Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Down on the drizzly street, Burt Robbins, owner of the dimestore situated below the Legion Hall, is standing under the overhang at the front door having a smoke with the mayor Maury Castle. They don’t seem happy to see Georgie and they don’t seem unhappy, so he pauses to exchange deep thoughts about the weather. Which is showing signs of improving. They grin back at him because they can’t help it, though Robbins’ grin is more like a sneer. Maybe one of them will buy him a coffee. He mentions hopefully that he’s heading over to Mick’s. They’re talking about the Brunists, who are apparently back on Cunt Hill this morning doing a repeat performance of their famous dance-in-the-mud end-of-the-world thing. People are headed out there. A helicopter clatters overhead, punctuating this news. Might be fun. After coffee. If the weather clears. If his bruised brain heals. If someone will give him a ride. Robbins says they ought to get up another carnival out there, and the mayor lets fly with his sour booming laughter (it makes Georgie’s head hurt) and says that after what happened last time, he couldn’t afford the insurance. The mayor asks Georgie if he knows Charlie Bonali. Sure. Tough prick. Heard he might have been a hired gun up in the big town. Right, says the mayor. The sonuvabitch should be in jail, but he’s being protected. He’s got up a gang now. Bunch of young hardass RC thugs. Making trouble. We might need someone on the inside. The mayor hands him a bill. Say hello to Mick. After you’ve had a bite, why don’t you drop by the Fort and see me?

Out on the rain-soaked mine hill, Ted Cavanaugh asks his police chief to radio Monk at the station and have him call the Fort, try to find out where the hell the mayor is. “All these TV trucks and cameras, not like Castle to miss a grandstanding opportunity,” he says. Doesn’t ask the chief, orders him. Like the old army officer he once was. That’s all right. Captain Romano has served worse. He sees the banker as a kind of wounded general trying to rally nonexistent troops. Only four state troopers have turned up here at the hill this morning, and they don’t seem to have any clear orders beyond securing the site of the dynamite blast over at the camp. Dee saw it. Sickening. There are a couple more troopers over there still, but that’s the whole army. Cavanaugh is someone they listen to, though, and when he tells them to block off the hill, they block off the hill. Instead of helping them, the new sheriff and his hayseed militia are shepherding Red Baxter and the crazies from the camp, a lot of drifters and riffraff among them. They are massing up in the mud down below by the scores, singing like their feet are hurting. Not far from the blackened spot on the road where Tub Puller’s car burned with him in it. At least the rain has stopped and the clouds are breaking up in the west, though everyone’s wet and feeling crabby. An unmarked helicopter has been coming and going. Might be army. Or police. Most likely newshounds. Dee has not been informed. Red Baxter is blowing off as usual, punching the air with his fist, the others hooting and hollering in their wild-eyed praise-Jesus way, cheering him on. The blond curly-headed boy who caused them so much trouble out here Sunday is among them with a look on his face like he’s already half-transported, that crazy stringbean son of the woman they arrested clinging to him as though terrified by something. His own wild imaginings, probably. “Ain’t that one a them old picks stole from the mine?” Louie Testatonda asks, pointing at the blond boy. Cavanaugh nods. “Obviously there’s a link.” Locals are also gathering at the edges, not all as idle spectators. Too many guns among them. That cheap hood Charlie Bonali is down there with some of his buddies, nasty grins on their punk faces. The police chief sees this thing playing out in several ways, almost all of them shitty. He has contacted other police forces in the area to let them know they may be needed. Also ambulance services and fire departments, taking no chances. When Wallace radios back, he says as far as they know at city hall the mayor is out at the mine hill. Left some time ago. Monk says he wasn’t sure who told him that. Didn’t sound like Dee’s cousin Gina. More like a squeaky old lady. Probably the mayor himself. Hard to hide that carny barker voice. Dee passes the first part on to the banker, not the second. Cavanaugh, angrily flicking his cigarette several yards away, calls the mayor a loudmouth, yellow-bellied tinhorn, or swearwords to that effect. He is also ticked off at the governor, supposedly on his way here but taking his sweet time about it. Some National Guard units are being trucked in as well, so they say, as yet unseen and unheard from.

And what about the bikers? Smith said he chased them into the next state and only lost them at the state line, then alerted the forces over there. “They’ll catch them,” the wannabe sheriff said. Dee’s not so sure. About them being caught, about them being chased out in the first place. Though the leader of that pack was the Baxter brat, and with him killed they might scatter. Unless, like a thorn in a bear’s ass, it’s just got them madder. Old Wosznik’s achievement, but at a heavy price. Dee liked Wosznik in spite of his dumb beliefs. Honest straightforward man you could trust, uncommon species in this depraved sinkhole. Brave, too, as it turns out. Or maybe just stupid. Never know.

When Dee and Louie first arrived out here this morning, access to the mine road was already blocked by the cultists down at the crossroads. Dee told Smith he should clear the road, and he did. Still playing man of the law. There were only two state troopers on duty at the hill, though they said two others were on their way over from the camp. The senior officer was a Catholic, so he and Dee and Louie had some common ground. Dee explained that, directly or indirectly, those religious lunatics were responsible for the Sunday blast and other crimes in the area, including the murder of Sheriff Puller, immolating the poor bastard in his own squad car, and he pointed at the black spot in the road where it happened. Cop killers. They were also the same people responsible for wrecking their church, especially that big mouth preacher down there making all the racket. Used mine picks on it, stole stuff. White-lying, Dee added that this hill was private property and those people would be trespassing if they tried to march up it without permission. They agreed, though, that if the vangies, as the trooper called them, decided to do that, there wouldn’t be much they could do about it, short of shooting them all. And that might not work because they’re all carrying weapons and could shoot back and outnumbered them at least fifty to one.

By the time Cavanaugh arrived, two more troopers had turned up, a lot of TV and newspaper people had rolled in, and the Brunist mob, still growing and increasingly unruly, had moved up to the foot of the hill. Cavanaugh carried a rifle and wore, Dee noted, a shoulder holster under his rain poncho. He stormed right through the mob, grinning steely-jawed at their verbal abuse, daring them to do worse. Dee and the others were impressed. He introduced himself to the troopers, briefed them all on the situation, listed the crimes they were dealing with, said that there was to be no shooting unless shot at, and that, if need be, they’d let the cultists up here, but meanwhile they’d try to stall until the National Guard arrived. The key, he said, was the acting sheriff. Whether or not he’d play by the rules.

So, when Smith starts up the hill with the cultists, Cavanaugh and the state cops meet them and tell them the state is now occupying the hill, it’s closed off and no longer under the sheriff’s authority. The cameras are pinned on them and rolling. The reporters have their pads out and are pushing mikes in people’s faces. The copter circles back overhead. Smith says he isn’t sure about the jurisdiction issue, but he’s only trying to reduce tensions. “These people wish to express their grief over the loss of one of their most beloved leaders, and they should be allowed to do that.” Presumably, the Brunists want to hold their memorial service for Wosznik up in that cross-shaped space where they have floor-planned the church they want to build. An outline of trenches lined with chalk that looks like a gameboard layout for a war game. Which it is. Dee asks, if the service is for Wosznik, why aren’t his widow and daughter here? Smith says he doesn’t know, maybe they just didn’t feel up to it. “Mrs. Collins is in shock, the girl is in fragile health.” One of the troopers says he thinks they saw that girl this morning. They took her into protective custody. She was doing herself harm over at the crime scene, but one of the camp thugs kidnapped her and carried her off. Big bruiser. The sheriff wants to know what the town cops are doing out here where they also have no authority. “Just getting out of the big city for a little country air,” Dee says. Cavanaugh makes a mistake then and feeds Smith a straight line. “I don’t know who’s bought you, Smith,” he says, “but—” and Smith interrupts him. “God’s bought me, Mr. Cavanaugh.” It will probably make all the evening newscasts. “All right,” the banker says finally. “We’ll let the governor adjudicate it when he gets here. He’s due any minute. Meanwhile, you’re here to protect law and order, Sheriff, and I want to know what measures you have taken in case things get out of hand.” “Things aren’t going to get out of hand,” Smith replied. “If they do, Mr. Smith,” Cavanaugh said, “it’ll be on your head.”