The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (80 page)

He has his weekly Wednesday date at the Loin tonight with his father and he’s driving Lem’s old tangerine junker again, his Bing Cherry in for new tires and top and a paint touchup, but there’s still time and enough left in the junker to make it out to the lakes and back before supper. He figures she’ll wait for him until he closes the pool, and she does. They’ve sent another cop over at closing time. Unfortunately, it’s not the old guy—it’s Angela’s brother, Charlie. When he and Babs step out of the front gate and he has finished locking up, Charlie swaggers over, toothpick between his teeth, and says: “I’d like a word with you, punk. About your fiancée.”

These foolish things
… Ted’s back in the Sir Loin saddle, ear tuned to the golden oldies, humming along silently. Second sour mash double on the rocks. Fatherhood, Tommy’s recent crisis. Irene, the Dance Barn, the old days. Legal actions. Plans for the Fourth. Stacy alone, thinking about her. Is there a pattern here? Looks like it. What we do on Wednesdays. Waiting for Thursdays. While waiting for his son. The double now just melting rocks. Orders up a third. Also a pattern.
A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces
… Though she doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t wear a lot of lipstick, either. But it feels right, brings her to mind. But then, what doesn’t? He stubs his out (maybe he’ll give it up), turns his gaze away from the waitresses and their switching little behinds to look out on the sunlit parking lot. Swirls the ice around in his glass as though stirring his thoughts. Days long now. Midsummer soon. Must be this weekend.
An airline ticket to romantic places
. Rio maybe. Baird has a special offer this summer. Advertised by a lady with fruit in her hat. Or Paris, Hawaii, Rome. A feeling of nostalgia, seeing her in those places. Though they haven’t been to any of them together, of course not. Yet, as if. A late April drive to a river town on a bluff where, holding hands, she told him how desperately she loved him and how lost she felt: more like it. The pale beige cardigan she wore that day with the amber necklace he gave her. Walking past him in the bank, smoothing her skirt down over her rear, knowing he is watching. Pointing down at the shoes she bought from Dave Osborne. Foolish things. That window in the motel room where the milky afternoon light seeps in. The pink butterfly on her tailbone.
The ghost of you clings
…

He sighs. Feeling good. Sad in some sweet way, but good. Most things have been going his way for a change. The NOWC network is cohering around the plans for the Fourth of July celebrations. Bringing the community together again. Cleaning up Main Street. Poor Dave Osborne. He’ll have to go. Stacy’s purchase didn’t save him. Will try to get him some help. What will they do with all those lace-less shoes? Props for their coalmine horror ride maybe. Pat Suggs remains incapacitated, though some of the city’s court initiatives have been blocked as though the old brawler were pulling strings from his hospital bed. Probably that black-bearded hardshell libertarian. When Nick called him he said he didn’t talk to wops and hung up on him. The backhoes are also back on the mine hill.
The ghost of you
… Probably just residual knock-on effects from his earlier moves, Nick explained. Good man. Though he wasn’t able to prevent Baxter’s release when some lawyer from Randolph Junction filed a complaint about the injuries the preacher sustained during his attempted escape. If it was one. Maury Castle said that Monk Wallace has a different version. “For one thing,” Maury said dryly, “he says Baxter wasn’t never out of his cell.” Well, the mayor’s a notorious racist, hates Italians, is resentful of Nick, is not to be trusted. Nick is working on getting Baxter rearrested, and the rest of that lot as well, has confidence in the chief and young Bonali. He believes Baxter’s followers are getting counsel from someone on the inside; the chief thinks it might be the deputy sheriff, Calvin Smith. As for what’s happening out at the church camp, Ted monitors things fairly well by way of Tommy’s friendship with Jim Elliott’s daughter, who is apparently having an affair with one of the young cultists. She’s a wild kid, but useful. Her mother was pretty wild, too. Frisky, they called her. “Yeah, I don’t know why,” Tommy said last week at supper, “but Sally talks to me. She’s a kind of comedian, and I think those religious crazies provide her material.” Ted has learned about the rape, the schism, the temple construction, the ripple of new prophecies, and it’s how he found out about their plans to dig an empty grave for Giovanni Bruno’s body. Some sort of symbolic burial ceremony later this month or early next. Only one problem: Bruno isn’t dead. He called to check. So he’s thinking about that. Not such a good thing that the Elliott girl and Stacy have become friends, but in a place like this, everyone knows everyone, there are no airtight seals. He found out when Stacy began describing a racy French novel she was reading about a woman’s extramarital affair that she said Sally Elliott had loaned to her. Maybe, describing it, she was trying to excite him. He once read a French novel called
Lucky Raoul
that was pretty arousing, but he didn’t remember enough of the plot, if it had one, to tell her about it. Those French. The Elliott girl has also visited Irene a couple of times. So has the Bonali girl, of course. Also a friend of Stacy. Smalltown webworks. Enmeshed in them.

What’s that one? Dum-da-da-da-da-dum-dum…
For sentimental reasons
… Mmm.
Think of you every morning, dream of you every night
… Moony old bastard. What time is it? Tommy’s later than usual. Maybe the old orange jalopy broke down. But he could at least call, damn it. Lem is taking his time with the convertible repairs and Tommy is clearly frustrated without it. He claims that Concetta’s son was responsible for the damage and he dragged her out to the car and railed at the poor woman until she cried. Have to caution him about that. Can’t afford to lose her. But Tommy had problems with that same boy at the pool, too—a kid they call Moron. Had to call the police. Says there’s a gang of them. It’s probably time to free his son up from that job. Too exposed. Hire him to work for the NOWC committee, maybe. At least until after the Fourth. The boy is full of good ideas. Would add some youthful energy. Tommy has been through a rough patch (past that now, good riddance), but getting his car back should help. Lem promised that it would look like new when he was done with it. Good old Lem. Works harder than anyone in West Condon. Except maybe the poor mechanic with the face full of nose who works for him. As a miner, Lem was a union hothead who railed against the bosses; now he’s a boss himself and is learning it’s not all haves and have-nots. But still he can’t seem to turn a steady penny. Have to ask the bank accountant to look at Lem’s books, such as he keeps, see if he can offer any advice. Probably mostly clients who haven’t paid up. Lem deserves the best and should be one of the town’s success stories. Da-dum-da-dum-da-dum…
The very thought of you
. Right.
And I forget to do
…some-thing… Nearly an hour late. Too much. Irresponsible damned kid. Too much like him of late. Well, to hell with him. Eat without him. What? “Phone for you, Mr. Cavanaugh.” Ah. At last. “Where the hell are you?” But it’s not Tommy. It’s the emergency room at the hospital.

III.6

Friday 19 June

One morning in the middle of summer he awakes to find himself in a strange place haunted by an infinite series of bearded men with hair down to their shoulders. The man sitting up in front of him in the blue purgatorial light and throwing off the comforter as he sits up and throws off his comforter is both familiar and unfamiliar, as are all his reiterations echoing out into the immeasurable distance. He thinks of days of fasting in the desert, when such hallucinations would appear commonly in the deranged euphoria of starvation, and full of self-understanding he rises naked to greet the naked phantasms as they rise, half to greet him, erect as he is erect, the other half their backs turned toward him. There is a stirring at his feet and the head of the woman appears as though by a conjuring, also in endless regression at the feet of all the other bearded men, gazing up at their splendid erections. He turns sideways that all his selves might display them in serial profile. “Oh, Wesley!” she says with a sleepy sigh. “You are so beautiful!”

“To whom, my child,” he asks, looking around in consternation, “are you speaking?”

The good news: Wesley has stopped talking to Jesus. The bad news: he
is
Jesus. Prissy is frightened, not by this sudden rise to the surface of the being within, but by his expressed determination, now that he fully is who he is, to embark upon his worldly mission, which she is certain can only end in catastrophe, like it did the first time. Happily, Christ Jesus has not lost his lusty ardor and has agreed to start the new day by dancing again their “Dance of the Incarnation,” which is of course all about flesh and the spirit. She has dashed away into the house, careful to lock the studio door behind her for fear he might launch his mission without her, to get her Magdalene costume, which is really just a cotton nightshirt the color of a gunny sack but much softer and which she has discreetly ripped here and there to suggest destitution (was she really a rich lady who bankrolled his movement, as Jesus likes to say? no matter, it’s more fun like this) and offer a few provocative glimpses of the poor sinful body within. Unfortunately, she forgot about her husband Ralph and woke him when she rushed, somewhat underdressed, into the bedroom. The ferocity of his scowl as he reared up in alarm was enough to pulverize a person’s spine, as if his rage were a kind of ray gun, and she did in fact go limp for a moment and had the mad desperate thought that she might ask him for his advice, even though he understands nothing at all about what she is presently going through and thinks of her as little better than a whore. Which part she is about to play, one she admittedly finds easier to perform than that of the Virgin Mary.

It is too dangerous to let Wesley out amid the rabble of West Condon, so to provide him some fresh air, over the past few weeks she has been taking him on drives into the country, where in secluded woodsy places they have danced the dances of the peaceable kingdom, the fall of the sparrow (a challenge to her choreographic ingenuity, which she rose to brilliantly, even as, paradoxically, the sparrow fell), and the parables of the hidden treasure, the persistent widow, and the ten virgins, sometimes mixing these things up for variety, which tends to suit Jesus more than it does Wesley, who is something of a stickler for textual exactitude. Too O.T. is what Jesus calls him, if she understands their conversations rightly. Which is difficult, because until now she has only heard Wesley’s half of them and has had to guess the rest. Today her ingenuity will again be tested, for Jesus has already announced his intention to leave the studio and go forth and preach to the unenlightened and it will not be easy to dissuade him. Although both he and Wesley are stubborn, Jesus is the one more receptive to playful and adventurous notions, saying it takes him back to his carefree boyhood days in Galilee, and she believes she will find a way.

Dressed in his scarlet tunic and flowing midnight-blue robes, fashioned for him by the woman from styles of an era not his own, Jesus studies, somewhat in perplexity, the bearded apparition in the mirror that presumably is himself. How is it that he has been reborn in this confused and faithless Presbyterian preacher, whom he has been wearing these past weeks like a thick scratchy overcoat? A wrapping now shed, though traces remain. This is not his nose, for example, and these fancy rags, richer and cleaner smelling than his own ever were, conceal a lack of sinew and a pallor most unlike him. Perhaps that confused faithlessness is the very reason for his having landed here: soft mud for the planting of the seed rather than the thorny fields of orthodoxy, the stony ground of dogmatic certainty, as per his parable, that seed now become purpose incarnate. He strokes his beard. Too much has gone wrong over the centuries; it has been a history of error compounded by more error. Christianity, as he understands it, is a farce, an embarrassment, its professional advocates a pack of fools and charlatans—his current vessel no exception. He knows what he must do. But is this body he is in strong enough to do it? Though his memory is not clear, he feels certain he has attempted this many times through the ages, and clearly he has always failed or things would not be as they are.

The woman returns somewhat breathless. In her pretty rags. She is all his Marys, among them the Magdalene, dear heart, just as he is Jesus. Not exactly the same as the originals, but yet the same; each essence newly embodied. The substance of her “Dance of the Incarnation”: that which has no body, no form or limits, made visible. Tactile. She puts on some music. Bach. A prelude. Meaning this will not be a quick exclamatory frenzy of the Word becoming flesh, but something more structured, more exploratory, explicative. A peroration.

“I have to go,” he says, impatience overtaking him. “I must carry my message to the multitudes.”

“No, you can’t! Not yet! They’re not ready for you, Wesley! It would be a disaster!”

He stares blankly at her.

“Jesus.”

He nods. “But my time is now.”

“No, it is…ah…tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, at least! There are things we must do first!” Her hand is in his tunic. She is already dancing. “And then the temptation of Christ in the wilderness!”

It’s true. He is still getting his new bearings. His reflected chrysalislike pallor above the puddled robes at his feet is an eloquent reminder of the newness of his advent. She is right, as she often is.

Loose gravel rattles under their wheels as they roll along on small country roads, headed for the wilderness. It’s a bumpy untended road, one Priscilla has never been on before, with scrubby ditches on either side, but at least they have left the billboards behind. They are on their way to premiere her new “Dance of the Temptation of Christ,” in which she will play the parts of both the devil (wild, perverse temptation) and the ministering angels (tender, loving embrace), more or less at the same time, since she perceives this as an active battle for Christ’s soul (did the Son of God have a soul? if so, does God?) with the outcome somewhat open-ended, even if that is not one hundred percent theologically correct. After all, they are skipping the forty-day fast as well, so this is only a creative representation of the general principles intended to show that Christ is above such petty squabbles and meant to be adored no matter which way it goes. In fact, since leaving the highway, she has already begun the dance, her bared breasts (whereon changes are taking place) bouncing as the car bounces over old unused railroad tracks. She steals a sidelong glance at Jesus to see if he is watching. He is not. His new state is confounding him. He has been like a troubled spirit these past couple of months, trapped in the shell of a stranger, and she realizes that subconsciously, for reasons mainly of performance values (no one had ever treated her to cunnilingus before, not like Wesley and Jesus with their doubled appetites, and she loves the feel of his beard nesting in her thighs, trimming it daily to her own pleasure), she has been refashioning that shell better to represent the rising spirit within. He has become what he seems to be.