Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  Freshly showered, richly fed, mildly drunk, the phone unplugged, the doors locked, and the blinds pulled, Happy Bottom and the West Condon Tiger lay face to fork, listening to the merry secular twang of Yogi Bear on the bedroom television, each contemplating in his/her own way that peculiar piece of anatomy toward which he/she was so relentlessly drawn, tasting it, toying with it, slowly drifting out of this time and this place, out of particularity toward union with the One. Classical copulation, belly to belly, was of course the true magical experience: the illusion of having solved the Great Mystery, simply because the parts seemed to fit. Antipodally, on the other hand, the parts no longer fit, and analogues had to be improvised. But, thus stripped of magic, it was closer to a pure mystical experience, for contemplation of the mystery was direct, enhanced by the strange fact that one could not imagine the thoughts of one’s partner, since one could not, without repugnance, imagine the partner’s perspective, being able only to feel—literally—the other’s hunger and excitement, the other’s joy. Though each knew, better even than any part of himself/herself, that concavity/convexity that he/she kissed, it nevertheless remained utterly unimaginable to him/her, impossible, always incredibly new. A tasty cornflakes commercial was the ding-dong epithalamium that accompanied their gradual ascent into blessedness. Happy’s thighs twitched, kicked, cuffed his ears, her bottom leapt, her fingers scurried, burrowed, clawed, kneaded, her mouth raged—

  “This man, Giovanni Bruno, was born thirty-four years ago next November, the fourth child of five of Antonio Bruno, an immigrant Italian coalminer, and his wife Emilia. Three months ago—or to be precise, fourteen Sundays ago tomorrow—he was rescued from a mine disaster that killed ninety-seven men. Tomorrow, he and a band of devout followers anticipate the end of the world. The astonishing story of the Brunists of West Condon, after this message …”

  Miller recognized it. He had written it. He’d forgot it was to be televised tonight. If Happy noticed his sudden distraction, she gave no sign of it. Unless an increased fervency was in fact a sign—

  “… Little is known of Giovanni Bruno’s boyhood, but that is not to say that it was uneventful. It was a time of physical and psychological insecurity, a time of anti-union violence and inter-union wars, a time of Ku-Klux Klan persecutions of immigrant Catholics, and particularly of Italians, of whom, by 1920, there were more than twice as many working the American coal beds as any other nationality. It was a time when coalmines were closing and jobs were few. Then came the crash of 1929, and by 1933, West Condon’s largest industry was relief. West Condon then was a town of intense poverty, of hatred and suspicion, of prohibition gangsterism, of corruption and lawlessness. The mines still operating paid fifty cents an hour at the coalface, and life at that face was miserable and precarious. Death came quickly and brutally, and families such as the Brunos lived in its shadow. It came by fire, by falling rock and coal, by powder and methane explosions, by the crushing impact of mine cars and locomotives, by falls down shafts. Knees swelled, spines were broken, arms were crushed, lungs were scarred, eyes lost their vision. Both of Giovanni Bruno’s brothers were killed in the mines, and his father was made a virtual invalid the last ten years of his life …”

  Losing it, the ascendant thrust, the flight from the immediate, Miller wondered if he should risk breaking their convulsive circle to go turn the goddamn set off. But, as he pulled his head back, Happy flashed out with her top thigh, rolled him to his back, pinning him, and down fell the mighty hero of the sun, undone by the dragon Ouroboros, primordial and true….

  “… Like all his family before him, Giovanni Bruno, too, left school at an early age and entered the mines. Here you see him as he appeared in his high school class photo. He was considered, by the principal, John Bradley, a poor student, withdrawn and friendless.” [John Bradley: “Yes, I remember the boy well. He was never in any trouble, and he seemed intelligent enough, but he was poorly adjusted. When he left school at the legal age of sixteen, he still had not completed what we consider freshman or ninth grade work. He was—how shall I put it?—he was peculiar.”] “About that same time, Giovanni suffered what was apparently a sudden revolt from orthodox Roman Catholicism. Until then unusually devout, spending most of his free time in the Church, serving first as an altar boy, then as lay assistant to the right Reverend Battista Baglione here in West Condon, he suddenly separated himself from the Church and has not been known to have set foot inside it during these subsequent sixteen or seventeen years.” [Father Baglione: “Yes, I t’ink, uh, de ’eresy, yes, is cause, uh, by de, uh, de pride.”]

  Those mountains, their valley twice pierced, now pitched, plunged, even as though angry, displaying against the gray-green wall beyond their vibrant silhouette of a rounded M, and in him a dark inscrutable river ran fast and deep …

  “… If he entered the mines to seek companionship, however, he did not find it. Deepwater Number Nine Coalmine supervisor Barney Davis recalls that he was a listless worker, did not participate in union activities or attend meetings, was not well liked.” [Barney Davis: “He didn’t get along with anybody. Nobody wanted to work with him. Even his escape from disaster last January was a sign of this isolation. There were seven guys barricaded in that room. Six of them were together and they died. Bruno lay a ways off from them, and he lived. Maybe he had more oxygen, since he didn’t have to share it with anybody. The only guy in the mine who took pity on him was his working buddy Ely Collins. Reverend Collins.”] “Ely Collins, an evangelist preacher of the Church of the Nazarene, was one of those six men who died, trapped in that same space with Giovanni Bruno … but not before he had managed to write a brief note to his wife, Mrs. Clara Collins.” [Clara Collins: “‘I disobeyed and I know I must die. Listen always to the Holy Spirit in your Hearts. Abide in grace—’”]

  And then the dams began to break, the mountains to crumble, the walls to fall, all the fountains of the great deep to burst forth, and the windows of heaven to open …

  “… God in His mercy … a white bird … found him in a … Virgin Mary … message from the tomb … attractive softspoken girl born … unavailable for comment … able to pass on this good news to all the world …”

  Has she slept again? Was she awake before? The chill is gone, the tunic lowered. The house is silent. Silent? Marcella rises.

  Miller woke, still on his back. The room was dark, but for the image pitched by the television set, enough to enable him to make out the bluish billowing terrain of Happy’s bottom beside him. Something was missing. Announcer: “When it’s time to relax, time for a smoke, enjoy the real American flavor, the natural mildness, the kingsize satisfaction …” He, leaning out: “Aha.” She: “Don’t rock the boat.”

  Marcella finds the house empty. Signs throughout of a sudden departure. Even her mother and brother are gone. Gone! A cry leaps to her throat. Can it be? It is coming! They forgot her! They have left her behind! She runs out the door. Gone! They have all gone! She is alone! Alone in the darkness! Wait! Wait!

  The television off, bedlamp on, cold drink beside him, enjoying a smoke, belly down and Happy Bottom astride, giving him a really tremendous rubdown, he mused: “You know, the appeal of Noah is not the Ark or the rescue.”

  “No?”

  She was being sarcastic, but he went on. “They just added that stuff to make the story credible.”

  “Aha.”

  That was worse than sarcasm, that was outright mockery, but still he went on. “No, it’s the righteous destruction, that’s what it’s all about. We’re all Noahs.”

  “Why”—as though astonished—“that’s true!”

  And still he went on. “So, see, the excitement of the disaster is over unless new destruction is possible. If Noah has three sons, one and preferably two have to become corrupt, so that we can—”

  Abruptly, she backed off and cracked his ass mightily, a kingsize belt that made him drop his smoke—grabbed it up, but not before he’d put a neat brown hole in the sheet. And then she c
racked the other cheek and said, “And this is the sign of my covenant!” At which time, in view of the way things stood, he stubbed out the cigarette.

  Running on the mine road, she can see their fire ahead. On the Mount. She hardly feels the ruts stabbing her bare feet, hardly notices the night’s damp chill, ignores the binding cramp in her chest, the lightness in her head. Will she be on time? Oh wait! And then she seems to see light, even to feel—yes! it is coming! Surging up behind. She races desperately against its advance. The light grows, gathers, enlarges. Ahead of her, always just ahead of her, spreading, filling the—the fire on the Mount is out! She cannot make it! Oh please! She sees her shadow as the light sweeps down on her from behind. She tries to enclose herself in its sweep. She spreads wide her arms to hold it back. Suddenly: lights spring up before her! out of nowhere! lights on all sides! flooding the world! she in its center! It comes! she cries. God is here! she laughs. And she spins whirls embraces light leaps heaving her bathing in light her washes and as she flows laughs His Presence light! stars burst sky burns with absolute laugh light! and

  4

  For I am the least of the apostles,

  that am not meet to be called an apostle,

  because I persecuted the Church of God.

  But by the grace of God

  I am what I am….

  Abner Baxter stood brooding and crestfallen in the ditch over the battered body. Blood glistened yet in dark drools from mouth to ears, and the bright glitter had not yet departed from her open eyes. How many cars had struck her, he did not know, but he knew one that had. Lights sliced damply now through the night air and the country silence was laced with the shrieks and moans of men and women alike. A doctor pronounced her dead, and a great threnodial plaint went up. The prophet knelt to kiss her and rose with blood staining his lips, his face drawn with grief. A woman, the doctor’s wife, indeed the very woman who two months before had inveighed against him in the prophet’s house, now scourged him with lacerating cries of “murderer!” and “fiend!” and a hostile passion smoldered and grew in that great multitude. Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, Abner found that the will to resist had left him utterly. He had left his wife Sarah blubbering in the car, had marched boldly back down the mine road, past the shocked and stricken faces, in the ruthless beams of light, down the road to where he’d struck her, had seen her from the lip of the ditch lying at the bottom like a crumpled bird, lights from wrecked cars illuminating spectrally her small body, and with strength still, and with calm presence of mind, had strode down into this ditch, here to arrive standing still while others bent over her, here to see her twitch and die … and now it was done. Sister Clara Collins stood there, across the body from him, watching him. The doctor bent over the girl still, along with that Wosznik fellow and several others. Of his own people, Abner alone was there. Which was as it should be. The others wept. He would have too, perhaps, but something restrained him: a sense of propriety maybe, as though … as though he had no right. Those terrible texts which had been troubling him these past weeks, those passages which spoke of the rebellion which must precede Christ’s return, now sprang forth in his mind, augmenting his affliction. Apologies formed on his tongue, but he seemed incapable of speech. He stood by the dead child in the midst of that mantling hysteria and execration and waited—for what? Perhaps: to be slain. “Monster!” shrieked that maddened woman. “Butcher!”

  “No, friends! We’re all murderers!” From a quarter least expected: it was Sister Clara Collins, ennobled, it would seem, by her own great griefs, and thus less undone by this present one, who now spoke forth boldly: “We all killed her with our hate and with our fear!” And he recognized the magnitude of it, the greatness of spirit, and he was stirred in the soul and much amazed. She stared then at his face, and Abner gave her much to read there, if she could but discern it. “Abner,” she said softly, softly though her voice carried far in the night air and stilled the lamentations, “this awful thing is a judgment on us—Please! Join hands with us now and pray!”

  And he reached across and accepted Clara’s hand, and as he did so, a great warmth surged through him—for all things are cleansed with blood, he thought, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission—and then, unleashed, the tears flowed.

  “… And knowin’ that in the Last Days grievous times must come, help us to take heart, and, as Brother Abner hisself has taught us, Lord, to fergit the things which are behind, and stretchin’ forward to the things which are before, help us to press on….”

  And with a great lightening of his heart, he perceived that, though a terrible thing was upon them and many would despair, he, Abner Baxter, would march in the vanguard and give them strength, and he foresaw the great and holy march upon the morrow, he like these, in a pure-white tunic, foresaw the massing on the Mount of the mighty army of the sons of light, foresaw the smiting of the wicked and the destruction of the temples, foresaw the glory….

  Amens were shouted and songs were sung and people wept and embraced one another and his own tears, he saw, were dampening the shoulder of Sister Clara’s tunic, and for just that moment he felt a boy again and wished to fold himself forever in her embrace, but then it was Brother Ben Wosznik whose arm was around his shoulders and then a pale stout man named Brother Hiram and he saw his own wife Sarah come running down the ditch and into Clara’s arms—“Oh Sister Clara! God help us!”

  “Children!” cried Sister Clara. “It is the last hour! God has called us to redemption! The battle lines is formed and the last struggle is commenced!”

  “Destroyers are come upon all the bare heights in the wilderness!” Abner cried out then through his tears, finding voice. “For the sword of God devoureth from the one end of the land even unto the other end of the land! No flesh has got peace!”

  “The darkness is passing! the hour is at hand! and the dead they shall hark to the White Bird of Grace and Glory and them that hear shall live!”

  “Amen!”

  “We shall live!”

  And the stout man raised his hand and lifted his soft chin, tears streaming down his round cheeks, and Sister Clara cried, “Brother Hiram Clegg!”

  “And henceforth,” he proclaimed, “them that have wives may be as though they had none, and them that weep as though they wept not, and them that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and them that use the world as though they used it not, for the fashion of this world, it is passing away!”

  And then up rose the woman who had so newly reviled him, and she cried out, “Go! says the prophet. Stand on high! Look thee toward the east! It comes!”

  “Now!”

  “Christ Jesus!”

  “March!”

  “Repent!”

  “It is coming!”

  “Save us!”

  They lifted up the body.

  O the powers of darkness tremble and with fear their hearts do fill,

  As the sons of light go marching out to stand upon that Hill

  Beneath the Cross and Circle to fulfill God’s blessed Will!

  For the end of time has come!

  So come and march with us to Glory!

  Oh, come and march with us to Glory!

  Yes, come and march with us to Glory!

  For the end of time has come!

  5

  Mid-Sunday dreams. Not all peaceful. Races against old deadlines. Missing trains and planes. Bags, badly packed, falling open on busy platforms. All of them lucid, but disjointed. Trying to straighten them out, he woke. Then back down again. Sounds from the television, Happy’s adjacent body, daylight squeezing past the blinds, the twisted sheets, all these entered in, and though he was always conveniently far from this place and time, there was still a nagging need to be doing something he was neglecting, to get somewhere before it was too late, all of which, during semiconscious spells, he understood only too well. Once he was racing on a bicycle on an old dirt road. Then it was a car. Hairy turns, torn-up roads, horrible precipices, t
remendous speed he couldn’t seem to control. As though in the sky above there were parenthetical comments being made by a television announcer, who called him “His Eminence Justin Miller” and once “His Promontory” just for laughs. The situation of this announcer was peculiar and he woke finally in the aura of that peculiarity: for the announcer, while ostensibly describing the race, if that’s what it was, neither explained accurately to the audience what “His Eminence” was doing, nor did he reveal to Miller the precise structure of the race, or how or why in fact he’d got into it. Perhaps it was night. Certainly, later, it was night. He was in a church-camp, having driven there perhaps, though this part was not distinct. Now he was at Inspiration Point with a blond-haired girl. Large full moon, which, however, was a bit unstable, occasionally startling him with its sudden oscillations. The girl was crying, yet they were both quite happy. They suddenly remembered the prayer meeting, raced, feeling guilty, through a dark forest, arrived late for it. Inside the church, there was crying and singing and impassioned preaching. The girl got drawn into it, soon was weeping emotionally with all the other boys and girls. He realized, within the dream, that all this had happened to him when he was in the seventh grade, and he had forgotten about this girl entirely. Her name, he recalled, was Mary. She was still the same, but he was now a grown man. The women who worked in the camp kitchen bawled and shrieked, their skirts always hiking up somehow over the roll of their stockings on their beefy thighs. He was dismayed that Mary, who had just wept for him (though exactly what he had done, he could not remember), now wept the same tears for Jesus. He turned to a companion, a large somber man whom he had brought here to show this sort of behavior, perhaps a father figure of sorts, and explained: “She has been seeking God, you see, but has never found him. I have been the victim of transcendence.”