Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

When he arrives, he feels like it’s the second time he’s come out here this morning; he dismisses the feeling. There’s a cheery freshness to the place this summery morning, but they’ve fallen behind in their projects, he knows, missing the energy and discipline brought to them by Ben and Clara. That damned Puller. The sheriff waited too long to go after the motorcyclists, and see now the consequences. Puller has an official story about the death of that mop-headed biker, and then there’s the one suggested by the since-repaired dent in the right front fender of his police car. No matter. They’re gone. But so are Ben and Clara. He has an uneasy feeling about Ben this morning for some reason. Some new awareness dawning about where the man’s priorities lie.

The church service, he learns, is being held up on Inspiration Point. After checking in at the Meeting Hall kitchen, where the ladies are busy preparing the Sunday buffet (he can smell roast pork), he makes his way up there, speaking with people as he goes. Both Wayne Shawcross and Welford Oakes acknowledge that they will see him later, before lunch, in the church office. Mrs. Edwards, about whom he is seriously concerned, will be there, too. No, no news from Ben and Clara. He remarks that there are more people here than he expected and learns that some of those chased out are drifting back by day, still feeling a part of things. Some help out, some don’t. On his way past the cabin refurbished for the two office boys, he sticks his head in. Already looking too much like some kid’s college room; he’ll have to speak with them about that. There’s something odd about the blond one, though he’s smart and people seem to be taking his arcane decodings seriously, especially with regard to something that’s supposed to happen next weekend. The other one is useful and willing but without much spunk and not completely reliable. Some folks, he thinks, are born to backsliding. Sooner or later they’ll both have to leave the cabin and it will become the official church office.

Outside the sickbay cabin, he nods to Rumpel and Dunlevy, members of his Christian Patriots organization, but not of the camp executive committee; he keeps the two things separate. Both former soldiers, they were with him at the cemetery yesterday for the Patriots’ Memorial Day services, a holiday too much ignored in this country. Dunlevy is a jack of all trades, useful in many ways, but only up to a point. Hard to know for sure what’s boiling underneath Rumpel’s thick skin, the one they call Hunk, but he is, at least on the surface, a simple man, blunt and mostly unthinking. He’s strong and he takes orders well and is a good rifleman, has his own arsenal. Both men were useful in clearing illegal Baxterite squatters off the new trailer park and campsite a few days ago, and he has more projects for them this week.

Cecil Appleby, the beekeeper, conducts this morning’s service on the Point. Reluctantly, as always; he’s no showboat. When ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do — that’s his style. Shawcross reads the scripture, Hall spouting a few spontaneous verses of his own, and that southern couple, L’Heureux and his woman, are there to lead the singing. Not sure about them. Especially the man, who croons religious songs like they’re love songs and earns his living singing in bars. The woman is more interesting, has some kind of special connection. They may or may not stick, but for the moment they bring a certain quality to these occasions. While Appleby leads them in prayer, staring at his gnarled hands as though the text were written there, Pat gazes across the way at the mine hill glowing in the morning sun. He sees it not so much as a holy place now as a building site. He can see the temple sitting there, but there are still problems to resolve. Pat has learned a few things about Appleby. The man has known tragedy. Apparently he struck and killed a child one day while driving. He was in real estate then, beekeeping just a hobby, and he was on his way to view a new property, probably hurrying to beat a competitor there. He got jailed briefly for involuntary manslaughter, gave up real estate afterwards. Gave up driving, too — his wife does all of that now. He took up carpentry, what he calls the Master’s trade, instead, and got good at it, it being part and parcel of his faith. Kept the hives, added to them, and the two of them became beekeeping nomads, chasing the seasons, picking up carpentry work on the side. Found his mentor in Ben Wosznik. Not because of Wosznik’s preaching, which is minimal, but because of his singing. Appleby doesn’t exactly preach either, he merely leads them in prayer, speaking quietly, sincerely, urgently to Jesus and God. Pat has taken a liking to him. Reminds him some of Ely Collins. Ely exhorted more, Appleby keeps more to himself, but he has Ely’s quiet eloquence. Innate wisdom. Like Ely, he is who he is and is trustworthy to the core.

After the service, he joins Shawcross, Oakes, and Mrs. Edwards in the church office off the Meeting Hall where the lunch is being set out. Oakes offers Mrs. Edwards a chair and she refuses it a bit too sharply. A little huffy recently, but there are a lot of pressures on her — pressures he can’t do much about. There is much to talk about; too much for a one-hour meeting. Mrs. Edwards wastes some of that time expressing her gratitude to him on behalf of the entire camp for all the time and concern he is devoting to them in their present difficulties. He nods in acknowledgement, trying not to show his impatience, then takes reports on the various camp construction projects. Wayne Shawcross describes the completion of the cabin for the two boys and points out the new shelves and filing cabinets installed in the office. Welford Oakes says he is plumbing in a ladies’ restroom with flush toilets in the unused storage room next door and the office where they are sitting is designated for future conversion into a men’s room, so he’s installing waste and supply pipes adequate for both facilities. Wayne reports there was another intrusion and vandalism in the camp yesterday. Somebody got in and tried to pull down one of the lamp posts, and there was an attempt to set Hunk Rumpel’s chicken coops on fire, but they were chased away by gunfire. Mrs. Edwards says that although nothing has been stolen, intruders have also been inside her tool shed. “Probably Baxter’s people,” Pat says. “We chased them off the new campsite. They were retaliating. There’s apt to be more of that. We’re going to be making life ever more uncomfortable for them around here until they get the message and move on.” Mrs. Edwards says that she will be putting a lock on the shed door and only she and Hazel Dunlevy, who has started helping her down there, will have keys.

They briefly touch on the legal harassments. The city’s injunctions, he tells them, are dead in the water. If anything does stick, enforcement still has to go through Sheriff Puller and he has no intention of preventing the church from having free access to the hill. The threat of state and federal prosecutors is a red herring. Not going to happen. He says he has been working with a hotshot lawyer up in the city named Thornton who has taken a personal interest in their case and who assures him the charges of embezzlement and theft against the three women have no merit. What he doesn’t tell them is that Thornton said the cases are similar, but the Filbert/Cavanaugh case is winnable and the Edwards one is probably not. Mrs. Edwards is one of their most dependable and enthusiastic workers; he could not have done without her during this absence of Clara and Ben. She has given her all, but she may have to be sacrificed. If she takes a personal hit, the church may be let off and they can perhaps avoid forfeiting any of the property. He assumes, if she gets sent up and the Rapture happens, being such a loyal and devoted servant, Jesus will find her. There’s her troubled boy, but he’d be best off in an institution anyway. The one consolation is that their adversaries will never get the money. He hopes that will console her as well.