The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Coover, Robert

  “Nah. What I need is some child sex slaves. They tell me Brazil is full of them. Dime a dozen. Ever fuck a little kid?”

  “Not since I was one myself.”

  “Your kid sister or little cuz, you mean. Rec room romps when mommy’s away. That don’t count and can mess you up. I’m talking about sex market specialties. Clean, dressed, and prettily packaged consumables.” Maury Castle’s loud grating voice and nasty imagination are getting under Georgie’s bark. “Like buying choice baby lamb in the meat market.”

  “Not my style, I guess. I go more for the fleshy bargains.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. I married one. Beachball britches. Ever think about getting married, Georgie?”

  He hesitates. Shouldn’t talk about this with a guy like Castle. “Yeah. Once.” He seems to see her bent over a water fountain. His high school sweetheart. In a pleated skirt. Or a crisp yellow frock. Actually, in nothing at all. Her sweet little buttocks. His hand between them. Her terrible vulnerability. “She was…different.” The way she looked up at him after he’d saved her from that newspaper fuck. So intense, so giving, a whole-body look, total surrender. But so still…

  “What happened? Cold feet?”

  “No.” Can’t stop himself. He’s fucking starting to cry. “She died.”

  “Jesus, Georgie, sorry to hear that.” That night out at the Brunist camp, the night of the bees and the fireworks when he was trapped and being shot at and he was pleading for mercy from everyone from God to Lady Luck—she was there. She was Lady Luck. He remembers this clearly now. “She probably did you a fucking favor, though. Did you get in her pants before she kicked off?”

  What a question. He hates this filthy sonuvabitch. In his mind’s eye, though, there were no pants he could get into. She was like Eve. Spread for him. La bella… “No. We were saving it for…you know…”

  “Big mistake. Unless somebody else dicked her, the poor little cunt died without ever getting laid. What kinda fucking life is that? You owed it to her. You let her down.”

  Coglione. Maybe he should spin the car in front of a big semi so it gets hit broadside on the passenger side. But he might get hurt himself. And even if not, how would he get away with the pile of cash in the back seat? This vehicle is what he’s got.

  The fire chief has reached the town center with his exhausted crew and has half a dozen volunteer fire trucks from the towns around at his disposal, but water pressure from the sabotaged hydrants is low and some incautious units have suffered demoralizing casualties. It is a hot day, hotter here. They beat the small fires out or smother them with foam. A few of the larger ones are brought under control in city hall, the post office, and the fire station itself, but in the untenanted Main Street shops, the liquor store, the furniture store and pawn shop, the surging flames rage unchecked, spreading now from building to building, and torched cars and trucks, no longer worth saving, are allowed to burn themselves out. The police chief’s hunting dog—retrieved from one of them and half-blind, its coat on fire—immediately attacks its rescuers and must be destroyed. Crews lift the dead off the street and deposit them temporarily on the tables of the bombed-out pool hall and on the sorting-room floor of the demolished post office, where they are covered with gray canvas mail-bags, all of it recorded by grimacing television and radio reporters, many now wearing combat helmets and kerchiefs over their faces. Ambulance teams gather up the wounded and wheel them urgently off to the city hospital, guided by local townsfolk jumping aboard to accompany friends and relatives.

  The banker, his face marked by flying debris when he rushed toward the bank at the moment of the final blast, grabs one of the ambulance crews and together they stretcher out the injured from the bank. Among them: Archie Wetherwax’s wife Emily, pinned under a fallen desk. The Rotary Club president, Gus Baird, in bad shape, midriff bubbling. Tommy’s young friend from the Italian grocery, out cold, his face bloody, his wife wailing over him. Also the acting sheriff and his wife, looking bruised and stunned though both on their feet, the wife staring blankly, muttering to herself, shrinking from everyone, even her husband. Smith must have left the mine about the same time Ted did but somehow beat him back. Smith tells him about Piccolotti’s heroism and personally organizes an ambulance for him. Those who can walk are helped to police cars, which are also filling up with wounded off the street. Ted has a word of encouragement for each. For the moment, the dead in here are left in the rubble where they lie, ambulance blankets tossed over them. With a gaping hole where the front door used to be, the place is vulnerable to looting. He’ll have to secure the tills and vault, gather up everything of value and lock it away in his office. Nail something up over the shattered windows and block off the door.

  He’s just starting the lockdown when Dee Romano stops in to check out the damage. He kicks at what’s left of the bomber in tux pants, gives a terse angry report. Monk Wallace is dead. The mayor’s secretary, Dee’s favorite cousin. Others at the post office, county courthouse, hospital, phone exchange. A nephew from the power plant hospitalized with a bullet in his lungs. The mayor? He’s gone, fled or kidnapped. Dee tells him what he saw out on the Waterton road, mentioning in passing that no one employed by the city has been paid yet this month. Father Baglione, he says, is in critical condition at the hospital. The church was dynamited, people killed and maimed. His second cousin, Timo Spontini, was shot down in the parking lot. Apparently the old priest defended the church with sheer bravado, facing the bombers on his own with bells and incense. Ted lights up, offers the chief one. The chief shakes his head. “None of this woulda happened if them goddamned holyrollers had not come back here,” he says through clenched jaws. “But I’m taking care of that.” He says nothing more when asked, just glares coldly. Ted likes Romano, trusts him, but feels a new distance between them. Almost as if Romano blames him somehow for the attack on his church. Ted thinks back on the scene at the mine hill. “Wait a minute,” he says. “You mean, Charlie Bonali’s gang?” Romano leaves him without reply.

  Ted glances at his watch: barely past noon. Can it get any worse than this? It can get worse. He knows what Bonali is capable of. And the Brunists are in league with Suggs’ rightwing militia. He saw something of a battle scene dress rehearsal this morning. Will he have to go out there again? How can he not? But who will care? Ted has never known despair, too much of a fighter for that, and a dogged believer in the prevailing power of the right, but standing there in the ghastly ruins of his family bank, he’s at the edge of it. He has never thought of God as the Almighty but as something more mysterious than that. The ground of all being, as someone has said. Something like that. Well, the mystery has just deepened. A young teller lies a short distance away in a scatter of bills and coins. Daughter of friends of his. Might have been Stacy, had she still been here, so he has to be glad she’s gone. But he has lost her just the same. Lost his wife, his son, and now his bank and all these innocent people. He has failed them. He has called the plays and none have worked. The bank is insured, of course. But is it covered for this kind of madness? Does it matter? Does he really want to reopen? He realizes how easy it is for lives to have bitter endings and is determined not to let that happen. This town is a mess, but it’s his town and he can’t walk away from it. He will not let himself be defeated, even when victory is hollow. That’s what he tells himself, in the old way, team captain up against it, back to the goal line, standing firm, jaw a-jut, shoulders braced. But his heart is sinking. Fuck it, he thinks, wiping the tears away with his sleeve. It’s finished. Then he feels an arm around his shoulder. “C’mon, Dad,” his son says. “Let’s clean this up.”

  The bank explosion sent night duty police officer Bo Bosticker leaping with a scream out of one of his coalpit nightmares, a persistent haunting from his mining days, the leap taking him out of his bed and onto his damaged knees and thence to his face on the floor. He lies there, wondering whether what he heard was real or part of the dream. For Bo, a leap from sleep is a mighty one from th
e abyssal deep and is violent by nature, for he is a heavy sleeper, known for his powerful snore. He has had a number of women move in with him over the years, then move out pretty quickly with bags under their eyes. He never leaves sleep with a light bounce—it’s more like clawing up from a deepshaft grave—unless rocketed out in terror like today. A glance at his watch tells him it is still early in the day, that he should get in a couple more hours of shut-eye if he’s going to last through the night watch, and he considers doing that right here on the floor where he lies. But his knees hurt and he is hungry and by now he hears the sirens, the helicopters, smells smoke in the air. Not slag smoke. Wood smoke. He also seems to catch a whiff of something that reminds him of entering the mine in the old days after the shotfirers had done their thing. So he pulls on his uniform shirt and pants and launches forth from his little house down by the old railroad tracks to limp into town on his wooden crutches. It is a hot sunny day—the sort Bo rarely sees at this hour o’clock—yet damp underfoot, and he remembers it was raining when he went to bed. Long before he gets to where he’s going, he perceives that there has been a serious amount of vandalism while he’s been sleeping: a grade school with its windows smashed, spouting fire hydrants, a church on fire. The military helicopters overhead seem to be firing at something right in the middle of town.

  The closer he gets to the center, the worse the damage is, the thicker the smoke now clouding out the sun. The post office is a smoldering shell. He hobbles in on his crutches for a look. There are people on the sorting-room floor covered with gray mailbags and other people carrying on over them. Bo wants to ask them what’s been happening, but they are mostly too hysterical. “Everybody’s dead!” one of them screams, shaking her fist at him. An older cop he doesn’t know stands guard over the place and Bo asks him what’s up and the guy says he doesn’t know, he just got here himself, something to do with a bunch of religious fanatics. He says he hasn’t seen anything like it since the last war.

  That’s what it looks like. An old war movie. Main Street lit up with burning cars and trucks and many of the buildings on fire, their windows smashed, black graffiti sprayed on them. Fire trucks, police cars, ambulances parked at whatever angle, mostly empty inside, their lights whirling. Flat water hoses snaking about underfoot. The helicopters are pounding the old hotel for no clear reason. One of them is parked on top of Mick’s Bar & Grill. The old moviehouse marquee is down, which makes the building look like it has dropped its pants. The bank has also been hit. Seems to have lost its front door, the whole corner just a big hole. Some of the police cars and motorcycles rev up their motors and pull out. Bo asks one of them where they’re going. “Out to the mine hill! The ones who did it are out there!”

  He runs into Charlie Bonali loading a bunch of weapons into some young guy’s car. The guns look like they might have come from the station. He should ask about that, but Charlie is wearing a bent tarnished badge and Bo isn’t sure of his authority or even exactly what is going on. “Where’s Monk?” Bo asks. “You’ll find him over at the pool hall,” says Charlie, pulverizing a wad of gum in his jaws. “On one of the tables.” “What the heck’s he doing? Resting?” “Yeah. In peace.” He’s pretty sure he knows what Bonali means by that, but he doesn’t want to ask.

  He heads to the station to report in. Looks like it’s going to be a tough day; they’re going to need him early. It has already been a tough day. He figures he should fuel up first with some meatloaf or else a hot turkey sandwich, but at Doc’s drugstore, which is one of the few buildings not burning, they’re bringing a body out. “Dead,” they tell him when he asks. “Shot down in cold blood.” Well, maybe they can call the Italian grocery and have them send something over.

  The first face that Angela sees, peering woozily up over her shoulder, is that of her friend Joey Castiglione. He’s holding her hand, which is cuffed to the cot. They’re in some kind of van. She hears a siren. “Take it easy,” he says. “You’ll be all right.” All right? Why shouldn’t she be all right? Where is she? Kicked. She feels like she’s been kicked. Who did that? She’s lying on her tummy, a pillow under her, her numb bottom raised. It hurts, other parts, too, but distantly as though they don’t really belong to her. She can’t move. She thinks her spine may be broken. “Where are we going?” she asks. “To the hospital. We’ll be there soon. Ramona told me you’d gone downtown, so when all hell started breaking loose, I came looking.” “Ramona?” She remembers something happening in the drugstore, people slamming in, she was trying to duck under the table, crawl somewhere. “Joey? Have I been shot?” He grins, gives her hand a little squeeze. “Yeah. But if it was going to happen, you got hit in the right place.” She feels very sleepy. Her eyes keep crossing. “Joey? Thanks a lot, Joey. You didn’t have to do this.” “Hey. It’s worth it just for the view alone.”

  When Vince Bonali learns that his daughter is being ambulanced in with bullet wounds, he breaks down in tears. He is down in the dimly lit basement canteen, sitting with the Ferreros and Concetta Moroni (no coffee, the percolators have been turned off to save electricity), and his old friend Sal wraps an arm around his shoulders and says, “Easy, Vince. Easy. It’s gonna be okay.” “It’s too much, Sal!” he sobs. He feels foolish, especially in front of the two women, but he can’t help it. “It’s too fucking much!” He hauls out his handkerchief and blows his nose loudly. He and Sal have brought Father Baglione here in Vince’s car; the old priest is in the emergency room with multiple bullet wounds and is not expected to pull through. Gabriela and Concetta are out here because old Nonno Moroni died last night, and both of them are in a fury about what happened to Nonno’s body (Gaby tears up whenever it’s mentioned) and are talking about asking Gabriela’s city lawyer cousin Panfilo to take legal action. Lights pop on in one corner of the canteen, where Doc Lewis, looking shattered, is being interviewed live for TV news. When they bring Angie in, Vince is waiting at the ambulance door. Joey Castiglione is with her. That’s good news. Joey winks unsmilingly and gives him a thumbs-up. He feels better.

  Out on the Mount of Redemption, the self-appointed Brunist Defender Dot Blaurock feels woozy with hunger. Breakfast didn’t amount to much. It’s getting hot and there’s no proper place to relieve yourself out here, though many have been doing so behind the backhoes or their cars or on the backside of the Mount or wherever. Young Darren Rector, still getting a lot of mileage for striking down the false prophet on this very spot two days ago, feels certain that they’re here for a purpose as yet unrevealed, a purpose that may be thwarted if they desert the Mount, and he suggests they open up the mine building restrooms as they did on the anniversary of the Day of Redemption. A good idea, but no one has the key. That guy McDaniel, Mr. Suggs’ strip mine manager and newly appointed deputy acting sheriff, says they should stay here. They could get trapped in the camp, and they’re better off holding the high ground. But what if those helicopters on the horizon should come this way? They’d be sitting ducks on this open hillside. No, Dot is one of those who is ready to call it a day. They’ve made their point, they’ve achieved the summit, they’ve held their memorial service—better to go back to the camp, try to find something to eat. Besides, she has squatter’s rights to the camp sickbay cabin and she doesn’t want anyone taking that away from her. “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on,” the preachers say, quoting Lord Jesus, the Son of Man, the one they’re all waiting for, “for is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” Sure. But they’re starving, and they can’t hold it much longer. The Son of Man never talked about what to do if you can’t find a restroom. There’s not much food left at the camp, but they can harvest the rest of the garden, eat it up before the Rapture comes. The camp is full of birds and animals that can be hunted. God will provide. One of her fellow Defenders says they could take up a collection and go pick up some hotdogs and buns and soda pop at the highway supermarket. Several of the women volunteer to
do the cooking. Spirits rise. Then some terrified people arrive down on the mine road, jump out of their cars, and come running up the Mount to join them. “It’s the end of the world!” they wail. “It really is!” Sobbing and blubbering, they tell them about the demons on motorcycles, the bombs, the guns, the fires, the slaughter, the destruction. “They’s hunderds of them!” “They’re everywhere!” “They’ve blowed up all the churches!” “Ours is burnt plumb to the ground, Abner!” People start praying in earnest. It looks like a long day. Maybe even an endless one. “Now is the judgment of this world!” cries Abner Baxter. “Mom, when is Jesus coming?” Mattie asks. “Soon,” she says hopefully. And then He does.

  With the improving weather, Glenda has taken the children—hers, Hazel’s, Wanda’s and a few others temporarily abandoned by people who arrived at the camp this morning—down to the garden to collect fruit and vegetables for their lunch and do a little weeding. Hunk has killed and gutted a chicken they will all share, hoping that the others over on the Mount of Redemption do not come back before they are done. Not even Jesus could stretch a chicken out among so many, and anyway, he’s not yet around to work such marvels, were he able. She also has some canned and packaged goods that Ludie Belle Shawcross gave her before she left, but Glenda intends to save them for the hard times ahead that she foresees. This is not prophecy or fortune telling, it’s just the stone truth they face. If Hovis or Uriah had come back, she would have had someone to drive the Dunlevy caravan and they might have left with the others, but those two fellows never showed and their house trailer is still parked in the lot. They both seemed more befuddled than usual this morning and they have probably ended up over on the Mount without knowing how they got there. She oversees the children’s little harvest, making sure the plants themselves are not pulled up with the weeds, and leads them in singing while they work—children’s hymns and nursery rhymes and popular songs like “Mairzy Doats” and “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?” When she hears the roar of intruders coming up the back road, she hurriedly shepherds the children into the garden shed and closes the door and tells them they’re all going to play the quiet game while she reads their palms. Everyone wants to be first and they all start shouting and she has to shush them, telling them that there is a little voice she listens to when she reads their palms and they have to be very quiet so she can hear it, and if they listen very very hard, they may hear it, too. She does not tell them what she really hears in here: rustlings of the flesh. For here the two of them were found naked with the bullet holes in their heads and here something of them remains. As Glenda examines the children’s plump little hands, she whispers all the happy wonderful things she sees there. She sees dark things, too, but she keeps these to herself. Even if there’s sadness ahead for them, they’re only children and need not fret over it. And then, just as she hears the intruders sputtering along on the old two-track road on the other side of the creek, then pausing ominously, only yards away, one of the little ones starts to howl. Wanda’s oldest, Davey, a boy not all there. He is hungry and thirsty and has made a mess in his pants and there’s no stopping him. She claps her hand over his mouth and then the others start. Would God approve strangling one to save the rest?