Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

Miller pushed: “Bruno has some of that in his background?”

Lewis hesitated, then replied, “I don’t know, Miller.”

“Is he alone?” The question he’d been saving.

“No, there’s a young girl here. His sister.”

“Can I see her?”

“Rather you didn’t. She’s exhausted and pretty frightened. She has been out at the mine, almost without sleep, these entire three days, and I’m having to keep a close eye on her as well as her brother.” The nurse was doing phallic things, though maybe unintentionally, with a syringe and needle. “We have her on a spare bed in a room that adjoins his, and I was just preparing a light sedative when you came. I’ve kept everyone away from her, of course, and will do so tomorrow, too. However, if you want to drop around, you might call me first, and—”

“Thanks, I will.” Miller gave them spare copies of the special edition for the girl and her brother, as well as for the other patients, stopped in a moment to visit Bert Martini, the guy who’d lost an arm Thursday night. Martini caught on Miller’s semipro baseball team. Used to. Martini was in good-enough spirits, but Miller felt his smile cracking, and left depressed. He wondered what he could do for the guy. Make him the coach maybe.

When he went out, the nurse was gone, busy apparently, and he missed seeing her. Too bad. She was something worth seeing. He thought about the miner’s sister, pajama’d and small in the hospital bed. Tomorrow. Felt the woolly cap in his pocket. He laughed, and the girl at the downstairs desk smiled back.

And the fatherly man with the gray moustache pats her head and wears a white jacket starchy and dark brows a turned-up trenchcoat collar though his face is black dear God! black! and he can’t breathe but smiles dark eyes and wears silk bright shorts silk shirt with a number on it — can’t breathe! oh please! and runs like the wind white jacket number fourteen soothes but soot in his hair and can’t white eyes face like the wind silk mouth and turned-up can’t breathe! the number on it can’t breathe! she screams and he holds her wrist brows with a gray jacket needle fatherly white pats her head and a nurse

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate thereon day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein…. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not affrighted, neither be thou dismayed: for Jehovah thy God is with thee whithersoever… .

The Baxters’ family worship Sunday evening was interrupted by an unexpected visit from Sister Clara Collins and her daughter Elaine. Abner frowned in concern; Sarah too was surprised: they had brought up Brother Ely’s body only that morning. The simplicities of Sarah’s recent life were fragmenting this weekend, changes had touched her that she could not yet cope with, so she now felt something excessively intrusive — if not improper — about Sister Clara’s unannounced call. Still, no sooner had she arrived than Sarah, almost against her will, began to weep for the other woman. So hard to believe so good a man was gone. Sister Clara clutched a note; she was terribly agitated.

From the day’s commencement, Sarah Baxter had been sorely tried. Abner had slept but poorly, rose early. He had kept to himself, bellowing alone in the closed front room in preparation for the early-morning service, could not even help her with the children. Now that the five were grown so, they all trod over her, especially the three boys, she couldn’t help it, and when Abner withheld his hand they blew their disobedience into open malice. Their oldest girl, Frances, usually some help, had had to pass the last three nights on the canvas cot in the shed, and so had waked sore and sniffly, poor child. It was too cold and damp out there and the mice made a fright of sleep — Sarah dreaded the week to come. Abner’s austere insistence on the practice vexed her, but the Good Book guided him and he was not to be moved. And as the girls grew, the problems mounted. Already, she and Franny had crossed dates a few times, and it would not be long before little Amanda, already ten, would be complicating the sorry matter even further.

But, although breakfast had been a persecution for her, curiosity to see their father preach for the first time had finally chased the five into their Sunday clothes and had cowed them to unwonted silence in the church. The Nazarenes had grown accustomed over the recent years to Brother Ely Collins’ tall eloquence in the Sunday pulpit, and Sarah had feared this morning that her husband’s blunt red wrath would whip them with too alien a chill. Brother Ely had saved their church, had built a roaring fire here and tended it with devotion. Although his message, no less than Abner’s, had been of the Lord’s awesome plans for sinners, his voice had been comfortingly paternal, and he had offered wonderful salvation in Christ Jesus. He had baptized all the Baxters, though they had been baptized before, and Abner himself had always agreed: Brother Ely was a saint.

Abner had stood, round and glowering, behind the rostrum this morning — it had surprised Sarah how stocky and aged he had seemed there, blunt hands gripping the rostrum, red-shocked face with its wide down-drawn mouth just visible above his knuckles — and after they had sung the fearsomely appropriate “Ninety and Nine,” which Abner had selected just for its relevance, he had raged forth astonishingly: “Belovèd! Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you!” The congregation, almost as a body, had started. Some had snickered in embarrassment afterward, and Sarah had seen with horror that her two oldest boys, Junior and Nat, were giggling furtively into their songbooks. How she had hated them then! She herself had felt near to tears: poor Abner! But, suddenly, the cry had become a prophecy! A boy had burst into the auditorium with the announcement that Brother Ely Collins might still be alive! Sister Clara and Elaine had rushed out and the congregation had bolted up to chase after. There had been a scattering, a rude disorder. “Hold!” Abner had thundered. “Have you forgotten that this is the House of the Lord?” They had hesitated, lashed to a respectful hush. “Let us all pause before departing,” her husband had commanded them, “for one minute of silent prayer that our beloved brother Ely Collins might soon be among us again!” The minute, abided by, had passed like an eternal judgment upon them, Abner’s final “Grace be with all of you! Amen,” releasing them somehow miraculously blessed.

Sarah had taken four of the children home, while Abner, a terrible and inexplicable tension crowding his red brows, had with Junior followed the others out to the mine. She had telephoned the Collins place, and Sister Mary Harlowe, poor woman, answering, had confirmed that Sister Clara was waiting at home. She had left Franny with the three younger children and had gone to sit a spell with Sister Clara. Many had come: poor Tessie Lawson, Mabel Hall, Betty Wilson, whose Eddie had died in the hospital, almost all the women from Sister Clara’s Evening Circle. She had learned then that Sister Wanda Cravens’ husband might also have survived. They had cried together a great deal there. Worried finally that Abner might return out of temper and find the children untended, Sarah had left before any word had come.

Arriving home, she had overheard from the front porch the two youngest, Amanda and Paul, taunting Frances in the kitchen with the hateful chant Junior and Nat had started last summer:

“Fran — ny! Fran — ny!