Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

For a long time before, he and his little brother Paulie had played Batman and Robin, flying dangerously through the trees, destroying wild beasts, and doing God’s will amongst the ungodly. Bad guys were not always easy to come by, of course, and sometimes, to keep the game going, Robin himself had to display a streak of perversity, so he could be dealt with by the hard arm of the law, but there were usually some little kids in the neighborhood they could catch and tie up and bring to proper retribution. Or, if not, they could almost always talk their sister Amanda into it. She was ten and bigger than Paulie, but so weak that Paulie — Robin, that is — could usually catch her and pin her down by himself. The trouble was, she sometimes tattled, but that only added danger to their game, and whenever she did, she always knew she would get it double next time.

Paulie had grown a little too smart, though, about playing Robin; he seemed to consider that it was even better than being Batman. So one day, as a lesson, Nat had shot a real robin with his beebee gun and had made Paulie watch it die. “Me, Batman,” he had said, standing over the bird. “You, Robin.” The bird was still blinking its heavy gray lids, but it had stopped trying to fly. As Paulie, scared, squatted down close to see where the bird had been hit, Nat had placed his foot on the bird’s head and slowly crunched its skull in. That had stopped Paulie being cocky about the part he played, but also it had almost stopped the game altogether. Paulie was too big a baby all the time.

But finding the hand had solved all that. That Sunday, when he came home, he put on his sweatshirt, and pulling his left hand up into the sleeve, carefully fitted the left cuff around the wrist of the dead hand, holding it inside by the bone that stuck out. He left a note where Paulie would be sure to see it: Beware the Black Hand! and then waited until he had him alone in the bedroom to spring it on him. Paulie screamed and nearly fell into a frothing fit. Nat could hardly keep from giggling. Lowering his voice in imitation of their father’s, he warned Paulie to keep quiet about it; if he said anything to anybody, the Black Hand would get him. When, later that evening, Paulie got his peter whopped by their father’s razor strop, Nat told him it was God’s punishment because he had acted so scared he had almost given it all away. But, Nat said, he had proven himself, and now he could be the assistant to the Black Hand. What did he want to call himself? Paul suggested the Black Finger, but Nat rejected the idea: if they painted it black with ink, everybody would see it and ask about it. Paulie said, what about the Black Peter? That was where God had hit him, and you couldn’t see that. Nat agreed, provided Paulie would promise to be careful and wash it off every time before their mother gave them their baths.

So, after that, the Black Hand and the Black Peter stalked the neighborhood. It was a million times better than being Batman and Robin, because now they were on the other side, and they could do whatever they wanted to. They stole and put poop on porches and tortured victims and broke bottles and burned birds they shot in gasoline and one night they strangled Widow Harlowe’s cat. With ink, Nat drew pictures of the black hand on little pieces of paper, which they left behind whenever they completed a really good job.

They began making plans for initiating Amanda, but their father was home almost all the time now, what with the mine closed and the sermons he was always having to prepare, and they were afraid about her tattling. She was their father’s favorite, and he could get pretty rough if he thought she was being victimized. But then, one Sunday night early in February when he’d had the hand just about a month, both their parents had to attend some important church meeting called by Widow Collins in some man’s house, a wop man named Mr. Bruno, and they left Franny in charge. Nat now had the idea that his father did not like Widow Collins anymore, so he put her on the list for future visitations. Once their parents had left, their big brother Junior wandered off to town to play the pinball machines, and then one of Franny’s girlfriends came by and they went for a walk, so Paul and Nathan had Amanda to themselves. An opportunity like that could not be passed by. Pitilessly, the Black Hand and the Black Peter struck.

A month of anguish and ordeal. A month of hope. Oh, the upward straining! Oh, the despair of nonfulfillment! Rarely had conviction so wholly failed her. Struck down, Clara Collins wept. Hardship afflicted though her life had been, always there had been something, or someone, to comfort her, to guard her from grief’s last defeat. Always in crisis — even at the worst a month ago when Ely got killed, and earlier when Harold died in the war — she had discovered, through her enduring faith in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, new inner rivers of resolve. But now, in this strange house, in inexplicable legion with these strange persons, at this strange and empty hour — emptier than she had ever conceived an hour could be — of midnight, the midnight that cleft the eighth of the month of February from the new ninth, as Abner Baxter hurled his implacable curses and all her friends walked out on her, Clara suffered a total collapse of strength. Everything just dropped out. Even faith failed her. She could not pray. It was as though they had walked out taking her very spirit with them, and now the hollow shell of her could but sit, utterly powerless and forsaken, in this bewilderingly darkened Italian living room lit only by its irreverent television — sit whimpering like a lost child.

The hour had been striking still as she followed them out of Giovanni Bruno’s bedroom, through the dining room with its alien pungency, into the shrouded blink and rasp of the living room where the old father sat, foul-smelling and raking his throat, staring mindlessly at an old movie, followed them, held by a mere thread to the edge of the awful cliff, to the very door. Out they had marched, indignant, inflexible, even as though frightened, the Baxters and the Coates, all those people, the widows Lawson and Harlowe, the Willie Halls and Calvin Smiths, the Grays, Gideon Diggs, everybody, all the friends of the faith she had known and so devotedly served, even her truest friend Betty Wilson. Out! If only one could have— “Please!” she had whispered desperately to Betty, and Betty, crying shamelessly, had begged her forgiveness, then left with the others. The thread parted. She dropped, head spinning. Nearby: a sofa. It received her. There she wept.

And the worst of it was: she no longer felt Ely’s presence. Throughout this month of terror and trial, he had stayed by her side, had seemed closer even than he had been while living, had guided her, inspirited her, given her strength and singleness of purpose … and now he was gone. Gone! Ely! How? How had it come to pass? “Puffed up with conceit!” Abner Baxter had cried, passing through the door. Oh no, dear God, it was not so!

So utterly, so frankly and wholeheartedly, had she believed that the portentous thing was truly happening, that now it was as though it had happened and had left her behind, behind in the strange-scented emptiness with its blue flickering light and tinkling hollow voices. She had not doubted, no, indeed all her life had seemed to come to bear on this moment, all good Ely had taught her, and all the signs this month — especially his suffering — had insisted upon it. “For our light affliction, which is for the moment only, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory, because we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen!” So many indications of the Spirit at work! Ely’s message and the appearances to both him and his companion Giovanni Bruno of the mysterious white bird, then the startling coincidence of the story that appeared in the evening Chronicle —had not the whole world seen it? — about the shepherd boy who had been visited centuries ago by a white bird that had also changed into the Mother Mary, telling him then to lead a Holy Crusade. Even little Elaine’s innocent gift at Christmas of the small porcelain statue of Mary with the bleeding heart now seemed almost terrifying in its hidden portent. Then, too, there was poor Eddie Wilson with the broken back, suffering like Ely a saint’s end, dying in Sister Betty’s arms with Ely’s name on his lips and something like “God” before — and he had not even been near Ely in the mine! And what of the puzzling “black hand” slaying of Mary Harlowe’s cat? Was it not another sign? So clear! So foreboding! And how excited Willie and Mabel Hall had become when she showed them the note! Willie had turned pale as a ghost, told Clara he had stayed home from the mine that night just because it had been the eighth of the month. Oh, true! true!