Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

It’s the oldest story I ever heerd tell

When gal meets boy at the Blue Moon Motel…

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

T’git your rocks off at the ole Blue Moon…!

There’s a lot of loud whoopeeing and clapping and heehawing laughter, and though this is an uncommon scene for Tub Puller, he is beginning to melt somewhat into it and feel less uncomfortable on his bar stool, and he may even be grinning, though perhaps that’s not obvious to others. But then the woman from the motel front desk presses through the crowd to shout in his ear that he has a phone call from his office. He says to tell the woman he’ll call back on the car radio, it’s too noisy in here, and he slowly downs his drink, lingering for one more verse…

Well, we had a grand time and it hurts like hell

T’be singin’ farewell to the Blue Moon Motel…

But our hearts is still here and we’ll be back soon

Cuz we cain’t stay away from the ole Blue Moon!

The stringbean cowboy-hatted singer shouts out through the uproar for everybody to join in on the chorus, and they do, each singing their own preferred versions, and if Tub were the sort of person to do that he’d surely do the same, but instead he swivels heavily about and puts foot to floor and shoulders his way out. Back to the face…

It’s the oldest story I ever heerd tell

When boy/gal meets gal/boy at the Blue Moon Motel…

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

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

When Tub Puller took over the rundown sheriff’s office from Dee Romano’s do-nothing cousin who treated the job as a family perk, he completely revitalized it. He repainted the office itself, hung blinds and detailed maps of the county, put down new linoleum, brought in furniture sturdy enough to take his bulk. His predecessor hardly ever ventured out of West Condon, not many people even knew he was there, but Tub has expanded his territory to include the entire county and has been developing a volunteer force prepared to respond to any emergency. He also added a new two-way car-radio system. It meant hiring operators on a tight budget, but there were any number of unemployed miners’ widows looking for a little extra grocery money and willing to put in long hours of light work for not much pay. He could not afford twenty-four hour coverage, so he set up two nine-hour shifts, keeping someone there from seven in the morning to an hour after midnight. After that, emergency calls are switched to his home phone. A lot more work, but sheriffing is about all he does or wants to do, and it beats coalmining.

Now it’s an accident on the back road to Tucker City. He’s not happy about having to leave the Moon, and his tooth still hurts, but routine is routine and he sticks by it as what he knows best. Tess said in her radio call that she had deflected a few nuisance calls, but this one seemed pretty bad and he should probably check it out. He asked her who called it in and she said it was Royboy Coates. She said his mother had called earlier to say he hadn’t come home for supper and she was worried about him, but she reminded Thelma that Royboy has had a way of getting in trouble of late and has been seen at all hours in unsavory places with unsavory people and that she and Roy should have a serious talk with him, and Thelma said no matter how many beatings Royboy takes from his father, it doesn’t seem to make a tittle of difference. Tess said Royboy told her on the phone that it was some young kid on a motor bike, a car or truck must have hit him, he wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead, but he’d wait there until the sheriff showed up, though he was scared so please come right away. He asked Tess if she knew where Cal Smith was and she didn’t. He asked her to try to reach him by phone and also one or two of the new deputies and to send them out there to join him in case he needs help. He’ll also need an ambulance if it’s as bad as Royboy says, so she should stay there until he calls back, but she reminded him tomorrow was a holiday and she was supposed to knock off early, so he told her to order the ambulance up now. She also reminded him about the Fourth of July parade tomorrow, which he’ll have to ride in, suggesting he might want to take the newlyweds along in the back seat, now that he’s hiring Franny in the office, and he reminded her he’s supposed to ride a goddamned horse and then he got on the road. He considered driving past the Brunist camp and picking up Hunk or Wayne, but it’s out of the way and they’re probably already in bed.

As he rises over a little hump in the road, he sees Royboy there all right, just where he said he’d be — he waves frantically when he spots the sheriff’s car coming — and there’s the cyclist on the side of the road, his overturned motorbike another twenty yards further up where momentum must have taken it. Tub pulls his car over onto the shoulder and sits there for a moment, his lights on Royboy and the fallen biker, looking the scene over. There’s a motorcycle parked beside Royboy. His own most likely. Royboy looks terrified, but then he probably hasn’t seen many dead bodies, if it is dead. Tub is thinking about that biker gang with the death’s-head and Brunist tattoos and patches who were here a couple of months ago. There are a lot of motorcycles in the county, it’s a cheap way to get around, but you don’t often see them out on the back roads this late at night. He hasn’t dealt with a motorcycle accident since the night he created one down the road from the Blue Moon. He remembers the Cavanaugh station wagon rolling past that night, thinking at the time that it was the Cavanaugh brat and a girlfriend. They had more urgent things to do, he figured, so he finished what he was doing. But then he learned the next day the car had been stolen and trashed, probably by the bikers. If so, they’d seen him. They might have come after him right then, but they didn’t. He supposed that they would and prepared for it, but it didn’t happen, and instead they left the area. Ever since then they have been somewhat on his mind. There’s a thick stand of trees over to the left beyond the ditch. Could be hiding someone. He turns his spotlight on it, leaves it and his brights on and the motor running, unsnaps his rifle from the overhead carrier, checks the ammo in the two pistols on his hips, dons his helmet, crawls out of the car cautiously, and looks around. Everything dead quiet. All he hears is crickets and the soft rumble of his car motor. Those assholes make a lot of noise; he’s pretty sure he’d know if they’d come back. He’s not wearing his steel-toed miner’s boots tonight, but he doesn’t expect to need them. Keeping his eye on the woods and the road in both directions, he approaches Royboy and the body, which looks twisted and lifeless. Royboy is so scared his teeth are chattering. “Why aren’t you at home, Royboy?” he asks to break the silence, but Royboy only shakes his head and tries awkwardly to laugh. It’s more like a sick whine. Tub pokes his toe at the body, then squats, asking himself if he’s ever seen Royboy on a motorcycle and where is the phone he called from, to look more closely at it. Feels a chill. The greasy duck’s ass haircut tells him all he needs to know. It’s the darkie who rode with them, the one they called Cubano. The shit opens his eyes and winks at him. The sheriff is down there on one knee when they rise up out of the ditch and he more or less expects to die that way. The odd thought that comes to him is that now he won’t have to go to the dentist. They strip him of his weapons and march him back to his car, where he can hear Tess on the radio signing off, telling him the ambulance will be out there in about fifteen minutes but she hasn’t been able to reach Smith or any of the others, and reminding him again about the parade tomorrow.