“Oh. Hello, Ted. Fine, fine. Yourself?”
Loose chuckle. “You’re sure a hard fellow to find these days!” The five blacked-in squares form an X of sorts. This X is converted to a diamond by adding four new squares: top, bottom, and two sides.
“Yes. I’ve been … busy. Eh, how’s the wife?”
“Wonderful, Ralph. Matter of fact, she was just remarking at dinner yesterday that it had been a long time since we’d had you over.” More casual laughter. “I think she sees herself as a kind of patron saint to all bachelors.” The four new squares touch the four outside blacked-in squares at two corners each: that is, a sort of checkerboard pattern is emerging. “What do you say to tomorrow night?”
“That’s very kind, Ted. But I’ve, uh, been a little under the weather. Flu. I wouldn’t make a very good guest, I’m afraid.”
“Oh? Sorry to hear that! Listen then, how about next—?”
“Ted … maybe you’d better, eh, let me call you.”
Four crosses, eight diagonals: thirty-two new small triangles. The banker frowns. “Ralph … Ralph, you know how much we all think of you here. We’d hate … believe me, it’s simply out of personal concern that I bring it up … but we’d hate to hear that you, that you got mixed up somehow—Ralph? Ralph?” In the uppermost square of the diamond, half the triangles have been blacked in with vertical strokes.
Reluctantly, smelling warmly of winter hay and afterbirth, vitamin D and hogsweat, Womwom the guardian of holy places, no less than the living reincarnation of Noah, and compassionate apostle of Kwan-yin, drives back toward West Condon, returning from outlying calls. There is an unwanted commitment there of which the country frees him. Not that nature is beautiful, certainly he has never thought so, only that, as pure process, it absorbs all catastrophes, relaxes him when the paradox of his own ego terrorizes him. Unlike Elan, he has never succeeded in neutralizing it. What does he want? He doesn’t even know. But the point is, out here in the country, he doesn’t care.
Signs. Womwom has been having to make his own breakfast. Not that he minds, but it is symptomatic. Elan gazes the mornings long out on the snow, on the rain, on the sun, on the wind, and finds words like “structural dissolution” and “the coalescence of polarities” leaking out her fingertips. He has heard them before, knows what must surely follow. Again. But not just again. Something new this time. Of course, it’s obvious what it is. It is the unprecedented participation of the Other. There have been large groups before, but the nucleus has always been his wife. Now, several nuclei seem, as though by accident, to have become attached, forming an almost organic something larger than any of them, and though his wife is still its most important member, she is now, for the first time, truly a member, depending on the others as they depend on her. If there is a center, of course, it is Giovanni Bruno, the One to Come. Little matter that he is so enigmatic a figure, Elan has led Womwom to expect such a mystery at the middle, but the point is, this abstract thing which has dragged them through the years is now suddenly upon them, and what he never expected is that the core thing should be outside his wife herself.
West Condon pep talk and sales pitches appear on billboards, defiantly tawdry above the patches of crusty snow, signaling the town’s proximity. Working hard these days. Has to get what he can. He is not an avaricious man, anybody can tell that by a single glance, but always they need it. Money. And never more than at times like these. And so he has to push, though he has no heart for it. Of course, he enjoys his work, but, as his wife has always said, he is too much an artist. Wastes whole days in the country, and meanwhile the easy money is in town. Sick dogs. Dogs with worms. Worms! A farmer bets on value when he calls a vet. Pet owners care nothing for economics. Keeping a pet is an affront to thrift in the first place, not to mention that it’s an affront to nature to boot. So, they pay up. “Ten bucks? Sure, Doc!” Beaming grab for the pocket. And little brats gazing raptly on, learning patterns that will make successes out of medical frauds for generations to come. Leeches. Why can’t he be a happy leech like the rest? An artist. Well, he is. But times of stress push him and he undertakes, against his own nature, the disagreeable.
Indications of West Condon can be seen a couple miles outside of town: a steeple or two, some smoke, and so on. But the town itself springs into being only at the city limits. There’s just enough soft roll to the land around, a settling over the coal beds, that no great distances can be seen from ground level. Then, too, things block the view—trees, humps of raw land shoveled up by strip-mining, barns and motels and the like, the usual brash fungi of billboards—block the view or flick distractingly in front of it, such that the city limits sign is a kind of guarantee you have made it, a lever you trip in passing that pops the town out of the yellow soil like a jack-in-the-box. Nothing special about it. Town like many they have lived in. But he likes it, has liked them all, and here in West Condon, as the only fully qualified veterinarian, he is especially needed. So, he feels an urge today, tripping the lever and feeling the town spring up to embrace him, to drive his roots in so deeply here that no crisis could ever tear him out.
At home, his wife is seated at the kitchen table, as usual, with Rahim the lawyer. Papers, logs, graphs, tools out in front of them. Late afternoon sun glows there. “Wylie!” she exclaims when he enters. “Giovanni said: ‘A circle of evenings’—of course! It means another seven Sundays! And seven Sundays after the first of March is the nineteenth of April: the last day the sun is in the sign of rebirth!” Rahim, excited, is frantically constructing new graphs.
“That’s good, dear,” Womwom says with a smile, and he goes in and lies down on the couch. The nineteenth of April.
But he has work to do. Can’t waste a minute. He gets up and goes out to straighten up his garage-office. Things are in a mess. The more he cleans, the worse it seems to get. He shows a fellow there through the pens, where he is growing worms, using dog intestines as hosts. Important experiment. Many of the worms are, as though magnified, snake size, but their morphology is strictly vermicular. “Lyttae,” he puns, but he sees the fellow fails to grasp this. A scorpion has got in and killed his best worms. Carnage. It is grotesque. Afraid of the tail, he kicks it in the head. The scorpion’s legs, detached by the blow, twitch in death throes, look almost like chicken claws. The head wanders about autonomously. “Make the best of it,” he cautions himself, and attempts to study the scorpion’s incredible head. But it terrifies him. The fellow is gone. Wylie is alone. With the dead worms and the scorpion head. It seems to be enjoying itself. He is afraid to kill it.
“I’m cold, Tommy,” whimpers Sally Elliott at the ice plant. A thawing rain drums the roof of the big Lincoln, securing them from parents, police, and bushwhackers. Tommy has found that girls jump in the back faster when he uses his Dad’s Lincoln instead of his own jalop. Something psychological. “Somebody’ll come and catch us.”
“Use a little common sense, Sally. It’s Monday night and it’s raining pitchforks. Nobody’s gonna come.” He has talked the slacks off her, but not the panties. He kisses her neck, strokes the sleek flesh of her tummy. Boy oh boy, does it feel good! “I told you I know what I’m doing,” he whispers. He insinuates his fingers under the elastic band, slithers toward whatever it is that’s down there.
She twists away, curls up in one corner, staring out at the rain. “Tommy, please, let’s go home.”
She wants you to do it, she just doesn’t want to feel guilty, wants you to make her do it so it’s not her fault. He sets his teeth. “Listen, Sally, if it was the end of the world tomorrow, I mean really, if this was our last, like our last chance, would you let me do it then?” He is on his knees beside her, staring at her almost edible everything. Sheen off the silk panties. White as a ghost.
“Why do you talk like that, Tommy? Do you believe that?”
“No, I just mean, if.” Boy, she’s dumb! She deserves it! If he can just get her down on her belly somehow.
“I guess so,” she says then
, surprising him.
“Sally!” he whispers, kissing her ear. He moves in. “You’re beautiful! You’re Eve!” His own mark of Adam, so taut and prickly he almost wants somebody to bite the end off, prods her softly in the side.
That scares her and she jumps away, scrambles for her slacks, pulls them on. But anyway she finally sees what he’s got. He figures she’s pretty impressed, because she forgets about being mad and gets cuddly again on the way home. “If the end of the world does come,” she whispers, “will you hold my hand all the time?”
“Sure,” he smiles. Hey, this Judgment thing is pretty rich, he decides, and can be mined for more. He’ll have to plan it out. Meanwhile, he lays hold of a plump breast and says, “We’ll have to practice, though.”
Rain falls. Clerks are laid off. A creek outside town overflows its banks. A three-hour power failure blacks out the town. A nice old lady rolls down a flight of stairs and breaks her neck. Signs all, and the signs are bad. And on the door of a stall in the boys’ rest room at the high school: APRIL 19. Carved with a knife.
“Mrs. Norton, this is a friend calling.”
“Why can’t you people leave us alone?”
“I’m not calling to trouble you, Mrs. Norton, let me assure you.” The diamond shape has reverted once more to a square, a large checkerboard, composed of twenty-five smaller squares, thirteen of which contain eight small triangles each, all blacked in, although the alternating vertical and horizontal strokes preserve the separate identity of each triangle. If the light is right. “Why I called was simply to tell you that I have good reason to believe you have a, shall we say, a pretender, in your midst, who may in fact mean you considerable harm.” The other end of the line remains silent. Diagonals are passed through the white squares giving them four triangles each. “And perhaps harm to our community as well. I speak of Mr. Justin Miller. I am sorry to say that I fear his intentions may be opportunistic ones.”
A prolonged pause. Then, snappishly, “We have long been aware of that. Thank you for your interest.”
The common sense thing to do, the mayor reasons, is to tell those people to stay home, they’re creating a public disturbance. Neighbors are complaining about the noise. But he hopes it will just solve itself somehow like the “Black Hand” thing, which has at last died out. Everybody seems to be out after his neck as it is, blaming him for the town’s troubles, even for bad business and power failures, when there’s just nothing he could ever do about it, and he doesn’t need any more enemies, even crazy ones. He pretends he has solved the “Black Hand” affair, hinting that the boys involved may well come from well-to-do families in town, and he has seen fit to bring it quietly to an end his own way. People say that’s good common sense. He even starts believing it himself. Sometimes he wishes he was back in the fire department.
Four men, all Italian Catholics, play pitch at the Eagles. The first, thumbing his cards into order, says, “It’s common sense. I’m not exactly cheering my ass off, I can’t even sleep nights. But that mine ain’t never gonna open up again. I pass.” The second man bids two, as the first codas, “That’s all I’m saying. Anybody with any common sense can see it’s never gonna open up again.”
“Common sense!” snorts the third, partner of the first. “To hell with common sense! Listen, if that mine closes, I’m dead. I can’t let myself think that. I gotta believe it’s gonna open up, or I’d go off my bat. There’s some things, buddy, common sense ain’t no good for. Three.” The fourth man passes.
And more signs. Elan the teacher senses estrangement from the rest of the faculty at school. The principal, while by no means hostile, forgets now to smile, does not mention the permanent appointment. Students grow lax in their homework, seem amused at her austerity. Her two boys suffer endess humiliation and she must pretend detachment.
Up early one morning, the skies broken up for a change, she takes a stroll before going to school, passes a small frame church with yellow brick siding. Outside, a signboard reads:
GAL. 1.9: If any man preacheth unto you any good gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema!
She shudders, recognizing she has wandered into an alien place. A redheaded boy sits on the steps eyeing her coldly, cradling a root or something in his lap. Can he know who she is? She hurries by, feigning interest in something across the street.
At school, there is an obscene drawing on her blackboard. Supposedly an angel, or so it seems, it nevertheless possesses two stringy bare breasts, buckteeth, large spectacles, and frizzy hair. From its naked bottom rises a flag that reads: REPENT! Below the figure: ST. ELLIE. The children are hysterical, their faces buried in books. Elan, suddenly near tears, feels utterly helpless. Her back is to the students, and she cannot turn to face them, nor can she bring herself to erase the angel.
Her two boys enter then, Karmin and Ko-li. They stand and stare. Karmin slams his books to a desk, marches to the board, and erases the drawing. “Boy!” he shouts out. “Whoever did that is really rotten!” His face is afire with righteous anger. “If he’s got any guts, he’ll go outside with me right now!”
Elan is to confront with courage and inward serenity the history that is to come and to comprehend with grace the bitter obligement of suffering. “Thank you, Carl Dean.” Wash the earth from your hands and feet and cast your eyes to the limitless stars. “Now, please take your seat.” She is able at last to face the class. The giggling diminishes. Some blush. By my light, thou shalt flee the darkness.
Kit Cavanaugh, cruising back into town from the ice plant with Sally Elliott, is sore. Boy oh boy, how can any guy get so far and not get in? He must be the biggest idiot, the biggest chicken, in the whole United States. It was so beautiful, that whole Last Judgment line, they were already off the earth and flying, man, stretched out there near-naked in the back seat of the Lincoln. Boy, there were flames everywhere! Her skirt was up, her blouse off. He slipped from her embrace to ease her panties down. And he was just ogling that fantastic black place below her bum and wedging his nervous fingers down inside there, when he heard Sally talking to herself.
“What’d you say, Sal?”
“I’m praying.”
“Praying! Whatcha doing that for?”
“I’m praying to Jesus not to let you do anything wrong, Tommy. If it’s gonna be the Last Judgment, I don’t want you to go to you know where.”
He thought she must be kidding, but there were tears running down her nose. “Aw, Sal,” he said, and took a last hungry look at the bum. He already had the rubber on: what a waste! Glumly, they headed for home.
The trouble is: how do you keep kissing them and get on top there at the same time?
“Tommy! Look at that!” Sally cries now.
He’d almost driven by without noticing, but now he sees the big gang of people. “My gosh! it’s a big fight!”
“Don’t stop, Tommy!”
“I’m just going slow to see. Hey! there’s old Ugly Palmers! Hey! look at him go! Man!” Maybe it’d be a pretty even fight at that, him and Ugly. “Say, you know what, Sal? That must be Mr. Bruno’s house! The guy who says it’s gonna be the Last Judgment!” Sally squeezes toward him. “Holy cow, wait’ll Dad hears about this!”
“Tommy, please don’t stop! I’m afraid!”
“But, gee, I think I oughta help old Ugly out. They’re ganging up on him.” Doesn’t mean to, though. Just whip old Sal up a little bit.
Suddenly, a window breaks with a tremendous crash. People start to run. “Tommy!” Sally screams. He guns it out of there, shaking just a little bit. Ho-lee cow!
In front of Sally’s house, they get in a hot clinch. Sal is trembling, sort of. Man, if he could just keep her mouth stopped, he could do it, just hold the kiss until he was in there. But how would he do that without breaking her neck? Something is wrong.
It is the last day of winter, the twentieth of March, a morning heavily overcast like many of late, and Betty Wilson is going to Mabel Hall’s. She slips out the back d
oor, so Sister Clara, who lives down the block, is sure not to see her, past her torn-up hollyhocks and Eddie’s old bird dog nosing at a corner of his pen, and goes to see Mabel, knowing, though nothing has been said, that the other girls, anyway Mary Harlowe and probably Wanda Cravens, will come there, too. A new element has been added and now it must be appraised. Cards will be consulted, or else tea will tell what otherwise might be missed.
Like when Mabel saw “an evil event” and “love destroyed” in January, and she even says now she made Willie stay home that dreadful night, and who can say it isn’t so? it’s possible. And certainly it was Mabel who saved them all from despair when the Judgment failed to come the eighth of March like Clara had said, and it was Mabel who found “the man of honor” that knocked on their door just one week later. As for the eighth, they had met at Mabel’s the Wednesday before, and she had foretold it: “adversity,” “deception,” and “vain expectation.” So, in a way, they knew it all along, all the girls, knew it wouldn’t happen that night. Sometimes, in the excitement of a meeting, or when Clara was telling them how it would be, how they would see Ely and Eddie and Hank and all of them again, they forgot, and then the end was surely coming that night again, the eighth. But probably, deep down, they all knew a postponement had been ordained. Of course, Mabel was very close to that Norton woman these days, and, though they all believed Mabel, they listened to her with two ears, as it were, and she was certainly very quick a couple days ago to find the nineteenth of April in her cards, where it had never been before. Clara could be, in a way, wrong, and she could be stubborn in her wrongheadedness, but Clara could always be trusted. Betty never doubted for a moment a single word Brother Ely ever spoke in his entire life, he was truly the greatest man she ever knew, maybe even a living saint, nor does she nowadays doubt a single thing that her best friend Clara says, but sometimes, well, the same word can mean twenty different things, that’s all. Of course, Mabel is a little batty sometimes and she probably wouldn’t recognize the Coming in her cards if she saw it there, there’s that to consider, but one would at least have expected something like “a long journey” or “an unexpected visitor”—not even to mention the awesome trump twenty—and not “vain expectation.” So, they probably knew. Not the eighth of March, not yet. Mabel always used to read tea leaves, but more and more she has been turning to the cards, ever since she bought that fancy set in Mr. Robbins’ dimestore.
Origin of the Brunists Page 28