Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

The next morning they awake to grim tidings. Not the writing on the wall, though there’s that, too. “Aw, Mom,” Mattie says after she swats him, “we only wanted to play Battleship and we ain’t got no paper.” “Any paper,” she says. “You ain’t got any paper.” “That’s what I said.” “Well, that ain’t no excuse to write on the walls. Now you take your erasers and see if you can’t get some of that off.” “Our erasers are all wore down.” “Well, lick it and wipe it with your sleeve.” Not that it matters much. They’ll be changing houses soon.

But the really bad news, discovered a moment later, is that everything has been turned off. No electricity, no gas, no water. Which means, among other grave consequences, that the toilet won’t flush. Isaiah who is headed in there now is going to be a very unhappy man. She goes door to door to the other houses in Chestnut Hills where people chased from the camp are living and finds it’s the same story. Everything shut down. They can’t do this. You can’t deprive a person of water no matter how poor they are. She urges them to join her in a march down to city hall to demand their rights. Only a few buy into this plan and most of them drop away before they get there. In the end she’s stuck with her own kids and a couple of yokels from Arkansas who can’t seem to get it in their heads that the Second Coming didn’t actually happen last month and they weren’t somehow left behind. Democracy’s a good thing, but it has its limits. On the steps of city hall, she also realizes she left Johnny at home. How could she have forgotten him? She sends Mattie to retrieve him and tells him to ask his father to bring them back here in the pickup because she might need his help.

The mayor’s busy, but he’s not so busy he can’t hear her out. Dot pushes aside the fat girl out front and storms on in. The boys from Arkansas follow her as far as the door. “What the hell is going on here?” the mayor roars out, and then she’s down to Mark and Luke. But it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t need numbers — right is on her side. She unloads her grievances on the mayor, a shady character if she ever saw one, telling him that she doesn’t know who’s responsible for the sabotage out there in Chestnut Hills, but it’s unconstitutional and has to be put right or there’ll be big trouble, and though he has been standing, he sits down again, wallowing a cigar around in his fat leathery cheeks, his beady eyes narrowing. She leans over and slaps her fist on his desk, reminding him that God is on her side and quite capable of serious devastation, and the mayor shrinks back into his leather swivel chair, nearly swallowing his cigar. At least she has his attention. He makes a circular motion around one ear and she thinks he’s calling her crazy and is about to pop him one, but then she realizes he’s signaling to the woman on the other side of the open door behind her to make a phone call. Probably to those clowns she met out at the pool yesterday. Little Luke has found a settee, something she hasn’t seen in a long time, and it excites her. She’s jumps up and down on it with gleeful yipping noises. Dot tells the mayor that children’s health and lives are at stake, and to illustrate the subject, she lifts Markie up and stands him on the mayor’s desk. Unfortunately, Markie uses that moment to let go again, puddling the scattered papers on the mayor’s desk, and she tells him that’s because with no running water they can’t use the bathrooms and now look what’s happened. The mayor can see what has happened. He’s on his feet again and looks ready to make a run for it. Mattie comes in just then, dragging a squalling Johnny. He says, gasping for breath, that Dad wasn’t home and he had to carry Johnny all the way here and he’s too heavy and he dropped him a few times. He doesn’t know where his father is, but probably he went to look for another bathroom — the one at home isn’t any good anymore.

The mayor, outflanked, relents. “Take her over to the utilities manager and get this sorted out!” he commands, probably heard clear across town.

His secretary doesn’t seem to know who the utilities manager is, being a typical underachieving government employee, but then she does know. Maybe the mayor mouthed something. Dot can hear the door slamming and locking behind her as they proceed down the hall. She carries Johnny now and drags along a reluctant Luke, who’s howling that she wants to go back and jump on the bouncy thing some more. They are led to a back room which seems to be part of the city clerk’s office. There’s a guy slumped behind a dusty desk looking three sheets to the wind. “The mayor said to take care of this,” the old girl squeaks and vanishes, not even explaining her case. Which Dot proceeds to do, though it’s clear not much is getting through. It’s still midmorning and this guy is gone for the day. Whatever she says, he just grins and winks. Consequently, the crisis she is describing becomes more of a monetary one, and what with her shouting and fist-banging and little Johnny crawling around on top of the desk and all three of the others now either whining or crying, he finally reaches blearily for his billfold, still grinning stupidly like she’s telling him a funny joke, fumbles for a dollar bill. She snatches the billfold from him, finds three tens, hands it back.

“Hah!” he says and falls back into his chair, casting his grin upon the inside of his billfold.

“And tell the mayor to get those services turned back on or we’re going straight to the Supreme Court!” she yells and leads the kids out of there.

Little Johnny is a load to carry, but Dot decides to toss him over her shoulder and go blow some change from their windfall on ice creams as a reward for her loyal little army, and while walking down Main Street, remarking as she goes on the street’s boarded-up pot-holed post-Armageddon look, she passes a sorry-looking white-haired guy having a smoke outside a shoe store. “Looks like you got some ponies there need shoeing,” he says.

“Well, I got ten dollars,” she says and she shows one of the bills to him. “What can we get for that?”

“Come on in, have a look. Whole stock’s on sale. Should find something you like for that price.”

At first, all the shoes cost ten bucks each, but she says she can’t buy shoes for just one of them, so the price drops to five, and then, when she shrugs and starts to leave, three pair for ten. “Look,” he says, “I’ll even throw in a pair of baby shoes for the little one. It’s your lucky day. Line ’em up and fit ’em out.”

Baby shoes. She hadn’t even thought about that. First any of her kids have ever had. She picks out a pair that look a bit like his father’s work boots. Mattie and Mark are easy enough, liking everything they try on and wanting them all, but Luke has her eye on some pink slippers high up on the wall of shoeboxes. “Not your size, little girl. Try these,” the owner says, showing her a pair of patent leather sandals. But Luke is determined, it being her nature, and starts to climb the boxes, succeeding in bringing the whole lot tumbling down. The man’s right, they’re too big, but Luke wants them anyway. “I’ll grow into them, Mom.”

“When they fit, Lukie, I’ll buy them for you. For now, come and try on these sneakers.”

After that, Luke hates every pair she tries on, so finally Dot makes the choice for her, ignoring her loud, bad-tempered protests. Mattie and Mark are bringing down other stacks just for fun, trying to bury each other in falling shoes and boxes. “You know,” the man says with a sick smile, “you’re like somebody out of my nightmares.” She asks him if he couldn’t show a little Christian charity and lower the price enough to leave her change to buy ice creams for the kids, but by now, in his excitement, Johnny has pooped his britches again and the place is reeking and the store owner’s free hand is closing. “No,” he says, looking like he’s about to gag. “Out. Out!” He herds them onto the street, following them out, locks the door behind him, and hurries away. Probably to go spend up the ten dollars, she assumes, and she wonders if somehow she got cheated.