Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

When finally the tears had stopped, when he felt like all the horror had washed out of him and he could stand alone again, he stood and walked out, walked down. Somebody met him at the foot of the stairs. “Is it true, Vince?” Vince nodded, passed on. Glass crunched beneath his feet. He kept a tight grip on the piece in his pocket. “God, it’s awful, isn’t it, Vince?” somebody said. He shook his head in commiseration. “It couldn’t be worse,” he said. At the door, Dee Romano, looking washed out, nodded at him, and Vince nodded back. But it could be worse. And, walking out of the home of the prophet Giovanni Bruno on that lush night in May, Vince Bonali released at last the piece of glass (though he reached in his pocket every now and then to touch it again, make sure it was still there) and looked up at the magnitude and care of the universe and thanked God that, if no one else had, he at least had come at last to his Redemption.

In June, the Reformed Nazarene Followers of Giovanni Bruno all waited around the world for the Coming of Light again. It was on a Sunday, the seventh, seven Sundays after the nineteenth of April, but they waited until midnight because the next day was the eighth of the month, and Elaine’s Ma had not entirely put away that idea yet. It was an extraordinary — though, as it turned out, again somewhat symbolic — event, huge rallies everywhere, all of it covered simultaneously by world television, press, and radio: as though literally nothing else in the whole world was happening that night. In fact, it made Elaine feel funny the next day reading the newspapers and discovering that a lot of other things did happen. And another funny thing: as exciting as their own meeting was and as important as she was in it, she kept feeling all night like she’d rather go see it on television, as if that was where it was really happening.

Her Ma had changed a few things by the time of the June rallies — like wearing regular clothes under the tunics and staying in out of the weather — so things went a little more calmly most places. They read afterwards about some meetings where things got even worse than they had at the Mount of Redemption, but her Ma said those people were sensationalists and not real Christians. By letter and telephone and television appearances, her Ma and Ben organized these Bruno Follower rallies all over the world, convinced now that when it happened it would happen everywhere at once, though of course their own meeting in Randolph Junction was the most important and one of the biggest. Reverend Baxter wanted to hold it on the Mount of Redemption in West Condon, but Elaine’s Ma decided against it on account of the Persecution, organized it instead in Randolph Junction where the mayor was a friend of Brother Bishop Hiram Clegg and even became a True Follower. It was a very nice meeting, even though the newspeople were rather impolite some of the time and a few people from out of town got to acting up — in fact, though it was much bigger and there were a lot more lights, it was a great deal like the wonderful revivalist tentmeetings her Pa used to hold.

Elaine was thinking a lot about her Pa these days, not just because he had become a Saint and Martyr, or because she and her Ma sometimes talked to him, or because she might go to Heaven and see him soon, but because she had a new Pa now, Mr. Wosznik, and she couldn’t help comparing. She loved them both, but the truth was, if she could choose, she would stick with the old one. Ben was very kind, but her old Pa was even kinder. Her old Pa was smarter, too, she thought, and dressed better. Ben always smelled a little bit like a farm. Of course, one thing about Ben, he sure could sing. Their ballad with him singing it was number three on the Hillbilly Hit Parade, and they were making lots of money, which Ben was giving to the movement because they had a lot of expenses now. Just what they spent on postage was something hard to believe. Of course, as her Ma said, there wasn’t any need to choose: we were all God’s children and, in a way, were all married to each other. Ben sometimes made Elaine think of her brother Harold who was killed in the war, and who always used to play a banjo and sing religious songs to her when she was little, and she wondered if maybe her Ma wasn’t thinking of Harold when she married Ben. Her Ma kept her old name so people would always know who she was, calling herself Mrs. Clara Collins-Wosznik.

Elaine was a much bigger help to her Ma now than she used to be. Her Ma even remarked on it several times. She wasn’t afraid anymore and people looked up to her because she was one of the First Followers and might even be a Saint someday. She took up collections and typed envelopes and helped organize meetings and even gave instruction in the Creed sometimes to the younger people at Junior Evening Circle. Like everybody always agreed, the Creed was very beautiful; it was based on the Seven Words of Giovanni Bruno and Saint Paul and the Revelation to John, and contained wonderful new ideas about Mother Mary and Spiritual Communication and the God, not of Wrath or Love, but of Light. It changed from time to time because, as her Ma said, it was a living Creed: Domiron wasn’t mentioned in it anymore, for example, though he might come back, now that Mrs. Norton’s book, The Sayings of Domiron , was out. She and Dr. Norton had become the first Bishops of the whole state of California, and her Ma would always say how she admired that lady and still to this day wore the medallion, but as Bishops the Nortons were not very active. They seemed too inclined to go their own way and forget they were all children of the same God.

Some of the younger people Elaine instructed were boys and they paid her a lot of attention, but regardless of what her Ma said about all being married to each other, she never let things go too far. It wasn’t just because she had her mind on being a Saint, but because she was going steady in a religious kind of way: ever since Carl Dean had gone to jail for trying to kill all those policemen, she had been writing letters regularly with Junior Baxter. Junior had stayed in West Condon with his folks in spite of the terrible Persecution still going on there, and they were meeting secretly now — Junior wrote “underground” and Elaine actually thought they were meeting in the mines or something until her Ma explained. Her Ma didn’t seem too happy about her writing to Junior, but she didn’t say not to. Elaine didn’t show her Ma all the letters either, because sometimes she and Junior had to discuss pretty grown-up things, considering they both wanted to be Saints.

All day long that Sunday that they went to the Mount, the Day of Redemption, she and Junior had been staring at each other. Elaine didn’t know at the time if it was because they still hated each other or what, but she didn’t like it. Her tunic felt funny on her all day. She even thought of asking Carl Dean to make him stop, but she was afraid of causing trouble just when everybody was so excited about all the Baxter people joining them in the Spirit. And they were so tired. Elaine thought she’d drop, and it made her kind of dizzy all day — she kept getting the funny feeling she was floating in and out of all those other people. They had been up all night watching over poor Marcella whom she loved so — Elaine had cried and cried like a baby, and once had even kissed the cold mouth and nearly died doing it, it just didn’t seem possible. All the next day, she kept waiting for Marcella to rise up and take her hand and smile. And then all the baptisms there before they went out to march, just at dawn, because Giovanni Bruno, who was heartbroken, opened his mouth in that special way of his when he wanted to say something important and said: “Baptize … Light!” It was the last thing anybody ever remembered him saying before they took him away from the Mount. Her Ma and Reverend Baxter and Mrs. Norton all agreed right away: he meant they were supposed to have a new kind of baptism, a baptism with light, and so they gave him a flashlight to hold and everybody walked under it, sniffling and bawling to beat the band. Her Ma still baptized with light in the same way, she had a special lamp for it, but Junior said his Pa had changed it a little, using real fire, and they couldn’t wear anything on their shoulders. That made her Ma a little mad when she found out, just like she got upset at Mrs. Norton for saying out in California that “light” meant “television.” It seemed like her Ma was always caught in the middle between those two.