Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“Nah, why should he?” Tommy says, but he’s blushing, caught off guard by her broadside, and Sally knows it’s true. Damn. The only hope is that it’s too dumb a job and no one else will want it. “How about another beer?”

“Sure. More ganja?”

“Why not.”

While he’s gone, she takes her notebook out of her trenchcoat pocket and writes, thinking about his mother inside (she can hear Tommy talking to her): There’s only now. And when that’s insupportable, there isn’t even that. She pauses, adds: The hardest thing in life is to face the fact of nothingness without a consoling fantasy: at the brink, no way back, unable to jump. The only thing left is to grow up. That’s a bit heavy so she writes: Inspiration: His hand on my ass. It felt like God about to take a bite. There’s a cartoon she has drawn on the page of a sleeping princess with a wicked grin and her hands between her legs. Absently, trying not to think about that stupid night at the ice plant, she defaces the sleeper with a mustache and beard and a rising dick, then writes: He’s not asleep, he’s just been hymnotized. It’s a sick world, she thinks, but (she writes): With a bit of dope, there’s always hope. And, stuffing the notebook back in her pocket as Tommy returns with the beers, she rolls a buddha. She’s feeling good. Rising sweetly into the evening. Let’s see what happens. “So, how did we get here?” she asks, gazing out distractedly upon the technicolor neighborhood, gilded by the dipping sun, while licking her cigarette paper. “One day we’re a kid, and the next we’re not.”

“And the next day we’re a kid again.”

“Some of us just never get it.” She lights up, sucks in a lungful, passes him the joint. “When are you going back?”

“Sunday afternoon. Econ test Monday. But,” he wheezes, exhaling slowly, “I’ll be back from time to time because of Mom. Except during finals. How about yourself?”

“Not going. Just a lot of exams I’m not ready for. Taking incompletes. My dad’s totally hacked, but what’s the big deal about graduating? I’ll finish up next year.”

Tommy nods. “I just want to get this part over with, try on the next thing. While you’re catching up, I’ll be backpacking through Europe.”

My plans exactly. Let’s meet up. Share room costs. But what she says is: “How tall are you now?”

“Six two.”

“That’s pretty tall.”

“Not enough for the courts. I have to play guard, and I’m not quick enough. They kept me on the team up at State through most of my junior year, but when I didn’t grow, they dropped me. Which was okay. Too much like the army anyway.”

She’s heard otherwise, badboy stuff, but she lets it go. “Not so long ago, you know, I was taller than you. To prove it, we stood nose to nose and touched foreheads, do you remember? I could feel that little lump down there pushing against me. I was trying to figure out just what it was. That’s why it took me so long to get the measurement right.”

He grins and his expression suddenly turns warm and affectionate and she flatters herself that she has got something right at last. Cool. She feels a sweet glow in her chest and other parts. But he’s looking over her shoulder. Angela Bonali has pulled up at the curb in a girlfriend’s car. His old high school flame. Shit. She’s been through this before. Tommy drops the spliff and trots down there, tail wagging. They kiss, glance up at her, laugh, kiss again. Out comes the notebook.

They have met some distance away, at the new motel out on the highway, where she has a room on weekends, for cocktails and dinner. With fresh oysters from who knows where, very nice, and a pianist quietly playing golden oldies. Their Thursday treat. They have avoided all the difficult topics at dinner, talking instead — when they weren’t just holding hands and saying how much they loved each other — about the arrival of spring and the surprise snowfall, about the need for better public relations to draw new industry to the area, and about the threat to that hope apparently posed by the evangelical cult that originated in the town and has now returned, intentions unclear. She sympathizes with his worries (she loves the way his brows knot up when he’s troubled, loves it more when his smile and love light smooth the knot away), but, not religious herself, or at least not in his way, there was not much she could say about the problem of the cult except to suggest that maybe the cheapest thing would be to buy them all one-way tickets and guidebooks to the Holy Land, which he said (there came the smile, there went the knot) he didn’t think would work. There were presumably thousands of the cultists by now, a lot of whom he expects will be descending on the camp and the town over the next couple of weeks. It all seems quite remote to her, but she supposes it means she may see less of him until all that is over, so she is able to share his sadness. This affair has surprised her with its spongy intensity, filling her up as it fills up with itself, making all else irrelevant. Though she has tried to end it (it’s not right), she can’t. Now, in their room, though their kisses on closing the door were as tender and searching as ever, his strong hands under her skirt exploring her with the usual urgency, the knot has returned and he is taking his time about undressing and coming to bed. She puts her chin on her crossed hands and draws her knees up under her breasts, raising her bottom in the air, her little nightie falling down around her shoulders. She knows that he adores her young body and cannot look away. He likes to lick it all over, starting with the little pink butterfly tattoo on her tailbone, as she does his. “You’ll catch cold like that,” he says as if scolding, but she can see that he is excited, even before his shorts come down. Always a nice moment. She finds his softening belly endearing. He is such a powerful man, still very athletic, even a bit intimidating, and his soft fuzzy belly, which she likes to lay her head on while she’s fondling him, makes him seem more human and vulnerable. “You know, when I was a little girl I used to pray like this,” she says. “I had read the Bible stories and been told about the birds and bees and I put the two together: I wanted to be the mother of Jesus and I was, as you might say, opening my ear to the Angel of the Lord.” His gentlemanly laughter thrills her. As does his tongued “I love you!” to her opened ear.

“Thank ye, lays’n gents! That song, as we like to say down to Nashville town, went out to some very special folks here tonight. I’m fixin’ to take a short break now, but I got a mess more a heart-stoppin’ boot-stompin’ country tunes to lay on your ears, or noses, or whatsomever y’tune in with, so don’ go way. Anybody lookin’ to stand me a beer, I’ll be parked right over here…

“…Whoa! Lookit what’s landed at my table! You settin’ to buy me a drink?”

“No, honey, I’m clean broke. Only popped in here to see if I couldn’t find a nice gentleman who’ll tempt me with one.”

“Ifn I was a nice gentleman, purty lady, I might. What was wrong with that feller who was leanin’ all over you at the bar, the one with the big lump on his forehead?”

“I seen by the way he was tugging at hisself and by the spots on his pants he’s most probably got a dose. So I told him I was with you to shake him off. Hope it don’t offend you.”

“Nope. Wisht you’d worked a drink off him first, though. We coulda shared it.”

“You the sharing type?”

“When it suits me. This where you sprung from?”

“Yeah. But I left here twenty some years ago when I was still a kid. Nobody knows me anymore. Patti Jo Glover, Duke. What’s your handle? The real one?”

“I ain’t tellin’.”