The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (60 page)

Halfway down the hill he meets Ben Wosznik climbing up. They have often run into each other in the early dawn hours, Ben still living by his old farmer routines, Pach’ unable to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, prison having taught him never to lose consciousness completely. Inspiration Point is a place Ben and some of the others often come to pray, and he asks Pach’ if he’d care to join him now. He’d like to tell Ben what he really thinks about prayer and religion, but instead, loving Ben and unable to hurt him, he only says he has to be by himself right now.

Which leads Ben to ask, “You been up here all alone?”

“Yeah. Who would I be with?” The question rankles him, hitting a sore spot—hadn’t Ben seen the mess he’d made of things?—but it also troubles him. He woke up this morning from a hangover dream about Elaine in which she passed by his van like a ghost and disappeared, and he wonders now if that was really a dream. “Listen, Ben, I gotta tell you, though don’t tell no one else till I’m gone. I’m moving on. I’m glad I came, and it was great to see you again, but I just don’t feel like I belong here anymore.”

“Well, I’m real sorry to hear that, son. We was all sorta hoping… If it’s on accounta Elaine, maybe she just needs a little more—”

“Elaine? She hates me. She told me so. It’s about the only thing she said to me all week. But it’s not just her. You’re about the nicest guy I know, Ben. I wish you were my dad. But I don’t believe what you believe. Not anymore.”

It’s hard to read Ben’s expression in the dark behind his beard. There’s pained disappointment in it and a kind of old-man bafflement, but also resignation. And affection. “Well, Carl Dean, I hafta hope you’ll come back to us. I’ll pray for you and pray God takes care of you, wherever you are. We’ll miss you, son.” And he lifts his arms for an embrace. During which, Pach’, trying not to break into unmanly tears as their beards entangle, his own still damp from the shower, thinks: Ben’s a believer, the man can’t think past that. Another week and he and Ben would have nothing to say to each other. Sad. Maybe it was better to have an old man who puts you off the whole idea of dads forever. The kind he had. Then you don’t set yourself up to be let down.

It was the night before last when Elaine came over to his van on her way home from the Friday prayer meeting, which he’d skipped, to tell him to go away. He hadn’t expected that. It was bombing down rain, and he’d thought he was safe. She caught him having a beer. Seeing her standing out there in her soaked tunic, hair streaming down her face, took him back to the last time they were together, really together, standing in the storm on the Mount of Redemption, holding hands and waiting for the end of the world, and he set the beer can on the dash and stepped out in the rain to join her. Felt apprehensive, yet vaguely hopeful. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he said he was sorry. “Why did you come back?” she demanded. “Please go away!” What could he say? The beer drinking really didn’t matter, he could see that. This was something else. He swallowed, and trying not to look down at her wet body, said he came back because he loved her and thought that she loved him. “That’s stupid. I never did. I was shook up because of my dad dying and all that was happening and I didn’t know what I was feeling. You took advantage of me.” Her voice was breaking and she seemed to be crying, but maybe it was only the rain. There was thunder and lightning, wind in the trees. It was quite a scene. Finally, maybe because he was hurt and wanted to hurt back, he got up the nerve to say that he came back to try to rescue her from all this goddamned craziness. That she should leave it now and go away with him, and she cried out, “I hate you, Carl Dean! You’re as bad as they say you are!” and ran away to her trailer, where her mother was watching from the steps, also getting drenched. Thunder crashed. A fucking nightmare.

His week was up, he should have left. But spent yesterday brooding about it. Teased himself into thinking maybe hate was love. Then, last night, he waited for her after supper. It was a beautiful evening after the storm the day before—not a cloud in sight, the lowering sun casting a soft movie glow on everything, as though promising a happy ending. He was supposed to be standing guard duty with Travers Dunlevy, but he got Billy Don, with whom he’s been having man-to-mans on the subject of women, to sub for him, saying it had to do with what they’d been talking about and promising him it would be the last time he’d ask and that he’d tell him what happened. Elaine was with her mother. There were a lot of other people standing around, staring, but he didn’t care. This was, he knew, his last chance on earth to get through to her. “Things are going to go bad for you, Elaine. When they do, think on me, and how I loved you and admired you. It will ease the pain some. And if you need me, just shout. Wherever I am in the world, I’ll hear you.” This was what he’d meant to say. He’d practiced it over and over. Didn’t happen that way. He only got the first part out. Her mother asked “What?” and he stumbled on the word “loved” and choked up. Elaine was staring right past him as if he weren’t there. Those dead eyeballs. He was halfway between crying and killing someone. In his desperation, unable to speak or to think what else to do, he lifted his T-shirt and showed her the tattoo over his heart. For a moment then, she did look at him. At it. She let out a yip of alarm and buried her face on her mother’s chest. It was as if he’d pulled his dick out and shook it at her. They were both horrified and there was suddenly a lot of hostility all around. He felt like a complete butthead, hated himself, hated everything and everyone in sight and figured they all hated him back. Before they could move on him, he spun around, nearly stepping on little Davey Cravens who’d come up behind him to hang onto his pantleg, and strode away, fists clenched, charging straight at scaredycat Junior Baxter, knowing then he’d have an open path, and he did, fat Junior crashing into the light post in his effort to lurch out of the way. Down in the parking lot, he hauled his leather jacket out from under the tented tarp where he’d stowed it all week, jumped in his van and drove straight out to the motel where Duke and his woman do their singing, proceeded to get thoroughly scorched on the hard stuff, keeping back only enough money to fill the tank.

While Duke was singing “Take These Chains from My Heart,” he made his mind up to stop back at the camp only long enough to pick up the rest of the gear he had stowed under the tarp and then drive off into the night without further ado, but the booze knocked him down and he fell out on the steel bed of the truck while he was loading up and didn’t come around until an hour ago. He’d so absented himself from his body, it was like a kind of dying, as if something had ended and nothing mattered anymore. Hadn’t even closed the van doors. From his headachy dream of the ghostly Elaine passing by, he awoke to utter darkness and a certain confusion of mind. His dream, if he remembered rightly, was also about being buried, and after the storm, there being still a damp earthy smell all about like that of a freshly opened grave, it took him a moment to be sure he was lying in his van and not in a coffin. He ached, rising, as if he’d been out cold for a year. Not used to that. He rarely dropped off that hard even when stoned. Felt sick and had to step into the bushes and throw up. Needed that cold shower and the walk up to the Point and back just to get the blood pumping again, clear some of the pain and thickness in his head. The shower was a smart idea. Last chance for a while, nothing ahead but wash-ups in filling station toilets.

He needs to finish the packing now and move his ass out of here before the camp wakes up and he gets asked too many stupid questions and he starts sounding off about the total craziness of these damned people and what they have done to his old sweetheart, fucking her mind like that as they’d once fucked his. Maybe she’ll come to her senses some day just as he did, though when he said that to Billy Don a couple of nights ago on guard duty, Billy Don said, “I think she feels like she
has
come to her senses.” He told Pach’ some of the rumors about what she and Junior Baxter were up to. “They want to be saints,” he said. Hurt him, but didn’t surprise him. It was what drove him nuts out on the Mount of Redemption that awful day and got him sent up: she and Junior whipping each other with switches and then she turning on him, screaming at him to go away. There are pictures of that in that damned book, too, almost dirty pictures what with all those wet bodies rolling around and that old lady with her legs spread and him with his stiff prang slipping its bonds. The boys took the book back before he could grab it and rip it up. Well, he went away that day, all right. Away off to a different fucking world. So now the two of them are back at it. The world changes but stays the same. One of the old guys doing his third stretch in the pen told him that. Makes him wonder about those snapping sounds he was hearing earlier from up on the Point, and he turns his head toward the creek. Forget it, man. Not your problem. Pack up your shit and get out of here.

Billy Don is the one guy he’s been able to talk to here, other than Ludie Belle and Wayne. Ben, too, if it’s not anything important. But they’re older and don’t understand a lot of things, or don’t want to. Billy Don is his own age and his gonads are on the boil like Pach’s own. Wears handles over his overbite, shades even at night to hide his wall-eye, drives a battered coupe the color of green puke, is something of a Jesus freak, but he’s easy to shoot the shit with. When Pach’ offered him a beer, Billy Don said he hadn’t touched a drop since he went a bit wild in high school before giving his life to Christ, Bible College being the best thing that ever happened to him. Pach’ could understand that and said he knew where he was coming from, but he offered it to him again anyway, reminding him that Jesus himself was a wino, and Billy Don didn’t take it but he didn’t say no either and there was a flicker of an embarrassed grin under his handlebars. He is one of Mrs. Collins’ inner circle, but Pach’ recognized him right off as a waverer and was able to open up to him, air out his own doubts and where they’ve taken him, confess the real reason he came here, and the hopelessness of it. Women. They ended up talking a lot about women. Which Billy Don knows even less about than Pach’. Like Pach’, Billy Don has also had to deal with a lot of personal insults in his life, being homely and wall-eyed without much of a chin, but he was born with a cheerful nature the way Pach’ was born with acne, so a lot of it rolled off him. Billy Don has the hots for some long-legged college girl with a dirty mouth who told him religion is for wussies who are too chicken to face reality, but in spite of that he can’t stop seeing her, so he’s pretty confused about things right now. Billy Don told him one night on guard duty about a busload of young Christian folksingers from Florida who visited the camp during the anniversary celebrations and underwent full immersive baptism by light, meaning they took off all their clothes and danced naked in front of a campfire, and Billy Don joined in and said it certainly made him feel close to God, if it also didn’t win him any brownie points with Mrs. Collins. He said if he could sing worth a hoot, he’d go join them, and Pach’ said, if you’re going to get messed up in religion, that’s probably the best way to go. When Billy Don asked him if he believed in God, Pach’ told him, pointing up at the sky, “Sure. Look at him out there. He’s what nature is. Big bastard. But he doesn’t think. Only humans think. You could say it’s what’s wrong with them. God doesn’t have that problem, but we like to think He does.” Billy Don shook his head and asked him what he thought would happen to his soul after he died, and he said he didn’t have one and hated the very word. “The only thing it’s good for is as a cheap gimmick in a horror movie. Stop worrying about it, Billy Don. Go screw the college girl and forget the rest.” Which caused Billy Don to duck his head and finger his rifle like it was his own dingdong and grin sheepishly again.

The guard duty bull, like the periphery fence Pach’ has been helping to put up, the barbed wire, the alarm bell, the secrecy, are all part of the sicko camp paranoia. As if the rest of the world cared fuck-all about them. Some of the people in town have been a nuisance, but the novelty is wearing off. And as for the bikers, they made it plain last night that they were clearing out and nothing to come back for. Secrecy. It’s like it was at the beginning when they were meeting in the Bruno house and had all those secret passwords and signs and prayers about the One to Come that they weren’t supposed to tell anyone about. At the Wednesday night prayer meeting, Billy Don took some stick from the older people for hanging out with the college girl, whom he said he was only trying to convert, staring daggers meanwhile at Darren for ratting on him. Elaine’s mother (Elaine wasn’t there; neither was Junior Baxter) said that even if his intentions were good, she did not believe that girl’s were, and he should not risk the safety and security of the rest of the camp by exchanging private information with outsiders and unbelievers. All this was apparently because of a town cemetery tour the three of them had taken earlier that afternoon, looking for the grave of Marcella Bruno. They didn’t find it, but Billy Don told him later they did find an empty grave that might have been hers with two golfballs in it like dropped eyeballs. The main subject of the prayer meeting was the announcement of June 7 as the date for the groundbreaking ceremonies for the new Brunist Tabernacle of Light to be built on the Mount of Redemption. Pach’ will miss that one. The choosing of the date had something to do with one of Bruno’s prophecies as well as something the boys saw that day in one of the cemeteries and what Darren called, rather ominously, “certain other developments.” Nods around the room, muttered prayers. Crazy.

Darren’s effort to break up Billy Don and the college girl made Pach’ wonder, so he asked him if Darren had ever made a play for him and that so confused Billy Don that Pach’ figured he had done and that Billy Don wasn’t sure what to do about it. He told him a little about Sissy without admitting to anything, but Billy Don didn’t want to hear about it and changed the subject. That’s probably when he started in about those firelight skinny dancers from Florida, which Pach’ also found tempting and wished he’d been around for, recalling those nights around campfires dressed in nothing but Brunist tunics and underwear. Once upon a time.