The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

  “Ah… Thorny, you’re there. How are you? Ted Cavanaugh here, voice out of the past.”

  “Hello, Teddy. I thought you might be calling.”

  “Thorny, Irene is dying.”

  “She told me she was not well. She is a lovely lady. I am very sorry to hear it.”

  “I mean, she’s not herself, goddamn it. You’ve helped her to do a very bad thing, Thorny.”

  “You mean give her money to a church? In my book, Teddy, that’s a beautiful and virtuous act.”

  “Yeah, well, all right, to her own church maybe. But these people are not her people.”

  “Evidently they are now. I believe she has found a peace with them she did not find with her people, as you call them. No doubt meaning your—”

  “Thorny, you have gone behind my back and taken advantage of a sick woman who is on a lot of drugs and mostly out of it, damn it. That was our money, not hers alone. I will hit you for your fees and all that you siphoned away, and goddamn it, I’ll strip you of your license as well.”

  “I have spoken at length with Irene. She is a relatively young woman and plainly in command of her faculties. The accounts, perhaps for evasive tax reasons, were solely in her name so the transfers were legal. And I did not charge a fee. I did it as an old friend.”

  “Oh hell. But, hey, Thorny, aren’t I an old friend, too?”

  “Teddy, you were never a friend. Take care. I suggest you open your heart to Jesus and prepare for His imminent return and the final judgment which will follow.”

  “Omigod…”

  “Well, that’s a start, I guess.”

  “I am mighty beholden to you, Bernice, for gittin’ summa that penny-silly for my boy to cure his nasty infliction. If Jewell’d found out, he’da got a awful whuppin’.”

  “Well, boys’ll be boys, Florrie, and they’s scads a wicked ladies ready to prey upon them. And upon older men, too, who should oughta know better, like that disgraceful reprobate we useta work for. You just know there’s a woman somewheres.

  “You mean, Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  “Nobody else. Every week, come Thursday night, he’s off and away, you seen that, and some other nights, too, when he gets a surge. He says he’s on business, but there’s only one sorta business gets done that time of day. You can smell it on him when he gets back worse than Ahasuerus’s harem. His tie hanging like something used up and strange hairs all over him. And that poor knotty thing a-dying away in there in plain sight, her angel wings already half sprouted—you can see them poking out her shoulder blades.”

  “Who y’reckon—?”

  “Not who, Florrie, but how many? Men like that, there’s never only one. If he does get contentious, I figure we got something to bemean him with, though I misdoubt he’s the sort who’d give a care.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t wanta cause no trouble, Bernice.”

  “Well, Florrie, sometimes like Judith, we just got to take history in our own hands.”

  “Oh no! You don’t reckon on cuttin’ off his head!”

  “Oh, Florrie, course not! Why do you always take things so literal? Judith was maybe a smidge harsh, but the point is when she and her people were being persecuted by this rich powerful enemy, she just didn’t set back and let it happen. She knew how to be a hero and save her people, and we have to try and do the same!”

  “We want to thank you for joining us at the Mount of Redemption last Sunday, Mr. Castle, even if your purposes was not entirely friendly. But, as I’m sure you witnessed, we are peaceful folk; it’s them others who’s acting badly. We don’t ask for your pertection, but we do ask for your understanding.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll do what we can, Mrs. Collins. Thank you for your call. (Hey, sweetheart, next time ask who’s calling before you hand me the fucking phone, awright?)” Click.

  “Hey, Nick. Wanted to catch you before you left for the afternoon.”

  “Beautiful day out there, Ted. You should be out on the course.”

  “I’d probably just ram my wedge up the butt of the first guy who told me it was a beautiful day. Right now, I have to head home to relieve the kid from the bank who’s saint-sitting. I got nowhere with Thornton, Nick. What have you learned?”

  “Well, the Brunist bank accounts are pretty fat but don’t show large recent deposits. They’ve probably opened up another account somewhere for your wife’s money. They’ve got phones out at the camp now. We can keep closer tabs.”

  “What? You mean tap them?”

  “I think I can arrange it. I understand they have also instituted armed guards. And the rumor is that Suggs has closed a deal on the mine.”

  “Damn. Can we do anything about slowing that down?”

  “Already in the works. One weakness Suggs has: he doesn’t trust lawyers. We can run circles around him.”

  “And that motorcycle gang?”

  “They’ve either left the area or are lying low. Not much we can do until they’re caught, and that’s something the county or the state will have to do.”

  “I’ve talked with the governor. Not very helpful. Says the sheriff seems to be doing his job. Maybe the possibility of stolen dynamite will wake him up.” Not much hope of that. The mine owners will have got to the gutless bullshitter with their own soporific story. Elections are won, he once said, not by what you do, but by what you don’t do. “Speaking of sleepwalkers, I ran into Jim Elliott on the street. Maybe he said something about a beautiful day, too. I’m afraid I really leaned into him. I may even have fired him.”

  “I know you’ve got a problem there.”

  “I was hoping to find some young blood for that Chamber of Commerce job, try to get this town moving again, but so far no candidates.”

  “The young woman here at the bank?”

  “Doesn’t want it.” He stands, relieving the constriction in his chest. “You once mentioned the notion of a city manager instead of what we have now. I’ve been thinking about that. Of course, we couldn’t dump the mayor without a lot of citywide restructuring. But I think the city council is fed up with him. There’s even talk of an investigation. We might start with a job that relieved him of a lot of his day-to-day operational duties—taking care of the finances, for example—and adding in the duties of the Chamber executive director under some new title. A kind of take-over, make-over role. Would you be interested in that, Nick?”

  “You mean as a job? I don’t know…”

  “Well, think about it. And what you’d need to make it worth your while. Meanwhile, I’d like to try to revive the old Common Sense Committee somehow. This was something we used back when the Brunist cult started up here. Involved the whole community. We need something like it again. Needs a new name, though. West Condoners for a Better Future, or something.”

  “Out of the Past and Into the Future.”

  “Something like that.”

  “A New Order for West Condon.”

  “Better.”

  “The acronym would be NOWC. Like Now West Condon.”

  “Hey, I like it. Maybe a New Outlook.”

  “Or New Opportunities.”

  “I think you have it, Nick. Let’s call it that. New Opportunities for West Condon. NOW West Condon. Brilliant. I was going to be out of town tomorrow, but it looks like I’ll be staying around. I’ll get started on it.”

  “Don’t call it that, Tommy. It sounds more like merchandise or something.”

  “What should I call it?”

  “It doesn’t have to have a name, Tommy. Just think about it.”

  “I do all the time. It drives me crazy. What do you call mine?”

  “I’ve never called it anything.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Of course I do. I love it. I love everything about you, Tommy.”

  “Sure, but what about my ass? Go ahead, I can take it. Tell me what you really think.”

  “Your mom might be listening in, Tommy!”

  “Oh yeah. How’s she doing?”

  “Well,
it’s very difficult for her, but your mom’s the sweetest person. I just love her. It’s so sad she’s so ill.”

  “She’s sounding pretty weird to me.”

  “Your dad says that’s because of the people who were taking care of her before. That’s why he asked me for a Catholic person and I found Concetta for him.”

  “I wish she could make it this weekend. I’m going to be missing a lot of good parties up here.”

  “Well, but you have me.”

  “Right. I know. You and your beautiful ass! I can hardly wait!”

  “Please, Tommy…”

  “In fact I’m looking at it right now. Gorgeous!”

  “In your imagination, you mean?”

  “No, in a photo. You know those Polaroids we took in the motel on that crazy end-of-the-world night?”

  “Yes, but we tore all those up and burned them.”

  “All except one.”

  “The one of us kissing.”

  “Yeah, well, I switched. I kept the one where I asked you to say cheese upside down.”

  “Oh no! Not the one on my hands and knees!”

  “Right! End of the world!”

  “Tommy Cavanaugh, you bring that photo with you when you come and we’ll tear it up while I watch!”

  “I don’t know if I can. My fraternity brothers asked for it for their meeting room, something to, you know, bow down to, and since I’m the chapter chaplain, how could I refuse?”

  “Oh Tommy. You’re such a tease. Do you love me?”

  “Yeah, sure. You know that.”

  “Come home, Tommy. Skip the party. Come quickly.”

  Somewhere a phone is ringing, beckoning her from afar. A voice like that of Jesus. She wishes to answer the call—for eternity may depend upon it—but she cannot. She has been rendered immobile, her body existing in a different dimension, she rising from it, but inertly afloat, unseen. There is a problem. What’s the matter? Something to do with her ability to transmit and receive. The lines are crossed, and there is nothing she can do. The Bible in her hands is like a phone book, its verses alphabetized and scattered among the white and yellow pages, hiding the destination she seeks. You know the father, someone says. She does, but even so she cannot find his name. How could she? Her eyes are closed. If, disembodied, she has eyes. She wants only to rise into the light. There must be an opening. If only she could reach the switchboard. But the switchboard has melted. Did she say goodbye? It doesn’t matter.

  “Resign? What do you mean ‘resign’? Damn it, you can’t do that, Maury.” Ted doesn’t like to be called at home. The ring can awaken Irene, doped up as she is, and set off a bad night. “I’m going to try to get you some help, but we can’t have any instability while we have all these problems. What’s the matter?”

  “Well, for starters, some asshole up in the city with a scary accent is trying to stop me from campaigning in Dagotown.”

  “You get his name?”

  “Are you kidding? I don’t even wanta know it.” When Castle speaks, the phone can be set down in one room and heard in the next. “And wait till you see our likely next cop. Know Charlie Bonali?”

  “I know his father. Should be all right.” He’s had too much to drink and dozed off in front of the television, this jarring intrusion further souring his sour mood. It’s a good thing the telephone separates them, else he might do serious damage to the stupid ass. Lem Filbert has been blunt about him. A crook. It’s something he should get on top of. Soon. Outside, a fat moon is rising. Another sort of call. “His sister works for me in the bank.”

  “Yeah? How’d she get that job, Ted?”

  “If you mean, did she have big-city sponsors, the answer is no. There was an opening, she was the most qualified applicant.”

  “Yeah, well, I got a feeling that’s gonna be her badass brother’s case, too.”

  “Hey, Tommy. Saw your mom’s wagon in the drive this morning and knew you were back. Is everything okay?”

  “I shouldn’t even be talking to you. I don’t want you ever in my car again. You are totally weird.”

  “I know it.” Sally grins, thinking about the surprise that butter-bags must have got when Riding the Hood’s ruby bullet landed in her lap, and writes: Another first in the history of armed warfare. “Those religious people out on the hill apparently think I’m some kind of diabolical fiend in league with Satan.”

  “They’re damn right.”

  “If they weren’t all so stuck in their beefcake fantasies, they’d say I was the Antichrist, but that’s too big a deal for a woman. You remember that wall-eyed kid out there with the pilot shades and cute hangdog look?”

  “Sure. What awful thing did you do to him?”

  “I bought him an ice cream sundae. He snuck away from the camp and met me over in Tucker City. At first he just wanted to warn me that I’d been demonized by the cult and that I should stay away from the camp for my own health, while at the same time trying to talk me into pulling on one of those nighties and becoming a member.”

  “What did you do to get so famous?”

  “After you left Sunday, I got those two boys to invite me up the hill. Research for Professor Cavanaugh, you know. I got lots of notes for you, but I never quite fit in, I don’t know why.” She pauses to let him make a wisecrack about that, thumbing through her notebook and coming on that cartoon of Sleeping Beauty with the beard and boner and inked-in phone receiver. When he passes (he’s probably scratching himself and yawning, pissed off by the call), she says, “And then a really creepy thing happened. While I was still talking to an old lady there at the tent, she winked at me and died. I freaked out and took off down the hill, and now they all think I sucked the life out of her.” She liked that old lady. She’d felt blessed by her.

  “And after that they still want you to join up? I thought it was that kind of outfit. Bunch of whacked-out vampires. You should fit right in.”

  “Poor Billy Don is pretty mixed up.” Well, that hangdog look: he fancies her, give the boy his due.

  “Billy Don?”

  “That’s the boy’s name. When I said no thanks, he switched and made it clear he wanted out himself. It was getting too intense, he said, too unreal. His buddy Darren, that’s the other one, apparently obsesses over the end of the world day and night, and it’s beginning to drive Billy Don nuts.” She understands that—it’s hard to live around crazy people, especially when they don’t know they’re crazy—yet she almost envies this fascination with cosmic mysteries and wishes it didn’t all seem so ordinary to her. She stubs out her cigarette. Maybe she should take up astronomy. She adds sunglasses to the bearded sleeper, and while Tommy makes what might be nose-blowing noises on the other end, writes: Beauty comes on a sleeping Prince Charming, lance in hand, and wonders whether or not she should wake him up. How will he behave when he has to give up his wet dreams? It might leave him with nothing to hold on to, so to speak. “He said he really wanted to get on that bus to Florida—you know, the one all those kids with guitars came on—but things are a mess at the camp after the bikers trashed it, and he couldn’t let his pal and Mrs. Collins down just when they needed him.” Beauty’s own life in the world has been something of a mixed bag, as they say out in the briars. Why drag poor Charming into it? Like her father, he’d just be completely baffled and get drunk all the time. “Also, I think Darren made a play for him and he wasn’t ready for that.”

  “Oh yeah?” Tommy perks up at that. “What’d he say?”

  “One night he woke up and Darren was touching him.”

  “Yeah, well, did he like it?”

  “I don’t think he did. I think it scared him a little.”

  “But what did he do?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “He liked it.”

  The telephone table is full of tiny black burn marks where her father—in one stupor or another, or maybe in a pique because of phoned abuse—missed the ashtray. He’s in deep trouble, she knows, with Tommy’s dad. He’s goi
ng to lose his job, and then what will they do? It’s not fair. He can’t help it if he’s about as clever as a broken pump handle and can only mimic the world in his friendly stupidity. He’s the sort of guy who uses a whiskey-flavored toothpaste, a Christmas gift from his friend Archie Wetherwax, and has a cigarette lighter that plays “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” which is his idea of high culture. Her mom is smarter—she’s been known to read a bestseller or two and professes to adore Chopin’s “Moonlight Sonata”—but she has been completely warped by this dumb town. “So how’s your mom doing, Tommy?”

  “About the same. If anything, when she’s lucid, she seems better. More feisty. I’m home because dad had to fire the home care nurse and needs a break. Bad fucking story.”

  “What happened?”

  “Can’t say exactly. But it seems the woman stripped her out. All Mom’s savings. The woman is one of those crazy cultists, it turns out, and I think they got it all. Dad’s shattered by it. But it’s also fired him up. He’s getting up some kind of community action committee again, and he says he’s going to throw the book at those freaks. That’s what he’s working on now down at the bank. Mom is teed off about all of this, of course, and not easy to get on with.”

  Growing up, Sally saw a lot of Tommy’s mother. Their mothers often took them to the park or pool together. Back when the brain was just warm mud and didn’t hold on to much, so it’s all pretty dim. But she always remembered his mother as a sweet, passive creature, very quiet and unassuming. Pretty, even when she got older. Sally’s mom always did all the talking. “It’s sad, Tommy. Getting old is sad. How about if I drop by for a Saturday morning toke? I can say hello to your mom and give you my notes from last Sunday.”