Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

So the chatter persists. Like the rain. Mabel’s neatly stacked deck of cards sits on the table, awaiting its final shuffle. But she is not ready. Nor are they. They all want to know, but they are afraid to know. Even “innocent” cards on such a day as this will have their darker side. They talk instead about the grieving Coates family (poor Thelma!), the horror of the burned car, that man and boy burned alive. Lucy says Calvin says Roy is ready to kill and he doesn’t seem to care who, and his friends are with him. Roy doesn’t blame Abner, but he doesn’t not blame him, either. There’s some unease between them, and that has Calvin worried. “I’m so scared,” Lucy says. Linda tells them that she always leaves the radio playing in her beauty shop and the other day she heard Patti Jo and Duke singing one of their songs. It seemed quite sinful to her, and as she had a client, she turned it off, but she understood from the introduction that they are quite famous now and Will Henry from the radio station is playing with them, which is why that station is off the air and their Brunist songs aren’t being played around here anymore. They all admit to missing Patti Jo and her conversations with the dead Marcella. Patti Jo was a good storyteller and she was so plain and direct about the things that were happening to her. “It’s like the bright has wore off out here without her,” Ludie Belle says.

Mabel picks up her tarot deck and studies it, sets it down again. They all watch her, trying not to. Ludie Belle says, “We all know it’s time t’go. We also know we cain’t go on accounta we cain’t forsake Clara. We’re like soldier boys in the trenches. Stay’n get killt. Go’n get killt.” “Well,” says Linda, “we live here. It’s not the same for us.” “And anyway,” says Glenda, “isn’t this it? The end, I mean? Isn’t it all just near over?” At this awkward moment, which seems like halfway between time and the end of time, Wanda Cravens begins to sing “Amazing Grace.” She has a thin nasal voice, but there is something painfully compelling about it. Lucy and Corinne join in. And then they all do.

At breakfast time in the Brunist Wilderness Camp Main Hall this wet Tuesday morning, kitchen manager Ludie Belle Shawcross is faced with what she calls a “rumbustious tear-out,” as three or four hundred fractious people, most of them armed, try to get out of the rain and “scrooge in” to a hall that can stand only half that number. They finish off all the coffee, bread, and eggs in about five minutes and crowd into her cook-room, helping themselves to whatever they can grab and raising a clamorous ruckus. Ludie Belle takes off her apron and tells Corinne Appleby there’s nothing more for them to do here, they’d better get down to the trailer park to defend their goods—“Them ramptious peckerwoods has a appetite up and is apt to plunder round our own kitchens if we don’t take cautions!” She waves at Wayne and Cecil caught up in the packed crowds in the next room, and also Uriah, Hovis, and Billy Don when she manages to catch their eyes, and she and Corinne hurry out of there. Mabel and Willie aren’t up at the Main Hall yet, nor are Hunk or Wanda, and Glenda, she knows, is down below overwatching her regiment of little ones.

Mabel is not surprised to hear Ludie Belle hammering on her caravan door and telling her to pack up—“We ain’t stayin’ more, Mabel, it’s time to red up’n cut mud!”—for she herself has arrived, after her reading this morning of the cards, at the same conclusion and has already done the packing and secured the dishware and other loose objects for road travel. Knowing Mabel rises early, Glenda dropped over right after waking up from the two-camper complex she inherited with her widowhood to tell her about the dream she’d had in which she and Hazel Dunlevy were driving through mountains somewhere and Hazel was telling her what it felt like to be shot. The way she described it, it sounded more like what she was doing with Welford in the garden shed, but when Glenda said so in a mostly friendly way, Hazel, who was never famous for her sense of humor, took offense and said that Glenda didn’t understand anything and that was the whole problem. Glenda said that made her feel guilty, like maybe she really was responsible for everything that happened, and she tried to say how sorry she was, but it wasn’t Hazel anymore, it was Ben, just like they saw him Sunday with his eyes staring and his face all full of holes, and she wasn’t driving, he was, or maybe nobody was, and she knew they were going to crash. Glenda, who has lost the power of interpreting dreams, asked Mabel if she had any idea what it meant and Mabel said she thought it signified the end of something, but it wasn’t at all clear what was starting up in its place; it didn’t seem promising, but on the other hand, it might foretoken the Rapture, which is often associated with car wrecks. She asked if there were any children in the dream and Glenda said she thought they were in the back seat, but they were being very quiet, which was unusual and in fact a little frightening, and she wished Mabel hadn’t asked. When Glenda left, Mabel decided to read the cards for herself and when she turned up the Tower, signal of calamity, next to the Chariot and the three of spades, she knew it was time to go. She called Willie, who has rarely left his room since what happened to Ben, and told him to get the caravan ready for the road. Which, quoting from the perilous travels of the Apostle Paul (“What presecutions, sufferin’s and afflictions I have indured, like as what come smack onto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra!”), he has done, removing the blocks, checking the tires, filling the tank from their spare canisters, then retreating to his room once more. They had planned to stay at least until Ben’s burial, but they might all end up getting laid out beside him if they don’t go now. She does not want to leave Clara behind, but she feels that God — who has guided her in her reading of the cards, which she accepts always as divine instruction (unless there is interference) — will somehow provide.

The trailer park is crammed with other vehicles that block their way out, but Ludie Belle says those folks will all be driving off to the Mount soon to try to take it by force, those being Darren’s presumptions, and they can hightail it out of here then. The others turn up at Ludie Belle’s calling, and while they all wait in out of the rain around Ludie Belle’s kitchenette table, they talk about the routes they’ll take, where they’ll meet up if they get separated, and what to do about Clara. Wanda says Hunk won’t be going; he’s staying to tend his chickens, and she’s too tired out to get on the road again and is probably having another baby, so they could leave Clara and Elaine in their hands. But the others fear for Clara here without Ben, and she and her daughter should anyway be out east where Brunist Followers who love them can take proper care of them. Glenda says you don’t have to be a fortune teller to know that Clara needs a doctor, “she’s so badly drawed up.” Clara won’t want to go, so Ludie Belle proposes they tell her a white lie that the police want to question Elaine about a possible illegal medical procedure, namely that of that back-roomer disguised as an exorcist who Bernice dug up somewhere, because even though Clara chased the old quacksalver off before damage was done, she won’t want questions being asked. One look at Elaine and they may take her away, as this society cannot tolerate the irregular. Then Wayne can drive Ben’s old truck and pull Clara’s trailer while Ludie Belle hauls theirs. Billy Don offers to trade off shifts with her if she doesn’t mind slumming in his old rusted-out Chevy, though first he has an errand to run and he’ll join up later. The Applebys take careful note of routes and meeting-up places, because once they can leave the lot they’ll have to hurry round the back way by the creek to load up their hives, and that can take a time as bees can turn exceptious if you rush them.