Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“How about community service? I promised to help clean up the street after the parade. Want to give me a hand?”

“Sure. Then I have to go serve wienies at the bank picnic. I understand things are about as wobbly out there as that sinking float.”

“Saw your boss pass by looking out of sorts. Is that what he was so agitated about?”

“My boss? No. Well, maybe. It was mainly about the sheriff, I think.”

“You mean, why he didn’t turn up?”

“Right. I think he’s dead. That’s what I heard.”

“Oh wow! But how—?”

“I don’t know. I heard people say his car might have caught on fire. Or got set on fire. And there was apparently some poor kid locked in the trunk.”

“Holy shit! That’s really scary! Who was the kid?”

“I didn’t hear.”

Later, at the bank picnic, Tommy tells her: Royboy Coates. Sheriff Puller was found in his burnt-out car, his wrists handcuffed to the steering wheel. The sheriff’s radio dispatcher said she’d tried to reach him before she shut down, but he didn’t answer and she figured he’d turned in for the night. She also said it was Royboy who apparently set the trap with a call about a highway motorcycle accident. “Roy-boy was just totally fucked,” Tommy says, breathing noisily around his bandaged reconstructed nose. “The only odd thing at the scene was a Dick Tracy comicbook on the ground near the front bumper. It was old and beat up, but showed no signs of having been out in the weather, so they may have dropped it there as a kind of taunt to the cops. Maybe they can get fingerprints.” For some reason that strikes Sally as funny in a sick way, but she doesn’t say so. Tommy is pretty rattled. His dad tried to contact the governor to ask for troops, as he’s been doing the last few weeks, but he was told the governor was out on a statewide tour of Fourth of July parades and couldn’t be reached until Tuesday, and his dad said Tuesday was too late. “He was yelling at whoever he had on the phone, telling him this was an emergency, that the governor had to cancel his fucking joyride and get on top of this, order up the National Guard, we need them now , and the jerk at the other end said something about there being little he could do, it was a national holiday weekend and the available troops were all deployed at one parade or another. Dad shouted, ‘Well, goddamn it then, redeploy them!’ and slammed the phone down. He’s mad as hell. He also called both senators, our congressman, and his pal at the FBI, yelling and swearing at all of them or whoever answered the phones. Answering service operators, mostly, who probably thought they were talking to a madman. And those armed Christian Patriots you saw today in the parade? They’ve all been deputized by the new sheriff.”

Onward, Christian Soldiers. The real battle hymn of the Republic. Things are not going well for Captain America and his young masked sidekick. “I saw Charlie Bonali in the parade, too. He seems to have got up a gang of his own.”

“The Knights of Columbus Volunteer Defense Mob, alias the Dagotown Devil Dogs. That vicious fucking asshole. Fleet said they turned up at his deli asking for money, pushed him around, threatened him, stole stuff. Romano tried to keep them out of the parade, and those fundamentalist Klan types, too, but couldn’t. When the chief said they couldn’t be in the parade if they were armed, they both said it was their constitutional right to bear arms and they’d just fall in behind the last lot and march anyway. Which would have meant they’d be marching together, and that seemed too dangerous. They were already eyeing each other like they couldn’t wait to get at it. So the chief let them in and kept them separated, his own squad car and other marching groups, between them. Man. The whole day has just turned to shit. Things are fucking out of control.”

“It’s the Fourth, Tommy. An American holy day. What did you expect? Killing is patriotic.”

“Killing cops isn’t.”

“Sure it is. Patriots are made by revolutions. Which are against cops and the guys who own the cops.” She means that as a general historical principle, but he’ll take it that she’s slamming his father again. She lights up a smoke and tells herself to ease up. “What about your dad’s resurrection circus tomorrow? Is that still on?”

“Dad’s completely shot, about as low as I’ve seen him. Something’s really got him down — Mom being so sick and all, maybe trouble at the bank, I don’t know. I know he advanced Lem Filbert a lot of money, and Osborne too, and all that’s down the tubes. And now what’s happened today. He has worked so hard to try to turn things around, and this is what he gets. But, yeah, as far as I know he’s going through with it. He figures none of this would be happening if those evangelical dingbats hadn’t come back, so if he can get them to wise up and move on, the other problems may take care of themselves.” Another Twain quote she found while composing her Cretins essay was “Against a diseased imagination demonstration goes for nothing.” Twain wasn’t talking to the diseased imaginations, they’re a lost cause, something the human horde has to live with; he was talking to the fool who thinks he can do anything about it.

The whole town is out here at the high school playing fields, the nearest thing it has to a park. They used to have one in the center, but now it’s a parking lot with a drive-in root beer stand on one corner. The townsfolk are lapping up the ice cream and free eats and soft drinks under the hot afternoon sun, and there’s a lot of beer being passed around from personal coolers, but the mood is more apprehensive than festive. When the word got around, a lot of people dashed out to the Deepwater No. 9 access road where the sheriff’s car was found to get a glimpse of his scorched body before it was taken away, and though they all thought they wanted to see it, after they saw it they knew that they didn’t. It was like a sickening echo of the mine disaster and has brought the nightmares back. Sally follows Tommy’s gaze and sees Stacy at one of the bank food stalls, where she’s cooking up hot-dogs and serving paper plates of potato salad and baked beans. Stacy waves and she waves back. She apparently lacked the nerve to wear the “non-prophet” shirt out here. Or maybe she didn’t want to hide what she’s got. Can’t compete with that. “She’s so cute,” Sally says, and Tommy turns away with a sad clownish grin under his swathed nose and says, “Yeah, but not very friendly.”

The fat lady’s family, the ones who cleared out the swimming pool, are all over there at Stacy’s stall, grabbing up whatever’s offered, pocketing what they don’t eat. The little girl in the pink slipper is wearing Sally’s stolen “sacred cow” tee backward, down to her ankles like a dress. It left her shop along with lots of other things while she and Stacy were cleaning up the street. That’s okay. Spread the evangel. A fifth freedom. From the private ownership of the world. The girl and her brothers have been running about, throwing firecrackers at the squirrels and butterflies, trying to stamp out all the grasshoppers, helping themselves to the sports day prizes, shooting water pistols.

Sally has put on her John Adams “holy lies and pious frauds” tee for her Independence Day meeting with Billy Don, but maybe she should change to something more suggestive for later. Something straightforward like “Why Not?” Or “Ripe Fruit.” Hanging by a thread from the Tree of Knowledge. My Cunt-Tree. ’Tis of thee. For thee. She drops her cigarette and grinds it out with her sneaker heel. Stupid. “I have to go, Tommy. I promised to meet that kid from the camp. But how about watching the fireworks together tonight? I’ll invite Mary Jane along for company. I’ve got what’s left of her stowed away somewhere in a dirty sock.”