The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (73 page)

Mr. John P. Suggs arrives, having been called with the news, and while they’re waiting for Ben and Clara, he tells Wayne and Welford they’ll meet in the office after lunch to talk about Sunday, and then he huddles with Hunk and Travers. More mischief afoot, Ludie Belle reckons. She has heard about troubled doings at the Baxter encampment and in Chestnut Hills and Ludie Belle figures those two fellows are mixed up in it. Mr. Suggs’ Christian Patriots. Wayne has been asked to join, but she has cautioned him against it. Too much like the sort of outfits her brother was in cahoots with back home, and he’s in jail now. Doing a lot of Bible reading. Probably come out a preacher like so many bad boys. The camp has been vandalized a few times of late in retaliation or else in provocation, and one night a shot was fired, so things are ramping up in an unpromising way. There aren’t a lot of people in the world who believe in this religion, and those who do can’t seem to get on with each other. It’s hard to figure. Creed. Where it gets sticky. For Ludie Belle, faith is part of the color of life. It goes with the horoscopes she reads, Mabel’s cards, changes in the weather, game shows on TV, Sister Debra’s nature love. Life would be a dull sad thing without it. After death? She doesn’t know. Wait and see.

When Wayne asks her quietly if she spoke with Hazel Dunlevy, Ludie Belle says she did. “I says it ain’t gone unnoticed, and she says, I know it, and she shows me the palm of her hand and says, see, it’s been writ there since she was borned, ain’t nuthin she can do about it.”

“Well, there ain’t neither of them got a spoonfulla sense, but maybe it’ll cool off,” Wayne says. They both know a lot about where such feelings can take a body and are slow to cast judgment.

Little Willie Hall bursts into the hall just then, crying out like that squeaky bellhop in the cigarette ads: “And when he gits home, he calleth t’gether on his friends’n neighbors, sayin’ unto ’em—
Luke 15:6!
—Rejoice with me on accounta I have jist got back my sheep which was lost!” His wife Mabel comes shuffling in behind with Ben and Clara as people shout,
“Glory!”
and
“Praise Jesus!”
and there’s a tearful rush toward them. Ludie Belle feels tears starting in her own eyes. It’s like something hard and heavy they’ve been holding back can be let go of now. But though Clara and Ben greet everyone like it truly means something, they’re both dry-eyed and Ludie Belle can see they’re not the same as before. Scrawnier and road-weary, but more than that. There’s something far off and broken about Clara, clenched up about Ben. Still in need of healing. Well, they can do that. Starting with fattening them up. She calls everybody to the table. Little Elaine, poor child, is not with them. That’s about the first thing everybody has noticed. “She’s ailing,” Clara explains and says no more. Beside Ludie Belle, Wayne whispers: “Clara’s bad hoarsed up and don’t look right.” Ludie Belle catches Mabel’s eye and Mabel shakes her head as she does when a bad card turns up.

Ben, alone, is back where it happened, trying to figure things out. Everything here where the bloodying of Junior Baxter took place was beat down that morning, the grass and flowers torn up and trampled on and all of it darkly wet like it had been raining blood. Now everything’s already grown back, this patch of weedy field wet today from summer rain and squishy underfoot, like nothing ever happened. Hard things happen and then become only ghosts of themselves. He and Clara have been visiting the Eastern churches, and most of the churches were full up and doing well and folks were good to them, treating Clara and him like heroes, hungry for news and eager to show they were all true Followers; but they were completely ignorant of the events at the camp, except those who’d come out for the dedication ceremonies, and even their memories were so different from Ben’s he sometimes wondered if they’d been in the same place at the same time. As for the troubles since: no notion of them. Even the history of five years ago was changing. It has been told so many times and in so many different ways that it often seems to be happening in some other place, a magical place like a Jerusalem or a Bethlehem, and he has to admit that his own songs make that even more so. Ben sometimes tried to set them straight in his quiet no-nonsense way, and they were attentive, but he got the feeling they were mostly only being polite, listening to his side of the story because of who he is, meanwhile waiting for him and all the other original witnesses to die so they could get on with their own version of things.

Kicking about, trowel in hand, Ben finds a water-soaked blue bandanna. So this must be the spot, or near to it, where they found Abner Baxter’s son, gagged by that bandana or one just like it. Probably came off a biker boy. Junior was out cold, his face running blood. They ungagged him and dipped him in the creek to bring him around. Only later did Ben learn from Bernice when she banded him up what was written there, and he knew then that it was probably his fault this had happened. What he told the younger one that morning when he caught them in his old farm shack, setting brother against brother. So he was in some way the cause for what happened to Elaine, too. Probably he should have just shot those boys when he had them in his sights. When he thinks about what happened here, he knows he could kill without remorse, and he knows that, even with God’s commandment against it, the prospect of eternal damnation would not stop him. But how did they know they’d find Elaine and Junior here that morning? Junior must have told them, not suspecting what his brother had in store for him. When he and Wayne and the others found him, Junior was wearing nothing but girl’s drawers. Elaine’s, as it turned out, though she seemed ignorant as to how he got hold of them. He said the same, trying to put the blame on the bikers, saying they must have done that to him while he was passed out. Later, on the road, Ben got to thinking again about their trailer break-in the morning the Baxters arrived. The missing money and handgun. So: the underwear, too, probably. Sick boy. It might also explain the belt he found here in the grass that morning, which Clara said could have been Ely’s. But Junior wouldn’t have walked down here in front of everybody, even in the dark, in nothing but girl’s underpants. Elaine was wearing even less, unless they stole her clothes. Far as he could understand her, they’d both had tunics on. Which made sense, given what they were apparently up to. But, if so, where were they? None to be found here that day and none here now. Whatever could those godless biker boys want with Christian tunics? There are a lot of things that Ben does not understand.

There was another pair of women’s drawers, for example. Didn’t see them at first that day. But, after they had hauled Junior up to the camp and cleared everybody out, Ben had come back here to look around, try to get a picture of what had happened. He found Carl Dean’s baseball cap at the edge of the woods, so that pretty much proved he was here, all right, hard as that was for Ben to take in. Then: a spot of bright color over there in the trees. He thought at first they must be Elaine’s, but they weren’t her size. Not her style, either: bright orange green-leafed flowers on them. When he realized whose they were, he also realized that she hadn’t told them everything. That maybe it was worse for her than she had said.

So today, after the meeting in the church office, he asked Mrs. Edwards to stay behind and help him with some notes of thanks he wanted to send to the Eastern churches. Clara, feeling poorly herself, was not up for the meeting and had left with Bernice after lunch to go check on Elaine in the trailer. The poor child won’t speak, won’t eat, the flesh on her bones thin like a wax coating. Which is worrying Clara sick, sapping the pluck right out of her. The meeting was mostly for his sake, filling him in on the changes at the camp, including the fancying up of the office they were sitting in, roomier now with the two boys out of it (Ben had failed to remark on it when they entered, and he knows that disappointed them), the legal actions being taken against them (“Won’t work,” said Mr. Suggs), the troubles they were still having with Abner Baxter and his people, the cornerstone-laying ceremonies for their new Coming of Light Tabernacle Church over on the Mount on Sunday. But Ben was worn down and worried and the closed office was thickly scented with waxy smells, and his mind kept floating off onto other things. That awful day, mostly—so vivid to him since they returned. So many unresolved mysteries. Young Carl Dean Palmers, just for a sample: what he did and didn’t do.

The first thing Ben asked Mrs. Edwards when they were alone in the office afterwards was what else she could remember from that morning. She began to tremble, and he knew it would not be easy for her. He apologized and said he and Clara would be grateful all their lives for what she did, but he was only trying to figure out some things and put his mind at ease, and he thought he’d start with what she could recollect about Carl Dean. Carl Dean is hated and reviled by near everybody. They’d all heard him tell Elaine the night before, like a threat, that things were going to go bad for her. And he’d bared his chest like a wild animal, scaring the child half out of her wits. He left the camp right after that, his wheels spitting up gravel, and Duke and his woman saw him in his leather jacket drinking with the bikers at the motel, leaving with them later on. Ben heard him coming home late, noisy, drunk. Fell asleep in his van with his feet sticking out. Then, like a taunt, he parked the van right in front of the Meeting Hall before leaving. With a vulgar obscenity hanging over the rearview mirror. But though he’s what some would call rough trade, Ben believes Carl Dean is a good fellow at heart and he does not think it was in him to do what most people seem to think he did. They had a touching farewell up on the Point that morning and Carl Dean said he wished Ben was his dad, and he was sincere about it. Brought tears to Ben’s eyes. He’s not the only one with doubts. At lunch, Wayne and Ludie Belle said much the same, and Billy Don pointed out that Pach’s handgun, driver’s license, and utility knife were in the van when they burned it. Seems like he’d have taken those things along if he was planning on joining up with the bikers. He said Pach’ was pretty ticked off, all right, and he might have liked to kill Young Abner, but he didn’t think he would ever do anything to hurt Elaine, which was what Ben believed. And then Ludie Belle told him about Mrs. Edwards’ apocalyptic angels story and pointed out there was no place for Carl Dean in that colorful gang. Like as if, in Sister Debra’s lively imagination, he wasn’t really there, no matter what she says to the contrary. So that’s what he wanted to know about.

She said she was so terrified, it was like everything was speeded up and stopped dead at the same time, like it can happen sometimes in nightmares, but she did have the memory that that short bearded man with the pockmarked face, whoever he was, was there somehow, though sometimes it was like he wasn’t. When they were burying the body, for example, he didn’t seem to be there. Burying the body? I think it was a body, she said, though it wasn’t very big. But it was heavy. An animal maybe. This was before what happened to Elaine. She stumbled upon them during her dawn prayers and just froze. She was so scared. But it was dark and they were drinking and didn’t see her. They had shovels. Why had she never said this before? She didn’t know. Somehow it was just coming back. Like she’d been too afraid to remember before. The ugly one with the beard may have organized everything and stayed in the background, so she didn’t see him at first. Maybe he had always been one of them and had infiltrated the camp under false pretenses. Colin said he wasn’t who he said he was. No, Ben told her gently. That was Carl Dean Palmers. Sure of that much. Ben had put her underwear in a plain brown envelope and he handed the soft packet to her now. She didn’t open it, just started crying, couldn’t stop, was soon hiccupping with her sobs. He said he was sorry and left her there. He had more questions, but they’d have to wait.

But that explained some things. Why they were burying the body at the camp, Ben has no idea, though, since they may have been lying in wait for Junior and Elaine, it might have been a two-birds-with-one-stone thing. The sheriff found a stolen station wagon later that morning over near the mine—apparently they’d taken the brake off and rolled it down the hill—and it was likely they used it to haul the body here. Made less noise than their motorcycles, too. Accounts for their quick getaway when he and the others rushed down there. Ben doesn’t have much to go on, but he supposes from Mrs. Edwards’ story that the burying must have happened near where he found the flowery drawers. The grave’s probably not too deep, something they dug in a hurry. The trowel he has brought along should be enough. He’s fearful of unearthing a decomposing body, only hoping she’s right and it’s just an animal. But where to start? Everything looks wet and settled, the ground back here in the trees covered with bushes and dead leaves. Could take him weeks, and even then he might miss it. Then he sees it. An area blanketed with dead maple leaves. But under an oak tree. He carefully clears the wet leaves away and finds the patch of disturbed earth where nothing new is growing yet, slightly sunken. About the size of Rocky’s grave, too small for a grown person. A child? A severed head? The thought of digging up such a thing sends a shudder down his spine. Maybe he should turn this over to Sheriff Puller, he thinks, even as he begins to drive his trowel into the wet soil. But what he finds is not a child. Not a body at all. It all begins to make sense. He remembers now the rumors going round before they left. But why here? Because no one would think to look here. Which means they most likely didn’t know Junior and Elaine would turn up, not wanting anyone to know they’d been here. It also means they’re planning to come back. He could report it, but it would throw suspicion on him and the camp, might draw state and federal authorities to the area. They never said anything to any outsiders about the rape, wanting to protect Elaine, so there’d be a lot of explaining to do. They’d want to pin the theft on somebody, and the bikers aren’t around, and they know he and the others have been seen over there around the mine buildings, not to mention the gatherings of all of them on the hill. Which weren’t themselves completely legal, as he understands it from all the disputation. There are people who mean them harm and want to be rid of them and they could use this as an excuse. But he can’t leave it where it is. What if they came back? It weighs too much to move any distance. He’d need help and that would mean telling somebody, and he doesn’t want to do that. Not yet. It’s hard work with nothing but a trowel, but he can shift it far enough that it won’t be easy to find.