Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“Maury, you and Dee either arrest Charlie Bonali and bring criminal assault and battery charges, damn it, or I’ll personally see to it you’re jailed for corruption and racketeering.”

“What the hell you talking about? Put in an honest day’s work around there, what do you get? A knife in the back. Anyhow, I might prefer jail. Stay healthier that way.”

“Let me warn you, Maury. This is becoming a federal case. The FBI is taking an interest. They’ll have some tough questions to ask. I’ll see you over at Mick’s. We’ll talk about this.”

Jim Elliott, always Mickey DeMars’ first customer of the day, is having an encounter with Jesus Christ, who has come in and introduced himself and asked for an egg sandwich. “Give us this day our daily eggs,” he said. This is not something he has expected. Jesus does not call him Jim, he calls him Paul. Saint Paul? Good grief. This is ridiculous. Or maybe it is not. Is he Paul or was he ever? His memory is not too good, especially after a few. It’s possible. What isn’t? He decides to go along with Jesus, raising his glass of gin to him (hmm, empty; he signals Mick for another). Why not? No skin off his back, as the saying goes. Which is a strange one, now that he thinks about it. They flayed a lot of guys back then. Roman fun. Was Paul one of them? Is this guy dangerous? He is wearing shiny gold lamé slippers like foot halos, which definitely look right on him and convince Jim that he is who he says he is. More or less. What does that mean, “more or less”? Well, he looks the part, but what is he doing here? This is not his time and place. Is it? What the heck is happening? Jim sees that his glass is already half empty. Jesus must be helping himself. Good for him. He slides the glass toward him and asks Mick for another for himself. Mick does not know what to make of all this. Jesus calls him the Good Samaritan and Mick shrugs and rolls his eyes. “I got a feeling I ain’t gonna get paid for that sandwich,” he says in his squeaky voice. “Don’t worry,” Jim says grandly. “It’s on me. Not every darned day you get to buy Jesus Christ an egg sandwich.” Not that the fellow is all that appreciative. “You’re the spooky con artist who invented all those lies about me,” he says. “Who, me? Never!” “You repackaged me and sold me on the international market as some kind of alien-from-outer-space carnival act. Eat the flesh and drink the blood,” he says, tapping his gin glass, and Mick refills it. “You made all that up, you deceitful quack!” “Listen, gosh darn it,” Jim says, his dander rising, “I don’t care if you are Jesus Christ. I’m not gonna take this lying down!” But, after his abrupt and ill-timed lurch from the stool, that’s exactly the circumstance in which, a moment later, he finds himself, his head hurting from where he banged it on the way to the floor. He could get up. Probably. But it’s not worth it. “Shut up,” Jesus is saying overhead. “I know he’s not Paul. You think I’m crazy? It just feels good to let fly from time to time.” Mick says, “I didn’t say nothing,” and Jesus says, “I know that, I wasn’t talking to you.” Oh oh. Another one of those. This town is full of them suddenly. Is it catching? Jesus drinks off his glass of gin and then slugs down Jim’s as well. Car doors slam outside. Voices. “I tell you the truth,” Jesus says, hovering above him, his bright robes fluttering, “it is — to quote that whimsical mental case, John, who was pretending to quote me — to your advantage that I go away.” And, sandwich in hand, he exits by the back door as the mayor and his pals come in by the front. “Well, if that’s not the berries,” Jim says, holding down the rising and falling floor with both hands, and is greeted by the newcomers in the affable manner that is their daily lunchtime custom.

“We won’t have to do this soon, will we, you naughty little pooper?” says Dot Blaurock while changing Johnny in one of their many little Chestnut Hills homes. Jesus is already in the neighborhood, wandering around, appearing and disappearing. It’s happening. The latter days, the end times: she’s in them. And she has been chosen. “Go forth and prophesy,” he said. Well, if Johnny could keep his diapers clean for five minutes she would. A kid with dirty diapers does not help to draw a multitude. When she raced back to the camp to tell everyone like Jesus told her to, no one believed her. What’s that line about a prophet in your own county? It’s true. Deaf ears. Well, tough luck for them. Out at the other campsite, Abner Baxter’s people were more willing to listen. “I was watching them all the time,” she said, “and suddenly they weren’t there anymore.” They nodded at that but wanted to know more about that woman who was with him. In all the pictures of the Rapture, Jesus is strictly on his own. She might have been Mary Magdalene, Dot said, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t look well. Maybe she was somebody who’d just been resurrected from the dead.

Her older kids rush in now with the news that they saw Jesus at the shoe store downtown. “What were you doing in the shoe store?” she wants to know. She can’t keep track of them. She should stand them in the corner for a while just to know where they are. But the corners in this place aren’t all that habitable. Isaiah’s going to have to open up a new one for them.

“We got a job! Look!” Mattie shows her a stack of flyers announcing a closing down sale. “When we’ve put the rest of these on everybody’s porches, we get some candy and more new shoes! Gotta go, Mom!”

Doors open at noon, the fliers say. It’s almost noon now.

When the banker reaches Mick’s Bar & Grill, he finds it empty, except for the former Chamber of Commerce secretary on the floor, drunkenly crooning a Sunday school tune. Even the proprietor is gone. Then he spies the flyers on the tables. The sonuvabitch, knowing he’s facing foreclosure, is spitefully stripping the store of any recoverable equity. The bank can put a stop to that.

It is noon in West Condon. The sun will never be so high in the sky again for another year. It drenches the town’s unkempt streets in an all but shadowless light. As the solstice is associated with the birth of John the Baptist, it is sometimes said to be the day that Salome lifts her veil, and indeed nothing is veiled. One’s own shadow is just a small black puddle underfoot, the size of one’s girth. Children play at trying to jump out of it. Under this saturating midday light, a crowd is gathering on Main Street, where crowds have not been seen for years. Many are clutching flyers announcing a closing down sale at Dave Osborne’s shoe store. First two pair free. Others are there by word of mouth or by announcements on the radio or flyers posted on shop windows and telephone poles, hoping they don’t need the flyers as vouchers. There are large hand-painted signs taped to the door and front walls and a tumble of laceless shoes in the window, but the store is locked. People press up against the window, peer in under cupped hands, knock on the front door. More are arriving every minute, trying to squeeze in toward the front. The shop owner appears in the inner dimness, waves at them, points at his watch face, holds up two fingers. “Two minutes!” someone shouts over his shoulder at the restless mass, and his shout is repeated by others. The owner is standing on the stepstool he uses to get down shoe boxes from the top shelves, trying to adjust something overhead. Changing a light bulb, maybe. Or hanging decorations. His movements are explained by those in front to those behind. Tied and netted around his legs like clownish pantaloons are all the debris of his trade: shoe horns, foot measuring devices, boots, floor mirrors, shoe-shine paste and fluids, and thick bouquets of shoes with their tongues hanging out. He is holding in his hand a colorful strand that some recognize as the rope he has been braiding out of shoestrings, and this amusing explanation is offered to the others pressing round. The shop owner steps down, pushes the stool back a yard or two, steps back up on it, loops the shoestring rope around his neck and jumps off. He swings toward the window, his feet belting the plate glass with a blow that causes the crowd to fall back, swings back into the dimness again, his hands reaching reflexively for his throat, then dropping away, swings forward and kicks the window again. At first his eyes bulge, staring fiercely at all those in the street as he swings, feet striking the window ever less resoundingly, then they cloud over. This seems to last forever and no one speaks under the noontime sun. There are soft thumps and then there are none. The banker arrives and kicks at the window and right behind him come the town cops. They smash their way in (people are screaming now, shouting, issuing astonished expletives, pushing forward for a better view or else backing away in horror) and cut the shoe salesman down. A siren can be heard like a howl of grief or anger. The crowd parts for the approaching ambulance. Inside the store, the police officer, Louie Testatonda, picks up a brown paper bag on the counter next to the cash register and asks: “What the hell is this?” A child rushes in, snatches it from his hands, dashes out again. “Stop her! She’s stealing the evidence!” he cries, but the child is gone.