The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (89 page)

Against his better judgment, which is generally about the same thing as his worst judgment, he does so, and is led by way of the alleys into the back door of the downtown hardware store. Everyone is either out there among the crowds on the street or on the phone in the office—the store is at their disposal—but before Cheese can fill his pockets with some items of his own, his partner loads him up with a gallon can of black paint, picks up a wide house-painting brush and a screwdriver, and marches him out again. Weaving along tipsily in his golden slippers, he leads them right out onto the sunny street and over to the bank corner, where he pops the lid on the can Cheese is holding with the screwdriver, dips the brush in (“I know, I know, be not anxious!” he mutters, though it’s not clear who he’s talking to) and commences to write across the bank wall and window: H
E HATH SWALLOWED DOWN RICHES, AND HE SHALL VOMIT THEM UP AGAIN!
He steps back, admiring his authorship, sticks the brush back in the paint. Cheese is a slow reader and is still trying to puzzle it out when he is grabbed by the town cops, Monk Wallace and Louie Testatonda. The drunk is gone. There’s a crowd around, whooping it up, some calling his name.

“Hey, it wasn’t me!” he protests. “It was fuckin’ Jesus Christ!”

“Sure it was,” says fat Louie, gripping his nape like you might a cat.

“And you’re fuckin’ George Washington!” says Monk, handcuffing him.

Never mind. They’re applauding him. He’s a hero of sorts.

Now she can’t stop throwing up. It’s okay. She wants everything that’s inside to come out anyway, no matter how much it hurts. Something has got into her, something evil, and she has to punish the body that let it in in hopes it can be driven away. It’s her own fault, she knows that. Even her Pa has abandoned her in her wickedness. Elaine used to talk daily with her Pa, but she is no longer worthy of him. She prays to him and to Jesus and to God, but she hears her prayers in her head like empty echoes. She must go looking for him and beg his forgiveness. If he loves her, and she believes he does—he
must
—he
will
forgive her. But to do that, she first has to die. Only it’s so hard. Elaine has come to realize that crossing over is the hardest thing in the world. The sinful body just keeps fighting back. Her Ma is in the room with her. Her Ma’s husband Ben. A nurse. Also the camp nurse. She hates them all, but she knows that the hatred in her heart is not her own, for there is a badly damaged self buried deep inside that loves them more than anything. There is also someone or something else in the room. She can’t quite see it. It’s a kind of shadowy hotness. She hopes it is Jesus or maybe her Pa, but she does not think it is. She thinks it is something horrible. That it is just waiting for her to die, unprotected. Unhealed, unsaved. And therefore unable ever to see her Pa again. Only the camp nurse knows what is really happening and she tells her quietly in her ear what she must do: There is something bad inside her and she must get strong enough that they can get it out while there is still time. Elaine understands: She must eat to die. If it makes her sick, that is only part of her martyrdom; she will welcome it. The thing inside her is resisting furiously, but, with a nod, she agrees to do whatever the camp nurse wants.

Things that get inside and change everything. Love, for example. Or something like love but less than it and worse than it. The palm reader Hazel Dunlevy sits alone, Mrs. Edwards having taken Colin for a ride, on a little wooden stool in the middle of the sunny vegetable garden staring, somewhat terrified, upon the earth’s ripe vegetal wantonness. Animals, too, they just go at it, can’t help themselves. Those flies: in midair. Men and women are caught between pure divine love and the sinful love that drives all nature. But even God’s love can be excessive, can’t it? Just look what He did to Mary. Is that a sacrilegious thought? She knows he is there before he speaks. A kind of shadow, not his own, that goes wherever he goes. “Well, lookie here,” he says. “It’s little Miss Muffet…all by her lonesome…”

Things that get inside and change everything. Fear. Appetite. The love of Jesus. Of Satan. Of Mammon. For Ben, it is unassuageable rage that has invaded him. Some might say that it is a holy rage and he sometimes wishes it might be, but he does not think that it is holy. It is a hellish black thing that fills him up, fattening itself on all that he once knew himself by. Blinding him, shutting up his ears. But there is nothing he can do except pray and have faith that God will not desert him in his darkest hour. Sitting beside poor little Elaine’s bed, suffering her suffering, he made his mind up. Or it was made up for him. By what got inside. Now, after he drives Clara back to the Wilderness camp to get Elaine’s room ready, he has work to do. The things he has to make he has used but has never made, but the principle is simple. Along the road back to camp, there are a lot of illegal roadside fireworks barns popping up, as usual this time of year. Never been legal, but nobody does anything about it. Should find something in one of them that can be made to work.

“So many things has gone so wrong,” Clara says, as much to herself as to him. “I didn’t never imagine it to turn out this way.”

“No.” Clara’s faith is still intact, as is his, but her will is being tested. And her strength. It’s like something vital has been sapped right out of her. She cries a lot more now, moves more slowly, often with her head down, is tired all the time. The latest bad news is that Hiram and Betty Clegg have been arrested in Florida and charged with something like what got Sister Bernice and Sister Debra in trouble. Has to do with that dead woman’s estate. Mrs. McCardle. Hiram got hold of it through the doddery husband, somehow, but it turns out there are children, and they have brought legal action against them and the church. And it looks like only some of the money ever reached the church. Something has got into Hiram, too. “What does Ely say?”

“It’s been a while. But today I felt him in the room, watching over Elaine. I think it was him. He didn’t say nothing. He was just there.”

What Ben felt in the room was utter hopelessness, but he doesn’t say so. “I’ll drop you off at the trailer,” he says, pulling into the camp, nodding at Hovis at the gate. Hovis draws his fob watch out of his pocket and meditates upon it. “I got some errands to do.”

Wayne and Billy Don are throwing a baseball back and forth in the sunshine in front of the Meeting Hall, and Wayne raises his hand and comes over to get the news about Elaine and to ask about what they should work on next. Ben answers him but feels he is growing distant from all this. Probably what he has just said has only confused the man. He tells Wayne they’ll talk about it later, when he gets back for supper and tonight’s prayer meeting.

Down in the trailer park, little Willie Hall hoists himself out of his heavy, redwood garden chair and comes over, Bible in hand, to tell them about the suicide—“Behold, I seen Absalom hanged in a oak!” he exclaims—and Ben and Clara nod and say Dave Osborne was a good man, it was a terrible thing, they must all pray for his soul, and Clara shows signs of tears again, though she hardly knew Dave. Willie asks about Elaine, and Clara says she’s getting better, they’re bringing her home, and Willie runs off, spouting good-news verses, to tell Mabel.

“What is it you gotta do, Ben?”

“I found some things. They make me figure we’ll likely see more a them biker boys.”

“What things?”

“Just things. Things they’re gonna want back.” Clara gives him a hard look, one mixed of pain and uncertainty. “I love you, Clara, and I love Elaine,” he says, “more’n I ever loved anything in the world.” Then he grins, feeling a little foolish. “’Cept maybe Rocky,” he says.

“Why are you telling me this, Ben?”

“Well, sometimes I keep things too much to myself. I just felt like, whatever, you oughta know.”

She leans toward him and rests a hand on his shoulder. And then her head. “Be heedful, Ben. I need you so.”

Doesn’t make things any easier.

Darren Rector has watched from the Meeting Hall windows as Ben and Clara’s old muddy pickup rolled in. Not long after Mrs. Edwards and Colin, with that scared-rabbit look on his face, rolled out. In Clara’s and Ben’s grave faces he has seen no sign of good news. They are at the edge of cataclysmic events that will impact upon the entire universe, and Ben and Clara are still preoccupied with their little family tragedy. And it
is
a tragedy, as earthbound events go. Very sad. Poor Elaine is starving herself to death. Doing, as if obliged, the Marcella thing. Odd how exemplars create themselves without ever knowing they are doing this. Perhaps, unwittingly, he is doing so himself. Elaine will receive her reward in Heaven, and Ben and Clara are both good Christian souls whom God will surely take to his bosom, but they are no longer reliable leaders for the end times hard upon them.

Darren has not been standing at the window waiting for their return. He has been watching Wayne and Billy Don playing catch. As though nothing were happening. That peculiar unawareness of most of the world even when at the very edge of the end of things. It’s almost a sign of it. A shying away from looming reality, which is awesome, and from one’s personal responsibility before it. Jesus’ ceaseless reminder, generally ignored, of the need for hourly preparedness. The virgins who kept their lamps trimmed in anticipation of the bridegroom, and those who didn’t. Most didn’t, don’t. That’s the very heart of the story. To be among the chosen, you have to work at it every minute of every day. It’s the ultimate final exam. Billy Don has no excuse. He has been privy to everything. It’s that demonic girl. Well, too bad for him. Darren is learning not to be angry about it. Sometimes he even feels sorry about the horrible fate that awaits his friend. Though not very.

Darren has spent the day devotedly poring through his tape recordings in search of further hints of God’s ultimate intentions, planning his symbolic burial ceremony at the Mount of Redemption, and drafting an urgent open letter to the churches in the form of a mimeographed pamphlet. The letter is ostensibly from Clara Collins as the Brunist Evangelical Leader and Organizer, though in its pamphlet form it does not require a signature. He would show it to her, but he does not want to intrude upon her grief and worry. She has often relied upon him to produce such mailings for the church. The letter speaks of the recent history of the Brunist Wilderness Camp, including the many improvements and increased security made possible by member contributions, the presumed author’s warmly welcomed return to the camp headquarters with her husband after their eastward travels (the author thanks the host churches for their kind hospitality), the carving out of the foundations of the new Brunist Coming of Light Tabernacle Church on the Mount of Redemption and the laying of the cornerstone; but it also tells of the ceaseless harassments and intrusions, the unjust legal actions being taken against them, the formation of a sinister organization in West Condon whose stated objective is to crush their movement, the brutal assault (not otherwise specified) upon her own daughter that has left the child at death’s door, the ruthless beating while under police custody of the bishop of West Condon, and the armed attack on the camp, though without naming the perpetrators of the latter, it being Darren’s firm belief that the event was driven by a divinely ordained internal dynamic, its protagonists selected from among those available. The camp has been stoutly defended, the letter says, by the county law enforcement agencies, by Brunist friends in the Christian Patriots, and by their own brave camp leaders, but is ever in need of stalwart and faithful defenders. After writing that line, Darren decided to capitalize Defenders, thereby, he realized, suddenly creating a new category of membership and one that might draw further numbers to this area in case of need.

The letter also describes, in the third person, his own prophecies and revelations and the church’s current plans, organized by him, for a symbolic burial of their assassinated Prophet on the fifth of July, making it clear in the announcement that all Brunist faithful are invited to that memorial ceremony and urged at least to celebrate it in their own way wherever they are. But how, he wondered, should he refer to himself? “Prophet” and “visionary” seem too ostentatious, clerical titles like “church secretary” insufficient. He thinks of himself as the “church historian” or “scribe,” but these have a stuffy academic ring to them. Finally he has settled on “evangelist,” news-bringer, a general term that places him humbly among all “evangelical” believers (Clara would like this) and at the same time sets him among an elite and celebrated yet subservient Biblical company, capable of prophecy but not defined by it, sometimes allowing Sister Clara to add a qualifying adjective or two to add specificity and a note of approval. The pamphlets have been run off and the envelopes have been typed. All that remains is to fill the envelopes and seal them, which he must do now in time for the afternoon mail. Now that Clara is back, he will also have to hide away the tape recorder and his unedited working notes. Darren has a locked office file drawer with his own key, keeping there his secret tapes, his private copy of the book
On the Mount of Redemption
and those other disturbing photos used by Billy Don for improper purposes, and various personal items such as his diary, Clara’s twelve-sided pendant, and the revolver he came upon a few days ago down where the rape and the armed incursion took place. What they call in the Western movies a six-gun. Though in principle he does not approve of firearms, and along with Sister Debra and others, unsuccessfully opposed their use in the camp, the startling discovery seemed more than mere coincidence; the gun lay glittering in the dark weeds like a personal, if somewhat foreboding, message from the beyond, dropped there specifically for him. When he picked it up, it seemed almost alive, vibrating with veiled purpose. He has fired it once, just to test it, shooting out a window at the back of one of the mine buildings over by the Mount of Redemption during the heat of day when the sound was less likely to carry. He found himself shamefully excited and could not resist a fierce moment of sin right there in broad daylight, under the very eye of God, repenting of the sin even as he was committing it, but reasoning later that it might not have been a sin at all but rather, given the nature of God’s strange gift, a kind of symbolic prayer of thanksgiving.