Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

That stung the mayor somehow. Vince felt people cluster at his back. “Naw,” Whimple grumped. “That’s got all cleared up.” And he walked away. Aha.

Just then, a couple women jumped out of a car and came busting through the crowd. He recognized Widow Collins. The other was a young girl. They went flying right at the blazing house. Vince shouted at them to stay back. Tiger Miller chased after them. The door was already busted in. All three disappeared into the house. Smoke seeping out like a kind of sweat. Vince hesitated just a moment, then, with three or four other guys at his heels, followed them in. Darker inside than outside. Spotlights beamed through the front windows. Living room wet and the windows broken, but no flames here yet. The smoke stung, but it wasn’t too bad. Made him think of the mine disaster — had a brief flash of panic, then it lifted. He felt at home. The women were grabbing things off the walls and out of closets. Miller and the other guys were helping, loading up and running out. The widow headed for a back room and Vince followed. Bedroom. Fire there all right. Still, goddamn it, he almost enjoyed it. A spray of water slammed through a broken window. “Load me up!” he cried. She looked up at him, her face wild with shock — Jesus Christ! she’s really mad! She yanked stuff out of closets and drawers, dumped them in his arms. He was crying from the smoke. “Let’s get outa here!” he shouted. He staggered out under his load, coughing like a sonuvabitch. Somebody had spread a blanket out front near the street, and he dumped his armful on it. Ground was wet and soggy from all the water flying around. Vince dipped his handkerchief in the mud, tied it around his face. People watching agog. Lot of them now. Real community function. He recognized buddies from the mine, business guys off Main, teachers from the school, they were really piling in. Weird light from the flames playing on all their gaping faces.

Going back in, he met the rest coming out, all loaded down, all gagging. Widow Collins leaning on Tiger Miller. Didn’t see the girl. Pushed on in. He heard a crash to the rear, felt a puff of hot air in his face. Christ! what an idiot! maybe he was all alone in here! But then he saw the girl, sitting on the floor behind a stuffed chair with an armful of pictures and crap. He tried to grab the stuff away from her, but she wouldn’t let go, so he just grabbed her up, loot and all, lugged her out of there. About Angie’s age, he guessed, though she didn’t have what Angie had, and for a minute there it was like his own house was burning, the house it took him seventeen goddamn years to pay for and all afternoon to paint the front side of — he felt the pain of these people’s loss, just like it was his own, knew the emptiness that would come over them when the shock was gone, and, Jesus, he felt sorry for them and let the tears, pricked out of him by the smoke, flow freely.

On the way in this time, he’d noticed something somebody had dropped by the front door, so, on the porch, he set the little girl down, picked the thing up. Just a shoebox wrapped with newspaper. The girl slumped in his arms as he helped her down the steps, and Widow Collins, standing like something dead over her sad heap of dumped possessions, watched as though she wasn’t seeing anything. Oddly, she held a little porcelain Sacred Heart Madonna in her hand. Friends circled her, a lot of them bawling. Vince wiped his own eyes with his shirtsleeve.

The street was packed with townsfolk. He saw guys like Hall, Smith, Mello, Johnson, Baxter, Lucci, nodded to all of them. Lucci asked him if this was a Black Hand job, and Vince told Georgie that’s what he’d heard. He listened to his answer travel out in waves through the people. He spotted Whimple and Miller in a huddle near Widow Collins, Ted Cavanaugh there, too, and he wandered over, not out of a sense of seeking importance, but because there was something reassuring about them. Cavanaugh tossed him a nod. Old football buddy.

“What do you have there, Vince?” Tiger Miller asked.

“Hunh?” He’d forget he was carrying the box. “I dunno. Found it by the door there.”

He started to hand it over to Widow Collins to put with her things, but Whimple grabbed it out of his hands. Tore off the paper, opened the box, which was partly burnt on the inside somehow, turned stone white and fainted dead away, knocking two guys down as he fell.

There were screams and the crowd pressed on all sides.

Vince took up the box from where it fell, shook out on the blanket what was inside. A carbonized human hand. One finger missing. Same finger that Vince had lost. He felt dizzy and sat down.

People shrieked out what it was. Some girl started to vomit and Tiger Miller held her head. Widow Collins grabbed up that thing and held it high. “Ely!” she screamed. A piece of it fell off and everybody ducked. Jesus, the whole place went crazy! People wailed and hollered and people prayed and people got sick and people shouted and pushed, going in every direction at once, man, it was awful! Vince stared at his own hand with the little finger gone, feeling like he’d just seen an apparition. Widow Collins went completely off her bat, bleating out crazy stuff about the end of the world and the horrors of the last times, and her daughter was howling and groveling around in the stuff on the blanket something terrible. Vince, sitting still, glanced up and noticed that Ted Cavanaugh was looking down at him. Somehow, oddly, that calmed him for the moment. He sighed, got to his feet.

“Vince, you usually home weekdays?” Ted asked.

“Sure.” He realized, standing, how much he was trembling. His throat was parched and his chest hurt.

“I may drop by sometime during the week, if you don’t mind.”

“Any time.”

Cavanaugh left him then and he felt alone and the scene was just too wild for him. He had to get out of there. He pushed and bullied his way through the crowd. They seemed to respect him. He broke free, made his weak knees hold long enough to get him down the street a half block or so, then sat down against a tree. He looked back at the crowd, at the house burning. No stopping it. It was burning clean to the ground. The noise was farther off now. He began to feel a little better. The roof collapsed on part of the house, sending a big orange cloud billowing up into the black sky like a message. The sweat was cold on his face. He rubbed his hand to be sure of it. Did old Collins have a finger gone? He couldn’t remember. He did recall, though, that the Preach didn’t get burned in the disaster, but died trapped with Mario Juliano and the others, with Lee and Pooch. So what did she mean it was Ely’s hand? Anyhow it was so small, looked almost like a woman’s hand, and Ely Collins was a pretty big man.

There were a lot of guys back there in the crowd that he knew and could kid around with, but for some goddamn reason he was scared to go back. Scared of the panic maybe. At home, there would be Etta and maybe Angie, but he didn’t know if he could make it. He felt weak and the street looked treacherous. He wiped his mouth, discovered he still had the muddy handkerchief tied around it. He took it off. Felt better then. Felt freer.

Damp was creeping up his ass. He stood. He was stiff from all the day’s work, but not so shaky now. Then he noticed Guido Mello and Georgie Lucci leaving the scene. They lived near him. He waited for them. Mello was a chubby type, mostly nose, not too bright but a willing sort who always did his share. Worked as a garage mechanic now. Lucci, one of Vince’s boys in the mine, was tall, something of a clown, but goodnatured; Vince had felt a lot closer to the man since the disaster, since Ange Moroni’s death, and he and Sal and Georgie quite often did things together now.