Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“Those record company folks were helpful, too, shielding us and hustling us outa there when the place started popping. They were real nice.”

“Nice probly wasn’t on their minds. I think they was more like pertectin’ their proppity.”

“I guess that’s what we are now, all right. At least until they have a second listen and hear what noise I make and call singing. The Moon won’t likely want us back, though. They looked to be getting seriously trashed.”

“Sure, they’ll want us back. Trashin’ the Moon is like trashin’ trash: you probly cain’t tell the differnce. They ain’t never had such crowds, and ifn our songs take off, with that ‘Recorded Live at the Blue Moon Motel’ printed on all the labels, we’ll have put ’em on the map big time, and ole Will, too…hmm…damn if that don’t sound like a song title. ‘Trashin’ the Moon.’ Maybe I’ll git sumthin outa this crazy night after all.”

“I’m sorry I drug you into it, Duke. It is crazy. I know that. I’m crazy. But we made Marcella happy, so it was worth it.”

“Just on accounta you left a old plastic hair clasp over there on her grave?”

“No. That I honored her by completing the task she’d set me. It was like some of the stories we used to tell when looking into the barrette. You know, princess offered up as a bride, princes given weird tasks to win her hand and the kingdom, the need for a tittle of magic and a friendly helper to get the deed done — that sorta thing. We sometimes had cemeteries and unmarked graves in our stories, too. So I can see how she set all this up. It was her way of us playing together one last time…”

“Well, settin’ here in a paupers’ buryin’ ground under the hanged moon mongst the lonesome dead, jist the two of us, smokin’ reefers’n cuddlin’, is about as wild a party I been to since the wake fer Granpappy Rendine when his still blowed up, and I hate t’break it up, Patti Jo, but if the ole Blue Moon’s still standin’, we should oughta head back’n have us a beer outa the fridge’n move our cuddle twixt the sheets. I jist heerd a rooster soundin’ off over there.”

“Yeah, and we got a date in a few hours at a wedding, too. We’ll have to be up for that. I suppose all those rowdy boys’ll be there. One of them’s supposed to be the groom.”

“They’ll likely be too sick to stand, but ifn they start actin’ up, with my hand broke, you’ll hafta pertect me, lil darlin.”

“I will, lover. Anybody get close to you, they’ll find out what a angry Rendine gal can do to anyone messing with her favorite cousin. They just better hang on to their goolies.”

“Hmm. Must be even later’n I sposed. Lookie over there to the west. Looks like dawn a-breakin’.”

“I see it. The problem is the sun don’t come up in the west.”

“That’s right. If it’s doin’ that, them friends a ourn at the camp might be onta sumthin. Most probly it’s a fire. Big ’un, looks like.”

“We can drive past and see. Here. While you finish off the joint, I’ll just go say goodbye to Marcella…”

…

“Everthing cool?”

“Yup.”

“And now you’re free? She says you kin go?”

“I can go. But she’s not saying nothing. She’s the one who’s free. She’s gone.”

J. P. Suggs looks like a dead man, the reddish gray frizz on his bony skull like some kind of sickly mold. Only his eyes and a finger on one hand work. No expression, just those eyes staring out from some awful depth. Gives Tub the creeps. Is he angry? Can’t tell. He can blink and wag the one finger. Ask him a question, he blinks once to say yes, stares back icily for no. Sometimes he wags his finger to say no, and then it seems like he might be angry that he’s having to work too hard, but mostly he either blinks once or stares back. Tub on occasion has remarked that he and Suggs see eye to eye, and that remark has now taken on a spookier meaning. But give Suggs credit, he’s a tough old bird. Has been in and out of coma, reduced to a stalk of celery with eyeballs, but he refuses to give up. Tub admires that. Bernice, old Tuck Filbert’s quirky widow, is here in the room, working as a private nurse for the old man. It’s not charity and she’s not doing it just for the money. Without Suggs, she’s in deep shit. Like her patient, she mostly lives in her own head; if Suggs’ head is a stone, though, hers is a swamp. She and Suggs have contrived this code of eye blinks and finger twitches, and she has been helping to move the conversation along. “I suppose I could deputize the Patriots.” The man blinks. Suggs wants all the Baxter followers camped on his property arrested for trespassing and either jailed or chased out of the county once and for all. “Baxter has already had the stuffing knocked out of him by that gangster cop, but it has only made him meaner.” The sheriff is talking more than is his habit, filling up the silence, doing Suggs’ talking for him, as it were. Though Tub has used the Christian Patriots against the illegal Baxterite encampments before, he has not sent them in as official sheriff’s deputies. Doing that will pit him against his own sidekick. “I’m having some trouble with Cal Smith.” Suggs blinks once, which Tub takes to mean “I told you so.” “I’m looking around for a new deputy. One of the Patriots probably. Though not many of them are near smart enough.” Suggs’ lids droop slightly as though to say “So what?” Or maybe he’s passing out again. Tub can see all the forces lining up. His own volunteer unit and Patriots militia with the Brunist campers and Suggs’ money. Next, Smith and the Baxterites, lawless drifters for the most part, many of whom are armed — and a lot more of them around than there used to be. Then the town establishment: Romano and his city cops, the mayor, the city manager, all under the banker’s thumb. And now Vince Bonali’s tough-ass kid and his Knights of Columbus Defense Dogs, or whatever they’re called, together with all the rest of the Romanists. Mostly pissed-off, unemployed ex-miners who are apt to shoot at just about anybody as a remedy for unhappiness. And what next? State troopers, maybe National Guard, though so far Tub has fended off the governor. He has also heard rumors of the FBI getting involved, which means federal troops. Hot summer ahead.

Down the hall from Suggs’ room, Lem Filbert is bellowing out his curses. They’re aimed mainly at the West Condon fire chief, who is in a bed at the other end of the hall. Lem says he aims to fucking kill the fucker as soon as he’s able to fucking stagger down there, and because he probably means it, Romano has his fat Italian officer posted outside his room. What’s Lem going to do, strangle him with his IV tube? He says the fucking mayor is also in for it and everybody else at fucking city hall. He intends to fucking kill the whole crooked fucking lot. Tub does not hear himself mentioned but doubts he’d be excepted. When Whimple turned up at the fire station late last Sunday morning after being up all night hopelessly battling the oily blaze at Lem’s garage, Lem was waiting for him with a crowbar. Bernice said the first thing she did when she saw the fire, even before calling the fire department, was hide her brother-in-law’s guns, which was a good thing because the place burned to the ground and everything on his car lot caught fire as well, the biggest fire in these parts since the old Dance Barn went up, and Lem snapped. Apparently he’d gone storming down to the fire station looking for Georgie Lucci, who has been sacking out on a mattress there and against whom Lem has had a longtime grudge, but Georgie wasn’t in. Lying low. Or maybe passed out in a ditch somewhere on the other side of town, as he later claimed. So it was Whimple who ended up in the hospital. Romano and his boys ran over to try to calm Filbert down, but when Bosticker got within a yard of him, Lem laid into him with a crippling crowbar blow to his knees. When he fell, Lem took his gun off him, at which point Romano decided it was time to stop fooling around and he shot him. Aimed at his gun hand, hit his bony wrist, shattering it, the bullet ricocheting off into his gut, and then, when Lem grabbed the gun up from the street with his good hand and kept coming, Romano shot him again, this time in the arm, and then again in the leg, finally bringing him down. Still, Lem fought them all the way out here to the hospital, and he has never stopped yelling even though they’ve kept him heavily doped. At first the mayor tried to blame the fire on Lem’s own carelessness and his flaunting of fire regulations, but when they found the empty shells of Roman candles, he decided some drunken kids must have driven by and set it alight. His cops more or less confirmed that. An anonymous caller even phoned in to say he’d seen kids running away from there when it started to go up, but he couldn’t see who they were.