The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (57 page)

Now, sitting on the edge of the tub, she watches the dance of his limp penis in the water as she stirs it (somehow the “Moonlight Sonata” seems right for this), dreaming of the future and of the child that will be borne to them all. The moment the mayor mentioned Wesley’s desire for a bath, she knew where he had gone and she worried for him, exposing himself, brave but foolhardy, to such risks in broad daylight, though she appreciated his needs. In the studio there is only a shower and toilet in a corner behind a curtain, put there mainly for her students as a kind of dressing room, the corner having previously been used for a photography studio and so already plumbed, and the water is usually only lukewarm at best and sometimes little more than a trickle. She thought she might have to break a window to get into the manse before noticing the open cellar door and coming straight up here, where she found him sleeping soundly in the bathwater, snoring softly while the storm crashed outside. Is Jesus also sleeping, she wonders, or is he, in some manner, observing her? Just in case, she has taken her clothes off beside the tub, for she knows it pleases him, and she is excited by his pleasure.

Later, she will bathe Wesley (he has not washed himself, the water is clear, except for where his pipe has fallen into it and created a rather ominous little smudge) and perhaps he will bathe her in turn and she will dry him off and he will dry her off and she will dance her May Day dance for him and with him, and they will run to the car and she will drive him home through the rain and then they will have to take their clothes off again and dry off again and so on, but for now she is choreographing his awakening. She wants it to be gentle, for he may have forgotten how he came here, and be frightened when he first comes to. As much as anything, he likes her to do a grand plie over his face, cunnilingus being for Wesley—and for Christ Jesus, too—a kind of mystical religious experience (she calls it their “Dance of the Tongues” and it is best when they dance it as a pas de deux, or trois; Wesley is a willing participant in all her dances, though he’s not very athletic or flexible, so this is one of his best ones), but that’s not easy in the tub, and it’s probably not the best way to wake up. No, it will be a dance of the fingertips and she will whisper to him about his greatness and her love for him and she will also speak quietly to Jesus, tell him that she wishes to love him and to serve him and that he must guide Wesley and keep him safely within the sanctuary of the studio, lest he fall into the hands of his enemies. They must be prudent. For soon they will be four.

II.5

Saturday 2 May

Saturday night in West Condon and folks are restless and needful, but money is short and nothing much happens without it. Still, they go looking. The pool hall. The Elks Lodge. The roller rink. The bus station and the rootbeer stand. Neighborhood taverns. Mostly dead. The municipal ballpark. Table tennis at the youth center. With dented balls. Legion Hall. Filling stations. Drag-racing up and down empty pot-holed neon-lit Main Street. Making something out of nothing, trying to, a local skill honed by all the bad years. The young with cars end up at the lakes or the old ice plant or out at the edge of town in the abandoned movie drive-in lot or where the big Dance Barn was before it burned down. Listening to music on the car radio. Having a beer and a smoke. Of whatever. The old church camp on the Tucker City road used to be a beer party favorite, but it’s occupied now by those religious idiot-sticks. Still, if you have nothing else to do, you can always drive by and shout out obscenities and throw bottles over the barbed-wire fence.

“I don’t have big ambitions,” an unemployed coalminer is grumbling up at the Eagles social club over a friendly game of pinochle. “Eat and shit regular. Fuck a whore wunst a week. That takes money. Not much. But some. Can’t stand to have a whore look down her nose at me. So I need a job.” The other three at table grunt in agreement, sorting their cards. “Have you thought of taking up whoring yourself?” one of them asks, wallowing an unlit cigar around in his jowls. “They tell me there’s a market now.” “They’s probly a age limit.” Now and then something opens up for a night guard or a short-order cook, a bouncer, debt collector, ditch digger. Shit jobs, but always a scramble for them. They hated the mines—the fear, the hard labor, the black greasy filth, the bad hours—but they miss them. They were a team then, union men. Now it’s every miserable cocksucker for himself. There’s work out at the strip mine, but it’s non-union, and Italians need not apply, the owner and his mine manager being militant racists. They’ve organized their own Klan den, though they call it something else, some kind of holy legion or militia. Guys who work for him say old man Suggs keeps a huge horsewhip coiled over a nail in his office; it’s the first thing you see if you go in there to bitch about something.

Not everyone’s completely broke. The Sir Loin steak house, offering weekend specials (also available during the week), does a little business. Enrico’s Palazzo di Pizza does. The chop suey joint out at the shopping center. The movie house with its pocked screen. The bowling alley. The Nineteenth Hole at the country club, which should probably be called the Tenth Hole with half the course long since gone to weed. Many of those eating and drinking in the Hole have played a round or two today and are now talking about their handicaps and missed putts and the deteriorating condition of the course and of life in general. Expressing their disgust at national politics, the injustice of the tax laws. Bemoaning the lack of downtown business. Wondering why, with all the unemployment, they can’t find a decent cook out here. Commiserating with the former secretary of the Chamber of Commerce after the unexpected overnight restructuring of the city organization that has cost him his job. The town banker who engineered this move on the grounds of saving tax money and curbing corruption is not here tonight, being either at home with his terminally ill wife or off on another business trip, so they can speak freely about him and his bullying tactics, even if his motives are impeccable. The former Chamber secretary has not taken this change of fortune well, but the club members are tolerant folk who can put up with belly-aching drunks when there is cause. The bank lawyer, who will be taking over the Chamber duties and others as a kind of ad hoc city manager, was here earlier tonight, but left before the supper crowd arrived. He is a nice young man and will do a good job, but the ex-secretary is a local pal, even if he is pretty useless, and people feel sorry for him, while at the same time feeling sorry for themselves.

The Hole is accustomed to an early crowd and shuts down early, leaving a long night ahead. Some will meet up at a club bar, others in a neighbor’s kitchen or over a bridge or poker table. Many will retire with a drink to a recliner chair in front of the box. A few, choosing to rough it, will head out to the roadhouses or take in a bit of country music at the Blue Moon Motel.

Sheriff Tub Puller is passing that popular Saturday night establishment and he decides to wheel through the parking lot to see who’s up to what. Looks like a full night. Tub is returning from a Christian Patriots meeting out at John P. Suggs’ strip mine offices, and he is feeling righteous and closely engaged with the way the world works and well equipped to do important deeds. Tub doesn’t share the religious beliefs of most of the other Patriots, preferring not to think about any life after this one, mainly because no matter what comes next it’s always a rough passage, but he is patriotic and he loathes Romanists and niggers and kikes and feels at home with Suggs’ militia. They look up to him as a big man and a leader. And he’s not just an immovable mass, he’s a good marksman, too; people have to admire that. If Tub Puller shoots at somebody, he hits them where he wants to hit them. Suggs’ mine manager, Ross McDaniel, is the only one who can beat him at target practice, and that’s all he can beat him at, except maybe the hundred yard dash. McDaniel is an outsider brought to town by Suggs and even Tub is a little afraid of him. There’s a rumor that his past targets might have included FBI agents and tax collectors and even a sheriff or two. Suggs knows Tub is not a very religious man, but he is cool about it, and Tub can appreciate where Suggs is coming from and respects it. Probably, in the end, he’ll find his way there as well, for it’s a hard, tough religion and the lines are clearly drawn and it has a certain manly appeal.

With a little help from Suggs’ deep pockets, Tub has been putting together a volunteer police unit to deal with emergency situations in the county, and the core of it has been recruited from the Patriots. In fact, they are more or less the same thing. There haven’t been any emergencies, but there are a lot of people around here who don’t see eye to eye, so there are apt to be, and Suggs wants him to be ready. The church camp sect is one of Suggs’ pet projects, and Tub’s troops have already been called out there a couple of times to defend it. Some of his most reliable volunteers belong to that group. Tub’s deputy Cal Smith is an evangelical, close to some of those people, and should fit right in, and for a while he did help out at training sessions, but since Red Baxter’s return, he has begged off, using his family duties as an excuse. Baxter was their section boss in the mine. A man born angry. Tub could go along with the loudmouth’s gobpile oratory back when it was about hours and wages, but then he got religion and became a rancorous pain in the ass. Suggs plainly hates the man and wants him run out of here. Smith, however, came from a family of pentecostals and only got closer to Baxter when Red shifted his hatred from bosses to sinners. In the mine, Tub was a shotfirer, using compressed air cylinders like dynamite to bring down walls of coal, a hazardous job, and Smith was his partner and driller. They hardly ever spoke to each other, but they were a team, so when Tub got elected sheriff, he appointed Smith his deputy, a good man to have at your back when there’s dangerous work to be done. Now he’s not so sure. There’s been trouble at the camp since Baxter’s return. If a line gets drawn, he may find his deputy standing on the wrong side of it.

Tub spots the Cavanaugh station wagon in the Blue Moon parking lot. The college kid’s probably here. He’d love to haul the smartass in for whatever, smoking marijuana or fucking a minor or something. His old man is a target of Suggs’ fury, one of many, and Tub shares his dislike for the banker. For all bankers, for that matter. Fat cats living off the sweat of others. When mines shut down and men are thrown out of work, these are the ruthless decisions of the money-maggots. But Tub is not a vengeful man. In fact, he has few emotions at all beyond a cold scrupulous hatred of a more general sort, and as for the kid, he’d feel out of place going in there in his uniform and shiny boots unless he had specific charges and an arrest to make.

He’s about to roll on out of the lot and back to his West Condon office when he sees them: three overdecorated motorcycles parked back in the shadows. They’d heard a distant growl tonight during the Christian Patriots’ military exercises that was probably them and Suggs had turned his dark scowl on him. Since the break-in and theft at the mine, Suggs has been in a rage about these out-of-town shitheads. So he knows now he has something to do. He could disable the bikes. Or impound them. But he might need help for that. They could come out any minute and they’re probably armed. It’s a Saturday night, and Smith will be hard to find, and the guys who were at the Patriots will be scattered. But no problem. He can handle this on his own. There’s a small secluded pull-off within view of the motel that he often uses to catch drunks and speeders leaving the motel, and after checking in with his radio operator, he pulls in there and turns off his car radio and douses his lights.

Cubano, Littleface, and Juice are sitting at the bar, knocking back whiskeys with beer chasers. Their pals Nat and Houndawg, who have stayed back at the base with Runt, are angry about it, but Juice and Cubano—penned up so long they’re going stir-crazy—decided they needed a social moment before hitting the road again tomorrow, Lit-tleface joining them to try to keep them out of trouble. And the sheriff is right: they’re armed. The place is a miserable dive and the two country singers don’t amount to much, but the Warrior Apostles dig the tunes, Juice bobbing his head to the beat and snapping his fingers, Littleface meditating on the lyrics, which are making him feel sentimental about his life on the open road and about his pals and about his country. And besides, though they’re cut off from the Brunists now, they saw these two yokels doing their act out at the mine hill and so they think of them as in some manner their own people.

There’s a tough, beardy guy sitting alone at the bar dressed in leathers with
APACHE
painted on the back of his jacket. Might or might not be what his jacket says. Short stocky guy, kind of a buttless tube, losing his tread on top. Worn dusty red cowboy boots with buckled straps over the insteps and tooled scrolls up the sides, pinetrees on the front, which give him class. What class he has. He isn’t flying colors, but he looks solid, so they ask him anyway, and he says no, he thought about buying a bike before he got sent up, but when he came out of the can, he went looking for four wheels, not two, needing something he could live in, sleep in, carry his shit around in. Juice tells him he admires his boots and he asks Juice if he ever did any time—he looks like a guy he’d seen up at the state pen. Juice says not in this part of the country, and asks, “What’d you get sent up for?”

“Laying into a buncha cops.” Can’t help but admire that and they all have another round. They ask him what he’s doing here. “Chasing a woman.”

“Not worth it, man.”

“I know it. Bad shit. It’s over. Moving on tomorrow.”

“Yeah? So are we. If you weren’t stuck in a cage you could join us.”

“Where you headed?”

“Don’t know. But it’s like them two croonies there are singing, ‘They’s always a bus goin’ somewheres.’” They ask what happens next for him and he says he doesn’t know either, but there’s another war brewing, and if they’ll take an ex-con, he may join up. He feels like killing a few people.