The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (96 page)

Out at the lakes, far from the bench-clearing brawl erupting at the Blue Moon, Sally Elliott steps out of the cold lake waters as she stepped in, mooning the moon and musing about the whimsical customs of midsummer. A distant voice, floating with silvery clarity over the still waters, has just cried out: “Omigod! What are we
doing?”
“That was my mother’s voice,” she says, drying herself off with her shirt. “Let’s go.” Billy Don, still wearing his sunglasses, lingers in the water at waist level, wanting to stay cool as she has stayed cool and consequently self-conscious about his telltale arousal—which, for fear she will laugh at it, he is trying desperately but unsuccessfully to detumesce with prayer and the recitation of mathematical formulae and also with moral fortitude, the sort his baseball coach used to urge upon him, with equal lack of success, to discourage the sin of Onan. They have been playing a game of water tag that should have been more fun than it was, but Sally has done too much pool time and he has been unable to keep up with her, or else it was the beer (he’s not used to it), so he has rarely had his hands on her and then only fleetingly and not in the best places, which never seemed quite available. Like some kinds of knowledge he’s been offered in his life, but that he’s not been quite able to grasp, advanced calculus, for example. But just seeing her moonlit bottom bob up when she dove under water and feeling the swish of her as she passed suddenly between his legs have been enough to keep him in such an unholy fever it’s a wonder the water around him hasn’t started to boil. “Billy Don? Come on!” Still he hesitates. She seems to guess what’s troubling him and tosses him her shirt, the one that says give me a hug, turns her back and walks over to pull her jeans on. Using his boner as a shirt hanger is probably even more ridiculous than leaving it exposed and bobbing stupidly on its own, but that’s what he does, pretending to be drying himself off until he can reach his cast-off clothes. Still hasn’t been able to give her that hug. He doesn’t know why. Just too dumb, probably. This damp T-shirt between his legs, he’s pretty sure, is as close as he’s going to get.

His return from the dead is celebrated with libations spilled upon his countenance and welcoming bilingual oaths. Where is he? In hell, as the company suggests?
Who
is he, for that matter? He is staring up at a blinding light. Some say it’s what people who have near-death experiences see. Are his eyes open or closed? Open. He is staring up at one of the lamps that overhang the Blue Moon Motel parking lot. “Maybe Georgie’s got some words of wisdom for us from the other side,” someone says. It might be his cousin Carlo. There are snorts of thick, drunken laughter. Georgie is sick. His head aches, his jaw hurts. There’s a hollow place where a tooth used to be. The arm that fucking sorehead Lem Filbert wrecked is in pain; must have done something to it when he fell. “What happened to that long string of shit who hit me?” he asks, digging the words up from somewhere, not sure they come out as intended. He has a mouthful of stones. “The singer? Them people took off before you could see ’em go.” His comrades are sitting around on their butts, swigging from an array of bottles. “Where’d all that juice come from?” “Inside. We managed to grab some on the way out. Beats what we been drinking all to hell.” They tell him what happened. The historic brawl he missed. He sees now they’re wearing shiners, split lips, bloody ears. They’re all grinning shit-eating grins. “Wrecked the fuckin’ place,” young Nazario Moroni says. “The cops let us go. Just chased everyone out and shut it down.” They offer Georgie one of the bottles. He has to suck from it lying down, though. He can’t sit up yet. It might be whiskey, might not; it’s wet and stings the wounded places. There’s weed getting passed around as well, a wedding gift from Moroni. “We lost Guido Mello, though,” cousin Carlo says. “As they shoved him out the door, he took a slow-motion swing at Louie Testatonda. You almost can’t miss Louie, but he did. It was like il Nasone was desperate to get hisself locked up so as not to have to go home to his dimwit wife and mongol kid and whatever else is going down there. They probly took him in as a family favor.” “Guido had our only wheels left. How’re we getting to Waterton?” “Grunge here is driving us. Him and Naz have joined the party.” “The brawl finished off the others,” young Moroni says. So they’re down to Johnson and Juliano, Stevie Lawson, and the two young toughs. And the resurrected hero who invented this monumental festa, much praised by all. The Sick Six. “One of ’em has two cunts, Stevie, and one of ’em don’t have none at all,” Cheese Johnson is saying. “We ain’t tellin’ you which is which—you gotta guess.” Stevie says, “Huh.” He stands up for a moment and falls down. They laugh and offer him another drink. Stevie has already forgotten he’s getting married tomorrow. Or later today if it’s got as late as that. From here the stag party goes to Waterton to share Stevie’s wedding present with him. That’s the plan. But Cheese and young Nazario have cooked up something else they want to do first.

So the next thing Georgie knows, they’re all out at the Brunist church camp under a vast moonlit sky, being sung to by mosquitoes. The camp has a perimeter fence strung with barbed wire, but Stevie helped clear the garden and move topsoil in for old man Suggs, so he knows a back way in, an old two-track route to the creek from an abandoned farm. He also knows they now have armed guards at the camp, having been one a time or two, so you can pick up an assful of buckshot. Moroni says he wishes he’d known about this route. He and Grunge and some of their pals have also been out here, it turns out, wrecking gardens, sabotaging lampposts, trying to set some chicken coops alight before getting chased off with rifle fire, but they had to cut their way in. Doesn’t seem like only anti-cult mischief. Carrying some deep grudge, more like, especially against the big stud Wanda Craven’s living with now. Georgie gets the idea it’s the way they’ve been able to recruit Grabowski’s car. The plan is to kidnap Wanda and take her somewhere and gangbang her. A warmup for the whorehouse. The last time Georgie and Cheese tried group-fucking Wanda Cravens, they got beat up and arrested and it cost him a few bills. He grins to remember it and he’s reminded how much his jaw hurts. Young Moroni tells them how to get to the trailer park without passing any of the cabins or other mobile homes by following the creek and coming in from the back side. Wanda and her guy live apart from the others because of their chicken coops. The moon’s not full but bright enough it should be simple to find their way. Of course, that also makes them easier targets. They should stay in under the trees. First, though, they’ll have to distract the big bastard, get him away from their trailer so they can grab Wanda. Cheese has brought along a big packet of stink bombs, firecrackers, and flares for the purpose, which he apparently stole from some place. Someone should take a different route, he says, and set all that stuff off and then tear ass, and the other four will snatch Wanda when everyone goes running toward the fireworks. Georgie volunteers for this diversional task or is volunteered, it’s all the same to him. Me ne sbatto il cazzo, he says. His aching head’s not working well, and it seems simpler and less dangerous, and it’s always fun to light fireworks. How will he know when to set the shit off? Cheese will hoot like an owl. He shows him what he means. Sounds more like a night train with a broken whistle, but it should be easy to tell from a real owl hoot in case there are any out here. Cheese gives him the armload of fireworks in a gunny sack and some matches. Moroni says not to worry, he’ll take care of the fat man if necessary. All in all, it seems like a good plan.

But they’ve just parted ways there in the woods and Georgie is alone in the dark when he sobers up enough to recognize how stupid it is. He and his pals are too drunk, the two boys are too sober. What did Moroni mean, “take care of”? Were they armed? There are strange sounds all around him. This is supposed to be fun. What happened to his happy stag party? He doesn’t feel like he’s in the real world anymore, but has got dropped into some nightmarish place where weird shit can happen. He tries not to panic, but he is panicking. He decides the only sane course of action is to beat it back to the car. First, though, he has to set off all these fireworks. Was that an owl hoot? Close enough. He has just lit a few fuses when the quiet night is torn open by a howling scream. It’s Cheese Johnson. He’s being attacked.
“Fucking Christ, they’re killing me!”
Georgie is on the run, fireworks popping behind him. He hears shots. The sky lights up with flares. The screaming gets worse. And the others start yowling. There are desperate cries for help. Must have been an ambush. Georgie runs away from the wild screaming (what the hell are they doing to them?), his head full of confusion, suddenly smacks up against the periphery fence. Didn’t see it coming. He is down again, his shirt torn by barbed wire. Probably he’s bleeding. His face hurts, his jaw hurts, his arm hurts, his gut hurts. There is a lot of noise in the camp now, shouts, Cheese and the others yowling, crackers popping, gunfire. The whole place is lighting up and coming alive. No place to turn. He is suddenly back in the exploded mine. Most terrifying moment of his life. His faceboss Vince Bonali told them to stay put while he went to phone topside, but some of them couldn’t wait. He couldn’t wait. He remembers the thick dust, the darkness, the fear of fire and of suffocation, Pooch Minicucci’s panic, screaming with terror like Cheese Johnson is now, and how it got to him and Wally Brevnik, sending them off on a mad suicidal run. He has always bragged about getting out before Bonali did, but he knows it was a big mistake and he and Wally could have ended up dead like Pooch and his buddy Lee Cravens, the last of their air sucked up by that mental case Giovanni Bruno, the only bastard who was trapped and got out. The one this camp is named for. That thought sends a shiver down his spine. Has he come full circle? Is he being punished now for his stupidity that night? He’s scrambling along the fence, snagging himself on it, trying to find the end of it, avoiding the moonlight when he can, feeling his own air getting sucked up. There are gunshots, more shouts:
“It’s the murderer! He’s back!”
He starts praying. First time since that night when he was lost in the black mine. C’mon, God, do me a fucking favor, for Chrissake! Some high-pitched voice way off somewhere is screaming about witches. What the hell is that about?
“Over here! This way!”
More shots. He seems to hear bullets ripping through the trees overhead. Something stinks. He has either shat his pants or kicked a skunk. He begins to cry, begs for pity. From God, the Devil, Lady Luck, whomever. The fence ends. He wipes his tears away. There’s an open field dangerously lit up under the moon. He decides to risk it, doubled over so if he gets shot he’ll get shot in the ass, not the head. Nothing happens. He reaches a copse, another creek, brambles, still running, a ditch, turns his ankle and goes down hard, more brambles, finally a paved county road. He recognizes it. Leads into town past shithead Lem’s garage. First he pauses to throw up and take a long sticky piss. He’s full of rage, pain, terror, nausea, self-pity. He realizes he’s been clutching the sackful of remaining fireworks to his chest the whole time like a lifejacket. He drops it, starts limping down the road back to town, then realizes he is turned around and going the wrong way, makes the correction, throws up again. Passes the dropped fireworks. Picks them up again. Long walk back on a swollen ankle. But still alive and out of there. So he should probably give thanks. But hey. God may have saved his ass, but why did He let him get in so much trouble in the first place?

“Ain’t never burgled a haunted house, Patti Jo. Sure y’wanta do this?”

“I’m sure.”

“Looks all boarded up.”

“Yeah, but, see? The padlock on the door’s been broke. I hear tell it gets used now for high school beer parties. If you stumble over any bodies, don’t worry, it’s just probably drunken kids passed out.”

“I stumble over any bodies, little darlin’, and I’ll see ye later back at the Moon.”

“It all looks so empty and busted up I can’t hardly recognize it. But I remember you turn left here into the dining room and then left again. The stairs are off the kitchen. Shine your light a sec, Duke. Here, this way.”

“What a hole. Worse’n the swamp I never growed up in. I cain’t smell no beer, but them kids has been relievin’ theirselves wheresom-ever it’s took their fancy.”

“It’s so sad. Marcella’s family had to get by on so little, but her mama always kept a neat house in a old-fashioned way. Now everything seems like either broke up or stole. C’mon. Marcella’s bedroom is up here at the back, looking out over the porch roof and backyard. Marcella kept a flower patch down there. She talked to the flowers like they were little people.”

“What are we aimin’ t’find?”

“I don’t know. But I’m thinking maybe that little gold cross she always wore on a chain around her neck, the one I saw in my—Oh…!”

“Whew! Nuthin in here, Patti Jo. Only scribblin’ on the walls and a ole rotten matteress which the kids probly been usin’ fer their party games.”

“Her room was always so pretty. I just loved coming here. It’s like something worse has happened to her than her dying. I feel like crying.”

“This room has had a lotta rough traffic. You ain’t gonna find any gold necklace here, angel.”

“No…but shine your light over there under the radiator. There’s something…”

“Lemme see…no, it ain’t nuthin but a cheap plastic hair clasp.”

“That’s it, Duke! We’ve found it! It was one of her favorite things. Mine too! It’s filthy now and all scratched up, but it used to be shiny, and if you got close you could see your face in it but warped in a funny kinda scary way. It was like another world and we made up stories about it. Right here in this room! Sitting here on the floor, next to her bed! I think she must of been wearing that barrette in the dream, too. And I think I even saw a face in it…but not mine. Let’s take it to her, Duke.”

“Whoa! Tonight? I ain’t keen on dead a night graveyard romps, sweet cuz. Cain’t we save it fer daylight?”