Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

These foolish things … Ted’s back in the Sir Loin saddle, ear tuned to the golden oldies, humming along silently. Second sour mash double on the rocks. Fatherhood, Tommy’s recent crisis. Irene, the Dance Barn, the old days. Legal actions. Plans for the Fourth. Stacy alone, thinking about her. Is there a pattern here? Looks like it. What we do on Wednesdays. Waiting for Thursdays. While waiting for his son. The double now just melting rocks. Orders up a third. Also a pattern. A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces … Though she doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t wear a lot of lipstick, either. But it feels right, brings her to mind. But then, what doesn’t? He stubs his out (maybe he’ll give it up), turns his gaze away from the waitresses and their switching little behinds to look out on the sunlit parking lot. Swirls the ice around in his glass as though stirring his thoughts. Days long now. Midsummer soon. Must be this weekend. An airline ticket to romantic places . Rio maybe. Baird has a special offer this summer. Advertised by a lady with fruit in her hat. Or Paris, Hawaii, Rome. A feeling of nostalgia, seeing her in those places. Though they haven’t been to any of them together, of course not. Yet, as if. A late April drive to a river town on a bluff where, holding hands, she told him how desperately she loved him and how lost she felt: more like it. The pale beige cardigan she wore that day with the amber necklace he gave her. Walking past him in the bank, smoothing her skirt down over her rear, knowing he is watching. Pointing down at the shoes she bought from Dave Osborne. Foolish things. That window in the motel room where the milky afternoon light seeps in. The pink butterfly on her tailbone. The ghost of you clings …

He sighs. Feeling good. Sad in some sweet way, but good. Most things have been going his way for a change. The NOWC network is cohering around the plans for the Fourth of July celebrations. Bringing the community together again. Cleaning up Main Street. Poor Dave Osborne. He’ll have to go. Stacy’s purchase didn’t save him. Will try to get him some help. What will they do with all those lace-less shoes? Props for their coalmine horror ride maybe. Pat Suggs remains incapacitated, though some of the city’s court initiatives have been blocked as though the old brawler were pulling strings from his hospital bed. Probably that black-bearded hardshell libertarian. When Nick called him he said he didn’t talk to wops and hung up on him. The backhoes are also back on the mine hill. The ghost of you … Probably just residual knock-on effects from his earlier moves, Nick explained. Good man. Though he wasn’t able to prevent Baxter’s release when some lawyer from Randolph Junction filed a complaint about the injuries the preacher sustained during his attempted escape. If it was one. Maury Castle said that Monk Wallace has a different version. “For one thing,” Maury said dryly, “he says Baxter wasn’t never out of his cell.” Well, the mayor’s a notorious racist, hates Italians, is resentful of Nick, is not to be trusted. Nick is working on getting Baxter rearrested, and the rest of that lot as well, has confidence in the chief and young Bonali. He believes Baxter’s followers are getting counsel from someone on the inside; the chief thinks it might be the deputy sheriff, Calvin Smith. As for what’s happening out at the church camp, Ted monitors things fairly well by way of Tommy’s friendship with Jim Elliott’s daughter, who is apparently having an affair with one of the young cultists. She’s a wild kid, but useful. Her mother was pretty wild, too. Frisky, they called her. “Yeah, I don’t know why,” Tommy said last week at supper, “but Sally talks to me. She’s a kind of comedian, and I think those religious crazies provide her material.” Ted has learned about the rape, the schism, the temple construction, the ripple of new prophecies, and it’s how he found out about their plans to dig an empty grave for Giovanni Bruno’s body. Some sort of symbolic burial ceremony later this month or early next. Only one problem: Bruno isn’t dead. He called to check. So he’s thinking about that. Not such a good thing that the Elliott girl and Stacy have become friends, but in a place like this, everyone knows everyone, there are no airtight seals. He found out when Stacy began describing a racy French novel she was reading about a woman’s extramarital affair that she said Sally Elliott had loaned to her. Maybe, describing it, she was trying to excite him. He once read a French novel called Lucky Raoul that was pretty arousing, but he didn’t remember enough of the plot, if it had one, to tell her about it. Those French. The Elliott girl has also visited Irene a couple of times. So has the Bonali girl, of course. Also a friend of Stacy. Smalltown webworks. Enmeshed in them.

What’s that one? Dum-da-da-da-da-dum-dum… For sentimental reasons … Mmm. Think of you every morning, dream of you every night … Moony old bastard. What time is it? Tommy’s later than usual. Maybe the old orange jalopy broke down. But he could at least call, damn it. Lem is taking his time with the convertible repairs and Tommy is clearly frustrated without it. He claims that Concetta’s son was responsible for the damage and he dragged her out to the car and railed at the poor woman until she cried. Have to caution him about that. Can’t afford to lose her. But Tommy had problems with that same boy at the pool, too — a kid they call Moron. Had to call the police. Says there’s a gang of them. It’s probably time to free his son up from that job. Too exposed. Hire him to work for the NOWC committee, maybe. At least until after the Fourth. The boy is full of good ideas. Would add some youthful energy. Tommy has been through a rough patch (past that now, good riddance), but getting his car back should help. Lem promised that it would look like new when he was done with it. Good old Lem. Works harder than anyone in West Condon. Except maybe the poor mechanic with the face full of nose who works for him. As a miner, Lem was a union hothead who railed against the bosses; now he’s a boss himself and is learning it’s not all haves and have-nots. But still he can’t seem to turn a steady penny. Have to ask the bank accountant to look at Lem’s books, such as he keeps, see if he can offer any advice. Probably mostly clients who haven’t paid up. Lem deserves the best and should be one of the town’s success stories. Da-dum-da-dum-da-dum… The very thought of you . Right. And I forget to do …some-thing… Nearly an hour late. Too much. Irresponsible damned kid. Too much like him of late. Well, to hell with him. Eat without him. What? “Phone for you, Mr. Cavanaugh.” Ah. At last. “Where the hell are you?” But it’s not Tommy. It’s the emergency room at the hospital.

One morning in the middle of summer he awakes to find himself in a strange place haunted by an infinite series of bearded men with hair down to their shoulders. The man sitting up in front of him in the blue purgatorial light and throwing off the comforter as he sits up and throws off his comforter is both familiar and unfamiliar, as are all his reiterations echoing out into the immeasurable distance. He thinks of days of fasting in the desert, when such hallucinations would appear commonly in the deranged euphoria of starvation, and full of self-understanding he rises naked to greet the naked phantasms as they rise, half to greet him, erect as he is erect, the other half their backs turned toward him. There is a stirring at his feet and the head of the woman appears as though by a conjuring, also in endless regression at the feet of all the other bearded men, gazing up at their splendid erections. He turns sideways that all his selves might display them in serial profile. “Oh, Wesley!” she says with a sleepy sigh. “You are so beautiful!”