Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Angela is on the phone to her friend Ramona, who has upset her by letting her know that Tommy was seen leaving the Fourth of July picnic Saturday night with Sally Elliott. She can’t believe it, but Ramona says everyone saw them. “She’s just an ugly smartalecky slut,” Ramona says. “It only shows how desperate he is.” Is that supposed to make her feel better? Ramona says her dad has had to go to the mine hill this morning because something is happening again. There was a big explosion at the mine on Sunday when some of them blew themselves up and now a lot of people are hurrying out there because they think it might be like five years ago. “You know, like, wild?” Well, not Angela. It was nice of Mr. Ferrero to bring them eggs for breakfast, but she doesn’t really like eggs, and she’s starving. Now that the rain’s nearly over, she’ll take a bath, put on makeup, and go to town for something more filling. Maybe Stacy will be in Doc Foley’s drugstore and she can ask her a private question about what a miscarriage is really like in case she has to try to describe one. Well, not in case. That’s what she’s going to have to say, or something like it. White lies: her days now seem full of them. She’s running out of money but feels certain she’ll soon get her job back when Mr. Cavanaugh realizes how unfair he has been and how much he needs her. She tells Ramona she has to go, that she has an appointment at the bank and needs to get ready for it.

White lies. It’s how Bernice Filbert thinks of the stories she tells the bedridden Mr. John P. Suggs. They began with the best of intentions. She didn’t want to tell him that his friend Sheriff Puller had been murdered and in such a gruesome way, fearing it might give him another brain attack. This morning he asked why the sheriff has not come by, and she said, “He did. But you was…sleeping.” So she also hasn’t told him about the motorbikers and Ben Wosznik getting blown up either because it’s all part of the same story. And she certainly hasn’t let him know about the changes at the camp since Ben died, because she knows that would really upset him and he might stop giving them money. So Ben is still at the camp and everything is as it always was, except for the hosts assembled by Abner Baxter at the outskirts, which oppress them daily. Ben hasn’t come to visit because he needs to stay to protect the camp and also because he has a bad summer cold he doesn’t want Mr. Suggs to catch. She hasn’t said what day it is. Maybe it’s still the Fourth of July. She can revise the story of the Fourth a little and then tell it like it’s a new one, just happening; he won’t know the difference. As for Sheriff Puller, maybe he had to resign and move somewhere else. Or maybe he also had a stroke, or soon will have. Eventually he could also die heroically saving the camp from the Baxterites. It depends on what happens next. There’s no one left to tell Mr. Suggs otherwise, except that unpleasant McDaniel fellow, his mine manager, and she can have Mr. Suggs fire him for siding with Abner’s people and send him away. She has a cousin who could do that man’s job at the mine, and without scowling all the time. When that fat city lawyer with the yellow slicked-down hair comes back, the one who is being so helpful, they’ll have a chat about it. She hopes he will admire her strategy.

Now that her foul-mouthed brother-in-law has been jailed, there’s a bedroom free to rent at their house; the hospital is expensive so home care might be the right thing. The hospital could loan her all the things she needs like blood pressure monitors and specimen bottles and bedpans, and the theropests could come by her house to exercise him. At the hospital, they sit him up and walk him around, but nothing’s working, his feet just bend back and drag along on his toes. If she can find someone to help lift him, they could hire her extra for that task. At least he is swallowing his own food now if it’s mashed up, and the hospital has a home catering service that Mr. Suggs can afford. That would cut her own food bills down, too, because he doesn’t eat much. He is alert a couple of hours each day, but otherwise, he appears confused and strange grunting and whining noises come out of him, as if he were speaking in tongues, and maybe he is, or else he sleeps. In his alert moment this morning, after inquiring about Mr. Puller, Mr. Suggs asked her in his laborious eye-blinking way to tell the sheriff that he should put some pressure on those drunks who invaded the camp by telling them they were under suspicion for the murder of those two fools in the garden shed, which happened that same night, and get them to implicate Baxter and his followers in everything that happened. All this thinking and blinking tired him out pretty fast. Leaving the hospital on her way out to the camp to check on Elaine, Bernice bumps into her friend Maudie, the head nurse, and tells her about the Hungarian exorcist turning out to be an abortionist and getting chased off by Clara. Maudie shrugs and says, well, it’s a kind of exorcism and it would probably have been a healing thing to do.

Wayne returns with dire news. The police have Elaine. “They said she was a-slickerin’ herself with a belt down in the rough nigh to where all the bodies was found, and they’re arrestin’ her for indecent exposure and takin’ her in for a medical.” Wanda Cravens and Hunk Rumpel have come to say goodbye. Without a word, Hunk walks away toward the creek and a few minutes later he returns, carrying Elaine, looking like an unstrung puppet made out of sticks, her eyes starting like an animal caught in a trap, her skinny little tummy bumping out under the soaked tunic pasted to it like she swallowed a mushmelon. Hunk doesn’t say how he got her, but they suppose they’d better get out of here fast. They can already hear the choppy crackle of helicopters somewhere in the sky. More troops will be coming in. Everything will get closed off. Glenda says not to wait for her at the meeting place, that she may have to stay. So many children to care for, it might be easier here, and she’d have to leave one of her two campers behind unless Uriah or Hovis returned to drive it for her. Those two West Virginia fellows aren’t back, nor Billy Don either, but the rest can’t wait, they’ll have to join up later. Mabel agrees to ride in Clara’s trailer to keep an eye on Elaine. Wayne says he hopes it’s not really the Rapture and they’re not dragging Clara and Elaine away from their own salvation, but Ludie Belle says, “God ain’t stupid. He’ll know where to find us.”

Which is how it is that Billy Don returns from his call to Sally Elliott to find everyone gone. No matter. Tucker City is in a different direction; it would only have confused them to see him turning off. He doesn’t know exactly what he wants to say to Sally, but something like he’s never known anyone like her before, meeting her has been the most important thing that’s ever happened to him, and he doesn’t want their friendship to end. He has her phone number but not her address, which he plans to ask for and also for her permission to call her from time to time. He may tell her he loves her, but he hopes he won’t blurt that out because he doesn’t think it’s something she wants to hear. But he does love her. He knows that, has known it for a long time, and his chest is tight with the thought of leaving, even if only for a short time. His immediate plan is to drive up to his cabin now that everyone has pulled out and throw a few things in the car before taking off, but the car won’t start. Seems completely dead. He’s about to step out to see what the matter might be when Darren appears at the window. “What are you doing here? I thought you were headed over to the Mount.”

“I am. Some people are walking. I have time. But I can’t let you leave, Billy Don.”