The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

  There is a moment of absolute silence as they all watch that floating head, and then Thelma Coates puts her jaws back together and says, “That man musta been that newspaper feller.”

  “Or else her brother,” says the beauty shop lady Linda Catter. “I mean, if all she felt was just only happiness, and not, you know…”

  Bernice Filbert says it was like a dream of wasting away with only the head remaining like a kind of blind repository for the soul, what you might call a rapturing by water instead of by air, and it may be the sort of experience the Prophet’s sister had when she died or else what she was afraid of. It’s always interesting what Bernice wears, and today it’s a one-piece dress that looks like it might have been made out of an old thin blanket, hanging loose in front for carrying things—the sort of thing women might wear in the field when they’re gathering—with a sash around the waist and a scarf over her head.

  “Losin’ his hands like that,” says Hazel Dunlevy, the palm reader, “that man in the water, whoever he is, it’s like as if he’s losin’ his future, and I reckon that’s how it turned out.”

  “But in dreams things are always the opposite from what they seem, aren’t they?” Lucy reminds them. “So, maybe he’s finding his future. Though it’s not like it’s a happy ending. Unless that’s an opposite too. Crying meaning like she’s really laughing, I mean.”

  “In some dreams that’s true,” says Mabel gravely, looking down upon them. “And in some it’s not.”

  The others nod solemnly at this, and Hazel says: “As fer a naked man bein’ Jesus, though, accordin’ to what Glenda says, Jesus often takes his clothes off in people’s dreams. Sometimes it’s more like a halo down there and that’s bad news, and sometimes it’s only ordinary, like as he’s one of us again, and that’s good news. If Jesus makes love to you in a dream, she says, that’s the best news of all.”

  “Well, I hope that never happens,” says Corinne Appleby flatly. She rarely speaks at all, but when she does it’s deadpan and straight out and always makes everybody smile.

  “I guess we need Glenda here to explain it,” Lucy says with a sigh. Glenda Oakes is watching the children, including Lucy’s own, taking them on a nature walk along the creek bed to the beehives and vegetable garden and back, though she’ll switch with Hazel and join them later when Mrs. Edwards arrives, because Glenda is the dream expert and Mrs. Edwards wants some help understanding her boy’s nightmares.

  “Actually, I told Glenda my dream of Marcella dreaming,” Patti Jo says, “and she said possibly it was an old dream Marcella dreamt when she was still alive and she was only remembering it. But it didn’t feel like remembering, it felt like it was happening right then for the first time. ‘Well, how do we know what remembering is like for the dead?’ Glenda said. ‘It might be like dreaming.’ She said that a head without a body could mean that Marcella no longer saw that person like she saw him before, so, if the man was Jesus or her brother, it could be saying she was losing her faith, and for that matter the naked man could have been both Jesus and her brother at the same time and others as well and not only men. Maybe her haunting days were ending and the man was just everybody, the head floating away signifying her own growing distance from this world, and she was crying about that. But Glenda said she couldn’t be sure. She’d never interpreted the dream of a dead person before.”

  Everybody has an opinion about this, mostly having to do with the difference between a live dreamer and a dead one, all of which pretty soon has Lucy completely beflummoxed. Ludie Belle interrupts all these airy speculations by saying that what she wants to know is what the niggles atwixt his legs looked like before they got melted, and Wanda Cravens asks: “Why? Y’reckon y’mighta reckanized them?” This is quite rude and embarrassing, but her friend Wanda isn’t really clever enough to be rude, it’s just something that popped out, and maybe others are thinking it as well, and it’s hard not to start giggling. But Ludie Belle only winks and says: “I was, you know, only wondrin’ bout it bein’ circumscissored or not, like as it might be a clue to who it was.”

  “Well, you know, Glenda asked me that same question, but she wasn’t thinking about whether or not it might be Jesus,” Patti Jo says. “She said that seeing a circumcision in a dream was a good luck omen, though it can also mean that the dreamer is worried about some forgotten detail that might embarrass them if it was found out, just as seeing one that has not been circumcised can mean that the dreamer is not thinking clearly and is refusing to see the truth. I said I didn’t know which it was, or rather Marcella didn’t seem to know—it wasn’t like she was paying any attention to that part. It was just there like sometimes a face is there in a dream but you can’t really see it.”

  All of which is finally too much for Thelma Coates, who gasps and says, “Oh my!” and flutters her hand in front of her face as though fanning it and says she has to get back or Roy will have a conniption. When she gets up to leave, Patti Jo also gets up and says she has to go back to the motel because Duke has a new song he wants to teach her for tonight. Thelma can give her a ride as far as the highway crossing and she can walk the rest. Everyone is sad about this; her story about Marcella Bruno’s dream has been really exciting and they want to keep talking about it.

  Instead they get back on about Abner Baxter and his family, who Thelma has told them are now living in an abandoned field next to that new campsite Mr. John P. Suggs is building, but without Franny who has left home, if you can call it home, to go live with Tessie Lawson, because she is going to marry Tessie’s brother-in-law, Steve, who is something of a rowdy and a drunk and hollow between the ears, so not much of a catch, but if you’re somebody as plain as Franny Baxter, what more can you hope for? This leaves Abner stuck with Sarah, who is so depressed she can’t do anything except eat all day, and Amanda, who is subnormal and flirtatious and apt to get in serious trouble in a snap if you take your eye off her. They are living mostly off collections at Abner’s preaching, which is not enough for one person, much less four, especially since most of his followers are even poorer than he. They discuss whether Abner’s troubles are mostly his own fault or not, he being the sort of person who cannot keep his mouth shut, and Hazel says that, well, most saints are like that, aren’t they, confessing Christ when they’re told not to? Bernice confirms that the word carved onto Young Abner’s forehead is “liar,” she having read it before she put the bandages on, and Mabel points out that that’s four letters, just like the four letters on Jesus’ cross. Bernice counts them on her fingers and says that, yes, it calculates, though it’s hard to credit the parallel.

  Lucy is able to tell everyone about investigations into the mine break-in, which Calvin is helping the sheriff with, and that, in spite of the rumors, no dynamite has been found. Mabel says she asked her cards, and they were not completely clear, but the Magician and Pope turned up, side by side and upside down next to the Chariot, and she took the Chariot to mean their climbing of the Mount of Redemption, hampered by slickness and trickery and false propaganda, so maybe it really was just all a deception to try to keep them off the mine hill like Mr. Suggs says. They all shake their heads in astonishment at the world’s wickedness and agree with that. Lucy is once again amazed at Mabel’s gifts, wishing she had just a smidgeon of them so that the future didn’t always keep surprising her so. The others remark on all the time Mr. Suggs is spending at the camp now with Ben and Clara gone, helping with the management and making sure people don’t bother them. Talk about your saints. Mr. Suggs’ halo is just waiting for him in Heaven, Linda says, and Lucy sees it there, hanging on a hook by the Pearly Gates like a ball cap. Lucy says that Calvin believes the motorcycle gang has split up since one of them got killed and they won’t be seen around here anymore, and that’s a blessed relief. But the damage has been done. It’s so sad. Bernice says that, afterwards, she had tried to give little Elaine an inside wash as well as clean all the blood off the outside, and the girl had coiled up and snarled and spat at her like a snake
or a trapped animal. Bernice, being a nurse, is the only one who even hints at what really happened, though everyone knows. And as if what happened to the girl wasn’t tragic enough, now the camp has been all month without Ben and Clara, who are desperately missed by everyone. Will they ever come back? No one knows and many fear the worst, for they left in great despair. They all agree it’s time for Mabel to consult her cards again and she gets them out and shuffles them in her strange sliding way, but before she can turn any of them over, Hazel Dunlevy, looking out the caravan window, says, “Here comes Sister Debra. I reckon I better go’n mind the kids fer Glenda.” As Mabel gathers up the cards, Lucy wonders what they might have said and whether or not this interruption means that a truth that might have been revealed will stop being true, changing the way the future will turn out, and thinking about so much terrible mysterious power sends a little shudder down her spine.

  “Blue often stands in for spirituality, hope, positive thoughts. It’s reckoned that a dreamer, dreaming of blue, specially a blue person, even a dead one, may be in the presence of his spiritual guide, and this would seem to be the case here, seeing who the dead man is and seeing as how he speaks wisdom even if it don’t make sense when the boy’s woked up. That he tries to stab the dead man with a table knife is not in itself a bad thing, because a table knife in a dream is a favorable sign pointing to succeeding at your life goals. That it ain’t the right sorta knife for stabbing somebody might mean he don’t really wanta kill the Prophet, but it’s more like a, you know, ritual thing, and a way of loosing his anger that his spiritual guide has been killt. That he sets the body on fire don’t look good on the surface, but fire is a symbol of change and growing up, specially for a boy, and may be trying to show a struggle for him to get control over something—to luminate it, like you might say. That the dead man keeps talking to him and keeps on being blue while he’s burning means the fire must be symbolic and not real. That the boy tries to eat the roasted dead man and does eat part of him can signify he’s just trying to take the Prophet and all his wisdom inside him, even if the part that he eats ain’t normally the place where wisdom can generally be found. Just the contrary, in fact—but contraries are common as sin in dreams. That he seen worms crawling outa the dead man’s flesh whilst he was eating him is a tad unsettling, but given the part he was eating, he mighta been seeing the intestines without recognizing them, and intestines are mostly a positive thing in dreams, indicating steadfastness and gumption, though sometimes they can remind you more like a maze you’re lost in. That he woked up screaming was probably just due to the worms, or what he thought was worms, but the rest was not troubling to him or he woulda woked up before. To be safe, though, you maybe oughta check to see he’s got worms or not, because sometimes dreams tell us practical things we should oughta pay attention to.”

  Alone in her cabin Debra has collapsed into tears as she has done so often over the recent weeks, though not in front of others if she can help it—certainly not in front of Colin, who is up at the office in the lodge, helping the two boys unpack boxes into the new filing cabinets. She is so grateful to Darren and Billy Don for taking Colin in as a friend and making him feel important, for he is all she has right now and when he is distressed and panicky she almost cannot bear it. She didn’t think it would be like this. She worries she won’t have the strength to see it through, not even knowing what “it” will be; though, whatever, it doesn’t look good. She has heard others speak of life as a burden, but she has so loved life, she has never really understood until now how it could be. It’s when you start being more afraid of living than of dying, and that awful Glenda is right, it does feel like an elephant sitting on her.

  She prays a lot more now—it’s the one time she can let go her feelings without embarrassment—tearfully confessing everything in front of everybody. Or, rather, having taken Ludie Belle’s advice to heart, almost everything; she would never say anything to upset Colin, and she has to be careful not to overdo it, for her emotions can trigger bad episodes and complicate his therapy. But she has often described in her public prayers the terror and inadequacy she felt in the face of what happened that morning in the wild patch on the other side of the creek, thanking God for giving her the strength to do what she never could have done on her own, for she is a weak person and a cowardly one who, without God’s help, would have simply run away or died of terror, rooted to the spot. She has always explained that she went there often for her dawn prayers because it was where she felt closest to God, which is true, but that she could never ever again return, for it has been irremediably contaminated with evil. Her account of events is probably a bit different from what really happened, but she can recall so little of it except as a kind of terrifying blur, it is probably as accurate as any other she could give. When she told Darren and Billy Don that the dark phantomlike figures who attacked the girl made her think of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the four angels of horror and devastation, they were very impressed and Darren asked her to tell it again for his tape recorder. He especially liked the part about there being more black angels in the offing, for he said that was his interpretation too, and he has since often spoken of her in prayer meetings as having prophetic powers, so she is now esteemed for that as well as for her bravery, though she does not feel at all brave and all she can see of the future is the terrible trouble she is in.

  Even though the place it all happened is now one of such utter horror to her, she nevertheless got up her courage one morning and snuck over by the back way from the vegetable garden to retrieve her abandoned underwear which if found would be hard to explain. Anyone who knows her would recognize them because she always wears panties with colorful flower patterns on them and she has hung them on the line often enough to dry and sometimes has gone around with little else on because they’re not much different than swimming suits nowadays. But they weren’t there. Those evil boys must have taken them. Or…someone did. She felt suddenly like she was being watched and she was too frightened for a moment even to move. The place where the body or whatever was buried seemed almost to start quivering. She thought she heard something behind her like the flutter of hawk or buzzard wings. Her heart raced and tears sprang to her eyes, for she recognized the sound as what she heard that morning behind her back as she scrunched down behind the tree here with her eyes pressed shut. But when she finally turned around there was no one there and everything was silent; only a few bees could be heard, a woodpecker high up in a tree. Afterwards, she thought of what she’d heard as the ghostly flutter of devils’ wings, even though until recently she didn’t really believe in devils, or ghosts either, and probably still doesn’t, and she certainly doesn’t know whether they have wings or not.

  She has never dreamt about that morning in the garden, or about devils either, unless she doesn’t remember. Most of her dreams are happy ones, and so after presenting to the women crammed into Mabel’s caravan one of Colin’s horrible dreams, she decided to balance it with one of her own, partly just to lighten her own heart. Colin’s nightmares, from which he usually awakes screaming and trembling violently and needing her solacing embrace, worry her, for she is not certain she understands the difference in Colin’s mind between his waking life and his dreams. Debra has never really believed in fortune-telling, horoscopes, and the like, but since she surrendered to the Brunist message, more things seem possible than before. After what happened that terrible morning, these women have, until today, been so protective and supportive and she has in turn wanted to accept their world and live in it to the best of her ability, to stay close to them. So, after Glenda was able to see Colin’s nightmare about stabbing and burning and then eating the blue corpse of Giovanni Bruno in such a positive and heartening way, she was eager to show them that, even if sometimes she seems nervous and grumpy, down deep she remains the loving hopeful person she has always been. Only it didn’t work out that way. Which is why she is crying now and can’t seem to stop.

  The dream she
told them was such a pretty one and made her so happy when she dreamt it. At first there was something about flying that had mostly faded from her memory by the time she woke up, as dreams do; she could only remember being on a bridge and realizing that if she pushed against the air she could rise up and fly—it was so exhilarating! She flew to a peaceful meadow with glittery green grass the color of the synthetic grass in Easter baskets and hundreds of beautiful orange daisies as bright as coins, unlike any she’d ever seen, and she knew she had arrived in Heaven. It really exists! she thought in her dream. It was like a place inside a place and oh so colorful! The grasshoppers were a shiny emerald green with eyes like tiny sparkling rubies and the butterflies were all colors of the rainbow, their wings turning luminous when they caught the sunlight, and she remarked to herself how she loved all of God’s creatures, even spiders and snakes and beetles. There were birds, too, and she named them all, though later she realized she had made up all the names, for these were birds with such rich plumage they would put a peacock to shame and were unlike any she had encountered before. She wanted to pluck some of the daisies and make the most beautiful daisy chain ever made, but she knew they would only wilt, so it was better to leave them just where they were, where they could be loved for their own sake. She knelt to kiss one of them. The earth they were growing in was a fertile black loam. How she wished she had some of that in her garden at the camp! Things would grow overnight in it! She dug her fingers into it, delighting in its soft moist texture. And then a funny thing happened. There was an elephant in the garden! It made her laugh to see it. She stood up and looked into its big sad eye and saw such wisdom there, so much knowledge, but how could it ever be revealed? Well, there was no reason it should be. It’s impossible to figure everything out in the world, that’s why one has to have faith. She felt that the elephant was her friend and, although it sort of disappeared from the dream, it would always be there in the way God is always there even if you can’t see Him, and she awoke full of peace and contentment.