Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

When the Kid assigned him the high school, Houndawg said it was summertime, it would just be empty buildings, ditto the grade schools the others got assigned, and the Kid said, if it belongs to the enemies of the Big One, it’s never empty. Sure enough, it isn’t. There are three army trucks there, guys in summer khakis unloading gear, going in and out of the school gym. Jackpot! “We’re disabling them three trucks,” he says. “Don’t worry about personnel less they get in your way.” Houndawg handled explosives in the army, but this stuff is pretty crude. Just dangerous footlong firecrackers leaking their innards, really, that he and Hacker fused and partly bound in three- and five-stick packs yesterday while they were sitting out the rain. Thinking about Runt. Feeling the wrath. Things could go wrong. The timing has to be perfect. So far so good. Houndawg is a reluctant holy warrior, skeptical of the zealotry that motivates most of the Wrath, but they fill the aimless loneliness that had threatened to steal away what little life he had left in him, and he’s grateful for that. He’s having fun for the first time in a long time, not since the war — even if only for a short time, maybe just this one day long. He has the luxury of the ex-sheriff’s high-powered rifle, but limited ammo, just what they found in the sheriff’s trunk when they were stuffing the kid in there minus what he pumped into the head of that evil old cocksucker who killed Paulie. Silver bullets. He has to make them count. After knocking out the power and phones as a unit, the Wrath divided up into three teams of four to hit a sequence of separate targets simultaneously, synchronizing their moves with stopwatches, with the Kid roaming between the three. Houndawg’s team is the least stable of them. Brainerd is cool, even with one hand disabled, but Sick has been shooting up and X has been eating uppers like they were a bag of Red Hots. It’s the only time X ever smiles, but it’s a twitchy smile and his set-apart eyes jiggle. Still, he’s probably safer than Sick, who has painted his face red to match his boots and put on feathers and seems to be living in some other reality zone. Houndawg, on a heavy dose of painkillers himself, takes one of the trucks, assigns Brainerd and X the other two, explains to them how to pop the hood, and tells Sick to give them cover. “We got just two minutes. In and out. If you have a problem with the nitro, don’t try to solve it. Okay, let’s move.” They have to take a guy out on the way in, catching him by surprise. Nothing personal. He can hear Sick firing away, who knows at what, while he’s planting the squibs. “One minute!” he yells. Other people are shooting now, and he worries Sick may have taken a hit. “Now!” The three of them tear out of there, but Sick’s not in sight. Then he comes backing out of the building, firing away, jumps on his bike and joins them as the building explodes behind him, the trucks blowing up as he guns past them, head down, wahooing like an Indian on the warpath, his topknot fluttering on his gleaming red skull like a raised flag. “Three fucking bells!” Houndawg laughs as they roar away. He can hear shooting, but they’re gone from there.

Franny Lawson is keeping her sister-in-law Tessie company in the sheriff’s office while her husband Steve is out at the mine hill with the Christian Patriots, doing his thing for God and country. They’re talking about what to name the baby when Sheriff Smith radios in from his car to say he’s on his way in but he’s stuck in traffic. He tried to get away as soon as he got her call about the power plant but still got caught in the jam-up. Did they reach his wife Lucy? Tessie explains about the phone going dead so she’s not sure Lucy got the message, but says that, yes, she was at the beauty shop. The sheriff tells them to shut down the office and go take cover. Gratefully, they do so.

It is a time for thanksgiving. The Brunists have reached the summit of the Mount of Redemption under a midday sun now sallying forth from the clouds as if joining their march and have entered into their outlined tabernacle church, though their numbers exceed its capacity and spill out over the hillside. Children are playing (they have got up a game down by the empty graves and are splashing in and out of them) and their elders are relaxing from the heightened tensions of the morning, when death and injury seemed all too near a prospect. There is still, however, an air of apprehension. The sudden dispersion of the authorities, releasing the Mount to them: was it God watching over them, shepherding them to higher ground, or is something more or other happening? Those ominous ker-whumps in the distance… But they are here now where they belong. Mr. Ross McDaniel, a man from the West of fierce faith and fortitude, has promised them that the Mount is theirs and they will not be moved, and they believe him. They all share the blessed hope of the rapturing of the church by Lord Jesus and the visible return of Christ with His saints to reign on earth for one thousand years, and today could be the day for that — as could any other, but as their young prophet and evangelist Darren Rector says, these days are overripe with omen.

A Brunist Defender and pastor who arrived this morning by bus from east Tennessee with two sturdy members of his congregation, rifles strapped to their backs, steps into the center of the outlined cross to add his voice to the exhortations and prayers of gratitude for their safe passage up here and to lead the assembled Followers in a prayer of remembrance for their fallen leader, Brother Ben Wosznik, a kind and holy man of unbending courage, tireless endeavor, and profound faith. He tells of Brother Ben’s visit with Sister Clara three years ago to his “little church in the wildwood,” as he calls it, and of all the souls that were saved that day through the mere power of the man’s inspired singing. In his memory, they sing — joined by many of the sheriff’s remaining deputies — some of the famous Brunist songs Brother Ben wrote and recorded, “The Circle and the Cross,” “She Fell That We Might Live” (heads swivel thoughtfully toward the mine road, fingers point, the tale is whispered), and “The White Bird of Glory.” This latter number, with its recounting of “the disaster that struck old Number Nine,” reminds them that they are standing on ground hallowed not only by those members of the faith who stood here on the Day of Redemption and suffered death, incarceration, and persecution because of it, but also by all the brave hardworking men, friends and loved ones of many present, who perished beneath their feet in the worst mine disaster the area has ever known. There are many “amens” and “God blesses” and spontaneous prayers for the souls of the deceased, not excluding the saintly Ely Collins, whose leg is still down there somewhere. His widow, also Brother Ben’s, is said to be too stricken by grief to attend, and she is remembered in their prayers, as are her unfortunate daughter and Brother John P. Suggs in his hospital bed. What a thrill to know he’ll be raptured with an undamaged brain, and Brother Ely with his leg back on! Sheriff Puller, who was so supportive and protective, is also remembered, as is the oldest boy of Brother Roy and Sister Thelma Coates, both Royboy and the sheriff so cruelly murdered. Sister Thelma lets out a sad little wail. Sometimes the world seems completely insane, but they feel protected by each other, and by their faith, the truth they share. There are those who say they should also pray for the souls of the motorcyclists who died in the camp blast, for that is the charitable and pious thing to do, and Sister Sarah Baxter, who has lost her wayward middle son in it, especially seems to want this, but her husband scowls and turns his back, and this part of the Defender’s eulogistic prayer is shortened to a passing mention of their youngest boy, Paul, who will hopefully return to them now that his older brother has passed away.