The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (23 page)

After leading them all in song (it might help, Debra is thinking, if she knew the words of the songs they sang), Reverend Clegg moves on to tell how doves were used for atonements (“You take a pair of doves, cut the head off one of them, turn it upside down and bleed it out on its mate, and then you set the living dove free, and when he flies he splatters the ground around with the blood of his beloved, and the blood cries out to God, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God!’ You see? Just so was
our
dying mate Jesus Christ killed and His blood sprinkled on us, my friends, so we might go free, crying out, ‘Holy, holy, holy, unto the Lord!’ Oh yes! Holy, holy! Amen!”), how the robin got its red breast, how Jesus as a young boy was said to have made sparrows out of clay that flew away when He clapped his hands, and how swallows, who blind their young before restoring their sight, represent the Coming of the Light and also, somehow, the incarnation of Christ. “We once were blind, but now we see!” Reverend Clegg’s own little bird-watching tour.

Returning last week to the town she left only a couple of weeks ago was like landing on the moon, the real town she once knew now buried under the strange otherworldly one they were driving through. Clara, too, remarked that it felt very peculiar. “It is hard to think,” Clara said, “that all our troubles come from here.” The camp, which seemed a million miles away, had become their cloister, their universe. All outside it was alien, though not dangerously so; there was something pathetic about the town, and about the manse as well. Which was, as she’d hoped, empty, though it was in a filthy state. There were dried eggs splattered against the kitchen walls and cabinets, spoiled milk in the fridge, a countertop and sinkful of dirty dishes, heaps of dirty towels and linens everywhere, and the furniture was all shoved about helter skelter. Pillows on the floor. Stains? She sniffed at the rumpled linens. She didn’t really want to do that but she couldn’t stop herself. How could she have lived here all these years with that stupid uncaring man? Clara waited anxiously in the car while, feeling like a thief (she
was
a thief!), Debra hastily gathered up everything she could carry and loaded it into the back seat, the trunk already packed with her new galvanized steel washtub, filled with chicken and beans and sweet potatoes and boxes of Jell-O. She started with her favorite chair, a low nursing chair bought at a country auction and reupholstered, piling everything else in around it, including the photo of Colin she’d saved, hidden inside the stacks of church sheet music (which she also grabbed up), the one taken of him at the orphanage on his ninth birthday, so cute in front of his birthday cake in his little shirt and tie, such a hopeful wide-eyed smile on his tender face. Clara does not know quite what to make of their living arrangements and on the way back to the camp expressed her concerns. Debra answered those concerns, explaining that she thinks of Colin, not only as a patient, but as her adopted son; they took out papers to adopt him officially when he was still in the hospital, but then Wesley selfishly refused at the last moment to sign them. Which was nearly true, and something like that might have happened had not Wesley been such a pig.

Now, because Ben Wosznik’s dog has wandered up to sniff his leg, Reverend Clegg pats Rocky’s head and asks, “Do you folks know how Rocky here got his name? Brother Ben told me only today. The dog’s real name is Rockdust, for, as Ben says, he and his brother wanted to name man’s best friend after a miner’s best friend.” The dog wags its tail. It is almost as if it has known its cue. “It is rockdust that is spread in coalmines to prevent explosions, and had Rocky’s namesake been in sufficient evidence five years ago, we might still have Frank Wosznik and our beloved Ely Collins among us!” There are moans amongst the worshippers in the darkening evening, and some tears. Reverend Clegg’s eyes begin to water, and Debra, watching Clara and Elaine, feels her own throat tighten up. “Oh, I tell you, that was a dreadful night! That disaster that struck Old Number Nine! So many good decent hardworking Christian men died and died so young! But from that tomb, in the words of our ‘White Bird’ hymn, came a message of gladness, a message of
gladness
, though its author, so much loved and revered by us all, had passed to his reward. ‘Hark ye ever to the White Bird in your hearts,’ his message said, ‘and we shall all stand together before the Lord!’” Elaine is as pale as her limp tunic, though her ears seem flushed, her dry-eyed gaze fixed on some far horizon. Clara is worried about her daughter, and after telling Debra a little about the scenes on the Mount with the Baxter boy five years ago and their secretive correspondence ever since, has asked her, as an experienced counselor for troubled teenagers, to try to draw her out, but so far the child has shied away from any attempt to befriend her. Elaine does her work about the camp—setting tables and washing dishes, emptying the new trash bins, weeding, sometimes minding the little ones—in more or less utter silence, her distant stare unsettling. She is so ardent a believer it is almost frightening, and it is maybe that intensity her more practical mother cannot quite understand.

“Oh, God’s ways are surely inscrutable, my friends. Out of the horror of that black night, that incomprehensible tragedy in the depths of the scorched earth, has emerged a transcendent vision and a stirring prophecy, one destined to shake the world! For it is the
truth
, and the truth
is
world-shaking! Just as the Holy Spirit was pleased to dwell in Jesus, so did it take up residence in that holy man Ely Collins, bringing to all of us, through him, the White Bird vision, and then, upon Brother Ely’s cruel death, the Spirit passed on into that disaster’s sole survivor, Ely Collins’ own underground workmate, our Prophet Giovanni Bruno. The Chosen One. In Brother Giovanni, the Spirit worked, as we know, a most marvelous transformation, turning a quiet solitary Roman Catholic coalminer into the prophetic leader of a great evangelical movement, awakening deep within the miner’s heart an unforeseen profundity, a remarkable visionary sensibility. It was our own Ely Collins who perceived this spiritual potential in Brother Giovanni. We know that the poor man had been taunted and abused by his fellow religionists, for a prophet, as is well known, is not without honor, save in his own country and in his own house, and we know that he had been ruthlessly driven from his church for standing up against the priesthood, just as Jesus had stood up against the Sadducees, and it was Brother Ely, we know, who took him under his wing and sheltered him and nurtured his soul. And to what wondrous effect! In the words of Brother Ben’s hymn, my friends:
Think of Moses, discovered in a river! Think of Jesus, a carpenter’s son! Think of Bruno, a humble coalminer! ’Tis the poor by whom God’s battles are won!”
Whereupon—amid the cries of “Amen!” and “Yes, Lord!”—the gathered Followers, arms raised and waving, break spontaneously into another chorus of the song…

Debra’s arms are also raised and waving, she is singing, tears are streaming down her cheeks, she doesn’t know why but it happens all the time now, it’s as though for the moment the Spirit is lodged in her own heart, and she is no longer the camp director, she is only a humble believer, part of God’s company, God’s glorious company, it’s all so vivid and real. “Yes, Lord!” she cries out. She wants this. “Amen!” she says. And yet at the same time she is watching herself and questioning herself, feeling a stranger even to herself, so she knows she is still not saved.

“Oh yes, how well I remember him and all that happened in that historic time! For, as you all know, I was here, yes, I was here and blessed to be a witness to all that transpired on that stormy Day of Redemption and the awful night before, the Night of the Sacrifice, which haunts me still. As you all know, my dear wife Emma was taken, over there on the Mount of Redemption, God rest her pious Christian soul, taken like the young girl Marcella Bruno, she was redeemed, they were redeemed, redeemed on the Day of Redemption, their souls were transported straight up to Heaven, leaving the rest of us poor sinners here on earth, pining to join them in God’s Heavenly kingdom. For the days that remain to us, God in his great compassion brought me my dear Betty, one of our First Followers who has devoted her life to our calling and who is here with us tonight. God bless her. Yes, I was here. I was here at that remarkable infolding of the faithful at the home of the Prophet on the eve of the Day of Redemption, summoned, as were all, by the Spirit. I was struck by the imposing nobility of our Prophet, by his august silence, his sober poise, his simple but powerful gestures. Not the gestures of a mere coalminer, but those of a being inhabited by the divine. You have all seen his portraits and his photographs—there is a large one hanging in there in the Meeting Hall—wherein one can see at a glance that here was a holy man, a good man, an inspired man, a genuine vessel of the Lord. I say ‘was.’ Now, some of you may not know this, for I have only learned of it today, but our beloved Prophet has suffered the fate of so many prophets and saints before him. He has been ruthlessly executed by his captors, and by that element for which we celebrate his new New Covenant—by light itself! Probably shortly after his capture, though we have until now been denied the knowledge of it. Yes, he is gone—that’s right! pray for him! I hear you! God bless him!—confirming what many of us had suspected all along, for his going began that night, that day, over there on the Mount of Redemption, he seemed already half-transported. I was here. I was here when the fateful decision was taken to visit the Mount, the night before, to acquaint ourselves with it for the great day to follow. Was this a decision we made, or did God make it for us? I was in that room when Sister Clara, as though herself possessed by the Holy Spirit, rose to declare: ‘We go to the Mount of Redemption, not to die, but to
act!
The Kingdom is ours! It awaits us on the Mount of Redemption!’ Oh, how moved we were by this great lady’s majestic bearing and the depth of her faith, echoing her dear husband Ely, for whom we all mourned! You have all read about this in our church pamphlets. And I was there, over there on the Mount that Saturday night, as we all gathered around a great fire and sang and prayed and confessed our new commitment. I was there as the Prophet strode among us in his flowing white tunic, tall and bearded as Jesus was bearded and manifesting a strength heretofore unseen, his dark cavernous eyes aglitter with firelight, his hand raised in solemn benediction, nodding from time to time as if to say, Yea, in thee I am well pleased! It was as if Christ were growing in him, filling him up with his presence. I was there when someone cried that there were lights on the mine road and we extinguished the fire and rushed to our cars and—and—and—oh, my friends, I can barely continue! Forgive me! But I was there, there in the ditch beside the old mine road which you can see from up there on Inspiration Point, standing there over the dying girl, the saintly sister of our Prophet, who had been fasting and seemed dreadfully frail, lying there—I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I cannot hold back the tears!—lying there in the wildly crisscrossing headlamps of wrecked cars, her little body in its white tunic broken and bleeding, yet somehow at peace, yes, at peace, we all saw that, and on the breast of her tunic, here where the cross in the circle is embroidered, a heart-shaped bloodstain—oh, God save us! God save us all and bless the soul of our beloved Sister Marcella Bruno! Amen! Amen! I was there. I was there when foe embraced foe and all enmity ceased and we became one unified and universal movement, God be praised! And I was there, my friends, oh I hear you, I was there at the Prophet’s house at dawn the next morning, none of us had slept, when that heartbroken man of God, his strength failing him, rose up out of his grief and commanded us to baptize with light, the seventh of his famous seven words, and we did that, I was baptized by the Prophet himself, we all were. He was never to utter another word, for he had already, choosing his words one by one as if mining them from his very depths or as if extracting them from the beyond, said all that was to be said. We all marched out barefoot to the Mount and there began the day with which you are all so familiar.”

Now has begun the night. Reverend Clegg, his white teeth and silvery hair seeming almost to glow in the dark, has preached them deep into the evening on this clear moonless night. Debra can see why there is talk of his running for the U.S. Senate, for he has the gift. Her heart is pounding and her cheeks are still wet, but after her momentary flight she is once again the camp director and her feet are on the ground and her elbows by her sides and she is ready to organize what happens next. Soon the candles they are all holding will be lit and they will parade down to the open area in front of the lodge, the Meeting Hall, under the darkened streetlamps. The candles, on cue, will all be snuffed, Ben will sing his new verse for “Amazing Grace” in the dark, and on the last line the lights will all come on, just as they did two weeks ago, and they will all sing the great song (she knows this one) together. Then, after prayers of thanksgiving, they will go into the now fully lit Meeting Hall to share a buffet supper. It was Debra who created tonight’s ceremony. This is what she can do, and they admire her for it.

“As the light fades from the sky, I ask you now to light your candles. The young servants of the Lord, Brothers Darren Rector and Billy Don Tebbett, will pass among you with lighted tapers. While they are doing that, let me remind those of you who came with me that we have organized a bus tour of the area tomorrow, including the Mount of Redemption and the Bruno home in West Condon. We may encounter hostility; we must be brave. On Tuesday, Sister Linda Catter will be here at the camp for all the ladies who want their hair done, and on Wednesday is the Brunist Wilderness Camp nature walk. Each day we are here, we are all expected to lend a hand with the building work, under the direction of Brother Ben and Brother Wayne and Brother Welford, and we will all attend the evening prayer meetings before returning to the motel. You have all heard the rumors of the future Brunist tabernacle to be built here, for, as it says, there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain. Brother John P. Suggs, God bless him, expects to have architectural drawings by the weekend for all of us to see. It is our hope that, when we depart once more for Florida, we might leave behind a substantial gift toward this exciting project. Certainly Betty and I will give all that we can. And now that the candles are all lit—oh, what a sight this is! what a vast glimmering multitude of little flames all burning together, one feels such a joyous unity here, such a togetherness!—let us bow our heads and pray!” She feels Colin draw near. This is the time of day when he most needs her. Her frightened little boy. She takes his hand. “Dear Lord, we thank Thee tonight for the promise of the imminent coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, when we’ll all be together in a great prayer meeting that will never end, as we praise You through the ceaseless ages that are to come! Whether He comes tonight, this weekend, or in the weeks and months to follow, Lord, we will be ready! Our lamps are trimmed! We ask You to bless these, Lord, who have come so many miles to be here; lay Your hand of mercy upon them. And now, may He Who makes the stars to shine bright at night to lighten up the path when it’s growing dim, may He lighten your path with the Star of Bethlehem to guide you to a full surrendered life in His Word! Praise Jesus! Amen!”