Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“I’m not talking to you, Connie.”

“Who are you talking to, Wes?”

Oh oh. Here it comes. They are still three blocks from the Lutheran church. Prissy grips the wheel and tries desperately to think how to change the subject, but she’s never good at that. Wesley has hesitated. He’s probably thinking the same thing. “I’m talking to Jesus Christ,” he says finally. “He…has moved in.”

Franny Baxter has been scouting the crowds at the bottom of the hill for purposes of her own. She is, plain and simple, looking for a man. Also plain and simple. She wants out of all this. What will her family do without her? She doesn’t care. She knows she has little to offer. She’s homely, scrawny on top and hippy below, has nothing to wear but her mother’s faded hand-me-downs, has pimples and hair where she shouldn’t, has never read a book she hasn’t had to, has a tin ear and is blind to beauty, both artificial and natural, has no interests she can think of, can’t carry a conversation past hello and goodbye (look how she chased off that Elliott girl who was only trying to be friendly), has few job prospects other than housecleaning, laundering, diner waitressing, and dishwashing. She has pretty much taken over all the womanly family functions with the baggy collapse of her mother, but that doesn’t mean she’s much of a cook or has any talent as a housekeeper. The minimum does it for Franny. But she’s also happy with little and can put up with anything except beatings and religion. She’s had enough of both for one lifetime. But a jobless drunk? A lazy foul-mouthed atheistic womanizer who’s never home? No problem. A dumb ugly cluck who doesn’t know what his thingie is for? All the better. She had spotted a couple of promising candidates among the hecklers before they got chased off. One in particular — a guy she knows, if barely. The kid brother of the dead husband of a friend of the family, the widow a former Nazarene who used to be in her father’s congregation, and now, if what she’s heard today from gossip queen Linda Catter is true, not much of anything. Like Franny herself. Fed up. Tess Lawson was always nice to her and she figures now she’ll try to get in touch with her and lay out her hopes and wishes and tell her she’s more or less in love with her brother-in-law Steve, so what should she do next? In love? Sure, she is. Why not? Clumsy lunks with big feet who scare easy and fall down when they get drunk? Just her style. She knows most everything about boys, leastways their backsides, and what she doesn’t know she’ll ask that woman Ludie Belle they’re all talking about.

“Well, I just don’t know what to think, Duke. Those ladies want to hear a voice talk to them. Hel — lo — I—am — speak — ing — to — you — from — the — other — side…!”

“Oh yeah, honey! Hah! I believe! The growl’s awesome!”

“Or else they want to see something weird, like something moving by itself, a card or a spoon, you know. Spookshow stuff. But it’s not like that. I’m not reaching across any life-and-death divide or nothing. I don’t hear any voices. Not like the way you’re hearing me. I only sorta know what Marcella’s thinking. I’m just, like, tuned in.”

“Still, you musta blowed their minds, Patti Jo, callin’ the shot on that ole lady expirin’ like that.”

“Yeah, well, but I didn’t exactly, that’s just how they want to think of it. It’s that Mabel lady. She’s the smart one, reads the cards and suchlike, has a kinda gypsy knowhow. She’s the one who connects all the dots. I only just had the feeling all day yesterday, Marcella and me, that something worrying was gonna happen like it done before, that’s all, and I told them that. Coulda been most anything. Like what just happened down there at the foot of the hill.”

“They are sudden to read a lot in a little…”

“But you know, what if they’re right, Duke? I thought it was kinda scary before, now I don’t know what’s happening. Why did I feel like I had to come here just now when all these other people were coming here, too? It was like we were all in touch with something, or something was in touch with us. I mean, what do you think, Duke? What’s happening? What do you think I oughta do?”

“Well, it ain’t my home ballpark, Patti Jo, but if I was your hittin’ coach, I’d say you should jist hang in fer a pitch or two, swing easy, and see what they throw at you next. We’re havin’ some good innings, we got us a live audience, Will Henry’s takin’ us on his radio show, I’m cookin’ up some new tunes to try out on the fans in the bleachers — and hey, I kinda like teamin’ up with you, little darlin’. Wherever.”

“You’re really a sweet guy, Duke. And I’m so damned crazy. I don’t deserve it.”

Over at the Wilderness Camp up on Inspiration Point, Ben Wosznik is sitting beside his dead dog, a shovel and shotgun across his lap. He gazes across at the Mount of Redemption, where, distantly, under late-afternoon overcast skies, the Brunist Followers mill about, waiting for the evening’s dedication ceremonies or else for the End. If the Rapture should happen now, he’d be a front-row witness to this spectacle, so inevitable yet so hard to imagine, but he might get overlooked in the gathering in of Christian souls. He should be getting back. He had set about to bury Rocky up here, where the old boy so loved to come when he and Clara used it as their own private chapel and talking-out place, but it still feels too polluted by the bikers’ recent presence. He’ll clean the area up tomorrow, but it will never be the same. Those cruel boys have probably spoiled it forever. Whatever forever is now in these last days. The scene up here at dawn this morning is still fixed in his mind, and he is only slowly coming to make sense of things. Abner’s boy seemed genuinely surprised when they found the gun in his backpack, Ben saw that. So if the kid didn’t steal it, how did it get there? “Why’d they do that to you, old fella? Must of been me they was after.” That was probably it. They’d supposed he’d planted the gun on them to get them thrown out of the camp, maybe after he caught them in the camp kitchen, and they took their revenge. “But who really done it, then?” Who stole the gun in the first place? And the money? But left the shotgun? Somebody in a hurry. He may want to ask Abner about what happened when he first arrived yesterday, though that’s apt only to put the man on the defensive again and stir up old feelings, never far from the surface, that the world is against him. Well, he’s been going through a lot, that man. He only just gets his feet on the ground and his boys trip him up again. There was a tearful moment early this morning, standing up here, when, just for a second, Abner’s vulnerability showed through, and his pain. A sympathy grew up between them — Ben felt it, too — but it hasn’t lasted. Abner is no longer so alone, his old buds Roy and Jewell having turned up today to egg him on, so he’s recovering some of his contentious nature, and now, after what all else has happened, Ben’s own forgiving nature is being sorely tested. Down below, the camp has been plundered. Cabin doors left gaping. Much of the food gone, medications. The lodge vandalized. Windows smashed. Vehicles in the parking lot and down at the trailer park broken into, though he’d hid his shotgun well and they never discovered it. But: Rocky’s headless body on his kitchenette table. He found the doves’ heads in the empty camp kitchen refrigerator, blindly staring out, beaks open as though begging for food or water. He tossed them down the hole in the men’s privy. No need for people to have to see that. But he will have to tell them what has happened. Far across the way, the old tipple and water tower, silhouetted against the soft gray sky, stand like tomb markers over an old Indian burial mound. Which helps him think what it is he’ll do.