The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (47 page)

II.2

Saturday 25 April

On a slight rise on the way into what he knew when a boy as the Presbyterian No-Name Wilderness camp, within view of the artificial bump of land their little movement grandly called the “Mount of Redemption,” Pach’ Palmers stops to take a leak beside the panel truck that is his present home. It’s his first time to see that goddamned mine hill since the day he got arrested on it. When he came back to West Condon after his release a couple of years ago, looking in vain for Elaine, he was able to pick up the old
Chronicle
delivery van, and once he got it running, he headed out here. But he turned back at the edge of town. He was starting up a new life. It seemed like bad karma, as Sissy would say. What a crazy time, what a crazy day. Life does throw up some fucking doozies. That one cost him a stretch in the slammer. Pach’ lifts his cock and aims his stream toward the Mount, wishing he could piss away that awful day, the worst day of his life.

What was he really thinking that day? Did he think the end of the world was coming? That Jesus was going to come flying down out of the storm, superhero cape flapping, and whisk them all off to Paradise? He was so hot for Elaine’s body, he didn’t know what he was thinking. He was holding on to her hand, hoping to find some place they could at least kiss, last chance and all that, but they were on a barren hillside with one sick rickety tree, surrounded by freaked-out Jesus worshippers, the whole world watching, and nowhere to go. And, anyway, there was no budging her. Elaine was completely lost to the insane moment and stood there in the rain, her tunic pasted to her skinny body, rain and tears streaming down her face, looking out on the crowds or else up into the sky. Down at the foot of the hill, those they called the powers of darkness were massing up, including all the reporters and photographers and state cops, and overhead: the mind-rattling
yak yak yak
of police helicopters. All their own people, showing off all they had in their wet flimsy tunics, were praying, singing, crying, and flinging themselves about in holy fits, their tunics turning black and brown in the mud. It was pretty arousing. He had a massive hard-on impossible to hide under his soaked tunic, which not even fear of the impending apocalypse could shrink. He was able to bend his underwear elastic band down over the head, and belt it in somewhat with the rope they all wore at the waist, but it kept slipping, and when it did it stuck out a mile. He thought: Well, Jesus, here I am, take me, sins and all. Then the town newspaper editor showed up. Mr. Miller. The guy who’d pretended to be a friend and fellow believer, but who’d turned on them like Judas. Exposed them. Made them look like dumbass jerks. Everybody said he was why Bruno’s sister went crazy, why she’d died in the end. So he was a killer, too. They were all charging down on him. The Antichrist. Or the Antichrist of the moment, anyway. He let go of Elaine’s hand and joined them. It was something he had to do. He remembered pummeling the guy there in the pouring rain, hitting him over and over, wishing he could kill him, the girl’s corpse somehow bouncing around in the middle of it all, pointing her blue arm at everybody. The guy’s clothes got torn off, and in the end Pach’ was pounding a lifeless naked body dressed in mud and blood. People were jumping on it. Somebody had an ax. Pach’ thought they
had
killed him. Only some time later did he learn the poor sonuvabitch had somehow survived. Elaine’s mother had had something to do with it. He was grateful for that. He was sorry about what he’d done. Doubly sorry, because when he went looking for Elaine again, he found Junior Baxter whipping her with a switch, and he laid into the spongy tub of shit—second time that spring, throwing him into the mud and punching him with both fists—only to have Elaine start clawing him and scratching him and throwing her nearly naked body down on Junior to shield him and screaming at Carl Dean to go away, go away. And with that, he lost it. He turned and pitched himself like a howling maniac at the advancing state troopers, taking down a couple of them before they all piled onto him. He was sent up to detention for six months for that, though he doesn’t remember anything after seeing Elaine’s little body on top of fat Junior with blood all over his stupid face.

Anniversary last Sunday. The nineteenth of April. He might have made it here in time had it not been for a leaky radiator. Just as well not. They were probably all over on that hill again and he would only have repeated the whole mess or made it worse. Five years. Long time ago. Seems like a different lifetime. Fuck, it
was
a different lifetime. Pach’—he wasn’t called Pach’ then—was an ignorant young dickhead with a susceptibility for big total answers. He was president of the Baptist Youth Group and full of furious opinions (how easy it was to speak of God and Jesus then; they were like pals on the track team, and he was elbow to elbow with them, slapping butts) when his high school reading and writing teacher Mrs. Norton drew him and his friend Colin into her goofball Seventh Aspect fantasies, and then, after the coalmine disaster, they followed her when she got mixed up with the lone survivor, Giovanni Bruno, a weird lunatic like all so-called prophets, one thing following another with a kind of mad irresistible logic. Religion’s appeal, no matter how nutty, to the down-and-out. He knows all about that, having been there all his life. The need for divine intervention to serve up just desserts, give the loveless something to love, cure the incurable, take revenge upon the wicked. Focused, God-sanctioned hatred. Oh yes, he felt all that, sometimes still does. He has an explosive nature; he knows that. He has learned to keep things in check, but as a kid he was just so damned angry all the time. He might have killed somebody and often wanted to. It was what made him let go of Elaine’s hand. He let go of everything when he let go of that hand. Everything. He hated Miller at the time. Now he thinks of him as pretty much the smartest guy he ever knew. Sure dumb of him to turn up out there, though, after all he’d done. Must have been Bruno’s sister who dragged him out. It was her body he was trying to reach when he got set upon. Pach’ can understand that. Same with Elaine now. Why he’s here. Except at least Elaine’s still kicking.

Trying to track Elaine Collins down is mostly what he’s done ever since they uncaged him. The six-month rap became a year for mouthing off and throwing his food on the floor and getting into fights with the other punks in detention, and they gave him another five in the state pen after he blew up and punched a sado guard. Laid the sick asshole out cold, sorry only that he hadn’t broken his neck. They might not have let him go anyway. His fucked-up parents had split and left the cheap development at the edge of town and he had no idea where they were, nor wanted to know, so as a juvenile there was no one he could be sent home to. No other relatives wanted him. He was too ugly. After a row or two in the pen, he settled down into his old camp counselor ways and they finally let him go after a couple of years. He was supposed to keep in touch with a parole officer, but he never did. He boarded a bus and came back here. He couldn’t have afforded the train, were it still running, but it wasn’t. The closing of the coalmines had also meant the closing of the railroads. West Condon itself was like it had always been only more run down, needing a fresh coat of paint. He wasn’t shopping, he was looking for Elaine, but she and her mother had left town along with most everyone else he knew, and, except for vague rumors of Brunist doings around the country, there was not much local news about them, so what he got out of the trip instead was his panel truck. He had wanted to apologize to Miller—tell him he was fucking right, they
were
all dumbass jerks, right on, man—but the
Chronicle
was closed. Miller had flown the coop, nothing left on the newspaper premises but a print shop run by an old schoolteacher and track coach he once had. Miller, the coach said, was reporting for network TV, something Pach’ never saw except sometimes in bars. Where no one was looking at the news. The paper’s rural delivery van sat out in the parking lot, its tires flat, battery dead, lights busted out, muffler falling off, hoses and fan belt shot, no shocks at all, but the body was not too rust-eaten and the engine looked repairable. The coach let him have it for a token dollar. A tall, sour ex-coalminer named Lem Filbert had a garage at the edge of town and he hired himself out to him in exchange for a tow, some used parts, a set of retreads, a meal a day, and Lem’s mechanical know-how, serving as night watchman on the side for he was already sleeping in the thing, Lem’s widowed sister-in-law providing him some old bedding. A part-time nurse of some kind who had plucked eyebrows and was so religious she dressed like women in Bible pictures. She joined their group around Bruno at the end, but he didn’t remember seeing her out on the hill that day. Maybe she didn’t want to get her clothes wet. She was the one who told him Elaine’s mother was now married to the singer Ben Wosznik and was doing missionary work somewhere over near the Carolinas, and yes, far as she knew, her daughter was still with them. When he had the van rolling again, he headed east. Lem worked hard and demanded hard work, but he was good to him in the end, filling his tank and stuffing a few bucks Pach’ knew he could not afford into his pocket.

The Brunists, he discovered when chasing around after them, had gone big time while he’d been locked up. They had churches all through that part of the country, radio and television programs, billboards and piles of pamphlet handouts, songs on the hillbilly stations, tent meetings said to draw thousands. Hundreds certainly. He saw them, looking for Elaine. The end of the world? Still on. Sometime. Soon. Patience, jackass, patience—that old church camp skit. Back in West Condon, nobody had seemed to know much about any of this. So much happens in this country that no one ever hears about. On their home turf, except maybe for Lem’s sister-in-law, the Brunists were a joke. They’d all made fools of themselves, dancing around half-naked in the rain, waiting for a Rapture, as they called it, that never happened. It was embarrassing. They should have disappeared into jokes the next day, but instead they’re a big religion. Hard to figure. Of course, Jesus Christ: same story. People are weird. Key apparently has been Elaine’s mother. Old lady Collins is a powerhouse and an organizational genius and a saint. Everybody says so. He remembers her as a big, horsey lady with raw red hands, nearly six feet tall, dressed in print dresses and wide white pumps. She had a way of belting out battle cries like some kind of general or football coach and was at the same time given to throwing herself around and bawling like a stuck pig and talking to her dead husband like he was in the same room with her. Pach’ was always afraid of her and knew she didn’t like him very much.

The search for Elaine was mostly fruitless, but he didn’t work all that hard at it either, even obsessed as he was. Something in him kept holding him back. Afraid of what he might say or do, maybe. Especially if she didn’t want to see him, and why should she? So he took odd jobs slinging hash, working on the roads, making deliveries, and wandered about, following their trail, but fell into a funk and backed off whenever it looked like he might be getting close. Went to country bars instead. Got sloshed. Man of constant sorrow. He hadn’t forgotten Elaine’s Day of Redemption betrayal. How could he after what it cost him? But his sweeter memories of her and his hopes of winning her back were what had gotten him through these bad years, so he has kept chasing her even while shying away, fantasizing some kind of future with her and whacking off to the memory of her little body, just as he’d done all through his prison days, just as he is doing now, standing at the edge of a gravel road under the warm April sun, his fist pumping.

He especially liked to think back on that night on the way home from the mine hill with a carload of chicken feathers when he kissed her and grabbed her leg and more besides—and she wasn’t mad after. It was Easter Sunday, a week before the day when the world was supposed to end, though it felt more like the world was just beginning. Wasn’t that the point of Easter? He has had a good feeling about that day ever since, in spite of the stupid Jesus story that goes with it. Colin Meredith was along that night, and they parked on a side street, and by agreement, Colin got out to take a walk. They were coming from a service on the Mount and dressed only in their Brunist tunics and white underwear, and the feel of her flesh through the thin tunic is what he remembers, first her shoulder and armpit (the knotty edge of her little bra), then her leg, then her whole body as he pulled her hard against him, grabbing her tight little bottom through the tunic and cotton panties, her tummy against his, everything twisting and leaping and shivering, the gearshift somewhere in the middle of it all like an extra dick. He scared her, and he was scared too as she began to bawl and get hysterical, and he backed off, apologizing, starting to cry himself and cursing himself for his rough ways. He kissed her cheek softly, whispering his sorries to her, and blinked the lights for Colin to come back, and then, later, as they were walking from the car toward Giovanni Bruno’s house, he told her he loved her, really loved her, and she smiled a trembly little smile—there was a chicken feather in her hair, like a pale flower petal—and his heart lifted. The next day at school, Elaine, tears running down her face, told him Junior Baxter had called her a whore, and he dragged Junior out of history class and thrashed him right there in the hallway in front of everyone and the principal threw him out of school, but Elaine took his hand and said if he had to go, then she was going too, and they walked out of there together, achingly in love, the only time he’d ever loved so hard or felt so loved in all his life.

Well, love. He doesn’t know what it is, only what it isn’t, and what it sometimes feels like. Back then, he was just trying to get into her pants, because he thought that was what guys were supposed to do. Now he knows that’s the least important thing. Everyone and everything fucks. Can’t help it, really. But, love: that’s the rare thing. The hard thing. And not God love, which is just a fake way of loving yourself. Human love. For someone else. Like he loves Elaine, without knowing what it is or even needing to know. Only kind of redemption he knows now, all he can hope for. He pulls over again, gets out, stretches, combs his fingers through his beard, climbs back in, touches his “Elaine” tattoo through his T-shirt for luck, tunes the radio to the local country music station. Why all these highfalutin thoughts? Be cause he is closing in on her once more and all the old anxieties are back. The urge to stop, turn around, and forget it. All along, he knows, it has been like the going was more important than getting there, with the where of the “there” being uncertain enough to give him an excuse always to change direction. Kidding himself. But not this time. For once he knows exactly where she is and knows she’s staying put. He has seen the fresh new sign pointing the way: “International Brunist Headquarters and Wilderness Camp Meeting Ground.” He either goes there now or throws his life away again. “No Trespassing”: that sign, too. Well, forgive us our trespasses, goddamn it to hell. He tosses his leather jacket in the back, takes down the plastic naked woman dangling from his rearview mirror and stows it in the glove compartment, starts up the truck again. Sniffs his armpits—fuck it, have to do. Pops some minty chewing gum in his mouth, which is mostly his way of brushing his teeth. The song on the scratchy old car radio is a religious one, sung by a bunch of young people. Sounds like a live recording not made in a studio. “Wings of a Dove.” He thought he heard the radio announcer, old Will Henry (that dumb rube still there—some things never change), say something about the Brunists, but he may not have heard right through the static.