Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

It is late in the afternoon, shortly before supper, when the West Condon police arrive at the Brunist Wilderness Camp on their second attempt to arrest Sister Debra Edwards for appropriating all that money from her rich folks’ church and giving it to the camp. The shadows are lengthening, the birds are into their evening concert, the fireflies are dancing their fairy dance down by the creek. Mabel Hall’s friends have already gathered in her mobile home down in the trailer lot for today’s reading of the tarot cards and have been idly gossiping in anticipation of the main event while waiting for Lucy Smith and Hazel Dunlevy. Things have been busy over at the Collins trailer which they can watch out of Mabel’s caravan windows. Poor half-starved Elaine was brought home from hospital in the ambulance today, exciting everyone (“Let them through! It’s little Elaine! Clara, Bernice, too!”), for Clara and Ben have not been the same since they got back and they reckon only Elaine’s improvement, signaled by this release from hospital, will change that. Bernice, who is the only one who has been allowed in and out over there, has assured them that the girl is eating again, explaining that Elaine is possessed by the devil, maybe more than one, and that when she is strong enough to survive it they will attempt an exorcism, but Ludie Belle, who got a close glimpse of Elaine when they were unloading her from the ambulance, says she reckons “she’s a-breedin’,” and that stirs thoughts of a darker sort, though few get expressed. “Devils getting in do the same effects,” Bernice explains solemnly, arching her brow. They have all wanted to go pray with her and see for themselves, but Elaine is too weak for visitors.

Then suddenly Mabel’s husband comes busting in to tell them that the police have arrived to arrest Sister Debra. “Lord have mercy! The wicked is at the gates a the righteous!” Willie cries. Ludie Belle is the first one out the door, the others quickly following.

They see Ludie Belle’s husband and Ben running up the hill ahead of them toward the Main Square, and when they get there several of the other men are there, too. The sheriff who was here earlier has left, so Billy Don has run into the Meeting Hall to try to call him from the office phone. The three policemen have paused at the gate, and Ben and Wayne go over to talk with them. It’s a tense moment but people are being polite. The police read out the charges and show Ben the new warrant and Ben says quietly that he’s sorry but it’s his understanding that the camp is outside the town’s jurisdiction. The police, who do not seem very intent on their task (it’s Saturday night and they’re working people too), point out that the warrant now covers the entire county and that if they wish to call the sheriff they may, but he will be obliged under the law to carry out the same arrest. Which explains to most who hear this conversation why the sheriff has gone away and why Mr. Suggs made a final offer to Mrs. Edwards to give her money to leave the area immediately, which she, in her distress and against the advice of her friends, has turned down.

Even now, while Ben and the police are talking, she steps mournfully out of her cabin wearing only a loose wrinkled summer smock and floppy thong sandals and walks to the gate to turn herself in. Her eyes are red and streaming still, and two or three of the women start to cry, too, including Lucy Smith, who has just arrived with two of her little ones and is watching all this from outside the gate, and then her children start to cry. Sister Debra has given so much of herself to this place they now call home, and if there is some question about where the money came from, there is certainly no question that Sister Debra has kept none of it for herself. She has been devoted to them as they now feel devoted to her. Ludie Belle and Linda and Corinne and all the others flock around and interpose themselves between her and the police, Ludie Belle berating the police fiercely for picking on the poor saintly woman, but Sister Debra says in a choked whispery voice that it’s all right and she steps past Ludie Belle and through the gate. The police say she might want to take an overnight bag. She shakes her head and walks toward the police car, but Ludie Belle and Corinne run into her cabin and throw a lot of things into a canvas bag they find there and bring it and a cardigan out to the police, Ludie Belle still giving them a piece of her mind. Hunk and Travers have a word with the older policeman with the bent rusty badge, and the officer shrugs and spits a wad of chaw.

As if all this isn’t bad enough, young Colin, without any pants on, bursts from the boys’ cabin past Darren and starts screaming out the same dreadful accusations against his mother as before, somewhat alarming the police and everybody else, Darren trying to drag Colin back to the cabin, telling him if he carries on they’re going to lock him up in an institution again. One of the police officers, the one in charge, sighs and asks Ben for the boy’s name, and Ben hesitates and looks around at the others but finally he tells him, adding that the boy is Mrs. Edwards’ adopted son but he is not completely right in the head. The police officer nods sadly and apologizes to Ben, saying sometimes there are things he has to do he’d rather not do, and Ben nods back gravely and the officers get into the car with Sister Debra and drive away.

In Mabel’s caravan afterwards, the talk is mainly about the arrest of poor Sister Debra, bless her heart — she looked like something was completely broken inside — and about the terrible things Colin was saying. Could they be true? Ludie Belle will say only that he is a troubled boy with special needs and that Sister Debra is a loving and caring person. They can read that however they like but, as Christians, always with charity in their hearts. Bernice was not in the caravan when they got back. She has probably returned to Mr. Suggs’ bedside at the hospital. She hardly ever leaves it. There are people who want to put her in jail along with Sister Debra, and only Mr. Suggs has the money and power to stop that from happening, so it’s a “desprit needcessity,” as Ludie Belle puts it in her extravagant way, to keep him ticking even if the tick is more like a t-t-tick now. Well, they all need him; God grant him a full recovery and a long life. Lucy remembers that last week Mabel turned up the Wheel of Fortune card upside down, along with that dark ace which could mean bad planning, and she wonders if that wasn’t a prophecy of these latest events, and everyone agrees it may be so, and turn expectantly to Mabel. Sister Hazel Dunlevy has not arrived but they decide not to wait for her. They will have supper together soon, before the eight o’clock prayer meeting down at the dogwood tree, joined there by some old friends from the Church of the Nazarene who are becoming Brunists tonight. There is just time left for Mabel to spread and read the cards, which now she is shuffling expertly with her eyes closed in solemn meditation. They wonder if they will learn more about Sister Debra’s fate or little Elaine’s or even their own, God save us, and whether or not, on such a day, the Hanged Man card will reappear. “I have noticed,” Glenda Oakes says, gazing with her one eye upon the fluttering cards now sliding into each other and coming to rest, “that Jesus is not in the deck.” “No,” Mabel replies in her soft feminine voice, so different from what one might expect from a woman her size. And then she opens her eyes to look at Glenda. “He is the deck.”

“I reckon I shoulda went to Mabel’s by now.”

“Yeah. But it’s too late. I skipped out on Wayne’s crew, too.”

Too late. Yes. It surely is. She shudders, sighs. Too late. Too late already that first time up on Inspiration Point. They have stepped out of the shed and walked the garden rows and picked a few weeds and wildflowers and eaten some berries and they have gone down to the creek to splash fresh water on their faces and private parts and they have even walked the path back toward the Meeting Hall a ways, but they keep coming back here. Like they can’t help it. She looks at her palm. “I’m skeered about the next part. But I thank the Lord this part got wrote in before.”