Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Together with the Crusadeer pals of Juice and Face and others they’d picked up, they rolled in Friday evening. Quietly: the detachable baffles Houndawg has fashioned for the pipes that work something like gun silencers mean they can now prowl like cats or roar like wild bears. Cool. They had numbers now. Power. Their first order of business that night was to avenge Littleface, but on the way in they picked up some of the stolen boxes of dynamite they’d buried. Before pulling out of the area two months ago, they’d divided the boxes into smaller parcels and scattered them about in different locations, figuring the cops might find some but not all of it. One of their pick-up stops was at the old cemetery, where Nat used to take Paulie and Amanda to play the Lazarus game because nobody ever came there. The hole they’d dug for their game was still there and they’d used it. Amanda was the one who usually got buried. Once he had her in the hole and unable to move with just her face peeking out, he’d scare her with stories about dead people coming after her, or pretend to be one himself, sitting on the grave so she couldn’t get out, making horror faces and noises, brushing dirt toward her mouth whenever she tried to scream or bawl. Why did she keep going back for more? Because she was dumb. When she came home dirty, their old man would pull down her pants and spank her, and she never complained, but he never laid the strap on her the way he and Paulie got it. He always babied Amanda. The old derelict graveyard spooked Cubano, who refused to go in. Nat laughed and told Paulie to show Cubano how to be a man, but Paulie had a fit, the first since he got his head stove in. That crazy lady actually left a big dent in his skull. Blinded him in one eye, too. Popped his eyeball right out and they had to push it back in, though it didn’t work after that. Did seem to cure his fits, at least until Friday night, but left him stupider than ever. That night, after they’d executed the sheriff, they holed out in the old man’s abandoned farm shack, stowed what they’d picked up so far under the floorboards there. They peered in on the squibs they’d hidden behind small logs in the old wood-burning stove two months ago and everything seemed all right so they left them. Maybe everything wasn’t all right.

Earlier that night they’d grabbed the Coates kid, out wandering around drunk, and before using him to set the trap for the sheriff, they pumped him for information, learning about the parade the next day and the Brunist ceremony on the Mount planned for Sunday, which Royboy said his family wasn’t invited to but were going to anyway. Meaning the town would be busy with the Fourth on Saturday, giving the Wrath a certain freedom of movement out at the edges, and then the camp would be vacated for a while on Sunday, allowing them to pick up the big chunk buried in the wild part down there, a little known corner of the camp discovered by Nat shortly after his family first arrived back. Which his fatass brother and the Collins whore also evidently discovered for their sick games. Or God led them there to get what was coming to them. The O.T. God. Nat’s God. The Big One. The one at war with the N.T. wimp. Nat’s theology. Though he has come to appreciate Jesus as a man of wrath. A comicbook in Nat’s saddlebag shows how he was betrayed and rewritten, softened up to be sold to the crowd. They also learned from Royboy that Nat’s old man had got kicked out of the camp after what they did to the Collins girl (Royboy was giggling nervously at this point) and that Junior had later led an attack on the camp in which Royboy’s brother Aaron got a butt full of buckshot and everybody got arrested and Nat’s old man got beaten up in jail by some wop cops. Didn’t sound like Junior, but you never know what a little healthy scarring will do for you. Royboy also told them that the Collins girl was very sick and maybe possessed by the Devil, that old man Suggs had had a stroke and was in hospital, that some people had suicided themselves — one guy right in his shop window at high noon — and that there was a big fire one night at the used-car garage at the edge of town that didn’t happen by itself but which was better than the Fourth of July. Deacon had grinned in his beard and said: “Whoa! I love this place!”

There were a lot of sirens on Saturday morning after they found the sheriff, so the Wrath kept their distance, using the day to gather up more of the nitro, case the area, deal with the defections. In spite of the blood oaths they’d taken, most of the Crusadeers who had joined them had split overnight, including Jesse Colt. Said they came to avenge their buddy Littleface, did that, they’re moving on. They don’t know dynamite and armageddons. So the Wrath is smaller, only a dozen or so, but it’s hardcore. Nat’s disappointed about Jesse. Dug his name, his style, thought of him as another Face. But he wasn’t. When they’re done here, they’ll hunt those deserters down, take retribution. After the sheriff’s car was hauled away, the mine hill was unoccupied for a time, so Nat, Juice, and Cubano took the occasion to roll in the back way and pick up the boxes buried under the tipple, but they discovered that the dog’s grave had been cleaned out and refilled with dirt. Just a single putrefied leg bone in there, like they were being taunted. Which meant someone was onto them, at least partly. After sundown, they withdrew into this state park. Stored their assets. Laid plans.

Then today, once they’d made sure the Brunists were all over on the mine hill, they slipped into the camp quickly the back way they’d come before. There was a barbed-wire fence up, but they’d passed by and seen that and were ready with bolt cutters. Nat wanted them in and out of there in ten minutes. He led them to the place near the tagged tree where they buried the stuff, but it wasn’t there. Didn’t look like anything ever had been. Had he got the right place? Had the tag been moved? It was dark when they buried it; maybe things looked different. While he was puzzling this out, the old man turned up. Back in the woods some ways, half behind a tree. Cradling a rifle. “Over here, boys,” he said. “You’re looking for that nitro.” The Wrath’s guns were out, but Nat said, “Don’t shoot!” “That’s right. It ain’t my aim to shoot nobody less I have to,” the old man said. “I wanta make a deal. I don’t figure this is all of it, nor not alla you neither, so I don’t reckon I can stop whatever meanness you’re up to. All I want, Nat Baxter, is for you to promise not to come back here to the camp again and not to bother the people here.” “I can do that, old man.” No problem. Nat doesn’t want the camp. He wants the town. The world. “Awright. You’re a mean young hellion, Nat Baxter, but I trust you when you give your word. It’s back over here. I’ll show you, but no funny business. Don’t need your whole passel, just you and a coupla others. Maybe that one there in the fancy red boots and that older feller in the braid who looks sensible enough not to start up no trouble.” Nat started forward with Juice and Paulie, who always jumped into everything, wanted or not, Deacon’s pal Toad Rivers and old Buckwheat joining in as protection or just out of curiosity, but Houndawg hesitating, maybe because he’d been singled out, then Nat, too. “Wait a minute,” he said, feeling one of his headaches coming on. Like somebody saying no. Something was wrong. What was it? He was squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden pain needling his head like black lightning and it was like Littleface was there with a lock on him — he reached for Paulie’s shirt—“No, stop!” he shouted, and Houndawg’s gun came up, aimed at the old man, and just as he fired, the whole world seemed to heave up and hit him in the face.