The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (113 page)

On her way to the corner drugstore for her second breakfast, the real one, Angela Bonali pauses for a moment in front of Linda’s Beauty Salon to study the hairstyles pictured in the window. Perhaps that’s what she needs to lift her spirits: a new hairdo. Something different. Life-changing. She remembers a phrase from a book she read (she wrote it down in her diary): “Loose tendrils of hair softened her face.” How do you get that in a hairdo? The trouble is, most heroines have blond hair, light and silky, or at worst flowing auburn hair—it’s the men who have stubborn black hair like hers. Women in books whose hair is said to be like shining glass or polished wood or the black of a starless night tend to be half-men or loose or wicked. Inside, she can see Signora Abruzzi sitting in the dark with her thin dry hair in curlers, her beaky nose in a magazine. She’d go in and turn the lights on for her, but that’s the old tattle who got Angela in trouble during her dark ages. Hard to imagine Widow Abruzzi ever eliciting moans of ecstasy, but then that’s true of anyone that old. It’s just awful how the body lets you down. You only have a moment, and when it’s gone… She shudders, crosses herself, and hurries on.

Further disappointments await her in Doc Foley’s. Stacy’s not there and the waffle griddle’s not working because the power is out. Angela loves their blueberry waffles with strawberry syrup and ice cream and crispy bacon on the side. She has to make do with just the syrup and ice cream. Because they are afraid the ice cream will melt with the power off they’re offering it at half price until it comes back on again, so she orders up a double portion. Stacy is probably over at the First National, but Angela doesn’t have the nerve yet to go back there. She feels terribly guilty about something, but she doesn’t know what, and it doesn’t seem fair.
She’s
not the one who has done anything wrong.

The shy, spindly soda fountain girl (what’s her name? Becky?) lingers at her table when she brings the ice cream. She has added some chocolate cookies for free and Angela thanks her for them. She’s not pretty, but at least she has no worries about weight. Of the magic numbers—36–24–36—she has only the middle one, straight up and down. Awkwardly, the girl asks about Tommy. Angela wonders what she knows and doesn’t know and whether or not she’s salting the wound. Well, surely she knows nothing; she’s not part of Angie’s crowd. She admires Angela the same way that Angela admires Stacy, and she’s just trying to be friendly. Angela smiles and says Tommy’s just great and she likes her bracelet.

“Oh, it’s only a cheap thing I won in a carnival…”

“It’s nice.” Angela feels generous and wise, a beautiful woman of the world, a model for sweet homely girls like Becky, if that’s her name. Angela does not seek worldly goods like money, power, fame, or even beauty. All she truly wants is to be regarded in some modest fashion as the Virgin is regarded. Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve! That’s her model. Blessed art Thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb. Which thought—yet another disappointment—depresses her again. She got through her last period with difficulty, not wanting anyone to see her in here buying tampons after all the fuss she’d made. She still hasn’t figured out yet how to catch up to her own history. The girl continues to stand there, so Angela, fishing about for something final to say, borrows a line from Stacy, which she has also written in her diary. “A friend once told me,” she says, “that love is not an island. I liked that.”

“Tommy was in earlier for sausage and scrambled eggs,” the girl says. “He had that funny thing on his nose. The power was still on then. He said it was his last breakfast special. He said he was leaving town forever.”

Angela smiles, hoping her makeup is hiding the flush. And that she won’t get sick. “He was teasing,” she says. “He had to run an errand today for his father. Because of, you know, what’s happening out at the mine hill. Tommy is becoming very important at the bank.” The stupid girl doesn’t say anything. She just stares at her.

Should Angela decide to risk a visit, she would find the bank closed, for Officer Wallace has called to say that Mr. Cavanaugh wants the doors locked until further notice, and they have done that, continuing to serve only those customers who are already in the bank. It’s like an extra day of holiday added to the long weekend, except that he asked them to stay until he got back. But why must they lock up so early? The bank often closes during power failures, but Mrs. Wetherwax, who is filling in for Angela and Stacy, took the phone call and she said the officer made it seem much more urgent than that. So many horrible things have happened of late, almost anything seems possible. And now the phones are dead, too. Just before they closed up, Mrs. Catter came in with Mrs. Smith, and she told them about it and they tried them, and sure enough, they are dead. Mr. Gus Baird, who almost always comes into the bank at this hour, does a little waltzing turn and sings: “All alone, by the telephone, waiting for a ring a ting a ling!” and they all laugh nervously. There’s an irate gentleman speaking with Mr. Minicozzi in Mr. Cavanaugh’s office about the foreclosure on his house (he can be heard plainly all the way out here on the bank floor, and his language isn’t nice), and when he leaves they’ll tell Mr. Minicozzi about the policeman’s call and ask him what it means. He always seems to know what’s happening. Mr. Beeker of the hardware store, just being let out of the locked front door, says he hopes it doesn’t mean the bank is running out of money, and the city hall janitor leaving at the same time—he has been in making a withdrawal, which leaves his account almost empty because the monthly payroll checks are late—says that as long as they have Mr. Beeker’s millions on deposit, there should be no problem, and they all laugh at that and feel a little less nervous afterwards.

Young Mrs. Piccolotti, who is in picking up rolls of coins for the family grocery (they have all had a turn cuddling her cute baby), says the trouble is probably the fault of that awful religious cult out at the edge of town; they’re completely crazy and they don’t belong here. That upsets Mrs. Catter and she says that many of them are friends of hers and have lived in this town just as long as Mrs. Piccolotti’s family, and they are decent Christian people. Religion is a private matter between a person and her God, and no one should interfere with it or make fun of it, the Constitution says so. They all agree and apologize if they’ve said something out of place. Mrs. Smith says she thinks she wants to go home. Mrs. Catter says in fact maybe they should start praying and repenting of their sins, because something very important might be happening, just like it says in the Bible, and Mrs. Piccolotti sighs and says, that’s just what I was talking about, and then she clams up because she’s the only Catholic in the bank except for Noemi and Mr. Minicozzi. It’s getting a bit warm without the air conditioner, and arguments don’t make it any cooler.

Mr. Baird changes the subject by saying he’d really love to see them all in bikinis on a beach in Brazil, that he might make a trip down there himself just for the amazing sight (he rolls his eyes in his comical way), and since they’re the only people in town with their hands on real money, they ought to consider one of his special end-of-summer holiday opportunities. Mrs. Wetherwax knows Mr. Baird as the rather tedious class clown, but to the younger girls he’s the bald guy with a bowtie who runs the local travel agency and is president of the Rotary Club. He wanders in and out of the bank most days, looking for people to tell his silly jokes to.

Then the phone rings and everybody jumps. It’s back on! No, it’s only Mrs. Wetherwax’s husband from the phone company, up a pole somewhere and tapping in. He tells them that the motorcyclists are back, what looks like three or four different gangs, and that they have blown up the power station and phone exchange and radio station. Armored trucks full of soldiers have arrived at the edge of town and there are more helicopters out by the county airport. They should all stay where they are and not go out on the streets. The motorcyclists might be converging upon the center.

In Mick’s Bar & Grill on Main Street, a block or so from the bank, the former Chamber of Commerce secretary has just ordered up another iced vodka when he suddenly remembers why he is supposed to stay off the gin. “Tag that with my social security number, Mick. I’ll be right back,” he says and staggers toward the door, singing “Joshua fit de battle ob Jericho! Jericho!” But the walls do not come tumbling down, and after slapping up against one or another without the door ever finding him in spite of the ever-helpful directions shouted out by his fellow klatchers (to him? to the door?), it is he who succumbs at last to the remorseless force of gravity.

Consequently, the intended object of his quest, young Reverend Joshua Jehoshaphat Jenkins, prospective pastor of the local First Presbyterian Church, arrives after overnight travels at the West Condon bus station unmet. There are numbers he could call, but being a self-reliant fellow, he deposits his bag with the stationmaster (“I see you are planning to settle in here, mister, and have brung your own bricks,” the stationmaster says sourly) and sets out upon the wet glittering streets on his own in search of his future place of employment, humming his favorite Sunday School tunes because he cannot seem to get them out of his head this morning. The downtown near the bus station is full of smiling people, young and old, emerging into the sunlight after the heavy rains. There are S
ALE
signs everywhere, church bells are ringing—it’s a happy day.

Joshua believes in the simultaneous veracity of various and even contradictory modes of discourse, and as he leaves the center and enters the residential neighborhoods, he chooses the descriptive one, which finds its truths in perceptive accuracy, not narrative coherence or moral judgment. Thus, while his observation that with the hot sun he is somewhat overdressed in his new three-piece corduroy suit remains within the descriptive mode, the reasons for his discomfiture (good first impressions!) do not. Not that the descriptive mode is without its own rationale. If everything in existence is God’s handiwork, as Joshua believes it is, then close descriptive attention to one’s surroundings is an approach to understanding God, and—reverentially—feeling His presence. In that respect, this sight of a bountiful garden of hollyhocks and sunflowers is equal to that of a dog squatting to relieve itself, and Joshua mentally records it all, finding in the activity, in spite of distant wailing sirens and a gathering awareness that he has forgotten to have breakfast, a profound peace and satisfaction. “He gave us eyes to see them, and lips that we might tell,” he sings to himself, “how great is God Almighty, Who has made all things well!” Bright and beautiful, yes, all things certainly are, must be. Although, slipping momentarily out of the descriptive mode into the utilitarian one, he could do frankly with a little snap, crackle and pop.

As he thinks that, astonishingly, those are in fact the sounds he hears, as if conjured from his hunger, but caused, he sees, by the distant approach down this sunny tree-lined street of a procession of army trucks. Ah. The mere descriptive mode will perhaps no longer suffice.

Out at the city hospital, the head nurse, on her own up on the second floor, has just hung up from alerting the doctors, nurses, and hospital emergency team to the power blackout—must get the generators turned on to keep the life support systems running and the operation theater functional—when a busty foreign woman and four armed men, one wearing a black stocking mask, another a silk black tie over a luminous flame-red T-shirt, storm up to her station, poke guns in her face, and demand to know what room a man named Suggs is in. She points down the hall, gives them a number, and faints. Seems to. One of them gives her a kick—which seems to satisfy him, or her—and they dash off, their boots clocking on the polished floor. Shots are fired, hundreds of them seems like, as she scrambles desperately, heart pounding, into the restroom at the nurses’ station and locks the door. When they come thumping back they notice her absence, shout death threats, not all in the mother tongue, and shoot up the place. Bullets come smashing through the restroom door, but she is as far away from it as possible, hunkered down behind the toilet. “Basta, Rupe!” she hears the woman say. “Don’ waste your beebees!”
“Two minutes!”
another calls out. When the boots and voices rattle away and it’s quiet again, Maudie peeks out through the bullet holes. They’re gone. Just the same, she keeps her head below counter height as she hurries in a squat past the ransacked medicine cabinet (more shots below, an explosion), and grabs up the phone. The line’s dead.

Mayor Castle snorts like a horse, roaring har-har sounds. He might be laughing. Georgie has been trying to weasel out of working as a mole for the mayor in Charlie Bonali’s Dagotown Devil Dogs, but needing a job and having already eaten an indigestible bite out of the small bill the mayor gave him, he has been proposing alternative, less life-threatening schemes for keeping tabs on Charlie. “Hell, I didn’t ask you to see me about that, Georgie,” the mayor booms. “You drove a cab up in the city for some years, ain’t that so? Well, I’m just a country boy and city traffic gives me the running shits. Besides, I lost my goddamn license. Something fucking wrong with a town when the mayor can lose his license just because he’s had a few, but that’s the kind of pisshole we live in, right? So right now I need somebody who can get me to the international airport fast and keep his fucking mouth shut. I can trust you, right?” Georgie grins and nods. Of course, he’s always grinning. But now he means it. He can even start working on that lump of pie sitting like a stone in his belly. The mayor lifts a briefcase from the floor, sets it on the desk between them, opens it. It’s full of money. More money than Georgie has ever seen. “There’s over a mill here, Georgie. I’m thinking Brazil. If we make it, we’ll split this pile 60-40. That’s several hunderd Gs for you, minus expenses. Decent taxi fare. We’ll take the official limo. You game?” Hell yes, he’s game. Besides, it occurs to him that Castle didn’t show him that money for nothing. It was to let him know that if he said no, he’d shoot him. “When are we leaving?” he asks. He’s grinning, and the mayor grins back. “Now.” That gives him brief pause. What is he leaving behind? Niente. “All right,” Georgie says, “but I need an advance. Three-thirty, that’s all. It’s to pay off a loan. The thirty is interest.” “Hey, Giorgio, you’re outa here forever. Forget it.” “Can’t. La mammina. It’s all she’s got. We can drop it off on the way out.”