Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Cokie Duncan has no such problems. He is out cold on the floor of the Eagles Social Club and he is not dreaming, his bombed brain cells are not up to it, but he is alone now under a scatter of playing cards randomly dealt upon him by his departing companions. They are now piling past the bouncer at the door of the Blue Moon Motel and entering the sound track of the final Duke L’Heureux and Patti Jo Rendine number, an upbeat Elvis-influenced rendition of one of the motel’s theme songs, “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again,” the final number because the recording crew have quickly decided with the arrival of the whooping stag party that it is time to close up shop and get the hell out of here. Will Henry, too, is packing up his guitar and moving toward the door. The two singers are on a high, though — it has been the night of their lives — and when they get a clamorous request from the crowd pressing in around them on the dance floor for yet another refrain of “The Night My Daddy Loved Me Too Much,” they cannot resist. It is into this festive congestion that tomorrow’s groom-to-be Steve Lawson and his rampageous pals stagger, not meaning to throw elbows and knock drinks out of people’s hands but not meaning not to either, too drunk for decision-making of any kind. Their goal is the tableful of drinks ordered up for the singers in the middle of the room and not yet consumed, their own supply exhausted, and, when reached, these are snatched up and passed around with a lot of hollering and cussing and laughing and generally obnoxious behavior. The freelance civil servant, Giorgio Lucci, the leader of this wild pack, gives a wave to his boss the fire chief who is just leaving, lets out a resounding coma-ti-yi-yippee-yippee- yo in acknowledgement of the hayseed performers, tosses back a tall glass of beer in one long guzzle and finds himself face-to-face with the female half of the singing duo, no longer singing. He blinks in recognition, belches, grins his stand-up comedian’s grin. “‘Patti Jo.’ I’ll be damned! Patricia Josefina! I never forget a nose! You nearly fooled me with that hayseed act, Josie. Remember me? I once had my finger up your little patonza.” He grabs her in the crotch of her jeans, and sings: “So why not take all of me?” Doesn’t get past “all” before her musical partner and former bush league bullpen pitcher comes in with some high heat for his big K of the night. Which is the signal everyone has been waiting for.

Out at the lakes, far from the bench-clearing brawl erupting at the Blue Moon, Sally Elliott steps out of the cold lake waters as she stepped in, mooning the moon and musing about the whimsical customs of midsummer. A distant voice, floating with silvery clarity over the still waters, has just cried out: “Omigod! What are we doing?” “That was my mother’s voice,” she says, drying herself off with her shirt. “Let’s go.” Billy Don, still wearing his sunglasses, lingers in the water at waist level, wanting to stay cool as she has stayed cool and consequently self-conscious about his telltale arousal — which, for fear she will laugh at it, he is trying desperately but unsuccessfully to detumesce with prayer and the recitation of mathematical formulae and also with moral fortitude, the sort his baseball coach used to urge upon him, with equal lack of success, to discourage the sin of Onan. They have been playing a game of water tag that should have been more fun than it was, but Sally has done too much pool time and he has been unable to keep up with her, or else it was the beer (he’s not used to it), so he has rarely had his hands on her and then only fleetingly and not in the best places, which never seemed quite available. Like some kinds of knowledge he’s been offered in his life, but that he’s not been quite able to grasp, advanced calculus, for example. But just seeing her moonlit bottom bob up when she dove under water and feeling the swish of her as she passed suddenly between his legs have been enough to keep him in such an unholy fever it’s a wonder the water around him hasn’t started to boil. “Billy Don? Come on!” Still he hesitates. She seems to guess what’s troubling him and tosses him her shirt, the one that says give me a hug, turns her back and walks over to pull her jeans on. Using his boner as a shirt hanger is probably even more ridiculous than leaving it exposed and bobbing stupidly on its own, but that’s what he does, pretending to be drying himself off until he can reach his cast-off clothes. Still hasn’t been able to give her that hug. He doesn’t know why. Just too dumb, probably. This damp T-shirt between his legs, he’s pretty sure, is as close as he’s going to get.

His return from the dead is celebrated with libations spilled upon his countenance and welcoming bilingual oaths. Where is he? In hell, as the company suggests? Who is he, for that matter? He is staring up at a blinding light. Some say it’s what people who have near-death experiences see. Are his eyes open or closed? Open. He is staring up at one of the lamps that overhang the Blue Moon Motel parking lot. “Maybe Georgie’s got some words of wisdom for us from the other side,” someone says. It might be his cousin Carlo. There are snorts of thick, drunken laughter. Georgie is sick. His head aches, his jaw hurts. There’s a hollow place where a tooth used to be. The arm that fucking sorehead Lem Filbert wrecked is in pain; must have done something to it when he fell. “What happened to that long string of shit who hit me?” he asks, digging the words up from somewhere, not sure they come out as intended. He has a mouthful of stones. “The singer? Them people took off before you could see ’em go.” His comrades are sitting around on their butts, swigging from an array of bottles. “Where’d all that juice come from?” “Inside. We managed to grab some on the way out. Beats what we been drinking all to hell.” They tell him what happened. The historic brawl he missed. He sees now they’re wearing shiners, split lips, bloody ears. They’re all grinning shit-eating grins. “Wrecked the fuckin’ place,” young Nazario Moroni says. “The cops let us go. Just chased everyone out and shut it down.” They offer Georgie one of the bottles. He has to suck from it lying down, though. He can’t sit up yet. It might be whiskey, might not; it’s wet and stings the wounded places. There’s weed getting passed around as well, a wedding gift from Moroni. “We lost Guido Mello, though,” cousin Carlo says. “As they shoved him out the door, he took a slow-motion swing at Louie Testatonda. You almost can’t miss Louie, but he did. It was like il Nasone was desperate to get hisself locked up so as not to have to go home to his dimwit wife and mongol kid and whatever else is going down there. They probly took him in as a family favor.” “Guido had our only wheels left. How’re we getting to Waterton?” “Grunge here is driving us. Him and Naz have joined the party.” “The brawl finished off the others,” young Moroni says. So they’re down to Johnson and Juliano, Stevie Lawson, and the two young toughs. And the resurrected hero who invented this monumental festa, much praised by all. The Sick Six. “One of ’em has two cunts, Stevie, and one of ’em don’t have none at all,” Cheese Johnson is saying. “We ain’t tellin’ you which is which — you gotta guess.” Stevie says, “Huh.” He stands up for a moment and falls down. They laugh and offer him another drink. Stevie has already forgotten he’s getting married tomorrow. Or later today if it’s got as late as that. From here the stag party goes to Waterton to share Stevie’s wedding present with him. That’s the plan. But Cheese and young Nazario have cooked up something else they want to do first.

So the next thing Georgie knows, they’re all out at the Brunist church camp under a vast moonlit sky, being sung to by mosquitoes. The camp has a perimeter fence strung with barbed wire, but Stevie helped clear the garden and move topsoil in for old man Suggs, so he knows a back way in, an old two-track route to the creek from an abandoned farm. He also knows they now have armed guards at the camp, having been one a time or two, so you can pick up an assful of buckshot. Moroni says he wishes he’d known about this route. He and Grunge and some of their pals have also been out here, it turns out, wrecking gardens, sabotaging lampposts, trying to set some chicken coops alight before getting chased off with rifle fire, but they had to cut their way in. Doesn’t seem like only anti-cult mischief. Carrying some deep grudge, more like, especially against the big stud Wanda Craven’s living with now. Georgie gets the idea it’s the way they’ve been able to recruit Grabowski’s car. The plan is to kidnap Wanda and take her somewhere and gangbang her. A warmup for the whorehouse. The last time Georgie and Cheese tried group-fucking Wanda Cravens, they got beat up and arrested and it cost him a few bills. He grins to remember it and he’s reminded how much his jaw hurts. Young Moroni tells them how to get to the trailer park without passing any of the cabins or other mobile homes by following the creek and coming in from the back side. Wanda and her guy live apart from the others because of their chicken coops. The moon’s not full but bright enough it should be simple to find their way. Of course, that also makes them easier targets. They should stay in under the trees. First, though, they’ll have to distract the big bastard, get him away from their trailer so they can grab Wanda. Cheese has brought along a big packet of stink bombs, firecrackers, and flares for the purpose, which he apparently stole from some place. Someone should take a different route, he says, and set all that stuff off and then tear ass, and the other four will snatch Wanda when everyone goes running toward the fireworks. Georgie volunteers for this diversional task or is volunteered, it’s all the same to him. Me ne sbatto il cazzo, he says. His aching head’s not working well, and it seems simpler and less dangerous, and it’s always fun to light fireworks. How will he know when to set the shit off? Cheese will hoot like an owl. He shows him what he means. Sounds more like a night train with a broken whistle, but it should be easy to tell from a real owl hoot in case there are any out here. Cheese gives him the armload of fireworks in a gunny sack and some matches. Moroni says not to worry, he’ll take care of the fat man if necessary. All in all, it seems like a good plan.