Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  “Well,” the minister said, “I think we want to give them every chance to mitigate their views and become absorbed once more in the community life. Our task is not so much to chastise or threaten, as to define for them what it means to be a West Condoner.”

  “Exactly!” said Ted. “Whatever we do, we’ve got to take it easy. We don’t want them to be able to use anything against us. Oh, incidentally, you fellows might like to read this,” he added, passing a letter back.

  It was addressed to the mayor, came from a man named Wild in a town over in the next state. The guy was bitching about his son’s getting spooky letters from Mrs. Norton, trying to get the boy to leave home, come to West Condon before the 19th. He told how they’d had to boot her out of Carlyle about a year or so ago, and warned the mayor that she was a complete nut and had a perverted interest in young boys. “Whew! Pretty hot stuff!” Vince commented, handing the letter to the minister.

  Ted parked in front of Savings and Loan, and they walked up to the second floor where Himebaugh had his law office. “He was here about an hour ago,” Ted whispered on the stairs. “If he’s gone, we’ll try his house.”

  But he was there, cleaning papers out of file cabinets and desk drawers, dumping them indiscriminately into a large trash basket. He looked up at them, smiled oddly. “Good afternoon, gentlemen! How have you been?”

  “Good to see you again, Ralph!” Ted beamed. “Ralph, you know Burt, Wes. This is Vince Bonali—”

  “Glad to know you, Mr. Himebaugh.”

  “My pleasure, I assure you.”

  What odd words these were! Things you said every day, but now they had such a weird ring, ghostly. “What are you throwing away there?” Vince asked, to get the ball rolling.

  “Oh, damage suits, Mr. Bonali. Wills. Liquor licenses.” Vince had heard the guy was shy, but if so, he hardly showed it now. Bright humorous gleam in his eyes, bold gestures, firm handshake. Kind of tremble there, though. “Did you gentlemen ever stop to consider how inutterably absurd our legal institutions are?”

  “Sure, lots of times!” laughed Ted easily. “I don’t know who’s more absurd, though, the institutions or the damned attorneys who invent them!”

  The lawyer smiled faintly, but something seemed to give way. He sat down, motioned them to chairs. They remained standing.

  “Of course, there’s an element of the absurd in every institution, isn’t there, Ralph?” Reverend Edwards asked. “Any society is a kind of jerryrig at best, and it’s hard to think of one without the compromises that make it seem absurd.”

  “Yes,” Himebaugh agreed. His fingers were pressed together prayerlike in front of him and they trembled. “That’s how it usually seems to turn out, all right.” A kind of smile jumped to his face, jumped away. “But no more.”

  “But that’s pretty much what it means to be a man, isn’t it, Ralph?” Ted asked. “Holding on to one’s beliefs on the one hand, one’s ideals, and on the other, accommodating oneself to the institution, making changes in it where it seems—”

  “No, not at all!” snapped the lawyer. He leaned forward on one unsteady elbow, and his lips seemed to flush pink. Kind of flutter in the thick brows as he looked up at them. The guy looked in pretty bad shape, now that Vince observed more closely. Awful thin. “To be a whole man is to be at one with the—”

  “Aw, come on, Ralph,” Robbins cut in. “Let’s talk plain. All Ted’s trying to say is a guy can believe what he wants to believe, and still get along with—”

  “You can’t know one thing and act otherwise,” the lawyer said. Precise enunciation, tremulous undercurrent. The total insane calm of the man and his weird shifty eyes were beginning to get to all four of them. “You can’t know that fire burns and put your hand into it.”

  “No? Well, goddamn it, Ralph,” Cavanaugh said gruffly, “that seems to me just what the hell you’re doing!”

  The lawyer smiled, lips quivering. “Maybe I’ve gone the next step. Maybe I’ve found out that fire doesn’t burn, after all.”

  “Oh, hell, Himebaugh!” Robbins said. “Don’t you see, we’re here to help you get out of this thing.”

  “I don’t want help. I don’t need help.” No smiles now. Very white. Very goddamn sick.

  “Well, man, it’s now or never. Don’t expect us to come around Monday to give you a hand when you’ve got this whole town ready to ride you out on a rail—”

  “There won’t be a Monday, you fools!” Himebaugh cried. He leaped up, grabbed a pile of papers, heaved them at them. A folder struck Vince right on the bridge of his nose, made his eyes smart. He moved in, fists doubled, but Ted held him back. “Get out! Get out!” the lawyer screamed. Threw more heaps of paper. Jesus, he was really cracking up! Paper flying everywhere like a goddamn flock of mad birds let loose. “Get out, I say! Get out, you fools, or I’ll kill you!” Banging of cabinet doors. His screams echoed. Waste-basket rattled off a wall. “I’ll kill you!” They heard him screaming like that all the way out to the street.

  On the way to the Nortons, they talked about it. Even Ted was shocked, and they all noticed how his health had deteriorated. Vince, embarrassed by the tears, repeated several times how the folder had caught him square on the nose. “I felt like laying into that guy right then and there!” he boomed. “Good thing you held me back, Ted!”

  It was already dusk when they stepped heavy-footed onto the Nortons’ front porch, knocked. Dr. Norton came to the door. Looked like they might have waked him up. “Hello, fellows, come on in.” Soft gentle voice. You could hardly hear him. Vince started forward, but Ted, holding his ground, blocked him.

  “I don’t think it will take us long to say what we’ve come to say, Dr. Norton,” Ted said.

  Norton’s wife, the schoolteacher Vince had driven in from the coalmine one day a couple months or so ago, stepped up behind the veterinarian. “What is it, Wylie?”

  “These men …”

  “We just came to say it might be better for you and for everybody,” Robbins said, “if you just sort of moved on.”

  “Now, wait a moment, Mr. Robbins,” the minister interrupted. “I think we want to give Dr. and Mrs. Norton every opportunity to reconsider the whole thing. You see, Dr. Norton, we—that is, all of us here in West Condon—have become concerned about certain activities which, we feel, are not in the best interests of—”

  “Why, gentlemen!” laughed Mrs. Norton. “All this has happened before!”

  “How’s that?” asked Reverend Edwards, biting down on his lower lip.

  “Look, Wylie! the dark one!” Vince broke into a strange sweat under her excited gaze. She smiled at him. “We are not going to leave.”

  “Well,” said Reverend Edwards, “that’s what I’m trying—”

  “We have been expecting you. We have been pursued by you all our lives, and we knew that you would find us here. But we have been brought here to consummate our life’s work, and we are never going to run again. We are not afraid.”

  Robbins’ neck was blushing red, a sure sign. “Maybe you better think again—”

  “We are going to the Mount of Redemption on Sunday to await the Coming of the Light. I hope you gentlemen will find it in your hearts to join us there. Now, go away and bother us no more. Wash the earth from your hands and feet and cast your eyes to the limitless stars!”

  “That’s nutty!” said Robbins. “Show ’em the letter.”

  “Forget it,” said Cavanaugh. He showed by his look, his back turned coldly on the Nortons, that he considered it a lost cause.

  They made one final call. And this one worked. At the orphanage, Reverend Edwards and Ted Cavanaugh pinned the Meredith kid in one lamplit corner. The old hotbox technique. Vince himself had used it in the union organizing days. Meredith was a pansy and it didn’t take much to break him. Suddenly, in a flood of tears, he said he was sorry, it was all wrong, embraced Cavanaugh like a father, disclaimed the Brunists, said they’d been persecuting him from the start, hinted they might have b
een whipping him, and, in fear of them, he asked to be hidden away. Reverend Edwards, deeply moved, offered his home for the rest of the week. The boy wept gratefully, then cheered up, became even joyful on the ride to the Presbyterian manse, and it made them all feel good. Won one!

  Or so they thought. That night, Tuesday, not only the goddamn local paper and the city papers were headlining the Brunist story, but it was even featured on the six o’clock televised newscast. Helicopter movies of West Condon and the coalmine, blown-up stills of some of Tiger Miller’s photos, and the announcer saying: “In this placid little American community of West Condon, a small band of devout believers, calling themselves followers of the coalminer-prophet Giovanni Bruno, believe that on Sunday evening, the nineteenth of April, the world will end. In expectation of their own salvation, they will gather on this little knoll here, near the Deepwater Number Nine coalmine, where only three months ago an explosion and fire killed ninety-seven men. From that catastrophe, on Sunday, January eleventh, one man was rescued, this man—”

  “Daddy!” Angie called out from her bedroom and he nearly went a foot up off his chair. “Listen to this!”

  She threw open her door, the radio turned up fullblast. Cheap country-style music, badly sung. “What’s that?” he asked. She’d taken lately to listening to a lot of that crap, especially the morbid ones about dead people, not excluding dead daddies.

  “The Brunists!” she cried. “They’re singing!”

  Do not think that God’s Chosen are the mighty!

  Do not think that God’s Elect are the high!

  Just remember the stories in your Bible:

  ’Tis the humble whom God doth glorify!

  Think of Moses, discovered in a river!

  Think of Jesus, a carpenter’s son!

  Think of Bruno, a humble coalminer!

  ’Tis the poor by whom God’s battles are won!

  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…

  “I’ll be goddamned!” Vince said, and hurried away midchorus to the phone. “Hello, Ted? Vince here. Hey, turn on your radio! The Brunists are singing! They’re on TV, too!”

  “Jesus Christ, what next! Vince, I’ve got some bad news.”

  “Yeah?” Felt the hair on his neck stand up.

  “The Meredith boy. Wes Edwards just phoned in a panic to tell me the kid has slashed his wrists with a razor. He’s in the hospital.”

  “Jeee-zuss God All-mighty!” Took the wind right out of him. “Is it bad?”

  “No, Doc Lewis told Wes it looked very much like the boy’s done it before. Apparently he doesn’t do it to kill himself. But we can’t let go of him now. If he got back to the Brunists, he’d probably try to make murderers of us, or worse, the state of mind he’s in. We’re sending him up to a state hospital tonight. But, listen, Vince, not a word! Miller will probably find out, but if he or anybody asks, you know nothing, okay?”

  “Sure, Ted. But Jesus, what a bad break!”

  “Nobody’s fault. We might even have saved the boy’s life. No telling what he might have done after Sunday night. But we don’t want Wes Edwards to get mixed up in this if we can help it, and so it’s just as well the Brunists don’t know how he ended up over there. Anyway, he’ll be up there a good while, so there’s no worry about him Sunday night. Just let’s hope Miller doesn’t get wind of it.”

  Fat chance. Headlines Wednesday night: BRUNIST KIDNAPPED! COLIN MEREDITH DISAPPEARS FROM WEST CONDON! TREATED AT HOSPITAL FOR INJURIES OR POSSIBLE SUICIDE! LAST SEEN AT HOME OF REV. WESLEY EDWARDS! And so on, big scare stuff. Phone rang. Thinking it was Ted, he answered it. “Mr. Bonali, this is CBS calling. We understand you were with the missing Meredith boy yesterday afternoon, just before his disappearance. Can you tell us—?” In a panic he hung up. Jesus! Kidnapping—that’s FBI stuff, isn’t it? He told Etta to answer the phone, ask who was calling, and if it wasn’t Ted, to say he wasn’t home.

  He switched on the TV and—wham!—there was Mrs. Norton’s funny little face. Every now and then, as she turned her head different angles, the floods beamed off her glasses and caused a kind of leap of light around her head. “We do not know what has happened to him. Our … sources, our sources at the higher aspects have informed us that he has fallen into the hands of the powers of darkness. We are … deeply hurt and concerned, but we are not surprised. We have all suffered threats upon our lives and upon our health. We are praying for his deliverance.”

  Announcer: “Mrs. Norton, do you have any idea who these powers, uh, these powers of darkness might be?”

  Mrs. Norton: “Yes!” She paused, fingering a little medallion on her breast that flicked light back at the lens like a secret code. Vince started right up in his chair, felt a cold sweat in the small of his back. She was looking right at him. “All of you!” she said.

  Feeling shaky, he called Ted, and Ted told him to relax, the entire story was being released, that he himself was taking all the responsibility, and that he would be by to see him the next morning. Final meeting of the Common Sense Committee tomorrow night. That calmed Vince down—Jesus! Ted was a great guy!—but he was still pretty restless. He paced the room, trapped by the Brunists: newspaper headlines black as death, their goddamn faces on television, and—blam!—Angie threw open her door again, and there they were:

  Come all ye who seek your salvation!

  Come all who would stand upon God’s Land!

  Come and march to the Mount of Redemption,

  For the end of all things is at hand!

  So, hark ye to the White Bird of Glory …!

  Ted’s message the next day, the sixteenth, was to cool it. But Vince was feeling so goddamn high, he knew it wouldn’t be easy. He had splurged on a bottle of whiskey, good stuff, in anticipation of Ted’s visit, but Ted had turned it down. Too early in the day, he said. Vince, who had already poured his own to make the offering of it more natural, felt a little awkward himself with a glass of whiskey in his hand at ten in the goddamn morning, but he lied that he usually took a bracer in the mornings. He hoped he hadn’t made some kind of mistake. Jesus! the thing hit him like seven hundred blazing bicarbonates!

  Ted showed him their release on the Meredith boy. The boy had come to them, it claimed, in fear of reprisals from members of the Brunist group, whose fanaticism he had come to abhor, and had asked for protection. He had wept gratefully when Reverend Edwards, approached on the matter, had generously welcomed the boy to his own home. But, evidently distraught by the experiences of the preceding weeks and fearing that attempts might be made against his life, he had cut his wrists with a razor, although not seriously. He was now being cared for in a hospital distant from West Condon, the name of which was not being divulged for the present for the boy’s own protection. Hah! “That should keep them quiet!” Vince said.

  “Well,” said Ted, “it’s mainly the truth, after all.”

  “Yeah,” Vince said, remembering the hotbox. Swallowed down the whiskey belches. Wondered whether to suffer the stuff gradually, or just throw it down. “And so tonight at the meeting, you want me to ask everybody to stay at home.”

  “Right. Not much hope they will, but we can try.” Ted paused, grinned. “I don’t want to give you stagefright or anything, Rockduster, but I should warn you that the meeting is being covered by radio, news chains, and television across the country.”

  That put Vince at the verge of a bowel movement, but outwardly he remained calm. He even shrugged. And he was pleased that Ted still remembered his first CSC speech.

  “You know, Vince, I’d like to make the meeting so goddamned straightforward, so goddamned plain and sensible, that it will bore those cheap corrupt headline-hunters to death, and they’ll pack up and get out of here.”

  Vince laughed, toned it: little too harsh maybe. Didn’t know why he felt so goddamn nervous today,
sensation that something was—he looked out at the big red Lincoln: it was the connection. Today they broke the connection. “I wish we could’ve stopped it, Ted.”

  “So do I, Vince. But I don’t see what more we could have done. We’ve at least contained it, and even cut them down one. I frankly doubt that that little handful of people can do us much harm, no matter how hard Tiger Miller strains. Now, our main worry is just to keep everybody calmed down, away from that hill, minimize the effect Sunday, and then try to get over it. Of course, things could get worse. If they do, I’ll give you a call.”

  “I’ll stay by the phone, Ted. Isn’t there anything else we can do meanwhile?”

  “I don’t know what. I tried to cajole Whimple into arresting Bruno on grounds of suspected insanity, but he didn’t have the nerve.”

  Vince glanced up, found Ted’s cool eyes fixed on him. He lowered his gaze, took a slow drink of whiskey. “Not a bad idea,” he said. “He should’ve done it.” Then he added: “I sure as hell would’ve.”

  “Speaking of Whimple, Vince,” Ted continued, “I wonder if you’d do us the favor of asking for a vote of thanks for him tonight at the meeting, for him and Father Baglione and Reverend Edwards.”

  “Sure.” Fixed his jaw in a kind of mockery.

  “Oh hell, I know, Vince, they’re not the ones who have put out on this job, but that’s the game we play.” There was a pause. It was now or never. Vince gazed thoughtfully into his whiskey glass. “You might be interested in knowing, though, that they’re setting up a Mayor’s Special Commission on Industrial Planning. I’ve nominated you for a spot on it.”

  Vince nodded, stroked his chin, looked up at Ted. “Thanks,” he said. “I’d like that.”

  Ted shrugged. “Nothing to thank me for, Vince. You’re the right man for the job, that’s all. Probably be about eight of us. Not too much in the way of rewards, twenty or so a month probably, but it might lead to some good things.” Ted stood.