The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (13 page)

“I come from plain people,” Ben says alongside her. “Us Woszniks never come to a place like this with just only the view in mind. Might check to see if it was a good position to hunt from, but otherwise we wouldn’t give a hoot. I guess none of us ever had much imagination. Nor much brains neither.”

“You got brains aplenty, Ben—and more than brains, wisdom. The kind the Good Book tells about, the word of wisdom as given to believers by the Spirit of God. I depend on you, Ben. You know I couldn’t never do this without you.” She is not flattering him. He is a good man, a righteous man, and with his quiet no-nonsense manner he has counseled her through many a vexation during their long exodus, and she knows that Ely has chosen him for her and for her task. Ben is slow to move, but when he moves, it is with right judgment, his humble steadfastness a model for them all. Still a handsome man, too, tall and big-shouldered, with a bushy salt-and-pepper prophet’s beard grown on their travels, a man comfortable inside himself, if a bit stooped now, starting to get the settled look of men his age. And he surely can sing. “Now, why don’t you sing me your new song you was telling me about?”

“Well, it ain’t exactly a new song. I figured we’d be singing ‘Amazing Grace’ tomorrow night when we turn on the lights, so I only made a special verse to begin it with.” His guitar is down below, so he sings without it, just as he did the night he turned up, almost like a miracle, at one of their first meetings all that time ago, his mournful voice floating out over the dripping trees and into the dying sky, rolling gracefully up and down through the stretched vowels…

“Oh, that’s beautiful, Ben, and it says so much in so few words.”

“I reckoned I’d sing the first part in the dark, and when I got into the last line, Wayne’d throw the switch, and then we’d all sing ‘Amazing Grace’ together.”

“You’re a showman, too, Ben. Sing it to me again. Sing me all of it. It eases me so.” Which is something Ely always said about that song, and now it’s as if he has just said it himself, talking through her as he sometimes does.

Bringing electricity to the camp is in truth an amazing grace. They will celebrate it and give thanks to God at tomorrow night’s Coming of Light ceremony, and now that the word is out about their being here, Clara has decided to invite some of their old friends in the area. It seems like the right moment. With electricity, they will not only be able to light up the whole camp, they will also have a big commercial refrigerator in the kitchen and electric ovens instead of that old cast iron wood-burning cookstove left over from the Depression era. They’ll have electric space heaters that can be plugged in wherever needed and dehumidifiers so the plaster will set proper, and they can use their power tools in the workshop, speeding up the construction work. There will be lights in the Meeting Hall and in all the cabins that can be saved—many of the sockets and switches and ceiling and wall lamps are already in place and wired up—and this afternoon Wayne and the others have been testing out the new streetlamps, a gift of Florida Bishop Hiram Clegg’s congregation. They have set the date of April 19 for the formal consecration of the new International Brunist Headquarters and Wilderness Camp Meeting Ground, and they hope to have all the most essential things done by then. Crowds of Followers will be flooding in, and they are not near ready, but the turning on of electricity will make it feel like they might have a chance.

The electrification of the camp could not have been done without Wayne Shawcross. The movement invested in a house trailer for Wayne and his wife Ludie Belle, needing his experience as a builder and electrician, and he has been worth many times the purchase price. Ludie Belle, who converted from a life of sin, is a willing worker and a lively presence, though, as Ben has said, when she gets the Spirit on her, she does throw it around a tad. Purchasing a mobile home for one of their Followers was something they had already done, out of necessity, for Wanda Cravens and her children. Her husband died alongside Ely in the mine, leaving the poor woman at loose ends, and for these past five years she has been tagging dumbly along with them, not knowing what else to do or where to go, finding herself pregnant about half the time, Wanda being a simple thing men take advantage of. As Ben says, sin is sin, but for some folks there’s just not much built in to fence it out, though it doesn’t exactly stay either, but just sort of blows right through. She and Ben had to share with Willie and Mabel Hall the burden of carrying along Wanda and her sickly brood, until they finally decided to buy her a used trailer home of her own, Willie at first doing most of the driving. And it did help her find a man, another man in a string of men, though this one may stick around. Wanda is not much help, and whatever she does usually has to be done over, but they use her to run small errands, do the washing up, and serve coffee and cookies at their church services and tent meetings, and that was how she met Hunk Rumpel, an army veteran who was otherwise homeless and happy to have a trailer to move into, relieving Willie of his driving duties, though he may or may not have a license. Hunk is not much brighter than Wanda but he is a stalwart Follower and he has some construction and survival skills picked up in the Army. Smoke is now pouring out of the Meeting Hall fireplace chimney down below; Hunk is probably banking up the fire for tonight’s prayer meeting, while Ludie Belle lights the candles and sets out the folding chairs.

Their general all-purpose Meeting Hall—church, dining hall, school room, offices—was converted from the old camp lodge, built early in the century in the days of rustic grandeur with heavy beams and stone walls and foundations. It was solid still except for the roof, which needed to be stripped to the rafters and rebuilt, and it was up on the roof that Hunk proved as invaluable as Wayne Shawcross has been on electricity. Though a big man with a lot of belly ballast, Hunk is agile and fearless in high places and he can command work crews with blunt authority and can lift the weight of three men. Once the building was tight and could shelter them, Ben installed a coal stove at the back and hung Coleman lanterns from the beams. Their brothers and sisters from Randolph Junction, still in touch with Hiram Clegg, presented them with a fine old upright piano. Ely’s final message in its gilt frame now hangs by the fireplace, alongside the Prophet’s “Seven Words” on a wooden plaque, created by some South Carolina youngsters with a woodburning kit, and a framed near-lifesize photograph of their late Prophet standing in the rain on the Mount of Redemption, a mine pick over his shoulder, his hand raised in a blessing. The Meeting Hall is where their Easter service was held this morning, celebrating Christ’s triumph over death, and where tonight’s candlelight prayer meeting will be. It is beautiful and it is hallowed by their labor and it anchors them.

So much of this is due to Mr. John P. Suggs, his money, time, influence, and his good Christian heart, a man who gives, as it says in Proverbs, and who does not hold back. He has obtained many of the materials for them at wholesale and purchased some things for them outright, has provided his own workers and equipment for pipe laying, erecting light and telephone poles, and resurfacing the access roads, has seen to the repair of the fresh water pumps, and, with Welford Oakes’ help, work has begun on a new cesspool and modern septic system. He has brought in trucks and heavy machinery to rip out underbrush, shovel up rubbish, demolish and haul away rotted structures, and to clear a half acre on the south side for Mrs. Edwards’ vegetable garden. He used his connections with the mine owners and bankers to get electricity extended to the camp from the old mine and is now arranging for phone lines from there, something crucial for Clara in her evangelical work. In effect, they will be wired up directly to the Mount of Redemption, something Clara plans to remark upon during tomorrow night’s Coming of Light ceremonies. Mr. Suggs is a saintly man who attributes his conversion to one of Ely’s tent-meeting sermons, at which time he gave himself to Jesus and became a regular supporter of Ely’s Church of the Nazarene. He loved Ely and took his death hard, saying it plunged him into doubt and despair, and he did not at first understand the Brunist movement with its Italian Catholic prophet and its talk about the imminent end of the world. He was a businessman and he did not have any particular end date in mind, and he had no sympathy for wine-drinking Romanists, being a reformed drinker himself. But the Nazarene church fell onto hard times, and after trying on other denominations without conviction, he started thinking again about the Brunists and the role that Ely had played in their origins and it all began to make sense to him. Whereupon he got in touch with them. He and Ben hit it right off, and together she and Ben dispelled his doubts.

Their main worry is what they will do with the crowds of Followers they anticipate will be rolling in here over the next three weeks. The Meeting Hall, so warm and ample a haven for the twenty or so living and working at the camp now, could seat a couple hundred at a stretch, and though there are a few more cabins that might be made livable and others could be built, it is hard to imagine many more people living here than are here now. Even if they come with their own mobile homes, the trailer park itself is full already, and the parking lot near the Meeting Hall, not yet cleared, is meant for visitors’ cars only. They have always intended this place to be a religious center and church headquarters, not a place for people to live, but Clara knows that many of those coming for the dedication ceremonies three weeks from now have no notion how they will live when they get here and will have no plans for moving on. Word about the new Brunist Wilderness Camp at the edge of the Mount of Redemption has spread among the believers; she herself has helped to spread it. Many of them are selling up or giving away all they have to be here, fully expecting the Coming of the Kingdom of Light, and Clara cannot naysay it because it may be so. She has sometimes said as much herself, following their Prophet’s own call and asking for such commitment as Jesus asked, “Leave everything and follow me!” The coincidence of dates seems to fulfill the Prophet’s enigmatical prophecies of “a circle of evenings” and “Sunday week,” making ever more urgent his call to “Come to the Mount of Redemption,” and, moreover, this place has mystical overtones for those who have never been here, and they will want to see it for themselves.

So, they will have to set up tents in the fields about and use all the local motels and call upon friends to take in pilgrims. They cannot turn anyone away. God has led them here, He will somehow provide. Mr. Suggs has offered mine property land for Followers to pitch their tents on or park their cars and mobile homes, as well as temporary accommodation in his Chestnut Hills development at the edge of West Condon, partly emptied out since the closing of the mines and the general exodus. Ben still owns a small farm nearby with a one-room farmhouse, and he has been back to see if it might be useful for visitors, but found it vandalized and in worse shape than the camp cabins, the porch and walls partly harvested for lumber or firewood. In fact, he pulled some of the loose boards off himself and threw them in his truck for use in repairing the camp cabins. They will just have to hope that, if the day passes without God’s intervention, these people will see for themselves what is possible and what is not.

Though some will be more difficult than others…

“I know. We been getting on so well. He’ll just only stir things up again.”

“Who will, Clara?”

She realizes Ben has left off singing some time back. There is still enough light up here to see each other’s faces, but it is completely dark down below. Camper and trailer lights have been coming on, casting their thin yellow glow upon the darkening evening, and she can see people moving about with flashlights and candles. Soon it will all be so different down there. It’s almost impossible to imagine. “Sorry, Ben. I was talking to Ely.” The blackest patch is just below where they are standing where the land dips away toward a kind of shallow ravine that the creek runs through. Her daughter Elaine named it Lonesome Valley, the poor child expressing her own sad heart. Bernice Filbert claimed to see ghosts drifting about down there on foggy evenings, though she always was one for exaggerated fancies. “About Abner.”

“What does Ely say?”

“God will judge, not us. Abner is a Follower and must be took in.”

“All we can do, I reckon. But he don’t need to stay here in the camp.”

“No. But he surely minds to. Him and all his people.” They have been worrying over this ever since Abner Baxter sent word he’d be at the consecration ceremonies and assumed they could house him and his family. Ely has been worrying, too. Abner hopes to arrive a day earlier for the Night of the Sacrifice, the night five years ago of his own conversion. They have told Abner the rules and limitations, but they know he’ll pay no heed. He was one of their most important early converts, for he was one who persecuted them and then believed, like Paul did, and he became their first bishop of West Condon, staying on to take the punishment here when the rest of them scattered. Of course Abner has had many conversions, all the way from godless communism. But he is still one of those most loyal to the faith, as best she can tell from the reports reaching her, even if they don’t agree on a lot of things, most things maybe, and there’s not much hope they ever will. “I don’t know what we can do.”

“This ain’t meant as a place for living in.”

“Well, we’re living in it.”

“We’re building something, Clara. And they ain’t but a few of us. What does Ely say about Elaine?”

“That we should oughta care for her more.” Which is not exactly what Ben meant with his question. The lopsided Easter moon hangs low in the damp sky like an orange balloon that’s losing its air. When it looked like that, her grandmother used to call it God’s ear. “You see? He’s listening, child. Tell him all what you know.” I am afraid, she tells Him now. Her daughter has grown up tall and rambly, coming to look like a kind of scrawny slump-shouldered version of her father, but with none of his natural friendliness. She hasn’t been back to school since they went out on the road, has been traveling only with grownups, so she hasn’t had a chance to be the age she is. There have been teenagers at all of their revival meetings around the country, and in the early days Elaine was able to run the Junior Evening Circle, read Scripture lessons, talk about her experiences as a witness of their origins and as one of the First Followers, but she has become more and more withdrawn, shying away from people, ducking her head and covering her mouth the way she does, retreating to their trailer when not absolutely needed. When Clara asks her what she’s doing there, she always says she’s reading the Bible. The poor child. She has known too much sorrow for one so young. She brightens up only when she gets a letter from Junior Baxter, and then sometimes Clara hears a smacking sound behind her door. She knows what that is all about and she doesn’t like it. She still has a nightmarish memory of being caught up in the fever of the Day of Redemption and being unable to rescue her daughter, to protect her from what was happening. There was so much else she had to do. Just like now. It’s like in a dream when you have to run but cannot. She has tried to talk to Elaine about that day, but gets no reply. Clara knows what it is to be at that time of life and to be alive to one’s own desires, and frustrated by them. She wasn’t the prettiest thing in the county either when she was Elaine’s age, but she was patient and steady in her faith and what she eventually found with Ely was pure and beautiful and wholly satisfying in a godly way, and she wishes for something like that for her daughter. Junior Baxter is not going to answer that wish. And so she is afraid. Elaine is all the family she has left. “We’ll just have to trust in the Good Lord,” she says finally, flicking on her flashlight. “Grace has brought us safe thus far, and grace’ll lead us home. Reckon we better go get our tunics on and make sure the candles’re lit.”