Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“South County Coal,” says Robbins, squinting in that general direction, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “You know, you can probably see the Waterton whorehouses from up there.”

“Oh, nice,” says Elliott. “Of course, I wouldn’t know.”

“Serviced at sunrise,” Gus Baird says.

Jim and Burt are board members and they and Gus teach Sunday School classes. Ted doubts they’ve read any more of the Good Book than he has, but he may need them close at hand this morning to help with the rescue operation if Wes Edwards loses it or doesn’t show. Full house today. Extra rows of wooden folding chairs and more chairs in the aisles. “Couldn’t see anything this morning in that downpour. It was a mess. And so was Wes. Good thing I went out there.”

Burt nods. “Ralph says Wes was splashing around crazily in his stocking feet out there and yelling at the rain.”

“He was somewhat out of touch.”

“Just singin’ in the rain,” croons Gus Baird, the travel agent and Rotary Club president, and he does a little turn around his umbrella.

Burt laughs dryly and says, “Them two kooks should be locked up, him and his wife both.”

“Well…” And, while fresh thunder rumbles overhead, he fills them in on what he found when he got Wes back to the manse, the general disorder, foul smells, things flung about, the spilled milk in the kitchen and the smashed eggs. “Wes said he’d been trying to make breakfast.”

“Well, I’ve dropped a few eggs in my time myself,” says Baird amiably.

“On the walls?”

“Oh oh.”

“Wait a minute. What do you mean?”

“I mean, his wife’s gone.”

“Debra? Really?” Elliott turns his dopy gaze toward the manse. “Wow, what do you think? She’s gone off with some—?”

“Wait. She wouldn’t have anything to do with that damned cult, would she?”

“You can bet on it, Burt. That screwed-up Meredith kid who was in it from the start has been living with them, and he’s gone, too.”

“Oh boy,” says Elliott, flashing his stunned stupid look. “We have a big problem.” Ted has a big problem with Elliott. An incompetent drunk, holding the town back. The area still has a lot to offer — cheap energy, old rails still in place, unused land, a workforce desperate for jobs, favorable tax incentives — but Elliott is useless. The Chamber needs new blood, someone with energy and imagination and appeal to get the town back on the commercial map again. Something Stacy could do well if she’d agree to it. She’s off visiting family. When she’s back, he’ll try again.

Robbins strikes a match to light a new cigarette and says, “It’s a disaster.”

Ted rose this morning before the unseen dawn, a routine now. His emaciated wife has already had a couple of falls trying to get to the bathroom on her own, so he tries to be up in time to take her. Irene’s decline infuriates her and she’s resentful of his help, insists he shut the bathroom door and leave her alone. He grants her that, but stands by to help her back to bed again. Poor sweet Irene. It’s heartbreaking. There’d been a couple of giggling young lovers up at the aborted service who evidently, following the Easter vigil tradition of watching the rising sun dance its bunny-hop to have their loves and lives blessed by it, had stayed up all night before coming, and seeing them Ted had felt a pang of grief, remembering Irene at that age and their own premarital spring. Such a pretty thing she was, and so loving, and so his . The girl’s wet dress clung provocatively to her body and the boy slipped his hand between the cheeks of her bottom, and then he felt a sudden pang of desire, and a pang of guilt. Whereupon, with equal suddenness, lightning struck.

Across the lawn, through the crowd, he sees his son Tommy, home from university for the Easter break, leaning against the Lincoln. He looks cool, but Ted knows he’s hurting. He had given the home care nurse Easter Sunday off, so he let Tommy sleep in and be there if Irene needed anything, and when he got back from dropping Wes off at the manse, he found Tommy trying to help his mother, at her insistence, get dressed for church. The boy was down on his knees, struggling with her nylons, and he looked miserable. “Tommy,” he said, “she can’t go.” Outside the bedroom, they embraced and wept a little.

The sadness of a house saturated with the depressing odor of mortality and decaying connections got to Tommy last night, so he borrowed his dad’s car and, on a whim inspired by the home-again Brunist news, gave Angela Bonali a call to get together to talk about her new job at the bank. That conversation lasted a minute or two and then his old high school flame gave him a spectacular blowjob while the rain drummed down on the car roof, best in a long time, nearly brought tears to his eyes. He’ll see her again Wednesday when she’s off the rag. It’s a kind of anniversary. They lost their cherries together on an Easter weekend five years ago and, thanks to a couple of gut courses at university, browsing through the old myths, he now knows how appropriate that was. He has been through those juicy old rituals countless times since then, it would have been easy for her to drop out of the memory stream, but those were pretty unforgettable times. First everythings and all that, but the Brunists also helped make them so. Those apocalyptic lunatics not only stirred things up in town, adding an edge of danger and something bordering on an alien invasion, they also gifted him with a what-if line to score by. Later helped him ace a sociology course too. “Making History by Ending History” was the title of his A-plus term paper, a high-water mark in his academic career. Angie was curvy and cute back then, an inexperienced virgin like he was, but just naturally good at it. Because she liked it. She exemplified his notion of loose hotpants Catholic girls. Perfect for an uptight hotpants Protestant boy earnestly looking to get laid. Now she’s a grownup dark-eyed beauty with all the moves, plus a world-class ass and humongous tits. He gets hard just thinking about them. She’ll be big as a barn someday, but right now she’s gorgeous. And his. She’s crazy about him. Complete surrender. No limits.

Sally Elliott, wearing an Easter getup of sneakers without socks, frayed cut-off jeans, and an old stained trenchcoat with torn pockets, pulls up on her bike, leans it against a tree, and comes over to where he’s sitting against his dad’s car, keeping his distance from the dismaying well-intended remarks of the church congregation (“We’re praying for a miracle, Tommy!”), and asks him how his mom’s doing. “Not so good.” Coming home was a shock, really. Her body all raisined up and twisted, hair gone, her mind mostly somewhere else. She’s changed a lot just since Christmas. Weird look in her eyes. Not even remotely the mom he used to know. “She’s got very religious. In a crazy kind of way.” “What other kind of religion is there?” Sally says. Surprises him. Always thought of Sally as the dumb smalltown Sunday-school type, though he’s heard she’s turned a bit wild. “The plain truth, Tommy, is life is mostly crap, is very short, and ends badly. Not many people can live with that, so they buy into a happier setup somewhere else, another world where life’s what you want it to be and nothing hurts and you don’t die. That’s religion. Has been since it got invented. Totally insane, but totally human.” He’s not religious himself, though he doesn’t think too much about it. Why break your brains over the unknowable? But he’s not exactly an atheist either. When they asked him to read the scripture lesson this morning, he agreed without thinking about it — he’d done it often enough before, a tradition at this little church, he feels comfortable with it — but it isn’t the same thing as believing what he reads. Just a way of joining in. He glances across at his father on the other side of the soggy First Presbyterian Church lawn, having a smoke before the service with Sally’s dad and other old guys, and no doubt filling them in on the Brunist story. Main news of the day, though his dad’s been worrying about it all week. His dad’s the reason Tommy is here today; church is not something he does up at school. It’s rough for his dad right now, but he’s standing tall. Tommy once asked him what he really believed, and he said, the Apostles’ Creed, the gospels, the Commandments, that sort of thing, but he wasn’t really made for religious or speculative thought. He’s a doer not a thinker. So he had to accept the historical weight behind Christianity, the great thinkers who worried out its details. He had to trust that all those really smart guys can’t be wrong and believe as they believed, even if he didn’t completely understand it. That suits Tommy. “Well,” Tommy says now, “you don’t have to be crazy to believe in something.” “Like Christianity, you mean? Yes, you do. Eat your god, suck his blood, and live forever. I mean, come on! Just look at today. Has to be the wackiest day on the calendar. A zombie horror story with Easter egg hunts. Open up that tomb and let the ghouls go walking, scavenging for chocolate. Weird, man!” He laughs as she staggers about in the grassy muck, her arms out monster-style, her snarly hair falling about her face in wet knotted strings. Or maybe she’s hanging from the cross. She’s a lanky girl, looks down on a lot of guys, used to look down on him in junior high. They’ve got some history. They had a flirtation or two back when they were both virgins and he was still a bit desperate. He even tried that apocalyptic line on her back when the Brunists were in town and had her pants down in the back seat, but that’s as far as they got. Angela came along, and then others, a parade of them really, then university. Sally went off to some dinky liberal arts college where they taught her to dress like a tramp. They’ve both moved on. He can’t even remember what her ass looked like, and inside the trenchcoat, there’s no telling now.