Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

With her illness and the dread accompanying it, she has become increasingly religious in a more fundamentalist way, something that disappoints him but that he understands and tolerates, even if she calls it patronizing. It is distancing her from him and he doesn’t like it, does not want their life together to end this way. Yesterday, in her scratchy voice, she told him when they say goodbye, they really have to say goodbye, because she won’t see him in the afterlife, he’s not going where she’s going. He wonders if the home care nurse, Bernice Filbert, is influencing her. She’s a licensed practical nurse, which is why he hired her, but she seems to have progressed to that office with minimal interest in medical science, preferring folk remedies, superstition, and prayer. One day he saw her wet her finger with a murky water from a little flask and dab Irene’s forehead with it. When he asked her what she was doing, she said she was refreshing her patient’s spirit. She speaks of the Bible as though it were the morning newspaper, and she dresses eccentrically in shawls and long floor-scraping skirts that might be in imitation of Florence Nightingale but probably are not. She is also Lem Filbert’s sister-in-law, Tuck’s widow. He’ll ask Lem about her the next time he’s getting gas. Probably he should look for other help. Italian Catholics maybe, who seem to take ultimate things more casually. Bernice and her helper Florrie Cox, who also does the housecleaning, are both good workers at modest wages, though, and if they make Irene happy for the time she has left…

“We looked into it, Mr. Cavanaugh. But it’s unincorporated land. It’s in Tub’s jurisdiction.” “We did this last time, Dee.” “Well, we didn’t know better. And the sheriff back then was a cousin of mine.” He tucks the phone between his chin and shoulder and lights a cigarette. Through the glass panel that separates him from the bank floor, he can see Stacy talking with a customer. Looks like one of the mine widows. Mostly hard luck stories these days. Foreclosures and repossessions up, bankruptcies, loans to cover loans. He grants as much leeway as he can but finally the bank has no choice. Stacy is full of natural sympathy and handles these people well, even when the news is bad. A real find. She came as an intern on the recommendation of an old fraternity brother now teaching up at the business school, a guy he still has a drink with when they cross paths and whose university projects he has occasionally funded. A tight end with good hands and some speed in his day, still fit. He told Ted the girl was whip-smart in all their investment games, almost always raked in the pot, and he’d like Ted to do him the favor. Ted guessed he might have been sleeping with her and was passing her on, but he no longer thinks so. You wouldn’t want to lose someone like this. Her investment expertise as a games player faded as soon as she had to deal with real people, but her grace with them is an even greater plus. She stands, smoothing down her skirt (she probably knows he is watching), to walk the client to the door; Ted swivels around in his leather chair, turning his back on this spectacle, not to lose the thread. “But, damn it, Dee, we have a major problem here. Right on our doorstep. What are we going to do about it?” “Not much we can do.” “Listen, part of the state highway runs through the town limits. Can we block it off?” “Not if the state don’t want us to. Wouldn’t do much good anyway.” The police chief reminds him that with Old Willie gone, there’s only Monk Wallace, Louie Testatonda, and Bo Bosticker left; he’s at least a man short. “And Monk’s getting on and Bo and Louie aren’t much more than traffic cops.” The banker sighs. Nothing will come of this. He used to have to deal with trade union militancy, an un-American foreign import, and there were a lot of brutal old-fashioned knockdown power fights with some pretty tough bastards, but at least it was clear and simple, a case of those who deservedly had against those who undeservedly wanted but thought otherwise; it was easy to understand each other in a dog-eat-dog sort of way. Not so, these militant evangelicals. It’s like an imaginary conflict on some other plane, but locally just as virulent and disruptive. “They say Red Baxter is on his way back here, Dee. Could we arrest him on those old murder and property destruction charges?” “Sure, if he comes into town. Just rile them up, though.” He knows that Romano, though cowardly and frustratingly unimaginative, is right. They have to hit hard, right through the middle, or not at all. And they’re too damned late, too undisciplined. He is. Suggs has been better organized. Unless the governor commits state troopers on Sunday, all his work this week will have been nothing more than a meaningless scrimmage.

He hangs up and Nick Minicozzi calls from his office upstairs. When things got tight at the bank, Ted let his bank manager go and moved down here, renting out his second floor office to the city attorney, who has become his bank lawyer as well. Sharp young guy. And Ted is glad to be back on the bank floor. Keeping an eye on things. Nick has been pursuing the question of camping permits. None of these people living in the fields are likely to have them, but again it’s a problem of jurisdiction, even if they are issued here in town by the county clerk at city hall. Ted, mulling this over, scribbles idly on his desk blotter. His straightline gridlike doodles have given way over recent months to rounder, softer, more complex and flowing shapes. More sensuous ones. He smiles inwardly at that, wheels round to steal another glance; can’t stop himself. She has been watching him. She looks away. Lovable, you’re so lovable…he’s a hummer now. “If the sheriff won’t cooperate,” Nick says, “about the only way to force the issue is if a property owner complains.” As the major non-absentee landlord in the neighborhood of the mine is John P. Suggs, that’s not likely. Nick is developing a brief on Suggs, hoping to find something they can use. There are rumors of past links to the Klan and various rightwing militias, though even if true, they might do him no harm. Unless a crime can be found. So far, only a few meaningless bar brawls when he was young. Ted asks Nick to have a talk with the priest to brace him for possible problems on the weekend. “And, Nick, you and the accountant might take a look at the Presbyterian church finances, make sure all the money from the sale of the camp is accounted for.” Nick says he’ll do that and reminds him of their foursome at three. His requested call from the governor comes through.

When Ted walks into Mick’s Bar & Grill for lunch, Earl Goforth, Burt Robbins, and Jim Elliott are at the back table, heehawing with the mayor and the fire chief, apparently at the expense of the scruffy character just making his exit, grinning but teeth clenched. Looks vaguely familiar. Might have been in the bank for a loan. Like everyone else. “That’s Georgie, our new fire inspector,” Maury Castle explains in his bellowing voice. “A coupla weeks ago, he took one of Lem’s old junkers out for a test drive and never brung it back, totaling it that night out on the whorehouse run. Lem keeps a loaded shotgun in his shop and he’s swore to kill Georgie if he ever shows his fucking face around there again. We just told Georgie his next fire inspection is Lem’s garage.” They all roar with laughter again, or at least the mayor roars; Robbins’ laugh is more like a mean snicker, Elliott’s a mulish snort, Mort Whimple’s a gasping wheeze, Mick’s a high-pitched hee-hee-hee, Earl’s a wet whistle out the hole in his war-scarred face.

Ted smiles faintly, orders up the usual, bowl of soup and a grilled ham and cheese, asking Mick not to burn the sandwich. About what’s edible in here, the soup not always. Where the elite meet to eat. “Why Lem’s?” he asks. “It’s not a public place.”