Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  “Of course, I had no way of knowing, Ted. I felt she qualified professionally, and, ah, but of course, I’ll wait to hear from you.” The original square, blacked in, has another square, comprising eight triangles each, attached to each corner.

  * * *

  The police are summoned by the Reverend Abner Baxter, irate. The city mayor Mr. Whimple is present during the call, so he accompanies two of his police, Mr. Romano and Mr. Wallace, to the Church of the Nazarene. Boxy building with artificial brick siding. Smell of mildew inside. Seething with rage, the redheaded preacher leads them to his pulpit, a plain rostrum on a one-foot stage, and, with a trembling white finger, stubby and fuzzy with fine red hair, directs their attention to the floor behind the lectern. The city mayor and the two policemen stare down at the little heap of feces. “Sacrilege!” the minister thunders. “Desecration!” And commences an oration on the theme.

  The police chief Romano stoops and extracts a half-buried note, holds it between fingertips at arm’s length. The three men study it. THE BLACK PIGGY. “Looks more like a toe to me,” drawls Romano, his other hand resting nervously on the butt of his gun.

  “Seems to be operating independently now,” observes the mayor.

  The preacher whirls on them, red with wrath, and demands they remove their hats. “This is the house of the Lord!”

  Sheepishly, the three do so. The policeman Wallace, abashed, stoops as though to inspect the feces. The other policeman and the mayor also stoop.

  “There!” roars the preacher, pointing to an open window, through which, no doubt, the Black Piggy has come and gone. He marches over to secure it.

  “Looks like baby shit,” Wallace whispers. “Whaddaya think, Mort?”

  “I dunno, looks like it,” the mayor acknowledges in a hushed voice. “Whaddaya think, Dee?”

  “Whaddaya asking me for?” Romano whispers in reply. “I don’t know nothing about shit.”

  “Lemme see that thing. No, just hold it out there. Does look a little like a toe, all right.”

  “I dunno, Mort,” drawls the police chief hoarsely. “Maybe we oughta call the FBI.”

  Ben comes on a Friday night. Like a gift. The widow Betty Wilson knows the minute he walks in that he’s that strange dark man Mabel Hall found in her tea leaves, that “man of honor.” All night, in her breast, there is a flutter like a caged bird, like a fish in a net.

  It is an exciting meeting because when they arrive they find the Bruno front room all fixed up like a church sort of, the television in the bedroom, and Giovanni sitting up in the living room armchair, the one his father died in. So pale! it frightens Betty even to look at him, so she hardly ever does, but when accidentally her eyes do happen to light on him, he is almost always staring straight at her, and that scares her all the more. But the room is very nice and they are all pleased, especially Clara, who has been using her own house for Sunday services for folks who don’t want to go hear Abner Baxter. There’s a little table fixed up with things like old Mr. Bruno’s gold pocketwatch and so on, and Mr. Himebaugh asks everybody to bring something to the next meeting that is precious to them to include there. Betty thinks right away of Eddie’s dentures, which she still to this day has kept in a glass on the dressing table by her bed in memory of him, but instead she decides she will bring his war medals. Mr. Himebaugh asks for Ely’s last note to hang there in a pretty frame he has brought, and Clara hates to give it up, but she is honored, too, and they all have a little ceremony there, putting it in the frame, and Mrs. Norton reads it to all of them so nicely.

  Well, just then, in the middle of all that excitement, the doorbell rings. Mr. Norton says it is somebody who doesn’t know the password, and they are all afraid it is some dirty trick again. Mr. Miller gets up and goes out there. Whenever they have trouble, they always depend on him, such a fine strong young man, even if he isn’t too religious. When he returns, he brings this man in with him, and the man says his name is Ben Wosznik, and that’s when Betty’s heart starts to sputter around so. She looks over at Mabel and Mabel looks back at her. It is he. She was afraid the stranger might be Mr. Himebaugh, and now her fear is relieved. He says he has heard so much about them and he read the letter in the newspaper that said everybody was welcome (that was Clara’s letter), and, well, here he is. He is big and thick-shouldered and has black burry hair and heavy brows and kindly eyes and a man’s broad smile that creases his tan cheeks in many folds. He used to be a coalminer, he says, though now he is just sort of a farmer. He knew all their husbands. He says he always admired Ely Collins and is glad to know that Mrs. Collins is here. His brother who used to live with him was also killed in the disaster, he says. No, he says, he isn’t married.

  The Girl Fried Egg of the West Condon Chronicle, opening her editor’s Saturday morning mail, discovers an envelope bordered in black. A death! she gasps inwardly, and eagerly opens it, but is disappointed by its unsigned contents. Doesn’t even understand it. She shows it, perplexed, to Mr. Miller. He smiles inexplicably and instructs her to pass such envelopes on to him unopened henceforth. She sighs, feels for some reason like crying or something. So much has been happening lately which she doesn’t understand.

  The terrifying cataclysms anticipated as a prelude to the Last Judgment actually did not take place. No explanation was given; perhaps they were merely overlooked in the press of last-minute details. Whatever the reason for it, however, their absence helped provoke a universal apathy to the event which even the prospect of sensational personal revelations failed to dissipate. It improved tempers only slightly that the affair, held in April, was moved from Jerusalem to West Condon, which, sitting like a mote on the fat belly of the great American prairie, was properly thought to be, like God Himself, utterly remote from anything human.

  • • •

  No one had anticipated that the Judgment would prove such a complex business, least of all the Organizers Themselves. After one frustrating day of hearing the petty petitions of the condemned, the Supreme Judge was heard to mutter: We shoulda pulled this goddamn thing off a long time ago. It began to appear that the process might prove interminable, but finally a stopgap solution to the increased cramming of the judicial calendar was found in condemning all politicians, welfare workers, postal employees, physicians, and journalists forthwith. Not without bitter protest, of course: Someone has to keep the world going, they wept. Therein, replied their Judge, lies the seed of your damnation….

  “But you aren’t listening to me, Reverend Edwards,” Tommy interrupts. Kit Cavanaugh is at his best when playing their own game with preachers and teachers. He is famous for it. Not that he doesn’t respect them. He does. But it’s so easy to string them along, he can’t resist it. Snickers, like those he hears now, are his best reward. “I asked you if the Last Judgment could happen here and happen now, and you said it was not impossible, and so I asked you, then what would it be like? I don’t think it’s gonna happen either, I mean, I agree with you, Reverend Edwards, but what I’m saying is if it happened, what would happen?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, Tommy. And God would probably consider the question an impertinent one.” The minister is a little bit riled.

  “Like here in the Bible, see, it talks about all kinds of dragons and tremendous beasts and things. Would we get to see some of that?”

  “I don’t think I would interpret all that too—”

  “And what about that poor, uh, prostitute? Boy, she really gets it! That must be something to see!” Rolling in the aisles.

  “The harlot is an image of a city, Tommy, of a literal historic enemy, and, ultimately, of all the enemies of Christ.”

  “And all that blood everywhere—whoo!” Tommy shudders visibly and gets a new rise in the suppressed hysterics.

  “But now you’re not listening to me. The Book of Revelation teaches us simply that Christ will have the final victory over all forms of evil. Instead of worrying about dragons, young man, which is an idea that no longer has much meaning for m
odern man, you should be worrying more about the salvation of your own soul. That’s what this story is trying to tell you. That each man, to find salvation, must, in a sense, pass first through a kind of terror—”

  “Oh yeah?” Tommy nods studiously, gazing down at his open Bible, reading not it, however, but what he has concealed there. “I see what you mean.” A pause for effect. “Is that what happened to you, Reverend Edwards?”

  The minister blushes before the ducked snorting heads of the boys’ Sunday School class. “Something like it,” he replies bluntly, glancing at his watch.

  “All I can say is I get the feeling here that God really hates us. Man, it’s really murder!”

  “He hates evil, Tommy.” The minister relaxes slightly. “And He no doubt hates impudence.” Freed, the boys laugh openly. “I see you’ve read Revelation well. Have you bothered to read the rest of the Bible?” More laughter.

  “Nope. This was enough to scare me!” The bell rings. The minister leaves hastily to dress for the main service. The class erupts into horselaughs. Tommy preens on them a moment, then ducks out. Must see Sally Elliott, make a date. An eight-page comicbook, concealed in his Bible, has told him at last all he wants to know.

  Sunday night, March fifteenth, is a sad night, and everybody is very depressed. Just one week ago, on the eighth, when they thought it was the End, there were so many folks. Gideon Diggs was here, and the Calvin Smiths, and Tess Lawson came and Wanda Cravens and two high school girls and Mary Harlowe, so many. And now they’re just about back where they started. Only Wanda, Mary, and Tess have stayed on, and now there’s Ben Wosznik with them. Betty Wilson knows how bad the others are feeling, and she’d like to cheer them up somehow, but she feels as awful as they do. Besides that, Clara and Mrs. Norton aren’t getting along tonight. Clara insists now the end is coming on April 8, and Mrs. Norton is saying, no, it will be next Saturday, March 21, but nobody really knowing. Trouble is, as Betty knows well enough, Sister Clara talks too loud. And then Sister Tess Lawson gets angry with both of them and calls them both spooky and just walks right out of there. Somehow that kind of frightens them.

  Then, as if things aren’t bad enough, they start getting the phonecalls again. Seems like it’s always worse on Sunday nights. That poor child, the Bruno girl, that she should have to suffer such abuse! Clara says they ought to just take the phone out, but Mrs. Norton says, no, you never know in what manner or by what means enlightenment is to be received. One night, after midnight, for example, they all sat for an hour watching “snow” on the TV because Mrs. Norton was convinced some message was going to appear there. Trouble is, Mrs. Norton has too many different ideas at once. But now even their old friend Brother Gideon calls and asks them to forget their foolish ways, and then Cal Smith calls saying the same. Mrs. Norton tries to receive an explanation in her book, but the phonecalls make it impossible. And Giovanni Bruno isn’t any kind of help either. He seems kind of sick. Maybe he’s been getting up too much.

  Finally, Clara takes the phone off the hook and says flatly the sources will just have to get through some other way tonight, and Mrs. Norton pinches her mouth in, but she doesn’t argue. Sometimes you can see when it’s best not to argue with Clara. And then, just as everybody is feeling so awful and nobody is talking for fear of making somebody mad or something, why, like a miracle, Ben Wosznik starts to sing. His soft vibrant baritone floats out over their despair like an embrace from Jesus and they all listen. Betty closes her eyes.

  “Ama-azi-i-ing Grace, ha-ow sweet the-e saound,

  Tha-at saved a-a-a wretch la-ike me!

  I-I wu-unce wa-a-as lost, bu-ut naow I am faound,

  Wa-as blind, bu-u-ut naow I-I see!”

  As he sings, he touches them, touches her. Tears come. The great hymn and the great voice pierce to the very core of her being, where now she sits, withdrawn, in the dark, for her eyes are closed, in the saddest joy she’s ever known. Her childhood, her mother, church camps and revivals, damp spring nights and cold winters by a coal-stove, snow on her father’s mining boots, Eddie and the war and the mines, all her dear friends, her children scattered over the world, trees lit for Christmas and the pink frock she danced in, prayer and love and Ely and Jesus, all her life seems like a beautiful instant, miraculously captured in the divine moment of this song, this man’s voice. Slowly, as though under its own power, out of the dark core, her own voice emerges, gentle, tempered, truer than she’s ever heard it, to harmonize in a tender humming plaint behind his radiant refrains:

  “‘Twa-as Grace tha-a-at taught my-y heart to-o fear,

  A-and Grace my-y-y fear re-elieved;

  Ha-ow pre-ecio-ou-ous did tha-at Grace a-appear,

  Thee-e haour I-I-I first be-elieved!”

  And there are sighs as they sing and soft amens and she knows Ben is watching her, but her eyes will not open. She can hear Wanda Cravens sniffling, thinking of how Lee used to sing that song in his sweet tender tenor, and Clara crying softly in a kind of faint almost, on account of it was Ely’s favorite hymn. And now, at the chorus, they all join in, filling the room with their harmony, though it is she and Ben Wosznik who lead them. Even Mr. Miller and the little Bruno girl sing, and finally the Nortons. It is beautiful. It is the most beautiful moment in Betty Wilson’s life …

  “Ama-azi-i-ing Grace, ha-ow sweet the-e saound,

  Tha-at saved a-a-a wretch la-ike me!

  I-I wu-unce wa-a-as lost, bu-ut naow I am faound,

  Wa-as blind, bu-u-ut naow I-I see!”

  The hotelkeeper Mr. Fisher and the Chamber of Commerce secretary Mr. Elliott whuff into the hotel coffeeshop through the lobby door Monday morning, the sixteenth, and there discover the city editor finishing his morning coffee.

  “Hello, Tiger!” greets the Chamber secretary with a clap to the trenchcoated shoulders. “Say, what do you know about Ralph Himebaugh?”

  “What do you mean?” The editor stands, hands a dollar across the counter. Doris the waitress fumbles with his change, drops a quarter into the dishwater.

  “Well, I don’t know, the guy’s been kinda peculiar lately. Promises to work with me on the industrial brochure and we set up dates and he doesn’t show up. When I call him up at home, he always puts me off and hangs up. Now, that’s not like old Ralphie.”

  The editor shrugs, while the waitress fishes in the dishwater. “Beats me, Elliott. Why don’t you—?”

  “Aw, shit now, Miller!” rattles the old hotelman, pink jowls folded into a kind of grin. “What we wanna know is has that old sonuvabitch got hisself mixed up somehow with this troop of religious monkeys over at that wop miner’s house?”

  “How should I know?” The editor smiles innocently. “Why don’t you just ask Ralph the next time you get him on the phone, Jim?” The waitress comes up with a bottlecap.

  “That might embarrass him,” the Chamber secretary says. “I don’t want to get him teed off at us or nothing. We’re just, you know, curious. That’s all.” Wide greeter’s grin.

  “Listen, Doris, goddamn it! Just give me another quarter!”

  “You won’t tell, hunh?”

  The editor pulls out his cigarette pack, finds it empty, crumples it, tosses it in the pecan jug, bringing an indignant glower to the hotel-man’s face. “What makes you think I even know anything about those—?”

  “Well, for one thing,” growls the hotelman with a smirk, “you got a Chevy with a license ending in 7241.”

  The editor laughs. “Okay, I admit, I’ve been trying to see what’s going on over there, but they’re pretty secretive. I—”

  “Listen, Tiger,” the Chamber man butts in, grinning as always. “Will you tell me I’m wrong? I say Ralphie is one of them. Do you say he’s not?”

  “Why should I tell you anything?”

  “Okay, that’s good enough by me. He’s in it.”

  The old hotelman cackles.

  The editor shrugs, reaches over the counter, and appropriates a pack of cigarettes from the display there. “
Keep the quarter, Doris,” he says. “Tip from your boss.”

  “The hell you say!” grumbles the hotelman, and goes behind the counter to help fish for the coin.

  In his office, the editor discovers in the morning mail further messages from the lady Black Hand …

  The Mayor of West Condon, upon being asked why, when the moment of the Judgment arrived, he was discovered by the Angel of Death masturbating in his own bathtub, replied that the Chief of Police was using the official one at City Hall. Although there was general laughter, the face of the Divine Judge remained utterly immobile. I, too, have a sense of humor, He said when the laughter had subsided, and, in demonstration of it, He forthwith dispatched all who had laughed to hell and sent the Mayor to heaven, thereby depriving him forever of his audience.

  • • •

  The Pope, justifiably fearing the worst, slipped away from the proceedings and approached the Gate with his own set of keys, forged through the centuries. Yes, they worked! Just as his predecessors had always claimed! St. Peter seemed to be on the nod, so the Pope shut the Gate quietly behind him, signed the register, and tiptoed on down the path. Hee hee hee! Everything was just as he’d thought it would be, everything! Except, of course, for the strange peculiarity of St. Peter’s three heads.

  • • •

  A famous lawyer was brought before the Divine Court and accused of sodomy. When asked what he had to say to that, he stammered in apparent incredulity that he was not guilty. Of course, replied his Judge, but if you were guilty, then what would you say? Thus challenged, the lawyer delivered an eloquent and moving defense, no doubt the greatest performance of his career, and it was not without effect. Under all precepts of orthodoxy, his Judge said leaning toward him, you would have condemned yourself to eternal perdition with this address. So enchanting was it, however, we might yet offer you one final path to salvation….

  “Hello, Ralph! Ted Cavanaugh here. How’s it going?”