Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“I was probly conjurin’ up a new song. Wisht I coulda wrote it down.”

“You were laying on your stomach. Light from the parking lot was making your butt glow in the dark. It was beautiful. And a solace to me. I leaned over and kissed it for luck.”

“That musta been when I got the rhyme. I don’t recollect what it was rhymin’ with, but the answer was Patti Jo.”

“It helped me get back to sleep again. But now I keep seeing Marcella’s face when she turned to stare at me. Like she’s right in front of me. Her little gold cross on a chain around her neck, glittering in the sun. Her ears sticking out a little. The scared begging look in her eyes. Her mouth open, trying to talk. And Elaine way up above us, about to come falling down.”

“Now, that’s sumthin t’ponder. Not jist a fallen angel, but havin’ one land on ye like a frigerator. Near as bad as gittin’ stars in your eyes. Well, when you’re low or feelin’ fearful, honey, you jist keep smoochin’ my butt, and I guarantee things’ll turn up rosy!”

“It might help if I knew where she was resting. One thing I wanted to do right off when I got here was go put some flowers on her grave. But no one seems to know where it is. I went down to city hall and told them I was a friend of the family, a distant relative, but they said there wasn’t much of that family left and they had no idea where anybody was. They kept eyeing me in a funny way, but finally said I should go ask Monsignor Baglione at the Catholic church. Father Bags has been here forever, a disgusting old priest with an unwashed old man stink about him. He still doesn’t speak much English and my Italian is mostly cusswords, but I was able to tell him directly who I was and why I was looking, figuring he was obliged not to tell anyone. He didn’t know where she was buried neither, only that she’d been excommunicated and so wasn’t in San Luca, and said I should ask down at city hall.”

“They’s some folks out to the church camp reckon she got dreckly transported.”

“Took the body and left the voice behind, you mean? I’ve still got enough R. C. in me to find those rapturing ideas too much like something outa kids’ comicbooks.”

“Y’know, they’s a gent sometimes comes in I could ask. Five-by-five squinty-eyed feller with a fat nose and a buncha chins, you may a seen him. He’s the fire chief now, but he useta be the mayor some years back, so all that mighta probly happened on his watch. He mostly only turns up midweek when they’s not so many people, usually with some wore-out ole bag or another. Got no idea what he does with ’em. On dead nights, when he’s on his lonesome, he sometimes buys me a drink at the bar and gits t’talkin’ in his sad comical way. I’ll tell him a friend’s inquirin’ but I won’t say who. An ole boyfriend or sumthin. But fer now, dear lady, the herd’s a-gittin’ restless. Time t’crank up another round.”

“Okay. At least we don’t have to do ‘White Dove’ anymore. Looks like that bird’s kicked the bucket.”

“No, them two kids’re here. I seen ’em. He’s drivin a sporty cherry-colored ragtop now. But they don’t have time fer warmups no more. It’s jist straight inta the dugout’n play ball!”

“Time for ‘Baby, Let’s Play House,’ you mean.”

“Or jist ‘A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.’ But you got me in a lovin’ mood, Patti Jo. My butt’s not customed to such tensions and it’s still jist a-tinglin’ like a little kid suffrin’ first love. Let’s do Hank’s ‘Baby, We’re Really in Love.’”

“‘I Love You So Much It Hurts.’”

“‘I’m Losin’ My Mind over You.’”

“‘Lovesick Blues.’ I really love to hear you yodel that one.”

“Cuz it’s bubblin’ up from the heart, little darlin’. Or from some-wheres in that genral neighborhood. You call ’em as we go. We’ll close with the house theme’n let that rainbo-ho-ho turn the clouds away!”

Stealthily, they enter the camp just after midnight. Ten of them. On the blind side, near the Field of Transcendence, as he taught her to call it. Now that of his suffering, his mutilation. His Field of Affliction. He is the one who knows the routes in and out of the camp in the dark and is their leader. His father is not here, he is Abner Baxter. There are armed guards — he has warned them about that — but they are armed, too. They carry warning whistles that sound like owl hoots in case something goes wrong. It was how he and the girl called to each other. She who is nameless now. Who makes him sick for what happened to her. Angry. She didn’t even try to stop them. It was like she wanted it to happen. The weather has been wet and drizzly the past couple of days. He can feel the damp working its way into his sneakers and socks, creeping up his pantlegs. But it provides a better cover for them. Sounds are dampened as well and the guards will be under shelter somewhere.

Their own encampment was a target last night. Each attack by old man Suggs’ raiders has been more savage than the one before and last night’s could have been bloody. His father had moved them defiantly onto the forbidden campground and many others had joined them. From town, from other campsites, from Chestnut Hills, Randolph Junction. Ready for whatever. Martyrdom maybe. But when a tip about the upcoming raid reached them, Young Abner suggested that they abandon the field for a few hours, hide their vehicles, return after the danger had passed. He had read about something like this in a Bible story. A tactic for a smaller force to frustrate an attack by a larger force without losing any ground. His father, his dander up, preferred a head-on collision, but the majority sided with Young Abner, and so they all melted away into the woods around. It worked. As soon as the raiders had given up and gone home, they were back and setting up camp again. There will be reprisals and there will not always be advance warnings, but last night was a kind of victory for them. And for him. Just desserts for the adversity he’s been through.

He knows that, like Timothy, he must endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ Jesus and be strong in Jesus’ grace, for if you suffer for righteousness, you will be blessed. But what he was put through was totally unfair. It hurt more than anything had ever hurt before. Then that humiliating scene up at the camp in front of everybody. They were so stupid, so uncaring, so wrong about everything. After that, the wounds on his head began to fester and he was sick for a while, and even now there is a nasty itch there that reminds him of his brother’s cruelty. Baptism by the knife: He seems to remember hearing Nat say that and then laugh. Punishment was visited upon the entire family and many of their friends after that, they were all expelled from the camp and sent out into the fields, and for a time he was blamed. His father was especially upset about the girls’ underpants, and he suffered anger and ridicule. He felt like Daniel in the lions’ den. What if Daniel had got thrown to the lions in girls’ underpants? What then? Would they have laughed and scorned?

Over time, however, they began to see his side of it. How he was victimized. Lured to the field. Ambushed. Tortured. Made to wear the underpants. Last night, Jewell Cox blamed it all on Clara Collins’ pride, and Roy Coates said the girl was just asking for it. Young Abner should not have let her talk him into such wickedness, old man Coates said, but you could see how you could be tempted to whip the brat. He felt like whipping her himself. And his father, after pouring out his wrath on Nat and Paulie, acknowledged that the expulsion had strengthened them. There were more followers now, more true believers, more baptisms by fire. Many of these people had given up everything to make the journey here; they were faithful Brunists and did not deserve this treatment. His father above all. “He’s the West Condon bishop and he ain’t done nothing!” Ezra Gray declared last night, full of fury, rattling his wheelchair, and Jewell said, “Nat and Paulie is only boys. They must of fell under the evil influence a thet ex-con Palmers, or whoever he was.” “They went bad a long time before that,” his father said grumpily, his face scowling up like it used to do before meting out the family discipline. This was out under the tent, after the failed raid on their encampment, after they’d set everything up again and were feeling good and congratulating him on his shrewdness. It was when he proposed tonight’s counterattack on the Wilderness Camp. His father was hesitant, but Roy and Jewell backed him, and pretty soon they had volunteers. More than they needed. There’s a big ceremony out on the Mount of Redemption tomorrow, and they’ve not been invited. Has to do with those temple-building plans that have so outraged his father. The thoughts of those in the camp will be on that; good time to catch them unawares.