The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (65 page)

Her medieval history class at college met early on Monday mornings, much to everyone’s disgust, so she chose this post-Pentecostal one for her visit to the old newspaper plant in pursuit of what she described to the funny little toothbrush-mustachioed guy running the print shop as “thesis research.” She remembers him vaguely as a teacher and some kind of coach at the high school. His current commission: a two-color mailbox stuffer outlining the goals of the New Opportunities for West Condon citizens committee, which he showed off proudly. He took her on a brief tour of the newspaper press and composing rooms at the back with their typesetting machines and antique flatbed press and soot-blackened windows and ancient Coke machine, the dusty concrete floor littered still with lead slugs (she pocketed one), then ushered her into this old job room, pulled on the lights from a dangling string, and clearing it of piled-up binders and ledgers, offered her the leather sofa. She said no—too quickly. She knows where she is. She’s not superstitious, but if she were, she would have said it feels haunted. This whole boneyard of a room does, but especially that sofa.

The first thing she has come on in here is a large stack of the last issue of the paper. Last ever. April 18. The Saturday before the End. Monday didn’t happen here. History stopped, just like the cultists said it would. Huge two-line banner:
WE
SHALL
GATHER
AT
THE
MOUNT
OF
REDEMPTION!
The Brunist evangel to be shipped to the world. It’s mostly a photo essay, as if it were by now all beyond words, or else the editor ran out of things to say. Her dad’s in one of the pictures, standing alongside Tommy’s father, some preachers, and Angela’s father, who was apparently something of a bigwig at the time in what was called the Common Sense Committee. NOWC père. Plus all the cultic stuff of prophecies and song lyrics and relics and doctrines, interviews, letters to the editor. Funny one from an old lady in her nineties who said she was getting a slip from the doctor to explain why she couldn’t make it out to the Mount and giving her phone number. If something started to happen, they could give her a call and she’d ring a taxi.

She has dug around and come up with all the earlier issues back to the April 8 special edition, the one that first broke the news about the cult and created such a furor:
BRUNISTS
PROPHESY
END
OF
WORLD!
across all eight front-page columns. Amazing horror-flick pic of a charred black hand. The Prophet in a contrasty iconic mug shot. Photos of helmeted coalminers. The mine hill with nobody on it. The burned ruins of a house. Squibs about other cults used as filler. The editor was clearly fascinated, as is she, by the long, weird, and often violent history of apocalyptic movements, nowadays known euphemistically as evangelical or fundamentalist churches, and there’s something in every issue, published without comment almost like contemporary news items: tales of millennialists, crusaders, ecstatics, flagellants, flat earthers and faith healers, naked adamists, hermits declaring themselves resurrected kings or sons of God, mystics, martyrs, messiahs, priestly rapists, ritualistic cannibals, visionaries (miraculous white birds flock past with the seasons), and other mythomaniacal eccentrics and criminals of the cloth. But also those who resisted these fantasies and the dire consequences they suffered, beheading the least of it. She sometimes thinks of herself as standing alone, breaking new ground. It’s easy to forget that atheism is as old as theism. And that the ratios haven’t changed much. Nor the power structure. According to the articles, end of the world gatherings seem to have happened several times a year over the centuries—some ending tragically, most comically. She learns, without surprise, that the Rapture idea was never mentioned in the Bible or in ancient times but was invented by a couple of religious charlatans in the middle of the nineteenth century and sold to suckers ever since. The
Chronicle
editor was obviously an atheist: to what extent was he St.-Pauling this crazy cult into a worldwide church with his deadpan epistles? Over her shoulder the Lutheran minister smiles, puffing on his pipe: God the Engineer at it again.

She also takes a moment to flick through the sports pages of the various editions until she finds a photo of the high school basketball team. Yes, he was cute. Wearing his hormones in plain view like another number on his shirt. Rascality written all over him. No wonder what almost happened at the ice plant almost happened…

After a prowl through the filing cabinets (“Street Repairs,” “Rotary Club,” “United Mine Workers,” “Bowling Leagues”), she comes eventually upon the Brunist folders, including notes about each of the early cultists—some dated, some not. Full accounts of Bruno; Clara Collins; her husband, Ely. In Marcella’s folder: a few typed scraps, photos, some job press proofs of her name in Old English, a couple of them with his name butting up against hers, rough sketch of the Bruno house floor plan. A handwritten background note speaks of her Catholicism, considers it to be more a kind of general mysticism—a thing of nature, not of doctrine. Therefore vulnerable to reinterpretation. To a change of heart. In one photo she wears a shawl or a light blanket as the Virgin often does in paintings, peering up at the camera with almost heartbreaking waif-like beauty. Already somehow looking martyred. Odd background structures. One print dated on the back that must have been taken out at the mine shortly after the disaster. Six different copies of this one. He put in some darkroom time.

Which probably explains that closet door with the small pane of glass. She looks inside: a small room, the cupboard-sized back half for development, plumbed and painted black with black curtains, the front, lit by a red bulb, for hanging wet prints. Lines and clips strung up just above eye level. A couple of curled prints still dangling there, including one of Angela’s father in front of the police station. Looking fierce. The face of vindictive law-and-order. Instead of leaving the room, she pulls the door closed, peers out through the little square window. The sofa. The exact angle of those photos. Somebody must have been in here, either unknown to the editor or arranged by him. She goes to get one of the photos with the shawl, sets it against the far armrest, returns to the darkroom, stares out the window at the dead girl staring back. Could she ever imagine the world as that girl saw it? Get into the head of an otherworldly Roman Catholic, the innocent daughter of aging immigrants, modest and sweet-natured and accepting, as she herself is not? Her poor, working-class family is accustomed to a punishing life. Her older brothers are dead already. Their lives are presumably continuing somewhere else. In the sky. As will hers? The girl doesn’t think about it. Like Reverend Dreyer’s divinity: thought, action, passion, all one. Her brother Giovanni is ill, but miraculously he is alive and needs her. Miraculously? Yes, it was a miracle. The girl believes that. God is mysterious and unknowable, but he is not absent or uncaring.

Sally shakes off her spectral forebodings and stretches out on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, the photo on her chest. White acoustic tiles. A kind of pocked movie screen. What did the girl see up there? Sally sees nothing. The blank face of the universe. Some cobwebs. She wishes she had a joint with her so she could relax into this. She feels big and awkward. The girl was small. With an enviable grace. Probably Marcella saw just what was in front of her: a strong handsome man who desired her. Whom she desired. What must he have seemed to her? God-like? No, but as one given her by God. What will happen next? It’s like there’s a force out there seeking to penetrate her. Not merely this naked man, but a transcendent force. As if she were uniting with something beyond either of them. She will accept it, for it is God’s way and it is good. So what went wrong? Never know. Something profound. Because God’s in the mix. A wholeness shattered. For now, he speaks her name. Like an endearment. Marcella. He’s crazy about her. Of course he is. Sally has the urge to take her clothes off. She’s a realist at heart. But she forgot to put the hook on the job room door. What the girl sees is the man’s searching gaze, which she meets, more prepared for this probably than he is. What Sally sees is his nakedness, the urgent ferocity of his erection. She sits up abruptly, her hand between her legs. Those cloven Pentecostal tongues of fire. They descended, the Good Book says, into laps. Root and core of the problem…

In Doc Foley’s downtown corner drugstore, picking up what her mother delicately calls her disposables, Sally runs into Stacy Ryder, the young intern at the bank. Sally knows her name because Tommy has remarked approvingly on the body the name belongs to. She introduces herself and Stacy asks what she’s carrying.

“It’s called a newspaper, an ancient human artifact, extinct in these parts.” The fellow running the print shop said there were plenty, she could have it. She tucked into its pages, unseen, a few other items as well, including a print of shawled Marcella, that sports page with the team photo, the Black Hand issue, other photos. She could have taken anything. Would never be missed. If anything, she was rescuing these things from oblivion. She shows Stacy the gaudy headline. “Last of its kind.”

“I’ve heard about that. Before my time here.”

“Sort of before my time, too. I was just a clueless high school kid. Still dialing up Jesus in those days, so I was a bit scared these guys might have God’s unlisted number.”

Stacy smiles. A pretty smile, easy and friendly. She’ll go far. “Pretty crazy. The world can be.”

“You’re not religious?”

“I gave up religion and the tooth fairy about the same time.”

“One of the five percent. Did you know that eighty-five percent of all Americans, including Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and atheists, believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus, but less than thirty percent believe in evolution?”

“Sounds about right. But I have to tell you, Sally, when I gave up religion, I gave up thinking about it, too.”

“Smart move. Not easy in this town, though. Sort of like not thinking about water when the ship’s sinking.”

“The main difference between religion and the tooth fairy was that at least I learned something from the tooth fairy. About money, marketing, the value of raw commodities. In the tooth fairy’s world, baby teeth are an instrument of exchange. Currency. The tooth fairy gave me coin bankable in my world, took the tooth. Probably thought she was getting a bargain.”

“Like the guys who bought this country from the Indians. The problem with teeth, I guess, is sooner or later the mine’s played out…”

She flashes that easy smile again. Some are born with it, others aren’t. “Exactly. So, ahead of that eventuality, I went exploring. Found a friend who didn’t believe in tooth fairies and she let me have one of her teeth when it fell out, in exchange for a finger puppet. I put it under the pillow, waited for several days, but no one took up the option. I figured there must be some principle in play about rightful ownership. But I didn’t believe it. I still don’t. I knew there had to be a less scrupulous tooth fairy somewhere who would make an offer. So I kept the tooth. Still have it.”

They’re both laughing. Sally says: “That’s the best kids’ story I’ve heard since Grandma Friskin told me the one about the constipated Easter bunny.”

“That shouldn’t affect egg-laying.”

“It does for kids, who start by believing rabbits lay eggs. How’s the book?”

“This? It’s pretty silly, I’m afraid. A friend at the bank loaned it to me. Listen. ‘The smile in his green eyes contained a sensuous flame. His open shirt revealed a muscular chest covered with crisp brown hair. His stance emphasized the force of his thighs and the slimness of his hips. She wondered if his broad shoulders ever tired of the burden he was carrying.’ Do you think he’s the right guy for the girl?”

“If the girl’s who I think she is,” Sally says, “it should be the perfect match. She also has crisp chest hairs.” That cracks Stacy up, but even at full throttle her laughter’s of a wistful sort, her green eyes still melancholy. “Ever read
Madame Bovary?”

“No. Is it good?”

“Well, it’s about a woman who reads too many romance novels.”

“I probably just said something stupid. It’s a famous novel, right? I’m not much of a reader, I guess. Mostly I read stock reports and spreadsheets. When I read books like this, I tend to read them like financial statements, in terms of risks, margins, potential returns. Emotions as intangibles, collateral, character as intrinsic value. Winning the love game is knowing when to hazard your resources, take the plunge, make the crucial investment decision. Some win. Most lose.”

“Is that how you play it, Stacy?”

“Me? No, I’m a spendthrift gambler. After a drink or two I’ll bet the house on the next roll.”

“Well, you can always pull back and reload. The emotions aren’t finite.”

“Yes, they are,” she says sadly, and looks away.

Sally believes she’s just heard something true. Straight out of one of those ladies’ novels perhaps, but nonetheless true. But she doesn’t understand it. “I guess I don’t know much about the love game. I mostly throw snake eyes,” she says. “Or the money game either, for that matter. What little I have from allowances and carhopping and babysitting you guys have in an account there. Every month you give me a few pennies of interest, which doesn’t cover the resoling of my shoes from the walk to the bank and back. I suppose the bank is making a lot more than I am out of it.”

“Yes, it is. Come in and see me some time and we’ll see if we can’t work out something better. Come soon, though, while I’m still here.”

“Thanks. What’s in that account won’t last long enough to matter. But are you leaving town?”

She sighs. “I’m afraid I’ve already stayed too long. Oops,” she adds glancing at her watch. “I’ve stayed too long on my lunch break, too. Have to get back and save the bank, which according to my boss is the same thing as saving the world.”