At one point during the Last Judgment, at a particularly tense and difficult moment, someone present released a thundering, monumental — if not indeed mystical — fart. It was not, however, as efficacious as its historic reputation might have led one to expect. The Divine Judge did not disappear in a cloud of crimson smoke, nor did His Judgments reflect increasing or diminishing wrath or benevolence, nor did the Devil lead a raucous dance around the Throne, nor did the Angels faint, nor did their wings quiver sensuously from suppressed giggling and set the fabled West Wind going, nor was the farter pardoned (he or she was not even recognized), nor, in the end, were the masses edified by this commentary, if it was that, on Divine Justice. In short, nothing happened at all. Nevertheless, one should not lose sight of the reality of it….
Old Wally Fisher came by when he got out of jail. Because of the bingo tent scandal and his general poor attitude, he’d been jugged that night with all the Brunists. When they’d spied him in their midst, still in streetclothes, they’d taken him for an envoy from the dark powers, and he would have gone the way of all poor flesh, meaning Miller, had not Dee Romano propitiously and for five bucks intervened. Fisher’s account of that night’s whole wild scene was hilarious, obscene but hilarious, from the no doubt apocryphal tale of the state centurion caught mixing it up in the women’s cell to the description of the comedy outside, seen through the cell windows, where a wobbly-kneed scar-faced Mort Whimple and a ring of unnerved troopers had stood, weapons at the ready, to keep at bay a rollicking mob of news and cameramen, East and West Condoners, visiondrunk one and all — and Miller, hearing it, felt better than he’d felt in weeks. They had jailed the poor guy, hadn’t set him free until he had agreed to turn over the entire proceeds of his First Annual Spring Carnival to the West Condon Chamber of Commerce for its industrial brochure, had brought a series of damage suits against him, and had started boycotting his coffeeshop, but the old bastard could still laugh about it, and Miller laughed with him. “Oh Jesus, Tiger, we gotta do something like that again soon!” he wheezed, dewlaps awag, old man’s lowslung paunch quaking. (Jesus, crucified, had a sudden glimpse of all his end would lead to, and he began to giggle. A Roman soldier, indignant at the blasphemy, thrust his spear into Jesus’ quaking side. Real blood came out, and the soldier paled. But Jesus went right on giggling: once you know you’re going to die, what, really, can they do to you?)
“Well, we could run Doris for mayor,” Miller suggested. The old man had a fit about that, but Miller, laughing, had a funny thought: what about running Abner Baxter?
By the time Ted Cavanaugh came to see Miller, the idea had got a pretty firm hold on him. A number of things had happened in the meantime. The article he’d set out to do on the Brunists in the first place, his study of small-group rebound in the face of public embarrassment and a description of the roots of religious motivation and commitment, his public excuse for involvement and his private antidote against the guilt he felt for the pain he’d caused, got rejected again, discouraging him from any more games-playing in that direction. On the other hand, he had received — and accepted — an offer to do a series of TV commentaries on the Brunists which, he saw, might give him a wimble into the whole world’s cranny. Moreover, he could move his arms again, plug in razors, use the telephone, pinch bottoms, and piss alone: in short, felt a man again.
Abner, he knew, was still in town, only Brunist leader not to run, and Miller learned he was holding clandestine Brunist meetings with a format all his own. His church had been wrecked, his home broken into and looted, black crosses swatched on his door, his kids beaten up, all credit canceled, and he’d got a lot of anonymous phonecalls and letters telling him he’d better move on or else. But he’d stayed. And, from what Miller could pick up, he also seemed to be at odds with the rest of the Brunists by now, or at least with Clara’s people, and partly, it seemed, because he still insisted louder than anybody that Bruno was a prophet and the Coming was at hand. A democratic mayoral election with the Millennium as an issue: it had a certain promise, and he could plot the documentary out from the beginning, wouldn’t have to move in after it was all over.
Wes Edwards came in with Cavanaugh, crinkled up his pastoral face, and asked, “Feeling better?” and that just about decided it for Miller.
The chat with Cavanaugh went poorly from the start. Ted was talking about West Condon’s troubles and “the best thing for all of us,” Miller was talking about Peter who, hearing the cock crow thrice, got to like the music of it, and Edwards was speaking nervously about friends he had up in the city who might find something for Justin more suitable for his talents. “Where things are livelier,” the preacher was saying, and Ted’s words were “shoulder to the wheel” and “a tough ball game,” while Miller, speaking of money changers and pigeon-sellers and getting nowhere, finally interrupted and said, “I’m not going.”
Cavanaugh stood. “Why not?”
Miller sighed. “Necessity is laid upon me,” he said.
“I’ve got a buyer for you,” Cavanaugh said, not getting it. He explained the details: amounted to enough to clear debts and buy gas to get out of town.
Miller listened. If he had any horse sense, he’d take it, but the recent deprivation of his senses had deprived him of that one as well. He knew, of course, that the plant was in bad shape, had been looted during his hospitalization, knew, too, that he was sick to death of deadlines and club meetings, knew that Happy wanted to get out of here and rightside-up again, but still he couldn’t stop himself. “Go to hell,” he said. He heard Happy outside his door, so he added as a sort of dedication: “Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”
She came in after they’d gone and he explained it to her. “Just until November,” he said. He had a lot of money just now from all those articles and the TV assignments to get the plant in shape, and for the present a weekly would do as well as a daily. Maybe he could even get ahold of the radio station somehow. He began to make plans.
Happy sighed. “Okay, but if we stay that long, we might as well stay on through January.”
“Why? You mean the Brunist—?”
“I’m talking about tigers, man,” she said, and patted her belly.
“Hey! You mean it? But when—?”
She shrugged, grinned. “Sons of Noah …”
“Aha! sign of the covenant!”
So they quickly signed a pact, exchanged gifts, broke a chamberpot, bought Ascension Day airline tickets for the Caribbean, and, nailed to the old tree of life and knowledge that night, she murmured in his ear one last Last Judgment…
The trial proceedings, caught up in the absurd intricacies of human ambiguity, slowed to a near standstill. Several totally unanticipated logistic problems had been run up against, and the Angels, faced at last with the actuality of this long-planned but unfortunately never practiced event, proved less resourceful and efficient than was no doubt expected. A leading American public relations agency was hired for thirty pieces of silver to provide the solution, and indeed certain gains — or at least apparent gains — were made. To be sure, the image of this sordid business was improved. A catchy slogan was introduced to help everybody remember to bring their certificates of baptism, and, to take up the slack caused by the cramming of the judicial calendar, tourism of Heaven and Hell, formerly the privilege of the sensitive few, was introduced and became a democratic commonplace. Still, in spite of the agency, or probably in the long run because of it, the whole affair bogged down entirely in bureaucracy and the impenetrable paradoxes of behavior, language, and jurisdiction, until at last one day it occurred to someone (most likely not a child, in spite of the overwhelming tradition) to ask why the whole thing was being perpetrated in the first place, and the Divine Judge found Himself hard put to provide an answer that satisfied even Himself, having to confess that He was less amused by it than He had thought He would be. It was therefore agreed to drop it, and the various Divine Substances took their leave. The only trouble was that by that time the enormity of the support organization and the goal hunger of the participants were such that the absented Divine Substances were never missed. The proceedings, indulging the everlasting lust for perpetuity and stage directions, dragged on happily through the centuries, the only consolation for those who might have guessed the true state of affairs being that which the risen Jesus centuries ago offered to his appalled disciples….