Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“Abner Baxter and his people is a master plague, Mr. Suggs. They just keep on pestering the camp and won’t let our people be. You can jail them and beat them and even kill them, and they just get up and keep a-swarming back, his boys carrying on their cruel killing sprees, his brash daughters seducting whomsoever chances in their neighborhood. Boy or girl, man or woman, it don’t seem to matter to them. The middle boy he got mixed up with his own dynymite and blowed his head off, and now the youngest girl she has took over the gang and goes riding around naked as a jailbird, the wicked little sprite.” Bernice feels like Rebecca at the well, refreshing Mr. Suggs with her stories as Rebecca refreshed the thirsty travelers with her water. Mr. Suggs’ mind has been scoured out by the stroke and she is anointing it with balm and refurnishing it. “As you know, before he seen the light, or claimed he did, Abner used to be one of them commynest devils, everbody knows this. Well, it turns out, he never stopped being one. That’s why he hates you so. His preaching is just only for covering up his evil acts. He’s like one of the Devil’s main captain generals.” Mr. Suggs is frantically wagging his finger. He wants to ask something. She takes her time, drawing it out letter by letter, hoping he drops off before he gets it all out. The first letter is “W” again, and soon enough, she knows he is asking where is somebody. Sheriff Puller again. She misses the sheriff. She was impressed by him and put herself in the way of him somewhat like Ruth did before her boss (Tamar’s way of catching Judah’s eye might have worked better but is not within Bernice’s talents), but he never took notice. Well, why should he, humble servant of God that she is? There are true stories about plain ordinary women being recognized by handsome young princes for the royal beauties they really are inside, but of course that fat homely man was no young prince and he saw everybody only as criminals or not criminals, with no affection for either and no appreciation of the soul within. “I have not wanted to tell you, Mr. Suggs, so as not to overworry you unduly, but Sheriff Puller, he has disappeared. There is fear that he has been kidnapped by the humanits, which would mean we might never see him again. Or we could maybe need some ransom money. But he is a man who is never afraid and who can stubbornly suffer a lot of pain so we are not giving up hope. A special secret service commander unit has been sent out to try and locate him and rescue him if possible. I can tell you about your mine manager Mr. McDaniel, though, or Mr. McDamniel, as we call him now in the secret service, in case you was about to ask. He is not who you thought he was or who we thought he was. With some money give him by the wicked moneylender Mr. Cavanaugh, he went and got him a backhoe bigger than a barn and it was fast and bulletproof and he set about attacking everbody and laid waste half the county. He was worse than Holofernes on the warpath tearing up Judea. The governor, he ordered up some bomberplanes to try and stop him, but that backhoe had a long claw that could reach up and snatch them planes right out of the air and chaw them up.” Mr. Suggs is wagging his finger again. Maybe she has gone too far too fast. “Of course, I am speaking in parables, as I’m sure you reckanize, Mr. Suggs. I mainly wisht to say he become a threat and a terror, but it don’t really matter now on account of he is dead. He attacked our people on the Mount of Redemption with his backhoe, killing I don’t know how many of our genuinest believers, but he brung about his own desolation when he up and somersaulted his backhoe clean over some schoolbuses that had accidentally got in his way. And you can see that wicked Mr. Cavanaugh directing him all the way. If we ever get electricity back, I can show you pictures on the tellyvision because they never weary of showing them.”

Without meaning to, she has let the story jump ahead. She was still at the Fourth of July parade. She hasn’t told him yet about the gathering at the Mount of Redemption and all inbetwixt, she was saving that for later, and suddenly there’s Mr. McDaniel careening down the hillside. Also she took that boy’s head off before she’d really got around to his story, but that’s all right, his wild naked sister will do as well and might appeal more to Mr. Suggs’ imagination. And though things in her story are a little mixed up, they aren’t half as scrambled as poor Mr. Suggs’ blistered brains. If he questions her, she’ll just tell him she told him already and he wasn’t paying attention or he fell asleep in the middle. The point is to theropy his crippled mind, get it fizzing and popping best she can, and to keep reminding him why they need his money and to what sacred use they are putting it.

Later, after Mr. Suggs has been fed some beef bouillon soup and a bite or two of mashed potatoes and has sunk back into his common afternoon stupor, Bernice prepares him for his enema and his bath, stripping off his diaper and hospital gown, and with some difficulty, tipping him over on one side. She never does this when he is alert, for he is a proud man and offended at being seen in this condition. The enemas are her preferred way of keeping account of how much goes in and how much comes out, and it’s convenient to give him his baths at the same time. Even when not emptying or washing him, she must roll him from time to time so as to prevent bed sores, but his heavy lifeless body is almost too much for her. The hospital food service has made its first delivery this noon, and though everything was tasteless and overboiled, it didn’t matter to Mr. Suggs and Bernice has ways of making it more flavorful for herself. She is still earning a tittle each month as Mr. Suggs’ personal secretary, but with the garage burned down and Lem in jail, her widow’s pittance from the mine union having stopped altogether, and a cruel vindictive mortgage to pay at the greedy bank thanks to Lem’s endless refinancing of the refinancing — she is already several months behind — the leftovers from Mr. Suggs’ daily meals will be a budget blessing.

When she finishes scrubbing Mr. Suggs’ back and his broad flat old man’s backside, white as the sheets he’s lying in, and giving it its daily alcohol rub, she turns him over and goes to work on the front side and is just sudsing up his floppy old prides when the doorbell rings. She rushes to the door, still carrying the soapy washcloth, thinking it might be Maudie come to help, but it is that portly city lawyer Mr. Thornton with the pasted-down yellow hair, tailored shirts, and shiny shoes. He says he saw the horrible events on television and he was worried about her and Mr. Suggs, and since there are no telephones, he felt it best to drive here and see her and him in person and make sure everyone is all right. He went straight to the hospital and the head nurse there told him something of the calamitous attack and sent him here. She sits him down in her front room and tells him to wait until she is finished with Mr. Suggs. She feels it is not proper for him to witness Mr. Suggs in such vulnerable circumstances, for it will weaken Mr. Suggs in his eyes, and moreover she herself has not finished dressing. She has her clothing on, but she has not yet made her eyebrows, and she knows her face must look half-naked. So she lets Mr. Suggs lie there for a moment in his suds while she does that, choosing an expression for today of both concern and cleverness; then she quickly rinses Mr. Suggs off and towels him, stuffs a diaper under him just in case, spreads the fresh hospital gown over him without putting his arms in, pulls the sheet up to his chin, and invites Mr. Thornton in, warning him that, should Mr. Suggs wake up, she has not, for the old gentleman’s own good, told him everything that has happened — about Ben Wosznik, for example, or Sheriff Puller, or the motorbikers’ attack on the town and all the people that died — so he should be cautious about speaking of any of that. “I also have not told him yet that Mr. Cavanaugh’s bank got exploded,” she adds, partly for Mr. Thornton’s sake, because she has come to understand in some wise just why he is so involved, “but I may try and find a way to do that, because I believe it would please him.”