Origin of the Brunists (37 page)

That scares her and she jumps away, scrambles for her slacks, pulls them on. But anyway she finally sees what he's got. He figures she's pretty impressed, because she forgets about being mad and gets cuddly again on the way home. “If the end of the world
does
come,” she whispers, “will you hold my hand all the time?”

“Sure,” he smiles. Hey, this Judgment thing is pretty rich, he decides, and can be mined for more. He'll have to plan it out. Meanwhile, he lays hold of a plump breast and says, “We'll have to practice, though.”

Rain falls. Clerks are laid off. A creek outside town overflows its banks. A three-hour power failure blacks out the town. A nice old lady rolls down a flight of stairs and breaks her neck. Signs all, and the signs are bad. And on the door of a stall in the boys' rest room at the high school:
APRIL
19
. Carved with a knife.

“Mrs. Norton, this is a friend calling.”

“Why can't you people leave us alone?”

“I'm not calling to trouble you, Mrs. Norton, let me assure you.” The diamond shape has reverted once more to a square, a large checkerboard, composed of twenty-five smaller squares, thirteen of which contain eight small triangles each, all blacked in, although the alternating vertical and horizontal strokes preserve the separate identity of each triangle. If the light is right. “Why I called was simply to tell you that I have good reason to believe you have a, shall we say, a pretender, in your midst, who may in fact mean you considerable harm.” The other end of the line remains silent. Diagonals are passed through the white squares giving them four triangles each. “And perhaps harm to our community as well. I speak of Mr. Justin Miller. I am sorry to say that I fear his intentions may be opportunistic ones.”

A prolonged pause. Then, snappishly, “We have long been aware of that. Thank you for your interest.”

The common sense thing to do, the mayor reasons, is to tell those people to stay home, they're creating a public disturbance. Neighbors are complaining about the noise. But he hopes it will just solve itself somehow like the “Black Hand” thing, which has at last died out. Everybody seems to be out after his neck as it is, blaming him for the town's troubles, even for bad business and power failures, when there's just nothing he could ever do about it, and he doesn't need any more enemies, even crazy ones. He pretends he has solved the “Black Hand” affair, hinting that the boys involved may well come from well-to-do families in town, and he has seen fit to bring it quietly to an end his own way. People say that's good common sense. He even starts believing it himself. Sometimes he wishes he was back in the fire department.

Four men, all Italian Catholics, play pitch at the Eagles. The first, thumbing his cards into order, says, “It's common sense. I'm not exactly cheering my ass off, I can't even sleep nights. But that mine ain't never gonna open up again. I pass.” The second man bids two, as the first codas, “That's all I'm saying. Anybody with any common sense can see it's never gonna open up again.”

“Common sense!” snorts the third, partner of the first. “To hell with common sense! Listen, if that mine closes, I'm dead. I can't let myself think that. I gotta believe it's gonna open up, or I'd go off my bat. There's some things, buddy, common sense ain't no good for. Three.” The fourth man passes.

And more signs. Elan the teacher senses estrangement from the rest of the faculty at school. The principal, while by no means hostile, forgets now to smile, does not mention the permanent appointment. Students grow lax in their homework, seem amused at her austerity. Her two boys suffer endess humiliation and she must pretend detachment.

Up early one morning, the skies broken up for a change, she takes a stroll before going to school, passes a small frame church with yellow brick siding. Outside, a signboard reads:

She shudders, recognizing she has wandered into an alien place. A redheaded boy sits on the steps eyeing her coldly, cradling a root or something in his lap. Can he know who she is? She hurries by, feigning interest in something across the street.

At school, there is an obscene drawing on her blackboard. Supposedly an angel, or so it seems, it nevertheless possesses two stringy bare breasts, buckteeth, large spectacles, and frizzy hair. From its naked bottom rises a flag that reads: REPENT! Below the figure:
ST
.
ELLIE
. The children are hysterical, their faces buried in books. Elan, suddenly near tears, feels utterly helpless. Her back is to the students, and she cannot turn to face them, nor can she bring herself to erase the angel.

Her two boys enter then, Karmin and Ko-li. They stand and stare. Karmin slams his books to a desk, marches to the board, and erases the drawing.
“Boy!”
he shouts out.
“Whoever did that is really rotten!”
His face is afire with righteous anger. “
If he's got any guts, he'll go outside with me right now!”

Elan is to confront with courage and inward serenity the history that is to come and to comprehend with grace the bitter obligement of suffering. “Thank you, Carl Dean.” Wash the earth from your hands and feet and cast your eyes to the limitless stars. “Now, please take your seat.” She is able at last to face the class. The giggling diminishes. Some blush. By my light, thou shalt flee the darkness.

Kit Cavanaugh, cruising back into town from the ice plant with Sally Elliott, is sore. Boy oh boy, how can any guy get so far and not get in? He must be the biggest idiot, the biggest chicken, in the whole United States. It was so beautiful, that whole Last Judgment line, they were already off the earth and
flying
, man, stretched out there near-naked in the back seat of the Lincoln. Boy, there were flames everywhere! Her skirt was up, her blouse off. He slipped from her embrace to ease her panties down. And he was just ogling that fantastic black place below her bum and wedging his nervous fingers down inside there, when he heard Sally talking to herself.

“What'd you say, Sal?”

“I'm praying.”

“Praying! Whatcha doing that for?”

“I'm praying to Jesus not to let you do anything wrong, Tommy. If it's gonna be the Last Judgment, I don't want you to go to you know where.”

He thought she must be kidding, but there were tears running down her nose. “Aw, Sal,” he said, and took a last hungry look at the bum. He already had the rubber on: what a waste! Glumly, they headed for home.

The trouble is: how do you keep kissing them and get on top there at the same time?

“Tommy! Look at that!” Sally cries now.

He'd almost driven by without noticing, but now he sees the big gang of people. “My gosh! it's a big fight!”

“Don't stop, Tommy!”

“I'm just going slow to see. Hey! there's old Ugly Palmers! Hey! look at him go! Man!” Maybe it'd be a pretty even fight at that, him and Ugly. “Say, you know what, Sal? That must be Mr. Bruno's house! The guy who says it's gonna be the Last Judgment!” Sally squeezes toward him. “Holy cow, wait'll Dad hears about this!”

“Tommy, please don't stop! I'm afraid!”

“But, gee, I think I oughta help old Ugly out. They're ganging up on him.” Doesn't mean to, though. Just whip old Sal up a little bit.

Suddenly, a window breaks with a tremendous crash. People start to run.
“Tommy!”
Sally screams. He guns it out of there, shaking just a little bit. Ho-lee
cow!

In front of Sally's house, they get in a hot clinch. Sal is trembling, sort of. Man, if he could just keep her mouth stopped, he could do it, just hold the kiss until he was in there. But how would he do that without breaking her neck? Something is wrong.

It is the last day of winter, the twentieth of March, a morning heavily overcast like many of late, and Betty Wilson is going to Mabel Hall's. She slips out the back door, so Sister Clara, who lives down the block, is sure not to see her, past her torn-up hollyhocks and Eddie's old bird dog nosing at a corner of his pen, and goes to see Mabel, knowing, though nothing has been said, that the other girls, anyway Mary Harlowe and probably Wanda Cravens, will come there, too. A new element has been added and now it must be appraised. Cards will be consulted, or else tea will tell what otherwise might be missed.

Like when Mabel saw “an evil event” and “love destroyed” in January, and she even says now she made Willie stay home that dreadful night, and who can say it isn't so? it's possible. And certainly it was Mabel who saved them all from despair when the Judgment failed to come the eighth of March like Clara had said, and it was Mabel who found “the man of honor” that knocked on their door just one week later. As for the eighth, they had met at Mabel's the Wednesday before, and she had foretold it: “adversity,” “deception,” and “vain expectation.” So, in a way, they knew it all along, all the girls, knew it wouldn't happen that night. Sometimes, in the excitement of a meeting, or when Clara was telling them how it would be, how they would see Ely and Eddie and Hank and all of them again, they forgot, and then the end was surely coming that night again, the eighth. But probably, deep down, they all knew a postponement had been ordained. Of course, Mabel was very close to that Norton woman these days, and, though they all believed Mabel, they listened to her with two ears, as it were, and she was certainly very quick a couple days ago to find the nineteenth of April in her cards, where it had never been before. Clara could be, in a way, wrong, and she could be stubborn in her wrongheadedness, but Clara could always be trusted. Betty never doubted for a moment a single word Brother Ely ever spoke in his entire life, he was truly the greatest man she ever knew, maybe even a living saint, nor does she nowadays doubt a single thing that her best friend Clara says, but sometimes, well, the same word can mean twenty different things, that's all. Of course, Mabel is a little batty sometimes and she probably wouldn't recognize the Coming in her cards if she saw it there, there's that to consider, but one would at least have expected something like “a long journey” or “an unexpected visitor”—not even to mention the awesome trump twenty—and not “vain expectation.” So, they probably knew. Not the eighth of March, not yet. Mabel always used to read tea leaves, but more and more she has been turning to the cards, ever since she bought that fancy set in Mr. Robbins' dimestore.

Now, the new element is the hill. “The Mount of Redemption.” They are going out there tomorrow night, since Mrs. Norton thinks something still could happen the first day of spring. It all started last night when Abner Baxter led his people over to sing revival songs on the front lawn at Giovanni Bruno's. He gave them no peace now. Only this time, Sister Clara shot right out there and shook a finger at Abner and said, “Abner Baxter, you're only doing this on account of you're afraid it might be
true!”
It made Betty so proud, it was just like Ely was back with them again. Oh, and there was a lot of shouting and Mr. Miller took pictures because he said he wanted to humiliate them and they all sang as loud as they could, everybody singing different songs, and Mrs. Norton wanted everybody to come in and lock the doors. Willie Hall wanted to go home right then, only Mabel made him stay. Mr. Himebaugh went upstairs to the bathroom and never came down for a whole hour.

Abner Baxter raised a terrible fuss then and shook his fist and said the power of the Lord was upon him and somebody started throwing rocks and then Ben Wosznik walked out there and he said, “Now, who threw them rocks?” and Roy Coates said back, “What's it to you?” and that high school boy who's taken such a shine to Clara's daughter went out there and Dr. Norton, too, and it looked like there was going to be a big fight. And Ben said, “Well, I just don't think that was a very Christian thing to do!” and Roy said, “What do you wops know about Christians?” even though Ben wasn't a wop, isn't even an Italian. And the Palmers boy said nobody was going to call a friend of his a wop, and he cocked back to take a poke at Roy, but Ben held him back and said they had to turn the other cheek like the Good Book says and then Roy Coates hit him. Right in the eye he had just turned. They all went running out to help Ben and the Palmers boy was swinging at everybody and Mr. Miller was taking pictures and Mrs. Norton started crying that the police were coming and a rock smashed the porch window and the Baxter people all ran away.

So they went back in, creeping like they were guilty of something awful, but they didn't know what, and everybody was nervous and upset and crying, and poor Ben, his eye was swelled up and his nose was all bloody, and Wanda Cravens was dabbing it with a wet dish-towel, Betty wanted to help, was hurt that Sister Wanda was doing it, but was just too weepy and trembling. The Palmers boy, though, said he hit at least five of them and he showed off his bruised fist to little Elaine to try to stop her crying so. Dr. Norton felt it and said he didn't think any bones were broken. And then the police
did
come, but Mr. Miller went out and sent them away.

For some reason, then, they all started watching Giovanni Bruno, or whoever he is. Something special was coming. He was still in the armchair, wrapped in blankets, just like always, like nothing had happened, even though the window in front of him was all broken in, but he was jittery, scratched all the time at the arms of the stuffed chair, darted his peculiar eyes around so, Betty grew a little frightened. And suddenly he lifted his hand and said:
“Mount of Redemption!”
And after that, Mr. Himebaugh came down from the bathroom.

“Mount of Redemption.” What in the name of heaven could it mean? Always riddles! Just like with “Sunday Week” and “A Circle of Evenings.” Betty complained one night to Mrs. Norton about it, how the spirits never said things plain, but Mrs. Norton said of course they talked plain, it was just that we weren't always smart enough to understand them, and that's why we have to study and work hard. Betty knew that, she'd known that all her life, every preacher she ever knew said so, but she also knew she'd never
be
smart enough, and that made her feel sad, made her feel cheated, and sometimes, God help her, even made her angry at the spirits. “Mount of Redemption.” Mrs. Norton said it must mean some place, perhaps where they must await the Coming, but she was utterly perplexed about where. But then Clara jumped right up like something had stuck her and cried out, “Why that there hill out by Number Nine! You know, that one right over where we worked!” And what got everybody so terribly excited was how Clara said “we” instead of “you” or “they” so spontaneous like. Mrs. Norton was so wrought up she was almost weeping, and she cried, “It's your husband! He has reached you!” And poor Clara, she was trembling all over and had to allow it must be so—where else could it have come from? And so they all prayed and sang and had goosebumps about it, and Mrs. Norton received a message.