Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“You cain’t take us in,” says Coates. “We live here.”

“Aiding and abetting,” he says.

“Bull.”

He lifts the megaphone. “All right, let’s get moving!” He’s waiting for Cal to cross him so he can break him, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, a snot-nosed brat dragging a dirty pink slipper on one foot comes over and pokes her finger in his belly. He swats at her but misses. “It’s real!” she shouts and other brats draw near with mischievous grins on their nasty little faces as if they all intend to have a poke.

“Luke, you come away from there and let the man be!” a woman calls out. “He’s just doing his job!” Big woman, near as big as he is, a squalling fat baby over her shoulder. She waddles out of the crowd toward him and gets a grip on the girl’s collar. “Sorry, Sheriff. We’re town folk. We just come out to bring some food and comfort to these poor people. I feel sorry for them and I think you should oughta too, but I suppose you got your orders. Us Christians is used to getting beat up by the law. We’ll be going now and leave you to it, but next time I see Jesus, I’m gonna tell him what you done.”

“Wait a minute—”

“I recognize them,” Smith says. “It’s okay. They’re living in the Chestnut Hills prefabs.”

“Squatters.”

“Maybe. But that’s Romano’s problem, not ours.”

It’s Suggs’ problem, too, he owning most of that property, but Tub knows this is not an argument that carries much weight with Smith. A lanky unkempt man with deep hollow eyes has come up beside the fat woman, toting a rifle and looking seriously deranged. Tub should probably tell him to hand over his weapon, but he has the notion it would not be a smart thing to do. The little girl in the pink slipper takes her thumb out of her mouth and asks: “Mom, can I have that silver star? Please , Mom!” and her mother tells her no, she can’t, it’s what makes the big man big, that without it he’d be a runt to a flea, and Coates’ sneer spreads through the crowd of faces like a kind of infection. Tub has somehow lost the thread of this game. “All you folks live in Chestnut Hills come with us now. This ain’t about us,” the woman says, and one or two follow her toward their cars, and then a few others, and then everyone. Now having Smith here is a bad thing. Tub might have shot a few of them, but with Smith as witness he has lost that option. All he can do is unholster his weapon and holler at them to stop in the name of the law and he does that. Some of his boys do fire warning shots over their heads, but the fat woman says: “Come along now! Don’t worry, they ain’t gonna shoot nobody. They ain’t very happy, but they ain’t crazy.”

“Doggone my soul, how I love them old songs! Put your hands t’gether there, folks, fer our sidekickin’ goddaddy, Will Henry! He has done so much fer us and he does pluck a mean box!” Tub Puller likes country music about as much as he likes any music (not much), so when he heard that tonight would be the last Duke L’Heureux and Patti Jo Rendine show at the Blue Moon, he decided it might be a smart idea to hang out for a couple of hours to prevent any repeat of the brawl and also to see what all the excitement is about, hoping only they weren’t singing songs like he’d heard them sing with the Brunists out on the mine hill, which he understood they were not. Needed a break from all that religious in-fighting. None of those nuts in here. He let Tess back at the station know he was going to be out of radio contact for an hour or two and if there was an emergency she should call him at the motel. He found the lot packed out, the stuttery “No Vacancy” neon sign lit, and the front door locked, and he had to bang loud with both fists to rouse anybody what with all the noise inside. When they finally showed up, they apologized, explaining they’d closed up because it was a complete sellout, no room for another body, though of course they’d let the sheriff in, which was, as he knew they were thinking, like letting in another half dozen. He asked them if there had been any trouble tonight and they said there had not and he moved on into the bar area. Not easy, even with the badge on his chest, to carve a grudging path. Never saw such a jam-up at the Moon, or anywhere else around here, for that matter. A lot of familiar faces but also a lot of strangers. The owner, watching things from the doorway, said they’d been rolling in all week for this show, every room booked double. But though he was glad to have seen this happen at the Moon, he said he was sad to see the act close down, and it was clear he’d had a few to console himself. Tub has sometimes stopped in here on dead midweek nights to have a whiskey or two on his own, so the bartender, when Tub finally got that far, simply greeted him with a nod and quietly poured him a glass of Coke spiked with a couple of shots of Kentucky bourbon, Tub hoping it might dull the pain in his tooth. After the holidays: the dentist, for sure.

A guitar is still slung around Duke’s stringy neck, but two of the fingers on his strumming hand are taped to a splint, so most of the guitar playing is being provided by his slack-britches partner and the local radio station announcer, Will Henry, playing backup on the night and adding his whine to the others. The woman doesn’t sing all that well but she’s got an earnestness about her that somehow makes her sound better than she is. So far it has mostly been twangy old standards like “I’m Movin’ On” and “Night Train to Memphis,” where they’re apparently headed tomorrow for a big Fourth of July stage show and a string of downriver venues after that, but he’s heard talk of some off-color songs and he hopes his uniform and the fact he knows them from the church camp isn’t putting them off. He’s had some rough weeks with more to come on this long beer-picnic weekend, and he doesn’t mean to make a fuss about song lyrics; he’s only in need of an easeful few minutes before the next call comes in. Of course they may not even have seen him, but that’s unlikely as his size always gets noticed, people turning to stare wherever he goes, and even now a lot of them are watching him, sitting there at the bar on a stool that feels more like the top end of a fire hydrant, drinking off his Coke and bourbon and accepting another.

Now, after a medley of moon songs—“Tennessee Moon,” “Blue Moon,” “Howlin’ at the Moon”—Duke announces that to mark the occasion tonight he has written a new number, “The Blue Moon Motel,” and that gets a wild cheer and some applause and foot-stomping. Will Henry does some preliminary strumming and Duke leans into the mike…

I was knockin’ about out on life’s highway ,

All alone and livin’ in hell ,

Feelin’ so bad I jist wanted to die ,

Then I met my gal in the Blue Moon Motel!

And then the woman and Will Henry join in on the chorus…

It’s the oldest story I ever heerd tell

When boy meets gal at the Blue Moon Motel ,

So listen up, darlin’, it ain’t never too soon

T’git your butt off to the ole Blue Moon…!

There’s a lot of hooting and hollering and loud whistling at that and then Duke calls the owner of the motel to come forward and he does, somewhat sheepishly and unsteadily, glass in hand, and he is cheered like you might cheer a ballplayer, and Duke puts his arm around him…

We sang us some songs and crooned us some tunes

’Bout huggin’ and kissin’ and life was jist swell,

We was makin’ real gold outa all our blue moons

And we owed it all to the Blue Moon Motel …

This time the woman, Patti Jo, steps up to the mike to sing the chorus on her own…