Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Purity of heart. Something Ely once said in a sermon, asking God he be granted it, and this has been her prayer as well and is now. What Ely meant by it was doing one thing in life and doing it right. It should be a grand thing and a noble thing and a holy thing, but one thing. It’s what true devotion is. On the road out east, between one church and another, she talked about it with Ben. He said he couldn’t define purity, but he knew how it felt. When they moved here to the camp they had it. Often, before that, in the early years, out on the road, too. But it was gone now. It’s still gone.

Bernice lifted her spectacles and took only one look at Elaine back at the trailer and said they had to get her to the hospital. Now. That child is dying. Ben was nowhere to be found. They rushed here in Bernice’s car, Elaine too feeble to resist. The doctor, too, was alarmed. The nurses took measures: emergency measures that Clara should perhaps have disallowed, but she was confused, ashamed, frightened, exhausted herself, the doctor taking note of that, asking questions, personal questions that she brushed aside or answered only in part, growing angry, then apologizing for that, trying not to break into tears, her daughter needing her strength, having so little of her own.

Her worst failing: Elaine has suffered so, and she has not known how to console her.

They left the camp, went east ostensibly to visit the churches there, sing and preach in them and bring the news, but primarily for Elaine’s sake, to distance her from the scene of her ordeal, spend more time together, attempt a healing. Though it was good to get back on the road again, good for her and Ben, Elaine remained tucked darkly into herself, refusing to speak, eating almost nothing. It just takes time, Clara supposed. Time and love. The movement, she saw, was strong and healthy. There were large, enthusiastic crowds wherever they went, and they even thought about settling out there, turning the Wilderness Camp over to those folks still living here. Maybe trying to build this administrative center was a mistake, for them at least; they were missionaries, not office workers. That’s how they were thinking. But word got around about Elaine wasting away and people began to get curious. They started comparing her to Marcella, only a legend to them, but a saintly one, and they wanted to see her, to pray in her company and to hear what she had to say. She had nothing to say, but that seemed to fascinate them all the more. Sick people turned up, asking to be cured. It got to be a little like a traveling freak show, which is how Ben put it one day in anger, chasing a crowd of them away from their house trailer, and they decided to return to the camp, fearful of the effect it might have on Elaine but not knowing where else to go. Besides, there was the Temple of Light cornerstone laying ceremony coming up; people would not understand why she who had brought all this about was not here. Even Ely, though mostly absent, seemed to be insisting on her return. The cornerstone was his tombstone, after all. But the trip back was long and Elaine, now refusing to leave her bed, worsened by the hour, as if the camp, as they drew nearer to it, were drawing the lifeblood out of her.

Ben arrives. He brings a chair over and sits beside her and takes her hand and asks clumsily how the girl is. He can see how she is. “How is it that something so good and holy can turn so bad?” he asks, not of her, just of the room. Of God. “I don’t hardly know what to do,” he says. And then he starts to cry. And she starts to cry. And they sit there for a while, two old people, weeping.

“Boy, this little lady kin sure flap, rare back’n cut down on a ballad! Jist give her a buncha words’n git outa the way! ‘The Trailer Camp Blues!’ So new it ain’t hardly got notes yet and ye heerd it here first in the ole Blue Moon, hottest spot the back side a Nashville! ‘Lost her name in a poker game!’ But she ain’t lost hers! Patti Jo Glover, folks, that’s whom she am! That’s right, give her a big hand, lemme hear it! I love her! And hey, ifn y’ain’t lovin’, y’ain’t livin’! Am I right? So kiss a face there! Go ahead! Won’t do ye no more harm’n a fever blister! And dontcha leave now, ya big sissies, hang in there to the end, cuz we got another big clump a Sattiday night honkytonk, hankypanky, hoedowns’n heartbreak a-comin’ your way soon’s we wet the whustle…

“That was beautiful, sweet thing! Y’really crunched it! Done me proud!”

“Well, I wish I could sing, Duke, and not only hoot and yip. Funny how you can make something just about bearable by only singing about it. And this one’s kinda comical like I guess my life was, though it didn’t feel like it at the time. Thanks for that. And thanks for the beer, too.”

“Thank the feller who runs this flophouse. The beers’re on him, and whatall else we hanker after. It’s the big crowds we been pullin’ in since we teamed up. Folks is comin’ from all over the acreage. Kitchen’s hummin’ and the bar cain’t stock in enough. Him and me we had a talk, and he’s uppin’ our wages, too. You ain’t singin’ fer free no more. And Will Henry says he knows a feller runs a record company who might wanta come fer a listen.”

“Oh…”

“Whatsamatter, little darlin? Thought that’d set y’dancin’. Sumthin gotcha feelin’ blue?”

“I’m happier than I ever been in my life, Duke. I’m so happy it sometimes makes me sad. But, well, I don’t know, it just feels so unreal. You know. Life out at the camp, kneel down to Jesus, hooray for poverty, the end of the world and all that, and then us here in the Moon drinking beer and talking honkytonk careers. I’m sorta lost and I don’t know if Marcella knows what to make of it neither.”

“She been talkin’ to ye?”

“Well, sure, in her way, most all the time. She’s worried about all the problems out there, the way things are breaking up and turning quarrelsome, and about whether the little Collins girl is gonna live or die and just what’s apt to happen tomorrow out on the mine hill, after all that young Darren has done to fever up anticipations and what with the troubles the Baxter people been causing, who knows what they may do next, but maybe that’s just me worrying and she’s worrying on account of I’m worrying.”

“That’s a most entertainin’ notion, Patti Jo. A worried mind inside a worried mind. Ifn I knowed how t’write it in a song, I surely would.”

“What I can’t figure out is exactly why I’m here. Marcella must of drawed me back because she wants something, something to help her find peace, but I don’t know what it is.”

“She was your best pal, Patti Jo. Her family’s all gone. You’re what-all she’s got now.”

“You mean, she just wanted my company? She’s not that selfish. Wasn’t when I knew her anyhow. And anyway we were kinda keeping company already before I come back. Has to be more than that.”

“Well, she mighta only wanted you to have a sweeter life than you been livin’.”

“I thought of that. And I think it’s partly true. It don’t seem a complete accident you and me met up. But that’s got done, and she still don’t want to let me go. For one thing, I think I have to stay now till the Collins girl gets better, and the way she is, that may never happen. Bernice says she’s real bad off, and Mabel is almost afraid to look at her cards. And it’s like if I go, she’ll surely die. I had a dream last night about her and Marcella. They were in a playground, playing like Marcella and me used to do. Jacks and stuff. And then Elaine was in a swing and Marcella was pushing her. She kept going higher and higher and I could see if she went any higher she’d tip over and fall out. I was scared and I ran over and asked Marcella to please stop. She opened her mouth but nothing came out, she could only shake her head. She was as scared as I was, but she kept pushing like she couldn’t stop herself. I knew she wanted me to help, but I couldn’t. It was like my arms weighed a ton. I woke up all in a sweat, tied up in the sheets. I probably cried out and I was afraid I mighta waked you up, but you were sawing them off. Softly, though. It was kinda more like humming.”