The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (71 page)

There are sirens outside and Dot realizes the check-in bimbo has called the police. She hasn’t even got her toe in yet. The level of tolerance and understanding here is frankly disappointing. Mattie has taken another kid’s green dragon float away from him and the sissy has gone wailing to his mother. So now everyone is watching them. They’re the story of the day. Mattie is biting the rubber float, trying to puncture it. Two officers come in, sweaty in their dark uniforms, trying to appear officious but not succeeding. If there’s anyone who looks out of place here, it’s those guys, not her. The fat one with the Roman nose and three chins tells her to put her clothes on, dress her kids, and leave the pool. The older one tells him he thinks this is one of the families squatting illegally in Chestnut Hills. You know, Louie, he says. Them cultists. He’s chewing something, but it doesn’t look like gum. A nasty habit her own father had. It turns her stomach. She protests that it’s a public pool and a free country, but they don’t seem interested in this line of reasoning. Mattie, meanwhile, has successfully destroyed the green dragon. It floats flat on the surface like seaweed. Her kids are already up and moving toward the exit. They know when it’s time to leave a place. “May the good Lord forgive you,” she says. She tosses her dress and little Johnny over her shoulder, shoves Fat Louie into the pool, and stalks off toward the gate in the chain-link fence, which, she sees, the check-in brat has opened wide.

They stop by the new unfinished campgrounds on the way home to see how Abner Baxter and his people are getting on and to take the wet things off and let the kids dry off running around in the afternoon sunshine for a few minutes. There were no sirens chasing them after they left the pool—they were too busy hauling Tubby out of the drink. “Hey, help!” she heard a girl shout over the splashy floundering on her way out of the gate. “My daddy can’t swim!” So Save-Me-Tommy had some heroics to perform, after all, if not the sort he might have preferred.

The new campsite is fenced off with a strand of shiny barbed wire,
NO TRESPASSING
signs dangling every twenty yards or so. There is some well-digging equipment standing idle, a small temporary worker’s hut, some poles and big spools of wire cooking in the sun. Dot wonders if there’s anything there Isaiah can use. The campsite is otherwise empty, though there are a few people still camped out at the edges, including Abner and his family, using a tented extension to their old Plymouth station wagon. Jesus will recognize his true disciples by the rusted-out clunkers they all drive. Just the four Baxters now, the mental girl at Abner’s side, holding his hand; Young Abner behind his shoulder, sporting his new red bangs; Abner’s wife Sarah off sitting in the passenger seat of the Plymouth, looking like she might have been there for several days. The defection of their oldest daughter is the cause of much bitterness. One wonders who’s doing the dishes now. The big tent is still up from this morning’s sermon and prayer meeting, with folding chairs set out which she recognizes from the camp.

Abner, scowling his scowl, says he is glad to see her, and others come to tell about their troubles and exchange God blesses. The sheriff has been demanding their driving licenses and car registrations or other proof of ownership on the grounds that there have been some recent car thefts in the area. This is absurd on the face of it because no one in their right mind would steal these cars. But some vehicles have been impounded and fines levied, jail threatened if the fines go unpaid. Some have just left the area, which seems to be the easiest way to get your car back. They have been made to move their tents and vehicles several times, sometimes only across the road—a kind of day-to-day harassment meant to make them want to give it up and go look for a friendlier location. The mayor of Randolph Junction, said to be close to Abner and a tent-meeting regular, has offered just such a place, though without any services, and many have already gone there, but Abner is determined to stick it out here and some of his pals are standing by him. Now there are threats of warrants being issued, which probably means anything resembling weapons will be confiscated, including kitchen knives, screwdrivers, and lug wrenches. Dot fills them in on developments at the camp and the new rules meant to exclude any but the inner circle. “Even the new lavatory is locked up,” she says. “Can you believe it?” Ben and Clara and their daughter have not been seen since they left the camp over three weeks ago and will probably miss next Sunday’s ceremonies on the hill, which, Abner says after dropping his head for a moment at the mention of the daughter, he and his son have been specifically ordered not to attend. Abner says he is not sure he will obey this order. Young Abner nods solemnly at this, his bangs flopping on his forehead, which still looks raw under there. It turns out his brothers and their gang kidnapped him and dragged him to that field to torment him and dressed him in the girl’s underpants just to humiliate him. Dot adds a more detailed note about being excluded from the camp dining table, hoping someone will take the hint, but no one does. In fact, a couple of them have been nosing around the pickup and if there were anything there to steal, she figures it would be gone by now. Isaiah always sets a little money aside for shotgun shells and gas. Maybe there’s enough for a pizza. If not, well, they’ll have to test out the storage theory.

The next morning they awake to grim tidings. Not the writing on the wall, though there’s that, too. “Aw, Mom,” Mattie says after she swats him, “we only wanted to play Battleship and we ain’t got no paper.”
“Any
paper,” she says. “You ain’t got
any
paper.” “That’s what I said.” “Well, that ain’t no excuse to write on the walls. Now you take your erasers and see if you can’t get some of that off.” “Our erasers are all wore down.” “Well, lick it and wipe it with your sleeve.” Not that it matters much. They’ll be changing houses soon.

But the really bad news, discovered a moment later, is that everything has been turned off. No electricity, no gas, no water. Which means, among other grave consequences, that the toilet won’t flush. Isaiah who is headed in there now is going to be a very unhappy man. She goes door to door to the other houses in Chestnut Hills where people chased from the camp are living and finds it’s the same story. Everything shut down. They can’t do this. You can’t deprive a person of water no matter how poor they are. She urges them to join her in a march down to city hall to demand their rights. Only a few buy into this plan and most of them drop away before they get there. In the end she’s stuck with her own kids and a couple of yokels from Arkansas who can’t seem to get it in their heads that the Second Coming didn’t actually happen last month and they weren’t somehow left behind. Democracy’s a good thing, but it has its limits. On the steps of city hall, she also realizes she left Johnny at home. How could she have forgotten him? She sends Mattie to retrieve him and tells him to ask his father to bring them back here in the pickup because she might need his help.

The mayor’s busy, but he’s not so busy he can’t hear her out. Dot pushes aside the fat girl out front and storms on in. The boys from Arkansas follow her as far as the door.
“What the hell is going on here?”
the mayor roars out, and then she’s down to Mark and Luke. But it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t need numbers—right is on her side. She unloads her grievances on the mayor, a shady character if she ever saw one, telling him that she doesn’t know who’s responsible for the sabotage out there in Chestnut Hills, but it’s unconstitutional and has to be put right or there’ll be big trouble, and though he has been standing, he sits down again, wallowing a cigar around in his fat leathery cheeks, his beady eyes narrowing. She leans over and slaps her fist on his desk, reminding him that God is on her side and quite capable of serious devastation, and the mayor shrinks back into his leather swivel chair, nearly swallowing his cigar. At least she has his attention. He makes a circular motion around one ear and she thinks he’s calling her crazy and is about to pop him one, but then she realizes he’s signaling to the woman on the other side of the open door behind her to make a phone call. Probably to those clowns she met out at the pool yesterday. Little Luke has found a settee, something she hasn’t seen in a long time, and it excites her. She’s jumps up and down on it with gleeful yipping noises. Dot tells the mayor that children’s health and lives are at stake, and to illustrate the subject, she lifts Markie up and stands him on the mayor’s desk. Unfortunately, Markie uses that moment to let go again, puddling the scattered papers on the mayor’s desk, and she tells him that’s because with no running water they can’t use the bathrooms and now look what’s happened. The mayor can see what has happened. He’s on his feet again and looks ready to make a run for it. Mattie comes in just then, dragging a squalling Johnny. He says, gasping for breath, that Dad wasn’t home and he had to carry Johnny all the way here and he’s too heavy and he dropped him a few times. He doesn’t know where his father is, but probably he went to look for another bathroom—the one at home isn’t any good anymore.

The mayor, outflanked, relents. “Take her over to the utilities manager and get this sorted out!” he commands, probably heard clear across town.

His secretary doesn’t seem to know who the utilities manager is, being a typical underachieving government employee, but then she does know. Maybe the mayor mouthed something. Dot can hear the door slamming and locking behind her as they proceed down the hall. She carries Johnny now and drags along a reluctant Luke, who’s howling that she wants to go back and jump on the bouncy thing some more. They are led to a back room which seems to be part of the city clerk’s office. There’s a guy slumped behind a dusty desk looking three sheets to the wind. “The mayor said to take care of this,” the old girl squeaks and vanishes, not even explaining her case. Which Dot proceeds to do, though it’s clear not much is getting through. It’s still midmorning and this guy is gone for the day. Whatever she says, he just grins and winks. Consequently, the crisis she is describing becomes more of a monetary one, and what with her shouting and fist-banging and little Johnny crawling around on top of the desk and all three of the others now either whining or crying, he finally reaches blearily for his billfold, still grinning stupidly like she’s telling him a funny joke, fumbles for a dollar bill. She snatches the billfold from him, finds three tens, hands it back.

“Hah!” he says and falls back into his chair, casting his grin upon the inside of his billfold.

“And tell the mayor to get those services turned back on or we’re going straight to the Supreme Court!” she yells and leads the kids out of there.

Little Johnny is a load to carry, but Dot decides to toss him over her shoulder and go blow some change from their windfall on ice creams as a reward for her loyal little army, and while walking down Main Street, remarking as she goes on the street’s boarded-up pot-holed post-Armageddon look, she passes a sorry-looking white-haired guy having a smoke outside a shoe store. “Looks like you got some ponies there need shoeing,” he says.

“Well, I got ten dollars,” she says and she shows one of the bills to him. “What can we get for that?”

“Come on in, have a look. Whole stock’s on sale. Should find something you like for that price.”

At first, all the shoes cost ten bucks each, but she says she can’t buy shoes for just one of them, so the price drops to five, and then, when she shrugs and starts to leave, three pair for ten. “Look,” he says, “I’ll even throw in a pair of baby shoes for the little one. It’s your lucky day. Line ’em up and fit ’em out.”

Baby shoes. She hadn’t even thought about that. First any of her kids have ever had. She picks out a pair that look a bit like his father’s work boots. Mattie and Mark are easy enough, liking everything they try on and wanting them all, but Luke has her eye on some pink slippers high up on the wall of shoeboxes. “Not your size, little girl. Try these,” the owner says, showing her a pair of patent leather sandals. But Luke is determined, it being her nature, and starts to climb the boxes, succeeding in bringing the whole lot tumbling down. The man’s right, they’re too big, but Luke wants them anyway. “I’ll grow into them, Mom.”

“When they fit, Lukie, I’ll buy them for you. For now, come and try on these sneakers.”

After that, Luke hates every pair she tries on, so finally Dot makes the choice for her, ignoring her loud, bad-tempered protests. Mattie and Mark are bringing down other stacks just for fun, trying to bury each other in falling shoes and boxes. “You know,” the man says with a sick smile, “you’re like somebody out of my nightmares.” She asks him if he couldn’t show a little Christian charity and lower the price enough to leave her change to buy ice creams for the kids, but by now, in his excitement, Johnny has pooped his britches again and the place is reeking and the store owner’s free hand is closing. “No,” he says, looking like he’s about to gag. “Out.
Out!”
He herds them onto the street, following them out, locks the door behind him, and hurries away. Probably to go spend up the ten dollars, she assumes, and she wonders if somehow she got cheated.

The boys are jumping up and down in their new shoes on their way to the corner drugstore for ice creams (maybe little Johnny can win them a few more concessions if she fumbles a while for change), but Luke, Dot discovers, has stolen one of the pink slippers, though not its mate, and she’s wearing it, dragging it along with a bare foot. She must have left the other sneaker back in the store. The boys have picked up some extra shoelaces, very colorful, probably for ice skates, and two shoehorns, which they seem to perceive as some sort of knightly weapon, attacking each other as they bounce along. She cuffs all three of them, reminding them that it’s a sin to steal. If the man hadn’t locked the store, she’d march them right back there. They’re probably making Jesus very unhappy—whereupon, there on the corner of Third and Main, Jesus himself makes a surprise appearance, rolling down the street in a sky-blue automobile, driven by an ethereal creature who could be the Magdalene herself, though with makeup on! Dot falls to her knees in the street, fearing the worst (they shouldn’t have stolen those shoelaces—“You see, Mattie, you see?” she cries), and she’s ready to let rip with prayers and confessions and talking in tongues, whatever it takes, but the Master drifts on by and turns the corner at the next block and disappears. She remains there on her knees in the empty street for a few minutes reflecting upon this apparition, wondering if she saw what she just saw, until her kids get restless and ask her to stand up. Come on, Mom, let’s go. They want their ice creams.