The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

  Doc Lewis told him that Suggs had emerged temporarily from his coma, but the stroke was very severe. He asked if Ted knew of any surviving heirs. He didn’t. A complete loner, far as he knew. Pat is mostly paralyzed, he learned, though he can twitch his left hand. He can open and close his eyes, but his face is frozen and he has trouble swallowing. No speech, but all the involuntary behaviors are apparently functioning, and though it’s hard to be certain, deep down inside his insensible shell he still seems more or less alert. So far. As with earthquakes, there’s always the fear of aftershocks. Was he a heavy drinker? “He used to be pretty wild, but he got religion. Now I hear he’s a teetotaler.” Lewis nodded at that. “We’re starting rehab immediately, but the prognosis for recovery is not good.”

  Rehab is what Main Street needs, too, but same prognosis. It’s a depressing sight out there. “We’ll have to get rid of those boarded-up shops for the visitors on the Fourth, Maury.” The mayor says sourly that it sounds like a job for the city manager. Ted expects that and ignores it. “Open them up free for craft and art shows, antique sales, club displays, get the shops that remain to put welcoming signs up for the holidays.”

  “Dave Osborne’s already got started,” says Gus Baird, the travel agent and Rotary president. “I dropped in Saturday and found him braiding all the shoestrings in the store into a single long strand. Very colorful. Says he has a birthday coming up and he’s making decorations for the party. The strings are gone from all the shoes in the shop, including the ones in the window. Open boxes everywhere. Even the strings from the shoes he was wearing were gone.”

  The klatch finds that pretty funny. Ted has known for some time that Osborne is in trouble. At the hospital this morning, he was thinking that if Suggs died he might try to acquire the strip mine operations and move Dave out there to manage them, mining being more in his line of work. But he’s evidently too late. He makes a mental note to drop by. He asks Mick for lemon meringue pie, hoping it’s less than a week old, and that causes another explosion of hee-hawing laughter. He asks what’s the joke and is told the story of Robbins getting slapped in the face with a slice of that pie by Prissy Tindle. Elliott clambers down off his stool to do a rubber-kneed hip- and head-wagging imitation of her performance, one hand on the bar to keep his balance. When he lets go to swing his hand through, he loses it. Hits his head on the way down, but doesn’t seem to feel it. “Hoo hah!” he says from beneath the stools. “Crazy stupid cunt,” Burt grumbles amid all the laughter. He still doesn’t see what was funny about it, but everyone else does, including Elliott, still braying down on the floor. Beeker says he saw Prissy driving through town with a long-haired beardy guy who must have been Wes Edwards, but you’d never have recognized him. “Dancing with the dork,” croons Gus Baird, rolling his eyes. Ted says his probable replacement, bright young fellow named Jenkins, would be here right after the Fourth. “We can put him up in the manse, Gus, get him used to his new home. His first pastorate. May take him a while to adjust.” Elliott meanwhile has been hauling himself laboriously to his feet, grunting and farting, and he gets a round of applause when he succeeds, which he acknowledges by raising his arms and falling to his ass again and having to begin all over.

  When Tommy arrives home after work on Wednesday, feeling down, the old priest is just leaving. His mom’s latest holiness whim. Concetta and Rosalia are there, looking smug. He’s just had trouble at the pool with Concetta’s kid and his dickhead cronies. The town’s bummed-out failures. There used to be mines to send them into. Now the only occupation left is street bully. The girls like to pretend to be drowning so Tommy will come out and rescue them, hug them to safety with his arm around their bosoms. He has sometimes played along, good practice, until some of the guys started imitating them, falling into the pool and floundering about comically, crying out “Help! Help! Tommy!” in falsetto voices. He tells them he’s like God, it’s up to him who lives or dies, and they’re definitely not worth saving. Today, though, Moroni’s evil buddy, Grunge Grabowski, doing the falsetto routine, threw little Buddy Wetherwax into the deep end—and Buddy can’t swim. He dove in and dragged Buddy—snorting and choking and beating on him blindly with his little fists, protesting all the way that he didn’t need to be saved—over to the edge of the pool, where Babs, his big sister, squatted, waiting for him, her legs spread suggestively, a few curly auburn hairs peeking out at the swimsuit leg seams. So Tommy had to throw Moroni and his pals out. “Yeah? Let’s see you try, scumbag,” Moron snarled, cocking his fists, his buddies hovering close by. “Nah,” Tommy said. “Not my job. I’ll let the police do it. That’s what they’re paid for.” And he went over to the emergency phone on the pole next to the lifeguard chair. With that, Moroni and his gang left, but not before Moron threatened to be waiting for him when he left the pool. He could handle Moroni, but probably not all of them, so he went ahead and called Chief Romano to tell him there might be trouble, it would be good to have someone just hanging around at closing time, and old Monk Wallace turned up and slouched at the fence, eyeing the girls and spitting into a tobacco tin.

  “What’s up with the priest, Mom?” He and his father both like Concetta’s cooking and neither really care what religion his mother adopts next. There’s no more money to squander, she can fly off to Heaven by any route she chooses. Tolerant flexibility is one of the advantages of being a Presbyterian. The priest has left behind a faint musty old man smell. “Been showing him your photo albums?”

  “I was taking confession, Tommy, and having my catechism lesson. And, yes, I was showing him these pictures of my aunt’s family on my mother’s side who are Catholics by marriage. He looks grumpy but he’s really quite nice. They call him Father Bags. Isn’t that amusing?”

  Those old albums have come to mean a lot to his mother in her illness, though she has also been doing a lot of damage to them, tearing up photos, sometimes whole pages. As best he can tell it’s mostly his father who’s getting ripped out of her story. Tommy has never paid any attention to these albums, but Sally Elliott has recently been given a tour and claims to have seen one of him at about age five with his pants down in the park having a wee wee; she was probably lying, but if it’s there, he might figure out how to have some fun with it.

  Fun is mostly what he’s not having. Which is why he’s feeling low. Not how he imagined his glorious summer after graduation. Except for the sporty new wheels with nowhere to go, sex with Angela is about it, and that’s going stale. How do married people do it? Angela sets the agenda now and she doesn’t give him a lot of elbow room. Babs Weth-erwax lingered for a while after the pool closed this afternoon, having sent her little brother on ahead with a friend, and though it was a bit like robbing the cradle, he was tempted to invite her into the changing rooms, but Ramona Testatonda, Angela’s fat spy, was also lingering, watching everything, and he wasn’t yet ready to make the break. Not like that anyway. Not for a juvenile. But maybe it’s about time to close down shop. He’ll miss Angie’s great body and all the things she does with it, but the world is full of great bodies. Bodies are the main thing it produces, and even the ones that are not great can be good for a romp, and what they don’t know, they can be taught. Just thinking this way cheers him up. He’ll spring it on her tonight. After the sex, of course. Thinking it might be the last time will give it a certain urgency. Might be the best night so far. Around the world in eighty ways. He’s already hard thinking about it. First, though, he’s overdue at Her Loins for his weekly supper with Dad. He has been skipping church. Probably in for a lecture.

  Alone on a saddle stool at the steak house bar on a quiet Wednesday evening, communing with a double shot of Tennessee sour mash on the rocks. Waiting for Tommy, who is late. Coming from his lifeguard job at the pool. And probably from one pair of thighs or another. That unquiet time of life. Ted remembers it, not all that fondly. But at least he always knew who he was, where he was going, what he’d be doing. Tommy has a new plan for the rest of his life every week. Ted is con
cerned, sometimes irritated, tries to show neither, knowing how little it takes to set Tommy off. He needs him now. Close by. Needs him, loves him. Loves the others, too, misses them, but he feels there’s a special bond between him and Tommy, something that’s been there since the boy was born. If only he’d take life more seriously. Tommy loves his privileges but not their responsibility. Ted hates those who don’t give a damn and worries his son is drifting down that alley. Probably just a phase. Still a kid. One day, he’s certain, he’ll be handing the First National Bank over to him and be proud to do so. No doubt his own father had the same worries.

  Fatherhood was not something Ted thought about. It just happened. He has been grateful ever since. Three kids, all doing well. He doesn’t pray much, but he thanks God for that. He has tried to talk about it with Tommy, what fatherhood means to him, but it only embarrasses the boy. He prefers to talk baseball instead. Cars. Travel fantasies. Tommy jokes about the life here. Calls the people out at the club a bunch of illiterate yoyos. Well, they are, but he hasn’t earned the right to say so. He’s even made some smartass remarks lately about banks and religion, calling both of them social parasites and partners in the power game. What college can do to a kid’s core values. There’s a sociology prof up there Ted would like to throttle. Tommy hasn’t gone to church since he came home after graduation, either. Out most nights. Drinks a lot. Often testy, restless. Good with his mother, though. Patient in a way Ted finds difficult. Tommy is upset about what’s happening to her, of course. It’s a tough thing to deal with, part of what’s making him edgy. Making them both edgy. Though with Ted there’s anger, too. Instead of loving farewells at the end, there’s this betrayal, bitterness, the religious madness, the shattering of their early dreams. If he were the first to go, it wouldn’t be like this. His heart would be full of gratitude. Now Irene is tearing up her photo albums, their long life together apparently without value. The wedding album has disappeared altogether, the photos of him in his officer’s uniform. Stripping it all away before the Last Judgment. At which, she assures him, he won’t do well. Her end of the world is everybody else’s end of the world. People, when they know they’re going to die, can get like that. Then along comes a scheming woman like Bernice Filbert. Who’s hanging out now at Pat Suggs’ bedside. Someone else to get her hooks into.

  Though he and Tommy are both on their own the rest of the week, usually eating at different times even when Concetta cooks up a pot of spaghetti and meatballs for them, they have set Wednesdays aside for supper together here, away from the golfing crowd, in West Condon’s only claim to royalty. Sir Loin. Not that the food’s much better here than it is at the Hole. The grilled steaks are usually edible after you cut away the fat, but that’s about it. They come with iceberg lettuce blobbed with French dressing out of a bottle and potatoes that taste pre-baked a week before and reheated, all on the same oval platter. The dollop of sour cream and chives on the potatoes is probably the tastiest thing on offer. He always asks for extra. Well-stocked bar, though. Even a short wine list with the familiar classics. Beaujolais. Valpolicella. Liebfraumilch. Chianti in a basket. California Chablis. Mountain Red. And a pretty assortment of sweetly smiling waitresses in short skirts. Loins on view. The owner is a Rotarian, on the school board, a Methodist, has a sizable mortgage. He begged off from today’s meeting of the NOWC steering committee but promised to help foot the bill for the fireworks on the Fourth. Ted feels like he’s helping keep him afloat by eating here from time to time, as he and Irene used to do every other week or so. It’s not far from the charred shell of the old Dance Barn just down the road. Seeing Maudie a couple of days ago reminded him of it. The big bands that came through. It was different here then.

  Can’t recover those old times, but things can be better. Will be. With Pat Suggs out of the way, Ted is feeling on top of the game once more. In control of the clock. Not that he wishes the man ill—tough thing, a stroke, he hopes he doesn’t have to go through it himself—but before Suggs can get on his feet again, if ever, the cult will be out of here, some people will be locked away, the camp will be back in Presbyterian hands, the mine hill scramble will be ancient history, the town under Nick’s sure hand back on a stable footing and free of corruption. He’ll get something out of Kirkpatrick, a prison, National Guard shooting range, whatever, maybe state backing for a coal gasification project. There’ll be more jobs, and more jobs make for more small businesses. Main Street will look like Main Street again. When Irene goes, he can set up Concetta with an Italian place on Main Street. She’s a great cook, could feature fresh homemade pasta, give Mick some competition. One good restaurant breeds another. The street could get famous in this part of the state. Then, when the old hotel is back in operation, they could move her into it. She has kids; it could be a real old-fashioned family restaurant.

  Tommy has ideas, too. Until the city consortium got interested in the old hotel, Tommy thought they should make a mining museum out of it, try to draw tourists. Ted regrets his response. What’ll we have? he remembers snapping. Nothing but busloads of school children. The only new business we can hope for is a candy shop with postcards. And who gives a damn about mining history anyway except ex-miners, and they’re jobless and pissed off and would just smear the place with graffiti. That was harsh. Tommy was probably hurt, though he only shrugged and walked away. Well, Ted was depressed at the time, and he apologized, told Tommy what some of the problems were. Later, they got to talking about the idea again in a new setting: How about the old mine? A tour of the horrific disaster with rides for the kids. Upgrade the hoists for a safe but scary drop into the darkness. Get the skips and shuttle cars rolling again down there and fancied up a bit like carnival rides. Everybody wearing mining helmets. Which can be purchased in the gift shop. Wax museum dioramas of the horrors of the disaster itself that light up as you pass. Empty miners’ shoes and ownerless dinner buckets scattered about. Broken spectacles. False teeth. Sound effects: the explosion, the screams, the shouts. It could get famous enough to attract the whole nation. Tommy even suggested re-enacting the Brunist end-of-the-world scene on top of the hill, but Ted nixed that. Who knows what lunatics might turn up, thinking it was the real thing? Enough of that shit.

  He chuckles, feeling loose and mellow, talking like a college kid. He orders up another double. Shouldn’t, third already (where’s the boy?), but he’ll limit himself to a beer at supper. Also feeling, somewhat sweetly, melancholic. Maybe it’s the tinny music on the cheap restaurant speakers. All the old songs. Nameless studio bands, but the tunes are enough. Getting sentimental over you… Yes, he is. Silently, he hums along. Stacy is alone tonight at Mrs. Battles’ rooming house. He thinks about her there. All alone and feeling blue. She has admitted that she sometimes masturbates, longing for him when he isn’t there. He imagines her doing that and it excites him—things you say and do just thrill me through and through—and he has to straighten up for a moment and adjust things, pretending to be reaching for his bill clip, which he sets on the bar. He has often thought to visit her there, but that would be too daring. And Mrs. B is a notorious gossip. They’ll be together again tomorrow night. Soon enough. Keep it cool. What we do on Thursdays. Something Stacy says. Probably a line from some old movie. He hasn’t gone to one for years, though they sometimes watch them now on the motel TV. Stacy seems to have seen them all, even the old ones. Knows the plots, likes to imagine alternative ones. That’s what the movies are, she likes to say. Alternative plots. Not like life. Life has only one. That’s sad. But true. Like all these songs. All of you… Never paid much attention to them before. Now he can name them, sing along on some of the lines. I’d love to gain complete control of you, handle even the heart and soul of you… Getting educated. Never too late.

  Through the plate glass window with the restaurant name painted in reverse, he sees Tommy’s red convertible pull into the parking lot and swing up near the window, where he can leave the top down and watch it from the restaurant. Tommy waves at him as he
climbs out. A handsome boy—tall, lean, with the grace of a good athlete and a big infectious smile. Ted’s chest fills with pride, love, a tinge of grief: all this will pass. He wants to hug him when he enters, and he stands, arms akimbo, meaning to do so, but instead finds himself shaking his son’s hand and asking him why he’s late and why he couldn’t at least have changed out of his T-shirt and shorts for dinner. “Sorry, Dad. Stopped by to see Mom first and she wanted to chat. Why is she so mad at you?”

  It was a mistake to come back here. Angela’s idea. Another romantic Saturday night at the Blue Moon Motel with that happy couple, Monica and Pete Piccolotti, meant to stir the dying embers. More like pitching cold water on them. Fleet and Monica have been at each other since they arrived. The hayseed duo, who have gone over the top tonight with gross off-color songs about incest and bus-fucks and trailer park whores (who writes this back-alley crap? and why are all these jerks in here, including the hick in the cowboy hat who runs the local radio station, whooping it up and asking for more?), are now trying to make amends with “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” or maybe Angela requested it. Probably. “He’s cute,” Monica says, nodding toward the beanpole singer. “He looks sort of like Jimmy Stewart after he’s had the stomach flu for six weeks.” Which is meant to be funny, but Pete, downing his beer, snaps back, “Have I told you lately that I’d like to stuff that goddamn guitar up that swamp rat’s ass?” He belches loud enough for everyone in the Moon to hear and gets up to go to the bar for another round. Monica says, “That’s enough, Pete,” and he says, “Well, no, sweet mama, it is not.”