Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

“But that’s pretty much what it means to be a man, isn’t it, Ralph?” Ted asked. “Holding on to one’s beliefs on the one hand, one’s ideals, and on the other, accommodating oneself to the institution, making changes in it where it seems—”

“No, not at all!” snapped the lawyer. He leaned forward on one unsteady elbow, and his lips seemed to flush pink. Kind of flutter in the thick brows as he looked up at them. The guy looked in pretty bad shape, now that Vince observed more closely. Awful thin. “To be a whole man is to be at one with the—”

“Aw, come on, Ralph,” Robbins cut in. “Let’s talk plain. All Ted’s trying to say is a guy can believe what he wants to believe, and still get along with—”

“You can’t know one thing and act otherwise,” the lawyer said. Precise enunciation, tremulous undercurrent. The total insane calm of the man and his weird shifty eyes were beginning to get to all four of them. “You can’t know that fire burns and put your hand into it.”

“No? Well, goddamn it, Ralph,” Cavanaugh said gruffly, “that seems to me just what the hell you’re doing!”

The lawyer smiled, lips quivering. “Maybe I’ve gone the next step. Maybe I’ve found out that fire doesn’t burn, after all.”

“Oh, hell, Himebaugh!” Robbins said. “Don’t you see, we’re here to help you get out of this thing.”

“I don’t want help. I don’t need help.” No smiles now. Very white. Very goddamn sick.

“Well, man, it’s now or never. Don’t expect us to come around Monday to give you a hand when you’ve got this whole town ready to ride you out on a rail—”

“There won’t be a Monday, you fools!” Himebaugh cried. He leaped up, grabbed a pile of papers, heaved them at them. A folder struck Vince right on the bridge of his nose, made his eyes smart. He moved in, fists doubled, but Ted held him back. “Get out! Get out!” the lawyer screamed. Threw more heaps of paper. Jesus, he was really cracking up! Paper flying everywhere like a goddamn flock of mad birds let loose. “Get out, I say! Get out, you fools, or I’ll kill you!” Banging of cabinet doors. His screams echoed. Waste-basket rattled off a wall. “I’ll kill you!” They heard him screaming like that all the way out to the street.

On the way to the Nortons, they talked about it. Even Ted was shocked, and they all noticed how his health had deteriorated. Vince, embarrassed by the tears, repeated several times how the folder had caught him square on the nose. “I felt like laying into that guy right then and there!” he boomed. “Good thing you held me back, Ted!”

It was already dusk when they stepped heavy-footed onto the Nortons’ front porch, knocked. Dr. Norton came to the door. Looked like they might have waked him up. “Hello, fellows, come on in.” Soft gentle voice. You could hardly hear him. Vince started forward, but Ted, holding his ground, blocked him.

“I don’t think it will take us long to say what we’ve come to say, Dr. Norton,” Ted said.

Norton’s wife, the schoolteacher Vince had driven in from the coalmine one day a couple months or so ago, stepped up behind the veterinarian. “What is it, Wylie?”

“These men …”

“We just came to say it might be better for you and for everybody,” Robbins said, “if you just sort of moved on.”

“Now, wait a moment, Mr. Robbins,” the minister interrupted. “I think we want to give Dr. and Mrs. Norton every opportunity to reconsider the whole thing. You see, Dr. Norton, we — that is, all of us here in West Condon — have become concerned about certain activities which, we feel, are not in the best interests of—”

“Why, gentlemen!” laughed Mrs. Norton. “All this has happened before!”

“How’s that?” asked Reverend Edwards, biting down on his lower lip.

“Look, Wylie! the dark one!” Vince broke into a strange sweat under her excited gaze. She smiled at him. “We are not going to leave.”

“Well,” said Reverend Edwards, “that’s what I’m trying—”

“We have been expecting you. We have been pursued by you all our lives, and we knew that you would find us here. But we have been brought here to consummate our life’s work, and we are never going to run again. We are not afraid.”

Robbins’ neck was blushing red, a sure sign. “Maybe you better think again—”

“We are going to the Mount of Redemption on Sunday to await the Coming of the Light. I hope you gentlemen will find it in your hearts to join us there. Now, go away and bother us no more. Wash the earth from your hands and feet and cast your eyes to the limitless stars!”

“That’s nutty!” said Robbins. “Show ’em the letter.”

“Forget it,” said Cavanaugh. He showed by his look, his back turned coldly on the Nortons, that he considered it a lost cause.

They made one final call. And this one worked. At the orphanage, Reverend Edwards and Ted Cavanaugh pinned the Meredith kid in one lamplit corner. The old hotbox technique. Vince himself had used it in the union organizing days. Meredith was a pansy and it didn’t take much to break him. Suddenly, in a flood of tears, he said he was sorry, it was all wrong, embraced Cavanaugh like a father, disclaimed the Brunists, said they’d been persecuting him from the start, hinted they might have been whipping him, and, in fear of them, he asked to be hidden away. Reverend Edwards, deeply moved, offered his home for the rest of the week. The boy wept gratefully, then cheered up, became even joyful on the ride to the Presbyterian manse, and it made them all feel good. Won one!

Or so they thought. That night, Tuesday, not only the goddamn local paper and the city papers were headlining the Brunist story, but it was even featured on the six o’clock televised newscast. Helicopter movies of West Condon and the coalmine, blown-up stills of some of Tiger Miller’s photos, and the announcer saying: “In this placid little American community of West Condon, a small band of devout believers, calling themselves followers of the coalminer-prophet Giovanni Bruno, believe that on Sunday evening, the nineteenth of April, the world will end. In expectation of their own salvation, they will gather on this little knoll here, near the Deepwater Number Nine coalmine, where only three months ago an explosion and fire killed ninety-seven men. From that catastrophe, on Sunday, January eleventh, one man was rescued, this man—”

“Daddy!” Angie called out from her bedroom and he nearly went a foot up off his chair. “Listen to this!”

She threw open her door, the radio turned up fullblast. Cheap country-style music, badly sung. “What’s that?” he asked. She’d taken lately to listening to a lot of that crap, especially the morbid ones about dead people, not excluding dead daddies.

“The Brunists!” she cried. “They’re singing!”

Do not think that God’s Chosen are the mighty!

Do not think that God’s Elect are the high!

Just remember the stories in your Bible:

’Tis the humble whom God doth glorify!

Think of Moses, discovered in a river!

Think of Jesus, a carpenter’s son!

Think of Bruno, a humble coalminer!

’Tis the poor by whom God’s battles are won!

So, hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!

Yes, hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!

We shall gather at the Mount of Redemption

To meet our dear Lord there face to face…

“I’ll be goddamned!” Vince said, and hurried away midchorus to the phone. “Hello, Ted? Vince here. Hey, turn on your radio! The Brunists are singing! They’re on TV, too!”