Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Tommy has ideas, too. Until the city consortium got interested in the old hotel, Tommy thought they should make a mining museum out of it, try to draw tourists. Ted regrets his response. What’ll we have? he remembers snapping. Nothing but busloads of school children. The only new business we can hope for is a candy shop with postcards. And who gives a damn about mining history anyway except ex-miners, and they’re jobless and pissed off and would just smear the place with graffiti. That was harsh. Tommy was probably hurt, though he only shrugged and walked away. Well, Ted was depressed at the time, and he apologized, told Tommy what some of the problems were. Later, they got to talking about the idea again in a new setting: How about the old mine? A tour of the horrific disaster with rides for the kids. Upgrade the hoists for a safe but scary drop into the darkness. Get the skips and shuttle cars rolling again down there and fancied up a bit like carnival rides. Everybody wearing mining helmets. Which can be purchased in the gift shop. Wax museum dioramas of the horrors of the disaster itself that light up as you pass. Empty miners’ shoes and ownerless dinner buckets scattered about. Broken spectacles. False teeth. Sound effects: the explosion, the screams, the shouts. It could get famous enough to attract the whole nation. Tommy even suggested re-enacting the Brunist end-of-the-world scene on top of the hill, but Ted nixed that. Who knows what lunatics might turn up, thinking it was the real thing? Enough of that shit.

He chuckles, feeling loose and mellow, talking like a college kid. He orders up another double. Shouldn’t, third already (where’s the boy?), but he’ll limit himself to a beer at supper. Also feeling, somewhat sweetly, melancholic. Maybe it’s the tinny music on the cheap restaurant speakers. All the old songs. Nameless studio bands, but the tunes are enough. Getting sentimental over you … Yes, he is. Silently, he hums along. Stacy is alone tonight at Mrs. Battles’ rooming house. He thinks about her there. All alone and feeling blue. She has admitted that she sometimes masturbates, longing for him when he isn’t there. He imagines her doing that and it excites him— things you say and do just thrill me through and through —and he has to straighten up for a moment and adjust things, pretending to be reaching for his bill clip, which he sets on the bar. He has often thought to visit her there, but that would be too daring. And Mrs. B is a notorious gossip. They’ll be together again tomorrow night. Soon enough. Keep it cool. What we do on Thursdays. Something Stacy says. Probably a line from some old movie. He hasn’t gone to one for years, though they sometimes watch them now on the motel TV. Stacy seems to have seen them all, even the old ones. Knows the plots, likes to imagine alternative ones. That’s what the movies are, she likes to say. Alternative plots. Not like life. Life has only one. That’s sad. But true. Like all these songs. All of you … Never paid much attention to them before. Now he can name them, sing along on some of the lines. I’d love to gain complete control of you, handle even the heart and soul of you … Getting educated. Never too late.

Through the plate glass window with the restaurant name painted in reverse, he sees Tommy’s red convertible pull into the parking lot and swing up near the window, where he can leave the top down and watch it from the restaurant. Tommy waves at him as he climbs out. A handsome boy — tall, lean, with the grace of a good athlete and a big infectious smile. Ted’s chest fills with pride, love, a tinge of grief: all this will pass. He wants to hug him when he enters, and he stands, arms akimbo, meaning to do so, but instead finds himself shaking his son’s hand and asking him why he’s late and why he couldn’t at least have changed out of his T-shirt and shorts for dinner. “Sorry, Dad. Stopped by to see Mom first and she wanted to chat. Why is she so mad at you?”

It was a mistake to come back here. Angela’s idea. Another romantic Saturday night at the Blue Moon Motel with that happy couple, Monica and Pete Piccolotti, meant to stir the dying embers. More like pitching cold water on them. Fleet and Monica have been at each other since they arrived. The hayseed duo, who have gone over the top tonight with gross off-color songs about incest and bus-fucks and trailer park whores (who writes this back-alley crap? and why are all these jerks in here, including the hick in the cowboy hat who runs the local radio station, whooping it up and asking for more?), are now trying to make amends with “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” or maybe Angela requested it. Probably. “He’s cute,” Monica says, nodding toward the beanpole singer. “He looks sort of like Jimmy Stewart after he’s had the stomach flu for six weeks.” Which is meant to be funny, but Pete, downing his beer, snaps back, “Have I told you lately that I’d like to stuff that goddamn guitar up that swamp rat’s ass?” He belches loud enough for everyone in the Moon to hear and gets up to go to the bar for another round. Monica says, “That’s enough, Pete,” and he says, “Well, no, sweet mama, it is not.”

Tommy rises to go with him, leaving the girls to talk about what sour ungrateful assholes they’re both stuck with and why isn’t there a nice place to go in West Condon where people dress up a little. Tommy is in a foul mood and Angela has picked up on it and has become snappish herself. And at the same time cloyingly affectionate. Trying to hang on. He fumbled the big midweek bye-bye and now here he is with it all still to do. He used their religious differences, why it was best to accept the inevitable, sad as it was, they belonged to two different worlds, they should call it off now before they got too deep and it became too painful; but, trying to keep the back door open in case he got desperate before this long summer is over, he softened it with too many I love yous, and Angela was convinced they could work it out. In fact, she took it as a kind of provisional marriage proposal and said they should go talk to the priest about it and he was too drained (what a night!) to argue. In fact, while he was brooding over what he might say next (tell her he had become an atheist and his kids would have to be raised atheist? no, a mistake to mention kids at all), he dropped off and didn’t come to until after Angela had already left for the bank the next morning. She left a tissue with her lipstick-imprinted kiss on her pillow beside him. He blew his nose in it. His dad had more business meetings to attend out of town, something about seeing state officials in hopes of landing something big for the town before the Fourth, so after the pool job he had to stay home with his mother the next couple of nights, settle into summertime reruns. Which was a relief, in a way. It gave him time to think, and Angela could sense that and said on the phone he was just using his mother as an excuse not to see her, and like a fool he kept insisting otherwise and making his mother’s condition out to be worse than it was.

But tonight’s the night. Has to be. A clean break. He’d imagined tender farewells, lingering kisses; it’s not going to be that way. He may not even get laid. Tant pis , as they say in Paris, which is where he should be tonight. Where it’s a whole lot easier than this. The only other French he knows is how to ask a girl to lie down with him, and that’s all you need. He had to coax Concetta into staying and to pay her overtime to get the night free, but she and her widow friends seem glad enough to get the work and the money his dad’s been giving him as compensation for missing out on Europe more than covers the cost. Only it’s a waste for a night like this. Except for Fleet, he hates everyone here. What is he doing in this stupid backwater? Naz Moroni was in here earlier with his demented Dagotown pals and there might have been trouble, but they had some women with them — breasty, big-nosed girls Tommy recognized from the pool — and they only made threatening and obscene gestures, which Angie insisted they ignore. If you want to take them on, Fleet said, let me know. Joey Castiglione was with them, or maybe he came on his own. Joey has the hots for Angela and Tommy wished he’d just grab Angie up and steal her away — it would have solved all his problems — but when Joey saw them there, he turned around and walked out again. Tommy thinks back on the college bars, the girls he knew up there, the class they had, and knows he doesn’t belong here. He has to figure a way out. Now.