Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

“Pretty serious charges, Vince.”

“Yeah, and there’s ninety-seven dead buddies of mine to make then more serious, Tiger, including one of the greatest facebosses that mine ever saw.” A tear came to that strong man’s eye, and he brushed it away. “But, hell, don’t quote me, I’d never get another job in this country.”

“Say, somebody said something about some horseplay in the washhouse Thursday night, something that had to do with Bruno.”

Bonali flushed. “Well, there wasn’t nothing, it was — no, there wasn’t any horseplay.”

Miller laughed. “Hell, I’m not running court, Vince. What I want to find out is about that poem.”

“Oh, that.” Bonali grinned, shifted heavily in his chair. He rubbed his jaw with his hand, the little finger of which was missing. “Yeah. Bruno wrote a poem.”

“Do you still have it?”

“The poem? Naw, I gave it back to him. What would I want with the goddamn thing? Poem about his Mother.” Bonali laughed loosely. “That silly bastard!”

Rosalia brings Mama. The veil she wears to funerals she is wearing and her feet are compressed into the old black shoes too small for her . Sia fatta la vostra volontà. Stands so darkly singular, small hurt blemish in this sterile white. Tears glinting like prisms tumble out and wet with light her crinkly brown cheeks. “My boy!” she says to the nurses who enter. “My boy! my Chonny!” Her Mama, whom English frightens, is the only person to Marcella’s knowledge who has called Giovanni by the English equivalent of his name. Mumbles, rootlike fingers rattling the rosary. Curved light ekes out of radiators, bending perception . Adesso e nell’ ora della nostra morte. Marcella repeats the words. Giovanni, the tall boy whose shy protective love has brought her safely to womanhood, lies suspended in a mechanism of light and steel, generated by his own indecisive pulse. “My boy! povero Chonny!” The old black shoes melt into the marble floor. Boots, really, with hooks instead of holes for the laces. Brittle and black and cracked. Reflecting the white room, condensing it into a minute pattern of glitter deep in the hard black polish. Nonna’s shoes . Cosí sia. Her Mama thinks Giovanni is already dead .

Shaved and lightly barbered, the Monday edition sandbagged with everything short of leftover Christmas carols and put to bed, Miller drove to the hospital. Over the phone, Lewis had told him Bruno was still in a coma, no change in his condition, but that Miller could speak this afternoon with the man’s sister if he wished. Bright cold day — prinked faintly with a widely scattered dazzle of frost crystals — chiseled the town’s usual tumble of casual boxes into planes of rare precision. He drove through these hard streets feeling himself peculiarly distinct, as though watching the processes of animation that slid him, white outlined cartoon figure, past the fixed drop of white outlined cartoon town. The speedgraphic lay, as always, on the seat beside him, but it was unlikely he would use it. Formulated questions, but images of her fragmented them. He was surprised to discover that his hands were sweating on the wheel.

The hospital, usually a dead white inside, was today somehow blurred and hopeful, a contrast to the frozen clarity he had just driven through. Uncommonly, neither the blood of birth nor the knock of death jolted his mind this afternoon as he entered, but rather a flush of pleasure in visible human progress warmed him. We move on. Things can be better. There are goals.

This bud of wellbeing was threatened momentarily by a near-encounter with Wesley Edwards, the Presbyterian minister, out dispensing his crinkly-smile consolations, but luckily Edwards didn’t see him, turned into somebody’s room. Actually, the man Edwards, while unimaginative and soft-souled, was no worse than the rest of the West Condoners — no, what rankled was his goddamn presumption. All his breed galled Miller, but especially the complacently doubtful types like Edwards — he blanked out this town’s small mind with his codified hand-me-down messages, and when you pushed him he would slyly hint he didn’t believe it himself, goddamn ethical parable or some crap of the sort. Well, you’re still the old fundamentalist at heart, Miller accused himself. Miller had noticed that Edwards, awkward among ailing men, spent most of his time giggling with the hospitalized women. They were prone and all but naked, yet safe, and so was he. Maybe the bastard got a buzz out of their bedpans. The thought made Miller smile, and it was this smile he carried into the third-floor convalescent lounge, where Marcella Bruno awaited him.

He arrives, in crushed light, bringing with him the air of old storybooks, things wanted, things with a buried value in them. As a child, she watched him run, a man to her, though they called him a boy, a man with long legs and strong shoulders. He ran for them and was praised, he leapt and was loved. And now it is for her he comes smiling, a man to her still, long and strong, with something about him of forest greenness and church masonry and northern stars. They speak of her brother, of her family, he asks about her. A man to be praised, yes, a man to be loved .

Back in, the cartoon town had fuzzed once more into lumpy solids, and the cartoon man was singing. A healing was happening. Sore, worn, he had found a young girl’s affection and had plunged in wholly. Where would it end? He didn’t care, he would see her again. The lumps glided recognizably by, and he found he hated them less. “You arrogant shit!” he said out loud, and laughed.

Still high, he left the Chevy in the plant lot and went straight to Mick’s. Hadn’t had anything but Cokes and a doughnut. He found Lou Jones at the big round table near the bar, apparently into some story, and he thought of some Jones could be telling that put him ill at ease. With Jones were the hotelman Wally Fisher, the lawyer Ralph Himebaugh, and Maury Castle, who had a shoestore in town, three of Mick’s most dependable klatchers. Although Fisher had a coffeeshop and bar in his own hotel, he was always in here afternoons. “Two with onions, Mick, and a beer,” Miller said, and damn if it didn’t sound like a feast to him.

Jones, disgruntled at having his story interrupted, leaned back and lit a cigar. The others cheered, reluctantly but sincerely, yesterday’s special edition, and exulted once more in the Father Jones escapade. Castle rattled tonight’s paper and read Miller’s “inexplicable lapse” box aloud for laughs, then Wally Fisher rumbled, “So, come on, Father, tell us what the sonuvabitch did.”

“Lou was just describing one of the gentlemen at your newspaper,” Himebaugh said by way of explanation. His quaint precision tinkled discordantly in the dark plain bar. “He has a rather, shall we say, individual manner of demonstrating his passions.”

Castle heehawed.

“Who’s that?” asked Miller.

“Carl,” said Jones.

The pressman. Miller grinned. “I should have guessed. Schwartz is the world’s most disturbed cocksman. What now?” Mick passed a glass of beer over the counter and Castle slid it across the formica tabletop to Miller. It was well after lunchtime, and the place was quiet. Only the sizzle of hamburgers in the yard-square kitchen off the bar. Mick had the television on as always, but the volume was off. Grand gestures of a bigmouthed guy pushing deodorant.

Jones drank off his beer, nodded at Mick for another. “Says he was worldweary after his unusual Sunday labors yesterday, so to restore the spirit he toted body and soul over to Waterton to Mrs. Dooley’s. He meets with this—”

“Mrs. Dobie’s,” interrupted Miller. “You can see how often Jones gets over there!”