Robert Coover - Origin of the Brunists

On a cold and wintry eighth of January ,

Ninety-eight men entered into the mine;

Only one of these returned to tell the story

Of that disaster that struck Old Number Nine!

Hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!

Hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!

We shall gather at the Mount of Redemption

To meet our dear Lord there face to face!

As we carried out the bodies of our loved ones ,

We looked up to God in Heav’n above;

We asked Him why, and He sent a man to tell us:

Hark ye to the White Bird of Love!

And from that tomb came a message of gladness ,

Though its author had passed to his reward:

“Hark ye ever to the White Bird in your hearts ,

And we shall all stand together ’fore the Lord!”

So, hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!

Yes, hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!

We shall gather at the Mount of Redemption

To meet our dear Lord there face to face!

Seven weeks we gathered by his bedside ,

Seven weeks we knelt and prayed to the Divine ,

Seven weeks, and from the Seventh Aspect ,

God answered our prayers with a Sign!

( Now,) fourteen weeks will have passed since the Rescue ,

When we gather out on the Mount that night;

We shall lift our voices then to sing God’s glory ,

And await with joy the Coming of the Light!

So, hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!

Oh yes, hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!

We shall gather at the Mount of Redemption

To meet our dear Lord there face to face!

And, finally, Reverend Wesley Edwards of the First Presbyterian Church worries about his sermon for next Sunday. A touchy problem, since he feels the occasion should be utilized, yet does not want to contribute in any way to hysteria. Somehow, Mark 4:11–12 seems appropriate to him as a text, yet it is full of pitfalls. Dare he risk it?

And he said unto them: Unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are without, all things are done in parables: that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest haply they should turn again, and it should be forgiven them.

What a triumph it could be! He and his wife have turned in late, exhausted by the long week and longer day, having suffered through just about everything from baptisms to egghunts, from ecumenical Good Friday services to his own jampacked flower-laden programs, even a wedding and an afternoon children’s party, and so he is not exactly overjoyed that his wife chooses just this moment to find fault with his sermon this morning.

“Of course, it was beautiful, dear. Don’t bite your lip like that. I don’t mean that everyone didn’t enjoy it thoroughly.”

“What was the matter with it?” He tries to sound agreeable and open-minded, but he is very tired. Moreover, undressing in the room where she lay reading idly, he was even considering the marital sacrament this night as an appropriate climax to the joy of Christian renewal (both students of The Golden Bough , they often celebrate primitive festivals in such manner), but he has never been able to succeed — even as a lusting boy — so long as his mind was at work.

“I didn’t say anything was the matter with it, dear. Only, well, it seemed so much like the one you gave last year.”

He laughs. “You want me to rewrite the Resurrection?”

“Oh no, that’s not what I mean.” She smiles. “But, I don’t know, it just seems like you only tell them what they want to hear, and that doesn’t seem …” Her voice trails off ambiguously.

“That may be so, dear,” he says, rolling his back to her. “But if I do, it is because I believe that God’s behavior is visible in their needs. It’s difficult to put it precisely, but for some time now I’ve had the feeling that I am only a passive participant in a larger drama, that by responding to them, I respond to Divine Will, and thus fulfill what is there potentially all the time. I think this is really what ritual is all about. And it seems especially right at Eastertime, which celebrates not a speech or moral judgment, but a mute action. Who am I to stand above and scold?”

“Oh, Wesley!” She laughs, switching off the bedlamp and curling around his back. “You’re not a preacher, dear, you’re a poet!”

He laughs in pleased response. She runs her hands down inside his pajama pants. He is still irritated with her for having turned him on, as it were, but as she scratches and burrows, the channels of his mind click closed, one by one. Visions of candy Easter eggs behind slender trees, gay flowered bonnets and starched skirts, the long green look down the No. 6 fairway toward the red flag that stabs its hole, fill the void as his mind retreats.

“Is he risen?” she asks in his ear then, astonishingly resurrecting this old premarital collegetime joke of theirs.

Click! the last channel. “Indeed,” he whispers, rolling on his back to receive her: “he is risen!”

Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee seven and seven, the male and his female …

West Condon, as though unable to gaze any longer upon the deep black reach of night, rolls over on its back to receive the Monday sun, now rising, as men say, in the eastern sky: the eye of God, the golden chariot, the communal hearthfire and source of life, the solar center that, for all its berserk fury, still works its daily anodyne magic on man’s ultimately incurable disease of dread and despair. Its first rays glance off the top of the West Condon Hotel, the high school flagpole, roof and treetops, the Deepwater No. 9 tipple and watertower, and, close by, the small irregular rise, now internationally known as the Mount of Redemption, where this morning occasional white chicken feathers lie like a fall of manna, their barbs gummed into clumps by the dew. Although no one is out at the mine, on the flagpole, or in the treetops, and thus cannot see the sun until at least another hour’s roll has lapsed, and though, as a matter of further fact, almost none will bother to look at it when it can be seen, its radiations are nevertheless early perceived: they shred dreams, calm the sleepless, turn West Condon on: clocks sound, radios crow, throats hack, razors buzz, frypans heat, toilets flush, children scuffle, doors bang, church and school bells ring, forks clink, toasters pop, motors turn over, sweepers roar, it is Monday morning.

Justin Miller, editor and publisher of the West Condon Chronicle , rouses himself from the jobroom sofa, where he has spent the night, camera at his side, in a vain attempt to catch further demonstrators or looters in the act. He feels, in a word, rotten. Dirty, unshaved, tired, disgusted. When there is enough light, he steps outside in the street to take photos of the broken windows, the cross on the door, then develops and prints them immediately for quick sale to the wireservices and photo magazines. He decides to leave the damages unrepaired as one further curiosity for the newshounds who will descend on the town, noses at the ready, this weekend — indeed, the back lot of the hotel is already filling up with cars — and now simply boards up the windows from the inside with cardboard ripped from packing boxes. He is still at the task when his office and advertising people begin to arrive, and, given his bearish temper this morning, he is hardly delighted to learn that his indispensable office girl, bookkeeper, librarian, classified ads chief, and social columnist Annie Pompa will not show up … for “religious” reasons, one of the other girls explains, then tenders her own resignation. “Ah shit!” the editor is heard to lament.