Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Ludie Belle Shawcross has told her bluntly that she is out of her water here and should leave, but she could never do that, not so long as Colin stays, and now, like a lot of these poor people, she really wouldn’t have anywhere to go anyway. The Wilderness Camp is now her home; she has and will have no other. Debra has always admired Ludie Belle’s forthrightness in confessing her sins and has tried to emulate her, but yesterday, up on the Mount of Redemption, Ludie Belle shocked her by saying she makes most everything up when repenting. “I lean on history like a preacher leans on the Bible, sweetie. I select out a few juicy licks and stitch ’em together into a up-liftin’ story, if you know what I mean.” She said this after advising Debra she was getting too personal in her confessions, and she should learn not to give away so much. It’s nobody’s business, and they tend to hold it over you afterwards. “Anyways, it’s more entertainin’ with a little judicious resortin’.” Just then Colin came by, sweaty and excited from all that had happened, and buoyed up by his new friendships with the young people from Florida — he had been bouncing about all afternoon as if the ground were hot and burning his feet — and he paused a moment to lay his head on her shoulder and catch his breath. And then, as quickly, he was off again. “Be careful, honey. You’re playin’ with fire,” Ludie Belle said, and Debra, knowing she was red to the roots, could only walk away, not wanting to see that woman again.

Instead of hovering behind her back as usual, Colin is standing this morning with the cheerful youngsters from Florida, who have been so nice to him. Reverend Clegg uses the word “radiance,” stretching it out in his resonant style (he is talking about the birds they are burying), and she thinks, yes, that’s exactly what she sees in Colin, an inherent childlike purity, glowing innocence. Radiance. He is a receptor. She used to have to shave him, not wanting him near anything sharp, but he has taken to letting the hairs on his chin grow. There aren’t many of them, no more than a dozen or so, and they are so blond they are almost like silver. It gives him a strange otherworldly look. Among his new friends, he has been tensely smiling, so rare for him, but they are leaving after lunch, so later he will cry again.

When Ben Wosznik hands out morning work assignments for cleaning and repairing the camp, Franny Baxter volunteers to help load the collected trash into his pickup. Ben has asked everyone to bag and drop all garbage and rubbish at the front gate of the camp where his pickup is parked and he will take it to the rubbish dump, and she posts herself there to receive it and toss it in the truckbed. When he starts up the motor, she gets in beside him on the hard bench seat and asks him if he could drop her off somewhere near the edge of town on the north side; she wants to have a talk with Tess Lawson. He says he’s not going directly towards town, he’s stopping off at his old farmhouse to pick up Rocky’s dog tag and then proceeding on to the town dump. She can help him unload the truck and then he’ll take her where she wants to go, and she says that’ll do fine. He asks if she has asked her father and she says no, and don’t tell him, but she’s a woman now and doesn’t need his permission for every little thing. If he finds out…? “All he can do is give me a larruping, and I’m plenty used to that.”

“He beats you a lot?”

“Not like before. Nat sorta tamed him.”

“Your father’s skeereda Nat?”

“Everbody is. Junior’s setting hisself up to take over, but Nat’s the one with our father’s fire.” Ben doesn’t say anything, so she says, “I think it’s awful what they done to your dog. Junior is telling everyone you must of hid your gun in Nat’s backpack to make us all look bad and get us moved out, and that made Nat mad.”

“Well, it ain’t so. Maybe Junior’s trying to hide something.”

“That’s what I reckon.” Pulling out of the camp gates, they had to thread their way through the crowds of people milling about, coming or going, and the fields they are passing now are littered with tents and trailers. The mine hill, too, only partially cleared, new smaller tents popping up there. The life she has known, wants to know no more.

“Your ma’s looking poorly. She was crying a lot yesterday.”

“This place gives her the creeps. After what happened, having a dead baby out there in the storm with nobody to help her but me, she didn’t never want to come back. She should of stayed home in bed that day or gone to hospital, but my father drug her out there, saying if they was all transcended she would not wanta miss out, nor not the unborn baby neither. She was sick for a long spell after that, really sick, and she just never exactly got well again.”

“That’s too bad, Franny. Must be a burden to you.”

“It can be.”

“So why is it y’mean to go see Tess? Y’reckon they’s a chance she’ll come back to us?”

“Maybe.”

“She knows you’re coming?”

“Nope.”

They are passing an old derelict farmhouse that would seem to be Ben’s, but, after slowing down, they roll on by. Ben doesn’t say anything, except a soft little grunt, but she saw what he saw: the wheel of a motorcycle sticking out at the back.

“We baptized it and raptured it, Mom, all at once,” says Mark. “You ain’t God, kid,” Dot says, cuffing his big stuck-out ears. “I’ll rapture your little britches if you try anything like that again. Now you and Matty get down on your knees over in that corner and pray for an hour that you don’t get sent to hell for putting on airs and messing like that with God’s handiwork.” “Oh Mom, that’s where the sandbox was!” “We didn’t mean to rapture the cat, Mom,” Matthew wheedles. “We was only wanting to baptize it.” “I told you not to put gasoline on it,” says Luke, and Dot sends her to the corner, too. They have been sharing this unfurnished prefab in Chestnut Hills with a family from Alabama, who left in a huff when her kids burned their cat, no doubt heading straight out to the camp to tattle on them. Well, good riddance, she couldn’t stand the stink of their homemade kitty litter dug up out of the back yard and the Blaurocks now have the place to themselves, though they don’t plan on staying long. That family was just a bunch of ignorant, drawling rednecks who knew nothing about the latter days and were always complaining about keeping the place clean and about her kids bullying their kids and about little Johnny’s dirty diapers and his whiny crying and about her loud snoring and Isaiah always hogging the bathroom. Well, her husband can’t help it. He has a nervous stomach, and did they think they didn’t snore, too? If God wanted her to snore, what could she or anyone else do about it? Not sleep? Get serious.

Dot and Isaiah Blaurock know everything there is to know about the Rapture and the Tribulation and the Last Days. They have been members of at least a dozen different churches and have been through what they went through yesterday any number of times. They believe in the general prophecy and whenever they hear about another specific end date, they try to be there. They find that they always cheer the other people up just by turning up and they get a lot of hugs, and that always makes them feel good. They first heard Clara Collins preach and Ben Wosznik sing in North Carolina, where Isaiah was working as an itinerant house painter, and they’ve been following them around, off and on, ever since. Not much Isaiah can’t do. He has been a farmer, a blacksmith, a roofer, a factory worker, a ditch and grave digger, a miner, a garbage collector, a construction worker, a cook, and, even silent as he mostly is, a sometime faith healer. Other things, too, probably. Hard to keep track. He doesn’t do any of these things particularly well, though his ability to keep their old Dodge on the road is a miracle by itself, but he’s done a bit of everything and so he’s valuable to any community like this one. Doesn’t have much to say, her Isaiah, but God gave him a mighty engine and she’s grateful. Clara has expressed her personal gratitude that they have come here to help out and she says there is a lot for them to do; Isaiah has lent a hand in putting the tents up on the mine hill and Dot has already showed that jellybean preacher’s wife a few things about gardening. Dot grew up on a farm in upstate New York; she knows what she’s talking about. They will be moving out to the camp this noon during the farewell luncheon for the busloads of old bluehairs from around the country, knowing they cannot be refused. They are penniless, and except for essentials, without possessions, having given up all for Christ, and they will be needed out there. This little house is something of a mess and doesn’t smell good, but that’s at least half the fault of the rednecks and no reason they should have to clean up after them, so they will just gather up their things and leave it as is, glad to get out of it. It’s owned by some rich guy named Suggs who has bought the Brunists their camp and is building them a new church, so it’s just pennies out of his pocket to get the place spruced up. In fact, maybe Isaiah can get the job.