Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

She enters the office with an application needing his signature. Displaying upright bank floor demeanor, knowing she is being watched. No eye contact. Only her flush gives her away. Deep into her throat. And the bluesy tune she is humming between closed lips. One of theirs. What is it? Hah: Baby, Knock Me a Kiss. Ted hopes his grin looks more like a boss’s approving smile and flips the top page of the application over as though studying it. “It’s okay, Mr. Cavanaugh,” she says crisply. “Just sign it before my knees give way.” She leaves primly, as though faintly exasperated, but twitches her hips slightly at the doorway like a backsided wink. What has he just signed? He doesn’t know. Happy as a pup. Another of their songs.

One condition of surrender: give up his obsession with the cult. He can do this. The world’s a crazy place, as unmanageable as economic cycles. Let it be. Suggs moved his heavy yellow backhoes onto the mine hill Friday, began chewing up the hillside. An outrage. There are pending legal actions, even their ownership of the hill is in question. It was like a dare: stop me if you can. Ted had learned they were having some kind of ceremony over there yesterday, the laying of a cornerstone or something. There must be a way. Stacy pleaded. Don’t let it spoil our weekend. He hesitated. For a moment he felt that football in his hands again, had his fingers on the laces. But he smiled, shrugged, booted it out of sight. Felt good. That game’s over. Whistle blown. With Tommy, Concetta, and her widow friend Rosalia sharing the home care duty, Saturday was a night in the city (“important meeting with investors”), yesterday a long drive in her car, a walk in the hills. Wet but beautiful. Maybe their most beautiful time together so far. They drove leisurely over into the next state, where they could wander around, hand-in-hand, unafraid of being recognized, then, somewhat more urgently, back to the motel. They got caught in a downpour between the parking lot and the room, so they shed their wet clothes, showered together, and spent a couple of delicious late afternoon hours in each other’s arms, lit only by the soft forgiving light flowing in through the wet windows and falling upon them like a kind of benediction. Divine sanction. What divinity, he couldn’t say. The days are long now. They dressed by that light for supper.

Nick Minicozzi drops down from his office upstairs, closes the door behind him when he enters. He has news. John P. Suggs is in the hospital. Intensive care. Catastrophic stroke. In a coma. Not expected to pull through. The Collins girl is there, too. She has apparently been starving herself to death. A kind of hunger strike against God for not bringing on the Second Coming, or something. And six men are in jail, charged by the sheriff with various crimes against the Brunist encampment. Apparently their power and phone lines got cut over the weekend. One of the arrested, a young guy, has a bullet wound, and another is Reverend Abner Baxter.

Even before he has fully absorbed it all, Ted is reorganizing his campaign. Breakthrough! He and Suggs have been playing “king of the hill” all spring and the coal baron has been beating him at every move; Ted had all but abandoned the field. Now things have suddenly changed. Pat is a stubborn autocrat, has no partners, only employees, disdains lawyers. It should be easy to tie up his headless empire in litigation, bring an end to the Brunist nightmare. And they seem to be fighting among themselves, making it even easier. He and Nick review all the legal actions they’ve been taking. Nick promises to follow up aggressively. Put on the blitz. “Especially hit hard on the money and property issues.” Maybe they can not only wrest the Deepwater land away from them, but might even repossess the camp itself, reactivate it now that it’s fixed up. Summer camp for the whole area.

“Who manages Suggs’ mining company?”

“The site boss is a guy named McDaniel. Not from around here.”

“See if you can reach him. Tell him he has to get those backhoes off the hill today or risk impoundment. Launch a suit that would force them to refill all the holes and trenches they’ve dug. And let him know you’re doing it.”

Even as he talks with Nick, he’s on the phone. Getting the word out. Fashioning moves. Power plays. He makes one-on-one appointments with all the members of the West Condon Ministerial Association. Books announcement times with Rotary and the BPW, the Masons, the Knights of Columbus. The Fourth of July is coming up. In years past, they held an all-county parade here in town. Could revive that. Find some famous guests — like a pro ballplayer or a movie actor — try to lure the governor down. Book a carnival, organize picnics and ball-games, hold raffles, throw a spectacular fireworks display. Theme of Unity. Progress. New Opportunities for West Condon. Bring in that city group buying the old hotel. The Italian-American angle. Brighten up Main Street. Restore the community spirit. He asks the NOWC steering committee to meet Wednesday in the old Chamber offices. Starting late. They need six months, have one. Have to work hard at this.

Then it’s off to the police station and jail, the hospital, see where the pieces lie. On the way out the door, his glance meets hers, sees the flicker of disappointment. The fool for love has lost his way again. He shrugs, shakes his head. Sorry. Can’t help it. Have to do this.

“Numbers,” Sally Elliott says, blowing smoke out over the porch railing, clouding the day. Ostensibly, she’s here to borrow Tommy’s cameras for a wedding she’s been asked to photograph. “Mathematics.” It’s Monday, his day off from the pool. Summer coming all over itself. Angela is working at the bank, he has the whole sweet top-down day out to himself. Maybe, first thing, once he’s got rid of Sally, he’ll drag Fleet Piccolotti out of his family sausage shop to go shoot some baskets or throw a ball around. Pete’s down on life, a side of him he didn’t see back in high school. It probably wasn’t there. Marriage, family have infected him with it, shopkeeping has. No easy cure, but sinking a few might cheer him up. “A kind of wizardry built on the void. Starts with zero the way religions start with God. Neither exist, but you can build a whole system.” She’s trying to impress him with what she knows about the Brunists, mostly things she’s learned from that wall-eyed kid with the droopy handlebars. If he can be trusted. Is she fucking him? Probably. There’s a bit of a breeze. He can hear the flag flopping about lightly above the porch roof. Traditionally it was Tommy’s duty to raise and lower it every day, but now he and his dad are both busy and preoccupied, so it stays up. When it comes down after Labor Day the house looks naked without it. Like it has lost its loin cloth or something. “Add in fantasy calendrics, a mysterious voice in a ditch, magic numbers and prophetic tombstones, and anything can happen, anything can be true.”

He knows she’ll turn all this into a thumbnail history of Christianity. She can be pretty funny, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out what the joke is. Well, she reads books. Her T-shirt is about all he’ll read today. He doesn’t even know many who do read, not for fun. She may be the only person in town. Those he has known up at college were mostly pretty boring. Couldn’t throw a ball or shoot the shit in an ordinary sort of way. Sally’s different, but then she’d probably be different even if she didn’t read books. On the porch table with their coffee cups and her ashtray are some old newspapers, one of which Sally says is the final edition of the West Condon Chronicle . She has explained all the pictures. He glanced at them. Ancient history. Vaguely remembered some of it, though at the time he wasn’t paying all that much attention. Did remember that black hand. The Claw. A lot of sick jokes about it back then. All this info-gathering began with his telling her he was thinking about going on to grad school in sociology and using the Brunists as dissertation material. That was months ago, while he was still up at school. Now he’s thinking more about law school, but she only laughed when he told her and has carried on as before. Well, she’s lonely — it gives her something to do.