The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (108 page)

So the chatter persists. Like the rain. Mabel’s neatly stacked deck of cards sits on the table, awaiting its final shuffle. But she is not ready. Nor are they. They all want to know, but they are afraid to know. Even “innocent” cards on such a day as this will have their darker side. They talk instead about the grieving Coates family (poor Thelma!), the horror of the burned car, that man and boy burned alive. Lucy says Calvin says Roy is ready to kill and he doesn’t seem to care who, and his friends are with him. Roy doesn’t blame Abner, but he doesn’t not blame him, either. There’s some unease between them, and that has Calvin worried. “I’m so scared,” Lucy says. Linda tells them that she always leaves the radio playing in her beauty shop and the other day she heard Patti Jo and Duke singing one of their songs. It seemed quite sinful to her, and as she had a client, she turned it off, but she understood from the introduction that they are quite famous now and Will Henry from the radio station is playing with them, which is why that station is off the air and their Brunist songs aren’t being played around here anymore. They all admit to missing Patti Jo and her conversations with the dead Marcella. Patti Jo was a good storyteller and she was so plain and direct about the things that were happening to her. “It’s like the bright has wore off out here without her,” Ludie Belle says.

Mabel picks up her tarot deck and studies it, sets it down again. They all watch her, trying not to. Ludie Belle says, “We all know it’s time t’go. We also know we cain’t go on accounta we cain’t forsake Clara. We’re like soldier boys in the trenches. Stay’n get killt. Go’n get killt.” “Well,” says Linda, “we live here. It’s not the same for us.” “And anyway,” says Glenda, “isn’t this it? The end, I mean? Isn’t it all just near over?” At this awkward moment, which seems like halfway between time and the end of time, Wanda Cravens begins to sing “Amazing Grace.” She has a thin nasal voice, but there is something painfully compelling about it. Lucy and Corinne join in. And then they all do.

IV.6

Tuesday 7 July

At breakfast time in the Brunist Wilderness Camp Main Hall this wet Tuesday morning, kitchen manager Ludie Belle Shawcross is faced with what she calls a “rumbustious tear-out,” as three or four hundred fractious people, most of them armed, try to get out of the rain and “scrooge in” to a hall that can stand only half that number. They finish off all the coffee, bread, and eggs in about five minutes and crowd into her cook-room, helping themselves to whatever they can grab and raising a clamorous ruckus. Ludie Belle takes off her apron and tells Corinne Appleby there’s nothing more for them to do here, they’d better get down to the trailer park to defend their goods—“Them ramptious peckerwoods has a appetite up and is apt to plunder round our own kitchens if we don’t take cautions!” She waves at Wayne and Cecil caught up in the packed crowds in the next room, and also Uriah, Hovis, and Billy Don when she manages to catch their eyes, and she and Corinne hurry out of there. Mabel and Willie aren’t up at the Main Hall yet, nor are Hunk or Wanda, and Glenda, she knows, is down below overwatching her regiment of little ones.

Mabel is not surprised to hear Ludie Belle hammering on her caravan door and telling her to pack up—“We ain’t stayin’ more, Mabel, it’s time to red up’n cut mud!”—for she herself has arrived, after her reading this morning of the cards, at the same conclusion and has already done the packing and secured the dishware and other loose objects for road travel. Knowing Mabel rises early, Glenda dropped over right after waking up from the two-camper complex she inherited with her widowhood to tell her about the dream she’d had in which she and Hazel Dunlevy were driving through mountains somewhere and Hazel was telling her what it felt like to be shot. The way she described it, it sounded more like what she was doing with Welford in the garden shed, but when Glenda said so in a mostly friendly way, Hazel, who was never famous for her sense of humor, took offense and said that Glenda didn’t understand anything and that was the whole problem. Glenda said that made her feel guilty, like maybe she really was responsible for everything that happened, and she tried to say how sorry she was, but it wasn’t Hazel anymore, it was Ben, just like they saw him Sunday with his eyes staring and his face all full of holes, and she wasn’t driving, he was, or maybe nobody was, and she knew they were going to crash. Glenda, who has lost the power of interpreting dreams, asked Mabel if she had any idea what it meant and Mabel said she thought it signified the end of something, but it wasn’t at all clear what was starting up in its place; it didn’t seem promising, but on the other hand, it might foretoken the Rapture, which is often associated with car wrecks. She asked if there were any children in the dream and Glenda said she thought they were in the back seat, but they were being very quiet, which was unusual and in fact a little frightening, and she wished Mabel hadn’t asked. When Glenda left, Mabel decided to read the cards for herself and when she turned up the Tower, signal of calamity, next to the Chariot and the three of spades, she knew it was time to go. She called Willie, who has rarely left his room since what happened to Ben, and told him to get the caravan ready for the road. Which, quoting from the perilous travels of the Apostle Paul (“What presecutions, sufferin’s and afflictions I have indured, like as what come smack onto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra!”), he has done, removing the blocks, checking the tires, filling the tank from their spare canisters, then retreating to his room once more. They had planned to stay at least until Ben’s burial, but they might all end up getting laid out beside him if they don’t go now. She does not want to leave Clara behind, but she feels that God—who has guided her in her reading of the cards, which she accepts always as divine instruction (unless there is interference)—will somehow provide.

The trailer park is crammed with other vehicles that block their way out, but Ludie Belle says those folks will all be driving off to the Mount soon to try to take it by force, those being Darren’s presumptions, and they can hightail it out of here then. The others turn up at Ludie Belle’s calling, and while they all wait in out of the rain around Ludie Belle’s kitchenette table, they talk about the routes they’ll take, where they’ll meet up if they get separated, and what to do about Clara. Wanda says Hunk won’t be going; he’s staying to tend his chickens, and she’s too tired out to get on the road again and is probably having another baby, so they could leave Clara and Elaine in their hands. But the others fear for Clara here without Ben, and she and her daughter should anyway be out east where Brunist Followers who love them can take proper care of them. Glenda says you don’t have to be a fortune teller to know that Clara needs a doctor, “she’s so badly drawed up.” Clara won’t want to go, so Ludie Belle proposes they tell her a white lie that the police want to question Elaine about a possible illegal medical procedure, namely that of that back-roomer disguised as an exorcist who Bernice dug up somewhere, because even though Clara chased the old quacksalver off before damage was done, she won’t want questions being asked. One look at Elaine and they may take her away, as this society cannot tolerate the irregular. Then Wayne can drive Ben’s old truck and pull Clara’s trailer while Ludie Belle hauls theirs. Billy Don offers to trade off shifts with her if she doesn’t mind slumming in his old rusted-out Chevy, though first he has an errand to run and he’ll join up later. The Applebys take careful note of routes and meeting-up places, because once they can leave the lot they’ll have to hurry round the back way by the creek to load up their hives, and that can take a time as bees can turn exceptious if you rush them.

Homesick Uriah agrees to go with them, but his buddy Hovis has not turned up in the trailer park—he’s a bit slow, probably he didn’t understand what was happening—so Uriah goes trudging back up through the sticky brown mud in his old rain slicker and soft-billed cap to search for him. Outside the Meeting Hall, he finds big television trucks and tents and camera equipment and cars parked everywhere, even on the grass and in the flower beds, and crowds grown so thick he cannot squeeze into the hall, but he has a key to the kitchen service entrance off the back parking lot and he lets himself in that way. The kitchen is jammed up with people, too (his heart sinks a little, thinking about the hard labor they’ve put into this building, and how little these folks respect it), but over their heads he can see young Darren in the main hall addressing the gathered faithful, spelling out the peculiar signs that have marked this time and place for momentous events soon to happen and indeed already happening, as Uriah has often heard him do, though never so sure of himself as now. He speaks of the voice in the ditch and the headless biker and the double sevens and the emptied graves and the sightings of Christ Jesus, and along with everything else, he tells them what that sick man who was supposed to be the Prophet Bruno said last Sunday before the terrible explosion in the camp: “Dark… Light.” He says it has many meanings but it was partly an astonishing prophecy of that blast itself just minutes before it happened, and this is because of what Uriah and Hovis told him later about dynamite used in the mines sometimes being called “black lightning.” Darren was amazed. “Why, that just fits!” he said, and Uriah and Hovis felt proud, but of what they weren’t sure. Darren, who has grown up some since his early days here as Clara’s office boy, is wearing his belted white tunic with a golden medallion on a chain around his neck and carrying a mine pick like a kind of staff, just like the Prophet in the picture, the very image of a young holy man, his bright blond curls standing out around his ears like a halo. The boy has a quiet, spellbinding way of speaking, giving the impression he knows what he’s talking about, even if there is some question about that among most of Clara’s people who have known him longer. But these are not Clara’s people. These are the Followers who have been traipsing around in the fields after Abner Baxter, a whole army of them, brazen and hungry, wet, raggedy, and ready for whatever, including the Rapture and the violent upheavals of the Apocalypse, if that’s what’s next. Uriah supposes that if so many of his people are here, Abner cannot be far behind, and, sure enough, there’s a parting of the masses at the main door like the folding back of the Red Sea, and to loud applause and cheers and
“Bru-no! Bru-no!”
chants, in strides the Brunist bishop of West Condon with all the fiery purpose of a short red-headed Moses, thick jaw a-jut, a few cameramen and photographers sliding in in his wake as though he were towing them, and in his booming voice he calls everyone to prayer. You could hear him all the way over on the Mount of Redemption. That man can squench thunder, as they say where Uriah hails from. Darren sometimes talks over Uriah’s head in his college-boy way, but he can certainly follow Abner, who is more like those hellfire preachers and union organizers Uriah and Hovis had known and followed all their lives back home. Where now, though the weather’s no better there than it is here, Uriah longs to be. If he’s going to have to slop around in mud while waiting to get raptured, he’d rather it was West Virginia mud. He tries to remember why he came up here. He pulls out his fob watch to study it, but as usual forgets what time it is as soon as he pockets it again.

“Are ye ready for the Glorious Appearing? Are ye ready for Christ to return?”
the Reverend Abner Baxter asks with his freckled fist in the air, his flushed face wet from the rain, and he is met with an affirmative roar. Abner’s bitter years in the wilderness have come to an end. There were times when he would speak and no one would listen, times when his embraces would be met with blows. Times when, as Paul said, “no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.” He has been hounded cruelly from town to town, has been shot at and pelted with stones and even with cow dung, attacked by night riders, betrayed, cursed, imprisoned, beaten, and deserted by family and fellow believers alike. About the only hardship he has not shared with the Apostle is shipwreck. On the other hand, Paul had no sons to lose or turn against him. In his intransigent faithfulness to the awesome and punishing Word of God, Abner has suffered the abomination of desolation as spoken of by Daniel the prophet and has been brought close to utter despair, but now, tempered by adversity, his faith annealed, it is he who will lead the holy remnant to glory. It is a word that fills his throat:
Glory! “There must be a Day of Wrath,”
he declares in a voice trembling with urgency,
“when sun and moon and stars is darkened, and the Heavens is rolled together and the earth is shook!”
As he looks back on his years of tribulation, he understands the tender generosity of the Lord’s wrath, the ferocity of His love. He can, like the Apostle Paul, now speak of these things with an eloquence born of terrible suffering and unyielding faith, and he does so here in the crowded Meeting Hall.
“Bru-no! Bru-no! Bru-no!”
the Followers chant. He recounts for them the horrors (another word that fills his throat) of the Final Days, many of which they have already suffered, and the blessings of the Heavenly kingdom that awaits them on the other side of their ordeals, which is not unlike the workers’ paradise he once imagined before his conversion to the true faith.
“All things are cleansed with blood,”
he cries, “and apart from the
shedding
of blood
there is no remission!
These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a
flame of fire
, and his feet are like
fine brass!”
The Followers are shouting his words back to him, calling for divine judgment, and some commence to speak in tongues. The earthly kingdom of Christ is imminent; the assembled believers can feel it, they have only to go out and pledge their eternities to it.

“He will come in
power
and
great glory
and I tell ye, the time is
now! The Millennial Kingdom as announced by the Prophet Bruno is at hand!”
thunders Reverend Baxter and Dot Blaurock bellows back: “Amen, brother! I
seen
Him! He’s walking around out there right now!
Hallelujah!”
Her kids all shout out high-pitched amens and hallelujahs, too, all except little Johnny who passes a bit of wind in his sousaphone way, young zealot that he is, and then begins to howl, his howls drowned out, however, by echoing hosannas and amens at full throat from all those around her, God bless them. Abner raises his fist and shakes it. “But the blessed Mount of Redemption, which is rightfully and needfully
ours
, has been sealed
off
from us!
The Antichrist is usurping God’s rightful place of worship and is desecrating the Temple!”
There are shouts of outrage and dismay, and Dot joins in, even though the temple that is being desecrated is really only the idea of one. She has joined up with a lot of these revelational groups over the years and this is the best it has ever got. Young Darren now coolly lays out the plan of action: They’ll leave here and form up at the base of the hill, where the mine road turns off from the main road. “Give others a ride if you can! But we’ll wait for those coming on foot!” Then, with the Brunist Defenders serving as marshals (Dot has volunteered herself as a Defender, but they have not yet taken up her offer; well, they’re busy, she’ll just be one anyway), they will all march peacefully up to the tabernacle as outlined on the hillside, where they will hold a church service in memory of their fallen friend and saintly Brunist Founder, Ben Wosznik, so horribly murdered while heroically defending their Wilderness Camp home. And, yes, they can take their guns with them—this is America, it’s their right. “We won’t use them except in extreme self-defense, but we won’t be intimidated either.” Darren says they have spoken with the new sheriff and he will do what he can to ease their way, but if there is trouble they should follow the leadership of Reverend Baxter. Who—fist raised again, shouting out
“Glory!”
—bulls forward. With that, the crowd turns and follows him noisily out the front door.
“Glory!”
they shout. Maybe the television crews weren’t expecting this, for some of them fail to get out of the way in time and are fairly trampled by the sudden brass-footed rush to the exit. Dot herself feels chunks of camera gear crunching under her boots as she clambers out of the hall, Johnny in her arms, Matthew, Mark and Luke following at her heels. “Christ Jesus, here we come!” she shouts, but then she has to pause for Markie to take a wee-wee in a rain puddle. Even with all eternity to go jump into, the boy can’t wait.