The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (42 page)

“I don’t think so. I’ve been watching them around the camp and up on the Mount. They never touch each other or even look at each other. It’s more like a kind of serious compact between them, not anything romantic. That’s my impression. But they are very cruel to each other.”

“Cruel?”

“I mean, you know, if you saw blood…”

“Yes.” Of course she has known all along, ever since that day on the Mount, what happened there, and then the letters Elaine and Junior have been exchanging and those sounds coming from Elaine’s bedroom, often just after a new letter arrived. Knew but didn’t want to know, and so kept on not knowing what she knew. She is standing in front of the open trunk, a package of chicken legs in her hands. Soft. Like a baby’s thighs. She feels close to tears. “I am so afraid.” Ben always says Elaine is a saintly little creature and he trusts God to take care of her, and that may be so, but it doesn’t help in figuring what to do. Clara, who has lost her husband and her son, feels like she is losing her daughter, too, and it is tearing at her heart. Since Ely died and all this began, Elaine has been her close companion. They have been approaching the Rapture together hand in hand, prepared to spend an eternity together, but she has also been her anchor to the earth. She is all she has in this world, even if this world soon will be no more, more precious than life itself. “If anything’d happen to Elaine, I don’t know as how I could bear it.” She can hardly speak. That little Catholic statue that Elaine gave her of Mother Mary with her bleeding heart on her chest, that’s what she feels like. What did Mary think when she held her dead son? What was the whole world to her then, and did she care if it was saved or not? “But what can I do?”

“I don’t know. But maybe you could take the boy out of it by offering to take his place.”

“What?” Clara is so startled by this suggestion she drops the chicken she’s been squeezing. “You mean, get whupped half-nekkid by my own daughter?”

She has made a grave mistake talking with this woman.

“Well, I don’t think she’ll actually want to do that. But letting her think about it might show her what’s wrong about doing this with Junior.”

“Oh. I see.” But she could never do this. Elaine would think she’d gone crazy. She picks up the chicken, packs it in, and slams the trunk closed. “I’ll think on it.”

Ben is going east soon to sing in some of the churches and maybe, she reasons on the ride back to the camp, she should go along and take Elaine with her. But can she leave the camp with all its problems? And she’s worried about Ben, too. When he came back from his rubbish dump run, instead of taking over the cleaning up of the camp and starting on the repairs as he was meant to do, he got his shotgun and left again, looking moody. He’d also forgotten to pick up the day’s groceries and replenish the supplies stolen by the biker boys, making it necessary for Clara to call on Mrs. Edwards for this emergency trip. That’s so unlike him. And now she has the problem of the Baxters and all the people here with no place to go, and Hiram, who has been so much help, leaving her to solve all these problems herself. “We got a new plan for the camp and all the rest,” she says suddenly, not sure just how she’s gotten to this matter, though she’s been meaning to bring it up since they left the camp, and she feels the minister’s wife stiffen at the wheel, “including the new motel Mr. Suggs wants to build, like he showed us last night.”

Mrs. Edwards turns the car radio on. “Will Henry said he was going to play some of the songs he recorded yesterday.”

Clara feels irritated with the woman but knows there’s no reason in it, and at the same time she feels beholden to her and sorry about what she has to say. “It means you and Colin and the boys will have to leave the camp buildings and move on down to the trailer park. We’ll be buying campers for you.”

“I had so hoped…” Mrs. Edwards says, looking stricken. “My halfway house…” She pulls over on the shoulder and stops for a minute. It’s like she’s having a hard time getting her breath. Clara wishes now she hadn’t told her and wonders if there might be some other way. The poor woman has worked so hard, given so much. She put that cabin together near all by herself, and she has always been so cheerful and caring and only just now she was trying to help with Elaine. “Colin will be…just shattered…” She is sobbing into her sleeve. And now Clara is crying, too. She has tried to hold it back, but she can’t. It’s just too hard. On the radio Duke L’Heureux, Patti Jo Glover, and the Florida youngsters are singing “Let a Little Sunshine In.” Clara is praying to Ely for guidance.

The Warrior Apostles are holed up in an old abandoned one-room farm shack, plotting their next move. In the comicbook Nat and Littleface have been reading, the villain is breaking into the U.S. Mint on the Fourth of July, while everybody’s off watching the parade, and stealing all the gold. Nat wants to see what’s behind the padlocked doors of the Deepwater mine buildings. He can’t wait until the Fourth of July, but all those people will be off the hill today, may be off already. Nat figures it’s best to hit the buildings after dark. Everyone will be exhausted and figuring all the excitement is over and they should be easy pickings. They’ll approach them by the back route off an overgrown dirt road running alongside the old train rails scouted out Saturday by Juice and Cubano. Meanwhile, if possible, they should not turn over their motors today, draw attention to themselves. Until the job’s done, let them think they’ve left the area. The shack is nearly falling down and is mostly stripped out, the front porch is gone and you can see through two of the walls, but it still has an old wood cookstove. Houndawg has brewed coffee on it, stoking the stove with part of the floor, and now he’s frying up a breakfast made out of some of the food they took last night from the camp. Tons of stuff—more than they’ll ever finish—including a quart of milk, which Littleface is chugging to the disgust of all, when Ben Wosznik turns up at the back door with a shotgun aimed at Nat’s head. “Don’t move,” the old bird says quietly. “Don’t even dare twitch or Nathan Baxter is history.” They all have blades and Littleface found two guns at the camp yesterday, though they’re probably in his saddlebag. Nat knows Littleface is prepared to die for him, but he shakes his head, staring straight at the old graybeard with the gun. “Though I’m dreadful sorry about what you boys done to poor old Rocky, who never hurt nobody,” he says, “I don’t aim to do you no harm. But I won’t hesitate to shoot y’all dead if need be, and y’know that. You’re trespassing on my proppity, and you got a bad reppatation round here, so no one’ll blame me.” “No shit,” snorts Houndawg, grinning. “This your crib?” “I just wanta make one thing clear, Nat Baxter. If you didn’t take that gun, and I don’t think you did, I don’t know how it got in your bag. I didn’t put it there, even if that’s what your brother’s whispering round. Somebody else hadta done it. That’s all.” Paulie suddenly starts leaping about like he’s trying to protest or dance or launch an attack and Ben swings the shotgun onto him. The knives are out. “Don’t shoot him,” Nat says. “My brother has fits.” He goes over to put a knife handle in Paulie’s frothing mouth for him to bite down on, and while he’s doing that, the old guy quietly backs out the door. Littleface has a gun in each hand and is headed after him, but Nat says, “No, leave the old man be, Face. It’s weird how you sometimes have to have somebody tell you what you already know.”

Reverend Hiram Clegg, when called upon at the farewell luncheon in the vandalized Meeting Hall, expresses his heartfelt gratitude for the warm hospitality the members of his congregation and those of all the other congregations present have received at the beautiful Brunist Wilderness Camp this past week, shares with Brother Ben the sorrow of all for the tragic death of the noble Rockdust, and announces his congregation’s substantial gift for the Brunist Coming of Light Tabernacle Church, a portion of which is to be employed for a memorial stained-glass window honoring Ely Collins, Giovanni Bruno, and Marcella Bruno. Though some might have hoped for prophecy’s grand fulfillment on the stirring occasion of this great Brunist family ingathering, they have been witnesses, by way of the miraculous coincidence of the repeated calendar, of the fulfillment of Giovanni Bruno’s prophecy of a “Circle of Evenings.” He and all his fellow Followers will be returning to Florida with renewed commitment to the faith and hope for the future as designed by God, and, oh yes, they will be back, for their hearts are here with this great movement and its resplendent new home. Here where, one day soon, make no mistake, they shall all meet their dear Lord face to face. “Face to face, we will behold him, far beyond the starry sky; face to face in all His glory, we shall see Him by and by!” He leads them in prayer and in song and feels tears spring to his eyes at the thought of leaving, though in truth he is weary of the bus and motel life and is eager to be home again and away from the camp’s problems and its gathering discord.

Hiram feels that Sister Clara has fumbled from time to time through the long hard week just passed, but today she has addressed those problems calmly and clearly, a true leader, and he has been reminded of Brother Ely Collins and his gentle force, which he himself has always tried to emulate but cannot quite. Clara has spoken of the work accomplished and that yet to be done, starting with the repairing and rebuilding of all the camp structures, which means, she said firmly yet kindly, that they will all have to be vacated immediately so that work can start up again tomorrow, the temporary exception being Sister Debra’s cabin, which is more or less finished, thanks to her own money and labors, though she too will be moving to a caravan in due time. She has posted the new architectural sketches of the Brunist religious center complex next to the fireplace chimney, pointing out that none of the areas except for the motel and the trailer campsites are to be used for residential purposes. They are beautifully drawn and everyone is impressed. The golden-haired preacher from Lynchburg declares them to be divinely inspired, and this thought is amenned by many, though not by all. Brother John P. Suggs, who is present, announces that he has begun work today on a new campsite about two miles down the road, which should have water and electricity by the end of the week. Meanwhile he has extended by one week the free use of the designated houses in Chestnut Hills, with the stipulation that they be properly cleaned before departure, unless the occupants wish to stay, paying the modest rent. Brother Suggs is applauded. All who remain in the area are expected to help with the camp work at least six hours every day if not otherwise employed and they should let them know their construction and homemaking skills. One midday meal will be provided each day for the workers, Clara explains, but the church’s resources have been drained by the week’s events, so Followers will have to find their own means of further support.

Will some resist these directives? No doubt, for many who have stayed are helplessly indigent or inclined to radical views, but Hunk Rumpel is seated beside Clara like an unspoken modifier; no one argues with Brother Hunk. Only Abner Baxter cannot hold himself back, it not being in his nature. He speaks without his usual fire and after a generous encomium and an apology for his miscreant sons, but, with a low insistent chant of
“Bru-no! Bru-no! Bru-no!”
behind him, he goes on to observe that the church has not distributed to all what has been given to all. Clara replies calmly that the church has always shared its modest resources with everyone—indeed, though he himself has contributed nothing over the intervening years, she has often sent him support for his own mission—but now they must be careful to husband what limited funds remain, for they are faced with many serious expenses. If he is referring to the money earmarked for the Coming of Light Tabernacle Church, they are not free to use that for any other purpose or it will be taken back, a claim that Hiram supports though he is not certain that it is true. The bishop of the Eastern Seaboard and newly appointed director of the National Brunist Media Organization rises to quote from First Corinthians: “I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you,” and he too is applauded. What with that large gift they have received, Hiram’s own collection on behalf of the temple can be used partly, he feels, for his own church expenses and those associated with his duties as the president of the International Council of Brunist Bishops; consequently, he has turned over a little less than half of the sum to Clara, with the intention of forwarding all of it to her should it be needed. This morning he has seen to the temporary burial of Harriet McCardle in Randolph Junction and all the legal paperwork that it required; thanks to those documents, her own wealth and that of her husband will also reach the church in various installments, based on the health and longevity of the surviving spouse, though Hiram has not spelled this out yet to Ben and Clara. Mrs. McCardle has been buried in a simple grave with plans to move her eventually to the Brunist burial ground on the Mount of Redemption, for which Hiram has promised to cover the expenses. A three-line notice of her death in hospital by natural causes (“an elderly visitor to our area”) has been discreetly announced in the Randolph Junction newspaper, placed there by the town mayor.

Now, Clara rings her water glass with her spoon and once more thanks all the brothers and sisters from around the country for making the long and arduous journey to join them here this week. She wishes them well on their homeward journeys, and she asks that the young people come forward and join Brother Ben and Brother Duke and Sister Betty and Sister Patti Jo in leading them all in singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and they all stand because it feels right to stand and take one another’s hand or put one’s arm around a shoulder: “Will the circle be unbroken, by and by, Lord, by and by,” they sing, and Hiram’s heart is full and his cheeks are running with joyous tears…