Besides the old songs, they sang many new ones written by Brother Ben Wosznik, including his exultant “White Bird” ballad, that, perhaps more than any other single thing, most immediately conjoined them all to this common cause:
On a cold and wintry eighth of January,
Ninety-eight men entered into the mine,
Only one of these returned to tell the story
Of that disaster that struck—
“Lights!” cried the lookout. “Lights on the mine road!”
They gasped, panicked, flew in a mad scurry back toward their cars. They knew not this enemy and what a man knows not, he fears unreasonably. People cried without cause. Clara stood on the hill and shouted to all of them their instructions. Ben, at the foot, shepherded each into cars, and it was most confusing. Hiram and Emma were somehow separated, Hiram’s own car filling up with complete strangers, and just before pulling the door to, he heard the lookout cry, “They’s fifteen or twenty cars of ’em!” Hiram watched the fire being extinguished, a little guilty that he had run so frantically.
And then it began. Darkly, the procession eased away from the Mount of Redemption and turned toward West Condon, toward that advancing column, and there was no choice but to fall into place quickly, else be left behind, indefensible victims. They drove in rather rapidly, a little too rapidly, Hiram thought, for he observed there was a deep ditch to either side of them, and for one dark fear-stained moment he saw it all as stupid, insane, a blind and foolish covenant with whimsey, what had brought him—?
Then he saw the lights ahead and he thought of nothing at all but the immediate danger, the car in front of him, the ditch to his right. Yes, indeed, there were many of them; these advancing lights guided them. And then there were their own lights and, his heart leaping to his throat, he threw his on, lights everywhere, and suddenly …
But how did it happen? If all of it seemed a dream, how much more so this jolting dizzying moment! If all a whirl, this was its violent vortex! Hiram remembered something of the later return: the thick flow of their great procession through that little town, the congregation of automobiles jammed in all directions around the Bruno home. Of that night, there remained scattered images, the vigil, the weeping, the mournful making of tunics and tunics and tunics. There were public confessions and old enmities were dissolved in prayer and awe. No one slept. There was that profoundly moving incident of the gold medallion, when, just before dawn, the hysteria abating and their great task upon them, the deeply grieving lady Mrs. Eleanor Norton — had she not been a spiritual mother to the girl? — stood, approached, in a walk more of death than life, Sister Clara Collins, and, wordlessly, hung that medallion around Clara’s neck. Whereupon they embraced and wept like schoolgirls, and all who saw wept too.
But the Sacrifice itself: where was he? when was it? who was there with him? what did he do? what did they do? He could never remember. Only split-second, almost motionless pictures remained. He saw her body hurtling by. But could it have been she? No, given the position of his car when he stopped, the position of the girl where they found her, it was quite impossible. Yet, he was sure of it: he saw her body hurtling by. There was another picture: lights askew, beamed in all directions. This terrified him. It was too bright, too harsh, too anarchical, too resplendent. Cars wrecked, in ditches, piled into each other — the grill of his own was smashed, his knee banged up, but he never recalled the crash, never remembered stopping, did not feel for hours his damaged knee, though afterwards it plagued him to his dying day: he recalled only the deranged play of lights and the moaning. Another picture, but this one was at the end: the girl’s body in the back seat of a car. Her right arm hung off the seat, her left lay pinched between her body and the back of the seat, her eyes open. He could never forget this, because he had helped put her there — where had he found the strength? it seemed incredible to him after! — and could have rearranged her, closed her eyelids, but did not. They were a good while untangling that heaped disarray of autos and the girl was slight, had bled much. By the time they entered her into her house, she had rigidified in that peculiar position, and so remained those intense hours that immediately followed.
And, finally, there was his picture of the girl herself, Marcella Bruno, lying, face up, in the ditch: lovely, yet wasted, drawn, so small! so helpless! Her face was serene, her eyes closed, her lips slightly parted, but her small body, enshrouded in its white tunic with the brown embroidery, was grotesquely twisted … one of her feet seemed even to point the wrong way. There was, he was sure, talk of rushing her to a hospital or of calling an ambulance: in such a situation, there was always such talk, and perhaps he himself even made a similar suggestion. And he seemed to remember the fear expressed that if she were turned over to any authority, even a doctor, she would be unable to join them on the Mount and thus could conceivably forfeit her eternal salvation. Though all of this may only have been recreated in later conversations (the fear of authority in some form or other was there, certainly, for Hiram himself knew a great anxiety). Anyway, this did happen: the girl’s eyes opened suddenly and her lips parted as though to speak. All leaned forward — he himself must have been quite close — but instead of a sound, all that emerged was a bright red bubble of blood that ballooned, burst, and dribbled down her cheeks. These things Hiram Clegg — who was to become Bishop Clegg of Randolph Junction, the first President of the International Council of Brunist Bishops, the man to nominate Mrs. Clara Collins as their first Evangelical Leader and Organizer, and who would be, some years later, the Bishop of the State of Florida — carried away from that humbling experience: the body hurtling by, the mad play of lights, Dr. Wylie Norton’s plump knees in the cinders, the bubble of blood, the girl in the back seat of a car.
Perhaps other occurrences of note transpired. Some seemed to remember a luminous white bird, perched high above them on a telephone cable. Others spoke in later years of a heart-shaped bloodstain on the breast of Marcella’s tunic, just where the circle and cross were. Many vouched that a priest had passed among them, solemn and ashen. There were those who recalled that the prophet dipped his fingers in the blood of his sister and therewith marked his forehead with a small dark cross, and some believed he so marked all those present. Hiram, it was true, did find blood on his forehead after, and so he was never in a position to deny this account. Yet if it occurred, he had wholly forgot it. The most persistent legend in later years — and the only one which Hiram knew to be false — was that the girl, in the last throes of death, had pointed to the heavens, and then, miraculously, maintained this gesture forever after. This death in the ditch, the Sacrifice, became in the years that followed a popular theme for religious art, and the painters never failed to exploit this legend of the heavenward gesture, never failed to omit the bubble of blood. Which was, of course, as it should be.
Part I: The White Bird
Do not fear what you are about to suffer.
1
Clouds have massed, doming in the small world of West Condon. The patches of old snow, crusted black with soot in full daylight, now appear to whiten as the sky dulls toward evening. The temperature descends. Slag smoke sours the air. Only eight days since the new year began, but the vague hope its advent traditionally engenders has already gone stale. It is true, there are births, deaths, injuries, rumors, jokes, matings, and conflicts as usual, but a wearisome monotony seems to inform even the best and worst of them.