The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (76 page)

Cecil Appleby pauses, raises his head. Has he heard something? He has. A voice at the bottom of the hill. It is Bernice Filbert, crying out. She is running up the hill, her long skirt pulled up to her knees, her car door flung open behind her. Clara blanches, staggers, takes an unsteady step toward Bernice. Ben rushes to Clara’s side.

Bernice seems to hear the unspoken question, asked silently and in fear by all: “No, no!” she shouts, clambering up the hill. “It ain’t Elaine! It’s Mr. Suggs! He’s had a powerful stroke! They think he’ll die!”

So there it is. The terrible but justifying sign. All turn in awe and expectation toward Darren, where he stands, somehow apart, not far from the open grave. He remembers that cold wind he seemed to feel when he stepped across those half-sunken footstones in the old cemetery; he feels it again. He nods and knows he has nothing more to do or say. His nod suffices.

III.5

Monday 8 June – Wednesday 17 June

Money. What is it? He doesn’t know. He defines himself by it, but it’s still a mystery. Like the Holy Spirit. It exists and doesn’t exist. You have to take it on faith. If it were more visible, more logical, it might not work. But it’s completely irrational. We use numbers to mask that, make it seem to add up. Calculations as litanies, incantations. Credit as the dispensation of grace. A delusion that works. Stacy’s definition of religion. Not his, but he can live with it. That people see money as the very opposite of the Holy Spirit, as something diabolical, also makes sense. Money as Mammon. Trying to do good with it is mostly a losing proposition. What’s happening here in the bank. Big mistake. Or, rather, “good” in finance means something else. The Golden Rule doesn’t operate here. Misguided generosity is a kind of wickedness. Loose morals. Failure to foreclose is an infidelity. But if “good” is not the same thing as the Golden Rule, it’s not the opposite either. The system requires exchange to work, and exchange involves give-and-take. Some kind of honor code. I’ll believe if you believe, I’ll spend if you’ll spend. It’s how we keep ticking along, using up the world. Misers are sinners who constipate the system. To win it all is to lose it all. Sweeping the Monopoly board is like the end of the world; to continue, you have to redistribute and start over. Another Big Bang, so to speak. Expand and contract, expand and contract, the eternal cycle of the universe. Same as the business cycle. You can’t legislate it—there’s nothing there to legislate—but you can profit off the swings. If you’re a believer. Like Paul said, you have to believe the unbelievable. Become a fool to become wise. A fool for Christ is not unlike a fool for money. That is to say a successful banker. Or a fool for love. Also a mystery. As Stacy wistfully said, laughing at his Monopoly board apocalypse. But also crying a little. Her longing for him is so intense it sometimes frightens him. Talk of leaving has ended. She now has no autumn plans. She has told Mrs. Battles she’ll be staying. You must have noticed, she said, ducking her head and leaning into his chest, I’ve completely surrendered. As has Ted. Long since. Was only waiting for her to catch up. Never let himself be a fool before. Wiser now.

She enters the office with an application needing his signature. Displaying upright bank floor demeanor, knowing she is being watched. No eye contact. Only her flush gives her away. Deep into her throat. And the bluesy tune she is humming between closed lips. One of theirs. What is it? Hah: Baby, Knock Me a Kiss. Ted hopes his grin looks more like a boss’s approving smile and flips the top page of the application over as though studying it. “It’s okay, Mr. Cavanaugh,” she says crisply. “Just sign it before my knees give way.” She leaves primly, as though faintly exasperated, but twitches her hips slightly at the doorway like a backsided wink. What has he just signed? He doesn’t know. Happy as a pup. Another of their songs.

One condition of surrender: give up his obsession with the cult. He can do this. The world’s a crazy place, as unmanageable as economic cycles. Let it be. Suggs moved his heavy yellow backhoes onto the mine hill Friday, began chewing up the hillside. An outrage. There are pending legal actions, even their ownership of the hill is in question. It was like a dare: stop me if you can. Ted had learned they were having some kind of ceremony over there yesterday, the laying of a cornerstone or something. There must be a way. Stacy pleaded. Don’t let it spoil our weekend. He hesitated. For a moment he felt that football in his hands again, had his fingers on the laces. But he smiled, shrugged, booted it out of sight. Felt good. That game’s over. Whistle blown. With Tommy, Concetta, and her widow friend Rosalia sharing the home care duty, Saturday was a night in the city (“important meeting with investors”), yesterday a long drive in her car, a walk in the hills. Wet but beautiful. Maybe their most beautiful time together so far. They drove leisurely over into the next state, where they could wander around, hand-in-hand, unafraid of being recognized, then, somewhat more urgently, back to the motel. They got caught in a downpour between the parking lot and the room, so they shed their wet clothes, showered together, and spent a couple of delicious late afternoon hours in each other’s arms, lit only by the soft forgiving light flowing in through the wet windows and falling upon them like a kind of benediction. Divine sanction. What divinity, he couldn’t say. The days are long now. They dressed by that light for supper.

Nick Minicozzi drops down from his office upstairs, closes the door behind him when he enters. He has news. John P. Suggs is in the hospital. Intensive care. Catastrophic stroke. In a coma. Not expected to pull through. The Collins girl is there, too. She has apparently been starving herself to death. A kind of hunger strike against God for not bringing on the Second Coming, or something. And six men are in jail, charged by the sheriff with various crimes against the Brunist encampment. Apparently their power and phone lines got cut over the weekend. One of the arrested, a young guy, has a bullet wound, and another is Reverend Abner Baxter.

Even before he has fully absorbed it all, Ted is reorganizing his campaign. Breakthrough! He and Suggs have been playing “king of the hill” all spring and the coal baron has been beating him at every move; Ted had all but abandoned the field. Now things have suddenly changed. Pat is a stubborn autocrat, has no partners, only employees, disdains lawyers. It should be easy to tie up his headless empire in litigation, bring an end to the Brunist nightmare. And they seem to be fighting among themselves, making it even easier. He and Nick review all the legal actions they’ve been taking. Nick promises to follow up aggressively. Put on the blitz. “Especially hit hard on the money and property issues.” Maybe they can not only wrest the Deepwater land away from them, but might even repossess the camp itself, reactivate it now that it’s fixed up. Summer camp for the whole area.

“Who manages Suggs’ mining company?”

“The site boss is a guy named McDaniel. Not from around here.”

“See if you can reach him. Tell him he has to get those backhoes off the hill today or risk impoundment. Launch a suit that would force them to refill all the holes and trenches they’ve dug. And let him know you’re doing it.”

Even as he talks with Nick, he’s on the phone. Getting the word out. Fashioning moves. Power plays. He makes one-on-one appointments with all the members of the West Condon Ministerial Association. Books announcement times with Rotary and the BPW, the Masons, the Knights of Columbus. The Fourth of July is coming up. In years past, they held an all-county parade here in town. Could revive that. Find some famous guests—like a pro ballplayer or a movie actor—try to lure the governor down. Book a carnival, organize picnics and ball-games, hold raffles, throw a spectacular fireworks display. Theme of Unity. Progress. New Opportunities for West Condon. Bring in that city group buying the old hotel. The Italian-American angle. Brighten up Main Street. Restore the community spirit. He asks the NOWC steering committee to meet Wednesday in the old Chamber offices. Starting late. They need six months, have one. Have to work hard at this.

Then it’s off to the police station and jail, the hospital, see where the pieces lie. On the way out the door, his glance meets hers, sees the flicker of disappointment. The fool for love has lost his way again. He shrugs, shakes his head. Sorry. Can’t help it. Have to do this.

“Numbers,” Sally Elliott says, blowing smoke out over the porch railing, clouding the day. Ostensibly, she’s here to borrow Tommy’s cameras for a wedding she’s been asked to photograph. “Mathematics.” It’s Monday, his day off from the pool. Summer coming all over itself. Angela is working at the bank, he has the whole sweet top-down day out to himself. Maybe, first thing, once he’s got rid of Sally, he’ll drag Fleet Piccolotti out of his family sausage shop to go shoot some baskets or throw a ball around. Pete’s down on life, a side of him he didn’t see back in high school. It probably wasn’t there. Marriage, family have infected him with it, shopkeeping has. No easy cure, but sinking a few might cheer him up. “A kind of wizardry built on the void. Starts with zero the way religions start with God. Neither exist, but you can build a whole system.” She’s trying to impress him with what she knows about the Brunists, mostly things she’s learned from that wall-eyed kid with the droopy handlebars. If he can be trusted. Is she fucking him? Probably. There’s a bit of a breeze. He can hear the flag flopping about lightly above the porch roof. Traditionally it was Tommy’s duty to raise and lower it every day, but now he and his dad are both busy and preoccupied, so it stays up. When it comes down after Labor Day the house looks naked without it. Like it has lost its loin cloth or something. “Add in fantasy calendrics, a mysterious voice in a ditch, magic numbers and prophetic tombstones, and anything can happen, anything can be true.”

He knows she’ll turn all this into a thumbnail history of Christianity. She can be pretty funny, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out what the joke is. Well, she reads books. Her T-shirt is about all he’ll read today. He doesn’t even know many who do read, not for fun. She may be the only person in town. Those he has known up at college were mostly pretty boring. Couldn’t throw a ball or shoot the shit in an ordinary sort of way. Sally’s different, but then she’d probably be different even if she didn’t read books. On the porch table with their coffee cups and her ashtray are some old newspapers, one of which Sally says is the final edition of the
West Condon Chronicle
. She has explained all the pictures. He glanced at them. Ancient history. Vaguely remembered some of it, though at the time he wasn’t paying all that much attention. Did remember that black hand. The Claw. A lot of sick jokes about it back then. All this info-gathering began with his telling her he was thinking about going on to grad school in sociology and using the Brunists as dissertation material. That was months ago, while he was still up at school. Now he’s thinking more about law school, but she only laughed when he told her and has carried on as before. Well, she’s lonely—it gives her something to do.

“Now Darren has come up with a new idea,” she says, lighting up again. “The preacher husband of the woman who founded the cult was killed in the mine disaster. They’re apparently going to rebury him under one corner of their new church, and Darren wants to dig a hole on the other side and ask for Bruno’s body back from wherever it is to put there.”

“Bruno’s dead? I didn’t know that,” he says. He’s only half listening. He’s wondering if he should take up pipe smoking.

“Meanwhile, he wants to fill the coffin with a tunic, a mining pick, and his seven sayings.”

“His seven sayings,” Tommy says, repeating her without thinking about it. A mistake. She goes on to quote them all and explain them, offering a few wiseass variants of her own.

The grass is high after the recent rain. Needs mowing. He owes his old man that much for his Bing Cherry gleaming in the driveway. Dandelions popping up everywhere, too. Have to behead the randy little suckers before they go to seed. His first sex: blowing dandelion seeds, impregnating the neighborhood. It’s fun, but what’s disappointing is the sad little nubbin that’s left at the end, the wilt that overtakes the stem. Doesn’t stop you from picking another, though, and having another blow. Maybe he should go for a drive today. Pick up a girl, someone new. A hand job on the highway with the top down, a fuck in the fields. He calls his new machine his Bing Cherry because, one, they’re his favorite fruit and nearly as delicious as pussy, and two, being a poet at heart, he likes the connection to bang, bung, bong. But the car is actually more the color of pie cherries. Which are also delicious. His Cherry Pile? Fleet calls it, or him, Il Cardinale. He sometimes now calls him Holy Father. Sourly. Fleet’s more like a sour cherry.

“So now, after what’s happened, they’re into their Hatfields and McCoys mode. Emily Wetherwax told my mother on the phone that Archie is out at the camp this morning repairing the phone lines that got cut. Electricity’s off, too. He called her from up a pole somewhere and said there’d even been some shooting over the weekend.”

All in all, it’s a wacky story, no doubt at least partly true. No wonder his dad wants to get rid of those wombats. The one image from her story that sticks in his head, even though it was probably made up, is of that redheaded fat boy dressed in nothing but girl’s panties and dumped at his preacher father’s feet like spoiled meat. Hi, Dad. Guess what? He and the girl were apparently in high school at the same time, both of them a couple of classes behind Tommy. She’s a miner’s kid, like Angela, but he doesn’t remember her. Probably not his type. Though she was evidently Ugly Palmers’ type, at least to the extent of gangbanging her with the others. Just as well the asshole didn’t turn up at Lem’s garage that morning; Ugly has just got uglier and was likely looking for an excuse to get into a fight.

“What if,” Sally says, stubbing out her smoke, “all the madness is buried in the language and you can’t get it out?”