Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

He has managed to ditch Clara’s two helpers, telling them he needed some thinking time on his own; they seemed to appreciate that, being heavy thinkers themselves. Bible school dropouts named Darren Rector and Billy Don-something. Or maybe they were thrown out; their story is ambiguous. They want to interview him for the Brunist church history they’re assembling, a history they seem to think is going to unravel the mysteries of the universe. Something Pach’ hopes to avoid; he’d have to tell them what he really thinks and blow what little cover he has. But it seems important to them, so he said maybe, after he’s been here a while. This is his one shot at Elaine and he doesn’t want to ruin it with his big mouth, but if he can get her to leave with him, maybe he’ll let them have it just before he takes off.

The first thing they did was move his panel truck down to the trailer parking lot. The old softball field. He was sorry to see it being used like that, but he didn’t say so. He asked who else was parked there, learned a few new names. Mobile homes with coming-of-light bumper stickers. He wondered if Elaine was in the Collins’ house trailer but tried not to stare at it. Old bucktoothed Willie Hall came out to say hello and unleash a few welcoming Bible passages on him. He said his old mining injuries were plaguing him, which was why he couldn’t help out with the construction work. He was just waiting for God to take him up into Heaven, that’s all he had left now, and he held up his dogeared Bible to show him the weight of it. His big spooky wife did not come out. He saw her staring out their caravan window at him. He touched the bill of his cap to her, but no response. A filthy little kid who looked retarded stood a few yards away, not far from the Collins trailer, giving him a long dim look, snot running down his upper lip. Turned out to be Mrs. Cravens’ kid Davey, and he learned something more from the two boys about that sadsack woman and her current fellow. He went over and squatted down in front of Davey to say hello, remember me? Smelled like he might have filled his britches. “I’m Pach’, Davey. Let’s be friends, okay?” The kid nodded and licked his lip. He could see the Collins trailer steps and door over Davey’s shoulder. Should he go over and knock? No, he shouldn’t. Patience, jackass. Later.

Does she know he is here? Probably. Scuttlebutt gets around quickly in shut-up places like this. A lot like a prison, he has been thinking since he was led in through that barbed-wire fence. Maybe she’s hiding from him. Well, he can wait. He learned from the two boys that she and Junior Baxter still have something going, though they have only just got together again for the first time this past week, when the whole Baxter clan turned up for the anniversary celebrations over on the mine hill. Elaine is a very private person, they said. She and Young Abner, as he’s called now, are often seen together, but they never hold hands or even talk to each other. It’s more like a religious thing. It was the one called Billy Don who told him that, a talkative guy with dark shades, a ponytail, and handlebars; Darren is the more cautious one, a smart kid with blond curls and the bespectacled bright-eyed intensity of a zealot. The Baxter family are living in an unfinished cabin and were supposed to have left several days ago but haven’t. They passed it on the path leading up here. A tent up at the back. Two of the Baxter boys have already been kicked out of the camp, he learned. Something about a motorcycle gang, a robbery, a gun. In retaliation, they came back and vandalized the camp when everyone was over on the mine hill praying, which explains the beat-up look of some of the cabins. But Junior and his two sisters are still here. One of the girls was pointed out to him as they passed the cabin. Cute. She was staring at him, and when he glanced back a couple of minutes later, beginning the climb up here, he saw she was still staring at him.

On the walk up to the Point, the boys filled him in on the years of the Persecution, the international following they now have, Mrs. Collins’ plans for a tabernacle temple to be built on the Mount of Redemption. There was a lot of money being spent here, much of it apparently coming from a local rich guy named Suggs. But they were able to acquire the camp in the first place, they said, thanks to the Presbyterian minister’s wife, Mrs. Edwards, who arranged for the sale and then became a Brunist Follower. This was unexpected news. Reverend Edwards was the guy who helped kidnap his friend Colin Meredith and kept him away from the Mount on the Day of Redemption. Pach’ remembers him as a klutz in a porkpie. With a nervous smirk. All day on the hill, Pach’ kept worrying that Colin would miss the Rapture. He learned later that Colin tried to kill himself in their house. “Mrs. Edwards is one of our most important converts,” the boys said. “She’s now the camp director.” He remembers Mrs. Edwards very well. Nature girl. Fantasy stuff. When he asked, they told him she was probably working down at her vegetable garden with Colin. So Colin’s here, too: also news. They offered to walk him over there, but he told them he knew the way.

Pach’ once tried to kiss a girl up here on the Point when he was about ten, but she didn’t like it and didn’t kiss him back and told the camp counselor. Which ended his summer camp that year. He hasn’t had a lot of luck with kissing. Elaine was always more a hugger than a kisser, being self-conscious about her bad teeth. But she’s a good hugger. The most intense hug he ever got was over there on the mine road at the foot of the hill the night before the supposed end of the world — the night Bruno’s sister was killed. He’d got turned on watching people in front of the bonfires they’d built to sing and pray around, the way their bodies were silhouetted inside the thin flut-tery tunics when they passed in front of the flames. He was jealous of Elaine and hated it when she walked in front of the fires so others could see, but it excited him, too. Those were sinful thoughts, and on the very eve of what might well be the Last Judgment, so he tried not to look, but he couldn’t stop himself. Not until Elaine’s mother stood in front of the flames and he found himself staring at something he knew he shouldn’t see. He turned away feeling hot and confused, as if his acne were erupting all over his body. Then the lights on the mine road, the rush to the cars, the awful thing that happened. He stood at the lip of the ditch, hugging Elaine, watching that poor girl die. Her smallness, her lips slightly parted, eyes closed, her fragile broken worried look. How many had hit her? Had he? Wrecked cars everywhere, lights pointed in all directions, some straight up into the sky as if trying to get someone’s attention up there, his own car ditched somewhere behind him. Where it stayed until the county hauled it out weeks later and sent him a towing bill up in detention. Seeing his schoolteacher Mrs. Norton lying in the roadway as though dead, her fat-kneed husband fanning her face with his tunic hem, scared him even more than the struck girl. Was everybody suddenly dying? Was it really happening? Elaine was sobbing in his arms, her back to the ditch, and while he was staring down at Marcella over her shoulder, the poor girl’s eyes suddenly opened and a red bubble ballooned out of her mouth, popped, dribbled down her chin. And that was it. His knees began to shake. Her brother stooped to kiss her lips and rose up with blood on his mouth, that’s what he remembers, though his vision was pretty blurry, his head may have been playing tricks on him. Elaine wrapped her arms around him tight and held him close, close, dressed in almost nothing as they were, and whispered in his ear that she wanted to be in Heaven with him forever. Brought tears to his eyes as he, chastely, except for the club pressed against her tummy, couldn’t do anything about that, hugged her back. Forever turned out to be less than a day.