The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  Isaiah Blaurock came past about then, just before the shooting at the tipple commenced, looking both fierce and quietly determined, like he always does, and Uriah thought he might have brought them all something to eat, but instead he just gathered up his three younguns from under the feet of Jesus and, without a word, carried them down to the foot of the hill where his pickup was parked. His wife Dot, who was just asking Jesus about the marriage supper of the Lamb, when could they start tucking in, seemed as surprised as everyone else and just stood there for a moment watching him go. Then she tossed her little one over her shoulder and went gallumphing after, shouting back over her shoulder: “Hold on! We’re going for reinforcements!” Which was when that boy started screaming about the Antichrist.

  Now, they’re still blasting away at the tipple like it’s the Fourth of July (and maybe it is, wasn’t it supposed to happen sometime soon?)—“I got her!” someone shouts—when a number of armed men appear from different angles at the crest of the hill with rifles pointed down at them, and order them to lay down their arms in the name of the law; they’re all under arrest. Italians by the look of them, though others cry out that it’s the Powers of Darkness. And they could be both at the same time, because it was the Romans who crucified Jesus, wasn’t it? “We are afflicted from all sides,” Jesus says, seeming somewhat exasperated. The boy won’t stop shrieking and somebody says, “Who is that crazy kid? Shut him up before he gets us all shot!” and somebody else says, “Sshh! He’s one of the First Followers!” “What?” Young Darren puts his arm around him and he eases up and starts to sob softly and Darren leads him downhill, away from the center of things, toward the “doorway,” as it might be called, of the outlined temple.

  And then that mean cuss McDaniel from the Christian Patriots points his rifle straight at the armed men’s leader, the one wearing a badge, and shouts back that he’s the acting sheriff out here and is the boss and he is arresting them if they don’t clear out immediately, or stormy words to that effect, not all completely Christian, and besides, he says, we got a lot more guns, so if you want to have a shootout, let’s get started. Then for a moment they’re all just standing there with their rifles and shotguns loaded, waiting to see who’ll shoot or back down first, the overhead sun casting ominous shadows under their brows and noses. Down on the mine road, a parade of yellow school buses with soldiers in them are pulling in and also some police cars with their sirens cranked up. “Reckon it’s time to go take a leak,” mutters the beardy fellow Uriah has been conversing with and he looks for a place to toss his smoke, finally just stubs it out inside his canvas bag and hands the bag to Uriah and asks him to hold it for him until he gets back. Hovis asks who that was and Uriah says it was a fellow from their parts who was agreeable to talk to if you could get past his smell. “He knowed a lotta friendsa ourn, or said he did when I mentioned ’em. Said he seen us on the tellyvision and come a-runnin’.” “Where’s he gone now?” “Off to take a leak, he said.” “With Sister Wanda? Don’t seem right.” “No. But you know Sister Wanda.” “She looked purty skeered.” “Well, I’m skeered, too.” “Whaddaya reckon’s in the bag?” “Cain’t say. Didn’t ask and t’ain’t polite to—”

  Far from all these apocalyptical doings and without access to any TV screens now broadcasting them internationally in all their entertaining horror (the blast on the side of the mine hill is so powerful it knocks back the cameras and the images go bouncing up to the sky and back and even end up sideways, and by now everybody’s watching—wow! did you see that?), Georgie Lucci has just made his fortune. Long overdue and much deserved, beloved and noble faccia da culo, gran testa di cazzo that he is. At the airport, the mayor told him to wait in the car while he got the tickets. He left the briefcase in the back seat, but showed Georgie he still had the key: “No fucking funny biz, partner. I’ll just be a jiff.” Once the chump was out of sight, Georgie took off, barreling down the highway bat-outa-hellwise aiming for the state line, laughing all the way, pounding the wheel with his palm, jerking on his boner, blowing thankful kisses at la bella Marcella, his Lady Luck, his Virgin Mary, his Red-Hot Ruby, blowing kisses as well at his nonna, his mother, even the puttana who gave him his present dose, singing “Fly Me to the Moon” at the top of his voice, and imagining what he was going to do with all that money. He figures if that crook Castle said Brazil, that’s the one place he’s not going. He doesn’t know where it is, but it did sound cool, full of naked young ficas lying around on soft golden beaches, all aquiver with pent-up desire. A kind of island paradise, how he pictured it. But, too bad, he’ll have to miss it. He’s not that stupid. There are other beaches, other hot women. When he’s out of the state and far enough away to risk it, he pulls over beside some roadside picnic tables. The briefcase is a tough nut to crack; the mayor knew what he was doing when he bought it. His knife is as useless as a soft dick against a resistant maidenhead, so he takes the limo’s crowbar to it, alternatively smashing and prying at it, one eye on the highway for cops or snoopers. He speaks sweet nothings to the briefcase while he beats it. “Spread, amore! Show me what you got!” The lock breaks at last and he jimmies the case open. What he finds inside is wadded newspaper. Old yellowing West Condon Chronicles. The ones with the old Cunt Hill photos that caused such a storm. Like the one raging inside him. He’s grinning, can’t help it, but he’s murderously pissed. He leaves the newspapers to blow in the wind, hops back in the limo, pockets the revolver he’d noticed Castle hiding in the glove compartment, and guns it back to the airport. Where, after an emergency call from the mayor of West Condon, they are waiting for him. Caution. He may be armed.

  When officer Bo Bosticker reached the police station at the end of his odyssey through the burning town, he found the front of it reduced to a pile of grimly decorated sticks and stones, though the unlit holding cell at the back was still intact and occupied. He himself had arrested Cokie Duncan the night before for loud-cussing, pissing-in-the-street, fall-down drunk behavior, and as the otherwise agreeable old fellow seemed to need a place to sleep it off where he wouldn’t get stepped on, he locked him up there and supplied him with coffee and smokes until he passed out. Dunc, like Bo, survived the Deepwater mine disaster, so he feels a fraternal regard for him, and even a certain duty in that he has a job and Cokie does not. He stumbled on his crutches over the debris to the back, and found the old boy still in there, jawing with Cheese Johnson, who was sitting on a wooden chair outside the cell, one arm in a filthy plaster cast, the two of them sharing a bottle of some kind of whiskey of a good color with a charred label. “Well, look-it here,” Duncan said, “it’s ole Bo! If it ain’t his ghost! Thought you was dead, Bo!” “Well, I was dead to the world for certain, and missed out on all the dramma.” “Drop your props’n pull up a chair, Bo,” Cheese said. “Have a wake-up snort.” “They killt everbody else,” Duncan said. “You’re the only one left!” And so he sat down for a minute to rest his aching knees and Cokie told him about the blast out front—“I got hit smack in the face by a piece a pore ole Monk! It was like he was lettin’ fly at me with one last gob!”—and Cheese filled him in on some of the wild doings out in the street while the bikers were still on it, including an illustrated account of the war dance of a Red Indian on top of the old hotel before he got blown away in a manner that Cheese called “outright magical.” While Bo eased the pain of his ruined knees with a few medicinal breakfast swigs, a bunch of other killings and explosions were colorfully recounted and somehow that got them onto the mine disaster again, which always had a way of coming up regardless, ever more so when calamity was the theme, and then Cheese left to go rescue some more bottles out of the liquor store fire. When he came back with an armload, plus a couple of cartons of cigarettes in his sling, he said he heard something big go off in the direction of the old mine and now everybody was tearing ass in that direction, the word being that they’re all shooting at each other out there, it’s a fucking free-for-all, so the three of them now have the town pretty much to
themselves, what there is left of it, though besides the smokes and whiskey there’s not much they need. Risking the flames that are eating up the inside of the dimestore, Cheese has also retrieved a soft over-shuffled deck of cards from the Legion Hall above it. One thing leads to another and pretty soon the three of them find themselves quietly day-juicing over a wistful unfocused game of pitch, a particular pleasure for Bo, card-playing being something he has generally had to miss out on since getting hired for night duty and one of the few things he is somewhat good at. He has often thought that playing cards would be the way he’d most like to spend the afterlife, and, who knows, given the look of things outside, maybe the worst has happened and this is the afterlife. He says so and makes it clear that, if so, he is happy with their eternal company. Of course, he shouldn’t be drinking on the job, but strictly speaking he’s still on his own time, though with everyone else dead, it’s probably up to him to take over. If he wants to. A circumstance that has never previously arisen and he is not comfortable with it. He asks, thinking aloud, if they ought to go out to the mine and see what’s happening, and Cokie, peeing on the wall of his cell, says, “Some things, ifn you cain’t do nuthin about ’em, ain’t wuth lookin’ at.” “Your ugly pox-eaten dick, for example,” says Cheese in disgust, and then he falls off his chair.

  Bo’s boss, West Condon Chief of Police Dee Romano, sits alone at the back of the bomb-damaged St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, trying to imagine an alternative career and seeking divine counsel in the matter, when his lieutenant Luigi Testatonda, returning from a check on his family, piles in heavily beside him, settles his cap on his lap, and informs him that another big one has gone off out at the mine hill and it has reportedly set off a lot of reckless shooting. He has a worried look on his sad moony face and Dee says, “It’s not our territory, Louie. We’re not going out there.” The worried look is nodded away and Louie busies himself with wiping his brow with a handkerchief and muttering a few prayers for the dead and dying. Of which they have seen their fill, need see no more. After organizing the volunteer units, they have toured the temporary downtown morgues in the post office and pool hall, where they said goodbye to what was left of their colleague Monk Wallace; have visited the various outlying targets, including the devastated National Guard bivouac area at the high school gym, where army medics, flown in by helicopters now sitting on the football field, are tending to the wounded and tagging the dead; have checked in on Father Baglione at the city hospital and some of the others who are out there. Dee’s nephew is pulling through, though he’ll have to give up smoking. The old priest is still touch and go. They have made consolatory house calls to the Juliano, Vignati, Spontini, and Lombardi families, most of them related, by one womb or another, to the Romanos. There were others, but they were both drained and could bear no more, so they stopped by to see that Dee’s family was all right (large ingathering at the house, general state of mourning, wife organizing a vigil for the priest), and then he let Louie drop him off here, giving him the patrol car to go look in on his own family. Shock and worry, Louie says when Dee asks, but no calamities. His daughter hiked out to the hospital when she heard about the Bonali girl getting shot, but they turned her back. Only letting in immediate family. Ramona keeps picking up the dead phone, he says, listening for the dial tone to return. The early afternoon sun casts a bright dusty beam through the shattered rose window much like those often shown in pictures of saints, or the Virgin at the Annunciation, or the boy Jesus astonishing the elders in the synagogue, the sort of beam that makes you feel that, if you walked into it, you’d be transported straight up to Paradise. The only trouble is, it’s falling on the blood-stained crater in the floor, not so much a welcoming beam as an accusing one. Step into it, you might get fried. The main impression it gives, though, is of the messy nothingness that it is beamed upon. Man’s life on earth: there has to be something more, or it’s not worth living it.

  The doctor and nurses have come to Angela Bonali’s room to take the bullets out. It’s not that her case is urgent, they say—the bullet went deep and hit her hip bone, but there’s no breakage or spinal damage—but that the operating room is in constant use and they need her bed. There are casualties coming in every minute, and from what they could see on the TV outside, there are soon going to be a lot more. She can hear the gurneys with their squeaky wheels constantly rolling by. The doctor says there will be a small scar but she should think of it as a beauty mark, and she is able to smile shyly at that. Once it stops hurting, it will be fun to show it off. Really, she’s lucky. Her friend Monica Piccolotti stopped by for a moment earlier. In tears. Pete’s head is wrapped, blindfolding him, and Monica can’t bring herself to tell him that he won’t notice any difference when the bandages come off. That made Angela cry, and Joey hung his head. Pete saved Monica and their little boy and their unborn baby, and Monica said that for the first time she really understood what marriage was all about and why it was ordained by God. She would love Pete now forever, and take care of him until they were in Heaven together and Pete could see again. Pete saved the life of Sheriff Smith’s wife, too, and the sheriff has been in and out of Pete’s room ever since, praying over him in his intense Protestant way, though now they say he has left for the mine hill again. Where something awful is happening.

  “Somebody blew himself up along with a bunch of others and now they are all shooting at each other and there are bodies everywhere,” Joey Castiglione says when he comes back after they’ve bandaged her up. He’s trying to be cool but his voice is shaking. Because the emergency generator still runs the hospital, all the TVs are off, except the one at the nurses’ station, and while they were digging out the bullets, Joey, who most people out here think is her brother, left the room and joined the crowd clustered around the set there. “It’s really gross, Angie. I saw some people down on their knees praying and they suddenly just keeled over!” Angela hopes she didn’t know them and is glad her dad is here at the hospital and far from trouble—and Joey, too. He says she ought to see it, but no, there are some things it’s better not to look at. When bad things happen on the TV, even when it’s just a made-up movie, she always closes her eyes or leaves the room. People go crazy, especially around other crazy people, and you can go crazy watching them. Joey also said some things about religion that she didn’t want to listen to. A Baptist preacher out there in the hallway now is blaming everything on the sins of the town and has got people into an emotional prayer meeting right in the hallway, and that’s the sort of thing, Joey says, though less politely, that gives him stomach cramps. Joey thinks he saw her brother Charlie right in the middle of everything. Well, Charlie was made for trouble, he can take care of himself. And if he can’t she’ll be sad, but mostly because her dad will be sad. Charlie is a total pain, and she doesn’t want him to die, but she does wish he’d just go away and stay away. His latest idea was to take her to the city and make money with her in an evil way. Angela told him he was the most disgusting person she ever knew and he only laughed and popped his gum in her face.

  When people die—and when you almost die!—it makes you think about things, so she and Joey have been having a very intimate conversation about how short life is and what it all means, and though neither of them have mentioned marriage, it seems like that is what they have been talking about. Joey is not any taller than she is and has the knobby Castiglione chin, and she’s not sure she really loves him, certainly not in the my-heart-stood-still way, but she has always felt easy around him, in some ways he has been her best friend ever since they were little, and she knows he would do his best to make her happy. They could go visit the fountains of Rome on their honeymoon and have their marriage blessed by the Pope, even if Joey’s not very religious. That’s what she finds herself thinking. But then, out of the blue, he says something that makes her cry. He says not to worry about the kid she is carrying, he’ll help her take care of it, and she breaks down in tears and tells him the truth but begs him not to tell anyone else. �
�I’ve made such a fool of myself, Joey!” she weeps. “I’m so embarrassed!” He smiles. “Hey. It’s okay,” he says. He kisses her. It’s awkward, with her lying face down and her sore bottom in the air, but she likes it. Not a lot. But enough. The word “comforted” comes to mind. Like in some romances she has read, though usually about older women. She feels comforted. And now, if anyone asks, that stupid girl from the drugstore, for example, who is also somewhere here in the hospital with cuts from the broken mirror which crashed down, she’ll tell them she is dumping that jerk Tommy because she has found true love with Joey, who is not such a spoiled selfish egomaniac and is ten times a better lover.

  At the Brunist Wilderness Camp, Young Abner is standing up on Inspiration Point, sometimes also known as the Higher Ground, leaning on his rifle and gazing down in fascination upon the burning cabins beginning to snap and crack, and he asks himself if—should his father die—he is ready to take his place. He decides that he is. Why else has God spared him by sending him here to the camp away from the terrible punishments on the Mount of Redemption? He has much to learn, but he already knows a lot, too. You don’t live all your life with a father like that without it becoming part of you. Since he is all alone here now, he has been reciting out loud some of his father’s famous lines—“The moment of holy retribution and rivers of blood is at hand!”—and, with practice and a little more courage, he’ll be able to sound just like him. “Ye shall set the city on fire!” Also, he’s taller, so he’ll be able to look down on people and not have to shout up at them like his father. He may be called on soon. Since the bomb went off over at the Mount, there has been a ceaseless poppety-pop of gunfire and a lot of people, he can see from here, are falling over, and that doesn’t even count the ones who must have died when the bomb went off. He can’t see his father, so he may already be dead.