Origin of the Brunists (11 page)

And so they'd disposed of everything again, everything but what they could pack into the small luggage trailer he had wisely picked up at a country auction about five years before, and had driven out of Carlyle. Young Larry Wild, one of Eleanor's pupils, had dropped by before they left, the only one in town to do so, admitting that he'd had to sneak away from home, his father having promised him a stiff belting if he turned up at the Nortons'. But he didn't care, he'd said, he'd wanted to tell them how unfair it was and how he'd always believe in her and in Domiron and in all she had taught him, and that he'd practice all the exercises faithfully. He had showed them then, shyly, a word his hand had written the night before. It was
SADNESS,
but he'd said he didn't really know for sure if it came from some other aspect of intensity or not. He had admitted that he felt like he had thought the word before writing it. Eleanor had encouraged the boy to continue to try, but to obey his parents whenever possible and to love the Good. She'd counseled him not to worry too much about his message, sometimes the spirits from other aspects of intensity did act through thoughts instead of, or prior to, writing, and Wylie had admitted he'd not even gotten that far. “Let thoughts pass through your mind,” Eleanor had said to the boy, quoting one of her own favorite messages, one Wylie had heard countless times, “like fluffs of dandelion afloat on an errant breeze, like migrating birds, like purposeless foam appearing and disappearing, but let your mind dwell on none of them. The surface must be barren, the page white, the water placid, the room of the mind empty.” Larry had helped with the last part of the loading, had walked them out to the car to say good-bye. He'd said it didn't matter if people did see him, they would all find out someday anyway, wouldn't they?

And now: Was it about to happen all over again? Wylie shuddered, walked to the window. Dark still, and a fog had rolled in. He wondered what Eleanor would make of that. In one thing, they were lucky: there were no kids involved this time, not yet. Or virtually none: it was true, she did have one pupil at the high school, a senior named Colin Meredith, who was now designated a Chosen One and receiving other-aspected instruction, but it was a relaxed and natural sort of relationship, with none of the strain of seeking converts or educating young men from scratch, and luckily he was an orphan. And there was still hope that Domiron would define the disaster as insignificant; after all, he'd said nothing about it before it happened. And certainly she was getting tired of moving around, too, would think twice before carrying things too far again.

On the other hand, the disaster at the mine was anything but a promising sign. Eleanor had not been forewarned, and had been badly shocked. She had hardly slept or eaten since Thursday night, and vivid cacaphonic messages now vibrated from her fingertips almost hourly—as though the disaster might have set off shock waves that were buffeting the entire universe, rebounding through Eleanor's fingers. And just here it had to happen, where things had been working out so well.

They'd liked West Condon. They'd found inexpensive housing and easy credit, enough clients to keep Wylie busy, and Eleanor had been able to obtain substitute teaching assignments at the high school. In fact, she was teaching practically full time, and they had told her only her lack of a State teaching certificate prevented her from being named permanently to the staff—toward which end she was now taking correspondence courses. Domiron, for his part, had urged caution and continued striving for inner self-knowing, and both of them had been greatly relieved. Eleanor's long life as a communicant with the higher forces had taken its toll on her, Wylie felt. “It's the price of the intensity of a Scorpion's passage,” she always said—and it gave them both great consolation that her voices were at last permitting her this much-needed rest. As Domiron counseled:

And then the mine blew up.

It made Wylie recall something Eleanor had said on their way here to West Condon a year ago. As usual, they had stayed in inexpensive motels on the edges of towns, while seeking a settling place. Wylie would check the telephone directories to count the number of veterinarians in the area, would make inquiries about the extent of farming, animal husbandry, and so on. He had, in the past, worked as a lab assistant in hospitals, as a salesman and store clerk, and even, during one depressing period, as a janitor in the high school where Eleanor was substitute teaching. Usually though, he had been able to find work in his chosen field, especially in small and otherwise unattractive Midwestern towns.

They had made several stops before coming on West Condon. In Springer, for example, there had seemed to be too few vets for the amount of farming that was around, but they hadn't liked the community somehow. A taste of degeneracy, a crabbed and wounded look about the citizens. More stops and then in Wickham they'd stayed a week, liked it, had even begun the house search, but Eleanor had chanced to see on the street, of all persons, the tall Carlyle druggist. They had left hurriedly (eventually to arrive and remain here), Eleanor biting her lip and breathing heavily. Maybe the druggist had had relatives in Wickham. Or maybe, as Eleanor had insisted, there had been more to it. But it had in any event been enough to awaken a worry in Eleanor that had apparently been lurking just under the surface. “Wylie,” she'd asked, as the car licked and snapped at the blacktop beneath them, “how many men came to see us that night in Carlyle?”

“Four, I think. Or three. No, four.”

“The druggist and—”

“The Wild boy's father, Mr. Loomis, and—”

“And
who
, Wylie?”

“Funny. I can't remember.”

“Nor can I, Wylie, but the fourth was there, there all the time!”

“Yes, but—”

“Wylie, I don't think now that was the real person of the Carlyle druggist who appeared to me on the street in Wickham.” She'd paused, placed her hand on his arm, sending goosebumps to bis flesh. “It was a sign, Wylie …
we're being sent!”

The wind's edged lick badgers the shifting thickening crowd, provokes from it a chronic babble of muted Sunday morning curses. Marcella, at the mine, blows her nose. Her reflections are pierced from beneath by omens of sickness: tomorrow, maybe even today. But these omens do not undermine her thoughts so much as provide a setting for them. It is as though once-disparate things are fusing, coalescing into a new whole, a whole that requires her sickness no less than the explosion that set the parts in motion. A puzzle oddly revolving into its own solution. The huddled round-shouldered figures, their bleak white faces of disaster, the pale fog of morning crawling sluggishly like a wet beast out of the yellow-bulbed night, the measured raddling of helmeted men, the toothed patterns chewed in the sky by the once-whitewashed buildings and the rust-red machinery—the both laminated with ages of soot, the raw shreds of gray slate masking the earth: all of it—each pain, each cry, each gesture—is somehow conjoined to describe a dream she has already dreamt. She knows first the curse, then hears the passing miner utter it; recognizes the platinum disc of the emerging sun behind the water-tower, then observes it there. If one among the present looks over at her, it is clearly a look of recognition—not of her, but of
what is happening.
The Salvation Army lady who has countless times already offered her a blanket now passes dutifully with another, and this time Marcella accepts it—but no, not from the cold. And, as she reaches for it, she feels her hand write an arc through the air, like a word without letters, yet for that all the more real—feels suddenly wrenched apart from herself, staring down, observing that act, that arc, that bold single sign in an otherwise stark and motionless tableau … she trembles slightly. The Salvation Army lady hesitates, observes her silently with heavylidded eyes. Although the woman has before been extravagant in her pity, the three gray dawns have humbled her. “Poor child,” is all she says, and then she turns away. The olivedrab blanket is thin and coarse, chafes Marcella's skin, but it dulls some the wind's hunger. She drapes it over her head and shoulders like a shawl, and waits
.

Miller, the rash and intemperate, woke from acid dreams crying “Mercy!” and wallowing in peanut butter and bread crumbs, half strangled by the phone cord. He lay there, trying to recall who and where he was—then Jones' phone call came to mind and he leapt from the bed, phone, crumbs, and all. Dressing, he telephoned his front-office chief Annie Pompa—their Girl Fried Egg, as Jones called her when he wasn't calling her worse—and asked her to go down and open up the office, put the backshop force on alert.

In the front seat of the Chevy he found Wanda Cravens' woolly cap, authenticating his folly. He pushed it into one of his trenchcoat pockets. Word was out and the mine road was alive with traffic. Fog gone, Miller pushed the Chevy up to ninety and stayed in the left lane. Twice, other cars lurched out in front of him to pass creepers, and, braking, he nearly spun to the ditch. He swore, lay on the horn, and gunned past them when they ducked sheepishly back in line. He was past caring.

He swung into the yard, parked in the restricted area, leaped out, speedgraphic in hand, locked the car. Checked his pockets, on the run, for film, notebooks, pencils, felt the woolly cap there. Grisly vision of Wanda Cravens throwing herself, sobbing, into his arms in front of all the popping shutters, haggard husband, fresh from the pits, staring incredulously on. Miller supposed Jones would be up at the Salvation Army tent, but didn't want to face the man cold. Maybe it was all over. He paused to get a photo or two as he crossed the yard—gray sooty day: perfect tone—and exchanged words with those who waved or called out to him. He learned: Not there yet, but hope was gone. They had driven pipes through to the different rooms behind the fall, and had got no response. Miller calmed, photographed. Children keeping vigil. The dark stoic mother of a boy named Rosselli whose first night it had been to work in the mine. Tuck Filbert's old father, refusing to give up hope, fighting to get on every rescue crew. He saw Wanda Cravens. She seemed undone by the news: in spite of the renewed attention given her, she had faded back into the baggy cotton print and run-down loafers. He stayed clear.

Circling wide to avoid her, Miller came across a prayer meeting. A clique of West Condon Nazarenes, powered by a squat ebullient man with thick red-maned head, and including several women widowed overnight, had seized the temporary Red Cross shelter pitched near the portal for the miners' families, and from it now issued hymned plaints, remorseful cries, and bristling execrations upon the community's sinful damned. Miller floated experimentally at their outer edge, but sensed his presence bedeviling them; even those who knew him seemed to resent his curiosity, or, at best, stared back at him apathetically. The jowly man leading them, he learned, was Abner Baxter, a faceboss who had led his section out Thursday night standing up. Though men prayed among them, most of his group were women, pale lumpy sorts with sacklike bodies draped blackly, kneeling in cinders and ashes. Baxter lacked eloquence and subtlety, but he had a compact bullying style of his own and a volcanic delivery.
“Serve the Lord with fear!”
he cried.
“With trembling kiss his feet!”
Their prayers defined the disaster as a judgment upon West Condon and a trial for God's faithful. What massed them up and charged them, apparently, was the expectation that Ely Collins—their man of tested faith—would emerge with messages, and it was with no small awe that they now awaited him. Miller knew of Collins. A seasoned mechanic within the mine, he was a locally celebrated evangelist without. He'd run the guy's photo a few times. Mrs. Collins was not among the group, he learned, but her daughter was: a plain gangly girl—pubescent gangliness—named Elaine. She wouldn't speak to him. Then Baxter suddenly interrupted the meeting, roared at Miller to kneel with them or be damned. Miller rose and, holding Baxter's raging gaze, slowly lifted the speedgraphic before his face and popped a photo, exiting casually before Baxter could get his wind back.

He saw Jones bulge out of the Salvation Army canteen up to his left, hulking face expressionless except for the eyes, falling away with their familiar as-though-pained squint. Miller waved; Jones nodded. Miller stopped to shake a miner's hand, wish him luck, offer a smoke—and caught sight of something off to his right. Stared a moment, strangely moved, then thought to get a photo.

Up at the canteen, Jones stood waiting, looking like a great stone Buddha that had just stood up for the first time in eighteen thousand years and felt like hell for doing so. “What do you think?” Jones asked. “Gonna put the old bitch to work tonight?” Jones had a professional greed for special editions.

“Maybe. If something happens.” Miller, feeling guilt for having turned out so late, meant that remark to imply coming any sooner would have been a waste of time. “I've alerted Carl and the boys, put Annie to the task of digging up what bios she can on the six.”

Jones grunted, sipped coffee, thin brows arching up away from the brown heat. “We'll know soon. Chigi's team is down there. Is twenty-five bucks okay?”

“For what?” Miller's mind was on doughnuts and coffee and the girl he'd seen. He reached in his trenchcoat pocket for a pack of smokes, absently pulled the woolly cap out instead. Looked at it, blanched, stuffed it back.

Jones, fighting back a grin, drank down his coffee, spat out the last mouthful, crushed the paper cup in his squabby hand and pitched it at a scrap barrel, missing it by a yard. “I offered it to Chigi for a firsthand story, if there's one worth telling.”