Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

Not that she’d challenged his right to the pulpit — it was rather that she didn’t seem to care about it. She attended his services, but seemed detached. Even in prayer, down on her knees before him, there was an arrogant willfulness about her that seemed to lift her above the others. And it was at her Wednesday Evening Circle where she most sorely vexed him. Their prophet and master in the Sunday pulpit, he was nothing at her Evening Circle. There, even that spineless chinless little fool Willie Hall had the presumption to contradict and interrupt him. Abner had counted on his wife Sarah assuming the leadership of the Circle, but once again that wretched woman had proven more burden than blessing to him. He’d upbraided her unmercifully for her faithless trepidation, but she only cowered and whimpered and begged that he forgive her.

And now tomorrow, the grand and triumphant homecoming for Mr. Giovanni Bruno! What a mockery! What an outrage! Why, even his own people knew him to be mad — how could Clara be such an imbecile? If she could only have seen that silly man, held naked and blubbering while his fellow Romanist Bonali read that poem—! No, she’d been blinded by her grief, had given in to her selfish whimsy, and only shock and punishment could now bring her once more to the true path. And this was Abner’s task. He cracked his palm with a razor strop, gazed up once more at Peter.

There was a knock: he ordered them to enter. Sarah and Francis came first, the others trailing reluctantly. And tomorrow there would be hosannas and dollars strewn like palm branches: the irony of it stuck in Abner’s flesh like cruel barbs. I, too, was saved! “Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in,” he cried aloud, and his family shrunk before him, “and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out!”

Bruno’s big homecoming was Ted Cavanaugh’s idea. There was a national — even international — focus on the man, why not put it to the whole town’s service? Already, Bruno had emerged as something of a town hero, a symbol of the community’s own struggle to survive, so why not make the most of it? True, as a hero, he was a little short on style maybe, but this town was long accustomed to making do with less than the best.

So Cavanaugh had talked to the Rotarians at their regular luncheon meeting, called the Chamber board together, conferred with Mayor Mort Whimple. They’d set 2 February as the date, since that was the anniversary of the town’s incorporation, even though Doc Lewis had said that might be pushing it a bit. A special statewide relief-fund drive for all the families of miners lost in the disaster had already been launched, and now Whimple had agreed to double the effort, enlarging especially on Bruno’s needs. Ted had got at the Jaycees through an employee at his bank and to the BPW and Eastern Star through his wife. His son Tommy had activated the youngsters at the high school, especially those of Hi-Y, Job’s Daughters, the Lettermen’s Club, and the like. Alderman Joe Altoviti had carried the project for Ted into the Knights of Columbus, Lombard Society, and the Eagles; Burt Robbins and Jim Elliott had worked on the Elks and the Legion; and Cavanaugh’s minister Reverend Wesley Edwards had involved the West Condon Ministerial Association. The Catholic priest was, as usual, more grudging, but he agreed to appear on the scene at least. Father Baglione was an old Italian whose loyalty to Rome, as much racial and provincial as organizational and pious, so outweighed any local considerations that he was really still a foreigner here. Didn’t even speak good English. Cavanaugh had been trying for years to get him promoted or some damn thing, get a young American fellow in here in his place.

Cavanaugh had also run into some resistance in the least-expected quarter: among Bruno’s fellow Italian coalminers. At first, he didn’t know what to make of it. Then, slowly, he had come to see that there was a kind of class embarrassment toward Bruno, and a certain amount of scarcely concealed resentment that if only one could have made it, it had to be someone like Giovanni Bruno. Unmarried. Belonged to no clubs, had no friends. Not active at the church. Maybe even a negative attitude there. Standoffish and peculiar. Well, Cavanaugh had made them forget that. He had pushed the idea that in the eyes of the world, Giovanni Bruno represented this generation’s victory over hatred and prejudice, and that they could all stand taller today, not because of who Bruno was personally or what he’d done, but because of the way others saw him. And, even more important, for the moment — no matter how arbitrary it might seem — he stood for West Condon, and they all had to help lift West Condon high!

He had written a couple articles more or less to that effect and had planted them in Miller’s newspaper. Not that it was easy: Miller was getting hard to get along with. There was a time when Miller would have written them himself and been all too glad to do it, but something had gone wrong. Tiger wasn’t panning out. Cavanaugh had thought, back when he first got Miller to come back here, that he’d get married, settle in for good, become a leader here, mayor for awhile maybe, or even better things. He had a good head, plenty of drive and spirit, and a big following. Should have been a sure thing. Instead, he couldn’t even make the goddamn paper pay off. Oh, he’d won a number of meaningless prizes, had sold some articles nationally, had introduced a lot of spectacular though finally pretty silly innovations in the Chronicle , most of which had long since been abandoned, but the paper was losing money, and, what was far more serious, Miller didn’t seem to give a damn.

Of course, Miller was a spoiled kid, only child, raised by his mother, pampered in school, and so his ego made it hard for him to blend in. Still given to adolescent just-for-the-hell-of-it storm-raising. His Dad was a mining engineer who was killed accidentally while trying to arbitrate a management-union struggle in the early thirties, a friend of Ted’s Dad, and maybe this had made Tiger grow up with that peculiar fascination for conflict — he always said it was what had led him into journalism as a career. Maybe Ted should have thought about all this before he encouraged him to come back and buy up the Chronicle , then loaned him the money to do it. From the day Tiger took that money, they’d been at odds. And he’d antagonized his best advertisers with tasteless stories, true or not, had ducked all responsibilities in the community, and had developed an annoying habit of mocking those very customs and traditions that most folks here revered. What was the matter with him? Maybe it was Jones’ influence. Cavanaugh didn’t know where the sonuvabitch had come from, but as far as he was concerned, he could move on any day. Jones’ irresponsible anything-goes virus could eat up a community, strike it with a kind of moral encephalitis, and goddamn it, Ted Cavanaugh wasn’t going to see that happen.

Miller’s private life was something less than exemplary, too, and now this latest scandal involving the Cravens widow had finally got Cavanaugh to wondering if Miller might not be best off leaving with Jones on the same train. Miller had a way of always getting his prick in the wrong place at the wrong time: Jesus! when was that guy going to grow up? It worried Ted, too, that his own son Tommy admired the man so. Came from the old days when young Tiger, as athletic hero and top student, was the town prince, but now Ted wasn’t sure what lessons Tommy might be learning from the man’s gathering ruin.

Still, on this project anyway, Miller had been cooperative enough, had run stories nightly, had done all he could to lure out-of-town — what Miller and now the whole town liked to call. “East Condon”—newsmen to the scene: the hotel was filled up Sunday night and there were even a couple national television cameras on the Bruno front lawn Monday morning. Bunting was up and a welcome sign on the front porch. Inside, neighbor women were giving the house a thorough cleaning. The outside had been freshly painted by high school students. Cheerful day, couldn’t be better. Ted had seen to it that schools and businesses would be closed for the morning, that the high school band would be on hand, and that the ceremonies would include a number of state dignitaries. Town spirit was the theme. Wes Edwards, for one, had a speech ready that was just the ticket: would call on everyone in earshot to join him in a pledge for community renewal. Edwards was a quiet intellectual guy, tremendous organizer, good golfer, moving speaker, a sharp cookie. Best they’d ever got here. Cavanaugh planned to get Bruno and his parents out of the ambulance and into the house as quickly as possible, let the girl represent the family in front of the cameras. Cute girl, shy but charming, just the right mixture of pride and humility.