Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

Now, while Pach’ works with Ben on the new sick bay, Baxter and his pals across the way are trying to hang a front door on their cabin, and neither crew is talking much to the other. People aren’t getting along, just like before, and trouble is brewing. Ben sees him watching them with a frown on his face and says, “Let them be, Carl Dean. They ain’t much good to us anyhow, so we at least get some work out of them for the time being. But that cabin has got other purposes. They ain’t staying there.”

Could he, he wonders? Stay here? Stay in this camp where he’s always felt most at home, here with all these friends, more like family than his own family? Could he go all the way, put a tunic on again, win Elaine, help defend Ben and Mrs. Collins against the abominable Baxters and the local establishment, build something that will last? While he’s asking himself that, Clara Collins comes rushing out of the lodge with big news: Mr. Suggs just called. The mine owners have accepted their offer for the Mount of Redemption. Papers are being drawn up. There are whoops and cheers and Wayne throws his painter’s cap in the air. Time to bring out the beers! But, no, not here. Mrs. Collins falls to her knees there in the woodchips and closes her eyes and lifts her hands and launches into her full-throated God howl and all the others drop to their knees too and join in, waving their arms about and praying to beat the band. An old coalminer from out east declares it’s a miracle, and that is noisily amenned. Mr. Suggs is grandly Godblessed. Nothing Pach’ can do but follow suit, get down on his knees, take off his cap, and tuck his chin in, anything else would be an insult to these people, but he’s feeling awkward as hell, a total hypocrite, the devilish reprobate they have taken him to be. Fuck. He could never do this.

When Pach’ reaches the flowering dogwood tree a little before sundown for Saturday evening prayers, she is already there. Standing beside her mother. All these years gone past, mostly thinking about her, and suddenly here she is. He’d thought, after so much buildup, he’d probably be disappointed, and he’d arrived, hands in pockets, talking to others, trying not to look her way, staying cool. That lasted about a minute. She has grown up some. Taller now than he is. Gangly, but not big-boned like her mother. She’s staring straight at him in a forthright way he has not seen before. He doesn’t know what that stare means, but it cheers him to see her there beside her mother and not by Junior Baxter. He nods to her as though in recognition, and when she doesn’t nod back, he looks away.

“Looks like you brung us luck, Pach’,” Wayne Shawcross says with a grin, passing by with his wife, Ludie Belle, and Pach’ grins back, feeling a kind of twitch in his cheek (the grin’s too wide, it’s not something he does often), and says, “I can give it to others but I never keep none for myself.” Ben and Clara still speak of him as Carl Dean, but he introduces himself to people as Pach’, which is his name for his new life. “You mean like what you got there on the knees of your jeans?” Wayne asked this afternoon when told his name. “No. Like Apache.” “You part injun?” “That’s what they told me.” “I think my granmaw was probly half Choctaw, but she wouldn’t never admit it. It was like being half nigger back then.” He’d got the new handle in prison. He’d lied and told them he had Indian blood, partly just to set himself off from the others, partly to shuck off the old life, be someone other than the self he’d come to hate. And who knows, given his old lady’s careless habits, maybe it was true — didn’t she like to claim when she was drunk that she’d got pregnant with him off a toilet seat? He was the only virgin in the men’s prison, where rape was part of the new-boys break-in rituals, and he meant to stay that way (didn’t quite), but he had to fight for it. Five guys, including a couple of trusties, grabbed him and ripped his pants down and the biggest of them said, “Bend over, Tonto, I’m gonna stick it to your holy huntin’ ground.” He was able to tear himself free and laid into the lot of them, starting with the fat asshole who called him Tonto, leaving him with less teeth in his mouth than he had before, and he was still holding his own against all five, even with his pants around his ankles, when the bulls finally showed up and broke it up with chains and truncheons. Lost him any hope for parole that year, but it earned him the nickname of the Crazy Apache, which over time got shortened to Pach’, which most people hear as Patch. Whatever. Just so it’s not Carl Dean. Or Ugly.

Elaine is still staring at him. He tries a smile this time. Same result. He has showered and laundered his rags in the new camp laundry, trimmed his beard, put on a T-shirt with only a couple of holes, and a denim vest. Combed his hair, even. Ben dropped a Brunist tunic by for him, but he decided not to wear it. There are others without tunics, so apparently it’s okay. Two of those are a country singer and his woman, who are said to be famous singers from Nashville, though he hasn’t heard of them. They’re first on the program, because they have a gig after. At the bar in the old Blue Moon Motel at the edge of town. Can’t be too famous. But a place to escape to maybe for a beer. What he misses most this time of day. They seem cool. The guy, anyway. The woman is mixed up with the fortuneteller, Mrs. Hall, and her flock of gossipy widows. Came to the prayer meeting in their company. She’s said to be in touch with the dead.

The days are lengthening and the sun is probably still shining on Inspiration Point above them, but twilight has already settled on this little grove down here in the valley behind the lodge, oddly making the dogwood flowers seem to glow, and Elaine, standing under them, seems to glow as well. How beautiful she is in this strange pale light. Now he’s the one staring and she’s the one to look away. He can feel Junior Baxter’s seething fury off to one side, but it means nothing to him. She’s here and he’s here. That’s all that matters. On his way from lunch to the work site, Ben saw him craning about and said, “I s’pose you’re looking for Elaine. She ain’t feeling all that sociable today. Be careful, son. I think your coming here has gave her a fright. She’ll be at the prayer meeting tonight. You’ll see her there.” All afternoon he has been plotting out what he’d say to her when they finally met, how he loves her, needs her, or else how he just wants to be friends again, have someone to talk to, whatever seems most likely to work, but all that has vanished from his head, and he knows it will all happen without a word or it won’t happen at all.

There is apparently something sacred about the tree, which is why they are meeting here. The two country singers do a song about it. “All who see it will think of Me / Nailed to a cross from a dogwood tree…” The easy familiar singing mellows Pach’ out (it was right to come here), and when they follow that with a singalong version of “In the Garden,” he joins in. Old campfire standby. And the joy we share as we tarry there (he is watching Elaine, who is not singing; her head is down and she looks thin and fragile and he longs to gather her into his arms and take care of her), none other has ever known…

“Now, my son, the Lord be with thee, and prosper thou, and build the house of the Lord thy God, as he hath said of thee.” This is Wayne Shawcross reading from the Old Testament, somewhat laboriously, his finger tracing the lines in the dim light, about somebody building a church. Could be referring to building the camp, but, after the news today, it’s the tabernacle idea that has them buzzing. “Moreover there are workmen with thee in abundance, hewers and workers of stone and timber, and all manner of cunning men for ever manner of work.” Sure. Cunning. Count me in. Wayne plows on in his wooden monotone: “Arise therefore, and build ye the sanctuary of the Lord God, to bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and the holy vessels of God, into the house that is to be built to the name of the Lord.” There are a lot of amens and praise Gods now, people are getting excited, even though they probably don’t know what arks and vessels Wayne is talking about. Elaine’s head is up, a kind of startled expression on her face, but she is not joining in. A woman with a glass eye and gold tooth is watching her, head cocked, as if trying to decipher the expression. “The Lord hath chosen thee to build a house for the sanctuary: be strong, and do it!”