Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

She prays a lot more now — it’s the one time she can let go her feelings without embarrassment — tearfully confessing everything in front of everybody. Or, rather, having taken Ludie Belle’s advice to heart, almost everything; she would never say anything to upset Colin, and she has to be careful not to overdo it, for her emotions can trigger bad episodes and complicate his therapy. But she has often described in her public prayers the terror and inadequacy she felt in the face of what happened that morning in the wild patch on the other side of the creek, thanking God for giving her the strength to do what she never could have done on her own, for she is a weak person and a cowardly one who, without God’s help, would have simply run away or died of terror, rooted to the spot. She has always explained that she went there often for her dawn prayers because it was where she felt closest to God, which is true, but that she could never ever again return, for it has been irremediably contaminated with evil. Her account of events is probably a bit different from what really happened, but she can recall so little of it except as a kind of terrifying blur, it is probably as accurate as any other she could give. When she told Darren and Billy Don that the dark phantomlike figures who attacked the girl made her think of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the four angels of horror and devastation, they were very impressed and Darren asked her to tell it again for his tape recorder. He especially liked the part about there being more black angels in the offing, for he said that was his interpretation too, and he has since often spoken of her in prayer meetings as having prophetic powers, so she is now esteemed for that as well as for her bravery, though she does not feel at all brave and all she can see of the future is the terrible trouble she is in.

Even though the place it all happened is now one of such utter horror to her, she nevertheless got up her courage one morning and snuck over by the back way from the vegetable garden to retrieve her abandoned underwear which if found would be hard to explain. Anyone who knows her would recognize them because she always wears panties with colorful flower patterns on them and she has hung them on the line often enough to dry and sometimes has gone around with little else on because they’re not much different than swimming suits nowadays. But they weren’t there. Those evil boys must have taken them. Or…someone did. She felt suddenly like she was being watched and she was too frightened for a moment even to move. The place where the body or whatever was buried seemed almost to start quivering. She thought she heard something behind her like the flutter of hawk or buzzard wings. Her heart raced and tears sprang to her eyes, for she recognized the sound as what she heard that morning behind her back as she scrunched down behind the tree here with her eyes pressed shut. But when she finally turned around there was no one there and everything was silent; only a few bees could be heard, a woodpecker high up in a tree. Afterwards, she thought of what she’d heard as the ghostly flutter of devils’ wings, even though until recently she didn’t really believe in devils, or ghosts either, and probably still doesn’t, and she certainly doesn’t know whether they have wings or not.

She has never dreamt about that morning in the garden, or about devils either, unless she doesn’t remember. Most of her dreams are happy ones, and so after presenting to the women crammed into Mabel’s caravan one of Colin’s horrible dreams, she decided to balance it with one of her own, partly just to lighten her own heart. Colin’s nightmares, from which he usually awakes screaming and trembling violently and needing her solacing embrace, worry her, for she is not certain she understands the difference in Colin’s mind between his waking life and his dreams. Debra has never really believed in fortune-telling, horoscopes, and the like, but since she surrendered to the Brunist message, more things seem possible than before. After what happened that terrible morning, these women have, until today, been so protective and supportive and she has in turn wanted to accept their world and live in it to the best of her ability, to stay close to them. So, after Glenda was able to see Colin’s nightmare about stabbing and burning and then eating the blue corpse of Giovanni Bruno in such a positive and heartening way, she was eager to show them that, even if sometimes she seems nervous and grumpy, down deep she remains the loving hopeful person she has always been. Only it didn’t work out that way. Which is why she is crying now and can’t seem to stop.

The dream she told them was such a pretty one and made her so happy when she dreamt it. At first there was something about flying that had mostly faded from her memory by the time she woke up, as dreams do; she could only remember being on a bridge and realizing that if she pushed against the air she could rise up and fly — it was so exhilarating! She flew to a peaceful meadow with glittery green grass the color of the synthetic grass in Easter baskets and hundreds of beautiful orange daisies as bright as coins, unlike any she’d ever seen, and she knew she had arrived in Heaven. It really exists! she thought in her dream. It was like a place inside a place and oh so colorful! The grasshoppers were a shiny emerald green with eyes like tiny sparkling rubies and the butterflies were all colors of the rainbow, their wings turning luminous when they caught the sunlight, and she remarked to herself how she loved all of God’s creatures, even spiders and snakes and beetles. There were birds, too, and she named them all, though later she realized she had made up all the names, for these were birds with such rich plumage they would put a peacock to shame and were unlike any she had encountered before. She wanted to pluck some of the daisies and make the most beautiful daisy chain ever made, but she knew they would only wilt, so it was better to leave them just where they were, where they could be loved for their own sake. She knelt to kiss one of them. The earth they were growing in was a fertile black loam. How she wished she had some of that in her garden at the camp! Things would grow overnight in it! She dug her fingers into it, delighting in its soft moist texture. And then a funny thing happened. There was an elephant in the garden! It made her laugh to see it. She stood up and looked into its big sad eye and saw such wisdom there, so much knowledge, but how could it ever be revealed? Well, there was no reason it should be. It’s impossible to figure everything out in the world, that’s why one has to have faith. She felt that the elephant was her friend and, although it sort of disappeared from the dream, it would always be there in the way God is always there even if you can’t see Him, and she awoke full of peace and contentment.

Glenda stared at her for a short time with her one eye, which reminded Debra all too much of the elephant’s eye in her dream. The little sitting room was hushed except for the crowded breathing. Then, showing her gold tooth in a smile that was not really a smile at all, she said it was funny how the real innards of a dream get hid away in the pictures, like pride here in the peacock and shame about that or about something worse, what with all those unnatural colors, and the sadness of knowing too much or maybe having too much known about you and what a burden all this hidden knowledge was, as big as an elephant, crushing the pretty flowers with its big feet — Debra thought the elephant was funny! — but the relief of knowing that whatever the elephant knows will not be revealed, meaning the fear that it will be, which goes together with the secret lies when naming the birds, which usually stand for one’s thoughts in dreams. And also how the most important things in dreams are not so much what is there as what is not there, like there are no human beings here in this Heaven, for example, and no children, or even any common animals like dogs or cats, they not being included with spiders and snakes amongst God’s lovable creatures. There’s a lot about money here, she went on to say, and Debra felt certain there was nothing about money at all, Glenda’s remarks about the green grasses being the color of money and also the green grasshoppers with those beady eyes like little warning lights, or even sparks of hot hidden passion, being just completely crazy, even though Debra had to admit she herself had said the bright orange daisies were like coins she couldn’t pick up. It occurred to her that the orange daisies might have been inspired by the flowers printed on her missing underpants, but she wasn’t about to say so. Glenda went on about the orangeness of those daisies, saying that that color, as everyone knew, was associated with the reproduction, daisies themselves being signs of indecision and of being loved and not being loved, and then about her desire to string them together in a chain the way cells get strung together, but her inability to do so, if she tried they’d just die like they always do, and Debra simply had to tune out because she knew what the woman was getting at and it was very cruel. By this time she was close to tears and having a difficult time stopping her lower lip from trembling and was sorry she had come to the caravan and will never do so again. She could not look at the other women, feeling like they were seeing clean through her, like she didn’t have any clothes on, or skin either, just a shriveled heart with pins in it. But Glenda, still staring at her with that one eye, and sliding her tongue over her gold tooth as if to polish it, went on about how feeling at peace with yourself in a dream always means just the opposite, and when she discovered Heaven was actually true, it really meant she did not believe it was, and when, like the daisies, she wanted to be loved for her own sake, it meant she felt she was not. As for the black soil, black always has to do with depression, sadness, and despair, she said, and sometimes hidden desires. “And, well, we all know what dirt means in a dream. And they’s worse things, like what is it you are kissing and what’s your hand doing down there in that wet black dirtiness, but I won’t say them.” But she already had. Debra mustered a kind of smile and a faint trembly thank you, and without looking at anybody, fled to her cabin.