The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  So, Georgie decides, tossing in another losing hand, is this dump. He feels suffocated by the dead. He looks around the table. Even these guys are dead. The whole fucking town is a town of the walking dead, and he’s going to be one of them unless he moves his ass. Besides, if he wants to score tonight, he should get on the road while he still has coin left to operate with. He had thought to invite these guys along, but he really doesn’t want to be around them any longer. He glances at his empty wrist and announces he has a date waiting for him, gotta go. He had made the mistake of tossing some money on the table when he sat down and, as he gets up to leave, Carlo reaches over and snatches up a couple of loose skins. “Now you owe me three,” he says.

  “Ruby,” he says, leaning his heavy head against her wheel, “Ruby… what I really feel like doing is shooting somebody.” Georgie is sitting in the Blue Moon Motel parking lot waiting for the old girl to warm up, sucking on the joint the Moroni kid gave him. Soft wet snow is falling like a punchline for the stupid joke that is his life. On the travel office window this morning, he saw a sign advertising holidays at a beach place called Brazil. Where he ought to be. Where he deserves to be. Wherever it is. He’s cold, wearing only a shirt and jacket, feeling miserable. The only way morning’s promise is going to be fulfilled is in a Waterton whorehouse, provided they still exist and he can find an old puttana who will take what little money he—he and his mother—have left. Ever hopeful even in deepest despair, he assumes that, on a shit night like this, they’ll take any trade they can get.

  The motel was the last stop on his desperate but futile nightlong quest. For what? Cunt? More than that. Some kind of affirmation is what he was looking for. Some justification. Just a pleasant conversation with some pretty young thing would have been nice. He is full of sorrow and could have used an arm around his shoulder. A soft breast to nuzzle. The roadhouses weren’t completely empty. Worse. Those few out on the crummy night were all juveniles. Drunken teenage high school kids. Boys pissing themselves with their own confused excitement, a few girls going bad. Well, that was all right. Hey, let’s rock. Georgie felt like one of them—he was one of them. But they didn’t feel like one of him. They called him an old pervert. Baldy, they called him. Gramps. In one place, an unshaven kid they were calling Grunge even threatened to take him outside and beat the shit out of him if he didn’t fuck off. He would have welcomed a brawl, but his own team had a membership of one and those red-eyed boys with erections bulging their jeans didn’t look like they would know when to stop. Then a short stocky guy with a fedora tipped down over his broken nose swaggered over and told Grunge to lay off. “Pal of my dad’s,” he said. “You worked out at Deepwater, right?” Georgie acknowledged that he did, and recognizing now the tipped lid, he introduced himself and said he was in the mine the night it blew up and killed his dad. “Been away since then. Just checking out the old haunts. Ran into your granddad today, too. At the Hog. Nonno Moroni’s the toughest bastard I ever knew.” “Yeah. Who I’m named after. But this is a private party, Georgie. Sorry.” “I smell fresh-baked cookies.” Young Nazario smiled faintly, fished out a joint and handed it to him. “On the house. Lemme know if you’re in the market for more. Me or one of my boys will fix you up. With whatever. Ciao.”

  By the time he had reached the Moon, he was no longer looking for women; he was happy only to sink into a drunken stupor and let his life end that way. Just as well, for there were no women to be had, unless one of the two couples in the room should have a blowup and leave a partner behind. He had hoped to catch the old girl who used to play a melancholic piano in here, but she had been replaced by one of those twangy hillbilly types, a long loose assembly of bones with some skin on them, wearing a sweaty cowboy hat and a plaid shirt. Boots that looked like they might not have been off his feet since he grew into them. When Georgie took his stool alone at the bar, the hick was singing about dead mommies and daddies, which was a real pick-up. There were two older people in a booth back in a dark corner and a young couple on the dance floor sort of melted into each other, mouths together, the guy’s big mitt on the girl’s plump little ass, the other holding her hand and pressed against her boobs. The Georgie Porgie of old might have cut in on the young stud, he could still show the little cunt a trick or two, but he had taken enough knocks for the night. “…And each night as I wander through the graveyard, darkness hides me where I kneel to pray…” Holy shit. They’re getting off on lines like that? When they parted mouths long enough to go into deep-gaze mode, Georgie recognized the girl from Sunday at church: Bonali’s hotpants daughter. The one at the bank. The boy, who was at least a foot taller, looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him. Everybody around here looked familiar. It was a kind of curse. Even the bartender turned out to be a punk from the neighborhood, a kid who was in grade school when Georgie was in high school. Only he wasn’t a kid anymore either. Beardy. Already developing a gut. “White dove will mourn in sorrow,” the hayseed whined, and Georgie, though suffering a deep grief of his own, decided if there was one more fucking chorus, he was going to trash the place. Gratefully, the song came to an end, though the lovers stayed in their swaying clinch on the dance floor, grinding away softly. The girl spotted Georgie past the boy’s elbow (Georgie winked, she ducked) and whispered something to the boy and they left, and the older couple soon followed them out. The woman was either a whore or somebody’s wife. If he’d come here earlier, he might have made out. It was when everyone was out of the place that, looking around, you realized how filthy it was.

  The singer did an Elvis imitation of “When the Blue Moon Turns to Gold,” apparently the house theme and just for him, for him and the bartender, who applauded, then, setting down his guitar, came over to the bar, to try to cadge a drink maybe, and Georgie told him flat out he hated hillbilly music. “Go fuck a horse,” he said. The guy only grinned faintly out of the side of his mouth and shrugged and said there wasn’t much else he knew how to do except drink and split the beaver, maybe Georgie had a better idea for picking up enough small change to get by. He didn’t. That eased things, and though neither could afford to buy the other a drink, they ended up trading tales, leaning there on the bar, Georgie finding himself telling the truth for a change about his fucked up family and fucked up life, while the singer, who introduced himself as Duke (Georgie gave him his Italian name, just to let him know where he was coming from), told him about the shit life of the country music road circuit, and the even shittier life of the bush leagues. He said, when asked, he used to throw a little, and Georgie said he used to hit a little but could never stay sober enough to go pro. Georgie even got around to telling about the girl who had been killed, the girl who was, he only realized this just now, the true love of his life. “One thing about country music,” Duke said, “is they got a song for ever damn thing that ever went wrong. They ain’t many differnt tunes, but some words is better’n others.” “And some words are worse,” Georgie said and asked him why he was singing that sick mommy and daddy graveyard merda when he came in. “The girl ast for it. It was the third time I’d done ‘White Dove’ for the moony little thing tonight. Probly has to do with the first night she got laid. Most usually does.” Georgie felt warm enough toward Duke by then to ask him if he’d like to join him on a run to Waterton, go give the dog a bone, but Duke said it was still too early, he had to stay on until midnight in case anyone came in. “But I’ll be around. Got no place to go. Drop in agin.”

  The fat unseasonal snow is still falling in thick clots as Georgie, hunched over the steering wheel, pulls out of the motel parking lot. After the warm day, it is mostly melting as it falls, though it is a nuisance without windshield wipers and the roads are greasing up. Ruby is making a farting noise; that cheap gas he bought was probably watered down. Ought to forget it. Way he’s feeling, he may not be able to raise a boner anyway. But it’s his last chance while he still has wheels. Lem will be pissed off enough about him keeping the car overnight, especially since he won’t be buying it
, so no chance for seconds—it’s tonight or who knows. Another thing he should have picked up on his rounds, he considers, was a pack of Redi-Wets. Old Doc Foley used to give all the boys free rubbers and showed them with a broom handle how to use them. Could use some now, but he’s not a boy any longer. Learned that tonight if he didn’t know it before. And anyway, it’s too late, he’s already a VD donor.

  “Goddamn it, Ruby,” Georgie asks, “what’s all this for? If life is such shit, why do we go on living it?” He answers himself: Because you’re scared not to, asshole. And because there’s always hope for one more piece of tail. He pats the dashboard (he’s glad he didn’t turn her in, he’d be all alone without her), his nose at the windshield, trying to see through it, thinking about dying. Or rather, trying not to, but unable to keep it out. Where was Marcella Bruno killed? On this road? No, out by the mine. “What’s it like, Ruby? What happens when you die?” The Waterton road is empty, almost spookily so. Nobody else fool enough to be out. No risk of hitting anybody, but it is easy to lose the road altogether. Can’t see through the window but when he sticks his head out he gets snow in his face. Maybe he should never let Ruby go, he’s thinking. Just drive through Waterton and keep on rolling. Go somewhere warm, make some money, fix her up. Whitewall tires. Radio. Leopard-skin seat covers, soft to stroke. Then he sees it, a small dark thing scurrying across the snowy road out in front of him with glowing ruby dots where its eyes are. It startles him with its sudden challenging presence. Raccoon maybe. Cat. Squirrel. Whatever. It’s dead meat. Georgie floors the accelerator. No pickup at all. If anything the old girl slows down. He knows if he can hit this thing, everything will be all right. “Come on, sweetheart, throw your hips into it! You can do it!” His fingers are snapping at the wheel as if working pinball flippers, his whole body twisting and pushing. The animal has frozen. He’s got it! And then, just as he’s about to score, Ruby starts to fishtail, he whips the wheel back and forth trying to straighten her out, everything is suddenly spinning around him, trees that weren’t there wheeling about in front of his face, and he braces for the impact.

  The whumping crumple of metal is not as loud as he’d expected, though in the silence that follows it echoes loudly in his mind. He has been thrown around, whacked his head on the window, but he’s okay. He switches off the motor, leaves the lights on, crawls out. He has wrapped Ruby around a light pole on the passenger side, the old girl nearly cloven in half at the waist, her rear end at an angle to the rest of her. “Oh, baby. I’m sorry.” He is. It is the saddest thing that has happened in a long sad day. He’s even crying a little. For her. For himself. He walks around her in the falling snow, whispering his apologies. His farewells. He crawls back in on the driver’s side to rescue the centerfold, looking a bit the worse for wear. He kisses the steering wheel, getting out. He has a long walk back to face. But first he clambers up on Ruby’s hood and, kneeling there in pious homage, lowers his pants, and using the centerfold’s taunting raised ass to arouse himself, jerks off on Ruby’s cracked windshield, fantasizing a loving blowjob (“Marcella! I love you!” he whispers as he comes). His final blessing. He wipes himself with the centerfold, no doubt inking his dick colorfully, and, a mile or so down the snowy road toward town, tosses it in the ditch.

  I.5

  Wednesday 1 April – Friday 3 April

  Her true love is wedged deep inside her as if trying to take root there. Oh, would that he might! She squeezes as hard as she can, gripping his muscular bottom tightly, her ankles locked around his thighs, wishing this moment could last forever. She feels like she is in Heaven, floating on silvery clouds (she will say so later in her diary), waves of ecstasy throbbing through her like a sweet angelic storm. Five years of a terrible emptiness, this is what he is filling. Her dark ages. Oh, oh! Her whole being is flooded with rapturous delight. Soft white snow is falling all about them like the feathers of a dove, curtaining them where they lie on her bed of dreams in the back of Tommy’s mother’s station wagon. “Oh, I love you, Tommy!” she whispers. “With all my heart! I do!” Tommy moves slowly in her as though he too wishes to prolong this awesome moment for as long as possible, and as he does so she can feel her whole body begin to vibrate with liquid desire. He raises himself up to gaze adoringly down upon her and she knows herself to be a glowing image of fire, passion, and love.

  The day opened up warm and sweet, heralding a new awakening. Angela arose feeling blissfully happy, fully alive. No heroine she has ever read about ever felt more so. On her way to the bank, she saw a white dove perched on a telephone wire like a kind of miracle, and she crossed herself and prayed to it, and now what she prayed for has come true. Oh, thank you, God! Thank you, Santa Maria, madre di Dio, piena di grazie! “White Dove” is their song, a strange song for lovers, yet prophetic too, for their love is tinged with the sorrow of dead and dying mothers. It was playing on the car radio that night, when, as the only gift she had to give, she gave him her virginity out here at the ice plant. Where she insisted on coming tonight. A sacred place (now doubly so), a sacred day. His white dove, Tommy called her that night so long ago, kissing her breasts worshipfully. They were much smaller then, she was still just a child, immature in body and mind. She dried his beautiful organ with her own panties (there was precious blood), her head leaning against his chest, listening to his pounding heart. And this day (she is an April fool for love!) is now another for her secret calendar.

  He picked her up at the bank, not in his father’s car but in the family station wagon, which was now his own car up at college, his mother being too ill to drive. Angela had hoped to see the big Lincoln come rolling up front to receive her as it had in times past (she had told her friend Stacy to watch), but now she is grateful for the extra room. It had been her suggestion that he come to the bank so they could go for a ride first, for she really didn’t want him to come to her house where her sour old grump of a father would be sitting in his front porch rocker in his dirty clothes like he always is, drinking beer and bellyaching, coming out with who knows what awful remarks. They drove out to the lakes and nearly got right to it—a breast was out and his hand was between her legs almost before she knew it, and she knew she was soaking wet down there and feared for a moment she had lost the power to resist—but she jumped out of the car, gasping for breath, and they went for a walk holding hands and other things (well, his hands were all over, he could not restrain himself), and even as she walked along, she was suffering little orgasms almost like hiccups.

  It clouded over and a cold wind came up (her panties were off, she can’t even remember how that happened), so they went to the Blue Moon Motel for supper. She had a chicken salad sandwich, but she could only eat half of it, she was too excited, and she kept having to use the bathroom. It turned out there was a country singer in the lounge named Duke L’Heureux, so they went in, and since they were almost alone they danced for a while. Duke L’Heureux was pretty awful and they whispered jokes to each other about him (“What do you expect, with a name like that!”), but they asked him to sing “White Dove” for them and he did, several times, and Tommy bought him some drinks, so it was really a nice time, though Tommy’s hardness rubbing against her and his hands squeezing her breasts and pinching her nipples and stroking her bottom and crawling down between were driving her crazy. If he had asked her to take her clothes off and lie down on the dance floor, she would have done it. She wanted to get a room immediately in spite of all her romantic plans and she knew he was thinking the same thing, but then one of her father’s stupid friends turned up and started ogling her and she pulled Tommy out of there. It was beginning to snow when they returned to the car. It was very beautiful, and she reached into Tommy’s pants and took hold of him and kissed him hard on the mouth and asked him to drive to the ice plant, her head in his lap, kissing him all the way, and he had to stop for a moment to avoid having an accident.

  Now he is sliding back and forth in her with measured strokes, still gazing down upon her with a look of inten
se fascination in his eyes, as though he cannot see enough. And then he kisses her, tenderly yet hungrily, his tongue licking her lips and exploring the recesses of her mouth, while his thrusts become more urgent and his fingers reach for her other opening down below, sending electric tremors of pleasure and mad desire racing through her, and she rises to meet him in a moment of uncontrolled passion, crying out in her delight. When she was a little girl she had once heard her parents say of a friend of theirs who was not married but was expecting a child that she had been touched by the finger of God, and though the grownups seemed to think that was funny, it made Angela recall that painting in St. Peter’s in Rome of God’s finger, the one touching Adam. There was something so mighty and awesome about that finger, frightening even, and she had never forgotten it. That’s what it feels like inside her now. The finger of God.

  Snow is falling outside her window, recalling for her a long-ago walk through a snowy campus, a night of such exquisite purity, the flakes dropping past the lamps overhead like big soft petals. It was the first night he said he loved her, and during the long goodnight kisses outside her sorority, she let his hands cup her breasts. Such strong masculine hands—as was he in all respects—and so handsome, so passionate, and yet so kind and gentle. So loving. In the spring, she accepted his fraternity pin (his brothers serenaded her, singing the song with her name in it) and, trusting him implicitly, she surrendered to him before they separated for the Easter holidays. Which were agonizing days for both of them. Mail was slow and phone calls difficult and expensive, so he drove all the way to her parents’ house to see her, and they walked hand in hand along the river, and he made love to her standing up against a secluded tree, and though it was all so new to her, she was able to laugh at the awkwardness of it, and then, still joined together, she cried. As she is crying now, and without him here to comfort her. Nor wanting him, for he is no comfort. She shudders and calls for the home care nurse Bernice, asks her to bring her one of her photo albums. The long white one.