Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  The morning does not go well. The ad force returns glumly from futile rounds, reporting they weren’t even allowed in the door most places. Miller encourages them not to worry about it, he anticipated as much, didn’t he? A little patience and things will return to normal. The girls up front, those who remain, receive angry phonecalls canceling subscriptions, but he tells them to accept them gracefully and to arrange for larger bundles to be left at newsstands. No one, he knows, will want to be without the paper, and after it’s all over they will all renew. Without Jones, however, the pressures of the day mount. Miller attempts to gather most of the routine material by phone, but gets almost no response from anyone. Even Dee Romano at the police station hangs up on him.

  Just before heading to Fisher’s coffeeshop for breakfast, he hears from Barney Davis: the mine is closed. He banners that instead of the Brunists, but ties it to the Brunist story. At the coffeeshop, he finds Robbins, Elliott, and Cavanaugh already discussing the closing, the word having flown ahead of him. Cavanaugh turns his back as Miller enters. Amuses him. Cavanaugh could be like a little kid playing cops and robbers, getting mad and going home when the others wouldn’t fall dead when shot.

  “Highest paid industrial worker in the U.S.,” Robbins is snarling. “If he had any brains, he’d take a cut in pay to keep his goddamn mines open.” Cavanaugh settles into his traditional role of defending the moderate labor movement, Elliott agreeing with everybody. Merest rituals.

  “Pecan waffles, Doris,” he says. They turn on him, then turn away.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Robbins is arguing. “I’m not saying the miners don’t deserve good pay and good working conditions. I’m only saying—”

  “They don’t deserve good pay and good working conditions,” says Cavanaugh.

  “In a lot of ways now, you have to admit, Burt’s right,” Elliott offers by way of mediation. Right is right: he’s a goddamn fascist. And so on. Over and over. “Coalmining is a marginal business these days, and the union has pretty much brought on itself the closing down of so many.”

  Traditionally now, it is his, the expert’s line: “That and dieselization of the railroads and strip-mining and the profit motive and the rising cost of machinery and underground gasification and rulings on—”

  “Hark ye,” interrupts Robbins, “to the white turd!” Not even much laughter. It is, from their end of the counter, all too true. Well, anyway, they’re reading his newspaper. And, in spite of their anger, in spite of his battered plant and decimated force, even in spite of his breakup with Marcella, Miller feels oddly pleased with himself. He has not, by God, been assimilated.

  There is an awkward silence then, and something seems to be missing. Puzzles Miller for a moment. Then he realizes it is Jones’ absence. At just such moments, Jones would always grunt, cueing the others to amused attention. Time for a story. Most likely horrible, for Jones was horrible, horrible but decorated with a deathly humor, for Jones was also funny. The Father. A reservoir of gaudy misery, he collected horror like others collect stamps. And he never failed to get them. They always attended when Papa Jones cast his bloody pearls. Now, without him, they stand, exit as a group.

  “Where’s Wally this morning?” Miller asks Doris, who has just cleaned the crud off the grill with a dishcloth which she is now using to dry a few coffee cups.

  “Who, the boss?” She arches one penciled brow, loose-wristedly flaps a palm at him. “Spent the night on the Legion floor. Can’t walk, can’t turn his neck, can’t talk, he’s in a hell of a mess! When I seen him coming down the street like that, I thought, oh-oh! Doris, old girl, you better take the day off! But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “He come in giggling like a idiot!” Doris whirs one index finger around her ear. “Now he’s upstairs sleeping it off.”

  A couple East Condoners enter the coffeeshop, take stools at the other end of the counter from him. Look at first like newsmen, but they turn out to be salesmen passing through. Newspapers—including his Saturday night edition—rattle, eggs sizzle and pop on the grill, coffee cups clank. The salesmen kid with Doris and the one reading the Chronicle asks if she’s ready to meet her Maker.

  “Which maker?” she retorts flatly, hand on grease-stained hip. “I been made by so many, I wouldn’t know one from the other.”

  The salesmen whoop at that. Even Doris grins as she flops the eggs to platters, glances over at Miller and winks. And now, treated to this classic, they will travel and the word will be carried. Miller grins at that, as Doris turns, flips up the top of the waffle iron. Sloppy as she is, she never misses the moment: they’re always golden brown.

  Miller receives them. “A blessing, Doris!” he praises, pouring syrup. “You’re a goddamn saint!”

  The Brunist Mrs. Betty Wilson is waiting for him on his return to the office, posted plumply and skittishly in the chair by his desk, and her news depresses him deeply: Giovanni Bruno seems much stronger now, it’s almost like he’s suddenly come alive, but his sister, she says, hasn’t eaten a bite or said a word for nigh on a week now, and she seems, well, a bit strange. “Sometimes she don’t even, even take care of herself, Mr. Miller. But nobody blames you, Mr. Miller. Leastways, not me or Clara or Wanda or Mary. We know they’s more to it than meets the eye.” What met the eye was Marcella arriving hysterical and more or less stripped.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Wilson. You’re quite right.”

  “Clara is jist tearin’ up the countryside, Mr. Miller, and now Ben Wosznik he’s helpin’ her, you remember Ben. Oh, the most terrible thing! Last Friday, the very day they crucified Christ Jesus, why, a whole buncha men come and beat up poor Ben, yes, that there Mr. Cavanaugh and Mr. Bonali and a whole buncha them fellas. And they drug poor Mary Harlowe right outa her own house and like to kidnap her little children, it was jist awful! They come to the Halls’ place, too, I seen them, but Mabel she didn’t let them in, and that’s jist a good thing she didn’t! And now Ben and Clara, why, they’re lookin’ for more folks to come next weekend and Clara she’s very optimistic. Of course, you know how she is, Mr. Miller. And that Palmers boy, he’s got seven or eight new members somewheres, though of course them young ones hardly ever stays on.”

  All good stuff. Miller gets more details on the Common Sense visits, then he tips her, and the woman leaves. Irresistibly, he opens his desk drawer, takes out Jones’ photos. There you are, he says: the Tiger. Look at her face. Jones caught it all. Well, she’s mad, he tells himself, and it was she, staking too much on a thin fantasy, who broke herself; he was little more than the accidental instrument … his audience, however, remains unconvinced. Conscience, he knows, is merely instinct socialized into guilt— Can one, knowing this, still fall prey to it? Yes, concludes this man much given to this sort of theorizing, another flaw in the evolution of mind. He dumps the photos back in the drawer, realizing the whole thing is starting to make him sick.

  Then, like an act of grace, there appears in his morning mail, a black-bordered envelope.

  One day during the Last Judgment proceedings, there appeared before the Judge a prophet and his beautiful sister. Aha! said the Judge to the prophet: I believe I know you! Yes, smiled the prophet with modest pride: I foretold your coming. How could you have done such a thing, asked the Judge: when I didn’t even know myself? Perhaps there is another, replied the prophet with a sly inscrutable wink over the Judge’s shoulder: yet greater than either of us. Hmmm, said the Judge, considering that: yet it seems improbable. What is probability in a universe such as ours? asked the prophet. I don’t know, I guess I was just a born skeptic, said the Judge with a wry knowing smile: But now what am I to do with you? I suppose you want to go to Heaven. Well, uh, no, Your Honor, replied the prophet: if you don’t mind, I’d rather like—hee hee—to be put in charge of Hell. Hah! good boy! said the Judge: It’s done! When, however, the Supreme Judge asked the prophet’s sister, whose beauty might have weakened any lesser Judge, she opted for Heaven.

  —And why do yo
u wish to be admitted to Heaven, my dear?

  —Because I am afraid to be where you are not.

  —But you can never be where I am.

  —Because … because I believe in you.

  —And if I do not believe in myself?

  —Because you are perfect.

  —What is your imperfection?

  —Because you are beautiful.

  —You, too, are beautiful. Where is the reason?

  —Because, then, because I need you.

  —Your need is a burden, inappropriate in Heaven.

  —Because I find fullness only with you.

  —What do you lack?

  —Because … because I love you.

  —In Heaven, there are no transitive verbs.

  —Then because I shall cry if you do not admit me!

  —Your tears, my sweet, shall water Hell.

  The next supplicant, a virgin who shall here be otherwise nameless, was brought before the Judge. Her virginity, of course, was not a possession (the Judgment itself made property an absurd contradiction), but rather of the essence, a thing happily forever renewable, if in fact with use it ever aged.

  —And why do you wish to be admitted to Heaven?

  —What is Heaven?

  —Why, Heaven is where I am.

  —And where are you?

  —I have said.

  —And so have I.

  The Judge smiled and because, to tell the truth, there had never been a Heaven before, the Judge and the virgin forthwith created one and had a Hell of a good time doing it….

  But when he calls her, he finds her cold and indifferent, as though she might be resenting having sent him what she did, and it takes him awhile, but after all, in the end, they both have a fear of Hell, and she says finally, “Okay, Tiger. You’re the Judge.” And, somehow, they’re both able to laugh.

  Midmorning finds Eleanor Norton stopped dead in her tracks downtown at the corner of Third and Main. She has been wandering absently through the bright town, shocked that others use light without perceiving what they use, and has arrived now at this corner where suddenly everything seems incredibly strange. People pass and their stares prove her corporeal existence, and yet it is as though …

  Don’t you see, dear Elan? You have passed through!

  Ah! But, but who are you?

  You know me and yet you do not know me.

  Domiron!

  I have come briefly to bring you hope and renewed assurance. Do not forsake your vision, Elan! do not forsake me!

  How could I! But where am I? I seem to be here and yet not here. Am I at the seventh aspect?

  No, we have met, let us say, halfway.

  Are you—I’ve always wanted to ask—are you the only God?

  Perhaps not, Elan, but such is our relationship at this level that that can be thought of as the case.

  “Wait!”

  Yes?

  “I … I love you!”

  Your love is known and dear to me. You would never have found me without it, for existence at the seventh aspect is pure love itself, without form, without object, without act.

  “How strange! I seem to have known that all along!”

  Is that strange?

  “And am I worthy?”

  Look about you at these staring faces. Do they perceive the light?

  “No.”

  Do they hear my voice?

  “No.”

  Do they even wish to? Do they try? Could they even dream of it?

  “No.”

  Then you have given response to yourself, have witnessed the gulf between you and men. Yet, remember, Elan: every created thing is divine, even these stupid foolish men!

  “Yes, yes! God is all that is!”

  Therefore, hark ye, Elan! I say to you that a time has been ordained and a time is to come. Time is not, yet a time must end: Stand on high without remorse and look about thee eastward with love!

  “I shall!”

  You have.

  “Never leave me!”

  As you love me, Elan, so I love you. Lo! I am with you always!

  She returns. The objects solidify, the street hardens. She occurs before their eyes, creates ears for their laughter. She pities them. The dense ones, the lost ones. “I love you all,” she says, then steps forward. Their circle rends to let her pass.

  Ugly Palmers stands in the noisy melancholic corridors of old WCHS, leaning against Elaine’s locker, at noon. He sees it all as if for the first time, hears only now the music in the excited voices and banging lockers, smells as though they had never before existed the dense sweaty odors of the generations which have passed through here. Nostalgically, he munches an apple, runs his fingers over the cool surface of Elaine’s locker. An end to this! Sometimes it seems almost unbelievable. Already, though he still has a whole week to enjoy it here, he is feeling the pain of irrevocable loss. And yet: he is happy.

  Elaine, however, arrives crying, her little face streaked with tears, blowing her nose in one of her Pa’s big handkerchiefs. There’s something so lovable about her blowing her nose in one of those great big handkerchiefs, something so terrible about her tears. “What’s the matter, Elaine?”

  She snuffles, more tears come, she opens her locker, shoves her books in, but she doesn’t answer.

  “What is it, Elaine? Why’re you crying?”

  “I cain’t tell you,” she whispers. She pulls out a brown paper bag, containing her lunch, from the locker, then closes it again.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too bad.”

  “Bad?” Carl Dean bristles. “You can tell me, Elaine. You still love me, don’t you?”

  She nods, looks up at him with reddened eyes. Her look always gets him. “It was something Junior Baxter said. In front of everybody.”

  Carl Dean feels his muscles tense, his back straighten, his fists ball shut. But he feels very cool now. This is something he can handle. “What was it?” he asks.

  “He called me … he called me …”

  “Look, why don’t you write it?” he suggests. He gives her a pencil stub and she uses the paper lunchbag. Her face reddens and her eyes water up again as she writes. She turns away and he reads: HORE. He sets his teeth. Looks around. Never find him now. But Junior’s first class after lunch is history. They eat their lunch in dark silence, holding hands.

  He walks Elaine to her class, then goes down the hall to look for Junior. Class has already begun and Junior Baxter is on the far side of the room, next to the windows, between Joey Altoviti and Angie Bonali. Boy, what a bunch of enemies! He has no choice. He strides into the room, trying to act official about it. “Excuse me,” he says, “but I have to talk with Junior Baxter a minute.” Junior shrinks into his seat, toward the aisle, but Carl Dean drags him out. Books spill and girls cry out. Junior grabs onto his desk, starts whining like a baby, kicks out, but he is weaker than a girl. Carl Dean hauls him out the door, paying no mind to the teacher’s protest, and in the corridor gives Junior a thrashing. Junior puts up no defense to speak of, so Carl Dean alternates his blows by whim between the boy’s beanbag belly and his fat white face. When blood is running out his mouth and nose and Junior starts to vomit, Carl Dean lets up. “Now you just watch how you talk to girls from now on,” he says.

  He realizes then he has a considerable audience. One of them is the principal, Mr. Bradley. “Come with me, young man!” Mr. Bradley says. In the office, Carl Dean starts to explain, but Mr. Bradley cuts him off. “I know who you are,” he says. “Now, you go down and clean out your locker, turn in everything you might have checked out, bring the locker key back to me … and get out of here!”

  “Get out—?”

  “You are expelled!”

  So, he does what Mr. Bradley has told him to do, but in a kind of daze, wondering how it could ever have happened, how his life could have turned out this way, and altogether it takes him about forty-five minutes, so he is able to catch Elaine in the corridor between fifth and sixth hour cla
sses. He tells her all that happened and he doesn’t know exactly what he wants her to do about it, but she does it anyway. She takes ahold of his hand like she doesn’t mean ever to let go and says if he has to go, then she’s going too, and that’s how it is that they walk out of there together, laughingly in love, and the day, crazy as it is, is beautiful.

  Elaine’s Ma is that moment over in Randolph Junction with another Brunist, Ben Wosznik, concluding the most successful day so far. The newspaper stories have carried their fame far and wide, and the way, she discovers, has been prepared. Naturally, there are those who scoff, there always are, but there are many who do not. Above all, she does not encounter out here that kind of implacable hostility she has run up against in West Condon. And, of course, the people with whom she speaks have, almost all of them, known and respected her and Ely for years and years, such that even the scoffers scoff gently.

  The Cleggs, Hiram and Emma, to whom she and Ben now bid farewell, are two of at least fifteen people who have said they would try to come next weekend, and, what is more, they believe they can bring another half dozen or so with them. Both Hiram and Emma are important leaders of the Randolph Junction Church of the Nazarene. Clara tells them how the Spirit has truly taken on flesh, that a new day is come, brought by the White Bird, which would last to the end of the world.

  “Amazing! To be sure, there is something great here!” Hiram says, nodding gravely, and Emma listens wide-eyed.

  Clara recounts the prophecies and the signs, tells of Ely’s premonitions and his disaster message, explains how so many folks arrived at the same truth by different paths, and mentions the secret aspects of it which of course cannot be let out until they actually join. She’s noticed the effect this usually has.