The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (55 page)

This is, was for years, has become again of late, Priscilla’s way. Life as dance else not life at all. It is her own special vision, her way of creating the beauty that life, left to do its own thing, so sadly lacks. In her professional years with Ralph, she preferred austere staging, harsh lighting, African percussion and Eastern wood and string instruments, and a minimum of costuming, finding even a body stocking too constrictive. Ralph was an elegant partner, always there, supportive, given to understatement, which set off her own passionate exuberance, but somewhat passive, waiting always for her to take the lead. Their dances seemed often to end without resolution, more like questions, really. He did not understand climax; he was incapable of it. He was something like a self-contained tango partner, formal (he even dressed in black with a pleated white shirt; only in the studio would he wear less), taut with an inner tension, but ultimately predictable. Priscilla had always aimed at the unexpected, for life, she felt, was all too predictable, and it needed something out of the ordinary for it to be experienced at all. It was, in effect, her way of praying to what she preferred to call the Life Force rather than God, though she was a believing Christian like most people were, simply too preoccupied or unsuited to figure things out on her own and trusting the wisdom of those whose vocation it was—Wesley, for example, various astrologers and philosophers, her great-aunt when she was still alive—and Priscilla addressed the Life Force wherever and whenever she could. She had dishwashing dances and laundry and ironing dances and shopping for Ralph’s high-fiber breakfast cereals dances. Sometimes these were just spontaneous responses to the moment, a flash of sudden inspiration in a department store aisle or on a putting green, but she tried always to choreograph her dances, in retrospect when not possible before, choreography being her way of thinking about the world. Giving it, it being shapeless, shape. Being nameless, name.

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.