The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (136 page)

Though partly stimulated by Sally’s book, Junior Baxter’s release, and a general shift of public opinion toward sympathy for the condemned evangelicals, the two last-minute clemency decisions followed directly upon the grotesque suicide of the third of the condemned, a Brunist preacher from a small church in eastern Tennessee. The man first went on a hunger strike and then secretly, before being force-fed by the prison authorities on the governor’s orders, swallowed the shards of a broken mirror smuggled in from the outside, the unspeakable horror of which, matched with the placidity of the dying victim, caused the prison chaplain and chief medical officer to resign or be asked to resign. The preacher’s farewell note, penned in perfect Palmer Method script, gave thanks to God, Jesus, and His Disciples and Apostles, to the Prophet Bruno, his martyred sister, and the Brunist “saints” Ely and Clara Collins and Ben Wosznik, and above all to his “spiritual guide, the great incorruptible holy man Reverend Abner Baxter.”

Unfortunately for Abner, such praise served as further condemnation, for the main charge against him from the outset has been his responsibility for instigating and directing that day’s most horrific events, the final episode in a long history of unrepentant criminal behavior. His followers, roaming vagabonds for the most part, chronically unemployed and disoriented by despair and poverty, were obliged to pledge blind obedience to him, following wherever he might lead in his uncompromising militancy. Even murder could become not a sinful breaking of the divine commandment but a sacred duty. Soldiers in God’s war to cleanse the earth of nonbelievers. That was the story about him, crafted by the prosecutor and the media. His three violent sons were believed to have been under his direct command—the motorcycle gang’s immaculately coordinated assault was said by the district attorney to have been Abner’s master plan, his march on the mine hill a sinister diversion to maximize the bikers’ damage, their attack on the town in turn serving Abner’s army on the hill by drawing away their adversaries, their final acts of murder and arson at the church camp aided and abetted by the oldest son standing guard for them (all right, he’s free, but new charges will be filed)—and his inflammatory rhetoric was likened to his early days as a communist agitator during the mine union strikes and internecine wars. He still cursed the haves on behalf of the have-nots, now under the cloak of religion, and prophesied the eventual redistribution of all property equally to all people, no matter by what means, as Jesus Christ, he heretically proclaimed, preached and intended. He was heard by several witnesses and on more than one occasion to call for a “day of wrath,” and the motorcyclists, led by his second son, wore “Wrath of God” on their leather jackets and tattooed on their bodies, as well as other cultic symbols. He was a major suspect in the death under suspicious circumstances five years earlier of young Marcella Bruno, sister of the founder of the cult (he has been heard to confess this crime), and was guilty of leading a destructive assault the next day on the St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church, though he jumped bail before he could be brought to trial. More recently, he was believed to have masterminded an armed invasion of the Brunist compound, and when jailed for his crimes, he attempted a forcible breakout, injuring the two police officers who eventually subdued him, for which reason he has until now been kept under close observation at the prison, mostly in solitary confinement. The legal occupants of the church camp were chased out by him and his followers, and those who lingered were ruthlessly exterminated. And yet, the only witness to any actual death caused directly by Baxter himself was his former closest ally Roy Coates, and Coates’ testimony, obtained in a plea bargain that spared him from a certain execution, was suspect. The specific victim in the Coates testimony was a member of the Knights of Columbus Defense Force and technically a deputized police officer, thereby adding cop-killing to Baxter’s crimes, though this Defense Force was an irregular and probably illegal group, and any such shooting, if it even happened, was arguably in self-defense. The brutal assassination of the county sheriff, however, was unquestionably the work of his sons and their gang, and this too was laid by the prosecuting district attorney, now the state governor, at Abner’s door.

Sally sees it all differently and says so on every possible occasion. While Simon files urgent appeal after urgent appeal, she uses what ever interview and talk show opportunities come her way as her bully pulpit, exposing the true realities behind the deceitful prosecutorial rhetoric, and continuing her assault on Christianity as the true culprit behind the crimes. She does her best to adhere to the cautionary guidelines laid down by Simon and her husband but never lets them get in the way of driving home a point with an imaginative flourish or two. Because she has become known for her reckless candor, interviewers and moderators often taunt her with questions meant to provoke another outrageous outburst. Both Simon and her husband have pointed out that letting fly with her unpopular opinions—she not only freely parades her atheism and her opposition to capital punishment and the conspiracy laws, she also vociferously champions all the liberal causes like civil rights, free speech, preservation of the wilderness, and prison reform, and rails against the inhumanity of corporate capitalism, the numbing banality of the networks, and the nation’s insane wars—has the negative effect of lessening the impact of her criticism of the Baxter case, reducing it in the public mind to eccentric leftwing soapbox oratory. Even her quoting of Adams and Jefferson is often taken as an insult to the nation and a calculated assault on its enduring values. She knows that, and knows too that these people are just using her as entertainment, turning her into a kind of sound-bite clown to fill the gaps between commercials, and she does her best to stay cool as her husband has instructed her, but restraint is not among her inborn virtues. In this she feels a certain empathy with Abner Baxter, whose thunderous grandstanding makes defending him such a nightmare.

In the end, the nightmare evolves into real-time horror. The preacher is accused of many crimes but few in particular, so the only defense, finally, is against the law itself. The Supreme Court refuses to hear the case, but Simon does get it before the state Supreme Judicial Court. He gives it his best and the judge is sympathetic and takes note of Simon’s eloquence, but tells him the court cannot change the law. “You should run for congress, Mr. Price,” he says. That they are facing failure sinks in slowly. “Don’t get your hopes too high,” Simon said when they began all this, “we lose more than we win,” but they both were certain they
would
win. They were right, and the right would ultimately triumph. When the last appeal is exhausted, they cannot accept it, but press on. And then—suddenly, it seems—the governor denies clemency, all options are closed, and the day of extinguishing Abner Baxter’s life is upon them.

Organizations opposing the death penalty have been in touch with her, and they let her know that they will be holding a vigil outside the prison where the execution is taking place and ask her to join them. She and her husband fly out in a private plane, and her husband hires a limousine to drive them to the prison, where they meet up with Simon and his wife. Sally likes Simon’s wife immediately. Passionate and smart. That ends that. But she and Simon will be friends still, and in this tribe of barbarians, that’s something. Because he is a Congressman, her husband is interviewed by the hovering media. He says: “I am opposed to capital punishment. Period.” She is proud of him. She hears him say so to the young newscaster and she hears him say so on the transistor radio she has pressed to her ear. The network she is listening to has a reporter inside the prison who will witness the execution and describe it for his listeners. Abner Baxter is said to be remarkably serene, having stoically accepted his fate, his blistering attacks on the faithlessness and corruption of those who put him here giving way to a quiet contemplative time. He is said to be reading the Bible. And writing.

Words. Their inscription. The pathos of that.

Night has fallen. They light candles as the hour draws near. They are not many. And they are not alone. A large parking lot has filled with cars and pickups, and tailgate parties are underway. Kegs of beer. Portable barbecue pits. A few musical instruments, blown or strummed randomly like an orchestra warming up. Someone is practicing a drumroll. They have rigged up a P.A. system to broadcast the reports from within and she can put away her transistor radio. They’re making a lot of noise. It’s like New Year’s Eve in Times Square. “It’s awful,” she says to her husband, “to think that we might be alone in the universe and that this is what we are.” Curious tourist-types gather, some joining the beer party, some coming over to their little group and accepting a candle, others approaching a larger mass of people, many of whom are now pulling on Brunist tunics. She has heard reports that they would be here. There are scores of them, and more arriving by the minute. What the occasional execution will do for a faltering movement. They also bring out candles. Abner releases a final statement, quoting Paul, which is read over the P.A. system by the reporter on the inside: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” The Brunists groan and kneel to pray. There is some keening, but they are largely subdued in their mourning. They are witnesses to a martyrdom. The making of a saint. They can all write a book.

She spies the blond curls. The Evangelist. No surprise there. It is no doubt he who has gathered the Brunists here tonight. The surprise is that Young Abner Baxter is with him. Well, a surprise, and not a surprise. When Junior got the news of his release, he didn’t thank them, just stared at them for a moment, then walked away, and she knew then that if the same circumstances as that day in the ditch should arise again, she’d once more be a target. Sally finds herself grinding her cigarette out underfoot and walking over to them. Is she feeling suicidal or what? The crowds around Darren stand and part. She hears hissing sounds. The Antichrist approacheth. Junior’s hair is growing back. His moustache. He wears a headband, also white, hiding his scars. Menacingly expressionless. As are most here. Darren wears an expression of sorrowful bliss. Like he’s high on something. A madman’s smile. Eerie by candlelight. “I’m sorry about your father, Abner,” she says. “We did everything we could.” No response, not even a blink. She feels like the only moving thing in a fixed tableau. “I’m sorry, too, about Billy Don,” she says, turning her gaze on Darren. He is wearing the dodecagonal medal Billy Don told her about, the one he stole from Clara Collins. It glitters in the night like something burning on his chest. His spectacles reflect the flickering candles like glowing half-dollars. She has not seen him up close or talked to him since that day on the mine hill, but Billy Don helped her to imagine him in his private ways, and she probably knows him better than he knows himself. Not probably; surely. “I miss him.”

“Billy Don is in Heaven, waiting for me with open arms,” Darren replies softly. She called his voice “quietly compelling” in her novel and it is, but his smug piety grates on her. “I do not think we will see you there.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she says. She knows what he has done, even if he no longer does. He should be sitting in Abner’s chair. But if he were, she’s well aware, she would be out here, just the same. “Your Heaven exists only in your head, creep, dies when you do. But, meanwhile, Billy Don and I will haunt your fantasy world, so watch out. Our games may be cruel. We will make enemies of your angels. Listen carefully to what they sing. You will know no peace.”

She feels suddenly exhausted. What has she said? She doesn’t know. The parking lot party is in full swing, raucous and obscene, cheering on the executioner. She turns to leave, unsure of what might happen next, her knees wobbly, sees her husband and Simon waiting for her a few yards away. Her husband takes her hand, Simon her arm. The countdown has begun and solemnly they walk away to the drummed beat of it.

The Kingdom has been decimated by the black magic of the Cretin Wizards with their cult of the Living Dead. The King hangs those he can catch, but they are everywhere, ineradicable as cockroaches. Their magic is merely a clumsy sleight-of-hand that can only delude the stupid, but, alas, there is no scarcity of stupidity in the world, nor in his Kingdom nor in his Castle, either. A lesson for the Goose Girl as well, launching forth on adventures of her own. She is no longer a Goose Girl, having bade farewell to her flock, a bittersweet occasion, for she had to choose one of them for her supper before setting out (I
T’S THE
S
ADNESS
is tattooed across her breasts), and she is no longer Beauty either, if she ever was, even in her own imagination. Inspired by the nightmares unleashed by the Cretin Wizards, she has taken up oneirophagy and will be known henceforth as Dream Eater, the tribal Dreamtime itself her chosen banquet hall. If indeed she is the chooser not the chosen. Is that enough for one life? No, but it beats bedding down in goose shit. Dream Eaters of the past have all been monsters. She will be a monster, too.
Is
one, born and bred. She flexes her talons, bares her steely teeth, and then, locking the gate and hauling up the drawbridge behind her, she’s out of there. Done’s done.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Excerpts from this book have been published in
Conjunctions, Harper’s Magazine, Western Humanities Review, Kenyon Review, Five Dials, FlashPoint
, and
Golden Handcuffs
. Thanks to Brown University and, in particular, to Vartan Gregorian, Brown president from 1989 to 1997, supporter of endangered dissident writers, innovative digital literary arts, and iconoclastic tenure-rejecting professor-types in need of focused writing time. Bernard Hoepffner, Larry McCaffery, Alexandra Kleeman, Stéphane Vanderhaeghe, Dzanc Senior Editor Guy Intoci, my literary agent Georges Borchardt, and my wife Pilar provided valuable critical readings. Scott Burns, Gordon Pruett, and my son Roderick helped with specific research needs. The book’s long decade of composition was sustained by daily late-afternoon coffees provided by innumerable neighborhood cafés in several cities, most notably by the Stella family and staff of the La Gaffe coffee and wine bar in Hampstead, London, where, in an isolated eyrie overlooking the city, much of the book’s writing was accomplished.