Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

One very sad thing happened the Day of Redemption: Sister Emma Clegg died of a stroke. She was a very holy woman and some said afterward that God had taken her away as a Sign of his keeping his Word. Nevertheless, it was a terrible shock for Brother Hiram, who was such a nice man and loved his wife so. At first, he was put in jail with all the other menfolk, but they let him right out again to take care of burying his wife, and they never came back to get him again. For a long time, he was very depressed, and he didn’t want even to think about making a new life. But her Ma, who had suffered so herself, had restored his spirit and made him get active again in the movement. He became the Bishop of Randolph Junction and, on that Sunday morning of the seventh of June, the day of the possible Midnight Coming — though by then nearly everybody was expecting it on the eighth of January, possibly next year, but more likely either seven or fourteen years from now — had married the widow Sister Betty Wilson, her Ma and her new Pa Ben standing as witnesses. As her Ma said at the little party after, it was a very poetical arrangement. A lot of people were there from all over the world, and most of them cried to think about it.

They also found poor Mr. Himebaugh, who had disappeared the Night of the Sacrifice, starved to death. Her Ma didn’t find that at all poetical and, even though they made him a Martyr, she hardly ever talked about Mr. Himebaugh again. Colin Meredith wrote them from where they were keeping him that he was in continual communication with the spiritual world and would return to them one day with incredible revelations. Sister Mary Harlowe settled in Randolph Junction and kept coming to their meetings, because after all she was a First Follower and her husband was a Saint and Early Martyr, but it seemed like she was starting to get bitter and sometimes talked rudely to Elaine’s Ma. Sister Wanda Cravens never got bitter and she was always very active.

Their Prophet was excommunicated by the Romanists and put in chains, and his people prayed daily for his deliverance. Really, he and his Ma were put in institutions like poor Colin, but, as her own Ma said, it was the same thing, it was all a part of the Persecution, and, as everybody knew, the mental institutions were controlled by Jews and atheists and they tortured Christians. They prayed for him to return and lead them to Light and most people believed his appearance would coincide with the real and final Coming, which meant he probably wouldn’t turn up for another seven years anyway. They had to learn patience and readiness, her Ma always said. Her Ma, who had run into a lot of problems talking on the phone to people where the time and even the date were completely different, had even begun to wonder if her old Pa’s final message, now known as the Revelation to Saint Ely Collins, anyway that part regarding the “eighth of the month,” was not to be taken symbolically instead of literally. Elaine and Junior speculated about this in their letters and talked about what they would do that day that the Prophet appeared and they were all together again.

And then one day in the middle of June, about a week after they waited for the Midnight Coming, Brother Bishop Hiram Clegg called a special meeting of all the Bishops who could come, about thirty of them by then, and he didn’t tell her Ma about it. Her Ma got terribly upset when she found out, because it looked for all the world like Brother Hiram was taking things into his own hands — and after all she’d done for him! She prayed to God and got guidance from Pa, and then she took Elaine and they stormed right into the middle of that meeting. Her Ma strode right down the aisle and was just about to raise the roof, when they all stood up and clapped and clapped.

Bishop Clegg rapped a gavel and said: “Sister Clara, we have, ahem, convened here this here night to consider the future of this great movement, and we have determined that the world lies open before us and we have but begun. But to accomplish the tasks that lie ahead, we must put our house in working order. To this end, we have here gathered and here, by unanimous consent, resolved to name you, Sister Clara Collins-Wosznik, our Evangelical Leader and Organizer!” Her Ma was just stopped dead in her tracks and seemed to go white all over. “Our financial picture has, of course, ahem, not yet stabilized itself, for the core itself is smaller than the loose ends still to be tied up, so we must apologize for the modesty of our initial offer, but we do feel able at this time to, ah, to propose a commencing remuneration of seven thousand dollars a year and traveling expenses. If you could just see fit …” And poor Brother Hiram’s voice started to break because he saw how her Ma was taking it: her Ma just broke right down and cried, and Elaine cried, and then so did a lot of other folks.

Then her Ma wiped her face with one of her old Pa’s big handkerchiefs and stepped up to the front and gave the most exciting speech Elaine had ever heard. She talked of their sacred goals and the race they had to run and how God’s Kingdom was not a gift to the indolent but the justifiable wages for honest hard work. “A body visited by Grace must live by Grace!” she cried, and Elaine felt a shudder run through her, tingling the place over her heart, and she started thinking about the next letter she would write to Junior Baxter. Her Ma told of all the converts and read letters from distant places and then: “God willing,” she shouted out, “we will go out and win the souls of the whole wide world!”

Everybody stood up and clapped and cheered and cried and said she’d have to give that speech on television, surely no one could resist, and then Bishop Clegg led them all in fervent prayer. They had been calling themselves the Reformed Nazarene Followers of Giovanni Bruno, but that night they decided to go back to the name Mr. Miller had given them: the Brunists.

The West Condon Tiger rose from the dead, pain the only sign of his continuance, for he was otherwise blind, deaf to all but a distant shriek, and abidingly transfixed. There was light, or seemed to be, more felt than seen. And down again: into the black bowels. Later: coruscations of terrible brilliance, an engulfing center-less agony. “Help!” Sounds of the rude world — or only a dream? Then, as the earth lazed through a few million revolutions, the pain passed, leaving only the light, figureless and unaimed, a medium merely: so it had come after all. And was he impressed? Not at all. Last thoughts: obscene blasphemies, social phalanx erected to the whole holy lot. Retributive passage then through epochs of black nebulae that twisted into shapes and masks of the grieving dead, scarred and supplicating: he sorrowed but could not reach them in their distress nor could they him in his. Unrepentant wrenched back to light, torture, somebody cried out, then dropped again to the dark company. Thus ages passed, in flickering succession. And what would he emerge? toward what new monster was his soul evolving? He tried to move — anything — assert his will — could not. Nailed fast to his torment, he stared out with blind eyes on the impossibility of the cosmos, and, staring, saw what looked like a cord with a button at the end. He tried reaching for it, realized for perhaps the billionth time in the course of his soul’s racked passage that he could move nothing at all. Nonetheless, from nowhere, from his renascent will maybe, an Angel of Light— the Angel of Light — appeared. “I thought I died,” he said and wondered who had stuffed his mouth with rocks. “How many years have I been here?” meaning light-years.

“Some eighteen, twenty hours,” said Happy Bottom drily. “And how feels today the man who redeemed the world?”