Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

From Hall, he picked up a small feature on the events that kept him home from the mine Thursday night and away from death. Spare stunted man in his early fifties, married but childless, with a long record of absenteeism in the mine, Hall explained that he had “had a hunch” about that night: it was on the eighth of the month, and one of his cousins had been hurt by a fall on the eighth of July some years back, and his bird dog had died the eighth of last December, just a month ago.

“Now, I ain’t superstitious, Mr. Miller, I don’t hold no truck with black cats and suchlike, I ain’t no old woman. But, see, them mines they is always dangerous in the winter, now I’m fatalistic about it, I figger when the Good Lord He says my day is up, well, it’s up, but then in the summer they’s always these here falls. The roofs, why, they jis fall in. You kin usually hear them, they’s a kinder stretchin’ sound, a kinder crackle, oh, it ain’t near so bad in the winter. I don’t mind workin’ in the — but, see, in the winter then, everthing it gits all dried out and they’s a powerful lot of dust, and, you know, that dadblamed mine, they don’t lay enough rock dust, Mr. Miller, I’m tellin’ you the Lord’s own truth, they don’t give a care about us miners, they don’t give a care about nothin’ except makin’ money. Why, the coal dust gits so bad you cain’t even see them machines, them big machines, you jis trip right over them, your lights right on them and all. And that’s how it is that it’s winter when all these here explosions takes place. I don’t mind it in the summer so terrible much. But, you know, I don’t think I’m gonna work no more down in the mines. No, sir, I don’t think so.”

Hall squirmed buglike in his chair, twisted his visored cap in his slender hands, pale mapped with blue veins. He refused the cigarette Miller offered him. “No, thanks, Mr. Miller. It’s right kind, but I don’t smoke none. No, listen, I got all this here coal dust down in my lungs, see, cause once you breathe it in, why, it don’t never come out again, and I’m afeered that smokin’ might touch off a kinder explosion right there in my lungs and, you know, smokin’ causes TB and this here dust it sticks to the wet part of the lungs, now a doctor told me this, Mr. Miller, it’s the Lord’s truth, and the lung it gits as tough as the backside of an old mule, and you start coughin’ and ifn you smoke, you git TB. Oxford, he smoked all the dadblamed time, and I always says to him, I says, Oxford, dadblame it — Oxford, he’s my buddy, he was my buddy, he got killt down there, Oxford Clemens, they all called him Ferd, but I called him Oxford, oh, he weren’t worth a hill a beans, he come from pretty poor stock, and that man he cussed and smoked all the time, but I ain’t one to use nicknames, see, I think it’s downright unfriendly, and, why, nobody called Jesus by no nickname, did they? But Oxford, he didn’t pay me no mind, he went right on smokin’. He had a cough, too, I weren’t surprised none. He even smoked down there in the mine, oh, it was agin the rules and all, but he never gave no care about no rules, when he wanted him a dadblamed smoke, he was gonna have it. Shoot, everbody else done the same, it weren’t jis Oxford. But our faceboss, that’s Angelo Moroni, Mr. Miller, he got killt, too, well, he didn’t like the idea none, and he always said, don’t lemme catch none a you guys smokin’ down here or I’ll have you outa here on your tail fast as scat, that’s more or less how he put it, but he never took the cigarettes away, so what happened is all these guys’d duck off in some room where they’d stopped working and sneak them a smoke now and agin, and, well, Mr. Miller, ifn they’da smoked out in the haulageways in the open, it wouldn’ta been dangerous at all, but these here abandoned rooms, they’s plumb fulla gas, and everbody told Angelo that, but he jis said, dadblame it! I don’t want none a you guys to smoke at all and that’s period! That’s pretty much how he put it.”

“How many years have you been a miner, Mr. Hall?”

“Thirty-six years, Mr. Miller, thirty-six years, off and on.” The man had small eyes circled with worry lines, an overbite, very little chin. A light gray grizzle furred his cheeks.

“Do you know Bruno well?”

“No, I seen a lot of him, he was on my shift and all, but, no, I cain’t say as how I really know him. Always I felt sorry on account of the others they all picked on him a lot down there, but you couldn’t never git friendly with him, he was a kinder inter -verted type, ifn you know what I mean. Like you’d say it was a nice day, and he’d jis stare back at you. He was a funny bird.” Hall tilted his head to one side a moment as though listening, himself resembling for that instant a “funny bird,” and then he continued: “Knowed his buddy well. Wasn’t it a pity, Mr. Miller, how Ely Collins had to suffer? Don’t seem right somehow, man like that, he was our preacher, you know, how his leg got chopped off and how …” Hall’s voice trailed away as, gazing off, he suffered Collins’ mutilations. “He took a lotta trouble with Bruno, he was always tryin’ to save him, build him up.”

“You mean he was trying to convert him from Catholicism?”

“Not exactly, on account of he weren’t no Catholic, or leastways none a them other Roman fellers cared to claim him. They said he’d split off or somethin’ and I guess he’s sort of nothin’ at all.”

“Did Collins talk to you about leaving the mine?”

“No.”

“Or seeing white birds in the workings?”

“Seein’ birds? No, not Ely, musta been somebody else.”

“And now you’re thinking of retiring, Mr. Hall?”

“Well, now, I won’t exactly say that, Mr. Miller, but I’m gonna be lookin’ around. I ain’t too old to learn a new trade. My wife Mabel she thinks I oughter start over in somethin’ where I kin work out in the open. I ain’t afeerd none a the mines, a miner he ain’t skeered about goin’ down, else he’d never go, you git fatalistic, but it’s jis they’s so dadblamed unhealthy. Besides, that there bed is playin’ out, and now they’s this mess down there to clean up — you know, they don’t give no care at all about the poor miner what gits throwed outa his job, they jis only reckon up what it’s gonna cost them to fix up all the damage, and they reckon up how much they kin make off the coal that’s left, and they add and subtract, and it all depends on the number they end up with, see, no, it’s the Lord’s own truth, Mr. Miller. It don’t come to their minds none about us poor miners, outa work and too dadblamed old to start over again. Why, I don’t know what I’d do now, see, I’m over fifty, and you cain’t learn an old dog, as the feller says, why, they’re jis leavin’ us to rot!”

“That pansy!” Davis grinned later, when Miller described the interview. “Why sometimes right in the middle of a shift, he’d start bellyaching about the smoke and cry around there was going to be an accident and he’d refuse to work. He hasn’t got the nerve for the job.”

“Maybe,” said Miller, “but, still, there he was, right afterwards, volunteering for rescue crews and taking twice the risk of usual work.”

“Feeling guilty probably,” said Davis.

“Here, Barney, before I forget. I saved you a couple extra copies of the special. Your ugly mug made it again.”

“What the hell! Two nights running! I’m getting famous!” Davis opened the paper, searched out his photograph, studied it a moment, then tossed it down on the desk with an effort at indifference, handsome square jaw set in disdain. “Think you’ll win some more prizes with it?”

“Maybe. If your picture doesn’t stop them.” Barney laughed and Miller asked, “What caused it, Barney? Have you figured it out?”