Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

“Mad!” whispered Himebaugh, glancing at the others. “The man is a psychopath, a lust murderer!” But, strangely, it was as though he were still giggling.

“That cocksucker!” Castle thundered, as always the most vocal. “Why, he’s a damn, a damn, a goddamn — what did you say, Himebaugh?” With that, they started to laugh again.

While Jones relit his cigar a fourth time, Miller ducked behind the bar and pulled five more beers, omitting Ralph. Castle, Fisher, DeMars, and Himebaugh stared at each other with astonished half grins and exchanged condemnations. “No, what I mean, that sonuvabitch oughta hang!” Mick declared in summation.

“Well, the hapless lady is too shocked even to fart,” Jones resumed. “She starts a fierce struggle to break loose, but Carl is twice her size, and, besides, she’s at a real disadvantage there on her belly with two hundred and fifty pounds of hot raging beef saddling her, pinning her wings. And all the time he keeps rubbing it in what a cheap rotten punk her goddamn brother was.” Castle banged. Fisher was over the table. “Only trouble is, Carl complains, he can’t get his reamer in the slot from behind, nice inspirational view of these great nates butting and flushing, but from the style he has her pinned, he can’t jack her up enough to bore in without losing his hold. He tries to tap the devil’s porthole, but there’s too much angry muscle there.” Himebaugh, wide-eyed, watched it in his beer glass. Mick gaped. On the screen, Bigmouth was panned offcamera and a sniveling grandmother admired her new prizes. “Carl clamps both her wrists in one hand, perforates and diddles her with the thumb of the other. She screams and bawls and then suddenly she twists out of his grip and they punch and wrestle and peck and claw, but Carl downs her finally and plunges it in and she shrieks like she’s been stabbed for the first time. Carl’s getting edgy about the cops or Mrs. Dopey, it’s a scene like that, figures you can hear her all the way to West Condon, but he has locked the door and the time it’ll take them to break it down he reckons will be time enough and he doesn’t give a damn. He digs her how her brother was queer and about the fruity silk shirts he always wore in all kinds of nigger colors, she’d just cut him in, see, on how she had bought the boy all these silk shirts, and that the brother sucked everybody at the mine, and on and on, and she’s screeching and flapping and belting the shit out of him, and now he says there’s a real sweet stink rising, and she tries to pitch him out, but he’s got his talons deep in her tail and doesn’t let go no matter what, and she twists and doubles and sweats and even somehow gets her feet once against his chest, and, boy, he says he is flying blind but there is nothing like it!”

Jones drank beer to let Castle and Mick get a few choice pent-up expletives off their chests. Himebaugh was pale. “I’ll be goddamned!” muttered Fisher, now smiling broadly.

“So they’re crashing around on that bed, blood and feathers flying, she clawing at his eyes, him grabbing a fistful of her hair and arching her head back so she can’t take good aim, and first thing you know they’re whamming away in rhythm and she’s clutching him in the ass and warbling his goddamn name and they both come in a tremendous simultaneous explosion and collapse in a tremor of secondary spasms.”

Castle whapped the table and Mick, in his peculiar twitter, cried out the name of the Savior over and over. Beer was spilled. Jones calmly examined his mutilated cigar. Himebaugh’s eyes lacked focus. “I’ll be goddamned!” Fisher rumbled again, reaching for a wet pack of cigarettes on the table.

“But, Jesus, Lou! Do you mean to say — did she—?” Mick lacked the words for it.

“Yeah,” said Jones. “She liked it.”

“Goddamn!” boomed Castle. “It’s too much!”

“They both admit it was the greatest fuck they’ve ever had, if not indeed the greatest in world history. The rookery is a wreck, all whipped and shredded, blood here and there. Carl is nearly blind, but he can see that those flawless haunches are brilliantly striped and maybe for good. He apologizes about what he’d said, explains he really never knew her brother, he was just trying to snap her out of her doldrums. She says never mind, doesn’t matter. He says he is sure he was a great guy, the greatest, had to be: brother of a woman like her. And silk shirts were his favorite kind. She agrees and cuddles up in Carl’s arms and he ends up passing the night there. They couple three or four more times during the night and this morning. No comparison to the first round, but it is warm and satisfying, quoth our hero. He adds that his old lady really has her feathers up when he appears for breakfast this morning, clawed and bloodied and reeking of strange persons, but he’s feeling so afloat he doesn’t even take the bother to apologize, just eats his Wheaties in blissful silence, and wafts on down to the shop, advising everybody it is spring.” Jones pulled Himebaugh’s untapped beer toward him, leaned back and drained it, turned his attention to relighting the cigar: all signs that the tale was told.

It was too much for Castle’s restricted vocabulary. There was no expletive to do it justice. Finally, he just shook his tanned jowls and said, “What a story, man!”

“If it don’t beat all!” chirped Mick, mopping up the beer on the table with his apron. “Sometimes I think most of us poor bastards just don’t know how to live. This corrupt lunatic is — really! — ” He paused for effect and looked around at the others: “He’s a goddamn genius!”

“Yeah, you said it!” laughed Wally Fisher. He propped back on two legs again. “Goddamn genius!”

“It’s a fucking outrage, that’s what it is!” Castle laughed, relocating words. His voice banged in the still room. On the television, somebody won $33. Camera panned on the audience. Pasty sheep-faced smiles. Hands silently and dutifully slapping each other. “But goddamn if it ain’t true to life!”

“And twice as beautiful!” added Mick over his sopped apron, and they all laughed. He still sat, but now Miller’s interest in another beer had passed. He couldn’t help but keep Himebaugh in the edge of his eye: the man sat silently, shaking his bony head, his thin old legs crossed, hunched in such a way that his elbow was pressed into his groin.

“Miller,” said Fisher, “you oughta publish this!” The thought delighted them all.

“What’ll we call it?” Miller asked drily. “A Child’s Visit to a Whorehouse?”

“Now don’t take the fun out of it!” said Castle.

“What if this sort of animal madness were set up as a precept for humanity?” Himebaugh asked earnestly. He cleared his throat, shifted his position, straightened up. “What would we all turn into? It’s ghastly!”

“Aw, shit, Ralph,” Castle protested, “that’s stupid!” Himebaugh glared at the shoe salesman from across the round table, soft underlip turned in. “That’s goddamn plain stupid!” Castle repeated, rankled to have had such a good story tainted.

“Stupid! But this is grotesque! This disaster — I mean, in the middle of all this horror, this tragedy — that, that man — that beast — you’re all beasts!” Himebaugh was losing control.

“I thought it was pretty funny,” said Fisher.

“You’re a beast,” Jones said to him.

Himebaugh glanced darkly at their laughter.

Mick butted in: “Who do you suppose that’d be, Tiger? Reckon that’d be Oxford Clemens’ sister?”

“Sure,” said Miller. Bigmouth had given way on the screen to a smoking hunter. Miller lit one. “Dinah. I always wondered where Ox got those fancy shirts. I thought he stole them.”