Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“Oh the sons of light are marching to the Mount where it is said

We shall find our true Redemption from this world of woe and dread ,

We shall see the cities crumble and the earth give up its dead ,

For the end of time has come!

“So come and march with us to Glory!

Oh, come and march with us to Glory…!”

With the electricity off in the beauty shop and her client’s hair only half done, Linda calls the power company, but no one answers. They never do, it’s so frustrating. So she calls the police. It takes forever, but finally Lieutenant Wallace answers and tells her he doesn’t know what the problem is, but he’s working on it. Just what you might expect! Even as she slams the phone down, it rings. It’s Tessie Lawson at the sheriff’s office, asking for Lucy Smith, who has just walked in, and she hands her the phone. “What did you say?” Lucy asks. But the phone goes dead. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Linda says, taking a listen. Lucy is confused. “I think she said he said I should go home right now and stay there, but maybe she said he said he was going home, and I should stay here . I just don’t know what to do!” “Well, why don’t you come with me,” Linda says. “I’m going to pick up some money at the bank, if they still have any, and do a little quick shopping. We can stop by the sheriff’s office and ask Tessie personally. Would you like to come along, Mrs. Abruzzi?” “No, dear, I only wait for you here and read your magazines.”

On her way to the corner drugstore for her second breakfast, the real one, Angela Bonali pauses for a moment in front of Linda’s Beauty Salon to study the hairstyles pictured in the window. Perhaps that’s what she needs to lift her spirits: a new hairdo. Something different. Life-changing. She remembers a phrase from a book she read (she wrote it down in her diary): “Loose tendrils of hair softened her face.” How do you get that in a hairdo? The trouble is, most heroines have blond hair, light and silky, or at worst flowing auburn hair — it’s the men who have stubborn black hair like hers. Women in books whose hair is said to be like shining glass or polished wood or the black of a starless night tend to be half-men or loose or wicked. Inside, she can see Signora Abruzzi sitting in the dark with her thin dry hair in curlers, her beaky nose in a magazine. She’d go in and turn the lights on for her, but that’s the old tattle who got Angela in trouble during her dark ages. Hard to imagine Widow Abruzzi ever eliciting moans of ecstasy, but then that’s true of anyone that old. It’s just awful how the body lets you down. You only have a moment, and when it’s gone… She shudders, crosses herself, and hurries on.

Further disappointments await her in Doc Foley’s. Stacy’s not there and the waffle griddle’s not working because the power is out. Angela loves their blueberry waffles with strawberry syrup and ice cream and crispy bacon on the side. She has to make do with just the syrup and ice cream. Because they are afraid the ice cream will melt with the power off they’re offering it at half price until it comes back on again, so she orders up a double portion. Stacy is probably over at the First National, but Angela doesn’t have the nerve yet to go back there. She feels terribly guilty about something, but she doesn’t know what, and it doesn’t seem fair. She’s not the one who has done anything wrong.

The shy, spindly soda fountain girl (what’s her name? Becky?) lingers at her table when she brings the ice cream. She has added some chocolate cookies for free and Angela thanks her for them. She’s not pretty, but at least she has no worries about weight. Of the magic numbers—36–24–36—she has only the middle one, straight up and down. Awkwardly, the girl asks about Tommy. Angela wonders what she knows and doesn’t know and whether or not she’s salting the wound. Well, surely she knows nothing; she’s not part of Angie’s crowd. She admires Angela the same way that Angela admires Stacy, and she’s just trying to be friendly. Angela smiles and says Tommy’s just great and she likes her bracelet.

“Oh, it’s only a cheap thing I won in a carnival…”

“It’s nice.” Angela feels generous and wise, a beautiful woman of the world, a model for sweet homely girls like Becky, if that’s her name. Angela does not seek worldly goods like money, power, fame, or even beauty. All she truly wants is to be regarded in some modest fashion as the Virgin is regarded. Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve! That’s her model. Blessed art Thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb. Which thought — yet another disappointment — depresses her again. She got through her last period with difficulty, not wanting anyone to see her in here buying tampons after all the fuss she’d made. She still hasn’t figured out yet how to catch up to her own history. The girl continues to stand there, so Angela, fishing about for something final to say, borrows a line from Stacy, which she has also written in her diary. “A friend once told me,” she says, “that love is not an island. I liked that.”

“Tommy was in earlier for sausage and scrambled eggs,” the girl says. “He had that funny thing on his nose. The power was still on then. He said it was his last breakfast special. He said he was leaving town forever.”

Angela smiles, hoping her makeup is hiding the flush. And that she won’t get sick. “He was teasing,” she says. “He had to run an errand today for his father. Because of, you know, what’s happening out at the mine hill. Tommy is becoming very important at the bank.” The stupid girl doesn’t say anything. She just stares at her.

Should Angela decide to risk a visit, she would find the bank closed, for Officer Wallace has called to say that Mr. Cavanaugh wants the doors locked until further notice, and they have done that, continuing to serve only those customers who are already in the bank. It’s like an extra day of holiday added to the long weekend, except that he asked them to stay until he got back. But why must they lock up so early? The bank often closes during power failures, but Mrs. Wetherwax, who is filling in for Angela and Stacy, took the phone call and she said the officer made it seem much more urgent than that. So many horrible things have happened of late, almost anything seems possible. And now the phones are dead, too. Just before they closed up, Mrs. Catter came in with Mrs. Smith, and she told them about it and they tried them, and sure enough, they are dead. Mr. Gus Baird, who almost always comes into the bank at this hour, does a little waltzing turn and sings: “All alone, by the telephone, waiting for a ring a ting a ling!” and they all laugh nervously. There’s an irate gentleman speaking with Mr. Minicozzi in Mr. Cavanaugh’s office about the foreclosure on his house (he can be heard plainly all the way out here on the bank floor, and his language isn’t nice), and when he leaves they’ll tell Mr. Minicozzi about the policeman’s call and ask him what it means. He always seems to know what’s happening. Mr. Beeker of the hardware store, just being let out of the locked front door, says he hopes it doesn’t mean the bank is running out of money, and the city hall janitor leaving at the same time — he has been in making a withdrawal, which leaves his account almost empty because the monthly payroll checks are late — says that as long as they have Mr. Beeker’s millions on deposit, there should be no problem, and they all laugh at that and feel a little less nervous afterwards.

Young Mrs. Piccolotti, who is in picking up rolls of coins for the family grocery (they have all had a turn cuddling her cute baby), says the trouble is probably the fault of that awful religious cult out at the edge of town; they’re completely crazy and they don’t belong here. That upsets Mrs. Catter and she says that many of them are friends of hers and have lived in this town just as long as Mrs. Piccolotti’s family, and they are decent Christian people. Religion is a private matter between a person and her God, and no one should interfere with it or make fun of it, the Constitution says so. They all agree and apologize if they’ve said something out of place. Mrs. Smith says she thinks she wants to go home. Mrs. Catter says in fact maybe they should start praying and repenting of their sins, because something very important might be happening, just like it says in the Bible, and Mrs. Piccolotti sighs and says, that’s just what I was talking about, and then she clams up because she’s the only Catholic in the bank except for Noemi and Mr. Minicozzi. It’s getting a bit warm without the air conditioner, and arguments don’t make it any cooler.