Origin of the Brunists (36 page)

And there are sighs as they sing and soft amens and she knows Ben is watching her, but her eyes will not open. She can hear Wanda Cravens sniffling, thinking of how Lee used to sing that song in his sweet tender tenor, and Clara crying softly in a kind of faint almost, on account of it was Ely's favorite hymn. And now, at the chorus, they all join in, filling the room with their harmony, though it is she and Ben Wosznik who lead them. Even Mr. Miller and the little Bruno girl sing, and finally the Nortons. It is beautiful. It is the most beautiful moment in Betty Wilson's life …

The hotelkeeper Mr. Fisher and the Chamber of Commerce secretary Mr. Elliott whuff into the hotel coffeeshop through the lobby door Monday morning, the sixteenth, and there discover the city editor finishing his morning coffee.

“Hello, Tiger!” greets the Chamber secretary with a clap to the trenchcoated shoulders. “Say, what do you know about Ralph Himebaugh?”

“What do you mean?” The editor stands, hands a dollar across the counter. Doris the waitress fumbles with his change, drops a quarter into the dishwater.

“Well, I don't know, the guy's been kinda peculiar lately. Promises to work with me on the industrial brochure and we set up dates and he doesn't show up. When I call him up at home, he always puts me off and hangs up. Now, that's not like old Ralphie.”

The editor shrugs, while the waitress fishes in the dishwater. “Beats me, Elliott. Why don't you—?”

“Aw, shit now, Miller!” rattles the old hotelman, pink jowls folded into a kind of grin. “What we wanna know is has that old sonuvabitch got hisself mixed up somehow with this troop of religious monkeys over at that wop miner's house?”

“How should I know?” The editor smiles innocently. “Why don't you just ask Ralph the next time you get him on the phone, Jim?” The waitress comes up with a bottlecap.

“That might embarrass him,” the Chamber secretary says. “I don't want to get him teed off at us or nothing. We're just, you know, curious. That's all.” Wide greeter's grin.

“Listen, Doris, goddamn it! Just give me another quarter!”

“You won't tell, hunh?”

The editor pulls out his cigarette pack, finds it empty, crumples it, tosses it in the pecan jug, bringing an indignant glower to the hotel-man's face. “What makes you think I even know anything about those—?”

“Well, for one thing,” growls the hotelman with a smirk, “you got a Chevy with a license ending in 7241.”

The editor laughs. “Okay, I admit, I've been trying to see what's going on over there, but they're pretty secretive. I—”

“Listen, Tiger,” the Chamber man butts in, grinning as always. “Will you tell me I'm wrong? I say Ralphie is one of them. Do you say he's not?”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

“Okay, that's good enough by me. He's in it.”

The old hotelman cackles.

The editor shrugs, reaches over the counter, and appropriates a pack of cigarettes from the display there. “Keep the quarter, Doris,” he says. “Tip from your boss.”

“The hell you say!” grumbles the hotelman, and goes behind the counter to help fish for the coin.

In his office, the editor discovers in the morning mail further messages from the lady Black Hand …

“Hello, Ralph! Ted Cavanaugh here. How's it going?”

“Oh. Hello, Ted. Fine, fine. Yourself?”

Loose chuckle. “You're sure a hard fellow to find these days!” The five blacked-in squares form an X of sorts. This X is converted to a diamond by adding four new squares: top, bottom, and two sides.

“Yes. I've been … busy. Eh, how's the wife?”

“Wonderful, Ralph. Matter of fact, she was just remarking at dinner yesterday that it had been a long time since we'd had you over.” More casual laughter. “I think she sees herself as a kind of patron saint to all bachelors.” The four new squares touch the four outside blacked-in squares at two corners each: that is, a sort of checkerboard pattern is emerging. “What do you say to tomorrow night?”

“That's very kind, Ted. But I've, uh, been a little under the weather. Flu. I wouldn't make a very good guest, I'm afraid.”

“Oh? Sorry to hear that! Listen then, how about next—?”

“Ted … maybe you'd better, eh, let me call you.”

Four crosses, eight diagonals: thirty-two new small triangles. The banker frowns. “Ralph … Ralph, you know how much we all think of you here. We'd hate … believe me, it's simply out of personal concern that I bring it up … but we'd hate to hear that you, that you got mixed up somehow—Ralph? Ralph?” In the uppermost square of the diamond, half the triangles have been blacked in with vertical strokes.

Reluctantly, smelling warmly of winter hay and afterbirth, vitamin D and hogsweat, Womwom the guardian of holy places, no less than the living reincarnation of Noah, and compassionate apostle of Kwan-yin, drives back toward West Condon, returning from outlying calls. There is an unwanted commitment there of which the country frees him. Not that nature is beautiful, certainly he has never thought so, only that, as pure process, it absorbs all catastrophes, relaxes him when the paradox of his own ego terrorizes him. Unlike Elan, he has never succeeded in neutralizing it. What does he want? He doesn't even know. But the point is, out here in the country, he doesn't care.

Signs. Womwom has been having to make his own breakfast. Not that he minds, but it is symptomatic. Elan gazes the mornings long out on the snow, on the rain, on the sun, on the wind, and finds words like “structural dissolution” and “the coalescence of polarities” leaking out her fingertips. He has heard them before, knows what must surely follow. Again. But not just again. Something new this time. Of course, it's obvious what it is. It is the unprecedented participation of the Other. There have been large groups before, but the nucleus has always been his wife. Now, several nuclei seem, as though by accident, to have become attached, forming an almost organic something larger than any of them, and though his wife is still its most important member, she is now, for the first time, truly a member, depending on the others as they depend on her. If there is a center, of course, it is Giovanni Bruno, the One to Come. Little matter that he is so enigmatic a figure, Elan has led Womwom to expect such a mystery at the middle, but the point is, this abstract thing which has dragged them through the years is now suddenly upon them, and what he never expected is that the core thing should be outside his wife herself.

West Condon pep talk and sales pitches appear on billboards, defiantly tawdry above the patches of crusty snow, signaling the town's proximity. Working hard these days. Has to get what he can. He is not an avaricious man, anybody can tell that by a single glance, but always they need it. Money. And never more than at times like these. And so he has to push, though he has no heart for it. Of course, he enjoys his work, but, as his wife has always said, he is too much an artist. Wastes whole days in the country, and meanwhile the easy money is in town. Sick dogs. Dogs with worms. Worms! A farmer bets on value when he calls a vet. Pet owners care nothing for economics. Keeping a pet is an affront to thrift in the first place, not to mention that it's an affront to nature to boot. So, they pay up. “Ten bucks? Sure, Doc!” Beaming grab for the pocket. And little brats gazing raptly on, learning patterns that will make successes out of medical frauds for generations to come. Leeches. Why can't he be a happy leech like the rest? An artist. Well, he is. But times of stress push him and he undertakes, against his own nature, the disagreeable.

Indications of West Condon can be seen a couple miles outside of town: a steeple or two, some smoke, and so on. But the town itself springs into being only at the city limits. There's just enough soft roll to the land around, a settling over the coal beds, that no great distances can be seen from ground level. Then, too, things block the view—trees, humps of raw land shoveled up by strip-mining, barns and motels and the like, the usual brash fungi of billboards—block the view or flick distractingly in front of it, such that the city limits sign is a kind of guarantee you have made it, a lever you trip in passing that pops the town out of the yellow soil like a jack-in-the-box. Nothing special about it. Town like many they have lived in. But he likes it, has liked them all, and here in West Condon, as the only fully qualified veterinarian, he is especially needed. So, he feels an urge today, tripping the lever and feeling the town spring up to embrace him, to drive his roots in so deeply here that no crisis could ever tear him out.

At home, his wife is seated at the kitchen table, as usual, with Rahim the lawyer. Papers, logs, graphs, tools out in front of them. Late afternoon sun glows there. “Wylie!” she exclaims when he enters. “Giovanni said: ‘A circle of evenings'—of course! It means
another seven Sundays!
And seven Sundays after the first of March is the
nineteenth of April:
the last day the sun is in the sign of
rebirth!”
Rahim, excited, is frantically constructing new graphs.

“That's good, dear,” Womwom says with a smile, and he goes in and lies down on the couch. The nineteenth of April.

But he has work to do. Can't waste a minute. He gets up and goes out to straighten up his garage-office. Things are in a mess. The more he cleans, the worse it seems to get. He shows a fellow there through the pens, where he is growing worms, using dog intestines as hosts. Important experiment. Many of the worms are, as though magnified, snake size, but their morphology is strictly vermicular. “Lyttae,” he puns, but he sees the fellow fails to grasp this. A scorpion has got in and killed his best worms. Carnage. It is grotesque. Afraid of the tail, he kicks it in the head. The scorpion's legs, detached by the blow, twitch in death throes, look almost like chicken claws. The head wanders about autonomously. “Make the best of it,” he cautions himself, and attempts to study the scorpion's incredible head. But it terrifies him. The fellow is gone. Wylie is alone. With the dead worms and the scorpion head. It seems to be enjoying itself. He is afraid to kill it.

“I'm cold, Tommy,” whimpers Sally Elliott at the ice plant. A thawing rain drums the roof of the big Lincoln, securing them from parents, police, and bushwhackers. Tommy has found that girls jump in the back faster when he uses his Dad's Lincoln instead of his own jalop. Something psychological. “Somebody'll come and catch us.”

“Use a little common sense, Sally. It's Monday night and it's raining pitchforks. Nobody's gonna come.” He has talked the slacks off her, but not the panties. He kisses her neck, strokes the sleek flesh of her tummy. Boy oh boy, does it feel good! “I told you I know what I'm doing,” he whispers. He insinuates his fingers under the elastic band, slithers toward whatever it is that's down there.

She twists away, curls up in one corner, staring out at the rain. “Tommy, please, let's go home.”

She wants you to do it, she just doesn't want to feel guilty, wants you to make her do it so it's not her fault. He sets his teeth. “Listen, Sally, if it was the end of the world tomorrow, I mean really, if this was our last, like our last chance, would you let me do it then?” He is on his knees beside her, staring at her almost edible everything. Sheen off the silk panties. White as a ghost.

“Why do you talk like that, Tommy? Do you believe that?”

“No, I just mean,
if.”
Boy, she's dumb! She deserves it! If he can just get her down on her belly somehow.

“I guess so,” she says then, surprising him.

“Sally!” he whispers, kissing her ear. He moves in. “You're beautiful! You're Eve!” His own mark of Adam, so taut and prickly he almost wants somebody to bite the end off, prods her softly in the side.