Public Burning

by Robert Coover

  If he is offended by the boys’ appeals, he is even more outraged when Ethel Rosenberg’s latest letter to her two sons is flashed on the moving electric sign on the Times Tower: Christ on the mountain! he can just feel the damned Phantom’s power radiate through the spellbound crowds in the Square…

  My Dearest Darlings,

  This is the process known as “sweating it out,” and it’s tough, that’s for sure. At the same time, we can’t let a lot of chickens that go about their business without panic, even when something’s frightening them—we can’t let them put us to shame, can we…?

  What’s that about chickens? The people duck their heads and peer nervously up at the sky. Is this it, then?

  …Maybe you thought that I didn’t feel like crying too when we were hugging and kissing goodbye, huh, even though I’m slightly older than 10. Darlings, that would have been so easy, far too easy on myself…

  What’s to be done? The National Maritime Union’s strike spreads like a virus, tying up hundreds of ships, and the U.S. Post Office announces a 36 percent rise in parcel post rates. Pickets appear: NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS PERJURY!

  …but it would not have been any kindness at all. So I took the hard way instead of the easy…

  The Reds walk out of the Korean peace talks, accuse Uncle Sam of bad faith. The Chinese breach the ROK defenses north of the Hwachon Reservoir. Soviet occupation troops raid workers’ homes in East Berlin and mark some thirty thousand ex-Wehrmacht officers for automatic arrest.

  …because I love you more than myself, and because I know you needed that love far more than I needed the relief of crying…

  Mrs. Sarah Brock Dodge, U.S. Army nurse in the Spanish-American War, and later personal nurse for General Douglas MacArthur and the Taft family, drops dead as a doornail…

  …We need to try to remain calm and free from panic, so that we can do all we can to help one another to see this thing through!

  …and then in Japan, an Air Force Globemaster transport with 129 American servicemen aboard falls right out of the sky, the worst disaster in the history of flight! Those damn chickens! “East and West,” TIME say, “from within & without / news crashed / upon the U.S….”

  for 120 seconds

  the rows of servicemen

  held fast to their seat-

  belts as the plane lurched

  and swayed towards the

  air base

  some prayed

  one boy clutched his

  rosary

  a second engine

  failed & the plane began

  to lose altitude more

  rapidly

  four miles short

  of the base the globemaster

  slammed steeply into a watermelon

  patch broke up & caught

  fire skittering bits of

  burning metal at a fright-

  ened Japanese farmer who stood

  nearby

  most if not all

  of the men were killed

  on impact which was so great

  that many bodies were torn

  from their boots

  they were

  returning to korea to defend

  the embittered koreans against

  the great conspiracy that

  the rosenbergs had served…

  …All my love and all my kisses!

  Mommy

  Demonstrators march in broad daylight through the streets with signs that read: THE ELECTRIC CHAIR CAN’T KILL THE DOUBTS IN THE ROSENBERG CASE! ROK troops fall back in Korea in the biggest retreat in two years. An anonymous caller tells the police that a bomb is set to go off in Public School 187 in the north part of the city. There are rumors of an all-out strategic exchange. Scrawled across the whitewashed walls of the Sing Sing Death House set atop the information kiosk: WHAT THE BOURGEOISIE, THEREFORE, PRODUCES, ABOVE ALL, IS ITS OWN GRAVEDIGGERS. Then somebody sabotages the stage and the whole business collapses into the street. And in Vienna, three beetle-browed Russians force their way past the landlady and drag Czech refugee Jaroslav Lukas out of his flat. Strange perspectives, weird watching faces, peculiar zither music—an Austrian policeman intervenes and a four-man (French, English, American, Russian) Allied Military Patrol speeds to the scene. They block the kidnappers’ escape route, leap out of the car with weapons at the ready. But the Soviet member of the FEAR Patrol commandeers the patrol car, shoves Lukas and his kidnappers in, leaps into the driver’s seat himself, slams into reverse, rams two civilian cars, shifts back into first—for God’s sake!

  STAND BY TO CRASH!

  —Where Is Uncle Sam?

  3.

  Idle Banter: The Fighting Quaker Among Saints and Sinners

  My old California colleague Bill Knowland was in trouble in his first test as the new Republican floor leader in the Senate, so on the way back to my office Thursday from the emergency meeting of the National Security Council at the White House, I stopped by the Capitol to see if I could be of help. The Hill and Mall were swarming with demonstrators, counterdemonstrators, tourists, cops, dogs, kids, and there were expressions of worry, gloom, apprehension, uncertainty everywhere. There’d been too many setbacks. In the middle of all this, Knowland had decided to pull a fast one: after having told the Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson earlier that there’d be nothing more controversial today than the call of the calendar—which few Senators even bother to show up for—he’d suddenly decided to interrupt the call with an aggressive attempt to ram our new controls bill through and catch the Democrats flatfooted. I wasn’t sure Bill was doing the smart thing, but I understood his motives and had to admire them: he’d just taken over from the ailing Bob Taft, and he was trying hard to put his personal stamp on the leadership job, make it his through partisan conflict. It wasn’t easy to follow a living legend like Taft, Bill had to do something audacious to signal the change and establish his authority. Of course, he could blow it, too, and the chances were just about fifty-fifty—with Wayne Morse now voting with the Democrats, there were forty-eight votes on each side of the aisle, and my vote was the tie-breaker. I was eager to get back to the Rosenberg case, things were in a mess now, thanks to Douglas, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on or what I was supposed to do, but Eisenhower’s relationship with Congressional Republicans was so fragile, we couldn’t afford to antagonize them in any way—I had no choice but to be on hand and save the day for Knowland if need be. Besides, it was just the kind of political battle I loved: nobody gave a shit about the bill itself, it was a straight-out power struggle, raw and pure, like a move in chess.

  On the way in, I saw Bob Taft. The poor bastard, he looked like hell. Mr. Republican. Fighting Bob. The Go-It-Alone Man. He was going it alone now, all right: he was dying, hip cancer apparently, probably wouldn’t last the year out. On the side of the angels now. There were some reporters hovering around him, looking very sympathetic, and since sympathy from those sonsabitches was something I rarely enjoyed, I decided Fighting Bob could share a little of it with me, he wasn’t going to need it much longer anyway. “Say, Bob,” I called out, moving in, “I have news for you!” Taft knew where I’d been that morning, knew about the Korean and German and Rosenberg crises—the whole Capitol was obviously ass-deep in the usual rumors, prophecies, and panic—and so of course he was all ears. He was on crutches and appeared to have lost a lot of weight (which was maybe why he seemed to be “all ears”), but he stretched forward eagerly as though reaching for a cure. The newsguys all turned to me, grabbing for the pencils tucked behind their ears, and photographers snatched up their cameras—I quickly lifted my chin and raised my eyebrows, conscious that my stern Quaker eyes and heavy cheeks often gave me an unfortunate scowly sinister look, putting a whole different slant on what I was saying (isn’t that a hell of a thing—that the fate of a great country can depend on camera angles?), and said: “I broke a hundred at Burning Tree Sunday, Bob!”

  The Senator shrank back as though suddenly aged, but he smiled and congra
tulated me. I bowed acknowledgments, smiling generously, trying to make the best of it, but I was suddenly sorry for him, felt suddenly like a brother, regretted my little joke—hadn’t he said when he fell ill that the first thing he’d noticed was a great weariness when he started “whaling golf balls” early last spring? Shit, I was just rubbing it in. I wanted to reach out and embrace him, give him my shoulder to lean on instead of those damned crutches, make him well again, make him President or something.

  We went on talking about golf, he seemed cheerful enough, but I felt like hell. I saw that the news reporters had stopped grinning, too, most of them had turned away, I’d been misunderstood again. I’d only wanted to give Taft something to laugh about in these troubled times, I’d meant no harm. He was one of the few guys, after all, who’d stood by me through the Fund Crisis last fall—even if the reason was that he was afraid Bill Knowland would be the guy to take my place. Taft had made a lot of mistakes, but he still might have gone to the White House if he hadn’t opposed NATO and collective security in Europe—what the hell, let’s face it, he would have gotten there anyway if a few of us hadn’t axed him, he could have won last year, that was clear now. And but a few short weeks ago, he was the most powerful man outside the White House in all America—maybe the most powerful Senator in history. Cut down. Last summer he’d been my enemy. It was I who’d busted up the unity of the California delegation and so assured Eisenhower of the Party’s nomination, had beat him out myself for the vice-presidential nomination—but now, looking at him there, shrunken, held up by those crutches, smiling gamely, his belly hanging low in his pants, I thought: Jesus, he’s a goddamn saint! I wanted to tell him everything, about the National Security Council meeting, about my talks with Uncle Sam, about the moves soon to be made, about the Rosenberg letters strewn around my office, about my hopes, my fears, the whole works.

  I remembered the time he came to my office and asked for my support for the Party’s presidential nomination—me, just a green junior Senator from California—and I’d had to put him off. I think in part I objected to the fact he’d asked me. As though he’d demeaned himself. It was too personal, coming to my office like that. It embarrassed me—it flattered me, too, but mostly it made me uneasy, and I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him. Besides, with him I had no shot at something bigger myself. It must have been a terribly difficult thing for him to do, I could never do it, I could never walk into some other guy’s office and ask him to help make me President, any more than I could fly. I could send somebody else, but I could never do it myself. But now, if he’d come today, I thought, I’d have said yes. Now that it was too late. He smiled feebly but kindly, adjusted his clear horn-rimmed spectacles, said we’d have to get up a game soon, shifted his weight, and hobbled away on his crutches, showing me his bald spot like a kind of halo. Was he needling me now? I wanted to call out to him, but I didn’t.

  This often happened to me, this sudden flush of warmth, even love, toward the people I defeat. It worried me, worries me still. It could backfire someday. Back when I was in the Navy, I wrote a note to myself on the subject, I have it still, taped inside my desk drawer: DON’T BECOME OVERGENEROUS ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT! But I kept forgetting. It was a weakness. Already some people were complaining I’d made too much of the tragic side of the Alger Hiss case, been too insistent in pointing out his intelligence, sensitivity, idealism, should never have said that I thought he was sincerely dedicated to the concepts of peace and of bettering the lot of the common man, of people generally—I might as well say as much for the goddamn Phantom. But once it was over, once I’d nailed the lying supercilious bastard for good, I couldn’t help myself. There’s something that makes me want the happy ending. Most conflicts are irresolvable, I know that, someone wins and someone loses, someone’s on the right side, someone’s on the other side, and what resolutions are possible are got afterwards by way of the emotions. I learned that way back in the seventh grade, first time I beat those girls in the now-famous Insect Debate. I’m no believer in dialectics, material or otherwise, let me be absolutely clear about that, I wouldn’t be Vice President of the United States of America if I was, it’s either/or as far as I’m concerned and let the best man win so long as it’s me. But I want these emotional resolutions when the fights are over.

  People misunderstand me. They think it’s all vindictiveness. It isn’t. Personal hatred is a big waste, it’s as simple as that. Issues are everything, even when they’re meaningless—these other things like emotions and personalities just blur the picture and make it difficult to operate. But it feels good to indulge in them when it no longer matters. I’ve often said that the only time to lose your temper in politics is when it’s deliberate and useful. I don’t always live up to that, I’m human, but I still believe it. I’m a tough sonuvabitch to run against in an election, everyone knows that by now, they say I’m a buzzsaw opponent, ruthless and even unscrupulous, they say I go for the jugular, no holds barred, or as Stevenson put it, “Nixonland is the land of smash and grab and anything to win,” and discounting the partisan hyperbole, that’s largely true, I guess. You’ve got to win, or the rest doesn’t matter. I believe in fighting it out, in hitting back, giving as good as you get, you’ve got to be a politician before you can be a statesman, I’ve said that and it’s so. No ruffed-shirt, kid-glove, peanut politics for me. As Uncle Sam once told me: “Politics is the only game played with real blood.” I didn’t want to believe him at the time, I wanted it to be played with rhetoric and industry, yet down deep I knew that even at its most trivial, politics flirted with murder and mayhem, theft and cannibalism.

  But—maybe because I do know that—I’ve always thought of myself as a healer as well. I was always breaking up fights between my brothers, saving them from Dad’s whippings, calming tempers at school, it was I who stopped that ugly brawl between Joe McCarthy and Drew Pearson in the Sulgrave Club washroom two and a half years ago (people thought I was siding with Joe, but actually I was saving Pearson’s life: Joe had heard from some Indian that if you kneed a guy hard enough in the nuts, blood would come out of his eyes, and he was eager to test this out), and it was I who bridged the generations in the Republican Party and brought its warring sides together for victory at last this past fall, I who now kept the peace between the President and a truculent Congress. I was Eisenhower’s salesman in the Cloakrooms, that was my job, I was the political broker between the patsies and the neanderthals, I had to cool the barnburners, soften up the hardshells, keep the hunkers and cowboys in line, mollify the soreheads and baby tinhorn egos, I was the flak runner, the wheelhorse, I had to mend the fences and bind up the wounds. Yes, bind up the wounds: I’m a lot like Lincoln, I guess, who was kind and compassionate on the one hand, and strong and competitive on the other. I gave Voorhis no quarter, for example, when I beat him for his seat in Congress in 1946; I called him a puppet of the Communists, hit him with dirty broadsides, anonymous phone calls, the whole lot, and if I hadn’t played it that way I wouldn’t be where I was now, America’s history and that of the entire world would have run a different course, the Phantom might well have had his way with us, maybe none of us would even be here now. But afterwards I went to the bastard’s office and smiled and shook his hand, spent nearly an hour with him, and I meant it when I said there was scarcely ever a man with higher ideals than old Jerry Voorhis, even if, like Alger Hiss and a lot of other insolent bums I’ve run into out here, he did come from Yale.

  Probably I got this from my mother. My father was a scrapper, a very competitive man, cantankerous even and aggressive, he loved to argue with anybody about anything, and he always instilled this competitive feeling in all of us, we owed him a lot, my brothers and I, even if sometimes we hated his guts. But my mother was just the opposite, a Quaker, a peacemaker, and she taught us—showed us—charity and tolerance and the need to keep your feelings about people separate from your feelings about moral questions. People were weak, of course they were, but that
didn’t mean you were supposed to stop loving them, even as you punished them. When my father’s Black Irish temper reared up inside him and he went for his strap or rod, she wouldn’t interfere, she understood the need for rules and the need for punishment and stood by watching while he laid it on (Jesus! he could really set your ass on fire, he scared the hell out of me early on and I learned how to avoid the beatings, even if I had to lie or throw off on others, but he pounded Don’s butt to leather and I used to worry he’d broken poor Harold’s health and crushed little Arthur’s spirit, I still have nightmares about it), but afterwards she always made him forgive us—some of our best family moments came after the strappings were over and Mother was getting us all together again. I suppose I’ve got something of both of them in me—“The Fighting Quaker.” TIME had called me after my nomination last summer, and that was probably the closest anyone had ever got to summing me up. “Richard M. Nixon: Change Trains for the Future.” I liked that touch, it took me back to my childhood in Yorba Linda, and identified me with the westward sweep of Uncle Sam’s evangel. Of course, there were the Democrats’ inevitable malicious jokes later about “the crash of the Federal Express” after the trainwreck here in Washington. And I wasn’t too happy about the anonymous parody I got in the mail shortly after that, titled “The Farting Quacker,” with a picture of me like a train engine chugging butt-backwards—was it my fault I had stomach problems? Some agent of the Phantom, I supposed, like all pornographers and irreligionists. I was used to it by now, I’d been called just about everything as far back as I could remember. When I was in high school, our Latin class put on a play based on Virgil’s Aeneid, it was maybe the most romantic thing that ever happened to me—I was Aeneas and Ola was Queen Dido and we wore white gowns and fell in love—but even then they started called me “Anus” and not even Ola could keep from giggling. Years later, when I was in the Navy, I realized we could have called her Queen Dildo, but we were all too green at the time to know about that. It was amazing we knew about anuses.