Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  Her heart jumps in excitement and he kisses her. She is scared, but she lets him, because she loves him. From the beginning, they have been in love. They have a lot in common and have always talked together about it all. The only trouble at first was that Carl Dean said he didn’t know if it was really true or not, and then both of them suffered powerful doubts. But, in the end, they both believed, and they are glad that religion has brought them together. When he puts his other hand right smack on her leg, though, she jumps back and stops him. “I don’t like boys to do that,” she says, a little breathlessly, though in truth no boy ever has before. Her heart is going like crazy.

  “I’m sorry, Elaine … it’s just … well, I love you so much … and now … with just a week … just seven days …”

  An indefinable anguish wells up inside her and she kisses him again, and, even though it makes her cry, she lets him leave his hand on her leg, and it makes them kiss harder and love each other more than ever. Her Ma was a little cool on Carl Dean at first, on account of she was afraid he wasn’t a true believer. And Carl Dean took more interest in Mrs. Norton than he did in her Ma, and that didn’t help a whole lot either. Elaine said, if he didn’t think it was true, what difference did it make if he catered to Mrs. Norton or to her Ma? But he said he didn’t say it wasn’t true, he just didn’t know, that was all, and he had a lot of faith in Mrs. Norton. After all, he knew her first, and even her Ma said she was a great lady, didn’t she? But finally he came to believe more in her Ma and now her Ma likes him okay. “We better go,” Elaine says, partly because her leg is starting to hurt, he’s grabbing it so hard, “or Ma’ll be mad.”

  “Just kiss me one more time, Elaine,” he whispers, taking his hand off her leg to wet one finger in the tears on her cheek. He looks at her extremely serious and she looks at him the same way. “So, no matter what, I’ll always remember it. It may be … our last kiss before …”

  And so she does and feels the anguish in her throat again, and she holds him tight and prays to God to let nothing bad ever happen to him, but suddenly Carl Dean, loving her so much, hauls her right up off the seat and pulls her hard against him and she feels everything just like they were bare naked and his hands are everywhere and not just on her leg either, and that really scares her and she twists away and starts to bawl and get hysterical. But he apologizes and lets go right away and doesn’t do anything more except kiss her softly on her cheek, and he blinks the lights, and Colin comes back, and they drive straight to Giovanni Bruno’s house. As Colin gets out and starts up the walk, Carl Dean whispers, “I love you, Elaine, I really do! I’m awful sorry if …” She smiles a little and tells him she isn’t mad. She isn’t. Just scared. And worried about what she’ll say if her Ma asks her where she’s been so long and why her face is all streaked up.

  Worry: indeed, what night in West Condon ends without it? Certainly Easter Sunday looking toward the prophesied end of the world is no exception. Worry is the universal dread tempered by hope, prolepsis of pleasure and pain alike, and so intrinsic to the human condition, that humanity has on occasion been defined by it. And so, tonight, fathers worry about their daughters, wives about their husbands, ministers about their flocks, doctors about their patients, Brunists about how they will meet the End, doubters about the truth, the mayor about the embarrassment and the shame and the next elections, businessmen about the slump and miners about the unemployment, children about their aging parents, and just about all West Condoners worry a moment or two, unless they have dropped off blissfully before the TV, about their health or their virility or their weight or their period or their happiness or when and how they’re going to die. Abner Baxter’s particular worry concerns the reluctance of his Nazarene congregation to recognize the real majesty and breadth of his vision, their almost womanish bickering about what to do and when to do it, instead of simply following him in faith—in short, their galling blindness. The newspaper publicity has frightened them. Yet, he is grateful for it. In the end, it will inspire them. Ralph Himebaugh, approaching total poverty—surprised to discover that it is an ascent, not a descent—also worries, like Baxter, about the willpower of those about him, and so he is also grateful for the publicity, much as he despises the publicist, convinced that, in the end, it will commit them utterly. Meanwhile, he is alert to the least sign of weakness, the least hint of retreat, the least flush of fear or faintness of heart. At nights, he doesn’t sleep at all. Nor, for a long time tonight anyway, does the banker Ted Cavanaugh. His dreams of a revivified community spirit, sprung from the Common Sense Committee, now seem doomed, thanks mainly to the Chronicle editor’s ruthless and unscrupulous exploitation of this insignificant cult. Passions in the Committee, as a result, are much higher than he had ever intended, and elements are taking over that he had hoped to keep excluded, and he wonders now if anything constructive can ever be salvaged from it after next Sunday. Probably not. He would like to turn it off, but knows he is unable. He is caught like the rest, and the most he can hope to do is to moderate somewhat the Committee’s zeal and pray for a small turnout next Sunday. As for the editor, on the other hand, there are some retaliatory steps that might be taken, that might even get rid of the bastard for good. Contemplating these, his other worries are momentarily forgotten, and he is able, finally, to sleep. The editor’s employees also worry, torn between conflicting loyalties. The devoutly Catholic Girl Fried Egg Annie Pompa, for example, has been called upon almost daily by friends who find much to criticize in her continuing assistance in the production of that paper. And today, even the priest has spoken to her. The police chief Dee Romano is worried that he may have to use his pistol. He has spent the afternoon at target practice, now methodically cleans it. In all his years on the force, he has never fired it at a man. Barney Davis, mine supervisor at Deepwater No. 9, is worried about the announcement he must make, now that Easter week is over, ending the Company’s pledge to Ted Cavanaugh. He himself has been offered a job with the Company elsewhere, yet he feels the pain of unemployment here as if it were his own personal affliction. He stares off, through his bedroom window, at the night sky. The worries of Wally Fisher, owner and operator of the West Condon Hotel and presently prostrate on his back on the floor of the Legion Hall, contrarily, are the happiest he has had in three months. Must remember to stock in some after-hours booze. Increase his fire insurance. Locate something to use as an annex, for already the room reservation requests from newsmen and TV people have surpassed the hotel’s capacity. What else will these newsguys want? Get some women from Waterton lined up. Keep the coffeeshop open longer somehow. And then the brainstorm hits him. He breaks into a delirious giggle, stretched out all alone there in the Legion Hall, terminating in a coughing fit. Tomorrow, he will call Barney Davis. If he lives that long. Somehow, incredibly, Eleanor Norton has cut the Mount of Jupiter on her left hand with a paring knife, and worries about the portent of it. On Eleanor’s hand, this rise is shifted toward the base of the middle finger, indicating, as one might expect, a tendency toward mystical religion, though principally, of course, it is ambition and the desire to command others that is read here. Can it omen the proximate loss of control over the movement she has mothered? Wylie asks her how she cut it, and she admits she doesn’t know. Betty Wilson, poor soul, faced with imminent judgment, worries about having fallen into the sin of envy and covetousness, insofar as she covets Ben Wosznik who seems to have become the private property of Wanda Cravens. Wanda has been taking special privileges in their group, moreover, just because Lee was with Ely and Giovanni Bruno when he died, but, after all, wasn’t her own Eddie a saint and prophet too? She has tried, humbly, to suggest this, but Ben seems less impressed. She is getting nowhere and is miserable. She decides to talk it over with her best friend Clara Collins the first thing tomorrow morning, and meanwhile sings herself to sleep with Ben’s new ballad. Battista Baglione frets about the correctness of the excommunication proceedings he has initiated against his former altar boy Giovanni Bruno. He does no
t doubt the heresy, of course, which he perceives as really a further fragmentation of Protestantism, heresy being, as he knows full well, a straight-line regression from the Mother Church … and the further, the faster. He is worried, however, about the wording, about the aptness of each charge, about the accuracy of his knowledge of pertinent Church history. His own future within God’s Kingdom on Earth may well depend on it. Although most of his flock worry conventionally, one who worries hardly at all is little Angela Bonali. She is almost literally afloat. She must be about the happiest luckiest girl in the world, her only worry being that this luck and happiness might end. Perhaps, in fact, it is inevitable. And her joy is not just because Christ is risen or because her Daddy has become so important, though she’s glad about these things, but because she is hopelessly beautifully unbelievably in love, and her love loves her. Ben Wosznik, in a comparable circumstance, though tempered by thirty or forty years more of experience, a man’s more defensive perspective, and a lifetime of obeying his own gift for practical common sense, worries about a possible proposal of marriage in the event they are disappointed Sunday. He’s afraid she may see something improper about it, though of course Christ Jesus Himself, just before His own death, emphasized that the risen dead did not live in wedlock in heaven. And he sure does admire her, he’s never met a woman her equal, yet he understands it won’t be easy to make her forget. He decides, practicing his new song, that maybe he ought to talk to her about it before Sunday, so she’ll know it’s on his mind and won’t run off afterwards without having had the opportunity at least to consider it….

  On a cold and wintry eighth of January,

  Ninety-eight men entered into the mine;

  Only one of these returned to tell the story

  Of that disaster that struck Old Number Nine!

  Hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!

  Hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!

  We shall gather at the Mount of Redemption

  To meet our dear Lord there face to face!

  As we carried out the bodies of our loved ones,

  We looked up to God in Heav’n above;

  We asked Him why, and He sent a man to tell us:

  Hark ye to the White Bird of Love!

  And from that tomb came a message of gladness,

  Though its author had passed to his reward:

  “Hark ye ever to the White Bird in your hearts,

  And we shall all stand together ’fore the Lord!”

  So, hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!

  Yes, hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!

  We shall gather at the Mount of Redemption

  To meet our dear Lord there face to face!

  Seven weeks we gathered by his bedside,

  Seven weeks we knelt and prayed to the Divine,

  Seven weeks, and from the Seventh Aspect,

  God answered our prayers with a Sign!

  (Now,) fourteen weeks will have passed since the Rescue,

  When we gather out on the Mount that night;

  We shall lift our voices then to sing God’s glory,

  And await with joy the Coming of the Light!

  So, hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!

  Oh yes, hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!

  We shall gather at the Mount of Redemption

  To meet our dear Lord there face to face!

  And, finally, Reverend Wesley Edwards of the First Presbyterian Church worries about his sermon for next Sunday. A touchy problem, since he feels the occasion should be utilized, yet does not want to contribute in any way to hysteria. Somehow, Mark 4:11-12 seems appropriate to him as a text, yet it is full of pitfalls. Dare he risk it?

  And he said unto them: Unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are without, all things are done in parables: that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest haply they should turn again, and it should be forgiven them.

  What a triumph it could be! He and his wife have turned in late, exhausted by the long week and longer day, having suffered through just about everything from baptisms to egghunts, from ecumenical Good Friday services to his own jampacked flower-laden programs, even a wedding and an afternoon children’s party, and so he is not exactly overjoyed that his wife chooses just this moment to find fault with his sermon this morning.

  “Of course, it was beautiful, dear. Don’t bite your lip like that. I don’t mean that everyone didn’t enjoy it thoroughly.”

  “What was the matter with it?” He tries to sound agreeable and open-minded, but he is very tired. Moreover, undressing in the room where she lay reading idly, he was even considering the marital sacrament this night as an appropriate climax to the joy of Christian renewal (both students of The Golden Bough, they often celebrate primitive festivals in such manner), but he has never been able to succeed—even as a lusting boy—so long as his mind was at work.

  “I didn’t say anything was the matter with it, dear. Only, well, it seemed so much like the one you gave last year.”

  He laughs. “You want me to rewrite the Resurrection?”

  “Oh no, that’s not what I mean.” She smiles. “But, I don’t know, it just seems like you only tell them what they want to hear, and that doesn’t seem …” Her voice trails off ambiguously.

  “That may be so, dear,” he says, rolling his back to her. “But if I do, it is because I believe that God’s behavior is visible in their needs. It’s difficult to put it precisely, but for some time now I’ve had the feeling that I am only a passive participant in a larger drama, that by responding to them, I respond to Divine Will, and thus fulfill what is there potentially all the time. I think this is really what ritual is all about. And it seems especially right at Eastertime, which celebrates not a speech or moral judgment, but a mute action. Who am I to stand above and scold?”

  “Oh, Wesley!” She laughs, switching off the bedlamp and curling around his back. “You’re not a preacher, dear, you’re a poet!”

  He laughs in pleased response. She runs her hands down inside his pajama pants. He is still irritated with her for having turned him on, as it were, but as she scratches and burrows, the channels of his mind click closed, one by one. Visions of candy Easter eggs behind slender trees, gay flowered bonnets and starched skirts, the long green look down the No. 6 fairway toward the red flag that stabs its hole, fill the void as his mind retreats.

  “Is he risen?” she asks in his ear then, astonishingly resurrecting this old premarital collegetime joke of theirs.

  Click! the last channel. “Indeed,” he whispers, rolling on his back to receive her: “he is risen!”

  Part IV: The Mount

  Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great!

  —REVELATION TO JOHN 19:17-18

  1

  Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee seven and seven, the male and his female …

  West Condon, as though unable to gaze any longer upon the deep black reach of night, rolls over on its back to receive the Monday sun, now rising, as men say, in the eastern sky: the eye of God, the golden chariot, the communal hearthfire and source of life, the solar center that, for all its berserk fury, still works its daily anodyne magic on man’s ultimately incurable disease of dread and despair. Its first rays glance off the top of the West Condon Hotel, the high school flagpole, roof and treetops, the Deepwater No. 9 tipple and watertower, and, close by, the small irregular rise, now internationally known as the Mount of Redemption, where this morning occasional white chicken feathers lie like a fall of manna, their barbs gummed into clumps by the dew. Although no one is out at the mine, on the flagpole, or in the treetops, and thus cannot see the sun until at least another hour’s roll has lapsed, and though, as a matter of further fact, almost none will bother to look at it when it can be seen, its
radiations are nevertheless early perceived: they shred dreams, calm the sleepless, turn West Condon on: clocks sound, radios crow, throats hack, razors buzz, frypans heat, toilets flush, children scuffle, doors bang, church and school bells ring, forks clink, toasters pop, motors turn over, sweepers roar, it is Monday morning.

  Justin Miller, editor and publisher of the West Condon Chronicle, rouses himself from the jobroom sofa, where he has spent the night, camera at his side, in a vain attempt to catch further demonstrators or looters in the act. He feels, in a word, rotten. Dirty, unshaved, tired, disgusted. When there is enough light, he steps outside in the street to take photos of the broken windows, the cross on the door, then develops and prints them immediately for quick sale to the wireservices and photo magazines. He decides to leave the damages unrepaired as one further curiosity for the newshounds who will descend on the town, noses at the ready, this weekend—indeed, the back lot of the hotel is already filling up with cars—and now simply boards up the windows from the inside with cardboard ripped from packing boxes. He is still at the task when his office and advertising people begin to arrive, and, given his bearish temper this morning, he is hardly delighted to learn that his indispensable office girl, bookkeeper, librarian, classified ads chief, and social columnist Annie Pompa will not show up … for “religious” reasons, one of the other girls explains, then tenders her own resignation. “Ah shit!” the editor is heard to lament.