Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Like Junior, Elaine has been waiting and praying for this moment for what feels like most of her life. Something happened to her out here on the Mount of Redemption, it was strange, she can’t explain it. Just being back here today in her tunic, even with her other clothes on, makes her knees shake. It felt like, for a moment, she stopped being Elaine Collins and just rose right up out of herself. As if it really was the End and she was rising toward her Pa. It hurt but like leaving your body must hurt. Before that, she was standing all alone and the rain was pounding down and there was thunder and lightning and everybody looked almost naked like in the pictures when the Rapture happens. She was crying and trembling and she looked around desperately for her Pa, sensing him there, needing him, saw Junior Baxter instead. He was crying, too. He had torn a willowy branch off the little tree up there and he handed it to her. “Hit me!” he begged. “Please! Now!” Others were whipping each other or themselves and screaming for the Rapture to begin. She almost couldn’t see through her tears, but she did as he asked. It started slowly, awkwardly, but when the pain began — he had a switch, too — it went faster and faster, like time itself was speeding up and it really was almost happening! If they could just hit hard enough and fast enough! She felt terrified and rapturous at the same time and she called out for her Pa and swung the switch, over and over, with all her might. And then suddenly everyone went mad and there was someone leaping on Junior and pounding him and bloodying his nose and mouth and she had to throw herself on top to stop him from being killed and her Ma was pulling her away and they were running, she was crying, they were all crying, her Ma too, it was as if they were running out of a new world back into the old one, which was no longer familiar or friendly, and then she was cuddled up in her Ma’s arms in the car, her tunic muddy and her body stinging all over, and they were leaving West Condon behind. And after that day it was like everything had changed and for the first time she understood what it meant to be born again. Elaine grew up with religion, it was not something she chose or even thought about, so maybe what she had before wasn’t really religion at all, just more like habit. Like most of these people up here today. A lot of praying and singing and saying things she has heard and said herself a thousand times, and then a snack in the food tent and polite smiles: You must be Clara’s daughter. Her Ma probably thinks it’s some kind of love between her and Junior, and it makes her Ma afraid of the Baxters, but what happened wasn’t love, not for Junior Baxter. He’s fat and has pimples on his chin, or did then, and he’s not even very nice. Elaine knows about love. About Christian love and family love and other kinds, too. She loves Jesus and loves her Ma and she loved her Pa and her brother Harold with all her heart, still does, even though they’re dead. She also loved Marcella Bruno. whom she’s been thinking a lot about today. It’s partly why they are all standing up here on the Mount of Redemption, remembering how she died on the road down below five years ago tonight. It was horrible, and remembering it still gives her a sick feeling in her stomach. Except for her own family, Marcella was the nicest person Elaine ever knew. Marcella loved Mr. Miller, but her Ma says that was the wrong kind of love, and that’s why it ended the way it did. Elaine had a boyfriend once she loved for a little while in Marcella’s way, or thought she did, Carl Dean Palmers, who was a nice Christian boy, a bit rough, but sweet to her and one of the original twelve First Followers like she was. Even though her Ma was not convinced, Elaine began to think that some day she and Carl Dean would get married. But all that stopped when Carl Dean went crazy up here on the Mount, and she saw the worst in him. The police took Carl Dean away and she hasn’t seen him since and she doesn’t want to. In their church prayers, they pray for his return, but she hopes that doesn’t happen. She hasn’t loved anyone since then, not that way, and she doesn’t think now she ever will. So it’s not Junior Baxter, it’s something else. Something bigger than both of them, something they’re just a part of, like a drop of water is part of a river. Again, the way religion is. She said that once in a letter to Junior, and he wrote back very excited that that was exactly what he was thinking, though he tended to think of it more like fire than water. They call it a kind of sainthood, a reaching for it, because that’s what Junior had been reading about in his Pa’s books. She gave up love for that. What’s strange is that it has to do with whipping each other. This was not something Elaine had ever experienced. Her Ma and Pa never raised a hand against her and her big brother Harold was always gentle and protective; she never got sent to the principal’s office and she never did anything to make anyone mad enough to hit her. And she doesn’t like pain, not at all. It’s more like Junior has opened a door onto the real world, the world behind the world, showing her something she hadn’t seen before. Something about God and what one has to do to get close to Him. What it means to be washed in the blood of the lamb. And so, yes, it’s about love, after all. The most important kind. And it makes her heart beat like crazy just thinking about it. Earlier, she heard the roar of the motorcycles over by the camp. Everyone was afraid someone might be attacking the camp in their absence, and Ben and Wayne and Hunk went hurrying over there, but she knew. Her knees were shaking so, she had to go to the old people’s tent and sit down on a chair there.

Before going over to the mine hill, Amanda is helping her father, Junior, and her fat stupid sister put up their big tent behind one of the cabins. Her father seems in an awful hurry to do this now. She knows she will have to sleep out here with her mother and Franny. The cabin is nicer, but the front door is missing and there is sawdust all around. Then some big men arrive and jump out of their truck, looking angry. Such moments, even though they seem to happen fairly often, always startle Amanda and make her squeak and hide behind her father. But it’s not as scary as she thought because one of them turns out to be Mrs. Collins’ husband, though she would never have recognized him with his beard on. And he’s got so old. He and her father clap each other on the shoulder and shake hands, and Mrs. Collins’ husband introduces the other two. “And you must be Amanda,” he says, smiling down on her, and she gives him the smile she always gives everybody, the one that hides how scared she is inside. It’s a flirtatious smile that Franny knows will one day be the little retard’s undoing, though she wishes she had access to something like it, reduced as always to a deadpan nod when introduced (naturally, old Ben did not remember her name). One of the other two is pretty good looking and not so past it, but Franny is not interested in any man who has religion in any serious way. Enough of that for one lifetime. She wants a guy who goes fishing and falls asleep in front of the television, whether or not he even remembers her name. Her brother Junior is preening and sucking in his gut and stroking his silly little red mustache which looks more like fever blisters, pompously introducing himself as Young Abner, as he always does on formal occasions like this, wanting them to understand that he stands by his father and is his father’s heir. “We have endured a great trial of affliction and suffering,” he says, speaking as his father might, “but we have got here and didn’t see you.” Mrs. Collins’ husband explains that they are expecting a police blockade of the hill tomorrow, so they decided to occupy it today and maintain an all-night vigil, and his father agrees wholeheartedly with this strategy and says he is prepared to do his part, and Young Abner nods solemnly. The men express surprise there’s only their own family here, having expected the big numbers their father had written about. Their father explains that they have hurried on ahead to be sure to be here on the Night of the Sacrifice, so important to him personally, the others would be following later, though Junior knows, as do they all, that there are no others. Things have not been going well. Their father’s message is a hard one and few can live with it. There also seems to be some problem about their tent. That cabin has already been allocated, and anyway the camp itself is not for personal residences. This confirms the worst for Franny, who assumes they will soon be on the road again in their beat-up old Plymouth Suburban, sleeping in it or in tents in parks and fields. Her father glances up toward the next-door cabin with the unmade beds and muddy jeans. “Except for working staff,” says Ben. “That’s for our camp director. And her boy.” All three of them expect their father to explode as usual, but he only smiles sorrowfully, showing his weariness, and says, “Well then, we will only use it for the weekend, having no place else to go for now. Our tribulations have been many and we are footsore and heartsore, but happy are we thy servants to be standing here before you. Come, let us dress in white and put our tunics on.” “You don’t have to do that no more, just wear underneath whatever,” says Ben Wosznik who is himself wearing boots and jeans under his tunic, but their father ignores him.