The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (36 page)

The loudspeakers are screeching and the helicopter, lifting away to follow the bikers, is still blanketing the hillside with its thuppety-thup rattle, but the songs and shouting have ceased. All are staring at the dog’s head. Graybearded Ben Wosznik walks slowly down the hill, his somber wife following a few paces behind. He picks the head up and cradles it. He stands there a moment, gazing out on the distance into which the bikers have just disappeared, and the helicopter as well, his fingers absently scrubbing the dog’s skull behind the ears. Someone turns off the squealing P.A. system and a sudden hush descends. People emerge quietly from the tents to gaze down upon the scene at the foot of the hill. Muttered prayers can be heard. A boy’s hysterical whimpering. The mayor and fire chief, surprised to find themselves up among the believers, step gingerly back down the hill. The cameramen, their fallen equipment recovered, are filming the dog’s head in Ben Wosznik’s arms. “Rocky,” someone whispers in answer to a reporter’s question. “Oh, him, you mean? Wosznik. W-O-Z…” “Man, oh man,” groans the Chamber of Commerce secretary, wiping at the blood on his face. “This is really crazy!” Which will be that night’s area TV sound bite. “I don’t think this is legal,” the bank lawyer is saying to the sheriff. “See me about it tomorrow, mister. Right now, I got a job to do. You got thirty minutes and then we are gonna seal off the access road and arrest anyone who don’t belong here.”

Angela Bonali wants advice about giving in. “How much have you given in already?” her friend asks. They have decided to drive past the mine hill on the way home from the park to see what’s happening. “Well, just about everything.” “You might want to hold something back.” The hill is still full of tents and little white spots all over it like cotton tufts, but they can see crowds streaming away from the bottom. Maybe everything is already over. Police car lights are flashing. Maybe not. Angie doesn’t care. Tommy really
does
like to try everything, but she always just wants one thing: Tommy on top of her and inside her, his weight falling on her softly. She loses herself then, and it’s magic. Everything else requires a kind of skill, and that means having to think too much. “Do you? Hold back, I mean?” “No, but I’m not trying to keep a man.”

Angela had just had her second bath of the day and was applying blush and mascara for at least the third time when her friend from the bank called and invited her for a Sunday drive. “I had a date and got stood up,” she said. Her friend is older, nearly twenty-five, but very sexy for her age, and Angela can’t believe anyone would stand her up. But she could think of nothing else to do except have a third bath, and she had a whole afternoon to kill before her big date tonight, so she happily accepted, changing into jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers, and head scarf to protect her new hairdo and bouncing out to the car when it pulled up at the curb. Floating on air, she is. They drove over to the park on the river with the giant rocks. Angela felt like climbing up on them all and rubbing herself against them, especially after her friend pointed out one with a little bump on top that looked like a gigantic circumcised peter. “It’s divine!” she said (a sinful thought about the founding of the Church occurred to her and made her giggle and cross herself), and her friend said, “Well, yes, I guess it is.” Angela was just so madly, hopelessly, deliriously in love, and she couldn’t stop talking about it. “It’s just the greatest thing!”

Her friend smiled but did not seem convinced (well, she was having a bad day), so Angie changed the subject and told her the gossip going around that their boss has taken a lover. “I don’t really blame him. His wife is in awful shape.”

“But what if you were not at your best, and Tommy took a lover?”

“I hope I’m always at my best.”

“Speaking of the devil,” Angela says now, though it has been a while since they have done so, and points toward what her friend has just called “that sad little furor” over by the mine hill, where their boss can be seen walking away with the mayor and the police chief. He is very important. The most important person she knows. And he is also Tommy’s daddy, which makes him nearly the most important man in the world. But he does not seem happy. Her friend decides it’s time to drive on, not wanting to get mixed up in all that. “Can you imagine?” Angie says. “Those crazy people want the world to end!”

“I’m sorry,” her friend says.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Talking to myself. I’ve been angry. I’m not angry anymore.” She sighs, winks somewhat sadly at Angela. “I just wish the world were other than it is.”

“Oh, not me! I love it and I never want it to change!”

Priscilla Tindle stops the car at the edge—herself also at the edge of something—of an open field across the way from the mine hill. She has so dreaded this trip, is full of dread still. Distantly, through the trees bordering the field on the other side, they can see crowds pouring away, police lights flashing, can hear the sirens. “Look, Wesley! Something bad has happened! We could get arrested!”

“Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

Jesus speaking. “Whithersoever” is a favorite of his. He likes to show off all that King James lingo, Wesley preferring the Revised Standard. She knows why Wesley wants to go there. He has been ask ing over and over and she has always found an excuse, afraid of those horrible people and of Wesley’s horrible wife. He doesn’t know yet about the money, but he wants to get his car back, and his ruined golf clubs, which were in the trunk. He wants to stop the woman from signing anything that would put him in danger. And when that grabby pig cleaned out the manse, she took the orange juice squeezer, and some of Wesley’s favorite old shirts, which that crazy boy has probably inherited, and his hot water bottle, which he needs for his lower back pain, not being quite up to some of Prissy’s routines. Prissy is helping him work that pain away with stretching exercises, but she has pushed him a little too hard and he could really use that hot water bottle now. For the past couple of days, he has been walking around in the sitting position. Her poor dear lamb. Lambs. But as to why his indwelling Christ wants to go to the hill, it’s something of a mystery to her. He says he wants to tell everyone the Apocalypse has already happened, just as he said it would, and this is it, so they should all just go home.

There is a man hurrying toward them across the weedy field. It is the Lutheran minister Reverend Konrad Dreyer. He looks rattled and disheveled and is without the straw boater he always wears. “They’re throwing dead animals around over there,” he gasps. “It’s getting pretty ugly.” This is what she wanted to hear. She offers Reverend Dreyer a lift into town, Wesley thankfully not objecting, and on the ride the minister describes the wild scene he had just witnessed, Wesley listening with a wily, knowing, yet impatient look on his face, a look she has come to dread. “I must say, Wes, it does cause one to reconsider the whole ecumenical movement.”

“Does it? I suppose, Connie, that you believe in the usual Christian notion of a benevolent God working His unfathomable will in Heaven and on earth, with worldly self-sacrifice the path to the Heavenly kingdom, spiritual peace lying on the other side of suffering, the whole idea of immortality being validated by our desire for it, like our desire for food and water.” Prissy is impressed. She hasn’t heard Wesley speak so sensibly since that memorable night she joined him in the bathtub. “That, and the redemptive power of my sacrifice.
Christ’s
sacrifice. Am I right?”

“Well, that’s a simple way of putting it, but, sure, something like that.”

“Well, all that’s completely stupid. It’s nothing like that. If that’s what you think, you’re as crazy as those people back there.” Oh oh, thinks Prissy. “God’s one tough hardballing cookie, my friend—about as benevolent as cancer. Just look what He put me through. His son, I mean.”

Reverend Dreyer in the rearview mirror looks nonplussed. “Wes, is everything all right?”

“All right? Well, I’ve been driven out of my church and home and made more or less unemployable, they’re trying to get me locked up, my wife has run off with a sick boy to live with those lunatic zealots and has taken our car and everything we owned, I’m reduced to sleeping on the floor in somebody else’s garage, but other than that, sure, everything’s fine. How about yourself, Connie?”

“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.