Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

And then, suddenly, there it is. Behind several small half-sunken footstones set in a kind of semicircle like boundary markers (like footlights, he is thinking, at the edge of a stage): a lone grave with a tilting stone and the name Gabriel J. Brown. Gabriel: the Annunciation angel. J. Brown: Giovanni Bruno. Died: age 33. Christ’s age. The Prophet’s own age on the Day of Redemption, and maybe the year he was killed, too. On the stone: the Brunist symbol of a cross in a circle. And an ominous warning: “Awake! Believe! Repent! Thy bones as mine are only lent!” He realizes the other two have gathered behind him. “Look at the date,” he says. He is calm now, free from fear or loathing.

“That was a long time ago.”

“No, Billy Don. I mean the day.” There is a distant rumble of ominous thunder.

“Six, seven. Ah. Wow. June the seventh.”

He feels the devilish girl shrink away. Was that a hissing sound?

I don’t feel like I’ve come to the right place. How did you end up here?

“I don’t know. It just seemed to happen.” They are passing down West Condon’s dark dripping Main Street with its facing rows of squat one- and two-story brick buildings staring sullenly at one another across a patched and repatched blacktopped street as if in chagrin or regret. Some are boarded up, others gaudily SALE-signed, the signs tattered with age. The rain has let up and there are breaks in the clouds, but there are still distant rumbles. It is Friday, a shopping day, and May Day on top of it, and there may be action out at the highway shopping centers, but nothing is happening here. The streets are empty but for a scatter of old rusted-out clunkers and muddy pickups looking as though they simply broke down where parked a decade or so ago, and were left to sit as monuments to ruin. The only shop doing any apparent business is a package liquor store down a side street. “A challenging ministry.”

You can say that again. This place exudes sin like sweat. Those wet bricks stink with it, the gutters are running with it. Smell it? Like old socks. A seed of evildoers. These poor lost devils were shapen in iniquity, as the saying goes, and in sin did their mothers conceive them. What in my name are we doing out here?

A shoe store clerk steps out for a curbside smoke as they pass by. They exchange nods. He looks down at Wesley’s shoes. “I was tired of being kept like a pet in a windowless cage,” Wesley says. “I wanted to see daylight.”

“I know what you mean,” the shoe store clerk agrees gloomily, flicking his butt into the wet street, and Jesus says: I am the light of the world, son. What more do you need? “If you want to trade those old dogs in for some genuine vintage classics, come on in. I got a sale on. Whole damned store.”

“Another time, thanks. Fresh air. I need fresh air.”

“Suit yourself,” says the shoe store clerk. Jesus says nothing, but Wesley feels a little tremor in his solar plexus or thereabouts, as though Jesus might just have shrugged.

Prissy seemed unusually excited and distracted this morning, and when she dashed off to do her shopping, she left the side door leading to the kitchen open, so he and his indwelling Christ just walked out. There was something very strange at first about the streets. As if they were not quite real. Eerie. It was raining lightly, but it was not the rain. Then it occurred to him. It was the daylight. The garage dance studio has only one window at the back, painted black, so there is not much difference in there between night and day, and he has somewhat lost his notion of diurnal time. Prissy sometimes brings him supper when he’s expecting breakfast. Also there are no mirrors out on the streets, at least not in the residential neighborhood, the shop windows that remain here on Main Street having dimly restored the studio’s ambience of replicative enclosure.

The Chamber of Commerce office looks closed, last autumn’s high school football schedule still pasted up on its fly-specked window. A furniture and appliances store is offering its stock for rental as well as sale. Next to it, a bald-headed barber wearing a stained butcher’s apron sits in his own chair, thumbing through a tattered magazine. He glances up at Wesley, raises his eyebrows in inquiry, shakes his head, returns to his magazine. Prissy cuts his hair now, shaping it, as she says, to suit his new image as a prophet. It is longer, he has sideburns now, and he has not shaved for a few days.

There is a bus pulled in at the corner station, which doubles as a juvenile hangout with its soda fountain and pinball machines. No one is getting on or off the bus, which is headed west according to the destination announced at the top of the front window. He has not told Jesus where he is going. There are no secrets between them, so he has also not told himself. But now the cat is out of the bag. He is going to the bank to get some money to buy a bus ticket. He can feel Jesus’ sour complaints more than hear them. “You have told me to remember the old rule of the prophet,” he says. “And you just said this place is so full of sin it smells like dirty socks.” A bald guy in a bowtie leaving the bank — a member of his former congregation, best he can recall — seems about to object to that, then changes his mind, dances out of his way.

Well, I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, and this is a good place for that.

“There are sinners everywhere,” he reminds Jesus, pushing on into the bank. “If we stay here, we’re just going to get into trouble. Wouldn’t you like to hit the open road?”

Nah. I like it here, Christ says. There are three women in the bank behind the counters. Knowing Christ’s preferences, he goes to the prettiest one. I think I’m in love.

“In love— ?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?” the girl says, attempting a friendly smile, but flushing visibly as if he’s found her out. Well, he’s a prophet now. He probably has.

“Pardon is granted, my child.” He returns her smile and hands her his checkbook. “I would like to make a withdrawal, please.” She takes his checkbook with trembling hands and goes to check the account. Jesus says: It was her “Dance of the Seven Veils” that really got to me. She said it was a kind of requiem for my poor cousin, and I was deeply moved. “Perhaps we can take her with us,” Wesley suggests, gazing at the young woman who has returned. She glances anxiously at the other women, who watch him now with big round eyes. Ah. Yes. There’s an idea. “How much is there, my dear? I think I’d like to take it all.”

“There’s…there’s nothing in your account, Reverend Edwards. The account is closed.”

“Closed? Closed?” he roars, and the women all jump an inch or so off the floor. The young woman serving them crosses herself, and, inside, Jesus winces. It might be a good idea to ask who has done this, he says. “You let me handle this!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Who has done this? Who has closed my account?”

“I–I don’t know, sir.”

“Where is the thieving iniquitous money changer who runs this unholy establishment?”

“Who? You mean Mr. Cavanaugh? He’s not here today, Reverend Edwards! I’ll call the, uh, the assistant manager upstairs!”

Look, you’ve frightened her. It might be wise…

“No need to be frightened, my child. This is a mere business matter. Ha ha. Your soul is not in danger.” He has meant that as a mere lighthearted jest, but she looks more terrified than ever.

“Charlie?” she is whispering loudly into the phone. “It’s Angie. Come quickly!”

“Is Charlie the assistant manager?”

“Yes, sir, he’ll — he’ll be down in a minute.”