Origin of the Brunists (63 page)

Announcer:
“When exactly, Mrs. Collins, do you anticipate the, eh, the end of the world?”

Clara:
“Well, we don't rightly know, but if you're worryin' about it like you better be, then I'd say to you you'd better come along with us right now, on account of it's apt to happen jist any moment!” Back to the network.

He wasn't able to catch them by car after all. Crowds blocked the way. People milled in every street. Mostly strangers. Lot of cars with out-of-state licenses. He parked as near to the back edge of town as he could, took up the speedgraphic, set out in a light jog. He decided to cut across the acreage that the city had just bought for purposes of luring industry. Hoped to cut the parade off. The lope over those untended fields was not easy: irregular, high with dried grass and shrubs that bit and clutched at his ankles, lot of junk to trip him up. He saw the crowds, though, just swelling out onto the mine road from the edge of town. Helicopter circling overhead, no doubt photographing his lone gallop crosscountry toward the Brunists: lost lamb returning to the fold, or messenger with the Word. Sky beyond the helicopter was gray with fat ripe clouds.

He angled more sharply so as to get ahead of the advancing masses. Out in front: several cars, many of them with tripods and other equipment strapped on top. Big TV outfit rolled along in front, followed by an enormous crowd that just didn't seem to end. A kind of flood at that: the Brunists bubbling down the road like a spread of white foam, and at the edges, like dark scum, the welter of the curious, the doubters, the hecklers, the indignant. He aimed toward a grove of trees, saw that if his wind lasted he'd make it before the Brunists with a couple minutes to spare. The helicopter came roaring down over his head and onto the Brunists, there to hover like a great speckled insect.

His wind lasted, but barely. He staggered up against one of the trees, gasping, pulled out a smoke. His side ached, one ankle hurt. He tucked the camera between his knees, lit up, then sighted the camera on the road in front of him, just as a couple cars shot by.

“Real scene,” somebody said behind him.

Miller looked around, noticed for the first time that he shared the grove with three or four other cameramen. The guy who had addressed him had come up from behind, now stood looking over Miller's shoulder. Young kid. Shaggy. Cocky.

“Did you catch the rumpus this morning at the R.C. place?”

“Guess I missed that,” Miller said, still panting.

“Apocalyptic,” the kid said. “Laid into altars with mining picks, swiped a lot of stuff.”

Miller could see the front ranks now: Giovanni Bruno, gaunt, lugging what did indeed look like a coal pick, head held high, hair flowing, legs kicking out vigorously against the restraint of the tunic, narrow bony feet, bare, beating down the hard ruts of the road; on either side of him, Abner Baxter and Ben Wosznik, singing lustily and bearing the two banners, a German police dog trotting at Wosznik's heels.

The photographer unwrapped a red pack of gum, shoved about half of it in his mouth, offered Miller some. “No, thanks.” So, in went the rest.

Behind the three men walked the Nortons, side by side, faces collapsed in grief and maybe a kind of horror, but their step measured and determined. On either side, more or less in single file, marched the women of West Condon, led by Clara Collins and Sarah Baxter. Mixing in and trailing back down the road: scores of East Condoners, no,
hundreds!
Some wielded torches, some silver candlesticks, part of the morning's loot, no doubt. And, in the middle, borne on—

“Now you won't believe this,” the photographer said, working his jaws mightily around the gum, “but you see that little Seenyora Two Hung Lo? There in the middle with the little fat fella? Well, they both been to college.”

“Is that so?” Miller was getting his breath back. He dropped his butt to his feet, ground it out, pulled out another.

“Degrees and everything.” The kid lifted his camera, took a photo. Somehow, his doing that made the camera in Miller's hand grow cold and heavy. The front ranks of the procession had pulled nearly abreast of them. “You wouldn't think brainy types like that could get their asses in such a silly sling, now wouldja?”

“Hard to figure.”

“You said it, man.” The gum cracked and popped. Miller felt chills ripple through him, seeing the thing now clearly, jogging slightly, back and forth, back and forth, to the rhythm of their song. “Now that poor little piece of dead snatch they're toting, that's a different story.” On the shoulders of six men. Litter was what looked like a lawn chair, folded down flat. She was just no color at all. Something between the dull aluminum of the chair frame and the vapid gray of the darkening sky. Fresh white tunic, too big for her—a grotesquely ironic thought occurred to him, and, yes, it was probably true … they probably found that tunic in her closet, or a drawer, and thought … Her mouth gaped open, lips drawn dry; he licked his own self-consciously. One hand pointed rigidly heavenward, the other downward. Eyelids half-open over a filmy opaque surface. It was so unreal a thing, he could register no emotion except horror. Marcella! He shuddered, closed his eyes, opened them. “They say she died with her hand aimed up at the Old Man like that, and that was what made that redheaded bugger see the light.” Miller just couldn't attach her to this brittle blue corpse that rocked on the road before him. The run here had weakened him, had made him sweat; now the sweat was cold as death on him and all his tendons were gone to rot. He leaned up against the tree to keep from buckling, flicked his cigarette into the ditch, lit a new one. Marcella. He saw her name on his desk blotter, heard her gay laughter, smelled her body on his, saw the intricate turn of a lightly tanned wrist, tasted the newness of her mouth. Marcella. Marcella Bruno. Was it something in her he had loved … or something in himself he had hated? He felt old. “Well, the word is she got banged by the guy who grinds out the local scandal sheet. He was a big cat in the club, but he cut out on them and got into her. She went off her nut and, so they say, finally knocked herself off. Now that's pretty wild too, I admit, but that's something I can understand.”

“Where'd you hear all that?”

“Oh, I dunno. You pick things up. You just drag in? There's a couple lambent skin pix making the rounds at the flophouse that this wiseguy took of himself laying the meat to her. Big guy, about as tall as Papa Spook out there, but twice as wide.” The kid popped his gum, spat out the side of his mouth, photographed Marcella's cadaver. “Gives you a weird feeling,” he said. “In one of the photos she's just like that, one arm up, one down, looking scared. Like it was all planned.” Weird feeling.

Behind the body marched alternate pallbearers, large numbers of out-of-towners among them. Willie Hall and a heavyset man dragged along a little red wagon, in which, huddled miserably, sat Emilia Bruno, ancient, dark, withered, looking very ill indeed, yellowish eyes cast upward toward where her daughter rocked above her. Some of the men carried large wooden crosses at least four feet tall, roughly hewn from tree branches. Miller saw three or four of them. Then came the young, a disordered, emotional, wildly singing lot, dozens of them, all sizes. The four Baxter redheads stood out. Carl Dean Palmers hopped backwards in front of them, leading them in their singing:

The helicopter lowered, cameras whirred and shutters clicked on all sides, the crowds trotted by, filling the ditches. The guys here in the grove with him folded up their gear, hiked it to their shoulders and set off, keeping pace with the procession, the vanguard of which was now virtually out of sight. The kid started to trail the others, turned around. “Hey, you coming?” He cocked his head, spat. “Say, man, you feeling okay?” Miller nodded, leaned away from the tree. Nothing to do but go on, see it out, find out what he could. “Got a little too much last night, hunh?” The kid, thank God, didn't wait for an answer.

There must have been at least three or four hundred tunicked followers in the procession, it was strung out for nearly a quarter of a mile. Others joined in, some wrapped in sheets, some merely in streetclothes, all barefoot. Behind the caravan were cars and trucks as far as the eye could see. A rumble in the sky. The singing broke off. Everyone looked up. A kind of moan or mumble rippled through the crowd, Brunists and spectators alike. Slowly, unevenly, the singing resumed:

Miller trailed wearily along, the crowds ahead dissolving into a shifting white mass, bordered by browns and grays, Marcella's body floating as though on a raft. Further rumbles overhead. Nervous jokes about that, strained laughter about his ears. He heard his name on occasion, nodded to people. What if, he wondered, what if he'd deflowered her first, talked after? He shuddered, as though with a chill. Ahead of him, the procession seemed to have stopped. People butted up against one another and began to murmur. He heard whisperings of “blockades” and “powers of darkness” and “police.” He edged up the slope of the ditch, made cautious inquiries of people in the rear ranks about Marcella, but they saw his camera and no one answered him. Back into the ditch then and toward the bottleneck, protected from Brunists who knew him by the thick hordes of massing spectators, staying as deep in the ditch as possible, passing under the body—he saw only the slight depression her cadaver made in the brightly striped canvas of the lawn chair—and the thick shapes of the tunicked women and the white banners, now becalmed.

At the head of it all he discovered a barricade and—goddamn!—a ticket booth! Manning it were Wally Fisher and Maury Castle and a couple guys Miller didn't know. Miller had heard rumors all week that Fisher was up to no good, and Fisher himself, with a dry cackle, had spoken of his “brainstorm.” The cop Dee Romano was there, too, palm resting on his pistol butt. He was explaining that it was all legal, that Mr. Fisher had rented the premises for the day for the purposes of promoting a small carnival, and that the admission charge of one dollar was entirely legitimate—all of which meant that Romano was getting a cut of the gate.

There was a tremendous protest boiling up, and Dee couldn't cover it. His right hand grew very fidgety. Maury Castle took over. “Now, folks, we realize that there is a conflict of interests here today,” he boomed out. “And we want to do everything possible to alleviate that conflict.” TV and movie cameras rolled, flashguns popped, the helicopter hovered. “We respect all religions and it was not Mr. Fisher's intention to interfere with the activities of you people.” Only man in West Condon who could talk to a square mile of people without a P.A. system. “Therefore, we have not bothered in any way the hill where you folks are going, and we have not mounted any of our stands up there. Moreover, we understand—” There was a sudden loud clap of thunder. The helicopter lifted and soared away. Castle grinned up at the sky, then continued. “Because we understand that you folks are not really interested in our carnival, why, we thought the only courteous thing to do would be to let you pass by at no charge. But I want to ask you to please be orderly and I'm afraid we have to limit the free entrance only to those who have these here jumpers on, these—what do you call …” His voice had sunk to a consultational tone, still audible, as he leaned toward Wosznik. “Yes, these here tunics. So now, if you other folks will please step back just a minute and let these people pass through, it will make things a whole lot easier.”

There was a lot of discontent, but also a lot of laughter. Good old pioneer ingenuity. Clara Collins and Ben Wosznik stood by the gate, explaining to those at the tail end what had happened, seeking to protect their people, but in effect doing Castle's work for him. They argued with Fisher and Castle about those members not in tunics, and bare feet became sufficient criteria, whereupon the Brunist fold was increased temporarily by about twenty-five young gate-crashers. Miller hung back until Clara and Wosznik had moved on. At the ticket booth, Fisher said, “One dollar, please.”

“Press,” said Miller sourly.

“No passes today,” the old bastard said with a broad grin. “This is, in fact, hee hee, a press carnival!” And then, his dewlaps flapping, he nearly gagged with laughter.

Rather than argue, Miller fished up a buck.

“Say, you'll never guess who the hell is here today!” Fisher said.

“Jesus Christ.”

Again that deep delighted wheeze. “No! Father Jones! He got a job on one of the city papers and pulled this as his first goddamn assignment!” The old man really thought that was funny, wheezed and choked so hard that tears came to his eyes. “I was so happy to see him, I even let him in for nothing!” Then he leaned forward, his face up against the ticket window, looking for a moment like an old father confessor, and whispered, “Say, Miller, you got a pretty ass!” Then back he roared again, nearly falling off his stool. “Jesus! I'm having so much fun, I'll never live out the day!”

Miller turned away from Fisher, only to confront Romano. “Take it easy today, Miller,” the cop said. “We don't want no trouble.”