The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (62 page)

She so loved her body then, and Wesley did too, often joining her in the nude. But it never produced anything and Wesley wearied of it and it did start to fall apart and bag on her as bodies always do, and for years since, until now, it has gone largely unappreciated. But that place on the other side of the creek had always been her favorite, her secret corner where she could strip down, even when camp was in session, and lie back in the warm summer sun and close her eyes and listen intently to the musical language of the birds and insects, separating out their voices, deducing the meaning of their calls, and she lay so still that once a little wren actually landed on her and walked along her tummy. Colin’s needs and agitations often make this pilgrimage impossible, but this morning she left him sleeping soundly, hugging his pillow, much buoyed of late by the attention paid him by Clara’s two office boys and the general optimism of the camp. In a few weeks’ time there will be a symbolic laying of the cornerstone of the new Brunist Tabernacle of Light over on the Mount for which there are already finished architectural plans, and the camp itself is becoming more beautiful and functional with every passing day. True, there are some who say that such projects make no sense if these really are the last days, but these are mostly people who are never really happy and who just want something for themselves.

She often leaves her undies back at the cabin, allowing the early morning air to whisper its whisperings without encumbrance, drying herself with her skirt afterwards but, like Colin, she has of late on warmer nights taken to sleeping in her underwear, so she had just pulled on a loose frock as she stepped out into the night, which decision was, as it turned out, dreadfully unfortunate. She had just lowered her panties to her ankles there in the nest of bushes, and bunching her skirt up around her midriff, had started sending a gentle hissing stream into the needles, when she heard hushed men’s voices. There was someone else there in the woods and not far away. She turned off the flow or it turned itself off, stopping as her heart stopped. She was terrified, couldn’t move, couldn’t even lower her skirt. They were grunting and cursing softly and one of them turned on a flashlight for a moment and she saw it was the motorcycle gang. They had shovels and were burying something. A body? It seemed too small for a body. Had they killed another animal? She didn’t see anything after that because she knuckled down behind a thick bush in the little depression there, trying to make herself as small as possible, fearful she was sticking out in all the wrong places, and began struggling, silently, with the tangle of underpants around her ankles, thankful for the racket of the birds covering her own fumblings and rustlings, but, doubled up as she was and stepping on them, she could neither pull them on nor get them off without standing up and making herself known to them. It would be getting light soon. Already she could make out the outlines of things, and she could see her own limbs clearly and knew they could, too, if they looked her way. She was in great danger, and if she had to run she couldn’t. It would be like running in a sack race.

She doesn’t know how long she stayed scrunched down there, her heart fluttering in her chest like a trapped bird trying to beat its way out, but the dark had been slowly lifting like a kind of dissipating fog and she knew she didn’t have much time. She had managed at last to free one foot so she could run now if her legs would obey her and she took a deep silent breath and prepared to do that. They were faster, she knew, but they didn’t know the woods as well as she did. She figured she had a chance by leading them through the most tangly part. Unless they had guns. Guns! The thought of being shot as she ran refroze her limbs, and she realized she was peeing again, it was trickling warmly down her thighs and into her sandals, doubled under her. She was praying now, not to nature or the night, which was all but gone, but to God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and Mother Mary and all the apostles and disciples to please get her out of this somehow. While they worked, the motorcyclists were insulting one another in what they probably thought of as a manly manner, smoking and spitting and cursing the sheriff and other people and threatening to kill everyone. “Cover it up with dead leaves,” she heard one of them say in a rattly growl. One of them, the one with the childish voice, was called Runt and another Jews or Juice and another Face, though he didn’t seem to be there. Jews or Juice was the one who kept talking wildly all the time, often about the one called Face, and the others were always telling him to shut up or keep it down, which was why she knew his name. The voice that was giving the orders, telling the others what to do and how to do it, made a shushing sound and they all grew very quiet. Had they heard her? Maybe they’d heard her heart, which was thundering in her ears. No. Someone was coming. Through the trees she could see the two white tunics and she knew what would happen next. She wanted to warn them but couldn’t.

Neither of them spoke a single word. There were no preliminaries, they simply turned their backs to one another in turn and smartly lashed each other, she with the razor strop, he with the belt—Debra had seen these things before, did not need to peek out at them to know what was happening. At first the strokes were measured and always, she knew, across the shoulders. But as the tempo picked up, the blows might fall anywhere, especially those of the boy, who seemed inclined to throw himself into it with more abandon. They emitted little grunts and whimpers as they swung, and once the girl—poor little Elaine, punishing herself for sins she could not even imagine—yipped in pain, unable to stop herself, a little squeak like that of a mouse caught by an owl. Whereupon the bikers, laughing cruelly, stepped out of the woods and encircled them, their knives out (Debra was watching them now, peeping through the brush, her heart in her throat). Elaine cried out, and then fell silent. The husky boy in the black leather jacket with the high collar, whom she recognized as Nathan Baxter, though he looked changed, rougher somehow, his head shaved nearly bald, took the belt and razor strop away from them and walloped his brother in the chest with both of them at once, flattening him out and leaving him gasping for breath. They stripped them both of their tunics, Elaine now stonily passive, staring off in another direction, as the older man with a braid sliced her tunic down the front with a knife, the downed boy struggling against them until he got a blow in the face from the razor strop. “Look,” said one of the motorbikers, “he’s wearing his chick’s skivvies. Ain’t that cute?” And they all laughed and kicked at him there on the ground with their boots. “What’ll we do with her?” another asked, and Nathan Baxter said, “Whatever. She’s with the enemy.” “Don’t mind if we fuck your girlfriend, do you, son?” asked the older man, his free hand clutching the girl between the thighs, and Young Abner said in a trembly girlish voice, looking like he was trying to smile and was about to cry at the same time, “She’s not my girlfriend. I don’t give a care what you do with her.” Nathan Baxter took a fistful of his brother’s hair and jerked his head up and laid the blade of his knife against his throat and said, “You got me in trouble, man, with that gun you stole. Maybe we oughta do to you what we done to the dog.” And he drew a red line on the boy’s forehead with the point of his knife. The boy started squealing in a high-pitched voice—“No! God! Please!”—and they gagged him with the blue bandanna the noisy one had been using as a headband.

This, Debra knew, was her moment to escape, had been, but she was still petrified, the long knives frightening her even more than guns would, and the moment was already gone because two of them were suddenly heading her way, dragging Elaine with them, still brandishing their knives, the noisy one called Juice or Jews or maybe Choose and a dark one with oily black hair who spoke with an accent, and she had to shrink down again, squeezing her eyes shut as if that could turn the world off. She could hear their hooting and sniggering, all their vulgar remarks about how scrawny the girl was as they exposed the rest of her and pushed her to the ground, then their grunts and heavy breathing, the noisy one complaining how tight she was, the other one telling him to break her open with his thumbs or the handle of his knife if he wasn’t man enough to crack it on his own, and there was some dreadful thrashing about and slaps and cursing and laughing, while out in the clearing the gagged boy was whining desperately through his nose and seemed to be strangling and then he was silent. Debra, who could not have seen anything through her tears even if she’d been watching, was trying to stifle her sobs for fear of ending up like Ben’s dog. What would happen to poor Colin if they rolled her head into the campground? The only thing she had heard Elaine say beyond a single gasp of pain was “Pa…?” which didn’t seem right, but it was what she heard. Lookie here!” The noisy one was back out there in the clearing again without any pants on, his hair flying loose around his head like a nest of snakes. “He whupped her but he never fucked her!” She knew by the sounds behind her that the other one, cursing the child in his native tongue, was taking his turn. Would they kill her when they were done with her? They would. Oh my God. Out in the clearing, the one with the little boy’s voice asked if the girl had hurt him, and the noisy one laughed and said, “Nah, that leaked outa her crankcase, Runt, not mine. A little somethin’ got busted in there.” The older one with the soft rattly voice said, “C’mon, Runt. Take your britches down and I’ll show you how it works.” Those two were now coming her way, too. Debra knew she could not take much more before she lost control and started screaming and it would all be over. The older one and the one with the accent were behind her showing the young boy what to do next, snorting with evil laughter and urging him to keep pushing and pushing, when there was a most horrendous howling out in the clearing like wild savages, maybe the gag had come off the boy, if he wasn’t already dead, and she found herself on her feet, shrieking, bawling, unleashing her own savage howls, ready to die, but nobody was paying any attention, they were all out there in the clearing where there was a lot of yelling and violent cursing going on, only the boy had been left behind, still down between the poor child’s legs, a scrawny redhead, couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, his bony bottom bouncing like a windup toy gone crazy.

And then, without even thinking about it, Debra did a very brave thing. She choked down her panic and picked up a thick branch, and just as the boy gave a surprised little yelp, gave him such a blow as might have bashed his brains out, grabbed up the lifeless girl, and half dragging her, half carrying her, screaming for help, hauled her away from there, stumbling through the undergrowth and over one of the bridges, afraid to look back for fear they were chasing her and she’d lose heart and fall down and they’d both be killed.

She was met at the edge of the camp by Ben and Wayne and Welford Oakes running her way, Ben with his shotgun, Hunk Rumpel just behind them in his white longjohns and carrying a rifle, Clara and Hazel and Ludie Belle in their bathrobes, everyone streaming out of cabins and the lodge and up from the camper parking lot, looking shocked and terrified. Clara swept her naked daughter into her arms, the child still stunned, wet eyes staring at nothing, mouth agape, her thin body oddly rigid like a stick figure, blood streaming down her sinewy thighs, her mother wrapping her bathrobe around her and hurrying her away. Debra’s knees gave way as soon as she was free of the girl, and they were all suddenly crowding around her, asking her questions, who was it and what happened, but she couldn’t think, she couldn’t speak, all the tensions of her ordeal were exploding out of her in uncontrollable sobbing, she could only point toward the creek, and several of the men ran off in that direction (and, yes, she who’d always opposed the arming of the camp hoped they would shoot all of them), and then she was throwing up. She was gathered up in hugs and prayers from where she’d fallen, one of the women saying someone should call Bernice to bring out some nerve medicine, Ludie Belle whispering in her ear that it was all right, just fling up, honey, it’ll do you a world, and guiding her toward her cabin, she should lie down a spell, she’ll fix her a cup of tea.

She became aware then that someone else was wailing even louder than she was—it was Colin, running at full speed, round and round in wild circles in nothing but his underwear, yowling at the top of his lungs. At the door of the next cabin, Abner Baxter, the father of all those terrible boys, was scowling furiously at Colin as though it was all his fault and trying to push his youngest daughter back inside not to witness it. Darren and Billy Don tried to catch Colin, but he leapt right past them, and soon everyone was watching Colin or chasing him, and she herself had stopped her weeping. It was Hunk who finally collared him and lifted him up, his feet still churning, and brought him over to the cabin, where Darren and Billy Don and some of the women gathered to help restrain him and calm him down.

Before they could get him inside, however, there was the sound of anguished howls rolling up from below and the men returned, Travers and Wayne carrying Young Abner Baxter under his armpits, the boy dressed only in girls’ panties with blood streaming down his face and hanging limp as a sack of butter from their grip, his toes dragging through the grass, but screaming in pain so at least he was still alive. They dumped him in front of Abner Baxter and Ben, who had a leather belt wrapped round his fist like tape, said, “Pack up your family and get out,” and Colin fell down and rolled around in the twitchy way he sometimes does and started howling along with the Baxter boy.

“What’s all this about?” Abner Baxter demanded over the racket.

“Ask your boy. You got thirty minutes or we’ll do your moving for you.”

He bristled and his neck reddened and he seemed ready to burst into one of his self-righteous tantrums, but then he looked around at all the armed men and at his bawling near-naked son and his chest caved in and his head seemed to sink lower on his shoulders. “But where will we go?”