Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

Two of the girls, Mary Harlowe and Lucy Smith, are already in Mabel Hall’s kitchen when Betty Wilson arrives, running in from under the rain, and the cards, stacked, are on the table. Lucy is explaining how she has begged and begged her husband to take her back to Bruno’s, but how Calvin is afraid of Abner Baxter. Lucy doesn’t say “afraid,” of course, she says “swayed,” but the other three know what she means. She tells them that everybody at the church is just disgusted with both the Baxters, how Abner and Sarah just stole the Circle right away from Clara and nobody could do anything about it, and how stupid Sarah Baxter is. Mabel informs Betty they have just been reading the cards, and Lucy and Calvin will join them again one day. They talk about Mr. Himebaugh being up in the bathroom all the time last night, and Mabel explains he has the flu. Mabel hardly ever talks, but she knows what’s going on before anybody else.

Mary asks if they all were noticing how Mr. Miller and the Bruno girl, the prophet’s sister, were getting so lovey-dovey, and, in a whisper, says she saw them kissing back in the bedroom when she went looking for her kids. Mabel says very bluntly that Wanda Cravens is also doing everything but lifting her skirts to get Mr. Miller’s eye, and at that Lucy Smith starts giggling so she can’t stop. “He is kinder cute,” she says in a titter.

“Well! if you knew what I know about that young man and dear Sister Wanda—!” says Mary Harlowe, and then she tells them.

“Wanda always has been man-crazy,” says Lucy. “I don’t know how poor Brother Lee ever put up with her so long.”

“And she was even flirting one night with that silly blond high school boy, poor child,” Mary adds, “and she certainly didn’t waste a minute trying to get her hooks in Ben Wosznik, either!”

Betty Wilson’s weak heart leaps dangerously to her throat, and she exchanges a terrified glance with Mabel, who, with a little shake of her head, warns her to say nothing. Betty guesses then that Wanda Cravens is not her only threat, that even her old friend Mary Harlowe has got ideas.

Just then, Wanda Cravens herself arrives with Thelma Coates, Thelma sneaking away from home and that horrible tyrannical husband of hers, Roy. She tries to say how sorry she is about the other night and starts crying pathetically, and they all cry together for awhile.

After that, they speculate on the meaning of Giovanni Bruno’s pronouncement about the Mount of Redemption, while Mabel shuffles the cards and says they should be quiet if it is going to work out properly. Sister Thelma asks what is the Mount, and Mary tells her about the hill at the mine, but Thelma and Lucy are admonished to keep utmost secrecy so as not to cause more trouble with Abner Baxter. A Bible is found and they swear on it. Mabel lays the cards out. She fingers each one before revealing it, studies each development, gasps, sighs, broods, smiles, purses her lips, squints her eyes. For a long time, an almost endless time, she gazes at the exposed cards. Outside, the rain falls steadily shushing mysteriously against the roof. “A controversy,” she says at last. Betty looks for it, but the faces are forever strange to her. “Two blond queens,” says Mabel, indicating them, “but,” another card, “the controversy is resolved,” yet another, “by time.” They all nod.

“But the end , Mabel,” Lucy insists, “is it coming?”

Mabel turns up another card, places it upper right. “It is not certain, but it is probable,” she says.

“Is it still April nineteenth?”

Mabel stares, her eyes running over the exposed cards. “I don’t know, but, yes, I think so,” she replies at last. “Here’s a five … black. Perhaps: a black hand …” A pause while they catch their breaths and glance at one another. Mary Harlowe is pale. “… And the number … the number … seven.”

“What does it mean?” Mary asks.

Mabel, not replying, turns up another card, places it just below the last one. “A reunion,” she says. “Perhaps to discuss the controversy.” Another card. “A distant place.”

“The hill!” Thelma whispers.

Mabel nods. “It can be,” she says.

Betty steals a glance at Sister Wanda Cravens. She is very young and slender with a cute freckly face, and Betty loses heart. Of course, she is too young and too thin and she is silly and fickle, but will Ben see that?

Mabel turns up a new card and catches her breath sharply. They all stare at it. “The Judgment!” she whispers, and one ringed finger points to Gabriel and three naked people: a fat lady with oversized breasts, a thin lady showing her bare behind, and an elderly man praying. Fascinated by the card, Betty barely hears the rest, only scattered phrases reaching her: “… ordeal … will subjected to wisdom and prudence … evil men … victory over opposition … false friends …” and so on. Trump twenty. Judgment. God has spoken.

“Who are the false friends?” Mary Harlowe asks. She would.

Mabel hesitates. “A dark man.” She glances up at Betty who withers. Of course, all the men Betty can think of are dark, except maybe the Meredith boy. And Abner, who is no friend in the first place. But, still, a cruel doubt has stabbed her, hurt her deeply, and inwardly she grows faint. “And perhaps a child,” continues Mabel, eyes flicking over the cards. “And a married woman.”

After the session, one of the best they have ever had, when the others have left, Mabel reminds Betty that Wanda Cravens has three small children and Mary Harlowe five, no obstacle perhaps to a beast of lust, but hardly attractive to a man of honor. Betty thanks her, weeping gratefully, and, as the rain lets up momentarily, leaves, her joy renewed.

West Condon came alive as Miller walked through it. First day of spring and, on impulse, he’d decided to leave the Chevy at home, walk to the Chronicle . Still needed the trenchcoat, but he wore it open. Women appeared to sweep porches, men laughed foolishly from autos, children ran and shouted. Bicycles bounced down off porches. He heard the whump-whump of a basketball bouncing on cinders. The cool rains of the last couple days had sunk a fragrance into the soil that the sudden vernal sun this Saturday morning exploited gaudily. Who would think some here saw an end to it all?

The new time springs forth! Sun splintering through the windowfrost sprays the truth of the new evangel upon her bed. She stretches, feels old constraints squeeze out her sinews to run fingering down her arms and out into oblivion. Make way for light!

Downtown, people opening their shops hailed him. He took off his trenchcoat, carried it over his shoulder. West Condon showing its best face, momentary denial of the gloomy omens. Exchanges of witless banter, easy laughter. Maury Castle, rolling out the awning of his shoestore, made a dig about widows and orgies. Miller only laughed and told him he’d better join up quick if he wanted to get a little of that grace. Castle heehawed.

The worst of it was still in front of him, but he felt ready for it. Admittedly, it was pretty harrying, and now that the cult had become a more or less public phenomenon, there was more to keep an eye on than merely the little group itself, and that pushed him all the more, but as long as they didn’t move the date up on him again, he felt he could make it to the end. Or close enough anyway, for what he wanted out of it. The cult itself had not grown much since Miller’s first night — an ex-coalminer named Ben Wosznik and two or three more disaster widows — but its force had. The town was now awake to them, and the members themselves felt this awakening. There was always a tension as they faced out of the Bruno house, and even their own homes now sometimes seemed alien to them.