Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  At home, beat down and depressed, he dropped into a chair facing the TV. It was off, but he didn’t feel like turning it on. Etta came in and sat down on the sofa near him. The fatness and silence of her presence irritated him all the more, but, hell, she didn’t have it easy either. He got to talking out loud, said the way things were going, it sure didn’t look to be a very hilarious goddamn thirtieth anniversary for them this year, did it? and how he figured they were really done for. Why was it turning out like this? Thank God, they still had the old house, but, shit, they’d probably have to mortgage that, too. And then, all of a sudden, he saw Etta was crying. He got half out of his chair, took her hand, said not to cry like that, he was just mouthing off, hell, things’d work out, they always did. But she handed him a letter.

  He glanced at the envelope: from their oldest boy, Vince Junior. He was working out on the Coast, worked on airplanes. Vince supposed something terrible must have happened, one of the grandkids or something, and, Jesus, just now—! He was almost crying and he hated to look inside. But when he opened it, there was a nice friendly letter and scribblings from the grandkids and a check for $300. The boy said he figured things must be a little close, what with the mines closed down, and, since he had a little extra, he was sending it along, keep beer in the icebox and Angie in pretty clothes, and so on, have a happy anniversary, and to let him know if they needed more.

  “Jesus, Etta,” Vince said. “That sure was nice of Junior, wasn’t it?” And he got out his handkerchief and blew his nose.

  Vince had always gagged along with the rest about getting old, but nowadays he found it hard to smile, found that cracks about his fifty years only made his stomach turn. Couldn’t land a new job and he began to see it wouldn’t even be easy to get on at the mines now. Trouble was, though he hadn’t wanted to admit it before, people hardly ever hired a new man old as Vince was. He could do the work of five or six young guys, understand, especially in the mines, he had the basic skills down and that’s what really counted these days, but, hell, it still didn’t matter. It was just the dumb attitude these people doing the hiring took. Vince hated even to look into a mirror. A thick gray depression was crowding down all over him.

  One Tuesday at Wanda’s—he’d fallen into the consoling habit of passing afterdark Tuesdays there—when there wasn’t much to do but talk, he tried to explain it. He had been feeling his goddamn half century all day, and now, mainly because before coming over he had got a little too tanked up at the Eagles, he couldn’t seem to stiffen the old pecker up enough to get the trick done, and that made him all the more miserable. “Wanda, I have to tell you, I’m getting old,” he confessed simply. He was goddamn sorrowful. The hall light was on, just outside the bedroom door, and it spread a harsh sallow glare over their side-by-side bellies.

  “It sure is somethin’ how time gits on,” she replied. She sounded worn out. Life was no picnic for her either, goddamn it.

  “It sure is a tough solution to worry about. I just don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do.” His tongue was thick. Room was slipping a little toward the left. And he’d never felt so weak and shriveled. “The future looks to me just like a big goddamn empty hole, Wanda.”

  She yawned. Her breasts filled up a little, and then slid off to each side again like wobbly little airbubbles. Then she giggled.

  “No, listen! I mean it, Wanda! What’s gonna come of me?”

  There was a long idiot span of silence, filled only by the squeaky sucking noises that the baby in the crib at the foot of their bed was making on his bottle. Wanda dug at one ear with her finger. The coarse pale hairs of her crotch poked up like dry weeds, pitched long sharp shadows across her right groin. He felt dizzy. He closed his eyes. And finally she said, “Vince, hon, d’you believe in talkin’ with spirits?”

  11

  What does it matter that secrecy has been decreed? the Spirit is made manifest by signs. Else, how account for the uprooting of the widow Mrs. Wilson’s hollyhocks, excrement on her front porch, a signature from the “Black Hand”? Or the theft of the widow Mrs. Lawson’s porch swing, the dead rat left on her window ledge? The inexplicable death of the coalminer Mr. Hall’s young bird dog? The town veterinarian Dr. Norton diagnoses: internal bleeding. Or how explain the suddenly fierce gossip of the dour old women in the nave of St. Stephen’s? “Fatti del diavolo!” Or the revival of St. Peter gags in clubs and bars and on church lawns Sundays? Or the excited nonsense of boys in high school locker rooms? “Gee whiz! the end of the world already, and me almost a virgin still!” How else shed light on the anonymous phonecalls received at the home of the coalminer Mr. Bruno? the appearance in the city newspaper of strange tales of medieval seers and wizards? the inflamed preachments against heresy from the pulpit of the Church of the Nazarene?

  Or who can say why else this town’s collective fate darkens so? The last of the area mines seems sure to close. The streets of the business sector grow desolate. Glumly, the shopowners visit each other. The mayor declares a one-month moratorium on parking meters to encourage downtown trade. The winter is bitter and long. The families of ninety-seven dead coalminers huddle around old habits, their empty futures hovering like birds of prey. Some marry again, some leave. Most wait, not knowing for what. Young people desert, breaking up families. A motel closes. The basketball team loses. A strange virus cripples half the community. The whole town seems to age overnight. Children grow rebellious. TV reception is often bad. A dance at the Eagles is canceled. People die. The rate of harassment crimes rises.

  Who is the “Black Hand”? Opinions vary. Italians, including the Police Chief Dee Romano, fear the revival of old blood enmities, of old extortions and death by night, but, strangely, few Italians are struck. Some blame out-of-towners, even rival cities. Others the Klan. A maniac. Communists.

  The mayor recognizes the adolescent style: some high school prankster.

  Coalminers observe uncomfortably that the victims are usually coalminers or their families. Not even widows in mourning are exempted. The Nazarene pastor Reverend Baxter, his own congregation often the prey, passes thundering judgment upon false prophets and apostates who, with their black signature and foul deeds, confess their allegiance to the Devil. “These here people they are murmurers! they are malcontents! they are walking after their own lusts! ungodly folks turning the great grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying our only Master and Lord, Christ Jesus! These here people, I tell ye even weeping, they are the enemy of the cross of Jesus! Their end it is perdition! their god it is the belly! and they do glory in their shame!” Rumors of Black Masses.

  Actually, a clandestine high school club or gang, not just a single boy, the mayor explains to a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce board members.

  The schoolteacher Mrs. Norton attributes the attacks to “the powers of darkness,” and when the widow Mrs. Collins contends it can only be the work of “Baxter’s people,” Mrs. Norton reminds her that the specific agents utilized by the dark powers are less significant than a recognition of the existence and activity of the powers themselves. To friends in private, Mrs. Collins admits frankly that she doesn’t understand what Mrs. Norton means, and she sits up nights hoping to catch one of the “people” redhanded and prove her point.

  The mayor announces in the city newspaper, the West Condon Chronicle, that the frequency of the recent “Black Hand” incidents makes it clear that it has become a new teen-age fad, a game, and he asks cooperation from all parents. With that, it does in fact become a teen-age fad, proving the mayor a prophet if not a consummate analyst, and culminates with a “Black Hand Blast” up at the youth center, which is converted at the last moment by the adult supervisors into a “Black Magic Party,” and, as usual, is not much of a success.

  “Black Hand” phonecalls tie up the circuits, and letters from same arrive daily at the newspaper office, city hall, private homes. When the newspaper releases the report of two other signatures, the “Black Peter” and the “Black Piggy,” it sets
off a rash of new calls and letters, etc., by everything from the “Blackhead” to the “Black Bottom.” “The Black Maria.” “The Blackboard.” “The Black Widow.” “The Blackball.” “The Black Armpit.”

  Yes, the mayor admits with a rueful sigh when the suggestion is put to him by several civic leaders: it is really a reflection of the town’s whole general deterioration, and is at the same time contributing to it. A community-wide moral problem. Monstrous. A cancer. Something has to be done, says one. The mayor agrees. A little common sense, says another.

  At the city hospital, a nurse, idle, picks up the telephone, waggles it indecisively in her hand a moment, glances down the empty corridor, sighs, finally dials a number.

  “West Condon Chronicle.”

  “Is Mr. Miller there, please?”

  “Whom shall I say is calling?”

  “The Black Hand.”

  “!”

  “Hello?”

  “Just—just a moment, please.” Clump clump clump. “(Mr. Miller! it’s some woman says she’s the Black Hand!)”

  “Hello, Miller here.”

  “This is the Black Hand.”

  “Hello there, Black. What a nice voice you have.”

  “Do you know why my hand is black?”

  “No, why?” Scratch. (Lighting a smoke.)

  “Blackness, you will agree, is the absence of light.”

  “That’s reasonable.”

  “But what is light?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Light is the radiant energy which enables the corresponding organs to perform their proper function. It is transmitted by an undulatory or vibrational movement, the velocity of which, uh, need not concern us here.”

  “Aha.” His loose laugh. Makes her catch her breath.

  “Tiger?” She rubs her nose to block a sniffle. “My whole me is going black!” She swallows. Don’t get sappy.

  His easy laughter trickles through the wires, makes her relax again. Anyway, she hasn’t made him mad. “I’m sorry, Happy. But what more can I tell you? I’m up to my ears in this goddamn project and it just doesn’t give me a minute.”

  “Is it about these people who think the Last Judgment is about to happen?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I’m probably the last dope in town to find out. One of my hernia patients told me all about it.”

  “Well, yes, that’s it.”

  “Any pretty girls?”

  Laughter. Too quick. “Nothing but old widows.”

  “Unh-hunh. Well, when’s Jesus going to come and get it over with, so I can see you again?”

  Laughter again. He likes to laugh. He has told her that no one else makes him laugh so much, laugh so well. “Middle of April or thereabouts, I think. It’s not sure.”

  “A whole month!” She pauses. “Listen, Tiger, can I anyway write letters to the editor?”

  “Sure.” A little awkwardly. “Listen, Happy, I mean it, I really am sorry. I warned you, though, I had a knack for getting hung up like this. But it can’t last much longer, God knows I’m getting sick of it, and then we’ll see if we can’t do something about that poor hand and so on of yours.”

  “It won’t be easy. It’s very very black.” That laugh. “Especially the so on.” She nibbles at the phone cord, hating to let go of him. Any excuse. “But if I write the letters, will you at least bring me the postage?”

  A hesitation. “Sure.”

  “Cross your black heart and hope to die, never to rise again?”

  A pause. “Listen, if my office girl weren’t listening in, I’d even promise to take it out for you and drop it in the slot.”

  The nurse giggles, rubs her nose. “Beware then,” she hisses, “for the Coming is at hand!”

  “The Black Hand, I assume,” he replies, and, giggling, she hangs up, runs paper into the typewriter beside her.

  Common sense. Common sense tells the former coalminer and now small-time farmer Ben Wosznik that where there’s an effect, there’s a cause. Sometimes more than one. A good fertilizer and crop rotation bring on a good harvest. But planting by the almanac helps, too. Maybe somebody’s cigarette caused the disaster that killed his brother, maybe not. The cigarette might have been only a part of it. Now they are having bad times. Common sense tells him it’s no accident, nothing is. He hears about the man who says the world is coming to an end. The man survived the disaster and everybody else, including Ben’s brother, died. Has to be a reason. There always is. Maybe there was more oxygen where he was or maybe he had more resistance. Maybe both. Maybe more. Common sense tells him it’s smart to go see what the man has to say. Can’t hurt. Might change his life. Might save it.

  Taking a shower at the high school, Tommy (the Kitten) Cavanaugh kids Ugly Palmers. “Ugly, if you think the world is coming to an end,” he says, “what are you wasting your time here at this jail for? You gonna need American history up there?”

  Ugly, soaping his feet, turns crimson. He never really blushes, his acne just flares up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. A short guy, kind of a tube, small hump in the shoulders, almost no butt at all. Pretty well hung, though.

  “Aw, come on, Ugly, don’t kid me!” Tommy winks at a couple other guys at nearby lockers, lathers up his belly. “The little Collins girl told me all about it.”

  “You leave her out of it!” Ugly yells, going red halfway down into his chest. Boy, he is suddenly mad as all get out! Just a lucky guess, too.

  Tommy figures he could whip Ugly, but he doesn’t want to get into anything down here, so, as though to soak better, he pivots under the hot spray until he has his butt to the guy. Never shoot a guy in the back. His Dad has a dirty joke about it. A couple guys are grinning, looking on, so he winks again. “Well, so what’s the story, Ugly? Is it really gonna happen, or isn’t it? We need to know, man!”

  “What’s it to you, Moneybags?” Really sore, all right.

  “Well, gosh, Ugly, I don’t wanna go to hell, do I?” He gets some snickering on that, but not much. Most of these guys are scared of Palmers. He hears Ugly’s shower turning off, decides it might be better politics to face the guy. He assumes a modest grin, and, working the soap between his legs, turns, just as Ugly slaps flatfooted by.

  At the edge of the showers, where the lockers begin, Ugly spins around. “I suppose you just think that this is all just a buncha nuts!” he blurts clumsily.

  “Who, Ugly?” Tommy counters, blinking innocently.

  “You know who.”

  “No, listen, Ugly, we don’t know anything. You gotta save us, man!”

  Palmers hesitates, his jaws working. “Okay, smart guy, I suppose you never heard of Tiger Miller.”

  This time the blink is real. “Sure I know Tiger Miller,” Tommy says. “You’re not trying to kid me that he comes to your meetings.”

  “He sure does!” Ugly snaps, gloating now, though his acne is still a bright vermilion.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Wanna bet?” Ugly thrusts out his hand. “C’mon. How about a thousand dollars?”

  “How you gonna prove it?” This thing is rankling Tommy now. He wishes he hadn’t brought it up.

  “Come and see for yourself.” Ugly is grinning. “C’mon. A thousand bucks. Your old man’s got the money.” He pokes his hand toward Tommy’s midriff.

  “I’ll bet a quarter.”

  “C’mon. A thousand bucks. Put up or shut up.”

  “Okay, Ugly, I believe you. But that’s just one. Who else?”

  Ugly backs down. “Lotsa people,” he says.

  “Yeah? Like who?”

  “You gonna soap that little thing all day?” Trying to get out of it. “Like who, Ugly?”

  Outwardly, the signs are few. Intimately, the message radiates. At a meeting, ministers are warned. Over Cokes, a talent is described. In a bed, someone is invited. A child overhears his parents denounce an old friend. A priest, making a house visit, is bluntly turned away.
An impeccable lawyer becomes irascible and unreliable. At an evening meeting of a Baptist youth group, “what if” questions are posed. Chiliastic warnings appear among the graffiti of boys’ rest rooms. MARCH 8. Erasure. MARCH 21 (in ink). Rotarians are informally entertained by a Presbyterian minister with new rumors. The newspaper, except for anonymous letters to the editor, is silent, but the editor is known to be intently absorbed in a new “project.” A neighbor darkens her kitchen and sits by the window. Observes the furtive arrivals. The sinister preparations. The burning candles. The sheets hung over the windows. Hears the screams. Who knows how the old man died?

  The banker, phone cradled between jaw and shoulder, draws a square on his tablet. A cross inside the square gives him four small squares. Two diagonals: eight small triangles. He blacks in alternate ones with a vertical stroke. Then the remaining ones with a horizontal stroke. To one corner of the now all-black square, he attaches the corner of another large one, adds in the cross and diagonals. On the other end of the line, the high school principal is saying, “She’s just a substitute teacher, of course, but one of the finest we’ve ever come across. I’m glad you brought her name up, Ted. I wanted to mention her before, but she doesn’t have a certificate yet. With the board’s approval, of course, we hope to—”

  “Unh-hunh. Well, don’t do anything too definite just yet, John. We want to—”

  “No, no, of course not! Is something wrong?”

  “No, I don’t think so. You know. We just want to run a routine check before we commit ourselves.”

  “Something in the past?”

  “Can’t be sure, John. Just want to be careful, that’s—”