Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

“It kinda shakes you up, doesn’t it?”

“And Jesus, right there in the goddamn newspaper, Sal! I didn’t see it at first, it was Angie who found it, and she got all hysterical, why, it was just awful.”

“It is awful. Jesus, I don’t think they should print stuff like that, Vince. Not where young kids can see it and get ideas.”

“I’m not kidding, Sal, sometimes I feel like going down there myself and breaking that sonuvabitch Miller’s neck.”

“It sure seems funny how all of this is fitting together, all this horrible stuff and the mine closing down and the bad times, all that Black Hand trouble we was having, and now, Jesus, all these goddamn newspeople pouring in here, why, the streets are full of them, and they’re just here to make us out a bunch of fools!”

“Don’t I know it?” Vince pulled the unlit butt out of his mouth, stared at it a moment in disgust, pitched it out toward the street.

“I suppose more guys than ever will be moving on now,” Sal said. “Looks like old West Condon is all washed up.”

Vince slammed the rocker arm with his palm so hard it surprised even him and made Sal nearly spill his beer. “We can’t let it die, Sal, we just can’t , goddamn it!” He’d show them the way, by God, he’d find it and show them all. “It’s our town, Sal, and if it dies, we die with it!” Sal shrugged. “Hey! you ain’t figuring on bugging out on me, too, are you?”

Sal grinned, pulled his ear. “No, I suppose not. I’m too goddamn tired to go anywhere.” He sighed. “Sure is funny how a dump like this can grow on you.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Vince agreed.

“Here we are, Vince, a couple old displaced dagos who’ve got nothing but trouble and the runaround in this damn town, and still, when the chips are down, we can’t seem to let go of it.”

“I been thinking about that lately, Sal. I been thinking a man ain’t born with an attachment to the soil, like they say, or even to a piece of it, he just sort of picks it up as he goes along.”

“You been making too many goddamn speeches,” Sal said.

Vince laughed, downed the rest of his beer. “I tell you the truth, Sal. I been enjoying this work with the Committee.”

“So we’ve noticed.”

“Go ahead, wise off, you bastard, but it’s been a good thing for me. Somehow — I don’t know — but somehow, growing up in an immigrant home and all, I just always had a kind of oddball idea about this place, like I was being kept here against my will and the town was a bunch of goddamn foreigners I didn’t understand and never could.” He paused, leaned back in the rocker, wiped the beer foam from his lip. “But I’ve got so I can see things better, Sal. I’ve caught on to what makes this town tick. Sometimes, goddamn it, I feel like I been fighting the wrong damn fights all this time.”

“Well, you got the right kind of friends, Vince.”

“Yeah, maybe … but, hell,” grinned Vince, “you’re one of them, ain’t you?”

Three of his new friends came by that afternoon, Ted Cavanaugh, Burt Robbins, and Reverend Wesley Edwards of the First Presbyterian. Just in case Ted might drop over, Vince had quit the painting project and cleaned up, now felt smug about his foresight. “We don’t think it will do much good frankly,” Ted said, “but we thought it was at least worth a try to call on Ralph Himebaugh, Dr. Norton, and the Meredith boy. Want to come along?”

“Sure. I’ll go tell Etta.”

In the car, on their way downtown, Vince in the back with the minister, Robbins brown-nosing Cavanaugh up front, Ted told them about some of the latest incidents: Mrs. Norton talking to herself on the street, the Palmers boy getting thrown out of school on bad conduct yesterday, and the Easter Sunday burning of one of Widow Harlowe’s cats, which looked like a revival of the Black Hand activities, maybe even an inside revenge for her having weakened last Friday.

“Oh, Jesus!” Vince said with a shudder, and his missing finger tingled. Catching himself, he started to apologize to the minister, but the guy smiled and shook his head. Likable man, small fellow with a deep hairline, piercing gaze, nervous mouth, very bright.

“We want to be reasonable,” Ted was saying, “but we want them to know what the limits of our tolerance are. If they want to persist in their destructive ways, well, they’re free to do so, but we’d rather they didn’t do it here. We can’t afford it.”

That sounded more like it. Vince was in the mood to kick somebody’s ass out of town. The minister had a pipe stoked up; Ted and Burt had cigarettes going. Vince regretted having forgot his cigars in the anxiety not to hold anybody up. Maybe Ted guessed it: he handed a cigar back over his shoulder. Great guy. “Thanks, Ted.” The minister lit it for him.

“Why don’t we just ask the Nortons to get out?” Robbins suggested. “They’re outsiders anyhow.”

“Well,” the minister said, “I think we want to give them every chance to mitigate their views and become absorbed once more in the community life. Our task is not so much to chastise or threaten, as to define for them what it means to be a West Condoner.”

“Exactly!” said Ted. “Whatever we do, we’ve got to take it easy. We don’t want them to be able to use anything against us. Oh, incidentally, you fellows might like to read this,” he added, passing a letter back.

It was addressed to the mayor, came from a man named Wild in a town over in the next state. The guy was bitching about his son’s getting spooky letters from Mrs. Norton, trying to get the boy to leave home, come to West Condon before the 19th. He told how they’d had to boot her out of Carlyle about a year or so ago, and warned the mayor that she was a complete nut and had a perverted interest in young boys. “Whew! Pretty hot stuff!” Vince commented, handing the letter to the minister.

Ted parked in front of Savings and Loan, and they walked up to the second floor where Himebaugh had his law office. “He was here about an hour ago,” Ted whispered on the stairs. “If he’s gone, we’ll try his house.”

But he was there, cleaning papers out of file cabinets and desk drawers, dumping them indiscriminately into a large trash basket. He looked up at them, smiled oddly. “Good afternoon, gentlemen! How have you been?”

“Good to see you again, Ralph!” Ted beamed. “Ralph, you know Burt, Wes. This is Vince Bonali—”

“Glad to know you, Mr. Himebaugh.”

“My pleasure, I assure you.”

What odd words these were! Things you said every day, but now they had such a weird ring, ghostly. “What are you throwing away there?” Vince asked, to get the ball rolling.

“Oh, damage suits, Mr. Bonali. Wills. Liquor licenses.” Vince had heard the guy was shy, but if so, he hardly showed it now. Bright humorous gleam in his eyes, bold gestures, firm handshake. Kind of tremble there, though. “Did you gentlemen ever stop to consider how inutterably absurd our legal institutions are?”

“Sure, lots of times!” laughed Ted easily. “I don’t know who’s more absurd, though, the institutions or the damned attorneys who invent them!”

The lawyer smiled faintly, but something seemed to give way. He sat down, motioned them to chairs. They remained standing.

“Of course, there’s an element of the absurd in every institution, isn’t there, Ralph?” Reverend Edwards asked. “Any society is a kind of jerryrig at best, and it’s hard to think of one without the compromises that make it seem absurd.”

“Yes,” Himebaugh agreed. His fingers were pressed together prayerlike in front of him and they trembled. “That’s how it usually seems to turn out, all right.” A kind of smile jumped to his face, jumped away. “But no more.”