Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

The door cracked open. “What is your message?” inquired a hushed male voice, so faint Miller barely understood it.

“Hark ye to the White Bird,” Miller replied, and then Marcella echoed him. The door opened, and they were admitted.

First thing he saw was Giovanni, sitting halfway up in bed, supported by a mound of pillows. He wore dark pajamas that exaggerated his pallor, had two or three blankets piled up on him to the waist. He turned his head — one thought of it more as a mechanical toy than a living man’s head — to look as Miller and Marcella entered. The others in the room did the same: pivoted silently toward them. The room was lit by a nightlamp beside the bed and a few candles placed about; aroma of tallow. At a small table near the foot of the bed, facing the door, sat Eleanor Norton, the high school teacher who had become Bruno’s spiritual counselor, and across from her, a squat pillowy woman in a cheap shiny dress. Black: must be one of the disaster widows. But which? When she turned to peek at him over her shoulder, he found her face familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Two young boys sat stiffly in chairs next to the far wall. The doorkeeper, of course, was Eleanor Norton’s husband, Dr. Wylie Norton. And it was very quiet.

“Good evening, Mrs. Norton, Dr. Norton,” Miller said into the silence. “How are you feeling, Giovanni? Much better, I hope.” He smiled at the others, added with measured concern, “I hope I haven’t interrupted any …”

“Not at all, Mr. Miller.” Wylie Norton smiled, extending his hand. “We’re glad you’ve come!” With Norton’s welcome, there were traces of relaxation all around. The two boys stood, came over, were introduced by Norton as Colin Meredith and Carl Dean Palmers, seniors at the high school. They were both shy, slow to commit themselves in any way, but Miller spoke frankly with them, and they were soon friendly. Meredith was a tall gangly boy with loose blond hair, a pink flush to his cheeks, tendency to stoop as he walked; Palmers was shorter, stockier, had a bad case of acne, seemed more mature, more aggressive. Miller noticed Palmers’ missing tooth and asked if he were the Palmers who played guard this year on the varsity football team. The boy grinned awkwardly and nodded, obviously pleased to have been recognized.

The name of the other one in the room came suddenly to mind, and he turned to the plump widow. “Mrs. Wilson, I’m Justin Miller. I don’t know if you remember me, but we—”

“Oh, yes,” she said quickly, kittenish little whimper of a voice. “You wrote up such nice things when I lost … when I lost …” And she began to pucker up.

“Now, now!” intervened Eleanor Norton. “Please remember, Mrs. Wilson, we must all stand firm!” She glanced up sharply at Miller, partly accusing, partly as though seeking — but seeking what? Some kind of signal, or—?

Miller nodded firmly. He thought of saying something like “I’m sure that’s how Eddie would want it,” but it was just too cornball, he might start grinning, so he kept silence. He let his gaze lift past the two women toward Giovanni, fixed, he hoped, with an adequate awe. For the moment, at least until he understood better what was going on, what had happened, what was expected, it was the best he could do for Mrs. Norton. On the wall over the headboard of the bed, there was a crucifix. Other things framed here and there. What looked to be an old wedding portrait of Antonio and Emilia: something of the old woman in Marcella, all right.

“We have been discussing certain instructions, Mr. Miller,” Eleanor Norton said suddenly. She had a precise gentle voice that cut cleanly through the silence. “Instructions from … from the worlds beyond us.” She paused. Miller, coming back to the table, noticed now the book open on it between the two women, a blank book, bound, the kind used for record-keeping. “These are messages received over the recent weeks from … from them, by way of extrasensory perception.” Miller didn’t know what to say to that, so he merely returned, unsmiling but genuinely attentive, her gray-eyed gaze. This, he knew, was his worst test. Marcella’s soft proximity bolstered him, yet he felt vaguely uneasy about her presence, witness to this act of his. “We are anxious, all of us, to comprehend what we can from them, and we are quite naturally … pleased, Mr. Miller, to have with us in our endeavors the sincere interest of all fellow beings whose motives are pure and who will … that is, who will participate in our meditations in a spirit of hope and honesty and … in a positive spirit, let me say.”

“Of course, Mrs. Norton. Let me—”

“But do understand, we are not like … like evangelists, Mr. Miller. Quite the contrary. We believe in quiet unpretentious and unadvertised gatherings.”

“Sure,” said Miller. “I can understand that you’re concerned about my being a newspaper editor. But I can assure you, Mrs. Norton, that my interest here has nothing to do with my paper, and I’ll never publish anything in it unless you want me to. Unless,” he added, feeling adventurous and addressing the whole room, “we all do.”

The doorbell rang. “That must be Mrs. Collins,” Marcella said, and left him to stand alone. Miller watched her go, moving lightly, a spontaneous gladness seeming to lift her up. She glanced back at him from the door and they exchanged smiles, surprised at each other’s attention.

Miller pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, turned to offer one to Wylie Norton, standing beside him, but Mrs. Norton came up, put her hand over his pack: “Please, Mr. Miller. No smoking.” And she turned her head significantly toward Bruno, who watched them darkly.

“Of course,” he said, returning the cigarettes to his pocket. Here but a couple minutes, and he’d already forgot that the sick miner was even in the room. As for Mrs. Norton, she seemed jumpy and peremptory, but Miller guessed it was at least partly due to Clara Collins’ imminent arrival. Eleanor had had Bruno — and Marcella, too — entirely to herself until three weeks ago when Clara Collins appropriated him to her own vision. The February eighth show, as he understood it, was a kind of emotional steamroller, with Eleanor Norton finally outlasting them all and obtaining a tenuous kind of intellectual control over Clara.

After four times through the white bird routine, more ridiculous than ever from this side of the door, the widow Clara Collins strode noisily in with her daughter Elaine, the coalminer Willie Hall, and a woman who turned out to be Mabel Hall, Willie’s wife. Miller had had no idea the Halls would be here, Marcella hadn’t mentioned them, yet he wasn’t surprised, recalling his interview of Hall, Oxford Clemens’ buddy, just after the disaster. Hall, he remembered, lived by hunches.

The Halls were introduced to everyone. Talk was about the snowstorm. Some took it as a portent. The boys, also new here apparently, were introduced to Clara and Elaine, though Carl Dean said he recognized Elaine from a study hall they had together. While Elaine, hand covering her mouthful of bad teeth and small shoulders hunched, received shy attention from Meredith and Palmers, her mother swung horsily around the bedroom, greeted Bruno, the Nortons, Betty Wilson, never waiting for a reply. She seemed intent, nervous, self-important, yet respectful. She lugged a large shiny patent-leather handbag out of which she now pulled a man’s handkerchief, blew her nose stoutly. As she strode long-legged — Miller thought of trotters — over to him, he realized she was nearly as tall as he was. Then he saw that she was wearing heels tonight. White ones, odd for midwinter. Nylons, wrinkled, sparkled above the ankles with melted snow. “It’s a good thing you come,” she said to him, and he understood immediately that he would suffer no challenges from her. Somehow from the beginning, maybe because of his interest in her husband and the note, she had clearly supposed him friendly to any cause of hers. “We need folks like you here.”