and says they’ve been working harder than ever at the camp and seem to be getting less and less done, and then he looks away. Though this is more an evasion than an answer, she decides to use it, and with her notebook open to her cogdiss page, she says that hard work might be a way of avoiding having to think about anything else, and he looks into her eyes with at least one of his and agrees with a nod that it could be. But when she suggests it might also be a way of inducing or reinforcing belief — that work is a kind of suffering, and the more of it you devote to some cause or other, the more you start to believe in it, have to believe in it — he says, no, it wasn’t anything like that, it was just to prove they can carry on without Ben and Clara.

“You mean Mrs. Collins has left the camp?”

“Well, just for three or four weeks or so. Probably. She and Ben are on a, you know, like, tour of the East Coast churches or something. Ben’s going to sing.”

He’s looking away again. Something’s bothering him; he’s not coming clean. He has made his methodical way down through his sundae, but the old voracity is not there. On a hunch, she says: “What I’m saying is, when you’re only thinking about something — religion, say — you can take it or leave it. But when you start doing something, or have to, especially where people can see you, you get hooked. That is, you hook yourself. Doing creates believing. You know? Almost like it is believing. Or when, for example, something bad happens…”

“Something bad did happen.”

“Oh yeah?” Heads turn in the silence, not to face them, but to position their ears. “Billy Don…?”

“I can’t talk about it. I promised.”

“Is it why Mrs. Collins and her husband left?” He doesn’t reply, just glances up at her then drops his head. Maybe they got into it with somebody and things went wrong and they just ducked out. Which would be a total disaster. But what could have gone wrong? She had all her closest people around her; any fights, she’d have won them. And Mrs. Collins didn’t seem like one to get caught out in any kind of scandal either. So something happened to her to make her leave. But she’s used to trouble and she didn’t look a quitter. You had the feeling she would have stood up against any…unless… “Did they take her daughter along when they left?” This time he doesn’t even glance up at her. “Something happened to her daughter…oh no. Someone in the camp?”

He shakes his head. “No,” he mutters, his head down, speaking so softly he almost cannot be heard. “It was those bikers. They…”

“The bikers? What—? Oh my god, Billy Don! They…?”

He nods and puts his finger to his lips, glancing uneasily around the drugstore. Nothing to be heard but the soft flutter of the ceiling fan overhead. “Your aunt was a real heroine,” he wheezes, his hand in front of his mouth, and clears his throat. “She heard something and went down there and fought them all off with a big branch.”

“She did? Aunt Debra?”

“But she’s not the same now. She seems mad about something all the time, or else just sad. She gets very demanding and at the same time she cries a lot. Nobody’s the same now.”

“That’s an awful story, Billy Don! It’s horrible! Something has to be done!”

“No, they don’t want anybody to know. You have to promise not to tell. They’re afraid people around here will take it the wrong way. You know, like we’re always getting accused of one sick thing or another. And the bikers have all left. One of them got killed. Sheriff Puller found his body and his wrecked bike out on the state road and he said they won’t be back.”

“I heard about that. Some guy driving drunk without a helmet. But their motorcycles are really noisy. You can hear them a mile away. How did they reach the camp without everyone knowing?”

“Well, it was very early, still dark. And they used a car.”

“A car.” Aha. “Saturday. Or Sunday. A week ago,” she says. He looks up at her, surprised. “Friend of mine. His car was stolen that night. Later they found it trashed over by the mine.” She saw Tommy that day. He’d gone out to the motel car park and found it gone. He said it took him a while to grasp that it had been stolen; at first he thought he must have parked it somewhere else, given someone the keys. But he had the keys. He said this happened “after midnight” which she translated to “the next morning.”

“And Pach’, he was there, too.”

“Pach’?”

“Carl Dean Palmers. I guess he was one of them — everybody said so, but he really fooled me. Duke and Patti Jo said he was getting drunk with the bikers in the motel bar the night before. He loved her, but she wouldn’t pay him any mind, so, I don’t know, maybe he just…”

And so that, too. “My friend said he was supposed to meet Carl Dean that morning at the garage, but he got stood up. I guess after all that happened Ugly just took off.”