Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  “And a prophetic cross, you say?”

  “You mean like to tell the future?” Emma asks. “Oh, Hiram! we must go see!”

  “Yes, dear, I quite agree.”

  Clara also is careful to mention how the Mother Mary has played a part, because she has discovered this idea has a tremendous appeal wherever she goes. Ben tells them again how he himself was attracted to the group and why he has stayed on. It’s just plain common sense to come and have a look for yourself, he says.

  “True! That’s true!” says Hiram.

  Ben’s frank and earthy manner impresses people.

  Driving back toward West Condon together, Clara tells Ben how big a help he has been to her. He tells her then how much he admires her, and adds surprisingly that if she ever thought of remarrying, he would like to be considered. She says she hasn’t been thinking about any such thing. He tells her that he understands perfectly well and certainly he could never hope to hold a candle to so great a man as Ely Collins, but he only wanted her to know how he felt. Just like Ben, she thinks, to put it so plain like that. Anyways, he adds, there’s no point even concerning themselves about it until after next Sunday, if there is an afterwards, but he does go on to mention anyway the Bible story about the woman who was widowed seven times. Of course, that story has already occurred to her. And then something Elaine reminded her of yesterday morning, something she had almost forgot, something Ely used to say in almost every preaching, comes back to her now and it has all the ring of a prophecy to it: “Grace is not something you die to get, it is something you get to live!”

  One moment, Colin Meredith is assured of the end and ecstatic with its glorious promise, the next, plunged into deepest despair in seeing it can never be, then relieved and even made joyful by the certainty of continuance, the certainty of more life, next terrorized by a sudden paralyzing vision of the final horror now upon them. For one sublime and exquisite moment, he embraces and is embraced by all, the boy of the Brunists, the loved one, he upon whom all depend, the all without whom he is forever lost; and then, suddenly, he is utterly alone, ignored, forgotten, unwanted—Eleanor is self-absorbed and impatient, Carl Dean deserts him for a girl, Giovanni does not even see him, a woman laughs cruelly in his face. Though he has willed an end to all his vices, they return to overwhelm him. Chaste in principle, he seeks lecherous solace in the act of love. Spent, he sinks miserably into self-disgust, returns repentant to his vows and to his friends, only to meet rebuff and anguish and to fall again in sin. She is beautiful, but her beauty is ultimately a terror to him; she is enormous, but her enormity protects him. She is brilliant with Mr. Himebaugh’s cold true brilliance, and her passion is as spontaneous and furious as Carl Dean’s temper. Her eyes are gray and wise, and her mouth is young and full and eager. Her breasts, sweet to his hungry mouth, are greater even than Mrs. Wilson’s, her hips, which quiver in his grip, mightier even than Mrs. Hall’s. Her arms grip with the strength of Mr. Wosznik, her hands, like Mrs. Cravens’, tear at his flesh, her massive thighs squeeze and kick like a mare’s, and her hair, wild as the prophet’s, whirls and snarls and clings to his body. Her womb, fertile as Mrs. Harlowe’s, grabs him like a fist and wrings the seed from his body and angels sing and sweat beads his forehead—“Mother!” he cries out, and sucks, bites, chews the hard nipple of his pillow. “Son!” she says, and sinks away from him into the dark and hollow earth.

  We all were so happy there together

  In our peaceful little mountain home,

  But the Savior needed angels up in heaven:

  Now they’re singin’ round that great white throne!

  Tommy (the Kitten) Cavanaugh has, at long last, climbed that famous furry mountain and passed into manhood. Spent, yet firm and ready as ever—a tiger, man!—he cuddles naked with her in a corner of the Lincoln’s rangy back seat, staring out on the old ice plant, only witness to the miracle of his accomplishment. He rolls down the window, and, turning his back to her—which she kisses and softly scratches—he slips the fragile skin off: like a young snake enjoying his first molt. Taking care to hold it cuplike so as not to make an even worse mess in his Dad’s car, he flips it out, regretting that it could not be kept somehow as a souvenir. He’s still wet where the skin was and his hands are sticky, so he looks in the clothes on the floor for a handkerchief or something, comes across her panties. “May I?” he asks devilishly, yet at the same time with an intimacy, a camaraderie, he has never known before. She nods, takes them from him, dries him tenderly, looking down at it, her cheeks against his chest. There are dark stains, too, which cause profound pangs of compassion and gratitude to course through him.

  “I can hear your heart,” she whispers.

  Which is cause for him to listen to hers, and he does so, staring ahead at that stupendous pink bud at the tip of his nose. The two feelings he has not anticipated are the inexpressible after-sense of well-being that now magnifies everything into such tremendous—almost unbearable—beauty, and the terrible nostalgia that goes, he supposes, with any perfect love. For love it is, no doubt about it, the greatest he has ever known and the greatest, he’s sure, he’ll ever know. The unexpected beauty, the excruciating sadness, the intensity of his love, all seem oddly summed up in the silly country music swimming over them from the car radio. He knows now that, though neither of them like hillbilly stuff, it will be, in an inescapable way, their song, and that no matter where they are or who they’re married to, the song will recall for them this moment….

  White dove will mourn in sorrow,

  And the willows bow down their heads,

  I live my life in sorrow,

  Since Mother and Daddy are dea-ea-ead!

  Sooner or later, in a sad, a terrible, yet also beautiful moment, they will have to talk about religion, that impossible thing, bigger than both of them, cruel to their love, her Catholicism and his Protestantism, and, after that, sooner or later, they will have to tear themselves apart. Forever. Tears spring to the edges of his eyes. There are tears in her eyes, too, and he wonders if her thoughts are the same as his. “I love you,” he says. He kisses her long and tenderly, tragically, and though her whole body is available to him, his embrace is chaste and gentle, a promise of his eternal care for her. So beautiful is she, so virginal, so his … his white dove …

  As the years roll by I often wonder,

  Will we all be together some day?

  And each night as I wander through the graveyard,

  Darkness hides me where I kneel to pray!

  White dove will mourn in sorrow…

  Sainthood, ultimately, is a rising above—not only God—but the Destroyer as well. Saint Rahim, rigid, hungry, but supremely at one with the All, stares meditatively in front of him at springs and the red and blue stripes of a cotton mattress. Illusion at moments of remarkable distance. A great calm. Through discipline to pattern. Distantly, a toilet lid clunks carelessly against the enameled tank. Like a bell in the mind. Shattering of peace, but still the perception of pattern. Again—as always—his childhood washes over and through him here, like an infusion of raw guilt, imprecise as ever in the imagery it calls up, yet piercing in the accuracy of emotions aroused. Panic! This dust—! He twists, squirms, chokes. Then it passes. He sighs. In truth, he feels better just now than he has felt all day, his second to go without food. Just six more days, and they say it gets easier after the third day. He believes he can make it. Abstractly, he worries about his cats. They have also been subjected to a fast, but he is not certain they will survive the week. Except for Nyx. Nyx will survive. He smiles.

  Water running. Door hinges revolving. He turns his head, watches her bare feet pad wearily across the wooden floor. Poor dear child! She is very weak. He would give up speech, too, but cannot afford it, not even for her sake. He needs every word at his command to keep the others from faltering. God! he cannot stand alone! She arrives at the bed, pauses. She has forgotten to turn out the light. An urge to kiss her small toes—just a foot from his face—
leaps to his lips, but he overmasters it. Discipline is his greatest virtue. She curls a toe. Oh God! He starts to cry, clamps his hand between his teeth, bites down with all his strength. She turns toward the door, hesitating, as though measuring the distance. Then, mechanically, her small feet, under the hem of her tunic, pad back to the door. The light goes off. She no longer troubles to put the hook.

  Almost before he realizes it, her feet are near his face again. God! catches his breath, holds himself rigid. At last, she enters the bed. The mattress hardly sinks below her weight now, so thin is she. He reaches up, strokes the gentle depression. Calm returns. He waits for her to sleep. The perfect man is the motionless cause.

  2

  The news of the mine closing broke on Monday and Sal Ferrero came by Tuesday morning, the fourteenth. Vince was up on the ladder. He had stirred up the old paint, was just putting a new coat over the patch he’d started on the south side nearly a month before. He knew what Sal wanted to talk about, so he hooked the bucket on the top of the ladder, crawled down. They had known it was coming, everybody had known it for weeks, but still it had hit them hard. “It’s awful,” he said. He pulled out his handkerchief, wiped the paint off his hands.

  “It’s a real blow, Vince.”

  “I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do.” He stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket, shaking his head thoughtfully. “Care for a beer, Sal?”

  Sal looked at his watch. Poor guy seemed lost. “Pretty early,” he said. “But, hell, okay.” They walked up on the porch, Vince’s four-fingered hand clapped on Sal’s narrow shoulders.

  “How about a couple beers, chicken?” Vince called in through the screen door. They eased themselves into chairs like tired old beat-up men. Vince fumbled in his pocket, found a half-smoked cigar butt, stuck it in his cheeks. “Well, goddamn it, I knew they’d do it, Sal.”

  “I know.” He sighed, pulling one big ear absently. Looking at his old friend closely, Vince saw for the first time that Sal was getting to be an old man.

  Etta came out with the beers, but today there wasn’t any of the usual kidding around. Sal and Etta looked at each other, shook their heads in troubled silence, and she went back in. Last night, she cried for over an hour; in fact, she’d hardly stopped crying since Charlie pulled out without a word Sunday afternoon. She was some better today, but still pretty glum.

  “Well,” said Sal, sipping at the beer, “I suppose they did what they had to do.”

  “I tell you what they had to do, Sal. They had to think about us, the people of this community, that’s what they by God had to do! Instead of fretting how much they were gonna suck outa here—no, Sal, they ain’t no excuse! It’s high time we started fighting back!”

  Sal nodded. Poor guy was really down in the dumps. Vince felt bad, but somehow not as bad as he probably ought to.

  “Sure leaves us high and dry, Vince.”

  “You said it—and now with all this Brunist shit—Jesus!”

  “Sure is getting wild, all right.”

  “Wild ain’t the word. Did you see that story Tiger published last night about them people who got together naked and whipped themselves all bloody, and how they got ahold of some little virgin girl and made a big mess outa her?”

  “No, I musta missed that. I hardly noticed anything except about the mine closing.”

  “Well, there was a white bird in this story, too, or maybe they called themselves a ‘White Dove Gang’ or something, but the awful thing was how they take this girl and tell her she is the Mother of God, see, and they strip her naked and spread her on the altar.” All the while Vince read it, he kept seeing his daughter Angie there, and it made him so mad he wanted to cry. “Then they have a big ceremony and everybody whips her and screws her, just a little virgin, see, who doesn’t know what’s happening.”

  “That’s pretty awful, Vince.”

  “Wait! You ain’t heard the worst! If she gets knocked up, they strip her again and stick her in a barrel of water. Then they chop off the little kid’s left tit and close up the bloody goddamn hole with a hot iron!”

  “Jesus Christ! You mean this was in the newspaper?”

  “I’m telling you, Sal! But the point is, they chop this tit up and eat it, see, just like it was the Host—”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “Wait! That’s not all! If she has a boy, why, they say that this is the Savior, and they take this little newborn baby and they stab it and drink its blood. Then they dry up the body and beat it to powder, and, Sal, they make bread outa that powder and they eat that, too!”

  “Have you still got that paper?”

  “Sure, I saved it.”

  “But you mean these Brunist people are doing things like that? Why, that’s horrible, Vince! I didn’t realize—”

  “Well, this wasn’t the Brunists, this was some people in Russia a hundred years or so ago, but the point is, like Miller is virtually saying, Sal, in the end, they’re all the same.”

  “It kinda shakes you up, doesn’t it?”

  “And Jesus, right there in the goddamn newspaper, Sal! I didn’t see it at first, it was Angie who found it, and she got all hysterical, why, it was just awful.”

  “It is awful. Jesus, I don’t think they should print stuff like that, Vince. Not where young kids can see it and get ideas.”

  “I’m not kidding, Sal, sometimes I feel like going down there myself and breaking that sonuvabitch Miller’s neck.”

  “It sure seems funny how all of this is fitting together, all this horrible stuff and the mine closing down and the bad times, all that Black Hand trouble we was having, and now, Jesus, all these goddamn newspeople pouring in here, why, the streets are full of them, and they’re just here to make us out a bunch of fools!”

  “Don’t I know it?” Vince pulled the unlit butt out of his mouth, stared at it a moment in disgust, pitched it out toward the street.

  “I suppose more guys than ever will be moving on now,” Sal said. “Looks like old West Condon is all washed up.”

  Vince slammed the rocker arm with his palm so hard it surprised even him and made Sal nearly spill his beer. “We can’t let it die, Sal, we just can’t, goddamn it!” He’d show them the way, by God, he’d find it and show them all. “It’s our town, Sal, and if it dies, we die with it!” Sal shrugged. “Hey! you ain’t figuring on bugging out on me, too, are you?”

  Sal grinned, pulled his ear. “No, I suppose not. I’m too goddamn tired to go anywhere.” He sighed. “Sure is funny how a dump like this can grow on you.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that,” Vince agreed.

  “Here we are, Vince, a couple old displaced dagos who’ve got nothing but trouble and the runaround in this damn town, and still, when the chips are down, we can’t seem to let go of it.”

  “I been thinking about that lately, Sal. I been thinking a man ain’t born with an attachment to the soil, like they say, or even to a piece of it, he just sort of picks it up as he goes along.”

  “You been making too many goddamn speeches,” Sal said.

  Vince laughed, downed the rest of his beer. “I tell you the truth, Sal. I been enjoying this work with the Committee.”

  “So we’ve noticed.”

  “Go ahead, wise off, you bastard, but it’s been a good thing for me. Somehow—I don’t know—but somehow, growing up in an immigrant home and all, I just always had a kind of oddball idea about this place, like I was being kept here against my will and the town was a bunch of goddamn foreigners I didn’t understand and never could.” He paused, leaned back in the rocker, wiped the beer foam from his lip. “But I’ve got so I can see things better, Sal. I’ve caught on to what makes this town tick. Sometimes, goddamn it, I feel like I been fighting the wrong damn fights all this time.”

  “Well, you got the right kind of friends, Vince.”

  “Yeah, maybe … but, hell,” grinned Vince, “you’re one of them, ain’t you?”

  Three of his new friends came by
that afternoon, Ted Cavanaugh, Burt Robbins, and Reverend Wesley Edwards of the First Presbyterian. Just in case Ted might drop over, Vince had quit the painting project and cleaned up, now felt smug about his foresight. “We don’t think it will do much good frankly,” Ted said, “but we thought it was at least worth a try to call on Ralph Himebaugh, Dr. Norton, and the Meredith boy. Want to come along?”

  “Sure. I’ll go tell Etta.”

  In the car, on their way downtown, Vince in the back with the minister, Robbins brown-nosing Cavanaugh up front, Ted told them about some of the latest incidents: Mrs. Norton talking to herself on the street, the Palmers boy getting thrown out of school on bad conduct yesterday, and the Easter Sunday burning of one of Widow Harlowe’s cats, which looked like a revival of the Black Hand activities, maybe even an inside revenge for her having weakened last Friday.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Vince said with a shudder, and his missing finger tingled. Catching himself, he started to apologize to the minister, but the guy smiled and shook his head. Likable man, small fellow with a deep hairline, piercing gaze, nervous mouth, very bright.

  “We want to be reasonable,” Ted was saying, “but we want them to know what the limits of our tolerance are. If they want to persist in their destructive ways, well, they’re free to do so, but we’d rather they didn’t do it here. We can’t afford it.”

  That sounded more like it. Vince was in the mood to kick somebody’s ass out of town. The minister had a pipe stoked up; Ted and Burt had cigarettes going. Vince regretted having forgot his cigars in the anxiety not to hold anybody up. Maybe Ted guessed it: he handed a cigar back over his shoulder. Great guy. “Thanks, Ted.” The minister lit it for him.

  “Why don’t we just ask the Nortons to get out?” Robbins suggested. “They’re outsiders anyhow.”