Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

The camp is suddenly aswarm with people piling into their vehicles and pulling out, wheels spinning in the mud and horns blaring. Down at the emptying trailer park, Ludie Belle looks out her trailer window and says, “There they go! The weather’s still ketchy, but it’s fairin’ up. Looks like it’s time to shuckle outa here.” Cecil and Corinne step out through the dying drizzle, start up their camper truck, and squeeze out through the congestion, waving at everybody. Hovis has turned up finally, but Uriah who went looking for him has not come back. Hovis remarks that Uriah is a mite slow and easily confused and may have got caught up in the general movement toward the hill, he’ll go find him. He asks again where they are meeting up and he says he thinks he can remember that. Billy Don says he’ll go along with him because he wants to use the office phone. Wayne and Ludie Belle take Mabel along to Clara’s trailer to explain why they have to leave the camp, but when they get there, they discover that Elaine is gone. “She cain’ta got far,” Wayne says and he goes looking for her. “Whatever passes,” Ludie Belle calls after him, “you be back here in ten minutes, hear?”

When word gets back to town that the Brunists are on the move toward the mine hill, Police Chief Dee Romano informs the mayor’s office, then calls Ted Cavanaugh at the bank to let him know, and he and Louie head out there, leaving Monk to mind the shop, lamed-up Bo Bosticker having gone home to get some shut-eye after his night duty. The mine hill is not really in Dee’s jurisdiction, though it is no longer in the county sheriff’s either — it belongs now to the state troopers who took it over Sunday night after the dynamite blast at the camp — but Cavanaugh expects it of him. He asked Dee to tell the troopers on duty there to hold their ground until he gets there, and to let them know the governor and National Guard units were on the way. Dee radioed ahead to be sure some troopers would actually be there when he arrived. As he’d anticipated, they were all over at the scene of the explosion, having coffee under the tent. They said they didn’t understand what the connection was between the blast at the camp and the empty mine hill. Dee doesn’t exactly understand it either but said he’d explain it to them when he got there, and meanwhile these were the official orders from the governor. There are a lot of cars on the road out to the mine, so he turns on the sirens and roars past them, thinking that if he were not a Romano and all that ties him to, he’d just keep on going.

The banker has arrived early after the long holiday weekend, while the tellers are still setting out their stalls. He’d planned to confront the backlog he had been avoiding, but now, after Romano’s call, he’ll have to holster up and get out to the mine. It has not been a good weekend. He has lost his intern (he is hurting, he’ll get over it), his son is not speaking to him, his embittered wife is increasingly caustic and befuddled by drugs and religious confusions, private armies have been forming up, stirring old local ethnic animosities, his Fourth of July celebrations were something of a shambles, underscored by the brutal murder of the sheriff, and his attempt to reason with the cult fanatics was a fiasco. He has to hope that Bruno recovers from his seizure, or he’ll have more problems on his hands. On top of all that, his fraternity brother in the FBI has confirmed Nick Minicozzi’s underworld connections (knew that, damn it; ignored it); the goddamned news media are back in numbers, determined to make everybody look like idiots, lunatics and criminals; and his own weak policies and lack of personal oversight have damaged the bank’s fiscal stability. Meanwhile, the violence is escalating and the various police units are incompetent in dealing with it, if not obstructive in some cases. The town has been overrun by a gang of vicious killers associated with the cult, and except for those who blew themselves up at the church camp and that abandoned farmhouse, they all got away without one of them being caught. Maybe they’re being hidden at the camp by the cultists. As soon as Ted has that thought, he knows it to be true. Meaning they may have more dynamite over there. He’ll demand a complete search and a shutdown of the camp, which is now a crime scene. National Guard units are at last on their way to support the state and local police, but they should have been here weeks ago; it took the murder of a lawman for Governor Kirkpatrick to take Ted’s warnings seriously. The pompous ass is driving in sometime this morning with his political entourage; Ted intends to meet it. He sees by his desk calendar that the new Presbyterian minister is also due today. Can’t deal with that. He calls Jim Elliott and tells him to meet the man at the bus station, take him to the church, show him the manse, get him settled in. Name’s Jenkins. Make him feel at home. Stay off the gin until you get the job done. He signs four foreclosure documents, approves the drafting of eight others, freezes all accounts with overdrafts, hauls on his shoulder holster, and calls Maury Castle at the mayor’s office, telling him to arm himself and meet him out at the mine hill. Immediately.

Sally Elliott is also headed to the mine. By way of Tucker City. Billy Don has called from the church camp to say he’s finally taking her advice and leaving, but he wants to see her before he goes. That’s really great news, she’d said, and they agreed to meet in forty-five minutes, the time it will take her to bicycle to the Tucker City drugstore. He’d told her that the Brunists are now led by Reverend Baxter with Darren at his side, and they had just left the camp to march over to the Mount of Redemption and challenge the state police there. Billy Don and the others were taking Mrs. Collins and her daughter with them when they leave, only hoping (he said with a nervous laugh) they’re making the right decision and the Rapture isn’t really coming. She said, “Don’t worry, Billy D — it’s the right decision.” Since the Saturday night downer when Tommy abandoned her to a night alone on bloody sheets, penniless and carless, blaming her for taking him to that hotel on purpose, cursing her loudly in front of all those opened doors as he stormed away, she hasn’t felt like writing, has been drawing instead. Smoking till her lungs hurt and drawing. Hands and ears. Eyes, mostly angry. The kitchen coffee pot, her shirt hanging over a chair back, the family cat. She sat for an hour in front of a mirror and tried to draw her vagina, but it was too depressing and she tore the page out and burned it. Then, using the Polaroid shot she had taken of the bloody hotel bedsheet, she recreated the design with colored inks, looking for some larger scene to arise from it in the way that Vasari described the painting of epic battle scenes from studying the pattern of spittle on a wall. This led her nowhere. Spittle was apparently more inspiring. When Billy Don called, she had been thinking about hopping on her bike and doing some sketching around town — the corner drugstore, abandoned train depot, backside of the derelict hotel — and his call brought to mind the old Deepwater No. 9 tipple and water tower, and that has become her project of the day. She scratches about for all the money she can find to give Billy Don, stuffs Tommy’s camera and some pencils and charcoals in her backpack, and gets on the road to Tucker City.

Charlie Bonali, founder and boss of the Knights of Columbus Volunteer Defense Force, is not privy to events out at the mine hill, he’s only guessing, but with the area sealed off by the state coppers after the nitro blast, he supposes the Brunist crazies will have to contest that and they’ll be protected by Smith and his white supremacist militia, who are Charlie’s real targets. He calls young Naz Moroni and tells him to arm the Devil Dogs and get them out there for the party. Moron says his nonno died overnight, the old guy he was named after, and he’ll probably get dragged into family stuff, but he should be free until something like suppertime. Before going out, Charlie will drop by St. Stephen’s to have a word with old Father Bags. Charlie is not religious, but he understands the Church’s power politics and identifies with it. From the Godfather Pope down, it’s like the syndicate. He’ll let Baglione know that the Brunists are on the warpath again and tell him about the K of C Defense Force in case the church might want to hire a couple of professional guards. He’ll also offer to restart and manage Bingo nights at St. Stephen’s and provide protection for it. Charlie’s old man is already out on the front porch, watching the rain fall and jawing with Sal Ferrero, a fellow member of the losers’ club, who nevertheless has brought breakfast by for them all, gift of his hens. They’ve been talking about the death of old Nonno, who was their dead pal Angelo’s old man, but now the subject of the pending foreclosure comes up, as it always does with these two whiners. It’s also a problem for Charlie. The money from the city has dried up, the rumor reaching him that they’re pissed about his busting the banker brat’s nose without first taking his badge off, and he’s not sure where he can park his bod if his old man loses the house. As for his whore of a sister, sprawled half-naked at the phone in her nightshirt, she does indeed seem to be filling out a bit in the belly, so maybe there’s some hush money to be made there.