Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

Idly, contentedly, Marcella stitches his white tunic. Dust, like a microscopic Imitation of the universe, floats and revolves in the shafts of sunlight that penetrate the room through the south windows. Hanging up the phone this morning, she felt the gray unnamable anxiety that has shadowed her these last weeks let go its grip, lift, fade like a bad dream. A paradox has apparently resolved itself, and now, with her discovery of its resolution, comes a great calm. The discovery encloses a decision, yet it is so easy a decision to make — in fact, it is already made .

Miller knew he had it in his hands to heave old Water Closet around and set her on a crisis course, and on April 8th, Wednesday of Holy Week, partly because he had no choice, he did it. Eight-page special on the Brunists, with photos, a 1,500-word release to the wireservices, and longer articles, previously accepted in précis, wired to three newspapers in large cities. The wireservices couldn’t get enough, offered special rates for another 1,500 words the next day, plus continued coverage. He airmailed wirecopy to the weekly news and photo magazines, suggesting unique angles for each and offering complete picture coverage; similarly to the television companies, tendering his services as “consultant.” Later, they’d get airmail copies of tonight’s edition.

He’d been considering all along popping it on Good Friday, had thought it might be a more destructive moment. But Eleanor Norton, obviously convinced he was an infiltrator sent by the powers of darkness — and indeed, she was right, he was — had been out to get him for some time now, and he’d suddenly realized she’d set him up for the ax tonight. It was the only way to account for Domiron’s sudden capitulation to the Collins faction last Sunday night: after announcing the “coming of the light”, on the eighth he had warned them to “let no evil heart block its passage.” And, of course, when it didn’t come, the heretic-hunt would have begun. Anyway, today wasn’t bad: not only was it Clara Collins’ celebrated “eighth of the month” and right in the middle of Easter Week, but it was also the Buddha’s birthday, a day to “beat the drum of the Immortal in the darkness of the world.”

The scene was ripe. The Brunists sat in hiding, intent only upon reaching the 19th without further harassment; Baxter and the loyal Nazarenes, furious as ever, had been effectively suppressed since the Collins fire by the Common Sense Committee and Whimple’s police; and Cavanaugh’s bund of Common Sensers itself had been using this time of silence to proselyte amongst belligerents and potential converts. As a result, Baxter’s forces had been reduced and the Brunists were down to the hardcore members, having got no new ones since Ben Wosznik: the Bruno family, the Nortons, the two boys, Himebaugh, Clara Collins and her daughter, the Halls, Wosznik, and the widows Wilson, Cravens, and Harlowe, with eight small children among them. Not that the cult was disheartened: this paucity of believers only made them more convinced than ever of their uniqueness, their special status as God’s select, and their group zeal and devotion couldn’t be greater. All they needed, Miller felt, was to be thrown upon the world scene, and they’d have no choice but to “prove” themselves right by finding more people to agree with them. Baxter, too, was probably waiting for that moment, for what he needed most right now was a visible enemy. And, surely, the Common Sensers realized that, for they’d been to see Miller several times already to urge him to continue suppressing this story, and most of them had even begun to get the idea he was on their side.

His main worry was Marcella. He’d thought to have her safely out of it by now. Originally, discovering Eleanor’s hostility toward him and her maternal sway over Marcella, he had thought it best to affect conviction and then tunnel out from within, share a carefully structured doubt, and then: conversion. Didn’t work. Marcella’s mind was complex and delicate, contained sweeping world-views that made cosmic events out of a casual gesture or a cloud’s idle passage, and, in such a mind, the commonplaces he liked to use were not common at all and refuted nothing. He had even hinted at marriage and she had laughed, supposing he must be joking. Now, he was bringing it to a head. He had called, asked her to meet him here at the plant this evening, and she had agreed. He’d insisted on the urgency of it: yes, regardless of what anybody might say to the contrary, she’d be there … she understood, she said. And maybe, at last, she did. He hoped so. He would show her the night’s edition, ask her to leave with him. He had no ring to offer, but he did have the brass collar still. He recognized that it might not be easy, but he believed, once the choice was clear to her, that her commitment to him would outweigh any other — Miller had that much faith in the gonads’ clutch upon what folks called reason.

Eleanor calls with the news. Marcella tells her she is sorry. Eleanor believes it is really a blessing, a further sign. Marcella agrees. She says nothing of her discovery, of her resolution. It was Eleanor, after all, who first confused her with all her divisions of love. But now the confusion has passed, the fear has passed, for perfect love, it is true, casts out fear. Love, she instructs her needle, never ends. Prophecy? it will pass away. Tongues? they will cease. Knowledge? it will pass away. But he who loves … abides in the light .

A beautiful spread! Goddamn, he had too much good stuff! Eight-column banner: BRUNISTS PROPHESY END OF WORLD! Four-column photo of the group on Cunt Hill, lit by the car lights he’d arranged and shot from the shaggy crotch by Lou Jones. Two-column mugshot of the Prophet in his new tunic, which Marcella had let him get for “inspirational” purposes. And inspirational it was: wonderful dark head afloat in pale white light; forehead, nose, cheeks — all looked as though chiseled from granite or marble, while the uncombed black hair and dark shadows in the throat, mouth and brow seemed almost like concentric circles leading inward to the glittering black pupils of his fierce eyes. Other photos through the issue of the free-for-all on the front lawn with the Baxterites, of Clara Collins’ house burning and the Brunists sifting through the ruins the next day for clues, of the Common Sensers assembled and excited, of the altar in the Bruno living room with its bizarre assortment of relics and instruments. There was an exquisitely grim three-column blowup of the Black Hand and, on the back page, some pictures from the Bruno family album, including a news photo from the late twenties of old Antonio Bruno bringing a gun butt down on somebody’s luckless head during the union struggles — same glittering eyes as his boy and a grin splitting his tough lean jaws. Miller was working up ideas for a special Millennium’s Eve TV documentary, if he could just sell the notion to one of the networks, and that picture of old Antonio was one he meant to use. Then, as if he wasn’t already overloaded, the school board had provided him an unexpected bonus story by firing Eleanor Norton last night. He dug up a somber group shot of the board, never before used because they all looked so sour in it, and ran it with cutlines that all but made grand inquisitors of them. Except for these cum-incensed types, as Lou Jones called them, Miller’s stories were essentially objective — meaning, he left it up to the reader to decide if the end might really be coming or not.

Of course, the greatest story would have to remain untold. Happy’s description of Giovanni’s abdominal scars had rung some kind of bell in his mind. She’d said they were all horizontal or vertical, but, though intricate, had no apparent design to them. It made him think of cracked wood and that made him think of the wooden statue of Saint Stephen in the local Catholic Church — its patron. He’d first noticed it at Antonio Bruno’s funeral a month ago. The mere fact that it was a Roman Catholic burial had troubled Clara’s people, but the excuse given that it had been the old woman’s pious wish had pacified them. The strangeness of the Cathedral, in fact, was probably the only thing that had kept the Nazarenes from completely losing their heads back then — as it was, they got a sudden stiff injection of awesome grandeur that would no doubt color the rest of their days. Antonio had been properly Disneyed up for his jolly journey, it would seem, to lollypop land, his bloody nose cured and even straightened in death. In fact, it was his very artificiality, oddly giving life to the statues in the Cathedral, that had drawn Miller’s attention to the boyish Stephen. Torso writhing, eyes turned inward to confront death, arms twisted up over his head, the boy was naked but for the usual loincloth — typically half-off, as though about to get raped — which hid away the prick beneath the soft girlish abdomen. Whereas old Antonio’s flesh had been ivory-smooth, the boy’s body was finely cracked, paint chipping off, joints separating. After Happy had tipped him off, he’d made a trip back to the Cathedral to see for himself: yes, the belly was that abstract fretwork of tiny scars she had described. Happy, when he took her there, had not only confirmed it, but located a kind of “LOF” in the right groin that had caused all the girls at the hospital to wonder if it stood for “love” or “laugh.”