Free The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel by Robert Coover

seas, tons of boiling mud buried millions of green trees in the Earth’s hot maw, mountains pitched upwards, vomiting floods of lava, earthquakes split mountaintops into jagged peaks, seas bubbled—ah! we live, my friends, in a quiet time: 8,500,000 furious years were needed to press out that one bed of coal out there, which we hack out, bring up, burn in minutes—we live, yes, in a quiet time, but at incredible speed…” Debra called his sermon frivolous, an insult to the dead and bereaved (she said that someone, who was either scandalized or laughing, told her they thought he’d said “in the Earth’s hot ma”), and went straight back out to the mine, arriving just as they were bringing up that fellow Bruno, the lone survivor. It’s a miracle, she said when she got back. She was clearly moved.
    If that is the Deepwater mine, then he’s not all that far from the old Presbyterian No-Name Wilderness Church Camp. You could see that same mine structure from Inspiration Point. The Presbyterian kids at camp called it the Gate of Hell and threatened to take the little ones over there and drop them down the bottomless pit. “You just keep falling forever and ever and you can’t see anything even with your eyes wide open!” And that hill must be the one where the Brunists gathered to await the end of the world. Another kind of blind forevering. How did he find his way here? To this hump, this vista, this convergence? He reconsiders his abandoned Presbyterian belief in predestination, for he seems to be doing what he has to do, even though he does not know he is doing it. That hill, he knows, is John P. Suggs’ next target. He should warn Cavanaugh, but he owes the man no favors. When Suggs approached him back in the early fall with a fair offer on the old abandoned camp, Wesley was interested. Church camps no longer had much appeal among his Presbyterians and it would require a major investment to make it operational again, even as a rental. Except for the occasional church picnic and the annual sunrise service, it had fallen into complete dilapidation. Debra, having a romantic attachment to the place, objected. She had loved it out there, had often spent days at the camp on her own, cleaning it up, making small repairs. Wesley had felt more comfortable in town, hated the flies and mosquitoes, the dark, the straw ticking and old dust, the privies and communal latrines and showers, the constant worry about snakes and ticks, the burrs, thorns and nettles, the lack of books, poor light, bad food; but the rough life excited Debra. She confessed once that she felt like she was naked all the time out there, or wanted to be. She still had fading hopes the camp could be restored in the way that she still had fading hopes they might have a child. She hated strip mining and said it was his moral duty to protect the camp from such a brutal sacrilege. Then suddenly she changed her mind and urged him to complete the sale. They could use the revenue for her halfway house for troubled teenagers, she said. Her pet project. Her abrupt turnaround was a surprise, but suited him. The sale was approved by the synod, and in early February the papers were signed, turning the land over to the coal baron. Whereupon Colin Meredith turned up with his strange beatific smile and goggle eyes and the conspiratorial whispering between them began.
    You were deceived.
    It was not something I wanted to think about. I deceived myself.
    So what’s going on out there now?
    I don’t know.
    You have some idea.
    I have some idea. A kind of evangelical commune.
    You know what I mean.
    She loves that camp. Always has. She’s a good camp mom.
    Especially for that boy.
    He’s an orphan. She’s the mother he never had.
    As he’s the child she never had.
    Well…
    You are filled with remorse about that. And you’re jealous. Nonsense.
    Those sexy Easter egg hunts, for example. With the boy around, no time for that. Made you angry.
    Not angry.