Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  Mrs. Norton drew a quick sharp breath. Clara stood, felt Betty and Elaine fearful at her side. “When?” asked Mrs. Norton.

  There was a long pause. Giovanni’s eyes moved among them, returned to stare upon Mrs. Norton. “Sunday …” he said, “… week.” He dropped his hand.

  Clara started to speak up, to ask what this was about, but Mrs. Norton held up her hand for silence. “The coming of light?” she repeated, and Giovanni nodded. “Sunday week?” Again, he nodded. “Giovanni Bruno, hear me! Is there anything … is there something more?” A pause. And then he shook his head no, the first time Clara had seen him do so. The movement made his hair splay out on the pillow, and Clara was astonished to see how really long it had grown. Mrs. Norton relaxed, but when she turned from the bed to face them, Clara saw tension and worry on her face still.

  “What is it?” asked Clara, though she had already begun to grasp it. Though frightened, she was ready: she had been tested, she realized, and found true.

  “I don’t know exactly, Mrs. Collins.” Then: “May I”—she fingered a small gold medallion that hung around her neck on a chain—“may I explain something to you?”

  Clara nodded. She sat, in awe, but feeling Ely close at her side once more.

  7

  Vince Bonali stopped up at the Eagles one night for a whiskey, keeping nothing at home but beer these lean days. From the minute he walked into the place, he was reminded of old Angelo Moroni, and from then on he couldn’t get his mind off him. They had gone to school together, hunted women together, broken into mining and drunk together, were best men at each other’s weddings, had worked their ways up simultaneously to be facebosses out at Number Nine. And they had always teamed up to play pitch and pinochle. Ange with his hat tipped down to his nose, Vince deadpan with a mouthful of cigar, unbeatable goddamn combination: that was mainly what hit him when he walked in.

  Sal Ferrero was shooting pool with Georgie Lucci. Vince carried his whiskey over, sat down on a stool to watch. They bandied sober hellos around. Sal and Angie and he used to make a trio, ever since Sal married Ange’s sister. In recent years, Sal only worked as a repairman in the mine, and in a different section at that, so they’d kind of split apart, but family functions always saw them together again, and he and Sal had seen a lot of each other since the disaster. Sal was a small wiry guy, kind of Jewish-looking, but a good goddamn man, knew how to joke around with the best of them, always on hand when help was needed. He was one of the first guys down into the mine after the explosion, told Vince later he’d mainly gone down to look for him and Ange. He’d found Ange, okay. Lucci was one of the four guys in Vince’s gang who’d panicked after the blast and run out without knowing where they were going. Lucci and his buddy Brevnik had lucked out. Lee Cravens and Pooch Minicucci had gone the wrong way. Tomorrow, Vince had to deliver the relief checks to their families. Happy Valentines. He didn’t look forward to it.

  “Want in?” offered Sal, straightening up. He had just muffed a shoo-in on the ninespot.

  “No, thanks,” said Vince. “I get a bigger charge outa watching the exhibition.”

  “Then keep your eye on this’n, Vincenzo old culo,” growled Georgie down the length of his cue. With a soft thuck, followed by a tight pair of clicks, he pocketed both the nine and the fifteen, then proceeded to clean the table.

  Sal plunked a half dollar on the table while Georgie was still lining up the last ball. “Never could do any good on Friday the thirteenth,” he said.

  So it was, Friday the thirteenth.

  “Find anything yet?” asked Georgie, leaning into his shot.

  “Not yet.” Vince had found himself caught up in an odd sense of nervous exhilaration the past week or so, but it was starting to fade on him. What kicked it off was saying out loud what he’d wanted to say for thirty years: he was through with coalmining. He’d put in a couple applications around town, talked to different people, boasted how he was commencing the new life, fifty years or no. Everybody’d agreed that yes, by God, he was doing the right thing. Took a lot of nerve to try to learn new tricks when you were staggering into your second half century, too; they all appreciated that. In fact they sometimes harped on it so much, Vince would get a little jittery. Just what the hell could he learn to do? he’d ask himself; then, just as quickly, he’d shove the dumb question aside: let’s see what they ask him to learn first.

  Georgie plucked the coin off the felt, emptied the far pockets as Sal racked. “I hear Guido Mello got on at the garage where Lem Filbert’s working,” he said, and chalked his cue.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Vince said. He’d tried there, asked too late. Awful lot of guys seemed to have the same idea he had.

  Vince’s kids, the two still at home, Charlie and Angie, had showed right off they were pleased, had talked up the change, they made big plans for the future. Charlie, actually getting halfway friendly to him for the first time in the kid’s useless life, would flash his big toothy smile and ask from time to time what had turned up. Vince always returned the boy a healthy line. Give the kid a little ambition by example. Began to consider taking him fishing when spring came on, Charlie had never taken an interest like the other boys, go upstate for a couple days maybe, sleep out. If he’d just stop snapping his goddamn fingers.

  Georgie broke the racked balls with a tremendous splat. Vince himself preferred to break soft, but Lucci liked the wide-open game. “Pretty big show last week,” Lucci said.

  “Yeah?” asked Vince mechanically. Heard some cards rattling loosely against each other over near the bar, then the flick flick flick of the deal. Caught himself glancing around for Ange.

  Lucci, trapped in the wide scatter of balls, had to use two cushions to get at the one, sitting like a pale orange near a sidepocket. He escorted the ball with twists of his hips, grunts and Italian obscenities, but missed just the same. “Yeah,” he said, picking up the chalk. “I think the least our Big Number One Hero could’ve done is share some of that fucking loot with his old buddies.”

  At first, Vince didn’t know what the hell Lucci was talking about. Wasn’t paying attention. “Oh, you mean Bruno,” he said after a moment. “Well, buddy, those are the breaks.”

  Sal stared across the green expanse of the table toward Vince, then looked down as though studying his shot. Vince knew what it meant. Sal was feeling it, too. Things were upsidedown. Self-consciously, Vince swallowed down his whiskey, moseyed back to the bar for another.

  He leaned on the bar awhile, staring glumly into his sweating glass, wondering why the hell he didn’t just go on home. Felt out of place. Like an old man at a kids’ party. What was wrong? He had tried to talk it out with Etta, but she never said anything. That’s the way she was, he hadn’t expected otherwise, been just like that for the thirty years they’d been married. She’d absorb his harangues and projected joys into her big-spread 300-pound body, return some little joke or other, then leave him to make his own decisions. True, he sometimes wished she’d turn on a little enthusiasm once in awhile, but on the other hand, whenever the kids with their interminable questions began to get to him, it was a large relief to have her friendly silence around.

  They had both of them broken all the old family traditions, Etta the German ones, Vince the Italian, when they got married. Her folks over in Randolph Junction weren’t so bad, though they hardly ever got over to see them, but Vince’s old man had nearly pitched him bodily right out of the goddamn house when he found out. Finally, things had settled down, of course, as they always do. Etta was Catholic at least, helluva lot better one than Vince or most of his family for that matter, and that had made it easier on Mama. She worked hard, had got all the kids through their catechisms and their schoolwork, kept them clean and looking neat even through hard times—and they’d known plenty—never failed to keep hot food in the whole family. So, eventually, his family had got used to her, made stale jokes about the difference between potatoes and pastas, even slipped and spoke Italian at her sometimes, and
then they’d all laugh. Underneath, it probably pissed Etta off a little, Vince figured; she was still a German, even if her name did come to be Bonali, and it seemed like sometimes she got the idea they did it as a kind of insult. But Etta had decent manners, always knew when to take it easy; really, by God, they got along fine. And he felt troubled now that he couldn’t give her more to hope for in her old age.

  When they married, Etta was a pretty exciting catch, tall and ripe-bodied and country fresh, though making a family had quickly ballooned her into the big woman she was now. Together, the two of them had brought off seven kids, all of them still alive and all well reared—well, all but Charlie maybe. The first five were married, living in different parts of the United States, and Angie, the youngest, was still in high school. It was Charlie who really burned Vince’s ass, just swaggering around all day, snapping his fingers, cracking his knuckles, dangling a butt in his thick lips—but still, goddamn it, Vince understood. He understood how it was to grow up in a house where the old man was out of work half the time and where there didn’t seem to be any real future. As Charlie himself had put it, hurting Vince more than the kid knew: “You saw how Ange got it. That’s the real future, man!”

  A chair scraped behind him, someone called out his name. Vince took a drink, lazed around, keeping one elbow on the bar. Rattle of cards. “Chair open, Bonali,” came the twang. Chester Johnson, toothy hillbilly, another guy from Vince’s shift, but a different part of the mine. They were all hanging around up here, Jesus, the whole damned mine. What there was left. Johnson fluttered the cards in a loose-wristed shuffle. “Wanna sit in as my partner a hand or two?”

  No, thanks, Vince thought, but there was something in the soft tease of the shuffle, persuasive presence of jacks in that thin deck, that could set the moment aright if not the times … and next thing he knew, he found himself straddling an old metal folding chair, staring half-blind at harsh little cardboard faces who this night said just nothing to him. Johnson kept yakking away, couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut five seconds, talked off every play he made, kept overbidding. Vince lit a cigar, glared through the hovering smoke at Johnson.

  “What really grinds my ass,” Johnson was whining, “is that outa ninety-eight possible guys, that fuckin’ crybaby had to be the lucky dolly.”

  Vince looked up sharply. The other two guys said nothing, stared at their cards. So at least he wasn’t the only one, that was plain. He’d been feeling guilty about his resentment at the fanfare surrounding Bruno, but maybe if the other guys like Lucci and Johnson felt like he did, there was cause. Still in his miner’s clothes, still black with that stinking soot, Vince had made his visit that night to the gymnasium, had gone there to see Ange Moroni’s cadaver. One of four long black lumps laid out side by side with a fifth in a rubber bag. On a tarp on the basketball floor. Ange’s uppers were missing, black eyelids half open, showing a watery white stuff below that didn’t look like eyeballs. Vince, though he rarely did now, had prayed for Ange. And for himself and all the other guys.

  “Jesus, Bonali!” cackled Johnson. “You remember that fuckin’ poem?”

  “Three,” snapped Vince, cutting him off. Both red jacks.

  “Aw, four,” Johnson drawled, topping him. Tipped his scrawny head one way, then the other, shrugged, grinned. “Spades, I reckon. Sure hope you got the jig, buddy.” They went down fast. Vince shuffled, cracked the cards roughly. “They makin’ all this big fuss, but shit, I bet he never knowed what hit him.” Johnson pushed on, the others nodding absently. Theme of the week apparently. Harsh nasal voice that pricked the ear: “Too many good goddamn guys got it.” Vince’s hands shook as he dealt the cards around. Johnson watched. “Guys like old Lee Cravens and old Ange Moroni and—”

  “One good thing about Moroni,” Vince butted in. “He knew how to keep his fucking mouth shut in a card game.”

  Johnson leaned back on two chair legs, stared at his cards a moment, then flipped them down on the table. “I dunno, boys, I think I’ve had enough,” he said, flicker of a grin crossing his wide lipless mouth. “Air’s got a mite sour.”

  “Suits me,” said Vince, and shoved his chair back. Tossed down the rest of his whiskey, walked out. Friday the thirteenth. Felt rotten, really rotten. Hated Johnson, hated Bruno, hated even himself. Down the hill, man. “What a fucked-up world!” he muttered.

  Even with the welcome money in his hand, Vince got no fun out of the idea of visiting the Minicucci and Cravens homes next morning. Stirring up the ashes, that’s all. He’d seen nearly all of the families at the mass funerals about a month ago, had steered clear of them since. Just didn’t feel comfortable, didn’t know what to say, knew they couldn’t help but resent that he had got out.

  Pooch wasn’t married—as old Ange used to say: why waste all that artillery in just one little mousehole?—but his folks more or less depended on him, so the charity committee had awarded them a full share of the money. Vince tried to take care of the business out on the front porch, but they dragged him on in, said it was too cold, sat him down in one of their overstuffed chairs, gave him wine, talked about Pooch and how he’d looked so fine at the funeral, and how badly they did need the money.

  The room was overheated, bore that weighted odor of old people, old food, old dust, made Vince recall his Mama the last couple years before she died. Vince only understood about half the Italian. Slipping away from him. The old woman sucked her dry withered lips, spoke of God’s ominous ways, how important it was to be ready at all times, one never knew, un giorno o l’altro, life was brief and inscrutable. Vince nodded gravely, growing sleepy. Si, una bolla di sapone, he acknowledged, a soapbubble, his Mama’s pet commentary on life in this world. Vince fidgeted in the chair to keep awake, covered up best he could, finally had to admit he hadn’t been to Mass in over three years. Tre anni! Ever since the kids had grown up, he said, but, yes, she was right, he figured to get started back, you never knew, any moment, a qualsiasi ora.

  “Ecco il momento!” the old woman said, wagging her finger. And as she rattled on, Vince remembered his old blind grandmother telling him about hell when he was a boy. She was an expert on hell. If Vince ever ended up there, he was sure he’d find his way around, she’d imbedded forever in him a mental map of the place. He had nearly forgot, but now he found he was missing not a word of the old lady’s Italian, it was all there, he felt once more the claws on his flesh, the pincers plucking out his nails, foul mouths sucking out his eyes. Rapt but edgy, a boy again, he listened. The dwarfish television set pitched a silent nervous image into the room. Pooch’s old man was nodding off. “Tre anni!” He apologized, thanked her for the wine, left somehow oddly grateful.

  But in West Condon’s old housing development, hell lost its charm, turned gray, and he grew old again. Old and tired and cold. He’d got overheated in the Minicucci living room, and the cold was bitter. Get this over with, get home, take a hot bath. Wanda Cravens met him at the tattered screen door with a baby in her arms, toddler hanging on from below. Another kid whined somewhere inside. Never a very big girl, she now seemed more drawn than ever. Must not weigh even a hundred pounds, Vince thought. He felt sorry for her, glad he was bringing some money. He told her what he was there for, and she asked him on in.

  Her living room was a wreck of cluttered junk, far from clean, far from warm, winter crawling across the bare floor, cockroaches scrambling alongside the wallboards. It looked more like a house after somebody had moved out than a place someone was living in. Vince found an arm of a waddy chair he thought would hold him, sat down gingerly against it. Wanda dropped the baby and toddler on a ragged throw rug in a corner with the cockroaches, shooed the older one, boy about three or four, on out the door, turned wearily toward Vince. She sure had it tough, okay. With a thin white hand, she pushed back a snarl of sandy-colored hair from her forehead, accepted the check he held out to her. They exchanged only a few words. Her voice was thin, had a hopeless lost distance about it.

  “I’m sure
you can use it, Wanda,” he said clumsily.

  She stood in front of him, a wooden table behind her. She sighed, nodded, then turned around, shoved aside the gray heap of clothes on the table, laid the check down, leaned over to examine it.

  Vince tried to come up with a couple remarks about what a swell guy he’d always thought Lee was, dependable and goodnatured, but her dress, the starch out of it, hung with limp descriptiveness over her small hips, and talk about old Lee seemed weirdly irregular. The back of her left thigh touched his knee. “Lee was one of the greatest guys I ever worked with, Wanda,” he said, confused by the silliness of it. “It was a honor …” She leaned further over the table onto one elbow, closed her eyes, rubbed them. Jesus, the poor kid! Her back trembled. Her legs were apart and the dress, folded wispily down the cleft of her buttocks, vibrated gently with her crying. If that was what she was doing. Vince stood up, unavoidably against her, laid his broad dark hand on her back. The bone was right there, hadn’t felt a back like that for years. “I … I guess I’d better be shoving off.” But she butted back against him with a kind of sob, and he thought less about shoving off. His fingers slid to her waist and she curled around like an old routine into his arms, gazed sadly up at him. Her eyes were a little red, but probably from the rubbing, he got the idea right away she was faking it. Thing that surprised him most was how he was staying so goddamn cool. Felt keyed up, okay, but like a spectator caught up in some movie.

  Her tiny chest heaved a little against him. “Vince!” she whispered, and it could have meant just about anything. Gentle-boned face, eyes a little close together like old Lee’s, cheeks dotted with mudcolored freckles, mouth a soft thin line with a slight overbite, her teeth a bit—They kissed. Vince yanked her in tight against his hard and heated body, clutched the whole of her ass with one big hand, went grabbing down for the lean thighs, felt the taut flesh snap back at him through the wilted cotton, a tautness he’d nearly forgot in women. Wished he still had the little finger on that hand, felt like he was missing something. She broke away, buried her face in his chest.