The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  “I’m sorry, Wes…”

  “If you guys in the Association had been doing your job, you wouldn’t have let this happen. You would have protected my rights. You’ve let me down.”

  “Well, I’d heard…”

  “You heard what those pharisaical church trustees, that brood of vipers, wanted you to hear. You have betrayed me to mine enemies, as the Good Book says. You’ve—no, I’m not going to tell him that.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not talking to you, Connie.”

  “Who are you talking to, Wes?”

  Oh oh. Here it comes. They are still three blocks from the Lutheran church. Prissy grips the wheel and tries desperately to think how to change the subject, but she’s never good at that. Wesley has hesitated. He’s probably thinking the same thing. “I’m talking to Jesus Christ,” he says finally. “He…has moved in.”

  Franny Baxter has been scouting the crowds at the bottom of the hill for purposes of her own. She is, plain and simple, looking for a man. Also plain and simple. She wants out of all this. What will her family do without her? She doesn’t care. She knows she has little to offer. She’s homely, scrawny on top and hippy below, has nothing to wear but her mother’s faded hand-me-downs, has pimples and hair where she shouldn’t, has never read a book she hasn’t had to, has a tin ear and is blind to beauty, both artificial and natural, has no interests she can think of, can’t carry a conversation past hello and goodbye (look how she chased off that Elliott girl who was only trying to be friendly), has few job prospects other than housecleaning, laundering, diner waitressing, and dishwashing. She has pretty much taken over all the womanly family functions with the baggy collapse of her mother, but that doesn’t mean she’s much of a cook or has any talent as a housekeeper. The minimum does it for Franny. But she’s also happy with little and can put up with anything except beatings and religion. She’s had enough of both for one lifetime. But a jobless drunk? A lazy foul-mouthed atheistic womanizer who’s never home? No problem. A dumb ugly cluck who doesn’t know what his thingie is for? All the better. She had spotted a couple of promising candidates among the hecklers before they got chased off. One in particular—a guy she knows, if barely. The kid brother of the dead husband of a friend of the family, the widow a former Nazarene who used to be in her father’s congregation, and now, if what she’s heard today from gossip queen Linda Catter is true, not much of anything. Like Franny herself. Fed up. Tess Lawson was always nice to her and she figures now she’ll try to get in touch with her and lay out her hopes and wishes and tell her she’s more or less in love with her brother-in-law Steve, so what should she do next? In love? Sure, she is. Why not? Clumsy lunks with big feet who scare easy and fall down when they get drunk? Just her style. She knows most everything about boys, leastways their backsides, and what she doesn’t know she’ll ask that woman Ludie Belle they’re all talking about.

  “Well, I just don’t know what to think, Duke. Those ladies want to hear a voice talk to them. Hel—lo—I—am—speak—ing—to—you -from—the—other—side…!”

  “Oh yeah, honey! Hah! I believe! The growl’s awesome!”

  “Or else they want to see something weird, like something moving by itself, a card or a spoon, you know. Spookshow stuff. But it’s not like that. I’m not reaching across any life-and-death divide or nothing. I don’t hear any voices. Not like the way you’re hearing me. I only sorta know what Marcella’s thinking. I’m just, like, tuned in.”

  “Still, you musta blowed their minds, Patti Jo, callin’ the shot on that ole lady expirin’ like that.”

  “Yeah, well, but I didn’t exactly, that’s just how they want to think of it. It’s that Mabel lady. She’s the smart one, reads the cards and suchlike, has a kinda gypsy knowhow. She’s the one who connects all the dots. I only just had the feeling all day yesterday, Marcella and me, that something worrying was gonna happen like it done before, that’s all, and I told them that. Coulda been most anything. Like what just happened down there at the foot of the hill.”

  “They are sudden to read a lot in a little…”

  “But you know, what if they’re right, Duke? I thought it was kinda scary before, now I don’t know what’s happening. Why did I feel like I had to come here just now when all these other people were coming here, too? It was like we were all in touch with something, or something was in touch with us. I mean, what do you think, Duke? What’s happening? What do you think I oughta do?”

  “Well, it ain’t my home ballpark, Patti Jo, but if I was your hittin’ coach, I’d say you should jist hang in fer a pitch or two, swing easy, and see what they throw at you next. We’re havin’ some good innings, we got us a live audience, Will Henry’s takin’ us on his radio show, I’m cookin’ up some new tunes to try out on the fans in the bleachers—and hey, I kinda like teamin’ up with you, little darlin’. Wherever.”

  “You’re really a sweet guy, Duke. And I’m so damned crazy. I don’t deserve it.”

  Over at the Wilderness Camp up on Inspiration Point, Ben Wosznik is sitting beside his dead dog, a shovel and shotgun across his lap. He gazes across at the Mount of Redemption, where, distantly, under late-afternoon overcast skies, the Brunist Followers mill about, waiting for the evening’s dedication ceremonies or else for the End. If the Rapture should happen now, he’d be a front-row witness to this spectacle, so inevitable yet so hard to imagine, but he might get overlooked in the gathering in of Christian souls. He should be getting back. He had set about to bury Rocky up here, where the old boy so loved to come when he and Clara used it as their own private chapel and talking-out place, but it still feels too polluted by the bikers’ recent presence. He’ll clean the area up tomorrow, but it will never be the same. Those cruel boys have probably spoiled it forever. Whatever forever is now in these last days. The scene up here at dawn this morning is still fixed in his mind, and he is only slowly coming to make sense of things. Abner’s boy seemed genuinely surprised when they found the gun in his backpack, Ben saw that. So if the kid didn’t steal it, how did it get there? “Why’d they do that to you, old fella? Must of been me they was after.” That was probably it. They’d supposed he’d planted the gun on them to get them thrown out of the camp, maybe after he caught them in the camp kitchen, and they took their revenge. “But who really done it, then?” Who stole the gun in the first place? And the money? But left the shotgun? Somebody in a hurry. He may want to ask Abner about what happened when he first arrived yesterday, though that’s apt only to put the man on the defensive again and stir up old feelings, never far from the surface, that the world is against him. Well, he’s been going through a lot, that man. He only just gets his feet on the ground and his boys trip him up again. There was a tearful moment early this morning, standing up here, when, just for a second, Abner’s vulnerability showed through, and his pain. A sympathy grew up between them—Ben felt it, too—but it hasn’t lasted. Abner is no longer so alone, his old buds Roy and Jewell having turned up today to egg him on, so he’s recovering some of his contentious nature, and now, after what all else has happened, Ben’s own forgiving nature is being sorely tested. Down below, the camp has been plundered. Cabin doors left gaping. Much of the food gone, medications. The lodge vandalized. Windows smashed. Vehicles in the parking lot and down at the trailer park broken into, though he’d hid his shotgun well and they never discovered it. But: Rocky’s headless body on his kitchenette table. He found the doves’ heads in the empty camp kitchen refrigerator, blindly staring out, beaks open as though begging for food or water. He tossed them down the hole in the men’s privy. No need for people to have to see that. But he will have to tell them what has happened. Far across the way, the old tipple and water tower, silhouetted against the soft gray sky, stand like tomb markers over an old Indian burial mound. Which helps him think what it is he’ll do.

  “When I was a lad

  ’N old Rocky a pup

  Over hills’n meadows we’d stray,

  Jist a boy an
d his dog,

  We was both fulla fun,

  We grew up together that way…”

  The sun, hidden all day, peeks out through a break in the clouds and casts a soft tender farewell ray on the back slope of the old mine hill. Ben Wosznik’s beloved dog Rockdust is being laid to rest in a freshly dug hole there, wrapped in his own blanket, while Brother Duke L’Heureux, the famous Nashville singer, guitar around his neck, sings a special version of the classic “Old Shep” in Rocky’s memory, bringing tears to the eyes of the mourners. For mourners they are, though it be but a dog. When that poor animal’s head tumbled into their midst today, following so close upon the shocking passing of Sister Harriet Mc-Cardle, something of their past lives suddenly ended and they found themselves face to face with that which they have so often prayed for, yet cannot help but dread: the imminent end of time. This is what the horror of Rocky’s severed head said to them, and it left them full of hope, and it left them full of fear.

  “When I come home from the mines

  Or from workin’ the land,

  Old Rocky would be by the door,

  Now them boys took a knife,

  And ended his life,

  I cain’t believe he won’t be there no more…”

  Many are kneeling, murmuring their own prayers, many more are crying, caught up in a grief that embraces not only Brother Ben and his martyred dog, but also themselves and the whole wide world. They can’t believe it won’t be there no more. But they do believe it. That is why they are here. As the lone ray of sun fades away, sucked back into the western sky like a withdrawn promise, and the song moves into the final verse, several others join in: Sister Patti Jo Glover, Sister Betty Wilson Clegg, Brother Will Henry in his fine white hat, those young folks from Florida, and then, invited by Brother Duke, just about everybody, even Brother Ben, the tears rolling down his craggy cheeks into his thick gray beard…

  “Dear old Rocky has gone

  Where the good doggies go,

  And no more with old Rocky I’ll roam,

  But if dogs have a Heaven,

  There’s one thing I know,

  Old Rocky has a wonderful home!”

  A sad chorus of “amens” echoes up and down the hillside as people rise to their feet and wipe their eyes and dirt is thrown on the shallow grave. Before returning to the other side of the hill, Brother Hiram Clegg remembers to say a word in remembrance of Sister Harriet McCardle, and then Brother Duke and Brother Will and Sister Patti Jo lead them all in the singing of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand…”

  “Lead me on, let me stand,

  I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m alone,

  Through the storm, through the night,

  Lead me on to the light,

  Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home…”

  Yea, lead me on to the light: This is their fervent prayer. It is the Brunist message of the new dispensation, the new covenant—the Coming of Light—and so they baptize by light as well, for that is who they are. The Army of the Sons and Daughters of Light. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light, for God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. How often have they heard that today! But when they return to the dusky eastern slope where all the tents are and where so much has happened on this momentous day, it is like stepping into the onrushing night, as if the burial has somehow brought the day to an abrupt end and plunged them all into what may be the final hours. Campfires are being built and lit against the encroaching dark and the apprehensive Followers are gathering around them, talking, praying, recounting the movement’s origins and years of persecution, reading from the Bible, reciting the words of the Prophet, confessing, preaching, singing, trying to find their place in this epochal event that has never happened before and will only happen once in human history—and perhaps at any moment. A great cosmic drama, promised since the beginning of time, is being enacted, the hill whereon they stand its stage and they its chosen actors, all caught up in the fulfillment of prophecy in the way that Simon the Zealot or Thomas the Twin, Mary the wife of Clopas, the tax collectors Zacchaeus and Matthew, the Samaritan leper or the woman from Canaan, ordinary folk one and all, were caught up in the First Coming of Christ Jesus the Messiah, also anciently prophesied and glorious in its fulfillment. And did those feel something of the same rush of awe and anticipation and even something like stage fright felt by these here tonight, as history dissolves into eternity?

  Throughout the day they have stood together in vast numbers against the enemies of the faith, spreading out over the hillside in their white garments of purity as though taking command of the earth itself, claiming it for Christ Jesus, and they felt great comfort in these numbers, which seemed to confirm the decisions they have taken and which gave them the sense, often verging on ecstasy, of participating in something far larger than themselves; this evening, in the dimming of the light, it is their aloneness that they feel, their smallness in the universe, and the strangeness of that universe, and, whatever their other differences, their shared courage in the face of that strangeness and that smallness, and their shared faith in God’s goodness and His care and protection of His chosen ones, for the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. God feels close by and people are talking to Him directly, like He’s there in the air about ten feet over their heads, and sometimes passing right through them in the way that light flows through a window, say, or the way, as a Wisconsin schoolteacher in their midst puts it, that thought passes from neuron to neuron over the intervening synapses, or, to put it in words better understood by most (as she does), the way that thoughts go from head to head, and sometimes without a word being spoken. Oh yes, their heads are full of strange new thoughts that have reached them from who knows where.

  Though for most, leaving the Mount of Redemption on this day is inconceivable (the Rapture—which is silent and sudden—can happen at any second), some have done so. Mr. John P. Suggs has been gone for several hours, though it is said he will be back for the tabernacle dedication service, and that his purpose was to deal with the threat posed by the banker. Will Henry returned to the radio station after the funeral service for all the evening programs, taking Brother Duke L’Heureux and Sister Patti Jo Glover with him. She is said to be in contact with the spirit of the Prophet’s sister, and agreed to go only if she was back here by ten o’clock; meaning, the dead girl’s spirit must have told her something, so they should be safe until ten. The sheriff also left the hill, though he is not a believer and once access was sealed off and troops posted, had no official reason to stay, though many have prayed for his conversion. But then he had to be called back when Brother Ben returned from the Wilderness Camp (another who seems to be coming and going incautiously) to report the raid on the camp by the biker boys. He and the sheriff went over there together, the sheriff angry with himself for not having left somebody to guard it, and he did so immediately. For most, the assault on the camp is yet another alarming sign that the end might be at hand, though for some it is also seen as retribution for the selfishness of their leaders, thinking too little about the plight of their most committed Followers.

  For there are many here among the Followers who, fearful of the fate of Ananias and his wife, have sold or given away all they have, following the call of Jesus and of the Prophet himself to “Leave everything and follow me!” and “Come to the Mount of Redemption!” and for them, should God not rapture his church tonight, there is no clearly defined tomorrow. They have no place to go and nothing to do when they get there, as the saying goes. So, in spite of the general opinion that today is only the anniversary of a great historic moment, the true Coming not likely to occur for at least another two years, these Followers still believe strongly (they are scanning the darkening sky for the lights of spaceships or other unnatural and cataclysmic events, the children especially finding this an exciting adventure) that the Rapture will come tonight and must come, for tomorrow is unimaginable. Some are now ca
mping out, often several families to a house, in the Chestnut Hills prefab development, thanks to Brother John P. Suggs, who built and owns much of it. But, being penniless by faith, they cannot pay the rents that begin tomorrow. Others are living like refugees in the homes of locals or in tents in the fields around, and this cannot go on. So, although they love and admire Sister Clara, they cannot agree with her (it’s easier for her and her friends—they have reserved all the best places at the camp for themselves and won’t let others in), and are drawn rather to those with a more urgent and immediate message, like Reverend Abner Baxter and his son Young Abner and all their followers. Though Brother Abner has largely been shunned by the official leaders and silenced by the gruesome acts earlier today of his wild younger sons (has Brother Ben Wosznik, as is rumored, done something unpardonable for which the killing of his dog was retribution?), he is attuned to their needs and convictions. He is not so lovable as Sister Clara or Brother Ben, but he is of one mind with them. He believes that the Tribulation has already begun, and they do too. He speaks boldly about the imminence of the Second Coming, interprets for them the mystery of the seven seals, the seven trumpets and the seven bowls (he is especially vivid on the topics of hailstorms, rivers of blood, mountains of fire, and loathsome sores), honors the Prophet more than any other, and preaches, as did the Evangelist Luke, that all in the movement are of one heart and soul and no one possesses anything of his own, but they all have everything in common; nor should there be a needy person among them, for those who have possessions must sell them and share the proceeds with all.