The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel Read Free Page A

for Mr. Cavanaugh at the bus station. “Come! Follow me!”

BOOK I
     
And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals ,
and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder ,
one of the four beasts saying, Come and see .
And I saw, and behold a white horse:
and he that sat on him had a bow;
and a crown was given unto him:
and he went forth conquering, and to conquer .
    —The Book of Revelation 6.1-2

I.1
     
    Easter Sunday 29 March
     
    It is the hour of dawn, but the skies are black and stormy, curtaining the sun’s emergence from the catacombs of night. A small party of climbers is struggling up the muddy slope of a steep man-made hogback ridge toward the pale wet light at the top, ghostly figures wrapped up against the elements when viewed from atop the ridge, black featureless silhouettes when seen from below against the dull nimbus, ribboned with rain, at the crest. Some lose their footing, drop to their hands and knees in the mud, swallowing down the curses that rise to their throats, mindful on this most holy morning that the stakes are high: nothing short of everlasting life. The source of which is death. That is the message of the day. For on this day, they say, exactly at dawn nearly two thousand years ago, one who died arose and walked again, promising a similar reward for all who would follow him, an easement against the anguish of death’s hard passage. “For as in Adam all men die, so in Christ all will be made to live.” Stirb und werde , as the Trinity Lutheran pastor intends to put it up here in the opening prayer he has been invited to deliver. Die and come to life—die and be —the meaning of this moment.
    This the incentive for the community’s long tradition of witnessing at a prayerful sunrise service the breaking of Easter’s dawn, though never before from such a place as this: a high artificial ridge of disturbed heaped-up earth at the South County Coal Company strip mine, the easternmost of a parallel set of such ridges. For nearly half a century, the Presbyterians have held their Easter sunrise service on Inspiration Point at their No-Name Wilderness church camp, gradually expanding it over the years into an ecumenical occasion as the town population and church memberships declined; but this year, the camp was mysteriously unavailable, rumored to have been sold to a developer, and this site was chosen in its stead by the West Condon Ministerial Association as the setting for the annual celebration of the Dawn Resurrection. The light at the top of the ridge is provided by battery-operated mine lamps mounted on stanchions, which do not so much light up the area as cast a pale otherworldly glow upon it, through which the rain falls as if upon a rubbly forsaken stage, one seeded with coal chips and bits of gravel, and barren except for weedy grasses that have taken root here and there. The giant claws that sculpted this strange terrain lurk in the pooled black waters below like skeletal creatures of the netherworld, mute witnesses to the sacred ceremonies at the top.
    The pastors of several different denominations are clustered under umbrellas up here, each with a few brave members of their congregations, though the minister of the First Presbyterian Church, traditional host of this event, has not yet arrived; they await him with what patience they can muster, as the remaining stragglers slowly make their way up the slippery slope to join them, feeling somewhat martyred by their own righteousness, many with hands and knees muddied and umbrellas broken. To fill the time, the Presbyterian choirmaster, huddled with his wife under a large striped umbrella with a handkerchief at his nose, is leading them all through some Easter morning hymns that no one can hear, the voices, even their own, drowned out in the lashing rain. “His Cheering Message from the Grave.” “A Brighter Dawn Is Breaking.”
    When Inspiration Point at the Presbyterian church camp became unavailable, alternative locations for the