Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

For I am the least of the apostles ,

that am not meet to be called an apostle ,

because I persecuted the Church of God .

But by the grace of God

I am what I am… .

Abner Baxter stood brooding and crestfallen in the ditch over the battered body. Blood glistened yet in dark drools from mouth to ears, and the bright glitter had not yet departed from her open eyes. How many cars had struck her, he did not know, but he knew one that had. Lights sliced damply now through the night air and the country silence was laced with the shrieks and moans of men and women alike. A doctor pronounced her dead, and a great threnodial plaint went up. The prophet knelt to kiss her and rose with blood staining his lips, his face drawn with grief. A woman, the doctor’s wife, indeed the very woman who two months before had inveighed against him in the prophet’s house, now scourged him with lacerating cries of “murderer!” and “fiend!” and a hostile passion smoldered and grew in that great multitude. Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, Abner found that the will to resist had left him utterly. He had left his wife Sarah blubbering in the car, had marched boldly back down the mine road, past the shocked and stricken faces, in the ruthless beams of light, down the road to where he’d struck her, had seen her from the lip of the ditch lying at the bottom like a crumpled bird, lights from wrecked cars illuminating spectrally her small body, and with strength still, and with calm presence of mind, had strode down into this ditch, here to arrive standing still while others bent over her, here to see her twitch and die … and now it was done. Sister Clara Collins stood there, across the body from him, watching him. The doctor bent over the girl still, along with that Wosznik fellow and several others. Of his own people, Abner alone was there. Which was as it should be. The others wept. He would have too, perhaps, but something restrained him: a sense of propriety maybe, as though … as though he had no right. Those terrible texts which had been troubling him these past weeks, those passages which spoke of the rebellion which must precede Christ’s return, now sprang forth in his mind, augmenting his affliction. Apologies formed on his tongue, but he seemed incapable of speech. He stood by the dead child in the midst of that mantling hysteria and execration and waited — for what? Perhaps: to be slain. “Monster!” shrieked that maddened woman. “Butcher!”

“No, friends! We’re all murderers!” From a quarter least expected: it was Sister Clara Collins, ennobled, it would seem, by her own great griefs, and thus less undone by this present one, who now spoke forth boldly: “We all killed her with our hate and with our fear!” And he recognized the magnitude of it, the greatness of spirit, and he was stirred in the soul and much amazed. She stared then at his face, and Abner gave her much to read there, if she could but discern it. “Abner,” she said softly, softly though her voice carried far in the night air and stilled the lamentations, “this awful thing is a judgment on us — Please! Join hands with us now and pray!”

And he reached across and accepted Clara’s hand, and as he did so, a great warmth surged through him — for all things are cleansed with blood, he thought, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission — and then, unleashed, the tears flowed.

“… And knowin’ that in the Last Days grievous times must come, help us to take heart, and, as Brother Abner hisself has taught us, Lord, to fergit the things which are behind, and stretchin’ forward to the things which are before, help us to press on….”

And with a great lightening of his heart, he perceived that, though a terrible thing was upon them and many would despair, he, Abner Baxter, would march in the vanguard and give them strength, and he foresaw the great and holy march upon the morrow, he like these, in a pure-white tunic, foresaw the massing on the Mount of the mighty army of the sons of light, foresaw the smiting of the wicked and the destruction of the temples, foresaw the glory… .

Amens were shouted and songs were sung and people wept and embraced one another and his own tears, he saw, were dampening the shoulder of Sister Clara’s tunic, and for just that moment he felt a boy again and wished to fold himself forever in her embrace, but then it was Brother Ben Wosznik whose arm was around his shoulders and then a pale stout man named Brother Hiram and he saw his own wife Sarah come running down the ditch and into Clara’s arms—“Oh Sister Clara! God help us!”

“Children!” cried Sister Clara. “It is the last hour! God has called us to redemption! The battle lines is formed and the last struggle is commenced!”

“Destroyers are come upon all the bare heights in the wilderness!” Abner cried out then through his tears, finding voice. “For the sword of God devoureth from the one end of the land even unto the other end of the land! No flesh has got peace!”

“The darkness is passing! the hour is at hand! and the dead they shall hark to the White Bird of Grace and Glory and them that hear shall live!”

“Amen!”

“We shall live!”

And the stout man raised his hand and lifted his soft chin, tears streaming down his round cheeks, and Sister Clara cried, “Brother Hiram Clegg!”

“And henceforth,” he proclaimed, “them that have wives may be as though they had none, and them that weep as though they wept not, and them that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and them that use the world as though they used it not, for the fashion of this world, it is passing away!”

And then up rose the woman who had so newly reviled him, and she cried out, “Go! says the prophet. Stand on high! Look thee toward the east! It comes!”

“Now!”

“Christ Jesus!”

“March!”

“Repent!”

“It is coming!”

“Save us!”

They lifted up the body.

O the powers of darkness tremble and with fear their hearts do fill ,

As the sons of light go marching out to stand upon that Hill

Beneath the Cross and Circle to fulfill God’s blessed Will !

For the end of time has come!

So come and march with us to Glory!

Oh, come and march with us to Glory!

Yes, come and march with us to Glory!

For the end of time has come!

Mid-Sunday dreams. Not all peaceful. Races against old deadlines. Missing trains and planes. Bags, badly packed, falling open on busy platforms. All of them lucid, but disjointed. Trying to straighten them out, he woke. Then back down again. Sounds from the television, Happy’s adjacent body, daylight squeezing past the blinds, the twisted sheets, all these entered in, and though he was always conveniently far from this place and time, there was still a nagging need to be doing something he was neglecting, to get somewhere before it was too late, all of which, during semiconscious spells, he understood only too well. Once he was racing on a bicycle on an old dirt road. Then it was a car. Hairy turns, torn-up roads, horrible precipices, tremendous speed he couldn’t seem to control. As though in the sky above there were parenthetical comments being made by a television announcer, who called him “His Eminence Justin Miller” and once “His Promontory” just for laughs. The situation of this announcer was peculiar and he woke finally in the aura of that peculiarity: for the announcer, while ostensibly describing the race, if that’s what it was, neither explained accurately to the audience what “His Eminence” was doing, nor did he reveal to Miller the precise structure of the race, or how or why in fact he’d got into it. Perhaps it was night. Certainly, later, it was night. He was in a church-camp, having driven there perhaps, though this part was not distinct. Now he was at Inspiration Point with a blond-haired girl. Large full moon, which, however, was a bit unstable, occasionally startling him with its sudden oscillations. The girl was crying, yet they were both quite happy. They suddenly remembered the prayer meeting, raced, feeling guilty, through a dark forest, arrived late for it. Inside the church, there was crying and singing and impassioned preaching. The girl got drawn into it, soon was weeping emotionally with all the other boys and girls. He realized, within the dream, that all this had happened to him when he was in the seventh grade, and he had forgotten about this girl entirely. Her name, he recalled, was Mary. She was still the same, but he was now a grown man. The women who worked in the camp kitchen bawled and shrieked, their skirts always hiking up somehow over the roll of their stockings on their beefy thighs. He was dismayed that Mary, who had just wept for him (though exactly what he had done, he could not remember), now wept the same tears for Jesus. He turned to a companion, a large somber man whom he had brought here to show this sort of behavior, perhaps a father figure of sorts, and explained: “She has been seeking God, you see, but has never found him. I have been the victim of transcendence.”