The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Coover, Robert

  Over time, however, trapped in this small town by the curse of a small family property inheritance and limited income, her vision slipped away from her, and the mundane became the mundane once more, her only dance the spiritless dance of the sorrowful housewife. The studio became a place to give classes to children, and her exercises, which she kept up without knowing were mainly a way to keep her weight down. She felt like such a fraud. She and Ralph became active at the church as a way, in her case at least, to keep a faint spark alive, her husband taking over Sunday School and the choir, she becoming the church organist and organizer of holiday pageants. And so the years went by. She and Ralph no longer danced together, though sometimes they gave little concerts, at the church mostly, Ralph singing, she accompanying him on the piano. She found herself increasingly focused on the mortal condition: If there was no further reason to dance, what was left except waiting for death? She would have created a dance to explore this question, but she was no longer creating dances.

  And then there was Wesley. The great-souled one. What happened in his office that first time did not feel like a dance, it felt more like getting run over by a train. But that was because she had pretty much stopped dancing and had forgotten what it felt like. Of course it was a dance. It was the dance. Whereupon she returned with all her heart and mind to her abandoned art of choreography. The magic was back and she was alive again. Really alive. How could she not love this man?

  Dropping the last load of flowers behind the studio, she sees that the light is on inside: the black paint has been scratched away in a tiny place at the lower right of the window pane and a spark of light is showing through. A kind of peephole, she thinks, and in the mud at her feet, though partly scuffed away: footprints other than her own. Ah. They have been watched. Well, she is used to being watched, if not exactly in this way. Just so he doesn’t bring the neighbors. She leans forward to see what Ralph might have seen, and there is the pair of joined exercise mats in the center of the room, so often the site of their terpsichorean ecstasies, the various lamps with their colored gels set strategically about to provide maximum visual effects in the facing and overhead mirrors, the translucent silk cloths she used in her “Dance of the Seven Veils” draped over the barre, and the feathered headdress she has donned to play the eagle to his pinioned Prometheus, though they chose a different renewable organ than the liver for her to eat, and as she is studying the scene, it occurs to her that something is missing: Wesley.

  You could at least have kicked his shins on the way out, Jesus says irritably. He is still in a rage about the legionnaire and Wesley’s unwillingness to exact some token of revenge. They are sitting on a stool in Mick’s Bar & Grill, Jesus having made a remark about having to feed the inner man when they passed it—I’d also be up for a quick snort, he added—communing over a beer and a grilled hamburger so overcooked it has an ashy taste even under a thick lathering of ketchup and yellow mustard. I’ve taken up residence in the wrong person again after all: a wimp and a fence-sitter.

  “I would not object if you chose to reside elsewhere,” Wesley replies.

  “That seems to be the general opinion around here.” This is the former Chamber of Commerce executive director Jim Elliott, sitting alone on the corner stool, his voice slurred with drink. Gin on ice with a twist of lemon. He’s had three of them since they came in and was clearly well under way before that. Elliott is a Presbyterian and a Rotarian and a golfer of sorts. Wesley has suffered him on many occasions, and this is another. Because they have both been bullied by the same man, Elliott has assumed an affinity between them that does not exist, and has been unloading all his woes, everything from the general lack of recognition and gratitude for his selfless service to the city of West Condon to his deteriorating golf game, the termites in his basement, his irresponsible daughter, the sickening noise at the back end of his car, and his lack of a satisfactory amorous life, for which he uses a less delicate phrase, spicing his lamentations with groans and fist-bangs and curses. “Judas effing Priest!” he exclaims now, slapping the bar, and Wesley feels a sharp cringing deep in the gut as if his indwelling Christ, personally offended, has shrunk away. Judgments are prepared for scorners, and stripes for the back of fools, Jesus grumbles sourly, and Wesley asks the establishment’s proprietor if he has any antacids. He has not.

  “I know what you mean,” Elliott says, apropos of nothing whatsoever. He raises his glass to Wesley in a toast, or perhaps to the villain behind the bar responsible for this travesty of a sandwich—the wretch’s eyes are not focusing clearly. “Bottoms!” he exclaims, and tossing his head back, drains his drink, then slams the glass back on the bar, concluding with what is partly an “Up!” and partly a deep belch, a little act he probably practices. “Pour me another one, Mick! Gosh darn it!”

  Mr. DeMars, who has been enjoying a sip or two himself—in memory of his dear old Irish mother, as he put it in his squeaky voice, though it turns out the lady is still alive, only somewhat non compos mentis due to a life of heavy drinking—does so, and with an apologetic glance and shrug in Wesley’s direction, pours himself another while he’s at it. Right, go with the flow. Wesley orders up another beer. Since he’s sharing it, it’s only half a beer, after all, and he needs it to keep the charred hamburger from getting stuck in his throat. Christ Jesus concurs. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, he says, adding a reminder that the Son of Man came eating and drinking, as it says in the gospel, and needs must continue upon his holy path. To every one, as they say, a loaf of bread, and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine! Which calls to mind our own dear piece of flesh, Jesus adds postscripturally. I find I miss her.

  “Yes, but she’s very demanding.”

  “You can say that again! A real pain in the neck!” exclaims Elliott with crossed eyes. “Who’re we talking about?”

  “We must be talking about my mother again,” says the big proprietor in his wee little voice.

  “I feel freer out here.”

  Freer? Are you kidding? You nearly got us locked up!

  “Me too, goddamn it! Let’s drink to that! Feeling freer, whoever the heck she is!”

  “Who you are in that airless box is who she says you are.”

  She has her little fantasies, Jesus says. But what a sweet tight little ass she’s got.

  “Ass? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “Did I say ‘ass’? I meant to say ‘neck.’”

  I’m Jesus Christ, I can say what I want to say.

  “But whatever I said, to heck with it! I meant it, and if you’ll tell me what it was I’ll say it again!” Whereupon Elliott snorts like a horse and lights up a cigarette with a musical lighter.

  Wait a minute. That wasn’t me who said that. There’s somebody else in here.

  “What—!”

  “What?”

  That’s right. Move over, sucker.

  Omigod! It’s Satan!

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes!” says Elliott, rolling his eyes stupidly.

  Get thee behind me, Satan, but no funny business back there!

  “This is terrible! What’s he doing in there?”

  “In where?” Elliott asks, looking around in confused alarm.

  No. Just kidding. It’s really me.

  “Damn you! Don’t do that!”

  “Hey!” cries Elliott, bristling and falling off his stool. He clutches the bar with both hands. “Don’t do what? Why do I get the feeling that I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about?”

  “I think he’s talking to himself,” the proprietor says.

  “Oh.” Elliott, with some difficulty, sits back down. He picks up his drink again, brings it and his cigarette to his mouth at the same time. “That’s all right, then.”

  “Sorry,” Wesley says. “It’s a kind of…indigestion. Too much white bread.”

  “That’ll do it.”

  “‘I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live: yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ Something
Paul said. I think he ate too much white bread, too.”

  “No shoot. That’s really interesting. Paul, hunh? But I’m lost. Another round, Mick. And get another beer for the preacher and whoever.”

  “I know when I’ve got a good thing” is the subtext of one of Priscilla’s repertoire numbers. It is one of her simplest routines. She could call it her “sex slave” dance, but she does not wish to demean in any way the grandeur and nobility of the relationship it celebrates. The name that Wesley knows it by is the “Glory Dance.” He need only say the word. She adores this beautiful crazy virile man and is willing to do anything for him, and this dance expresses that. She knows she must work really hard to keep him here and keep him safe, which is not easy. Only she understands his special genius. Only she is capable of it. The others laugh at him or are afraid of him and they will try to lock him away and do dreadful things to him if she is not vigilant. Protecting this great-souled one is now her life’s work, though she is fully aware it will bring her hardships and humiliation. As now. These men are laughing at her, she knows. But people have laughed at her before. She holds her head high. She is doing her dance of quiet pride. Her whole body is in motion, but they cannot see that.

  When she saw the police enter the First National Bank, she should never have fled. She could not have known that Wesley was in there; she was only frightened of the policemen, those ominous authority figures who have been turning up in her nightmares. But why are they in her dreams? Because of her fears for Wesley. And so, in a sense, she did know he was in there. It was her dream happening in real life. When she arrived after racing back from the empty studio, the women clerks were still in a tizzy about “the crazy man.” She didn’t need to ask any questions, she merely did her making-a-cash-withdrawal dance, one she has rehearsed all too often, and listened to their chatter and that of the other women who had entered. He was shouting lunatic things about love and Jesus and calling the bank president vile names, they said. He wanted to abduct Angela. The cute one, who acknowledges this with her hand on her breast. We’ll take her with us, he said. We? There were others? Probably outside in a getaway car. The women were waiting for him to draw a gun and try to rob the bank. There were no men in the bank now, so one of them admitted to having soiled her panties. Just a speck. It was so terrifying! But what happened to him? Angie’s brother came running over and arrested him. The crazy man called the officers agents of evil, or something like that. Charlie looks so handsome in his new police uniform.

  So she came here to the police station, fearing the worst. She knew she might never see him again. She was close to tears. Could she somehow choreograph a jailbreak dance? But they have released him. He is not here. It’s a miracle. She feels a great wash of relief that makes her tremble, even though she is trying to appear calm and collected, like some sort of nurse or sister. She is surrounded by uniformed men who see her, she knows, as a ridiculous and wanton woman. In her worry and fear, she has been too transparent. But she can’t help it.

  “Where did he go?” she asks at last, her voice cracking.

  They don’t know. The burly one with the toothpick in his teeth has a vulgar little routine of his own, danced to the rhythm of his snapping fingers and popping knuckles with singular leering intent. He is standing between her and the door. She is already rehearsing in her mind her exit-stage-right dance. A casual farewell pirouette so she doesn’t get her backside pinched. The older one who is chewing tobacco spits into the corner and says, “Not much open on the street. You might try Mick’s. He was headed that general direction.”

  On his way to his unannounced destination (though Jesus has divined it: This is crazy! They’ll be waiting for you!), Wesley has stopped to speak with his erstwhile friend and colleague, the Lutheran pastor Konrad Dreyer, whom he found tossing a ball around with his young boys in the churchyard during a sunny break in the weather. He wants Connie to call the Ministerial Association together to protest his unwarranted dismissal in the name of freedom of religion and freedom of speech, and Connie has said he would do that, though it also has its hazards because of sectarian differences, especially since Wes is claiming some sort of direct mystical connection to the Redeemer.

  “It is not mystical.”

  He is in his old neighborhood, though he never thought of it as a neighborhood, more like some kind of accident that just happened, he but a passing witness. He had always known that his mission in life, as his mother had often reminded him, transcended neighborhoods, transcended towns, really, even nations, though sometimes it was hard to remember that during board wranglings or disorderly teenage Sunday School classes or rodent problems in the church basement. There are a lot of churches in this neighborhood, as there are in all others, here mostly made of stone or brick in accordance with the construction principles of the third little piggy. Trinity Lutheran is a limestone church with a heavy Teutonic entranceway, probably built about the same time as the lodge out at the church camp. Dark and damp inside, as he recalls, but pleasingly resonant for a preacher’s voice.

  “Paul said, Christ lives in me. Does he live in you, Connie?”

  Connie meditates on that. He lights up a pipe, so Wesley does likewise despite Jesus’ complaints that he is being asphyxiated. “Well, sure, Wes, in the sense that we all partake of the holy spirit. The ground of all being resonates through us all.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I know, but I have to answer you in the way I best know how. I am less inclined to personalize the manifestations of the Absolute than are you. It is hard to speak of this, because as Dionysius the Areopagite has said: the finite cannot express encounters with the infinite. The created cannot do justice to the Creator. But I always feel that the spirit of God is within me, that God Himself is the ground of the soul and there is an inward way to Him. When I pray, I am not speaking to some outside other, but to the God within.”

  “Yeah, well, does he ever talk back?”

  “I believe my prayers are sometimes answered.”

  “No, I mean, does he coach you in what to say and make you do things you weren’t planning to do and say things like ‘Where am I? Turn on the lights!’ or ‘Salute one another with a holy kiss,’ or ‘Hey, let me see your vengeance on them?’”

  Connie chuckles around his pipestem. “What’s that from? Jeremiah? Lamentations?”

  “His remarks are not always original, but given the context, it’s like I’m hearing them for the first time.” The more words, the more vanity, Jesus is saying now. He has been grumpy ever since they left the studio. Is there no end to windy words? “Right now he is saying, Is there no end to windy words?”

  “Job, probably. No, that is not the sort of conversation, if it can be called that, that I have with the transcendent cause of all things. It is more like the immersion of my finite self within the infinite self that is God.”

  “You know what? I think you’re just kidding yourself, Connie.”

  Priscilla falters at the door of the Italian bar and grill. She can hear men hooting and barking with laughter inside and assumes they are laughing at poor Wesley. He is about all there is to laugh at in this town nowadays. She doesn’t want to do this, but she must. Only she can rescue him. Her dance will be one of great suffering, but the suffering should not show on her face, for it would only be cause for more cruel laughter. She steels herself (she has a little dance for this) and pushes on in, half blinded by fear and shame. The mayor is in there, the former mayor, and two of the church trustees who voted for Wesley’s incarceration, Burt Robbins and Jim Elliott, and they are looking at her with wild grins on their faces. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Wesley is not among them.

  “Hey, Prissy!” Jim shouts as though from mountaintop to mountaintop, then heehaws like a donkey and falls off his barstool, bringing fresh whoops of laughter from the others. That her name alone evokes such merriment means they’ve been talking about her.

  “If you’re looking for your loony loverboy,
” Burt says, unable to speak without snarling through his beak, “he and whoever he was talking to just left.”

  “Without paying,” the mayor adds in his booming voice, and the big flat-faced man behind the bar, a squeaky piccolo to the mayor’s bass, concurs.

  “I’ll pay his bill,” she says, reaching into her purse, and they all think this is funny, too.

  “So, how’s Ralph, Prissy?” Burt asks pointedly, and she decides to ignore that, preferring that they laugh at her silence rather than anything she might say. Jim is still on the floor but able still to emit donkey sounds. “You guys all dancing together now?”

  They all laugh at that, but the little roly-poly narrow-eyed ex-mayor with the big nose says, “Easy, Burt. That’s enough.”

  Not quite: “I bet you look pretty cute all tangled up in your tutus.”

  “Did he say where he was going?” she asks, handing the barman a bill still crisp from the bank and pointing at the slice of lemon meringue pie in the glass case on the counter. She knows she will suffer more mocking laughter as she leaves, but perhaps she can deflect it somehow.

  “For here?” the proprietor asks, and she nods.

  “Said he needed a bath,” the mayor bellows. “We let him know he could use a shave and a haircut, too.”

  “We told him he could also give that inner dummy he was talking to a good soaking,” growls Burt through their sour snickering. “Maybe he could hold him under and drown the sonuvabitch.”

  She is somewhat alarmed by this news but hides her emotions behind a dancer’s expressionless mask. She takes the slice of pie off the plate and holds it in the palm of her hand and gazes contemplatively at it as a mystic might gaze at a leaf or a feather, finding the mysteries of the universe contained within it, or as a jeweler might scrutinize a diamond or a pearl. Or Salome, the Baptist’s head, its awesome truth. Slowly she begins to sway, letting her upraised palm trail after her body motion as if it were the head of a snake, she its charmer, only hoping the wooziness she has been suffering of late doesn’t return. She does an adagio glissade toward their table, still swaying, still focused on the pie, and there, while the men make self-conscious remarks about her nuttiness and back off, she mimes the effort to stick a finger from her other hand in it, though it always seems just out of reach. She leans toward it, her tongue out and doing a petit battement of its own, the hand pulling away whenever the tongue approaches. She straightens up, head high, attempts a little fouetté in her street shoes, and swirls gracefully to the opposite side of the room, where she begins to sway again, eyes closed, as though falling into a trance. The mayor applauds and guffaws, setting Jim off again, and once he finally stops his braying, she again glissades, swaying, toward the table, their eyes wholly on her now, watching her hips move, big boyish grins on their greasy faces. “She’s stupid,” she hears Burt say, though really she can hear and see very little, so intensely is she immersed in her performance. She mimes again the attempt to reach the pie with her finger and her tongue, leaning toward the mayor, so that he can see closely the teasing little dance her tongue makes with its étendre movement, quivering toward the elusive pie. He rolls his eyes comically, and as the other two lean close, trying to see what the mayor sees, she moves her arm fluidly from the third ballet position to the fourth and slaps the pie—whop!— in Burt Robbins’ smirking face. He sputters and roars an obscenity and lurches blindly to his feet, the chair crashing against the wall, while she executes a rapid little pas de bourrée en arrière, tippytoeing backwards out of the bar, enjoying now the howling laughter she had earlier so dreaded.