Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

Out of fog: new signals; in clarity: the gathering of … fog.

She seemed to wake, discovered for the first time there were people about her, mostly miners, motion was minimal, there seemed to be nothing happening, some glanced at her, but none paid attention. She sighed, secretly relieved, for the sense of awakening in public had startled her. She read the message. It did not seem to be from Domiron. Some lesser aspect probably. Of these, she trusted few, and doubted now. On the contrary, she reasoned, fog is a false emptying that adds interest to the mystified forms, while clarity, simplifying perception, liberated the mind from counteractive effort. Nevertheless, she pocketed the note … it was foolish to be too hasty.

Over one grimy brick office building, a wind sock jabbed rigidly. A northwest wind, and it pierced her thoroughly. The sock poked its signal at the nearby rise, which lifted its nubbed crest just over the fretwork of denuded trees to the east of the buildings. Too squat for a hill really: a hummock, a soft knoll. On a concrete wall, next to a steel door, she found a sign that read: CAUTION! NO SCUFFLING OR PLAYING! NO SMOKING! This is a Closed Light Mine — Smoking in or Carrying Smoking Materials into This Mine is a VIOLATION OF THE LAW! Scratched on the wall with coal was: Look! This Means You! with an arrow aimed at the word “Scuffling.” A few adolescent obscenities, cartooned nude women, male genitals, no clues. In red: JE$U$ $AVE$! Why don’t you? 1st Nat’l Bank . She counted the words on the printed sign: twenty-eight — it meant nothing to her. Four sevens. Well, so what? The first five words, true, contained a certain meaning applicable to her: to be careful not to become childish about this crisis, nor to seek unnecessary trouble; but, given the rest of it, it was probably merest accident. What was a “closed light mine”? She didn’t know. Were the lights enclosed, or was the mine defined somehow as “light”? Perhaps there was, in a sense, light trapped in the mine that needed now to be released. But all these directions seemed futile. And then, suddenly, beside the steel door, as though it were materializing, appearing there now for the first time, she saw a telephone! So certain was she that she had marched this bitter way to receive a message, that she impulsively lifted the phone off the hook and put it to her ear.

“Excuse me, lady, can I help you?”

She nearly dropped the phone in fright, fumbling returned it to its cradle, apologized to the tall miner beside her. “No, no! I’m sorry! I was only curious, and—”

The miner smiled. “Oh well, go ahead and listen, if you like.”

Eleanor calmed. “Thanks,” she said, “but I’m just getting in your way, I’m afraid. I hope you’ll pardon me.” They exchanged smiles, and she walked away.

Unexpectedly, she came upon a Salvation Army canteen, still operating although the two women inside were packing things away into carton boxes. There was coffee, though, steaming hot against the chill in her, and they seemed delighted to have a customer. They apologized that the doughnuts were from Saturday, but, suddenly hungry, Eleanor accepted one anyway. It was rubbery and tough, sugarless, but sweet to her. When the women learned she was not herself a widow, had lost no one out here, they grew talkative, but Eleanor was too weak to listen. A sense of displacement was overtaking her; exhaustion threatened to buckle her knees. She sat on a wooden folding chair. She could never walk back again. The women told her that all the bodies had been recovered and were being prepared by morticians at the high school gymnasium. They described the hideous condition of some. Funerals tomorrow and Wednesday. They produced anecdotes of rescue, which Eleanor pretended to attend. Their hollow voices clucked and moaned at the horror. Well, did they think they would escape it? Sensational slaughter made people count death exceptional.

The two miners who had offered her the ride entered, and she asked if they might be going back soon; she would like to take them up on their offer. They laughed and said Sure, introduced themselves as Mr. Ferrero and Mr. Bonali. They had coffee first, and Eleanor received an account of Mr. Bonali’s escape from the disaster.

The ride back into town was surprisingly brief. On foot, it was a healthy hike, of course, but the cold wind had distorted the distance. She told the two men that she was a teacher at the high school, and Mr. Bonali, the driver, said he had thought so when she had told him her name, because he had a daughter, a freshman this year, who had mentioned her. Angela. Angie. Eleanor said, oh, of course, Angela Bonali, but she couldn’t bring the girl’s face to mind. Mr. Ferrero said it must be a tough job, he wouldn’t have the courage to face up to a pack of teen-age monsters every day. She replied that she enjoyed her work, but regretted the absence of spontaneity and receptivity in today’s youth. Of course, she didn’t mean Angela, she was only speaking generally.

“No, I know what you mean,” Mr. Bonali concurred. “She’s a wise kid, thinks she’s pretty smart. They all do.”

“Well, we weren’t angels,” observed Mr. Ferrero, and Mr. Bonali, laughter booming, agreed with that.

Eleanor explained to them that she had to pick up some papers to be graded in her office at the school, so they dropped her off there, although of course her purpose was to visit the gymnasium.

The mine company guards at the gymnasium door would not allow her to enter. Beyond their bulked shoulders she could see the dark cadaver lumps on the floor under army blankets, fewer than she had expected, white light raying in on them from the opaque windows back of the bleachers, dust hovering gloomily. On the basketball scoreboard: WEST CONDON 14, VISITORS 11. Eleanor rarely thought about numbers — she respected the numerologists, but the ever-present prime numbers were too vague to satisfy her — but, out of an old prejudice from childhood, multiples of seven always caught her eye. Seven, fourteen, twenty-eight, thir — well, yes! of course! the toll! incredible!

As though on cue, Colin Meredith appeared before her, a tall supple-limbed boy with guileless eyes and perceptive brow whom Domiron had led to her. His long blond hair, soft and silky, flopped loosely on his pale brow. He seemed extremely excited. Colin’s discipleship, if it could be called that, had thus far disappointed Eleanor faintly: he was too playfully interested still in flying saucers and green men from Mars to grasp the profounder truths of essence, transience, emanations, and reabsorptions. Nonetheless, the soil was fertile, his was an aristocratic spirit, and, though cautious (she suddenly thought of the sign at the mine!), she entertained large hopes for him. Now, he said he had been looking for her, had come here hoping to find her. “Mrs. Norton,” he gasped, once they had slipped out of earshot of others, “do you remember the message you gave me, the one from, from …”

“Domiron.” It was not to tell him, for he knew it well; only he feared yet to speak it aloud.

“Yes, the one that said about the long uphill struggle one must endure, out of — do you remember? — ‘out of the abyss of darkness,’ you said!”

She nodded, accepting his child’s awe, and saw that his true growth had begun. “I received perhaps the most important messages of my long life over this past weekend,” she told him solemnly. “Cosmic purposes of enormous significance are to be revealed to us soon. Can you visit me later this week?”

“Sure! Would Friday be soon enough?”

She smiled. “I hope so,” she replied.

Eleanor and Wylie returned home from the Tuesday mass funerals, depressed and, for her part, confused. So many deaths at once, the irregular and paradoxical messages she was receiving, the bitter weather — Eleanor was frightened, felt weak and light-minded before the challenge, but could not resist its excitement. She had tried to visit the rescued miner, Mr. Bruno, yesterday, but was told he had not awakened from his coma. She would try again tomorrow, if he lived still. Yet, she was sure he would. She understood at this point all too little, but she was convinced that Giovanni Bruno was somehow a part of it.