Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  “I see Him, boys!” said Ely Collins, though his eyes were closed. “He’s beautiful! And He’s gonna take good care of us!” Lee Cravens asked, “Who, Ely?”

  “Why, the white bird! He’s spreadin’ His great wings over us, yes, I kin see it! and He’s smilin’ down!”

  The other five looked at each other, but nobody laughed. Strelchuk saw Lee Cravens looking up, and he looked up too. The slabs of black rock still hovered there, but they seemed not so heavy somehow.

  Collins’ breath started coming in short gasps. “Pray with me boys!” he pleaded.

  Juliano glanced up at Pontormo. “You think it’s okay?” he asked.

  “God’s a good God,” Cravens said. “It’s what Ely always said. He’s got room in His heart for everybody.”

  “God, be with Clara tonight, and Wanda, and all our wives and loved ones,” the preacher said.

  “He ought to take it easy,” Pontormo urged, but more gently than usual.

  “Give them courage and strength and …” Collins’ voice faded. Mike and Lee edged toward the old man, Mike reaching for his wrist to check his pulse, but just then Collins’ eyes opened and fixed on Mike. The old man smiled feebly, closed his eyes once more. “And, God, whatever happens, take good care of Mike. He done more than any man need t’ve done for anybody.” Strelchuk felt a wash of pride and embarrassment pass through him. “He’s a good …”

  “Now, you just better rest a little,” Strelchuk said awkwardly. Collins began to sing. “So I walk with him … and I talk …” Lee Cravens, eyes damp, picked it up:

  “… And I talk with him,

  And I tell him I am His own;

  And the joys we share—”

  “Boys!” gasped Collins. His breath was coming hard and his face was screwed up with pain. “Y’ got any more water?” Strelchuk gave him what he had, but giving up the last of it made him worry. He held it to Collins’ lips himself, careful not to waste any of it, since the old man’s hands were shaking badly. Collins licked his lips, then asked, “Where’s Giovanni?”

  “Who?” asked Cravens.

  “He means Bruno,” Strelchuk said. “I forgot all about him.”

  “He’s running around down here somewhere,” Mario Juliano explained to Cravens and Minicucci. “He was with us at first, but he busted off while we was cutting Collins free.”

  “Is that so?” said Cravens. “We never seen him.”

  “Didn’t come ou’ way,” Pooch confirmed.

  “Could’ve took a different course,” suggested Strelchuk.

  “God, be with Giovanni …” Collins whispered.

  “He’s a funny guy, that Bruno,” Juliano said.

  Ten more bodies are recovered, and hope wanes for the remainder. Nearly two hundred night shift miners have surfaced, turning in their tags, or gone back below to seek survivors, leaving about a hundred still in the mine. Ministers and priests keep vigil. First National Bank president Ted Cavanaugh continues his restless rounds, huddling here with a team of sweating, sooted miners, there listening intently to the wranglings of state mine inspectors and UMW officials; now turning a heartening phrase or two for Greater Deepwater Coal Company people, then offering hope and consolation to waiting or grieving mining families. The surfeit of volunteer rescuers gather in the Salvation Army canteen, await their turn, speak in whispers. Many of the merely curious have, since there’s really nothing much to see, gone home. Rescuers, coming up, report greater and greater violence the farther south they push.

  Dr. Wylie Norton, the veterinarian, arrived home from his house call to find his wife Eleanor in the brightly lit and silent house, poring through her logbooks. “Eleanor!” he said with alarm. “What is it? You’re pale!” He set his bag down, approached her tentatively.

  “Not a trace.” She spoke gravely, evenly. ‘“I have been all the way through, Wylie, and … there is not a word.”

  He sat down at the kitchen table across from her, adjusted the glasses on his narrow nose. “You mean about the mine?”

  “Yes,” she said. “There’s no denying it, Wylie. I was not told a thing. Not one single word suggests it.”

  “Well,” he said. His voice was hushed, his eyes, avoiding hers, fixed on the journals. He rubbed his hands, pressed together the fleshy tips of his supple tolerant thumbs. “Well.”

  “Why do you suppose Domiron did not … did not enlighten me?” Her voice, against her will, slipped a pitch higher. “Do you think he’s … he’s leaving me? Wylie! What have I done? Have I—?”

  “Oh, well, now,” cautioned Wylie, shifting in his chair.

  “Wylie, the mine, this town’s life, its essence, our town, Wylie, it blew up, it all blew up!” Her voice was leaping and breaking and pitching like a wild animal. Lost!

  “Yes, dear, but—”

  “Men are down there! Hundreds! Dying! Perhaps beneath our very feet!” Tears sprang. She bit down on her lip. “Wylie, we have come here, found a pattern, and in one split second it has all been destroyed and we did not receive so much as a hint of it!”

  “Eleanor,” said Wylie calmly, his eyes bending up to meet hers now. “I think maybe it’s a little too soon to jump to conclusions.” His damp blue eyes, holding hers, somehow took the edge off her panic. “I think, well, I don’t know, but there must be, there’s probably some purpose.”

  “Do you? Oh, do you, Wylie?” She grasped at this, and found it held her. “Do you think so?” She paused. He smiled faintly. “Wylie, let us hope so! I don’t know what I’d do if … if I … stopped …” She couldn’t pronounce it.

  “I feel pretty sure you’ll get a message soon,” her husband said. “You’ll receive a clarification soon enough.” He reached across the table and patted her slender hands.

  And, true enough! Wylie was right! They went into the living room together. She sat on the sofa, Wylie in the easy chair. Through all the houses and furnishings they had passed, through all their trials and uprootings, always there seemed to be this situation: she on the sofa, he in an easy chair in front of her and slightly to her left, somewhat shadowed. They did not turn on the television. Loosed by her return from panic, her mind floated free. Images from her long life bubbled up and disappeared. Ten thousand years must elapse, how many had she known? Quietly they sat, Wylie glancing over at her from time to time. Her mind drew lots and passed through ageless epochs. Distantly came the street sounds, an occasional shout, radios, a car racing. And then, suddenly, she started up out of the sofa, grasped her journal, locked herself in the bedroom, and emerged about fifteen minutes later with the message.

  Wylie was waiting for her in his armchair. He looked up at her questioningly. She nodded. She was exhausted, and her face felt damp with perspiration. He smiled, pushed the glasses up on his nose, and followed her into the kitchen, where she read the message to him:

  “Do you hear? Do you see? Do you think? Then, why do you doubt still? Elan has lost discipline and moves darkly among alien forms. Cling in recollection to the abiding universals! Seek my light without seeking, guileless and true, do not resist! Domiron hails Womwom for his superior insight: all praise to him who shall be called a Saint! Let it be guarded in memories that false portents are sprung from too hasty knowledges. Time is for all events, all passages are brought to light. Cosmic purposes of enormous importance are to be illumined soon. Further direct contact between worldsouls and higher aspected beings may be anticipated to transpire very near future. Elan is to confront with courage and inward serenity the history that is to come and to comprehend with grace the bitter obligement of suffering. Levity has intruded upon your meditations and vanity distorts your actions! Awake! Beneath you, the earth has leapt in protest. Proceed henceforth in resolute accord with the duty of your enlightenment! You will comprehend more intensely soon. Domiron bids you!”

  Wylie sat very heavily in his chair. He peered up at his wife over his spectacles. “Eleanor,” he began softly, “don’t you think perhaps …?” But then he stopped. He sta
red down at his square practical hands. He scratched some clay off one finger. After a moment, he looked up at her and smiled. “That‘s fine,” he said.

  Her Ma led them all in prayer. They sang “Beulah Land,” “The Old Rugged Cross,” “The Ninety and Nine” …

  —Sick and helpless, and ready to die;

  Sick and helpless, and ready to die!

  The words made them cry. The cinders bit into their knees, and the cold air stung their wet faces. Elaine Collins wept shamelessly and prayed amen to all her Ma said, prayed to save poor Eddie Wilson in the hospital, and to be tonight with Tessie Lawson, who had lost her belovéd Bill, and Mary Harlowe, who’d lost her Hank. But Elaine wasn’t afraid now. Her Ma was here, they had run out here together, and she could tell from the look on her Ma’s face that her Pa was okay, that he was alive and would come back to them….

  —Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!

  Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own.

  The air worsened. They all noticed it. They knew the answer, but had been putting it off. They had to build a better brattice. Strelchuk and Juliano led them. They scouted around and discovered a room inside what looked to be about seventh south that was relatively clean and not hard to brattice off. They lifted Collins in there and set about the task of barricading themselves in. They erected temporary stoppings to hold the gases back as long as possible, collected all the tools and canvas and boards they could find. Collins, the veteran, came to from time to time and instructed them in short choppy gasps how to short-circuit the return vent system, and also reminded them to leave a bucket or something outside with a sign on it. Minicucci volunteered his undershirt and they wrote on it with a ballpoint pen: COME AND GET US!, drew an arrow, and signed their names. It cheered them to pass the shirt around, yet there was the disconcerting quality of a tombstone about it. They tacked it up on a timber about a hundred yards away, chalked some large arrows on the roof and walls.

  They had few boards, had to make do with coal and slate, but Collins said that was the best thing anyhow. He hauled himself up against a wall, he seemed improved, and pulled out a scrap of paper he had in his pocket. He tried to write something on it with a stub of pencil, but his old freckled hand was shaking terribly.

  While Strelchuk was hunting for chunks of loose coal and whatever else he could find, his headlamp flashed over a body. “Jesus!” he squeaked. He was afraid to beam it that way again, but his head twitched back in a kind of reflex, and his lamp had to follow. He could hardly believe what he saw. “Bruno!” he cried. “Bruno, you sonuvabitch! How the hell did you get here?”

  Bruno didn’t answer. He was stretched out on a sort of ledge or groove in a recess. His eyes were big as saucers and his white lips were pulled back, showing his clenched teeth. Dried blood on his face. Twitching all over. He reminded Strelchuk of rabbits he had shot and wounded, just before he finished them off.

  “Hey, it’s okay, Bruno! It’s me, Strelchuk!”

  But nothing; the guy just stared at Strelchuk with those buggy eyes. He was trembling like he might have a fever or something.

  Strelchuk ran back and told the others, and they all went to have a look, but they couldn’t budge him either.

  “Maybe we ought to drag him in here,” said Pontormo. Jinx enunciated with a peculiar precision, a careful thickening of the consonants that betrayed a shift of language somewhere in his past.

  “Aw, let him be,” said Lee Cravens. His soft voice always took the edge off things. “He ain’t doin’ us no harm there, and he sure ain’t no kinder help.”

  Together, the five of them built two walls, a couple inches apart, and filled the space between with shovelloads of fine stuff. They pissed to make clay and plastered up the chinks in the inner wall. They worked a long time. And when they were all done and feeling suddenly very beat down, they noticed two things: one, that they were all out of water, and two, that old Ely Collins was dead.

  3

  Tiger Miller on a Saturday night. Out at a coalmine, no place to be. Physically exhausted, otherwise restless. He’d planned, knowing he’d need to unwind after the disaster pressure, to make the usual roadhouse circuit tonight, but now he didn’t know. Three days and only about half the bodies recovered. The official toll was now ninety-eight dead or trapped, almost surely dead. Yet hope, the forgivable madness, kept the friends and families out here, doggedly waiting; kept the tired frightened rescue workers digging away.

  Black bodies, burnt and gas bloated, had been his dismal fare since Thursday night. Had they moved him? He thought not, yet details were etched deeply. There was one without its head. Normal, except for the missing head and the body’s scorched nakedness—in one brief instant of flame, all the clothes, but for one shoe and a pant leg, had been burnt or blown off. There might have been some shirt fragments pasted to its shoulder, it was hard to tell. Peculiarly, part of the jaw was still intact. Body hair, hairs in the crotch, in the armpits, they were all carbonized, but stood rigid. He supposed they would crumble like cigarette ash if you touched them. Yet, he had discovered that the roots of the hair on one man’s head, one who still had his, were a soft blond. They removed the one remaining shoe from the headless one—the torso had seemed familiar to a woman who said she had dressed her husband’s right foot that afternoon with a corn plaster. The shoeless foot stuck out screaming nude on the end of the black leg, a blistery glowing pink vegetable thing attached to the charred leg stump like a mushroom. There was a corn plaster, too, but the woman didn’t think it was the same kind. Not exactly horrible finally. Ironic form of ultimate definition. Square corn plaster. Round corn plaster.

  Miller sat in the Salvation Army canteen, drinking chlorine-scented coffee to keep warm, eating gummy packaged doughnuts and bruised apples to pacify if he could—and he couldn’t—his nervous stomach. Lou Jones was due to relieve him at midnight, and was already overdue. Maybe he wouldn’t show up. Miller couldn’t blame him if he didn’t. Except during the midday deadline hours, he and Jones had maintained a 24-hour watch out here. They weren’t alone. Some hundred and fifty newsmen and photographers on hand, though the number had fallen off considerably as the rescue dragged out. He sometimes joined them in the bar at Wally Fisher’s hotel, or wherever else they chanced to congregate, feeling a vague nostalgia for the old days. After graduating from West Condon High years ago and making the usual university/military cycle, Miller had turned wire service correspondent, and probably would still be one had he not returned to West Condon a few years ago for his mother’s funeral and found the Chronicle up for sale. He’d always wanted his own newspaper, had a lot of untried ideas for one, and here it was, a good buy and everyone anxious to make it easy for him, a working knowledge of the town, even his folks’ old house to live in. Why not? And so here he was, years later, the prince become a frog, living grimly ever after, drowned in debt, sick to death of the disenchanted forest, and knowing no way out.

  Miller sipped the hot black coffee. Mere habit. He reached into his trench coat pocket, pulled out a pint flask, emptied what whiskey remained into the coffee, realizing as he did so he was being watched. One of the new widows, Mrs. Lee Cravens—still not technically a widow, actually, since Cravens’ body had not yet been recovered. She sat on a wooden folding chair in one corner of the tent. She smiled at him when he glanced over, but he pretended not to notice, let his gaze drift on past and out the door. Glanced at his watch impatiently, but paid no attention to what it said. Mrs. Cravens was a spindly nondescript young woman, but the tragedy had brought her bloom. Miller’s photographs chronicled the transformation from Thursday’s formless cotton print hung baggily, shabby loafers, and sparse hair limp over pale crabbed face to the present pert act: now, a nightly pressed indigo skirt swathed her rear in hooked silhouette, breasts arrowed up in a starched white blouse, color tipped faintly fingers, lips, and lashes, and her hair coiled instructed under a woolly cap. Ingeniously, to this caparison she had added her husband’s bunchy black and or
ange high school letter sweater. Three infants had whimpered this morning at the wind’s gnaw, augmenting that aura of mournful innocence that so attracted the foreign newsmen and photographers, but tonight she was without.

  Though he had never seen her before this disaster, Miller knew her: she was the disconcerting epilogue to all his high school eroticism here, his fatuous taste then for the dumb poppy that ran to seed with the first tentative wound. In spite of the intoxicating touch of their taut adolescent bodies and the fragrant heat of the sweaty prefatory scramble, the conquest was always a comedown—in the end, they laid for want of imagination. Freeing himself was painful, but seldom difficult: curiously, they had usually led him to the next one. They married for the reason they laid, and when the famous bane of progeny poisoned it for them, there was nothing left—a few empty infantile motions and instincts, absently clung to. They peopled West Condon, these pricked flowers of his, and getting used to them was his first hard work on coming back here. Often they had recognized him, even those like this one he had never had, and something persistent in them had seemed to freshen briefly. It was illusory, of course; not even they knew what it was. He had blundered a few times before he had learned to see past that false rebudding—maybe the will to blunder had been part of what had brought him back here—and each indiscretion had punctured his privacy with the nuisance of mild scandal. He had learned to look elsewhere, out in East Condon generally; they watched him here.

  Jones showed up, after all. Jones was his salvation: his dogged attending to the task made the silly game almost pleasurable. A slow copywriter, but a genius out in the field: always in the right place at the right time, and he always knew everything. A real find. But then, of course, Jones had found him. Blond stubble frosted the man’s pale jowls and his small creased eyes were marshy with blood vessels. The blond wiry hairs that fringed his upper face below the hat gave him a moronic look. “You look like an advertisement for the black death, buddy,” Miller told him. “Sure you don’t want to call it a night?”