Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“Well, I hear tell from Mildred,” Linda Catter is saying, “that Sarah never got over what happened out here that day and has become a dead weight round Abner’s neck. She don’t even warsh herself proper, and mostly won’t eat lest they set something in front of her. Then she’ll eat anything and won’t stop till they take it away again. Don’t ask me about other things.” “Some days,” Wanda Cravens says with a weary sigh, “you cain’t take no more’n jist want the Rapture to hurry up’n come.” She is still the same old Wanda, Betty notes, though more beat down; she used to have nice little breasts, but no more, and she has gone slack in the britches and her belly is sagging, unless she’s stumped her toe again. They have all crowded into Mabel Hall’s caravan here at the foot of the Mount of Redemption to get out of the afternoon sun and catch up on each other’s lives over the past five years and wait for the visit, promised by Mabel when it starts to get dark, of the young woman in spiritual contact with Marcella Bruno, who died right here on this road. Betty was here. At Clara’s side. And the next day up there on the hill where the body was laid out on a lawn chair, pointing stiffly up at Heaven. Hazel Dunlevy wants to know what happened to Marcella’s body afterwards, and Betty says it disappeared and folks reckon she got raptured straight to the other world. “She seemed to stand straight up and she ain’t been seen since!” Betty had not met Hazel before. A pretty little thing with freckles and a dreamy look. She and her husband Travers, who is a plasterer and carpenter, are recent converts who have been here all winter. Hazel is a palm reader, and she read Betty’s palm and everything she said was completely true: that she is a down-to-earth person with solid values, a practical outlook on life, a soft heart, and a pleasant romantic nature. Her money line and fame line cross, which means, Hazel said, that she will come into some money by surprise and luck, and her fate line means that her life will find its way into the public eye, but that already happened, which just shows how true palm-reading is, because Hazel didn’t know that. Hazel wouldn’t say anything about the health line, only that there was nothing to worry about, and so of course she has been worrying ever since. “Well, if this Patti Jo is talking to Marcella’s spirit,” Corinne Appleby the beekeeper says, “maybe she can just ask her.” Sarah Baxter, who is not privy to these after-dark plans of Mabel’s, has left, too miserable even to say goodbye, which gives them the opportunity to talk about her and her enfeebling illness. Sarah told Linda a long time ago that she saw the girl’s head hit the windshield, she said her eyes were wide open, staring straight at her, and then smack! and that was what caused the miscarriage the next day, especially when the corpse just reared up like that, and Linda, who has given Betty a fresh perm this morning, relates that event to everyone now, goggling her eyes out at the staring part, and they all jump and gasp when the poor girl’s face smacks the windshield, and they flutter their hands at their breasts and shake their heads at the tragedy of it all and how it has undone poor Sarah; it half undoes them, just imagining it. Glenda Oakes, who is another of Clara’s new converts and is said to have the gift of interpreting dreams — having only one good eye, she explained to Betty, helps her to see into the fourth dimension, where dreams are — says she thought Sarah was just going to tip over into the ditch herself a while ago over at the mine road: “Her ankles look like her thighs has slid down round them.” Truly, Betty has noticed, Sarah does look dreadful, her chin fallen to her breastbone, her eyes rheumy and hair all snarly, barely able to shuffle along by herself, her shoulders higher than her head. Bernice Filbert put some of her miracle water on her, but it didn’t seem to do any good. She has been crying almost without stopping since they arrived, though Mildred said that was really out of happiness at seeing everybody again. It was the first sign of life she’d seen in the poor woman in years. Mildred joined them in the caravan for about five minutes, but could not leave Ezra alone any longer than that without him yelling for her and calling her names, mostly those of the devil and bad women of the Bible. She has dark circles under her eyes now and an unhealthy skinniness about her, probably from pushing the wheelchair around all the time, and she has adopted bitter ways. Why, after all that had happened, that man wanted to go back down in a mine again, no one can imagine, but there it is, you can’t tell what’s coming next in life. Unless, that is, you have someone like Mabel and her story cards. Mabel kept her husband Willie home from the mine on the night of the disaster because of what she saw in her thick little deck and she even foretold Ezra’s accident for Mildred. “The five of spades come up flat against the Tower on its head, it was plain as the nose on your face,” she said while Mildred was still here, and Mildred allowed as how all that was so, though just when this happened, neither of them could remember. Betty has already had Mabel read the cards for her, but without the best results, so she is hoping they will have another opportunity before they go back to Florida to see if they come out better, for Mabel has usually found good news for her. Betty, who is known here more as Betty Wilson than as Betty Clegg, realizes, talking with her widowed friends, how very fortunate she has been and how envious they all are of her, and how all this was prophesied long ago by Mabel, though she didn’t exactly understand it at the time. Yes, she’s been lucky, but nothing’s perfect. As she admitted when the others kept remarking on what a fine man her Hiram is, “Yes, he’s a mighty good talker and a holy man, and I’m right proud a him, but he don’t do nothing for hisself,” and they all laughed at that and said what man’s not the same. It was a pretty short romance. Lasted about a day. Of course, Clara’s the luckiest one of all, even if dear old Ben is showing his age. Betty still feels a twinge in her heartstrings when she sees him. “I hear tell Abner’s people is baptizing with real fire,” Linda says, and Betty is able to confirm this, for Hiram has spoken about it, saying that Abner has misread what John the Baptist said in the Gospels and that is sure not what Giovanni Bruno meant when he commanded them to baptize with light. “But how do they do that?” Bernice wants to know. Bernice is not exactly a Brunist either, having always been her own church of one. She dresses in long skirts with layers of things on top like shawls and capes and aprons, and today she is wearing bracelets and a pretty beaded headband. Hiram has spent some time talking with her about faith and prophecy and the afterlife and she seems interested in a deeper commitment. Most ladies are when Hiram talks to them. Bernice is providing home nursing care for the wife of the town banker, who is wasting away like the synagogue ruler’s daughter, as she remarks, but she has the weekend off. “I mean,” she asks, “when they do their baptizing, do they really burn theirselves?” Betty doesn’t know, but she says she thinks at least at first they walked through fire, or else jumped over it like jumping over balefires. “Hard to say whether that’s for saving souls or getting them used to the other place,” says Corinne. The room is dimming as the twilight settles. All the talk about fire has reminded Mabel to light some candles and get out the folding card table she always uses. That girl who talks to the dead will be here soon.

Nat is sitting beside Midnight in the dark, under the mine tipple, watching the thickening crowds on the hill through stolen binoculars, most of them in those white gowns like old women at a dance. They’re all making tent meeting noises now, mixed in with some twangy guitars and the tiny pops of flashbulbs going off. Usually, even at this distance, he could hear his father’s voice above the racket, but not tonight. The old man has turned beggar. Not so many gawkers now as before; the sheriff’s car has been parked more or less permanently down there, so people don’t tend to hang around unless they want to go on up and be part of it. Anyway, it’s boring. The sheriff himself is not there, but his number two is. Smith. Nat knows him from churchgoing days when his old man was the preacher. Smith marched out here that day with everyone else, but as soon as it was over he dropped out, just when his old man most needed him. Maybe he was a double agent, working for the other side. Another target. Pop. Midnight’s chrome picks up flickering lights from the bonfires over there, making her seem alive and restless, burning from within. Like Nat is. He rests his hand on her frame, as though to calm her. He feels another headache coming on and needs to get himself in motion. The other Apostles have been making a swoop of the roads around, plotting out escape routes, casing supply joints, siphoning off fuel from parked cars, visiting roadhouses. Like Houndawg, Nat doesn’t drink, but the others do. Houndawg calls it laying down roadslick. Juice says it keeps the machinery oiled. Midnight was green when Nat appropriated her, but Houndawg has helped him chop her down and rebuild her, bobbing the fender, wrenching in some scraps from the junkyard, reshaping the pipes, filing away all the ID numbers, and adding new engine guards, then repainting her body bits shiny black. Littleface calls her Nat’s Batmobile. She’s faster now and no way anybody could identify her. Houndawg himself rides a souped-up flathead with stretched downtubes and buckhorn handlebars, what he calls his old war horse. “Butt ugly, but fast and smooth.” He’s back, having a smoke in the darkness, Juice and Cubano are just rolling in, and Nat can hear the rumble of Littleface’s shotgun pipes out on the access road. Have to do something about eating. There’s food over there in the big tent and on a table set by one of the bonfires, he can smell it from here, but he doubts his pals would be allowed, and the Warrior Apostles travel together. Besides, the deputy sheriff is over there somewhere. “C’mon,” he says as Littleface pulls in, “I’m hungry. Let’s go.” He stows the binoculars in his saddlebag, mounts Midnight and kicks her into life. Paulie hears the motors turn over and aches to be with them. Franny has tried to force some chicken and beans on him, but he’s not hungry. He never is. There’s some green Jell-O with marshmallows in it, and the twitchy little half-pint eats some of that. Franny thinks all the beatings may have stunted him, but he’s only thirteen, he may not have started to grow yet. His not eating always makes their father mad, and Franny started getting fat eating up Paulie’s leftovers so he wouldn’t get another whipping. Now, eating is the only thing she feels like doing. Her kid sister, who is two years older than Paulie, is stunted in another way. She’s got okay looks, a good figure, but she’s got the brains of a seven-year-old. Amanda has taken her share of their father’s beatings just like the rest of them, and still gets hauled in from time to time, but on her they seemed to have had a different effect. Maybe they weren’t so hard. While the rest shy away from their father, Amanda clings to him. Thankfully, all that holy smiting of sinners’ backsides seems to be passing away. In the early years of the Persecution, their father was more severe than ever, the laying on of the razor strop a regular family worship ritual, forcibly witnessed by all, but he has mellowed over time or else he is just giving up on them and has his mind on other things. The razor strop itself got thrown away or else Nat stole it. It was probably Nat who broke him. Nat was threatened with a thrashing when he stole the motorcycle, but Nat’s near as big as her father and when Nat stood him down, her father just got older overnight. Franny often, out of pity, took beatings for the younger ones, but they didn’t seem to appreciate it. Even, oddly, resented it. Well, the problem with big dumb Franny is, she just doesn’t get it. She thinks her father’s whippings were tough, wait till she gets to hell. Amanda knows. It’s about the saving of souls, and Franny’s will not be saved. Amanda can feel her own soul inside her, anxious for its fate, and she knows the body must be punished for it to be redeemed. She is, she knows, a sinful girl, and when she heard her father shout from the pulpit, “And if thy right hand offend thee, cut if off, and cast it from thee,” and that if you didn’t, your whole body would get thrown in hell, it frightened her so she could sleep only fitfully for weeks after, afraid the hand would do in her sleep what she refused to let it do awake, and sometimes it did. Not even to her father can she talk about this, she can only beg him to punish her for her redemption’s sake. Her father, she knows, is going to Heaven, and the worst thing Amanda can imagine about hell is not the eternal torment but being all alone there. Junior, too, understands the relationship between the punishment of the body and the redemption of the soul, though he has a more generalized notion of sin — we are all born into sin — and consequently has a more traditional and communal notion of the need to punish the flesh to be free of the flesh. Mortification: this is a word Junior has taught Elaine. Whom he has been keeping an eye on, just as she has been furtively watching him. He has approached her, but under the watchful eye of her mother she has been very jumpy and unfriendly. But he knows. He has been in her underwear drawer. The belt he found there is buckled tightly around the tops of his thighs, under his tunic. He feels the tug of sin each step he takes. Like Paulie, Junior has also heard the motorbikes leave, and has heard Ben tell Elaine’s mother that he’s worried those boys are headed to the camp again and that he should get over there to check on things. So he’s gone (Nat’s an idiot, but a useful one) and Elaine’s mother is dragged away to preach to everyone about the new tabernacle. Junior looks at Elaine and she looks at him.