Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

I call thee now to courage! Though each hour bring thee a new test, persist! Through all plights, against the blind, despite all mischief, persist! Though the powers of darkness pursue thee, yea, though they clasp your hands and share your table and strike at your innermost heart, persist! In self-denial, austere and venerative, persist! Persist, and unto new aspects shall the vernal winds of regenesis blow thee! Domiron bids you!

And so, where this night she anticipated joy, she confronts asperity and fear. Hints of betrayal. Divisions. Justin rises above the conflict, smiles silently upon it. Then, the journey to the hill: it reunites them. Her mother remains with Giovanni, the rest leave in cars: Mr. Himebaugh with the Nortons, Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Harlowe with the Halls. Mrs. Collins, Elaine, and Colin with Carl Dean, Mr. Wosznik and Mrs. Cravens with her and Justin. His right hand rests on her knee. She takes it into her lap. It is a large hand, not coarse, yet full of strength. He glances at her, smiles reassuringly. His fingers grip her thigh, giving her strength, then he returns the hand to the wheel. The Mount of Redemption. They arrive to find it dark. Colder than they had expected. Why: they are so few! It shocks them all. Justin eases the crisis: they line the cars up facing them, turn on all the headlights. Mr. Wosznik says that he will make torches for their next meeting. They sing, but their voices are swallowed up in the night and they seem, each, to sing alone. Without her brother, they seem strangely purposeless. Mr. Wosznik and Carl Dean build a small fire, blotting out the last of the stars, but bringing a moment of warmth to their small community. Below them, past a patch of firs and naked elms, the mine buildings squat darkly, unspecific threat that somehow, in its inanimate crouch, draws tears from the eyes of the women widowed here. Only one thing seems certain: they have come to the right place. Suddenly: car lights on the mine road! They huddle at the fire and watch in silence, in fear — yes! again! — it is Reverend Baxter and all his people! More of them than ever! Cars and cars! How did they know? The Nortons insist they must get away. But they are all afraid to leave the little fire. Mr. Himebaugh is trembling. Mrs. Collins is angry with Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Hall. Taunts and shouts from below. Justin speaks with Mr. Wosznik and Carl Dean and Colin. And still another car. But this time the driver, Mr. Diggs, comes running up the hill. The men brace for him. “Clara! Clara!” he cries. “It’s your house! It’s burnin’ down!”

Thwock! The Black Peter administers justice upon the Evil One. Thwock! The Black Peter is tough, boy! He can really lay it on. Thwock! The Evil One bawls, but the Black Hand has gagged his filthy mouth. “Again!” the Black Hand commands. He holds pinned the Evil One. Thwock! “Switch him again, Paulie! Right on the peewee!” Thwock!

The Black Piggy is a sissy. A scaredy-cat. She administers justice like a baby. She always cries and runs away. Boy! they’ll get her now! They’ll make blood come.

They tell the Cravens boy if he will stop crying they will let him go home. He stops, but he keeps choking like. The Black Hand peeks out the shed door. “All clear!” he whispers. “Now, you shut up, Davey, and not a word, or we’ll deal with you again!”

“We mean it!” the Black Peter avers, whistling the switch through the air. But they’re not scared, because Davey Cravens is just three and hardly talks yet.

The Evil One, sobbing remorsefully, leaves. “Good job, Black Peter!” says the Black Hand. The Black Peter, swelling with pride, switches an old inner tube. Carefully, the Black Hand pushes his own hand out his sweater sleeve and slips the black one into a paper sack. The black one is beginning to fall apart. Already, the little finger has got lost and pieces chip off all the time. “Button up, Paulie.”

When the Evil One is out of sight, the Black Hand and the Black Peter, now disguised as Nat and Paulie Baxter, slip out of the shed and down the alley toward home, discussing proper retribution for the Black Piggy and plotting further astounding adventures.

Abner Baxter, Jr., helped his Mom as he always did on Saturday mornings, burning trash, filling the coalbin, cleaning the yard, and so on. Warm sunny day, a perfect first day of spring. The ground was damp and spongy from yesterday’s rain. His sister Franny was cleaning the kitchen, the other three were out playing. They got it easier than he ever did. He was already a freshman in high school, and he shouldn’t have to do this kid stuff.

Junior stared into the flames of his trash fire and watched the boxes melt, flare up, collapse. He built his fires like cities, then consumed them with his fiery wrath. Sodom fell beneath the flames every Saturday, an epic, and better even than in the movies. He put ants and beetles inside the boxes, watched them scramble out and to the top, just like people running to the roof. They scurried about up there, helterskelter, until, doomed anyway, they finally tumbled off and died. Sometimes he would catch a frog for his fires. Sometimes the frog died; sometimes, like Lot, he got away.

His little sister Amanda came down the alley. She was crying. “Whatsa matter?” he asked. Not that he cared.

“Nothing,” she said, and went on by. She was always crying.

A cornflakes carton tipped precariously as flames licked into its lower stories. The lettering turned cloudy black like the box, then shiny in contrast to the box. Miraculously, the carton did not fall, burned to a fragile black ash in that half-topple. Miracles happened all the time in Junior’s trash fires.

His Mom came out. “I been calling you,” she said.

“Fire ain’t out yet.” He watched her closely now for change, whenever she wasn’t looking, but she was still the same. Fat women don’t show for awhile. It disgusted him to think about it. “Awful dry today, and you cain’t take chances.”

She sighed and went back in.

He’d always thought his Mom was pretty, but now he didn’t think so. She was big and old. Maybe that was the kind of change that was happening.

A big black ant appeared on a milk carton skyscraper. Junior imagined it was Carl Dean Palmers. Carl Dean was a senior at the high school, a bully, and possessed by the Devil. He made fun of Junior in the shower room, and pushed him around outside classes, knocked his books out of his hands. The carton burned slowly, being heavily coated with wax. The wax began to melt and it made the ant run faster.

Carl Dean was having carnal knowledge of Elaine Collins. Elaine was only a freshman like himself and too young for seniors, but her Mom was arranging it. Junior’s Dad all but said so, and right in church on Sunday mornings, so it had to be true. When Junior went with his Dad to sing on the Bruno lawn night before last, he had hoped he might get to see it. He wondered if only Carl Dean did it to her, or if they all took turns. But his Dad made so much noise he scared them, and they came out and got in a fight.

The ant peeked over the edge, his feelers wobbling around. He was probably thinking about jumping. Junior watched with his hand in his pocket. Last year, when Reverend Collins was still alive and everybody was friends, Junior used to go by Elaine’s house at night, because she sometimes left her blinds up. The thing he always wanted to see was if she was getting hair yet like him, but he was never able to make sure. Now, she wasn’t at home so much, and anyway her Mom seemed awfully suspicious suddenly about Peeping Toms. The ant stopped running. It was surrounded by torturing flames. The roof of the skyscraper began to buckle. The ant bowed its back like a cat raising its fur. Then, as the skyscraper tipped, the ant rolled into the fire. Junior tried to watch it, but he lost sight of it in the ashes. Did God watch each single Sodomite to be sure he burned? When his Dad’s side finally won out and they took holy retribution on the apostates and impostors, Junior hoped he could be responsible for Carl Dean Palmers and Elaine Collins.