Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“Well, you know, Glenda asked me that same question, but she wasn’t thinking about whether or not it might be Jesus,” Patti Jo says. “She said that seeing a circumcision in a dream was a good luck omen, though it can also mean that the dreamer is worried about some forgotten detail that might embarrass them if it was found out, just as seeing one that has not been circumcised can mean that the dreamer is not thinking clearly and is refusing to see the truth. I said I didn’t know which it was, or rather Marcella didn’t seem to know — it wasn’t like she was paying any attention to that part. It was just there like sometimes a face is there in a dream but you can’t really see it.”

All of which is finally too much for Thelma Coates, who gasps and says, “Oh my!” and flutters her hand in front of her face as though fanning it and says she has to get back or Roy will have a conniption. When she gets up to leave, Patti Jo also gets up and says she has to go back to the motel because Duke has a new song he wants to teach her for tonight. Thelma can give her a ride as far as the highway crossing and she can walk the rest. Everyone is sad about this; her story about Marcella Bruno’s dream has been really exciting and they want to keep talking about it.

Instead they get back on about Abner Baxter and his family, who Thelma has told them are now living in an abandoned field next to that new campsite Mr. John P. Suggs is building, but without Franny who has left home, if you can call it home, to go live with Tessie Lawson, because she is going to marry Tessie’s brother-in-law, Steve, who is something of a rowdy and a drunk and hollow between the ears, so not much of a catch, but if you’re somebody as plain as Franny Baxter, what more can you hope for? This leaves Abner stuck with Sarah, who is so depressed she can’t do anything except eat all day, and Amanda, who is subnormal and flirtatious and apt to get in serious trouble in a snap if you take your eye off her. They are living mostly off collections at Abner’s preaching, which is not enough for one person, much less four, especially since most of his followers are even poorer than he. They discuss whether Abner’s troubles are mostly his own fault or not, he being the sort of person who cannot keep his mouth shut, and Hazel says that, well, most saints are like that, aren’t they, confessing Christ when they’re told not to? Bernice confirms that the word carved onto Young Abner’s forehead is “liar,” she having read it before she put the bandages on, and Mabel points out that that’s four letters, just like the four letters on Jesus’ cross. Bernice counts them on her fingers and says that, yes, it calculates, though it’s hard to credit the parallel.

Lucy is able to tell everyone about investigations into the mine break-in, which Calvin is helping the sheriff with, and that, in spite of the rumors, no dynamite has been found. Mabel says she asked her cards, and they were not completely clear, but the Magician and Pope turned up, side by side and upside down next to the Chariot, and she took the Chariot to mean their climbing of the Mount of Redemption, hampered by slickness and trickery and false propaganda, so maybe it really was just all a deception to try to keep them off the mine hill like Mr. Suggs says. They all shake their heads in astonishment at the world’s wickedness and agree with that. Lucy is once again amazed at Mabel’s gifts, wishing she had just a smidgeon of them so that the future didn’t always keep surprising her so. The others remark on all the time Mr. Suggs is spending at the camp now with Ben and Clara gone, helping with the management and making sure people don’t bother them. Talk about your saints. Mr. Suggs’ halo is just waiting for him in Heaven, Linda says, and Lucy sees it there, hanging on a hook by the Pearly Gates like a ball cap. Lucy says that Calvin believes the motorcycle gang has split up since one of them got killed and they won’t be seen around here anymore, and that’s a blessed relief. But the damage has been done. It’s so sad. Bernice says that, afterwards, she had tried to give little Elaine an inside wash as well as clean all the blood off the outside, and the girl had coiled up and snarled and spat at her like a snake or a trapped animal. Bernice, being a nurse, is the only one who even hints at what really happened, though everyone knows. And as if what happened to the girl wasn’t tragic enough, now the camp has been all month without Ben and Clara, who are desperately missed by everyone. Will they ever come back? No one knows and many fear the worst, for they left in great despair. They all agree it’s time for Mabel to consult her cards again and she gets them out and shuffles them in her strange sliding way, but before she can turn any of them over, Hazel Dunlevy, looking out the caravan window, says, “Here comes Sister Debra. I reckon I better go’n mind the kids fer Glenda.” As Mabel gathers up the cards, Lucy wonders what they might have said and whether or not this interruption means that a truth that might have been revealed will stop being true, changing the way the future will turn out, and thinking about so much terrible mysterious power sends a little shudder down her spine.

“Blue often stands in for spirituality, hope, positive thoughts. It’s reckoned that a dreamer, dreaming of blue, specially a blue person, even a dead one, may be in the presence of his spiritual guide, and this would seem to be the case here, seeing who the dead man is and seeing as how he speaks wisdom even if it don’t make sense when the boy’s woked up. That he tries to stab the dead man with a table knife is not in itself a bad thing, because a table knife in a dream is a favorable sign pointing to succeeding at your life goals. That it ain’t the right sorta knife for stabbing somebody might mean he don’t really wanta kill the Prophet, but it’s more like a, you know, ritual thing, and a way of loosing his anger that his spiritual guide has been killt. That he sets the body on fire don’t look good on the surface, but fire is a symbol of change and growing up, specially for a boy, and may be trying to show a struggle for him to get control over something — to luminate it, like you might say. That the dead man keeps talking to him and keeps on being blue while he’s burning means the fire must be symbolic and not real. That the boy tries to eat the roasted dead man and does eat part of him can signify he’s just trying to take the Prophet and all his wisdom inside him, even if the part that he eats ain’t normally the place where wisdom can generally be found. Just the contrary, in fact — but contraries are common as sin in dreams. That he seen worms crawling outa the dead man’s flesh whilst he was eating him is a tad unsettling, but given the part he was eating, he mighta been seeing the intestines without recognizing them, and intestines are mostly a positive thing in dreams, indicating steadfastness and gumption, though sometimes they can remind you more like a maze you’re lost in. That he woked up screaming was probably just due to the worms, or what he thought was worms, but the rest was not troubling to him or he woulda woked up before. To be safe, though, you maybe oughta check to see he’s got worms or not, because sometimes dreams tell us practical things we should oughta pay attention to.”

Alone in her cabin Debra has collapsed into tears as she has done so often over the recent weeks, though not in front of others if she can help it — certainly not in front of Colin, who is up at the office in the lodge, helping the two boys unpack boxes into the new filing cabinets. She is so grateful to Darren and Billy Don for taking Colin in as a friend and making him feel important, for he is all she has right now and when he is distressed and panicky she almost cannot bear it. She didn’t think it would be like this. She worries she won’t have the strength to see it through, not even knowing what “it” will be; though, whatever, it doesn’t look good. She has heard others speak of life as a burden, but she has so loved life, she has never really understood until now how it could be. It’s when you start being more afraid of living than of dying, and that awful Glenda is right, it does feel like an elephant sitting on her.