Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

She’s got red hairs on her fan — ny!

Sarah had slammed in and upbraided them unmercifully, shouting at them that they would hear from their father on that score that very night. Franny had insisted shyly that she didn’t mind the teasing, and had begged her not to tell their father, but Sarah had replied she was anyway mad at both of them still for the way they had carried on at breakfast. Then Franny had told her that Nat had run off, presumably to the mine. Franny was less charitable toward Nathan. They all were. Sarah had heard before Nathan even came about the curse of the third child, and certainly that boy was the devil’s own. Well. She was wearied of whipping the child, and now he was so grown, husky for an eleven-year-old, it usually took both her and Franny holding for Abner to manage it. And Lord, it did no good. Abner would not admit it, but that was the plain truth of it. Nathan could not be saved.

Franny had dragged about all faint and teary, so Sarah had told her to go lie down until her father came home, she would finish the kitchen and get Sunday dinner. The girl hadn’t argued; behind her glasses, her eyes had been red-rimmed, her round cheeks flushed and feverish. Poor Franny! Such a good girl, and to suffer so! And then the other children humiliating to make it worse. Franny was fifteen, she shouldn’t have had to endure that trial, but what more could Sarah have done to stop it? It had been Abner that hot summer night who had judged the girl’s refusal to tattle on the little ones an act of disobedience, and all Sarah’s wailing had not constrained him. Abner had not thrashed Franny for a long time, so he had laid the razor strop to her. Tears had spilled and Abner had sweated, but the girl had not complained. And the others, witnessing the scourging, had discovered what now they sang about. How could they be so dreadful, those children? It grieved Sarah. Junior, who had started it, no longer mocked, of course: Sarah had noticed, giving him his baths recently, that he must sooner or later fall prey to his own malevolence. Her poor white goose, he was such a soft one. They were all redheads, all but Amanda, and that was probably why she was her father’s favorite.

Abner and Junior had come home shortly after noon, Abner somber and uncommonly gentle. Ely Collins was dead, he had told her softly: horribly dead. She had wished to weep then, but had been unable. Now, he had said, much work lay ahead. Had he meant for her, too? The vague foreboding of ordeal had dismayed her. They had eaten Sunday dinner in virtual silence, all but Nat who had not returned home and who had not been seen by Junior at the mine. When Abner had retired to the front room, Junior’s plump white face had turned to her and he said, “He was frightening out there! Everybody cried! He made them!”

More omens of disruption had touched her during family worship. Abner had passed the afternoon studying the Holy Bible, and by evening he had fallen strangely meditative. He had listened with curious patience as the children had recounted their evil doings, and instead of administering the usual castigations, had spoken solemnly with each of them about duty and led them, individually, in prayer. “The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge,” he had told Franny, “but the foolish despise wisdom and instruction.” To Junior, he had explained proverbially: “He hath made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made; his mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violence shall come down upon his own pate.” And he had instructed Junior how the ruthless avarice of the mine owners would bring disaster upon their pates, just as vice and waywardness had brought retributive death to many miners. Nathan, typically, had refused to say where he had been all day, or what it was he had brought home in a paper sack, would not even answer his father. Abner’s face had contracted darkly. “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother,” he had rumbled ominously, and for a moment the familiar thunderheads had seemed to be forming and Sarah had breathed easier, “the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young vultures shall eat it!” But he had pursued the matter no further, had turned to little Amanda to receive her admission of mocking her sister Franny that day and disobeying her mother, and had, with alarming tenderness, lectured the confused child on love, admonishing her to make love her aim, and to “desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy!” What had he meant by that? Unnerving portents everywhere! Praying with Amanda, Abner had cried upwards to the Lord: “Oh deliver not the soul of thy turtle-dove unto the wild beast! forget not the life of thy poor forever!”

The children, disoriented by their father’s altered manner, had gradually grown more unruly, testing the new limits, and Sarah had feared for them. Only little Paul, whose turn was last, had remained wanly mute, apparently too young to perceive the shift. Once Nathan had whispered something in the boy’s ear, and he had begun to cry softly. That Nathan! She could have beat him herself! Abner had turned then to Paul, and whimpering, the boy had repeated what Amanda had revealed just before him. And then the doorbell had rung, bringing Sister Clara Collins and her tagtail daughter into the awry room, and Sarah had commenced to weep.

Abner invited Sister Clara to join them in prayer, but she impatiently thrust her note into his hands, saying, “I need your guidance, Abner! It’s from Ely!” Sarah wished to see it, but feared Abner’s rebuke if she asked; Sister Clara determined the matter by snapping it out of Abner’s hand the moment he glanced up and planting it in Sarah’s. In tortured script, it read:

DEAR CLARA AND ALL:

I dissobayed and I know I must Die. Listen allways to the Holy Spirit in your Harts Abide in Grace. We will stand Together befor Our Lord the 8th of

Even before Sarah finished it, Sister Clara was demanding: “But what can it mean? What do you take it to mean?” Sarah was too confused even to hook the words of it together sensibly. She waited anxiously, staring hard at the note, for Abner to remove the burden of that response from her, and at last he did: “I think it means that it’s better, if the will of God should so will, that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing.” The words touched Sarah familiarly: she had awakened to them. They were to have been a part of Abner’s sermon this morning.

“Maybe, Abner, but it ain’t all of it, it cain’t be. I know, God was tellin’ him to leave the mine and go preach, and Ely he didn’t do it, and so in a way he done wrong. Maybe. But what is troublin’ me so, Abner, is what does he mean about listenin’ to the Holy Spirit and standin’ together—”

Abner, interrupting, growing nervous, explained that the Holy Spirit was the inspired word of the Holy Gospel; we must study it in our hearts and abide in Christ Jesus, so that our consciences will be clear when we must stand before Him “that is ready to judge the living and the dead—” The children were growing restless and noisy, but fell silent instantly before Abner’s sudden buffeting glare. “The living and the dead,” he repeated, then added, though his mind seemed to be on the children: “For the end of all things is at hand—”

“That’s it, Abner!” Clara cried and Abner’s white face spun toward her, pinched inward in consternation. “The end of all things is at hand! Don’t you see—?”

“Now, Sister Clara—”

But the woman was in a frenzy and wouldn’t be hushed, though Sarah saw that Abner’s temper would not long be contained. “We will stand together before the Lord the eighth of — the eighth of when? Of when , Abner? That’s the point of it, don’t you see? Ely was tryin’ to tell us that God’s final judgment is near upon us!”