Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  And now, since the mine disaster, people wondered why this big play to the spookier side of the Bruno rescue and all those peculiar little squibs about religious eccentrics? Miller was a skeptic, didn’t go to church, everybody knew that: so why this sudden interest in so-called miracles and visions? When Reverend Wesley Edwards first came to town to take over the Presbyterian pulpit he had, prodded by some of his elders, sought to reactivate Miller’s interest in the church. Miller’s skepticism hadn’t bothered him, he was a skeptic in most ways himself, and in fact he’d got a kick out of arguing with that romantic rationalist. But there was no getting him back to church. Miller was an atheist, and a fundamentalist to boot, who couldn’t see past the end of his own flesh-and-bone nose, to put it politely. And then Miller had started throwing some of his own remarks back at him, and Edwards had realized he’d compromised himself in the course of their talks. So one day he had just taken the pipe out of his mouth and said, “Justin, make your peace with God, surrender to His will.” Miller had snorted, and that had been the end of it.

  Then, on this otherwise calm sixth of February, a Friday when church news was customarily printed, there appeared, right on the front page in a small neat box, a paragraph which announced that the Evening Circle of the West Condon Church of the Nazarene would convene on Sunday evening at the home of Mr. Giovanni Bruno. “All interested townsfolk are invited to attend this very important meeting.” Edwards smarted. Nothing the Presbyterians had ever done had made the front page, not even his own election to the chairmanship of the Ministerial Association. What was Miller up to? Edwards sensed it: it’s me he’s after.

  Actually, Miller had toned the story, giving Mrs. Clara Collins much less than she’d asked for, a bare announcement where she’d wanted a screaming banner. He’d just come back from Mick’s and his daily late-afternoon ration of hamburger-ash and beer the day before, Thursday, having left his assistant Lou Jones behind, regaling the boys with horror stories from the history of coalmining. Jones had a knack. He’d turned a grisly tale of management goons working over a hapless unionizer into a goddamn song-and-dance act that had had the whole klatch laughing and crying at the same time. Miller didn’t know much about Jones, he’d just turned up one day announcing he’d decided to seek his fortune with the West Comedown Comical. Miller had laughed and taken him on. There had been some hint of a job as an all-night disk jockey that he’d just involuntarily surrendered (“Obscenity was the uncouth charge,” Jones had said), but on the other hand that might have been several jobs back. Jones was, in brief, a complacent drifter, gifted with an uncommonly facile feedback system, making his way any way he could, keeping a perverse eye out and telling good stories about what he saw. Miller was glad to have him, and though his humor sometimes had a way of biting too deep, he generally enjoyed the guy.

  Clara Collins had not only wanted more attention for her announcement, she’d wanted Miller to attend the Sunday night meeting. She’d jumped up when he entered, nearly knocking the chair over. Her purse had swung, sweeping a stack of copypaper to the floor. “I don’t mean to trouble ye, Mr. Miller, I only stopped by a minute—”

  “No trouble, Mrs. Collins. Good to see you.” He’d picked up the copypaper, tossed it carelessly on the desk. “Sit down.” He’d hung up his coat, dropped into his swivel chair, pulled out his pack of cigarettes, but, catching her look, had tossed them on his desk without lighting one. The beer, as usual, had made him drowsy.

  She’d sat awkwardly beside his desk, knobby knees apart, had glanced around nervously at a restless activity she was ignorant of. “We’re all meetin’ Sunday over to Mr. Bruno’s house,” she had said, boldly yet somehow whispering it. “We’d be honored ifn you could see fit to come.”

  “That’s very kind, Mrs. Collins.” He’d suppressed a yawn, reached again for the pack, stopped himself. “But I’m afraid I’m tied up. Is there some special reason—?”

  “Well, that’s jist it, Mr. Miller.” She’d straightened up, smoothing the plain print dress out over her broad thighs. He’d known of course what was coming. “Sunday’s the eighth of the month. Mebbe … mebbe it’s the end a the world!”

  “Oh yes. Your husband’s note.”

  So she’d explained again about that, had told him what had been happening at Evening Circle. He’d heard the pressman Carl Schwartz’ voice out front saying good night to Annie—like Lou, he called her Anus Poopa—and it had set him to thinking of Carl’s disaster story, the assault on Dinah Clemens. Miller could still picture vividly the room as it was the first time he went there. Aqua-blue with pink and white lily pads, the walls; bed an old iron antique, lumpy mattress, a single sheet stretched tautly on it. Dinah had a certain sense of order. There were pillows and blankets in the wardrobe, which she’d got out later. It had been Ox’s idea.

  “Willie Hall? That’s the fellow who used to be Oxford Clemens’ buddy at the mine, isn’t it?”

  She’d said it was, talked about Willie and his wife Mabel, Oxford’s late foster mother Marge Clark. Miller, watching Clara, had realized she had something in common with Dinah—not just the rawboned hillbilly part, but something attractive, too. Also had realized he was getting a hard-on. “It was Willie’s idea, Mr. Miller,” she’d said, “to meet at Mr. Bruno’s.”

  “Why this Sunday, Clara, and not some other month?” Why had he called her by her first name, why the tenderness? Horsey woman, well along in years, tough reddish hands, not his type at all, and yet there was this throb between his legs. Maybe it was just the beer.

  She’d told him why she was counting on February, but he could see she was troubled, not all that confident. He had listened to her voice, hearing Dinah Clemens. They’d gone the night they won the regionals. Five green guys ages fifteen to seventeen, Miller the youngest. Ox had taken them in the back door so they wouldn’t have to face any of the old guys in the bar who might recognize them. Ox had kept insisting that Tiger go with the one called Dinah. It was the one thing Ox had been set on, and Miller hadn’t seen the point in arguing. He’d assumed Ox Clemens knew better than anyone which one was best, and if it was all some kind of gag, well, hell, he didn’t have to go through with it. That in actuality it had been the very opposite, had been virtually an act of consecration, Miller hadn’t found out until they were climbing the back steps to her room, the girl telling him she’d heard so much about him from her brother. “And then I read about that there shepherd boy, Mr. Miller,” Clara had said, “and it all seemed to fit.”

  “And you talked with—?” He’d realized then that he had a cigarette between his lips. What the hell. He’d lit up.

  “I went by right after the meeting and asked, and his sister she said, sure, come along, we’ll be expectin’ you. Y’know, Mr. Miller, I think Mr. Bruno he already knows!”

  “It’s possible.” When he’d glanced at the large shadowy space between her knobby knees, he’d been repulsed by a sense of a-sexuality there, yet the erection had kept drumming away. What was it? Was it plain sincerity that was exciting him? Or only the provocation of his waterjugs? He’d undressed by the bed. Dinah had hung her few clothes in the old wardrobe that leaned up against one aqua-blue corner, had frocked her strong freckled shoulders with a pink robe. Miller had looked at Clara’s shoulders: yes, she almost certainly had freckles there. “Will Abner Baxter be there?”

  Clara had slumped a little, relaxing some of that raw aggressiveness, her taut belly briefly softening. “I dunno, Mr. Miller. I hope so.”

  “Is he a real minister, or—?”

  And she’d commenced to tell him about how one gets the call and gives testimony of it to the local church board, and he’d kept hearing Dinah telling a young kid who was asking all the wrong questions how a girl got to be a whore, and the difference between local preachers, district ministers, and elders. Her voice had had a husky soothing quality, all the harsh sounds of the words rounded off; it was rustic nasal from the mountains, all right, bluegrass in cadence and twang, but the wa
rmth and kindness and earnestness in it were all her own. She’d rubbed his chest and abdomen. “You’re a good boy with my brother. I’m much obliged.”

  “So Baxter still has to wait a year?”

  “That’s right.” Clara had seemed confused. Her hands had pressed nervously on her thighs. Of course, if you thought the world was ending, what sense did it make to talk about next year? “Well, all we kin do, Mr. Miller, is hope for the best.”

  Miller had swung around to his old Underwood, had run copypaper in, and had rapped out the one-paragraph box about her proposed meeting. “I can put that on the front page for you.”

  “But do ye think it’s … enough?” He’d felt a shrinking.

  “Any more than that, Mrs. Collins, and I’m afraid you’ll get a lot of people you don’t want.”

  That hadn’t entirely satisfied her, and he’d felt like, with Dinah, trying again, but she’d finally agreed it was the best. When she’d left, Miller had called Happy Bottom at the hospital and, holding on, had made a date. Off at nine. They’d have sandwiches somewhere, spend the night at his place.

  At home later, he’d just undressed to shower when the phone rang. It was Marcella, calling to tell him of the planned Sunday night meeting, and repeating Clara’s invitation to come. Her soft Catholic voice was something else: instead of cornfields, terraced gardens, secret and undiscovered. Yes, he thought, but no, the Nazarenes were too much for him, Baxter especially, that was a pose he could never fake. So he again refused but pretended great interest, and asked her to tell him afterwards all that happened.

  Hanging up, the phone cord snaked momentarily around what Happy called his gaff—already starting to dance at the sound of Marcella’s voice and the vision of Happy here, soon, the speared whale, white tail flipping—then slipped off, just a touch, a taunt, just enough to bring his entire attention to bear briefly on that obstreperous machine, filament and didymous anther, feel himself that instant only an extension of the mechanism, accouterments of defense and motion: sperm carrier. It wasn’t sex that whipped him, whipped them all, it was the spook behind sex, that thing that designed him, reshaped him, waked him, churned him, thought for him even: Jesus, when was the last time he’d committed a wholly rational act! He felt the engine drive his legs to the bath, hoist him over the edge, felt his balls sensitizing his fingertips as he turned on the water, his prick reach for the soap, heard the tubes boil and sigh as the hot water struck and soothed. Wesley Edwards had once chided him for his “romantic attachment to rationalism.” Rationalism indeed! Christ! Old Edwards would laugh his ass off if he knew!

  5

  “God,” said Tommy Cavanaugh, alias Kit Cavanaugh, alias the Kitten, known in the bleachers and back seats as “the boy with the paws that refresh,” youngest son of the town banker, starting forward on the basketball team and class officer, owner at sixteen of his own set of wheels, “wouldn’t hurt people.”

  Reverend Edwards argued that while God was surely just and benevolent, He was still capable of righteous punishment, and that sometimes when a man thought he was being hurt, he later found out it had been for his own benefit, as when a father chastises his son, for example, or when a coach makes you go to bed early at night. Everybody snickered at that, since it was already out in closed circles that Tommy had the very night before broken training rules to take Sally Elliott out parking at the iceplant. Bushwhackers had come on a scene of some disarray, the implications of which Tommy had not, though perhaps he should have, denied. “God is good,” said the minister in that talk-down tone of his that always bugged Tommy, “but sometimes He makes us to suffer experiences we might rather avoid. Remember the stories of Adam and Joseph, of Abraham and Noah. Remember that, as good as God is, this is a God Who could say to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is—’”

  “I can’t believe all those stories,” said Tommy flatly. He looked around at the class and saw that they were with him. Usually Mr. Robbins or Sally’s Dad taught their Sunday school group, and then they talked sports. Reverend Edwards was an aggravation. For Tommy, though God was a distant elusive substance difficult to envision, He was nonetheless guardian of what was good in human affairs, a kind of president, as it were. “Anyway, you said we weren’t supposed to take them literally.”

  “No, that’s right, but I didn’t mean you were to ignore them altogether either. Just reflect, fellows, how God made His own Son to suffer, and how He promises a terrible judgment upon those who turn away from Him.”

  Tommy knew nothing of terrible judgments. He knew that God was generally satisfied with a token pledge of allegiance once a week, a more or less solemn pause to consider the moral virtues, and that anything more than that would suppose a pride in God only imaginable in men. He supposed that some day, after a happy life on this earth, he would pass an even happier eternity in God’s country, a place spatially distant but not entirely unlike West Condon. “All I’m saying is that I think if God wants us to believe in Him, He makes us believe, and if He wants us to do something, He knows how to get the job done without a lot of faking around. A coach is just a man, you know, he may be a pretty smart man, but he’s just a man, he doesn’t know everything, but God is, well, God is God!”

  Reverend Edwards smiled, as the other guys giggled and wheezed. “That’s right, Tommy, but sometimes God may think that you learn a lesson better if you learn it by yourself. As the Bible says, ‘For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields—’”

  “But why?” demanded Tommy, getting exasperated. “Has God got control over things, or hasn’t He? You know, if He has to pass signals to me by blowing up a mine and killing a hundred guys almost and then not bother to tell me why, well, He isn’t even much of a coach!”

  “Well now, let’s not be impertinent,” scolded Reverend Edwards, no longer smiling, chewing on his lip like he always did when he got bothered. “As for all that seems evil in this world, you’re forgetting about the devil and—”

  “That’s the other team,” interrupted Tommy. “I don’t play for them.” Again the convulsions of snorting and snickering. Tommy himself giggled without being able to hold back.

  Reverend Edwards looked at his watch. “Well, fellows, I thing it’s about time …”

  “One thing’s been bothering me, though, Reverend,” said Tommy, “and that’s about sin.”

  “Well now,” said Reverend Edwards with a sly class-is-over smile, “have you been sinning, Tommy?”

  Everybody laughed. Tommy grinned, accepting the laughter as praise, having in fact set himself up for it. “What I mean is, if God knows everything, even before it happens, and has all that say-so over everything we do, well, if we sin, it must be because He wants us to sin, and if He wants us to sin, then how is it sin?” He paused, a little breathless. “If you see what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do, Tommy, though I’m afraid it gets us into the doctrine of predestination,” said Reverend Edwards gravely, again consulting his watch, “and I doubt we can cover all of that in the two or three minutes we have left. But let me say that, as Presbyterians, we do not believe that man is without free will. Perhaps, Tommy, God in His infinite wisdom has granted man the one freedom to turn away from Him, and that this is what is really meant by sin.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, why would He want to do that?” Tommy asked, and when the minister showed no signs of answering, added, “I don’t know, I can’t see giving up something you already got or playing spooky games like that with people who are too stupid to know what’s going on. If it’s all so indefinite and weird and shaky like you say, well, that’s a pretty scary idea.”

  “I think God is a pretty scary idea,” said Reverend Edwards softly, and he smiled. The bell rang and they all went outside, even though it was cold, eighth day of February, to horse around ten or fifteen minutes before they had to go to church.

  “Comin’ at you, Kit!”

  Tommy pivoted to receive the morning�
�s church program, wadded into a loose ball, as the guy who had pitched it made a hoop behind his back with his arms and faded like a football end. Tommy the Kitten mock-dribbled, wheeled, cupping the paper ball in the broad long-fingered hand that was his on-the-courts trademark, and hooked it gracefully through the receding hoop, bouncing it off the guy’s butt below.

  “Hole in one, Kit baby!”

  “Well, a hole in one is better than no hole at all,” Tommy gagged and they howled with laughter. Old standby of his Dad’s. His father was, in fact, at that very moment on the other side of the church lawn surrounded by the older guys. They were laughing and that meant his Dad had a new story. His Dad was a great storyteller, if not the greatest of all time, but he never told a sacrilegious joke, and he never told a story that made fun of West Condon. Those two things went together for his Dad: the community was sacred and religion was there to keep it so. For Tommy, both were pretty boring and restrictive, but he didn’t really mind either. If you really had to, there were ways of getting around both. The ice plant, for example, was outside the city limits. His Dad, he thought, had a few pretty old-fashioned ideas, but everybody’s Dad did. For one thing, he would always lecture Tommy that although property was in itself a kind of virtue, it carried with it an equal responsibility, and Tommy could never get it out of his mind that he would have the property, whether he was responsible or not.