The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (109 page)

The camp is suddenly aswarm with people piling into their vehicles and pulling out, wheels spinning in the mud and horns blaring. Down at the emptying trailer park, Ludie Belle looks out her trailer window and says, “There they go! The weather’s still ketchy, but it’s fairin’ up. Looks like it’s time to shuckle outa here.” Cecil and Corinne step out through the dying drizzle, start up their camper truck, and squeeze out through the congestion, waving at everybody. Hovis has turned up finally, but Uriah who went looking for him has not come back. Hovis remarks that Uriah is a mite slow and easily confused and may have got caught up in the general movement toward the hill, he’ll go find him. He asks again where they are meeting up and he says he thinks he can remember that. Billy Don says he’ll go along with him because he wants to use the office phone. Wayne and Ludie Belle take Mabel along to Clara’s trailer to explain why they have to leave the camp, but when they get there, they discover that Elaine is gone. “She cain’ta got far,” Wayne says and he goes looking for her. “Whatever passes,” Ludie Belle calls after him, “you be back here in ten minutes, hear?”

When word gets back to town that the Brunists are on the move toward the mine hill, Police Chief Dee Romano informs the mayor’s office, then calls Ted Cavanaugh at the bank to let him know, and he and Louie head out there, leaving Monk to mind the shop, lamed-up Bo Bosticker having gone home to get some shut-eye after his night duty. The mine hill is not really in Dee’s jurisdiction, though it is no longer in the county sheriff’s either—it belongs now to the state troopers who took it over Sunday night after the dynamite blast at the camp—but Cavanaugh expects it of him. He asked Dee to tell the troopers on duty there to hold their ground until he gets there, and to let them know the governor and National Guard units were on the way. Dee radioed ahead to be sure some troopers would actually be there when he arrived. As he’d anticipated, they were all over at the scene of the explosion, having coffee under the tent. They said they didn’t understand what the connection was between the blast at the camp and the empty mine hill. Dee doesn’t exactly understand it either but said he’d explain it to them when he got there, and meanwhile these were the official orders from the governor. There are a lot of cars on the road out to the mine, so he turns on the sirens and roars past them, thinking that if he were not a Romano and all that ties him to, he’d just keep on going.

The banker has arrived early after the long holiday weekend, while the tellers are still setting out their stalls. He’d planned to confront the backlog he had been avoiding, but now, after Romano’s call, he’ll have to holster up and get out to the mine. It has not been a good weekend. He has lost his intern (he is hurting, he’ll get over it), his son is not speaking to him, his embittered wife is increasingly caustic and befuddled by drugs and religious confusions, private armies have been forming up, stirring old local ethnic animosities, his Fourth of July celebrations were something of a shambles, underscored by the brutal murder of the sheriff, and his attempt to reason with the cult fanatics was a fiasco. He has to hope that Bruno recovers from his seizure, or he’ll have more problems on his hands. On top of all that, his fraternity brother in the FBI has confirmed Nick Minicozzi’s underworld connections (knew that, damn it; ignored it); the goddamned news media are back in numbers, determined to make everybody look like idiots, lunatics and criminals; and his own weak policies and lack of personal oversight have damaged the bank’s fiscal stability. Meanwhile, the violence is escalating and the various police units are incompetent in dealing with it, if not obstructive in some cases. The town has been overrun by a gang of vicious killers associated with the cult, and except for those who blew themselves up at the church camp and that abandoned farmhouse, they all got away without one of them being caught. Maybe they’re being hidden at the camp by the cultists. As soon as Ted has that thought, he knows it to be true. Meaning they may have more dynamite over there. He’ll demand a complete search and a shutdown of the camp, which is now a crime scene. National Guard units are at last on their way to support the state and local police, but they should have been here weeks ago; it took the murder of a lawman for Governor Kirkpatrick to take Ted’s warnings seriously. The pompous ass is driving in sometime this morning with his political entourage; Ted intends to meet it. He sees by his desk calendar that the new Presbyterian minister is also due today. Can’t deal with that. He calls Jim Elliott and tells him to meet the man at the bus station, take him to the church, show him the manse, get him settled in. Name’s Jenkins. Make him feel at home. Stay off the gin until you get the job done. He signs four foreclosure documents, approves the drafting of eight others, freezes all accounts with overdrafts, hauls on his shoulder holster, and calls Maury Castle at the mayor’s office, telling him to arm himself and meet him out at the mine hill. Immediately.

Sally Elliott is also headed to the mine. By way of Tucker City. Billy Don has called from the church camp to say he’s finally taking her advice and leaving, but he wants to see her before he goes. That’s really great news, she’d said, and they agreed to meet in forty-five minutes, the time it will take her to bicycle to the Tucker City drugstore. He’d told her that the Brunists are now led by Reverend Baxter with Darren at his side, and they had just left the camp to march over to the Mount of Redemption and challenge the state police there. Billy Don and the others were taking Mrs. Collins and her daughter with them when they leave, only hoping (he said with a nervous laugh) they’re making the right decision and the Rapture isn’t really coming. She said, “Don’t worry, Billy D—it’s the right decision.” Since the Saturday night downer when Tommy abandoned her to a night alone on bloody sheets, penniless and carless, blaming her for taking him to that hotel on purpose, cursing her loudly in front of all those opened doors as he stormed away, she hasn’t felt like writing, has been drawing instead. Smoking till her lungs hurt and drawing. Hands and ears. Eyes, mostly angry. The kitchen coffee pot, her shirt hanging over a chair back, the family cat. She sat for an hour in front of a mirror and tried to draw her vagina, but it was too depressing and she tore the page out and burned it. Then, using the Polaroid shot she had taken of the bloody hotel bedsheet, she recreated the design with colored inks, looking for some larger scene to arise from it in the way that Vasari described the painting of epic battle scenes from studying the pattern of spittle on a wall. This led her nowhere. Spittle was apparently more inspiring. When Billy Don called, she had been thinking about hopping on her bike and doing some sketching around town—the corner drugstore, abandoned train depot, backside of the derelict hotel—and his call brought to mind the old Deepwater No. 9 tipple and water tower, and that has become her project of the day. She scratches about for all the money she can find to give Billy Don, stuffs Tommy’s camera and some pencils and charcoals in her backpack, and gets on the road to Tucker City.

Charlie Bonali, founder and boss of the Knights of Columbus Volunteer Defense Force, is not privy to events out at the mine hill, he’s only guessing, but with the area sealed off by the state coppers after the nitro blast, he supposes the Brunist crazies will have to contest that and they’ll be protected by Smith and his white supremacist militia, who are Charlie’s real targets. He calls young Naz Moroni and tells him to arm the Devil Dogs and get them out there for the party. Moron says his nonno died overnight, the old guy he was named after, and he’ll probably get dragged into family stuff, but he should be free until something like suppertime. Before going out, Charlie will drop by St. Stephen’s to have a word with old Father Bags. Charlie is not religious, but he understands the Church’s power politics and identifies with it. From the Godfather Pope down, it’s like the syndicate. He’ll let Baglione know that the Brunists are on the warpath again and tell him about the K of C Defense Force in case the church might want to hire a couple of professional guards. He’ll also offer to restart and manage Bingo nights at St. Stephen’s and provide protection for it. Charlie’s old man is already out on the front porch, watching the rain fall and jawing with Sal Ferrero, a fellow member of the losers’ club, who nevertheless has brought breakfast by for them all, gift of his hens. They’ve been talking about the death of old Nonno, who was their dead pal Angelo’s old man, but now the subject of the pending foreclosure comes up, as it always does with these two whiners. It’s also a problem for Charlie. The money from the city has dried up, the rumor reaching him that they’re pissed about his busting the banker brat’s nose without first taking his badge off, and he’s not sure where he can park his bod if his old man loses the house. As for his whore of a sister, sprawled half-naked at the phone in her nightshirt, she does indeed seem to be filling out a bit in the belly, so maybe there’s some hush money to be made there.

Angela is on the phone to her friend Ramona, who has upset her by letting her know that Tommy was seen leaving the Fourth of July picnic Saturday night with Sally Elliott. She can’t believe it, but Ramona says everyone saw them. “She’s just an ugly smartalecky slut,” Ramona says. “It only shows how desperate he is.” Is that supposed to make her feel better? Ramona says her dad has had to go to the mine hill this morning because something is happening again. There was a big explosion at the mine on Sunday when some of them blew themselves up and now a lot of people are hurrying out there because they think it might be like five years ago. “You know, like,
wild?”
Well, not Angela. It was nice of Mr. Ferrero to bring them eggs for breakfast, but she doesn’t really like eggs, and she’s starving. Now that the rain’s nearly over, she’ll take a bath, put on makeup, and go to town for something more filling. Maybe Stacy will be in Doc Foley’s drugstore and she can ask her a private question about what a miscarriage is really like in case she has to try to describe one. Well, not in case. That’s what she’s going to have to say, or something like it. White lies: her days now seem full of them. She’s running out of money but feels certain she’ll soon get her job back when Mr. Cavanaugh realizes how unfair he has been and how much he needs her. She tells Ramona she has to go, that she has an appointment at the bank and needs to get ready for it.

White lies. It’s how Bernice Filbert thinks of the stories she tells the bedridden Mr. John P. Suggs. They began with the best of intentions. She didn’t want to tell him that his friend Sheriff Puller had been murdered and in such a gruesome way, fearing it might give him another brain attack. This morning he asked why the sheriff has not come by, and she said, “He did. But you was…sleeping.” So she also hasn’t told him about the motorbikers and Ben Wosznik getting blown up either because it’s all part of the same story. And she certainly hasn’t let him know about the changes at the camp since Ben died, because she knows that would really upset him and he might stop giving them money. So Ben is still at the camp and everything is as it always was, except for the hosts assembled by Abner Baxter at the outskirts, which oppress them daily. Ben hasn’t come to visit because he needs to stay to protect the camp and also because he has a bad summer cold he doesn’t want Mr. Suggs to catch. She hasn’t said what day it is. Maybe it’s still the Fourth of July. She can revise the story of the Fourth a little and then tell it like it’s a new one, just happening; he won’t know the difference. As for Sheriff Puller, maybe he had to resign and move somewhere else. Or maybe he also had a stroke, or soon will have. Eventually he could also die heroically saving the camp from the Baxterites. It depends on what happens next. There’s no one left to tell Mr. Suggs otherwise, except that unpleasant McDaniel fellow, his mine manager, and she can have Mr. Suggs fire him for siding with Abner’s people and send him away. She has a cousin who could do that man’s job at the mine, and without scowling all the time. When that fat city lawyer with the yellow slicked-down hair comes back, the one who is being so helpful, they’ll have a chat about it. She hopes he will admire her strategy.

Now that her foul-mouthed brother-in-law has been jailed, there’s a bedroom free to rent at their house; the hospital is expensive so home care might be the right thing. The hospital could loan her all the things she needs like blood pressure monitors and specimen bottles and bedpans, and the theropests could come by her house to exercise him. At the hospital, they sit him up and walk him around, but nothing’s working, his feet just bend back and drag along on his toes. If she can find someone to help lift him, they could hire her extra for that task. At least he is swallowing his own food now if it’s mashed up, and the hospital has a home catering service that Mr. Suggs can afford. That would cut her own food bills down, too, because he doesn’t eat much. He is alert a couple of hours each day, but otherwise, he appears confused and strange grunting and whining noises come out of him, as if he were speaking in tongues, and maybe he is, or else he sleeps. In his alert moment this morning, after inquiring about Mr. Puller, Mr. Suggs asked her in his laborious eye-blinking way to tell the sheriff that he should put some pressure on those drunks who invaded the camp by telling them they were under suspicion for the murder of those two fools in the garden shed, which happened that same night, and get them to implicate Baxter and his followers in everything that happened. All this thinking and blinking tired him out pretty fast. Leaving the hospital on her way out to the camp to check on Elaine, Bernice bumps into her friend Maudie, the head nurse, and tells her about the Hungarian exorcist turning out to be an abortionist and getting chased off by Clara. Maudie shrugs and says, well, it’s a kind of exorcism and it would probably have been a healing thing to do.

Wayne returns with dire news. The police have Elaine. “They said she was a-slickerin’ herself with a belt down in the rough nigh to where all the bodies was found, and they’re arrestin’ her for indecent exposure and takin’ her in for a medical.” Wanda Cravens and Hunk Rumpel have come to say goodbye. Without a word, Hunk walks away toward the creek and a few minutes later he returns, carrying Elaine, looking like an unstrung puppet made out of sticks, her eyes starting like an animal caught in a trap, her skinny little tummy bumping out under the soaked tunic pasted to it like she swallowed a mushmelon. Hunk doesn’t say how he got her, but they suppose they’d better get out of here fast. They can already hear the choppy crackle of helicopters somewhere in the sky. More troops will be coming in. Everything will get closed off. Glenda says not to wait for her at the meeting place, that she may have to stay. So many children to care for, it might be easier here, and she’d have to leave one of her two campers behind unless Uriah or Hovis returned to drive it for her. Those two West Virginia fellows aren’t back, nor Billy Don either, but the rest can’t wait, they’ll have to join up later. Mabel agrees to ride in Clara’s trailer to keep an eye on Elaine. Wayne says he hopes it’s not really the Rapture and they’re not dragging Clara and Elaine away from their own salvation, but Ludie Belle says, “God ain’t stupid. He’ll know where to find us.”