Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  It was all empty, the town was falling all apart, soon there wouldn’t be anybody left around but him. No mines, no paper, businesses closing. The clubs would go soon. He looked across the table and there was Ange Moroni, hat tipped down to his nose, grinning at his cards. Mike Strelchuk and Carlo Juliano playing with them. Why did he remember that? He didn’t know, but it was plain as day. There was a big crowd, loud music, and they were winning. Where did it go: that excitement?

  One evening just as the ten-o’clock newscast was coming on, all they had to keep plugged into the world now that the Chronicle was closed, Vince stood to stretch, chanced to gaze out the window just in time to see Ted Cavanaugh’s red Lincoln swing up at the curb. He ran into the bedroom, woke Etta up. “Hey! Wake up! Ted’s coming! I just saw his car out front!” Looked frantically for a tie.

  “Angie’s got a date with his boy,” Etta replied sleepily, and rolled over hugely.

  Vince went back to the door, peeked out. It was true, nobody was getting out. He went in to watch the news and sports. Began to understand a few of the remarks Angie had been making of late, why she’d seemed almost to hate him. Hours passed. He watched the midnight movie, old swashbuckler, hardly followed it. Time it was over, having watched all those flashing swords, he was in a sweat, imagining just about every grotesque perversion conceivable. When she finally came in, he called to her. “I’m tired, Dad,” she snapped, sounding tough. Whorish. “Let’s have confessions tomorrow.”

  The kid might not have laid her, but he’d sure mussed her up. “Who you been wrestling with?” he asked dully, then saw that her face was all streaked with tears.

  “Oh, please!” she cried, and ran into her room. For a long time, he heard her sobbing in there. It naturally occurred to him what the matter was. He’d have Etta ask tomorrow. “Ted, old buddy, I hate to tell you, but you and me is about to become related, in a manner of speaking.” But shit, the bastard would find a way out of it, buy off the doctors or the judges or something. It’d be Vince who’d wind up in the jug afterwards, and little Angie to raise a bastard. Things were bad. In fact, they were so bad that when he found out the next day that this had not been the problem, that it was just a routine breakup, he almost found himself feeling let down.

  That was the kind of mood he was in when Wally Brevnik and Georgie Lucci came by his house to say good-bye. They told him they were going up North together, get some kind of factory work. They’d both been in his gang at the mine, and they said they still thought he was the best goddamn faceboss that mine had ever had. They didn’t say anything about mayors, but told him they sure as hell hated to say good-bye.

  Vince told them it hurt him to see them go, too. Seemed like just about everybody in town was bugging out on him. Again, he wanted to tell them about the big hole he was looking into, about how afraid he was.

  Wally said that by God they’d write for him when they found something good, figured it would only take them a couple weeks. “Shit, a man of your ability and experience, Vince, you’ll have no trouble.”

  Vince got a little excited about that, said for them not to forget now, hell, it’d be just like down in the mine, all of them working together, and they all laughed about that, and then they were gone. Last thing he heard, as he walked them out to their car and saw them off, was Ben Wosznik on the car radio singing that Brunist song that was such a big hit these days. They waved at each other until they turned a corner a couple blocks down. He turned around, that hillbilly melody still ringing in his head, and there was the old house. Angie’s bike up against the bright yellow porch. On the rocker: a new calico pillow that Etta had made for him. Stop kidding yourself, he said. You ain’t going nowhere.

  Then one night, he went for a walk. He was trying to get a new outlook. He had made mistakes, but who in this town hadn’t? He walked under leafy trees, past flowering bushes and lawns with a new green nap, the air laden with vegetable renascence. This town wasn’t through yet, and neither was he. Why couldn’t he make a new start? The ballooning May moon smiled down on him as though to say: it goes on; only men quit.

  He found he had wandered into the old housing development where Wanda lived. Quiet, empty, badly lit, yet bright in the moonlight. Decided to stop by, what the hell, make some sort of apology. She must be feeling about as cruddy as he was. It didn’t matter much anymore who saw him or what they thought. And he felt like a wrong had to be righted, no matter how it was misread afterwards. He even thought about going home to get Etta and bringing her with him, but it was a long walk. He located Wanda’s house, but it was dark. He didn’t see curtains up, remembered then that she had given everything away. Jesus, the poor kid, all she had was the bare walls! Then he saw the FOR RENT sign sticking up in the clay of the front yard. Gone. With the rest of them. Like Sal said, hard to believe it had really happened. He felt relieved, but vaguely disappointed at the same time. “Well, God bless her,” he said, not knowing quite what he meant by it.

  Moseying back, he chanced to pass the old Bruno house. It sat like a spook there in a tunic of moonlight, no longer protected. They sure got Bruno and the old lady put away fast, had to give them credit for that much. Vince noticed that the windows and doors were broken. He wandered up … then once on the porch, on in. A pale ghostly light hung dustily throughout. Things looked pretty busted up. He stood in the front room and looked about him on the melancholy scene. Did they see it would come to this? In the dining room, a huge glass chandelier lay splattered all over the floor, so that it crunched wherever he walked. His eyes were adjusted to the dark now, and he saw that the drapes had been slashed, chairs broken up, upholstery ripped, and he remembered his own demolition of the Church of the Nazarene. “What do we do it for, God?” he asked aloud, and wouldn’t have been too surprised to get an answer. “Do You understand what makes it happen? Can You forgive it?”

  He felt he needed something by which to remember his coming here, to remember the whole Brunist story, and, since it was the nearest at hand, he picked up a fragment of the broken chandelier. He held it up toward the moonlight and, miraculously, a rainbow danced and shimmered in it. He wandered through the other rooms, and throughout there was the sound of glass underfoot like slate in the mine, wallpaper stripped and hanging in spectral shreds, black distorted objects silhouetted against the pallid light. In the kitchen he found a staircase, mounted it. Things upstairs were no different. In the bathroom, even the fixtures had been torn out and robbed.

  He heard sirens. He thought it might be another fire. The last one had brought him so much luck, he couldn’t resist chasing this one. And this time there’d be no screwing up. He started for the stairs, but realized the sirens were wailing up right out in front. No bells: must be an ambulance. Or the cops! Somebody had seen him come in! He looked frantically for a hidingplace, but the rooms were mostly barren. Heard them on the porch, heard the rattle of the door and the crunch of glass as they shoved on in. “This way!” That was Dee Romano! “The guy who called said we’d find him upstairs.” Vince’s heart raced, his mind seemed frozen. A back window. Might be a chance. Maybe a porch roof below. Heard them rumbling up the stairs. Window in the back bedroom, big one, but also a bed. He ducked under … and ducked right out again. Somebody already under there. Galloped on hands and knees to a closet, rolled inside. The light came on. Closet door was half open, but he couldn’t close it now. He huddled, shaking, in a corner. “I smell it,” said Romano. He could hear them bumping to their knees. “And here he is!” said Monk Wallace. “Jee-ee-zuss!” Old Willie scrambled out of there. “Boys, I’m retirin’!” he said. “What should we do?” asked Wallace. “Not our job,” said Romano. “We don’t have to pick it up.” They followed Willie out, leaving the light burning. Vince heard them talking down the stairs. More people down there. He supposed they’d keep coming all night. It’d be a long time before the place emptied out and he could leave. Meanwhile, he lay curled up there in a corner of the closet, bawling like a newborn baby. “Don’t leave
me again!” he sobbed. “Without You, God, it’s horrible!” He had to still his sobs from time to time, because others, curious, came up to look, to shudder, to shrink away. “Boy, you never know, hunh?” “You said it, man!” “Like he just stretched out there and kicked off.” “Really weird.” “They all were.” Vince fingered the small piece of glass from the chandelier, pressed shut his eyes. Santa Maria, madre di Dio, pregate per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ ora della nostra morte. Così sia.

  When finally the tears had stopped, when he felt like all the horror had washed out of him and he could stand alone again, he stood and walked out, walked down. Somebody met him at the foot of the stairs. “Is it true, Vince?” Vince nodded, passed on. Glass crunched beneath his feet. He kept a tight grip on the piece in his pocket. “God, it’s awful, isn’t it, Vince?” somebody said. He shook his head in commiseration. “It couldn’t be worse,” he said. At the door, Dee Romano, looking washed out, nodded at him, and Vince nodded back. But it could be worse. And, walking out of the home of the prophet Giovanni Bruno on that lush night in May, Vince Bonali released at last the piece of glass (though he reached in his pocket every now and then to touch it again, make sure it was still there) and looked up at the magnitude and care of the universe and thanked God that, if no one else had, he at least had come at last to his Redemption.

  7

  In June, the Reformed Nazarene Followers of Giovanni Bruno all waited around the world for the Coming of Light again. It was on a Sunday, the seventh, seven Sundays after the nineteenth of April, but they waited until midnight because the next day was the eighth of the month, and Elaine’s Ma had not entirely put away that idea yet. It was an extraordinary—though, as it turned out, again somewhat symbolic—event, huge rallies everywhere, all of it covered simultaneously by world television, press, and radio: as though literally nothing else in the whole world was happening that night. In fact, it made Elaine feel funny the next day reading the newspapers and discovering that a lot of other things did happen. And another funny thing: as exciting as their own meeting was and as important as she was in it, she kept feeling all night like she’d rather go see it on television, as if that was where it was really happening.

  Her Ma had changed a few things by the time of the June rallies—like wearing regular clothes under the tunics and staying in out of the weather—so things went a little more calmly most places. They read afterwards about some meetings where things got even worse than they had at the Mount of Redemption, but her Ma said those people were sensationalists and not real Christians. By letter and telephone and television appearances, her Ma and Ben organized these Bruno Follower rallies all over the world, convinced now that when it happened it would happen everywhere at once, though of course their own meeting in Randolph Junction was the most important and one of the biggest. Reverend Baxter wanted to hold it on the Mount of Redemption in West Condon, but Elaine’s Ma decided against it on account of the Persecution, organized it instead in Randolph Junction where the mayor was a friend of Brother Bishop Hiram Clegg and even became a True Follower. It was a very nice meeting, even though the newspeople were rather impolite some of the time and a few people from out of town got to acting up—in fact, though it was much bigger and there were a lot more lights, it was a great deal like the wonderful revivalist tentmeetings her Pa used to hold.

  Elaine was thinking a lot about her Pa these days, not just because he had become a Saint and Martyr, or because she and her Ma sometimes talked to him, or because she might go to Heaven and see him soon, but because she had a new Pa now, Mr. Wosznik, and she couldn’t help comparing. She loved them both, but the truth was, if she could choose, she would stick with the old one. Ben was very kind, but her old Pa was even kinder. Her old Pa was smarter, too, she thought, and dressed better. Ben always smelled a little bit like a farm. Of course, one thing about Ben, he sure could sing. Their ballad with him singing it was number three on the Hillbilly Hit Parade, and they were making lots of money, which Ben was giving to the movement because they had a lot of expenses now. Just what they spent on postage was something hard to believe. Of course, as her Ma said, there wasn’t any need to choose: we were all God’s children and, in a way, were all married to each other. Ben sometimes made Elaine think of her brother Harold who was killed in the war, and who always used to play a banjo and sing religious songs to her when she was little, and she wondered if maybe her Ma wasn’t thinking of Harold when she married Ben. Her Ma kept her old name so people would always know who she was, calling herself Mrs. Clara Collins-Wosznik.

  Elaine was a much bigger help to her Ma now than she used to be. Her Ma even remarked on it several times. She wasn’t afraid anymore and people looked up to her because she was one of the First Followers and might even be a Saint someday. She took up collections and typed envelopes and helped organize meetings and even gave instruction in the Creed sometimes to the younger people at Junior Evening Circle. Like everybody always agreed, the Creed was very beautiful; it was based on the Seven Words of Giovanni Bruno and Saint Paul and the Revelation to John, and contained wonderful new ideas about Mother Mary and Spiritual Communication and the God, not of Wrath or Love, but of Light. It changed from time to time because, as her Ma said, it was a living Creed: Domiron wasn’t mentioned in it anymore, for example, though he might come back, now that Mrs. Norton’s book, The Sayings of Domiron, was out. She and Dr. Norton had become the first Bishops of the whole state of California, and her Ma would always say how she admired that lady and still to this day wore the medallion, but as Bishops the Nortons were not very active. They seemed too inclined to go their own way and forget they were all children of the same God.

  Some of the younger people Elaine instructed were boys and they paid her a lot of attention, but regardless of what her Ma said about all being married to each other, she never let things go too far. It wasn’t just because she had her mind on being a Saint, but because she was going steady in a religious kind of way: ever since Carl Dean had gone to jail for trying to kill all those policemen, she had been writing letters regularly with Junior Baxter. Junior had stayed in West Condon with his folks in spite of the terrible Persecution still going on there, and they were meeting secretly now—Junior wrote “underground” and Elaine actually thought they were meeting in the mines or something until her Ma explained. Her Ma didn’t seem too happy about her writing to Junior, but she didn’t say not to. Elaine didn’t show her Ma all the letters either, because sometimes she and Junior had to discuss pretty grown-up things, considering they both wanted to be Saints.

  All day long that Sunday that they went to the Mount, the Day of Redemption, she and Junior had been staring at each other. Elaine didn’t know at the time if it was because they still hated each other or what, but she didn’t like it. Her tunic felt funny on her all day. She even thought of asking Carl Dean to make him stop, but she was afraid of causing trouble just when everybody was so excited about all the Baxter people joining them in the Spirit. And they were so tired. Elaine thought she’d drop, and it made her kind of dizzy all day—she kept getting the funny feeling she was floating in and out of all those other people. They had been up all night watching over poor Marcella whom she loved so—Elaine had cried and cried like a baby, and once had even kissed the cold mouth and nearly died doing it, it just didn’t seem possible. All the next day, she kept waiting for Marcella to rise up and take her hand and smile. And then all the baptisms there before they went out to march, just at dawn, because Giovanni Bruno, who was heartbroken, opened his mouth in that special way of his when he wanted to say something important and said: “Baptize … Light!” It was the last thing anybody ever remembered him saying before they took him away from the Mount. Her Ma and Reverend Baxter and Mrs. Norton all agreed right away: he meant they were supposed to have a new kind of baptism, a baptism with light, and so they gave him a flashlight to hold and everybody walked under it, sniffling and bawling to beat the band. Her Ma still baptized with light in the same way
, she had a special lamp for it, but Junior said his Pa had changed it a little, using real fire, and they couldn’t wear anything on their shoulders. That made her Ma a little mad when she found out, just like she got upset at Mrs. Norton for saying out in California that “light” meant “television.” It seemed like her Ma was always caught in the middle between those two.

  But Elaine’s commitment, the strangest and most important moment of her life, happened out there on the Mount of Redemption. Holding hands with Carl Dean, praying and singing and crying, Elaine had watched the lightning flash and the rain come down, had watched the terrible forces of evil gather like dirty clouds below them, had watched the worshiping multitudes rolling and dancing and beating each other, and she could tell that Carl Dean was pretty excited and not just about the End of the World. He kept looking around nervously and saying they might never see each other again after today and once he even asked her to go down in the trees with him so they could be alone a minute. But she was afraid and praying all the time, because she really believed, she really was sure it was going to happen and right then, and she kept looking for her Pa. She held on to Carl Dean’s hand because she was scared, but all the time she kept feeling miles away from him: suddenly the only thing that counted was that moment and Carl Dean couldn’t get his mind off what would happen next.