Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

As Wayne looks up from his reading, pocketing his spectacles, the amens raining down, Elaine’s mother steps into the ruckus and in her sharp clear voice starts to spell out what she calls the glad tidings about acquiring the Deepwater mining property and what that means to them. She gets about two lines out. “And I heerd a great voice outa Heaven saying, behold!” That’s little Willie Hall interrupting. Can’t hold him back, never could. “The tabernacle a God is with men, and he will dwell with ’em and they shall be his people, and God hisself shall be with ’em and be their God! Ay-men! Revelation 21:3!” People are shouting at him, goading him on. Clara can’t get a word in edgewise. It’s already turning into another one of those nights, just like old times, though now Pach’ feels more like a self-conscious tourist. “Tell it like it is, Brother Willie!” “Let ’em bring me up onto thy holy hill,” he cries, pointing, his big ears standing out like signal flags, “and to thy tabernacle! Psalms 43:3!” Abner Baxter raises his fist to speak, evidently keen to unload a few verses of his own, but the two singers take it as a cue to do another number: “The Sons of Light Are Marching.” The song they sang on the march out to the hill that terrible morning. Pach’ led the parade, walking backwards, bellowing at the top of his lungs so they could hear him all the way to the back. Hammering the ruts and gravel of the mine road with his bare feet as though to say goodbye to both road and feet. Must have hurt. Doesn’t remember. Remembers Elaine marching right there at the front, watching him, almost desperately, singing with him in her timid little voice, the dead body they were carrying in the folded lawnchair rocking along above and behind her like a kind of canopy, the Prophet’s gaga mother beside her being pulled over the bumps in a little red wagon, helicopters rattling in the sky overhead, photographers and newsmen and the curious trailing along beside them, the whole mad procession watched by state troopers in black uniforms and white visored helmets. “O the sons of light are marching since the coming of the dawn,” Pach’ sings now, joining in. “Led by Giovanni Bruno and the voice of Domiron!” But he’s the only one who does it that way. The others sing: “Led by Giovanni Bruno, we shall go marching on!” So Domiron’s out. The rest of Mrs. Norton’s contributions as well, probably. He decides to shut up until he gets the whole picture. “So come and march with us to Glory!” Their own battle hymn. Not a song to tamp down the emotions, but it brings a certain order to them, makes them less dangerous, even as it stirs them up. Somehow it’s the rhymes that do that, like little fasteners. Buttons. “For the end of time has come!”

When the song is over, Duke and his woman wave their goodbyes. “Peace!” Duke says. Pach’ wants to leave with them, needs a beer, relief from all this shit, but he can’t, wouldn’t look right, and he still has hopes of connecting with Elaine. Runny-nosed Davey Cravens comes over and stands beside him, takes his hand. “You’re my friend,” he says, looking up at him. Big Hunk Rumpel, Mrs. Cravens’ current man, rumbles forward in his split tunic and takes Davey up by the scruff. “It’s okay,” Pach’ says, but Hunk just turns away and hauls the kid on up the path toward the lodge, the boy yelping and bawling all the way. Hunk never seems to say much, but at work today he took to Pach’ right away and Pach’ felt adopted by him. Respect of strength for strength. The old prison code. Maybe Hunk’s done time too. Seeing what just happened to Davey, Hunk is not much improvement on the old man Pach’ got stuck with, but he’s someone you might want to have in your corner when things get tough.

Before Mrs. Collins can pick up where she got cut off, Abner Baxter starts up a rant of his own, like he’s been threatening to do all along. He doesn’t say so, but his Bible quotes seem to equate the temple idea with idol worship. That’s how Pach’ reads them anyway, and the look on Clara’s face suggests it’s how she reads them too. Elaine watches her mother with some alarm, her hand at her mouth, her shoulders hunched, while Baxter rails against pride and vanity and speaks up for the poor. “And therefore I command you, saith the Lord, thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land!” He is getting a lot of shouted amens and some people start clapping in rhythm to all his “thy’s.” This probably has something to do with how their money is to be spent. It came up at lunch, too. People who want a place to stay, not another church. Pach’ can only watch. He’s on the other side of the world from these people now. Baxter turns toward his constituents, raising both arms. He is angry about the use of sheriff’s troops to clear the tents off the Mount of Redemption and sealing it off and he thunderously says so. Pach’ only wishes he could go take Elaine’s hand and lead her out of here.

Who comes to take his hand, walking over in front of everyone, is Baxter’s daughter, Amanda. She presses up beside him and says she wants to be his friend, too. In this half-light they may not notice how red his face is, must be, and how his acne’s flaring up. He looks around in the sudden silence for help. He’s afraid Elaine might get the wrong idea. Certainly Amanda’s father seems to have got the wrong idea; he’s sputtering and his face is puffed up like he’s about to have a fit, his stupid son boiling up beside him. Luckily, the other Baxter girl, the older frumpy one, quietly takes charge. “She’s kinda simple,” she mutters by way of apology, and leads the girl away, and Pach’ thanks her. All these crazy kids. Pach’ is beginning to feel like the Pied Piper. Of course, people didn’t like the Pied Piper either, did they?

Elaine puts her arms around him and hugs him close. She tells him tearfully how much she loves him, how she’s missed him. Don’t ever leave me again, Carl Dean. She calls him Carl Dean? Probably. Pach’ doesn’t seem right. She’s such a tender fragile person, she can’t even imagine savage Indians. When he slides his hand down to hold her little bottom, she doesn’t complain. She presses closer to him and releases a little gasp, a kind of sob. He can feel her tummy pushing against him. “I love you, Elaine,” he whispers, and she trembles and grips him tightly as the sweet night closes down around them. He tugs gently at her bottom to rub her tummy against his hard-on. He desperately wants her to take it in her mouth. But would she, could she? No, but Sissy does, lapping lovingly at it with his little puppy tongue. Pach’ is somewhat alarmed by this, and he pauses to worry about it. He spent a lot of time and spunk jerking off in prison, but otherwise he stayed clean. Except for little Sissy, as they called him. Her. Sissy was more girl than guy and the men called him “she” and “her,” and eventually Pach’ did, too, but never in ridicule. Sissy had a little dick and it got hard like a pencil stub when he was excited, but he was curvy and cuddly with innocent blue eyes and puckery lips and a snow-white bottom, soft and round as a girl’s. “Sissy” was for “Sister,” both as in family and in nun: he liked to dress up like one, using prison blankets. Even the screws thought this was funny, and several of them were probably serviced by Sissy in that costume. He was in for drugs and as an accessory to murder, a murder committed by his boyfriend, whom he then tried to hide. His boyfriend died in a drug-crazed shootout with the cops, and Sissy was taken in. And one sad and lonely night when Pach’ could not stop thinking about Elaine, Sissy took him in his mouth and he let him do that. Sissy said he’d never seen one that big and it almost frightened him. Eventually he had Sissy in other ways, too, but always while thinking about Elaine. And now, lying in the back of his van only yards away from her (he has been unable to take his gaze away from the lighted windows of their trailer, even though the blinds are pulled) and humping his pillow while fantasizing about her, it is Sissy who has taken her place. That’s weird, and he doesn’t think he likes it. Sissy eventually got a tattoo of a little heart with a large Indian arrow through it and the words CRAZY APACHE — not over his heart, but on his little white left cheek, otherwise without a blemish. Sissy cried when Pach’ left prison and Pach’ felt bad, too. Poor little Sissy. Oh, what the hell. Out of affection, Pach’ lets him finish up.