Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

And then that mean cuss McDaniel from the Christian Patriots points his rifle straight at the armed men’s leader, the one wearing a badge, and shouts back that he’s the acting sheriff out here and is the boss and he is arresting them if they don’t clear out immediately, or stormy words to that effect, not all completely Christian, and besides, he says, we got a lot more guns, so if you want to have a shootout, let’s get started. Then for a moment they’re all just standing there with their rifles and shotguns loaded, waiting to see who’ll shoot or back down first, the overhead sun casting ominous shadows under their brows and noses. Down on the mine road, a parade of yellow school buses with soldiers in them are pulling in and also some police cars with their sirens cranked up. “Reckon it’s time to go take a leak,” mutters the beardy fellow Uriah has been conversing with and he looks for a place to toss his smoke, finally just stubs it out inside his canvas bag and hands the bag to Uriah and asks him to hold it for him until he gets back. Hovis asks who that was and Uriah says it was a fellow from their parts who was agreeable to talk to if you could get past his smell. “He knowed a lotta friendsa ourn, or said he did when I mentioned ’em. Said he seen us on the tellyvision and come a-runnin’.” “Where’s he gone now?” “Off to take a leak, he said.” “With Sister Wanda? Don’t seem right.” “No. But you know Sister Wanda.” “She looked purty skeered.” “Well, I’m skeered, too.” “Whaddaya reckon’s in the bag?” “Cain’t say. Didn’t ask and t’ain’t polite to—”

Far from all these apocalyptical doings and without access to any TV screens now broadcasting them internationally in all their entertaining horror (the blast on the side of the mine hill is so powerful it knocks back the cameras and the images go bouncing up to the sky and back and even end up sideways, and by now everybody’s watching — wow! did you see that? ), Georgie Lucci has just made his fortune. Long overdue and much deserved, beloved and noble faccia da culo, gran testa di cazzo that he is. At the airport, the mayor told him to wait in the car while he got the tickets. He left the briefcase in the back seat, but showed Georgie he still had the key: “No fucking funny biz, partner. I’ll just be a jiff.” Once the chump was out of sight, Georgie took off, barreling down the highway bat-outa-hellwise aiming for the state line, laughing all the way, pounding the wheel with his palm, jerking on his boner, blowing thankful kisses at la bella Marcella, his Lady Luck, his Virgin Mary, his Red-Hot Ruby, blowing kisses as well at his nonna, his mother, even the puttana who gave him his present dose, singing “Fly Me to the Moon” at the top of his voice, and imagining what he was going to do with all that money. He figures if that crook Castle said Brazil, that’s the one place he’s not going. He doesn’t know where it is, but it did sound cool, full of naked young ficas lying around on soft golden beaches, all aquiver with pent-up desire. A kind of island paradise, how he pictured it. But, too bad, he’ll have to miss it. He’s not that stupid. There are other beaches, other hot women. When he’s out of the state and far enough away to risk it, he pulls over beside some roadside picnic tables. The briefcase is a tough nut to crack; the mayor knew what he was doing when he bought it. His knife is as useless as a soft dick against a resistant maidenhead, so he takes the limo’s crowbar to it, alternatively smashing and prying at it, one eye on the highway for cops or snoopers. He speaks sweet nothings to the briefcase while he beats it. “Spread, amore! Show me what you got!” The lock breaks at last and he jimmies the case open. What he finds inside is wadded newspaper. Old yellowing West Condon Chronicles . The ones with the old Cunt Hill photos that caused such a storm. Like the one raging inside him. He’s grinning, can’t help it, but he’s murderously pissed. He leaves the newspapers to blow in the wind, hops back in the limo, pockets the revolver he’d noticed Castle hiding in the glove compartment, and guns it back to the airport. Where, after an emergency call from the mayor of West Condon, they are waiting for him. Caution. He may be armed.

When officer Bo Bosticker reached the police station at the end of his odyssey through the burning town, he found the front of it reduced to a pile of grimly decorated sticks and stones, though the unlit holding cell at the back was still intact and occupied. He himself had arrested Cokie Duncan the night before for loud-cussing, pissing-in-the-street, fall-down drunk behavior, and as the otherwise agreeable old fellow seemed to need a place to sleep it off where he wouldn’t get stepped on, he locked him up there and supplied him with coffee and smokes until he passed out. Dunc, like Bo, survived the Deepwater mine disaster, so he feels a fraternal regard for him, and even a certain duty in that he has a job and Cokie does not. He stumbled on his crutches over the debris to the back, and found the old boy still in there, jawing with Cheese Johnson, who was sitting on a wooden chair outside the cell, one arm in a filthy plaster cast, the two of them sharing a bottle of some kind of whiskey of a good color with a charred label. “Well, look-it here,” Duncan said, “it’s ole Bo! If it ain’t his ghost! Thought you was dead, Bo!” “Well, I was dead to the world for certain, and missed out on all the dramma.” “Drop your props’n pull up a chair, Bo,” Cheese said. “Have a wake-up snort.” “They killt everbody else,” Duncan said. “You’re the only one left!” And so he sat down for a minute to rest his aching knees and Cokie told him about the blast out front—“I got hit smack in the face by a piece a pore ole Monk! It was like he was lettin’ fly at me with one last gob!”—and Cheese filled him in on some of the wild doings out in the street while the bikers were still on it, including an illustrated account of the war dance of a Red Indian on top of the old hotel before he got blown away in a manner that Cheese called “outright magical.” While Bo eased the pain of his ruined knees with a few medicinal breakfast swigs, a bunch of other killings and explosions were colorfully recounted and somehow that got them onto the mine disaster again, which always had a way of coming up regardless, ever more so when calamity was the theme, and then Cheese left to go rescue some more bottles out of the liquor store fire. When he came back with an armload, plus a couple of cartons of cigarettes in his sling, he said he heard something big go off in the direction of the old mine and now everybody was tearing ass in that direction, the word being that they’re all shooting at each other out there, it’s a fucking free-for-all, so the three of them now have the town pretty much to themselves, what there is left of it, though besides the smokes and whiskey there’s not much they need. Risking the flames that are eating up the inside of the dimestore, Cheese has also retrieved a soft over-shuffled deck of cards from the Legion Hall above it. One thing leads to another and pretty soon the three of them find themselves quietly day-juicing over a wistful unfocused game of pitch, a particular pleasure for Bo, card-playing being something he has generally had to miss out on since getting hired for night duty and one of the few things he is somewhat good at. He has often thought that playing cards would be the way he’d most like to spend the afterlife, and, who knows, given the look of things outside, maybe the worst has happened and this is the afterlife. He says so and makes it clear that, if so, he is happy with their eternal company. Of course, he shouldn’t be drinking on the job, but strictly speaking he’s still on his own time, though with everyone else dead, it’s probably up to him to take over. If he wants to. A circumstance that has never previously arisen and he is not comfortable with it. He asks, thinking aloud, if they ought to go out to the mine and see what’s happening, and Cokie, peeing on the wall of his cell, says, “Some things, ifn you cain’t do nuthin about ’em, ain’t wuth lookin’ at.” “Your ugly pox-eaten dick, for example,” says Cheese in disgust, and then he falls off his chair.