The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel Read Online Free

ludicrous. Sunrise services, Easter parades, chocolate bunnies and colored eggs: all vile impurities, idolatrous humanist perversions. The Great Conspiracy, as he calls it. The church’s pact with the Devil. He loathes them all.
    The Presbyterian minister appears on the slope at last, hatless, coatless, unshaven, floundering about in the mud. He is met partway up by the town banker, a Presbyterian stalwart, dressed in heavy boots and the sort of rain gear worn by hunters and fishermen, and helped up the rest of the way, the banker asking why he has only one shoe on. “What? What? Am I not free?” he shouts in reply. “Where am I? There is a darkness on the land!” The Lutheran pastor steps forward to lead them all in prayer, but he is interrupted by the Presbyterian minister who, upon reaching the top, plants his stockinged foot in a murky puddle and without prayer or preamble (“Oh no!” squeaks the choirmaster’s wife) raises his face to the downpour and, shaking his fist at it, cries out: “Blessed are those who are free from the infection of angels! What? What are you saying? I know, I know! A people laden with iniquity! Woe upon them all! But what about me? I am filled with bitterness! Get out, damn you! Out!” Whereupon, there is a sudden blinding flash and a ground-rocking blast of thunder and everyone flees, slipping and sliding urgently down the greasy slope.
    Last down is the town banker, guiding the confused and increasingly incoherent Presbyterian minister, the banker picking his steps out carefully with the help of one of the mine lamps lifted from its stanchion, avoiding the slick tracks laid down by those who had lost their footing and, with yelps of alarm, feet flying, had slid down on their backsides. The Presbyterian minister, soaked through, stumbling unsteadily, one shoe off, one shoe on, babbles on. “No! Not one jot or one tittle! Not an iota, not a dot!” The sky flares again with lightning— “Can you hear me? Who do they say that I am?” the man yells at the storm, and his knees buckle and down he goes, nearly pulling the banker down with him. “God damn you!” the banker mutters under his breath, fully aware of the peculiarly precise power of such an oath on such a day. But too much is awry for propriety. He hauls the minister to his feet and, slapping through the ankle-deep water at the bottom, bundles him into his Lincoln Continental and heads in a fury, kicking up mud, for the church manse.
    It is in such browbeating weather that West Condon prodigal son (there is an army of them) Georgie Lucci steps down off the bus from the city on his first return in nearly five years to the scene of his youthful indiscretions, somewhat nauseous from the long overnight ride, having sucked up half a case of cheap beer en route and fallen dead asleep only an hour before pulling in. He hardly knows where he is, only that he is getting fucking wet. At this unholy hour, the old corner bus station, where once he reigned as pinball king, is closed (he decorates its doorway with a pool of vomit, just for old times’ sake: Ciao, bambini, Georgie’s home!), as is the rest of the downtown, which he examines in a brief futile stagger, seeking shelter and a bite of breakfast, wearing his duffel bag as a ponderous rainhat. Not a soul on the streets, everything dark as midnight and shut up tight, some shops boarded up as though forever, the cold rain bombing down, the thunder and lightning giving him a headache. Fuck off, he groans, though to no one in particular, being no blasphemer, at least not by intent. None of his crimes have been, they’ve just happened. He tries the door up to the Legion Hall above the Woolworths, hoping some old pal might be sleeping it off on a couch up there, but that door too is closed to him, so he pisses on it, adding his bit to the flow flooding the earth. There are a few cars parked on the street in front of the broken penny parking meters, their junky antiquity bespeaking