Robert Coover: The Brunist Day of Wrath

In the end, the nightmare evolves into real-time horror. The preacher is accused of many crimes but few in particular, so the only defense, finally, is against the law itself. The Supreme Court refuses to hear the case, but Simon does get it before the state Supreme Judicial Court. He gives it his best and the judge is sympathetic and takes note of Simon’s eloquence, but tells him the court cannot change the law. “You should run for congress, Mr. Price,” he says. That they are facing failure sinks in slowly. “Don’t get your hopes too high,” Simon said when they began all this, “we lose more than we win,” but they both were certain they would win. They were right, and the right would ultimately triumph. When the last appeal is exhausted, they cannot accept it, but press on. And then — suddenly, it seems — the governor denies clemency, all options are closed, and the day of extinguishing Abner Baxter’s life is upon them.

Organizations opposing the death penalty have been in touch with her, and they let her know that they will be holding a vigil outside the prison where the execution is taking place and ask her to join them. She and her husband fly out in a private plane, and her husband hires a limousine to drive them to the prison, where they meet up with Simon and his wife. Sally likes Simon’s wife immediately. Passionate and smart. That ends that. But she and Simon will be friends still, and in this tribe of barbarians, that’s something. Because he is a Congressman, her husband is interviewed by the hovering media. He says: “I am opposed to capital punishment. Period.” She is proud of him. She hears him say so to the young newscaster and she hears him say so on the transistor radio she has pressed to her ear. The network she is listening to has a reporter inside the prison who will witness the execution and describe it for his listeners. Abner Baxter is said to be remarkably serene, having stoically accepted his fate, his blistering attacks on the faithlessness and corruption of those who put him here giving way to a quiet contemplative time. He is said to be reading the Bible. And writing.

Words. Their inscription. The pathos of that.

Night has fallen. They light candles as the hour draws near. They are not many. And they are not alone. A large parking lot has filled with cars and pickups, and tailgate parties are underway. Kegs of beer. Portable barbecue pits. A few musical instruments, blown or strummed randomly like an orchestra warming up. Someone is practicing a drumroll. They have rigged up a P.A. system to broadcast the reports from within and she can put away her transistor radio. They’re making a lot of noise. It’s like New Year’s Eve in Times Square. “It’s awful,” she says to her husband, “to think that we might be alone in the universe and that this is what we are.” Curious tourist-types gather, some joining the beer party, some coming over to their little group and accepting a candle, others approaching a larger mass of people, many of whom are now pulling on Brunist tunics. She has heard reports that they would be here. There are scores of them, and more arriving by the minute. What the occasional execution will do for a faltering movement. They also bring out candles. Abner releases a final statement, quoting Paul, which is read over the P.A. system by the reporter on the inside: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” The Brunists groan and kneel to pray. There is some keening, but they are largely subdued in their mourning. They are witnesses to a martyrdom. The making of a saint. They can all write a book.

She spies the blond curls. The Evangelist. No surprise there. It is no doubt he who has gathered the Brunists here tonight. The surprise is that Young Abner Baxter is with him. Well, a surprise, and not a surprise. When Junior got the news of his release, he didn’t thank them, just stared at them for a moment, then walked away, and she knew then that if the same circumstances as that day in the ditch should arise again, she’d once more be a target. Sally finds herself grinding her cigarette out underfoot and walking over to them. Is she feeling suicidal or what? The crowds around Darren stand and part. She hears hissing sounds. The Antichrist approacheth. Junior’s hair is growing back. His moustache. He wears a headband, also white, hiding his scars. Menacingly expressionless. As are most here. Darren wears an expression of sorrowful bliss. Like he’s high on something. A madman’s smile. Eerie by candlelight. “I’m sorry about your father, Abner,” she says. “We did everything we could.” No response, not even a blink. She feels like the only moving thing in a fixed tableau. “I’m sorry, too, about Billy Don,” she says, turning her gaze on Darren. He is wearing the dodecagonal medal Billy Don told her about, the one he stole from Clara Collins. It glitters in the night like something burning on his chest. His spectacles reflect the flickering candles like glowing half-dollars. She has not seen him up close or talked to him since that day on the mine hill, but Billy Don helped her to imagine him in his private ways, and she probably knows him better than he knows himself. Not probably; surely. “I miss him.”

“Billy Don is in Heaven, waiting for me with open arms,” Darren replies softly. She called his voice “quietly compelling” in her novel and it is, but his smug piety grates on her. “I do not think we will see you there.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she says. She knows what he has done, even if he no longer does. He should be sitting in Abner’s chair. But if he were, she’s well aware, she would be out here, just the same. “Your Heaven exists only in your head, creep, dies when you do. But, meanwhile, Billy Don and I will haunt your fantasy world, so watch out. Our games may be cruel. We will make enemies of your angels. Listen carefully to what they sing. You will know no peace.”

She feels suddenly exhausted. What has she said? She doesn’t know. The parking lot party is in full swing, raucous and obscene, cheering on the executioner. She turns to leave, unsure of what might happen next, her knees wobbly, sees her husband and Simon waiting for her a few yards away. Her husband takes her hand, Simon her arm. The countdown has begun and solemnly they walk away to the drummed beat of it.

The Kingdom has been decimated by the black magic of the Cretin Wizards with their cult of the Living Dead. The King hangs those he can catch, but they are everywhere, ineradicable as cockroaches. Their magic is merely a clumsy sleight-of-hand that can only delude the stupid, but, alas, there is no scarcity of stupidity in the world, nor in his Kingdom nor in his Castle, either. A lesson for the Goose Girl as well, launching forth on adventures of her own. She is no longer a Goose Girl, having bade farewell to her flock, a bittersweet occasion, for she had to choose one of them for her supper before setting out (IT’S THE SADNESS is tattooed across her breasts), and she is no longer Beauty either, if she ever was, even in her own imagination. Inspired by the nightmares unleashed by the Cretin Wizards, she has taken up oneirophagy and will be known henceforth as Dream Eater, the tribal Dreamtime itself her chosen banquet hall. If indeed she is the chooser not the chosen. Is that enough for one life? No, but it beats bedding down in goose shit. Dream Eaters of the past have all been monsters. She will be a monster, too. Is one, born and bred. She flexes her talons, bares her steely teeth, and then, locking the gate and hauling up the drawbridge behind her, she’s out of there. Done’s done.

Excerpts from this book have been published in Conjunctions, Harper’s Magazine, Western Humanities Review, Kenyon Review, Five Dials, FlashPoint , and Golden Handcuffs . Thanks to Brown University and, in particular, to Vartan Gregorian, Brown president from 1989 to 1997, supporter of endangered dissident writers, innovative digital literary arts, and iconoclastic tenure-rejecting professor-types in need of focused writing time. Bernard Hoepffner, Larry McCaffery, Alexandra Kleeman, Stéphane Vanderhaeghe, Dzanc Senior Editor Guy Intoci, my literary agent Georges Borchardt, and my wife Pilar provided valuable critical readings. Scott Burns, Gordon Pruett, and my son Roderick helped with specific research needs. The book’s long decade of composition was sustained by daily late-afternoon coffees provided by innumerable neighborhood cafés in several cities, most notably by the Stella family and staff of the La Gaffe coffee and wine bar in Hampstead, London, where, in an isolated eyrie overlooking the city, much of the book’s writing was accomplished.