Origin of the Brunists (23 page)

After the ceremonies, everybody still milling around, not wanting to go home and lose this thing, Vince ran into Barney Davis, the mine manager. Barney asked him if he'd mind delivering the charity drive checks to Cravens' widow and Minicucci's folks. Vince said okay, make a nice farewell gesture.

“What do you mean, farewell?” Davis asked.

“I'm getting out.”

“What? You mean you're quitting the mines?” Davis laughed. “Shit, Bonali, it gets in the blood. You can't quit easy as that.”

“Yeah? Well, watch and see, Davis.”

Davis laughed again. “I'll believe it when I see it in the
Chronicle,”
he said.

Once a day, six days a week and sometimes seven, year in, year out, the affairs of West Condon were compressed into a set of conventionally accepted signs and became, in the shape of the West Condon
Chronicle
, what most folks in town thought of as life, or history. Compactly folded into a soft, damp, aromatic pouch, it fluttered onto porches nightly, was gathered in by the several citizens to easy chairs and kitchen tables, there to open its petals like the proverbial lotus, providing, if not exactly wisdom, at least plenty to talk about and maybe a laugh or two. That its publisher and editor, Justin Miller, sometimes thought of himself as in the entertainment business and viewed his product, based as it was on the technicality of the recordable fact, as a kind of benevolent hoax, probably only helped to make the paper greater, for it was certainly true that although the
Chronicle
was as old as West Condon and as much father of the town as child of it, it was only when Tiger came home to take it over that it became a real institution.

Miller himself was something of a local institution even before that, having been the greatest athlete to pass through West Condon High School. Small towns like West Condon seldom reached the state basketball finals, but Miller had taken them there twice, to this day a kind of Golden Age to the town's middle-aged and old-timers, a legend for the young: number 14: jersey retired. He had, meanwhile, captained both the track and baseball teams, edited the school paper, presided over his class twice, made mostly A's, and, surprising no one, vanished from the premises immediately after graduation. Nobody asked why he left: anybody with any sense did. So, his extraordinary decision to return a few years later, giving up his freewheeling life as a correspondent in order to resuscitate the defunct
Chronicle
, had come like a breath of new life: hey! Tiger's back in town! things are moving again!

And there were prodigies: the highway was widened by the state, two mines resumed operations awhile, and a new factory making plastic toys was established on the outskirts, though this operation later folded. The newspaper, of course, was great, if Tiger had anything to do with it it
had
to be great, won a lot of prizes, put West Condon on the map. The basketball team won the conference title and Tiger started up his semipro baseball club, never had a losing season. And whenever the town fell into the dumps, people looked to the
Chronicle
, counted on Tiger to pull them out, and he usually did.

So now their communal eye was on the
Chronicle
again. Deepwater No. 9, last mine in the area to keep operating, was closed since the disaster, and rumor was, it was going to stay that way. No new industry, business was poor, and people were moving out again. Hard winter. But was Tiger still with them? Most folks thought so, but there were bad signs. Rumor was that the paper was losing money, and Miller didn't seem to care. Some of the Rotary Club meetings had been treated pretty unpleasantly, punch lines left out of speeches, names misspelled, that kind of thing. The traditional Christmas spirit had got knocked, too, when Miller started running parodies of the best-loved Christmas songs and gave the Yuletime charity activities almost no space at all. Some said, that's the trouble with Miller, he keeps going soft just when you expect the best of him. A lot of jump, but not much of a miler. It was still a matter of town curiosity that Miller had led the basketball team to State his sophomore and junior years, but had been unable to get them past the regionals his senior year. Some said he was screwing around too much that year; others thought they saw “some spark go out of him,” as though he'd become just plain bored; others blamed the coach. And that was why, while most people saw his return to take over the
Chronicle
as a heroic kind of yea-saying, if not indeed an act of grace, there were those, even then, who wondered if Tiger might not simply have run out of wind out there in the world and returned to rest up awhile in a place where heroism was still possible without sticking to training rules.

And now, since the mine disaster, people wondered why this big play to the spookier side of the Bruno rescue and all those peculiar little squibs about religious eccentrics? Miller was a skeptic, didn't go to church, everybody knew that: so why this sudden interest in so-called miracles and visions? When Reverend Wesley Edwards first came to town to take over the Presbyterian pulpit he had, prodded by some of his elders, sought to reactivate Miller's interest in the church. Miller's skepticism hadn't bothered him, he was a skeptic in most ways himself, and in fact he'd got a kick out of arguing with that romantic rationalist. But there was no getting him back to church. Miller was an atheist, and a fundamentalist to boot, who couldn't see past the end of his own flesh-and-bone nose, to put it politely. And then Miller had started throwing some of his own remarks back at him, and Edwards had realized he'd compromised himself in the course of their talks. So one day he had just taken the pipe out of his mouth and said, “Justin, make your peace with God, surrender to His will.” Miller had snorted, and that had been the end of it.

Then, on this otherwise calm sixth of February, a Friday when church news was customarily printed, there appeared, right on the front page in a small neat box, a paragraph which announced that the Evening Circle of the West Condon Church of the Nazarene would convene on Sunday evening at the home of Mr. Giovanni Bruno. “All interested townsfolk are invited to attend this very important meeting.” Edwards smarted. Nothing the Presbyterians had ever done had made the front page, not even his own election to the chairmanship of the Ministerial Association. What was Miller up to? Edwards sensed it: it's me he's after.

Actually, Miller had toned the story, giving Mrs. Clara Collins much less than she'd asked for, a bare announcement where she'd wanted a screaming banner. He'd just come back from Mick's and his daily late-afternoon ration of hamburger-ash and beer the day before, Thursday, having left his assistant Lou Jones behind, regaling the boys with horror stories from the history of coalmining. Jones had a knack. He'd turned a grisly tale of management goons working over a hapless unionizer into a goddamn song-and-dance act that had had the whole klatch laughing and crying at the same time. Miller didn't know much about Jones, he'd just turned up one day announcing he'd decided to seek his fortune with the West Comedown Comical. Miller had laughed and taken him on. There had been some hint of a job as an all-night disk jockey that he'd just involuntarily surrendered (“Obscenity was the uncouth charge,” Jones had said), but on the other hand that might have been several jobs back. Jones was, in brief, a complacent drifter, gifted with an uncommonly facile feedback system, making his way any way he could, keeping a perverse eye out and telling good stories about what he saw. Miller was glad to have him, and though his humor sometimes had a way of biting too deep, he generally enjoyed the guy.

Clara Collins had not only wanted more attention for her announcement, she'd wanted Miller to attend the Sunday night meeting. She'd jumped up when he entered, nearly knocking the chair over. Her purse had swung, sweeping a stack of copypaper to the floor. “I don't mean to trouble ye, Mr. Miller, I only stopped by a minute—”

“No trouble, Mrs. Collins. Good to see you.” He'd picked up the copypaper, tossed it carelessly on the desk. “Sit down.” He'd hung up his coat, dropped into his swivel chair, pulled out his pack of cigarettes, but, catching her look, had tossed them on his desk without lighting one. The beer, as usual, had made him drowsy.

She'd sat awkwardly beside his desk, knobby knees apart, had glanced around nervously at a restless activity she was ignorant of. “We're all meetin' Sunday over to Mr. Bruno's house,” she had said, boldly yet somehow whispering it. “We'd be honored ifn you could see fit to come.”

“That's very kind, Mrs. Collins.” He'd suppressed a yawn, reached again for the pack, stopped himself. “But I'm afraid I'm tied up. Is there some special reason—?”

“Well, that's jist it, Mr. Miller.” She'd straightened up, smoothing the plain print dress out over her broad thighs. He'd known of course what was coming. “Sunday's the eighth of the month. Mebbe … mebbe it's the end a the world!”

“Oh yes. Your husband's note.”

So she'd explained again about that, had told him what had been happening at Evening Circle. He'd heard the pressman Carl Schwartz' voice out front saying good night to Annie—like Lou, he called her Anus Poopa—and it had set him to thinking of Carl's disaster story, the assault on Dinah Clemens. Miller could still picture vividly the room as it was the first time he went there. Aqua-blue with pink and white lily pads, the walls; bed an old iron antique, lumpy mattress, a single sheet stretched tautly on it. Dinah had a certain sense of order. There were pillows and blankets in the wardrobe, which she'd got out later. It had been Ox's idea.

“Willie Hall? That's the fellow who used to be Oxford Clemens' buddy at the mine, isn't it?”

She'd said it was, talked about Willie and his wife Mabel, Oxford's late foster mother Marge Clark. Miller, watching Clara, had realized she had something in common with Dinah—not just the rawboned hillbilly part, but something attractive, too. Also had realized he was getting a hard-on. “It was Willie's idea, Mr. Miller,” she'd said, “to meet at Mr. Bruno's.”

“Why this Sunday, Clara, and not some other month?” Why had he called her by her first name, why the tenderness? Horsey woman, well along in years, tough reddish hands, not his type at all, and yet there was this throb between his legs. Maybe it was just the beer.

She'd told him why she was counting on February, but he could see she was troubled, not all that confident. He had listened to her voice, hearing Dinah Clemens. They'd gone the night they won the regionals. Five green guys ages fifteen to seventeen, Miller the youngest. Ox had taken them in the back door so they wouldn't have to face any of the old guys in the bar who might recognize them. Ox had kept insisting that Tiger go with the one called Dinah. It was the one thing Ox had been set on, and Miller hadn't seen the point in arguing. He'd assumed Ox Clemens knew better than anyone which one was best, and if it was all some kind of gag, well, hell, he didn't have to go through with it. That in actuality it had been the very opposite, had been virtually an act of consecration, Miller hadn't found out until they were climbing the back steps to her room, the girl telling him she'd heard so much about him from her brother. “And then I read about that there shepherd boy, Mr. Miller,” Clara had said, “and it all seemed to fit.”

“And you talked with—?” He'd realized then that he had a cigarette between his lips. What the hell. He'd lit up.

“I went by right after the meeting and asked, and his sister she said, sure, come along, we'll be expectin' you. Y'know, Mr. Miller, I think Mr. Bruno he already
knows!”

“It's possible.” When he'd glanced at the large shadowy space between her knobby knees, he'd been repulsed by a sense of a-sexuality there, yet the erection had kept drumming away. What was it? Was it plain sincerity that was exciting him? Or only the provocation of his waterjugs? He'd undressed by the bed. Dinah had hung her few clothes in the old wardrobe that leaned up against one aqua-blue corner, had frocked her strong freckled shoulders with a pink robe. Miller had looked at Clara's shoulders: yes, she almost certainly had freckles there. “Will Abner Baxter be there?”

Clara had slumped a little, relaxing some of that raw aggressiveness, her taut belly briefly softening. “I dunno, Mr. Miller. I hope so.”

“Is he a real minister, or—?”

And she'd commenced to tell him about how one gets the call and gives testimony of it to the local church board, and he'd kept hearing Dinah telling a young kid who was asking all the wrong questions how a girl got to be a whore, and the difference between local preachers, district ministers, and elders. Her voice had had a husky soothing quality, all the harsh sounds of the words rounded off; it was rustic nasal from the mountains, all right, bluegrass in cadence and twang, but the warmth and kindness and earnestness in it were all her own. She'd rubbed his chest and abdomen. “You're a good boy with my brother. I'm much obliged.”

“So Baxter still has to wait a year?”

“That's right.” Clara had seemed confused. Her hands had pressed nervously on her thighs. Of course, if you thought the world was ending, what sense did it make to talk about next year? “Well, all we kin do, Mr. Miller, is hope for the best.”

Miller had swung around to his old Underwood, had run copypaper in, and had rapped out the one-paragraph box about her proposed meeting. “I can put that on the front page for you.”

“But do ye think it's … enough?” He'd felt a shrinking.

“Any more than that, Mrs. Collins, and I'm afraid you'll get a lot of people you don't want.”

That hadn't entirely satisfied her, and he'd felt like, with Dinah, trying again, but she'd finally agreed it was the best. When she'd left, Miller had called Happy Bottom at the hospital and, holding on, had made a date. Off at nine. They'd have sandwiches somewhere, spend the night at his place.