Origin of the Brunists (42 page)

After a can of soup and a couple hamburgers at Mick's, Miller hurried back to the office, goosed by guilt. But back by old Hilda, he was surprised to discover all the forms locked up and in place. Maybe they didn't need him after all. Carl Schwartz, ink-smeared, told him the story, obviously filtered through Jones and thus elevated to a classic, of the George Washingtons who came to the hotel and left a deposit of shit to cover the bed if not the board, while two paperboys lurked behind the press to overhear it. Still another enduring contribution to American folklore: Jones had done it again. Miller used the toilet, washed up, glanced over the pegged layouts trying to remember what was going into the paper, nickeled a Coke from the machine, nodded to old Jerry the janitor as he shuffled in for work.

At his desk, he answered a few phone messages that had come in during his several long absences, took notes from a book on the Dutch Anabaptists which could be turned into a small feature piece for tomorrow's edition, cleaned the excess clutter off his desk. Felt sleepy. Too much exercise. He dragged the manila file folders out of his bottom desk drawer: they contained the accumulation of his notes on the Brunists … hmmm. He jotted that down: the Brunists. Hilda's muffled rhythm and the teletype (mustn't forget the goddamn copy for Himebaugh) nearly had him dozing over his notes, when Reverend Wesley Edwards dropped in. Tweed overcoat, Sam Snead hat, leather gloves, smirking smugly around the stem of his briar pipe. Gregarious cleric of the new confession, seer of the secular Christ. All of which meant that once again the priests, having something to lose by risking the challenge, were rolling with the punch. In one breath, Edwards would ridicule “Mother Goose parsons” and boast of man's “progress toward independence from any transcendent boss,” then, puff-puff on the pipe, turn right around and defend myth as “an image-language reaching out beyond the particulars of appearance toward the transcendence.” Today, it turned out, Edwards was not happy about the recent millennial features in the paper, felt they were adversely affecting the impressionable young, who were asking him questions, the answers to which they weren't intellectually prepared to grasp.

“Well, Edwards, news is news.”

“Even if it's from the fourteenth century?”

Miller laughed. “Well, of course, that's not why—”

“No, I know it's not why. If news is news, how did it turn out you missed that fight the other night on Mr. Bruno's front lawn?” Miller shrugged. Edwards assumed a look of concern. Pipe out. Eyetooth nibbling his lower lip. “Justin, it's just that sort of thing, I'm afraid, that's beginning to worry me.”

“Unh-hunh. You think maybe we ought to use a little, uh, common sense …?”

“Well.” Deep flush. Puff-puff on the pipe. Edwards played the part of the Christlike servant, holding no direct power or wealth like his class before him, nor seeming to want any. But he was just more sophisticated. What had any hierophant since Aaron ever been, give or take a few awesome franchises, but a witchstick for the power man against the masses? The Reverend. “Of course, I suppose it will all be over in another month.”

“Maybe, maybe not. They're already committed to the irrational, what's to make them change their minds?”

“Well, if what they think is going to happen doesn't happen …”

“Do you think Christ rose?”

“Well,” fumbled Edwards, “yes, of course.” He emptied his pipe into the wastebasket, reached into his coat pocket, withdrew a tobacco pouch. “But anyway, that's not the point, it doesn't matter—”

“Exactly! It doesn't matter! Somebody with a little imagination, a new interpretation, a bit of eloquence, and—zap!—they're off for another hundred or thousand years.” Miller passed his hand over the heap of manila folders on his desk. “Anyway, it makes a good story.”

Edwards gazed down at the folders. “But, Justin, doesn't it occur to you? These are human lives—one-time human lives—you're toying with!”

“Sure, what else?”

“But to make a game out of—”

Miller laughed. “You know, Edwards, it's the one thing you and I have got in common.”

Edwards stood there, indignant, dead pipe in hand, glaring down at the folders. “The only difference,” he said finally, curling his mouth into a patronizing smile, “is that I know what I'm doing.”

They stand by his bed, Elan, Rahim, and Mana. Elan questions, her brother's nods condemn, fracturing her vision. Alone in her room afterwards, Marcella prays. She's convinced there's been a mistake, and that a new day, a new hour, will restore consonance. She does not yet, however, see how that will happen, and so pleads now for help. And meanwhile, in her garden, the sunny heads of her seed-package people wilt to a disconsolate brown
.

Miller returned to the plant from a haircut and a purchase: a collar of roughly hammered pieces of old brass, primitive, magnificently simple, colors taken from the earth. The colors on her fingers this noon. Late afternoon, press run over, long but inviting night ahead. Where should they go? Perhaps his own place, a good steak or something. But on his desk, he found a pink message to call Miss Bruno. Uneasily, foreseeing that Eleanor might have spread her mothering wings already, he did so and proved himself a fair prophet. Mrs. Norton had called a small supper meeting of certain members in preparation for tonight's expedition to the Mount of Redemption, and Marcella now had to stay to prepare for it.

“You can't get out of it?”

“No.” Then, hesitatingly, as though perhaps being overheard, she added, “Tonight … please … be careful!” And she hung up … without inviting him to the supper.

Disgruntled, he dropped the phone in its cradle. The first day of spring was fading outside, gathering to a gray chill that matched his inner turn. The thought occurred to him to drop the whole thing. His morning seemed an age ago. But he had invested three hard weeks, and he needed at least that many more to have anything really exploitable. He stared at the manila folders: yes, there was a story there. More than one. And even his struggle to stay in the group would provide him new materials, wouldn't it? It would. Then, there was the brass collar in his pocket. He took it out, held it in daylight. Did it really matter who established the choice for her? Let them do it, let them victimize him, let them crack her circle, and with patience the pieces would be his. Grinning malevolently at those two old specters in the back window, he took up the gauntlet, and, doing so, realized he had to hurry. Tonight. He'd begin tonight.

Before supper, dusk hanging still, they gather, the select. Giovanni slumps pale in the front room armchair, pale but life now waxes beneath the filigree of eggshell ribs. Eyes aglitter with the flames of early candles, they form community with him in a circle: Giovanni, Womwom, Karmin, Ko-li, Elan, Rahim, Mana. The absent one is missed silently by all. They lock hands to meditate. Privately, Mana repeats her prayer. She has felt her own security totter, fears now for what might yet come, though love has invested her with a strength none have accurately reckoned. The challenge, she realizes full well, is her own: to bring him back, to bring them back to him. Veins ripple electrically in Eleanor's temples. Both hands Marcella grips shed a damp cool clamminess: it is as though both hands were the same man's. But her brother's hand is rigid, a frozen metallic claw; Mr. Himebaugh's fidgets, squeezes her fingers absently, strokes her thumb. His eyes are closed and he shows his teeth. Eleanor gasps. Hands drop. Domiron speaks:

And so, where this night she anticipated joy, she confronts asperity and fear. Hints of betrayal. Divisions. Justin rises above the conflict, smiles silently upon it. Then, the journey to the hill: it reunites them. Her mother remains with Giovanni, the rest leave in cars: Mr. Himebaugh with the Nortons, Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Harlowe with the Halls. Mrs. Collins, Elaine, and Colin with Carl Dean, Mr. Wosznik and Mrs. Cravens with her and Justin. His right hand rests on her knee. She takes it into her lap. It is a large hand, not coarse, yet full of strength. He glances at her, smiles reassuringly. His fingers grip her thigh, giving her strength, then he returns the hand to the wheel. The Mount of Redemption. They arrive to find it dark. Colder than they had expected. Why: they are so few! It shocks them all. Justin eases the crisis: they line the cars up facing them, turn on all the headlights. Mr. Wosznik says that he will make torches for their next meeting. They sing, but their voices are swallowed up in the night and they seem, each, to sing alone. Without her brother, they seem strangely purposeless. Mr. Wosznik and Carl Dean build a small fire, blotting out the last of the stars, but bringing a moment of warmth to their small community. Below them, past a patch of firs and naked elms, the mine buildings squat darkly, unspecific threat that somehow, in its inanimate crouch, draws tears from the eyes of the women widowed here. Only one thing seems certain: they have come to the right place. Suddenly: car lights on the mine road! They huddle at the fire and watch in silence, in fear—yes! again!—it is Reverend Baxter and all his people! More of them than ever! Cars and cars! How did they know? The Nortons insist they must get away. But they are all afraid to leave the little fire. Mr. Himebaugh is trembling. Mrs. Collins is angry with Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Hall. Taunts and shouts from below. Justin speaks with Mr. Wosznik and Carl Dean and Colin. And still another car. But this time the driver, Mr. Diggs, comes running up the hill. The men brace for him. “Clara! Clara!” he cries. “It's your house! It's burnin' down!”

 

The second woe has passed; behold, the third woe is soon to come
.

—R
EVELATION
TO
J
OHN
11:14

Thwock! The Black Peter administers justice upon the Evil One. Thwock! The Black Peter is tough, boy! He can really lay it on. Thwock! The Evil One bawls, but the Black Hand has gagged his filthy mouth. “Again!” the Black Hand commands. He holds pinned the Evil One. Thwock! “Switch him again, Paulie! Right on the peewee!”
Thwock!

The Black Piggy is a sissy. A scaredy-cat. She administers justice like a baby. She always cries and runs away. Boy! they'll get her now! They'll make blood come.

They tell the Cravens boy if he will stop crying they will let him go home. He stops, but he keeps choking like. The Black Hand peeks out the shed door. “All clear!” he whispers. “Now, you shut up, Davey, and not a word, or we'll deal with you again!”

“We mean it!” the Black Peter avers, whistling the switch through the air. But they're not scared, because Davey Cravens is just three and hardly talks yet.

The Evil One, sobbing remorsefully, leaves. “Good job, Black Peter!” says the Black Hand. The Black Peter, swelling with pride, switches an old inner tube. Carefully, the Black Hand pushes his own hand out his sweater sleeve and slips the black one into a paper sack. The black one is beginning to fall apart. Already, the little finger has got lost and pieces chip off all the time. “Button up, Paulie.”

When the Evil One is out of sight, the Black Hand and the Black Peter, now disguised as Nat and Paulie Baxter, slip out of the shed and down the alley toward home, discussing proper retribution for the Black Piggy and plotting further astounding adventures.

Abner Baxter, Jr., helped his Mom as he always did on Saturday mornings, burning trash, filling the coalbin, cleaning the yard, and so on. Warm sunny day, a perfect first day of spring. The ground was damp and spongy from yesterday's rain. His sister Franny was cleaning the kitchen, the other three were out playing. They got it easier than he ever did. He was already a freshman in high school, and he shouldn't have to do this kid stuff.

Junior stared into the flames of his trash fire and watched the boxes melt, flare up, collapse. He built his fires like cities, then consumed them with his fiery wrath. Sodom fell beneath the flames every Saturday, an epic, and better even than in the movies. He put ants and beetles inside the boxes, watched them scramble out and to the top, just like people running to the roof. They scurried about up there, helterskelter, until, doomed anyway, they finally tumbled off and died. Sometimes he would catch a frog for his fires. Sometimes the frog died; sometimes, like Lot, he got away.

His little sister Amanda came down the alley. She was crying. “Whatsa matter?” he asked. Not that he cared.

“Nothing,” she said, and went on by. She was always crying.

A cornflakes carton tipped precariously as flames licked into its lower stories. The lettering turned cloudy black like the box, then shiny in contrast to the box. Miraculously, the carton did not fall, burned to a fragile black ash in that half-topple. Miracles happened all the time in Junior's trash fires.

His Mom came out. “I been calling you,” she said.

“Fire ain't out yet.” He watched her closely now for change, whenever she wasn't looking, but she was still the same. Fat women don't show for awhile. It disgusted him to think about it. “Awful dry today, and you cain't take chances.”

She sighed and went back in.

He'd always thought his Mom was pretty, but now he didn't think so. She was big and old. Maybe that was the kind of change that was happening.

A big black ant appeared on a milk carton skyscraper. Junior imagined it was Carl Dean Palmers. Carl Dean was a senior at the high school, a bully, and possessed by the Devil. He made fun of Junior in the shower room, and pushed him around outside classes, knocked his books out of his hands. The carton burned slowly, being heavily coated with wax. The wax began to melt and it made the ant run faster.