Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

Jones didn’t share in the laughter, chose to relight his cigar instead. His eyelids slowly drooped the table to silence. “He meets with this pigeon he has in the past plucked, and he flaps over to bicker with her the tariff. But this birdie is grounded. Very down in the beak. Just slopping up a drink or two, she says. Carl inquires what can the matter be, and she informs him tearily she has lost a brother in the mine accident.” Miller glanced up, winced inwardly. That bitter breath again. Had to be her. “She has decided she is gonna take a week off from the ranch, fly the scene, try to forget. She’s sniffling blowsily, and Carl is afraid she’s gonna break into some noisy lament and ruin his whole fucking night. He scans the club, but the others are all paired, have eggs aplenty.”

“You would think they would do less business on such a night,” Himebaugh interposed softly, but they ignored him.

“So finally he says to her, let’s go to your room, have a quiet drink there, you can tell me all about it, I’ll buy the bottle. She’s a sorry-looking red-eyed droop, but, as I say, he has no choice. She shrugs and says okay. She leads the way, and at this juncture in the narration, Carl consecrates a quarter hour or so to the immortalizing of her butt as it joggles up the stairs a few inches in front of his face, her skirt rucking and rippling, and bringing on, in Carl, a certain agitated enlargement.”

While Castle hollered about that, Miller asked, “Hey, Mick, what about those hamburgers?”

“Hunh? Oh, Jesus, Tiger! Hold on!” Mick ran to the kitchen, called out, “Just in time!” Which meant they were black, not white, ash.

“Round of beers, too, Mick.” The bigmouth guy on television, who had earlier been urging fragrant armpits, now spun a large wheel, while a muss of little mousy women stood by mockbreathless, clutching their handbags. Whole goddamn American populace was becoming a bunch of actors.

Mick handed the hamburgers, fresh from cremation, over the bar to Castle and went to work on the beers. Jones puffed on the cigar, took a long swallow of beer, continued: “So they get to the room. He, she, and her prize wazoo. Carl pours out two tumblers. There’s only one chair in the room, and, just his luck, while he’s dispensing whiskey, she’s planting her buns on it. Carl seeks a scheme to decoy her off the chair and onto the bed. He puts her drink on the dresser, thinking she’ll come and get it. No. She sits there looking run-over and commences to stare at her feet. He suggests she go lie down, as she looks a mite peakèd. She hears nothing. He finally concludes he will have to use force, and that is just the which he does not care yet to do.” Jones drinks to the rapt silence.

Mick hung over the bar with a big foolish grin on his broad Italian face, finally came around and joined the others at the table. “What do you mean?” he asked incredulously, without dropping the grin. “You mean he aims to lay this miserable broad?” Mick was a large guy, but he had a funny high nasal voice.

“Well, so he’s thinking about this and he is just about to screw the gentility act and go heave her off, when the goddamn whore herself gets blithely up and humps off to weewee. Carl hastily claps her whiskey down on the night table aside the famous scene of action and appropriates the chair for himself. And, true to form, she staggers back in, still out of the plot, and plumps down on the bed. She picks up the glass, drinks it off like it was water, sets it down again. Still, she hasn’t looked once at our hero, hasn’t let a peep.”

Himebaugh was giggling softly, eyes squinting slightly under his bushy black eyebrows. There was a prudery in him that usually drove him from such gatherings as this — he was a common visitor to this table, but seldom stayed long. Now he tittered and stared at his hands, nervous on the tabletop. Fisher, a flabby old man, sat leaning back on two legs of his chair, chin tucked in the soft fleshfolds of his neck, a smile on his poker face — he frankly enjoyed the story, rarely interpolated. Castle guffawed abruptly from time to time, but not in strict cadence with the tale. He had round leathery cheeks that ballooned when he laughed. Castle could tell at a glance where a man bought his shoes, and, if they weren’t from his place, it didn’t pacify him to explain you had to spread your business around.

“Meanwhile, our man in Waterton is taking it easy with the alcohol. He pumps in a couple stiff swallows, avers it prolongs the action, but too much and he might not fire off at all—”

“Yes, that’s true!” Mick sang, then flushed when everyone roared. Fisher even had to ease his chair down on all four legs momentarily for fear his convulsions would spill him.

Jones smiled around his dead cigar, continued: “Patience pays its way. The whore spreads on the bed and commences to chatter. Carl learns who her brother was and some miscellany about him. She kicks off her shoes. Carl, coolly denying still his throbbing rod, pumps her more about the brother. She tells all. Tears. Very touching scene. Carl waxes sympathetic. It is very sad indeed. He even works up a kind of tear and rubs his eye red. Advises her she ought to turn in for the night, forget all about it, head off tomorrow on that trip she’s been thinking about. She’s grateful. Says by Jesus he understands her. She tells him nighty-night and flops over to the wardrobe, stopping by the dresser to puddle out another tumblerful. Sets the tumbler on the floor by the wardrobe, hauls off her blouse, skirt, and bra, drops her drawers, wriggles into a traditional scrap of lingerie.” Jones paused to light the cigar again, while the others exchanged commentary. Lou could never keep a cigar going and tell a story at the same time.

Miller had finished the hamburgers, delicious in spite of the charring, and wanted another beer, but Mick was hunched over the table in such unabashed absorption, he didn’t have the heart to break the spell. Fisher smoked and chuckled drily, leaning back. Castle brayed and shouted, “Come on!” and beat the table. Himebaugh giggled to himself and stared at his glass, still full of beer.

“She squats for the tumbler and is surprised to discover our boy still in the picture. Look, she says, I’m going to bed. Like you said. Good night. Thanks, but good night. Carl shrugs, tells her don’t mind him, he’s just finishing his drink, and before she can object he switches back to the belovèd brother, jaws on like he has known the poor bastard all his life. So she doesn’t complain now, just quaffs the rye, then nests into the sheets, her famous bun to the breezes, and listens to him. Carl says she holds her goddamn hand curled up against her mouth and reminds him of how his little daughter sucks her thumb at night.”

“A detail only a doting father could provide,” Miller interposed. Fisher laughed drily, but the others seemed not to have noticed there had been an interruption. Jones downed his beer. Himebaugh’s glass sat untouched in front of him. The man’s soft flabby titter was nearly inaudible. Seemed in some world of his own. On the screen above, pain pills were Bigmouth’s product now. Disturbingly graphic.

Jones said, “Carl’s knob, caught wrong in his pants somehow, is paining him, so he decides the time is come. She is gazing placidly and weepily through the far wall, so he quietly slips his pants off and, talking all the time, hooks them on the foot of her bed. Then, just as the whore seems about to emerge from her distant focus, he jumps her, pins her arms behind her, and says: Your brother was the biggest shit I ever knew, he deserved to die!”

“Jesus Christ!” cried Castle, slamming the table, half out of his chair.

Mick was stunned, jaw slack, and even old Fisher lowered his chair, smile sliding to frown.