Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  Elaine returned, said her mother was coming. They stood awkwardly to wait. The girl’s front teeth were crooked; she covered her mouth when she talked. She said almost nothing and could hardly be heard, just stared mournfully into corners. She was frankly homely, strawlike hair, patch of freckles on her nose, sallow unhealthy pallor about her skin—her hands were coarsely pink, hands of a woman of forty. A simple print dress hung on her slight frame limply.

  Mrs. Collins, dry-eyed, stepped broad-shouldered into the room, put her hand on her daughter’s frail back, said she didn’t want any publicity.

  “My reason for coming, Mrs. Collins, was only to bring you this.” He handed her the note. “It was found in your husband’s hand.”

  Mrs. Collins accepted the note, faint tremor in her roughly reddened hand, studied it. “Child,” she said, “go get my glasses.” She shifted a stack of laundry—Miller noticed now it was tagged with people’s names—and sat on the couch, squinting at the note. She was gangly like her daughter, but large-boned, stouter. Same straw hair, even more freckles, but her skull was larger, her neck thicker, her body more massive, her hands tougher. She, too, wore a print dress, but unlike Elaine’s, it was dominated by her form. She had quick nervous eyes, wider set, more determined and aggressive than her daughter’s. And she spoke with the absolute authority of a longtime matriarch. “I cain’t understand it,” she said. “It don’t make sense that Ely should die.”

  Elaine returned with the glasses, fragile rimless spectacles with thin gold bridge and earpieces. The woman hooked them on cautiously, unused to the feeble claws, and struggled with her husband‘s dying hand. Collins must have been very weak when he wrote it; the scrawl staggered almost illegibly and fell away at the end.

  “‘Abide in Grace,’” the woman read. She looked up at Miller. “If they was any man alive a saint,” she told him firmly, though her eyes had misted and contracted behind the lenses, “it was that man!—He walked amongst the blessèd, Mr. Miller!”

  Miller, on his feet still, found himself nodding in agreement. “Mrs. Collins, I wonder if you—”

  “Ely Collins did not deserve to die like that, Mr. Miller!”

  “No, I believe you. I’m truly sorry.” Miller ventured on, aware he might be trespassing family ground. “But can you tell me what you think he means about having disobeyed?”

  “They was a bird in the mine.”

  “A bird?”

  “A white bird, like a dove. He seen it.” She paused, eyes testing his sincerity in asking. “He knowed he was maybe jist seein’ things, like you ofttimes do down there, but he was afeerd too as how God might be tryin’ to tell him somethin’. He was afeerd God was tellin’ him to git outa the mines and go preach.” Tears rolled down her broad cheeks and her voice quavered, but she held on.

  “You mean he was afraid there would be a disaster?”

  “No, I don’t think he thought of it like that. He only thought as how he might be sinnin’ agin the Lord, might be committin’ greed and avarice, to go on workin’ for money when the Lord was callin’ him to go do His work.” She swallowed. Her hands shook. “We wanted to git Elaine growed first,” she said, and now the tears were streaming. “He was a good man, Mr. Miller!” she cried in sudden protest. “He done no wrong! He didn’t deserve to git killt like that!” Swallowed sobs shook her. Miller felt her grief, but was helpless. “Ifn he died like that, they must be a reason! The Good Lord would not take Ely away ifn they weren’t no reason! Would he, Mr. Miller? Would he?” Her wide tortured bespectacled face seemed to be accusing him. “Why did Ely die and his partner live? What is God tryin’ to tell me, Mr. Miller?” Tears flowed; she didn’t even see him now. “Why?” she screamed.

  Miller stammered something about being sorry. Elaine, weeping, begged, “Ma! please don’t cry! Ma!”

  The woman, clutching her husband’s note, slumped from the couch to her knees on the floor. She wept so huskily, so brokenly, that Miller was certain that, though perhaps she prayed often, she wept seldom. “Oh God! help me! help me!” she cried. Her great body quaked with wailing, and her red hands clawed in the braided rug. Elaine wept hysterically, her face buried in her mother’s armpit. Miller took the moment to step over the two women and get to the door. He had already photographed the note, and he’d call later by phone to ask about publishing the damned thing.

  It was after nine before he reached the hospital. Stopped short at the entrance: realized he was still running. Hadn’t slowed since the rescue. Paused to calm himself. Flicked his cigarette into the bushes, wiped the sweat off his upper lip: coarse growth of stubble scraped his hand. Pocketed his hands and shouldered through the door. He knew the girl at the desk. She told him: “Third floor. Dr. Lewis.”

  On third, he was barred by the floor nurse, narrow-waisted girl with an award-winning hind end. Must be new. Dr. Lewis stepped out of the small lab nearby and his greeting cleared the way. Short even-tempered man in late middle-age, thick gray moustache, heavy brow, white jacket. Miller gave him and the nurse copies of the special, asked about Bruno.

  “We’re not encouraged, Miller, but that’s not a quote. The man absorbed what should be a fatal quantity of carbon monoxide. It tends to accumulate, you know, doesn’t get passed off like most gases. Hemoglobin sponges up carbon monoxide two hundred and fifty times as fast as it does oxygen, so what happens, the CO prevents the blood from taking in the oxygen it needs, even if there is plenty present. The other six men in the same space with him obviously died earlier from just this cause.”

  “Have you made autopsies, or is there—?”

  “Blood samples have already told us the story.”

  “How is it you think Bruno survived?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know. Maybe your headline makes a … valid diagnosis.” Lewis smiled faintly: fellow skeptic’s gentle prod of hypocrisy. The nurse winked. “One thing, he was separated from the others, though no one knows why, and he may have received a much more gradual dosage. The others could have spread out more, there was room, but fright probably closed their circle. Important to stir the air, too, and they may not have moved around much, especially after their light gave out.”

  “But if they knew the gas was there, couldn’t they—?”

  The nurse stood, smoothed her white skirt down over the pubic knoll, and switched into the small lab nearby.

  “Probably didn’t know. Hard to detect. They just dropped off to sleep as they normally would and didn’t wake up after. Or, if they did, they probably lacked the strength in their limbs to move or were too groggy to think things out.” The nurse lacked nothing in her limbs, which, beyond the door of the lab, she stretched for him to see. “Peculiar reversal of the dream process: meant to serve us by protecting our sleep, it more likely than not kept these men confused about reality, might well have convinced their vertiginous minds that the disaster was a dream.”

  “Served them after all, then,” Miller said. The nurse was loading medicines on a tray.

  Lewis smiled. “In a way. But if Bruno lived, then maybe they all could have.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Nothing to see. He’s still in a coma.”

  “Is that a bad sign?”

  The nurse reached for medicines high on a shelf: made her skirt ruck up and her fanny bobble. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw him looking. He smiled.

  “I’m afraid it is. His chances of recovery diminish the longer he remains in it. Usually they come around within the first couple hours, once they’ve got into fresh air or are fed oxygen, if they do at all. If he does come around, the delay increases the likelihood of pulmonary complications. He is still getting transfusions, respiratory stimulants.”

  “Can he have any other troubles?”

  “Asthenia.” Lewis paused. “Temporary stupor or maybe amnesia. This isn’t for print, of course.”

  “No.”

  “Carbon monoxide poisoning, Miller, amounts to oxygen lack. And oxygen is the one thing—it
and glucose—that the brain cannot do without, even for short periods of time. So some damage is conceivable, and there have been cases of permanent mental illness, although almost always, I should say, in cases where there was a predisposition for it.”

  Miller pushed: “Bruno has some of that in his background?”

  Lewis hesitated, then replied, “I don’t know, Miller.”

  “Is he alone?” The question he’d been saving.

  “No, there’s a young girl here. His sister.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Rather you didn’t. She’s exhausted and pretty frightened. She has been out at the mine, almost without sleep, these entire three days, and I’m having to keep a close eye on her as well as her brother.” The nurse was doing phallic things, though maybe unintentionally, with a syringe and needle. “We have her on a spare bed in a room that adjoins his, and I was just preparing a light sedative when you came. I’ve kept everyone away from her, of course, and will do so tomorrow, too. However, if you want to drop around, you might call me first, and—”

  “Thanks, I will.” Miller gave them spare copies of the special edition for the girl and her brother, as well as for the other patients, stopped in a moment to visit Bert Martini, the guy who’d lost an arm Thursday night. Martini caught on Miller’s semipro baseball team. Used to. Martini was in good-enough spirits, but Miller felt his smile cracking, and left depressed. He wondered what he could do for the guy. Make him the coach maybe.

  When he went out, the nurse was gone, busy apparently, and he missed seeing her. Too bad. She was something worth seeing. He thought about the miner’s sister, pajama’d and small in the hospital bed. Tomorrow. Felt the woolly cap in his pocket. He laughed, and the girl at the downstairs desk smiled back.

  And the fatherly man with the gray moustache pats her head and wears a white jacket starchy and dark brows a turned-up trenchcoat collar though his face is black dear God! black! and he can’t breathe but smiles dark eyes and wears silk bright shorts silk shirt with a number on it—can’t breathe! oh please! and runs like the wind white jacket number fourteen soothes but soot in his hair and can’t white eyes face like the wind silk mouth and turned-up can’t breathe! the number on it can’t breathe! she screams and he holds her wrist brows with a gray jacket needle fatherly white pats her head and a nurse

  6

  This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate thereon day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein…. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not affrighted, neither be thou dismayed: for Jehovah thy God is with thee whithersoever….

  The Baxters’ family worship Sunday evening was interrupted by an unexpected visit from Sister Clara Collins and her daughter Elaine. Abner frowned in concern; Sarah too was surprised: they had brought up Brother Ely’s body only that morning. The simplicities of Sarah’s recent life were fragmenting this weekend, changes had touched her that she could not yet cope with, so she now felt something excessively intrusive—if not improper—about Sister Clara’s unannounced call. Still, no sooner had she arrived than Sarah, almost against her will, began to weep for the other woman. So hard to believe so good a man was gone. Sister Clara clutched a note; she was terribly agitated.

  From the day’s commencement, Sarah Baxter had been sorely tried. Abner had slept but poorly, rose early. He had kept to himself, bellowing alone in the closed front room in preparation for the early-morning service, could not even help her with the children. Now that the five were grown so, they all trod over her, especially the three boys, she couldn’t help it, and when Abner withheld his hand they blew their disobedience into open malice. Their oldest girl, Frances, usually some help, had had to pass the last three nights on the canvas cot in the shed, and so had waked sore and sniffly, poor child. It was too cold and damp out there and the mice made a fright of sleep—Sarah dreaded the week to come. Abner’s austere insistence on the practice vexed her, but the Good Book guided him and he was not to be moved. And as the girls grew, the problems mounted. Already, she and Franny had crossed dates a few times, and it would not be long before little Amanda, already ten, would be complicating the sorry matter even further.

  But, although breakfast had been a persecution for her, curiosity to see their father preach for the first time had finally chased the five into their Sunday clothes and had cowed them to unwonted silence in the church. The Nazarenes had grown accustomed over the recent years to Brother Ely Collins’ tall eloquence in the Sunday pulpit, and Sarah had feared this morning that her husband’s blunt red wrath would whip them with too alien a chill. Brother Ely had saved their church, had built a roaring fire here and tended it with devotion. Although his message, no less than Abner’s, had been of the Lord’s awesome plans for sinners, his voice had been comfortingly paternal, and he had offered wonderful salvation in Christ Jesus. He had baptized all the Baxters, though they had been baptized before, and Abner himself had always agreed: Brother Ely was a saint.

  Abner had stood, round and glowering, behind the rostrum this morning—it had surprised Sarah how stocky and aged he had seemed there, blunt hands gripping the rostrum, red-shocked face with its wide down-drawn mouth just visible above his knuckles—and after they had sung the fearsomely appropriate “Ninety and Nine,” which Abner had selected just for its relevance, he had raged forth astonishingly: “Belovèd! Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you!” The congregation, almost as a body, had started. Some had snickered in embarrassment afterward, and Sarah had seen with horror that her two oldest boys, Junior and Nat, were giggling furtively into their songbooks. How she had hated them then! She herself had felt near to tears: poor Abner! But, suddenly, the cry had become a prophecy! A boy had burst into the auditorium with the announcement that Brother Ely Collins might still be alive! Sister Clara and Elaine had rushed out and the congregation had bolted up to chase after. There had been a scattering, a rude disorder. “Hold!” Abner had thundered. “Have you forgotten that this is the House of the Lord?” They had hesitated, lashed to a respectful hush. “Let us all pause before departing,” her husband had commanded them, “for one minute of silent prayer that our beloved brother Ely Collins might soon be among us again!” The minute, abided by, had passed like an eternal judgment upon them, Abner’s final “Grace be with all of you! Amen,” releasing them somehow miraculously blessed.

  Sarah had taken four of the children home, while Abner, a terrible and inexplicable tension crowding his red brows, had with Junior followed the others out to the mine. She had telephoned the Collins place, and Sister Mary Harlowe, poor woman, answering, had confirmed that Sister Clara was waiting at home. She had left Franny with the three younger children and had gone to sit a spell with Sister Clara. Many had come: poor Tessie Lawson, Mabel Hall, Betty Wilson, whose Eddie had died in the hospital, almost all the women from Sister Clara’s Evening Circle. She had learned then that Sister Wanda Cravens’ husband might also have survived. They had cried together a great deal there. Worried finally that Abner might return out of temper and find the children untended, Sarah had left before any word had come.

  Arriving home, she had overheard from the front porch the two youngest, Amanda and Paul, taunting Frances in the kitchen with the hateful chant Junior and Nat had started last summer:

  “Fran—ny! Fran—ny!

  She’s got red hairs on her fan—ny!

  Sarah had slammed in and upbraided them unmercifully, shouting at them that they would hear from their father on that score that very night. Franny had insisted shyly that she didn’t mind the teasing, and had begged her not to tell their father, but Sarah had replied she was anyway mad at both of them still for the way they had carried on at breakfast. Then Franny had told her that Nat had run off, presumably to the mine. Franny was less charitable toward Nathan. They all were. Sarah had heard before Nathan even c
ame about the curse of the third child, and certainly that boy was the devil’s own. Well. She was wearied of whipping the child, and now he was so grown, husky for an eleven-year-old, it usually took both her and Franny holding for Abner to manage it. And Lord, it did no good. Abner would not admit it, but that was the plain truth of it. Nathan could not be saved.

  Franny had dragged about all faint and teary, so Sarah had told her to go lie down until her father came home, she would finish the kitchen and get Sunday dinner. The girl hadn’t argued; behind her glasses, her eyes had been red-rimmed, her round cheeks flushed and feverish. Poor Franny! Such a good girl, and to suffer so! And then the other children humiliating to make it worse. Franny was fifteen, she shouldn’t have had to endure that trial, but what more could Sarah have done to stop it? It had been Abner that hot summer night who had judged the girl’s refusal to tattle on the little ones an act of disobedience, and all Sarah’s wailing had not constrained him. Abner had not thrashed Franny for a long time, so he had laid the razor strop to her. Tears had spilled and Abner had sweated, but the girl had not complained. And the others, witnessing the scourging, had discovered what now they sang about. How could they be so dreadful, those children? It grieved Sarah. Junior, who had started it, no longer mocked, of course: Sarah had noticed, giving him his baths recently, that he must sooner or later fall prey to his own malevolence. Her poor white goose, he was such a soft one. They were all redheads, all but Amanda, and that was probably why she was her father’s favorite.