But they weren’t even listening. I stuffed my hand absently in my jacket pocket, reminded by the Lincoln quotes of my successful Checkers ploy (“…here it is—I jotted it down—let me read the notes…”), and felt a postcard there. It was the drowning-man syndrome all over again, but I fished it out just the same, trying to look as mysterious as I could. It was the postcard I’d grabbed off that rack in Ossining. It said HELLO FROM SING SING! across the top and showed two cartoon cops standing beside an electric chair with a privy hole and a raised toilet lid, one of them explaining to the other: “He fell through.” I stared gloomily down that black hole, thinking: the hell with it, it isn’t worth it. All this jackassery: I’d Had Enough, Stassen could have it. Pat was no longer praying, I noticed, if that was what she had been doing before. She wasn’t laughing like all the others either, but I wasn’t necessarily encouraged by that. She was just looking in my direction, her eyes crinkled up sadly and gazing as though at some point just behind my loft ear, her thin white hands twitching nervously in her lap, picking at each other. I remembered how Ethel’s big dark eyes had peered so deeply, so directly, so trustingly into mine—almost as though probing my very soul; you could almost say, rediscovering it—as she’d said: “I envy you your power, Richard. Your majesty. You are a great man!” I felt myself being drawn back into her impassioned life-giving embrace, where everything seemed possible once more, and everything possible seemed good. “I have faith in you, Richard! You will unite the nation and bring peace to mankind…!” Yes, faith—not loyalty, but faith! That’s what I needed! Not a dutiful peck on the cheeks, but full firm committed lips pressed on mine, not tight jittery haunches, but a soft yielding bottom, not thin secretive stone-cold fingers, but a warm hand tearing at my hair, kneading my—
I shook it off. Christ, I was getting excited again. I pulled my shirttail down in front and raised my arms (this did not quite work), looking for something meanwhile to cover myself with. What I saw was Uncle Sam looking like he’d just swallowed his corncob pipe and was trying to cough it up again. He was pointing frantically up at the Times Tower, whore under the time and weather clock, which told me it was nearly ten minutes to eight and eighty degrees (whoo! it felt like twice that at least!), the news getting flashed to the world was: LET US STRIVE ON TO FINISH THE WORK WE ARE IN…! Well, I thought, I can’t be too far off the track. “The issue at stake,” I cried, turning back to the mob in the Square, adopting a scowl of deadly earnestness, and recalling for some reason the night I mounted a table at the Senior Beer Bust at Duke and gave a deadpan parody of a talk on Social Insecurity (what had I said? was there something I could use?)—“The issue at stake, to put it starkly, is this: whose hand—” and here I thrust out my hand in a gesture I knew was very effective, “—whose hand will write the next several chapters of human history?” And then I saw for the first time the blood on my hand: my God, there was blood all over it! from my ass! it was coming from my ass! Oh Jesus! “Let’s—let’s not deceive ourselves!” I gasped, really frightened now: what was happening to me? “The heat is on! We have the fight of our lives on our hands! We already have seen bloodletting and…and there’ll be some more blood sp-spilled before it’s over!” No, not blood: lipstick! Oh shit, I thought, as I mopped the sweat from my brow and plunged helplessly on: “I know that this is not the last of the smears!” Needless to say, I had just—as though compulsively—wiped the sweat from my face with my lipsticked hand, a fucking mess, but I couldn’t stop myself… “I was warned that if I continued to attack the Communists and crooks in this country they would continue to smear me, and in spite of my explanation tonight, other smears will be made!” Ah, it isn’t what the facts are but what they appear to be that counts when you are under fire, I thought, as the laughter cascaded around me. Some puffy-eyed clown was trying to crawl up on the stage in front of me…familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Out of some gangster movie maybe. Like this whole goddamned mob. I realized that out in all that roiling hysteria there was one static point of reference that my eye kept coming back to: an old bearded bum standing motionless in one of the VIP aisles in a floppy hat and tattered old overcoat, his arms out at his sides like a cheap stuffed doll. A teddy bear. His pinprick eyes, not quite real, and shiny beet-red cheeks gave the impression that he’d been crying. He stood there as though planted, old boots driven into the pavement, like a fat scarecrow…or a message. The turmoil in the square raged around him, but the old bum was untouched by it. I knew him. I’d seen him in my own mirror. I felt myself being pulled back aboard the Look Ahead, Neighbor Special, rocketing north toward all those grand discoveries—about life, about myself—intimations of freedom from the Death House of politics and propriety, the possibility of a fresh start, a new life of love and adventure, instead of all this pretending…and I thought for a moment that maybe I was only dreaming, that in a minute I’d wake up again on the VIP train (and this time I’d join in, I thought, I wouldn’t hold back), or back in my office, at home, even back at Dress-Up Day at Whittier High School with Ola—but then something—whick!—stung me on my left ball, and as I clutched my nuts and doubled away in pain, only to take another one—swack!—on my poor overabused butt, I knew I was where I’d always been: front and center on the stage of human history, never mind how silly or brutalizing, a victim of my own genius and God-given resources, and nowhere to go but on…and on and on…
Well, by God, I could and I would. I think of history in terms of tragedy—but not my own. I saw Uncle Sam, his pipe coughed up at last, the stem turned into a peashooter, striding forward to cut me off, but I didn’t give him a chance. Taking my cue from the flag-leafed Bond clothing store statues I’d just glimpsed rearing chalkily above me, a bronze shield between them with the legend EXCELSIOR, I coldly turned my other cheek and, hopping to the other side of the stage, snatched the first piece of bunting I could reach (which turned out to be a flag actually, the first one, circle of thirteen stars), wrapped myself in it, and then whirled with a vengeance (which was not as easy as it sounds, hobbled as I was: I had to face them cross-legged in the end, nearly lost it again before I’d even got started) on this mindless boozed-up but malleable rabble: “My fellow Americans!” Uncle Sam stopped short, eyeing me curiously. Herb Brownell, slipping out from behind the wings with his program notes, blinked and stepped back in again, elbowing Judge Kaufman in the right eye. The Warden was back there, too, I noticed, muttering something in the ear of the skullcapped Prison Chaplain and chewing bemusedly on his long black cigar—and now out front I discovered my old man, sitting on the edge of his chair, glowering intently, just as he used to do at all my school debates—my biggest thrill in those years was to see the light in his eyes when I destroyed my opponents, and by God I was not going to let him down now. Or Mom either, seated quietly beside him, hands folded in her lap, a goddamn saint. “We live in an age of anarchy!” The mob, which had been applauding itself drunkenly, now broke into laughter again, but there were cheers and whistles as well. Let them laugh, I thought. This is a generation that wants to laugh, a generation that wants to be entertained, thanks to the movies, TV—a sea of passivity, but so much the better for us swimmers. I stared boldly out at them, mob and cameras alike, feeling very much in control of things once more, wiser than I knew…. “We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last five hundred years!”
They were listening now, even as they continued to whoop it up. People have noticed that “peculiar sales executive charm” I have, and I poured it on, smiling, scowling, clutching the flag tight around me with one hand (though it was all hand-stitched and the seams chafed me sorely), hammering home my points with the other—not for nothing had Dick Nixon won the Reader’s Digest Southern Conference Extemporaneous Speaking Contest so many years before! I started out by laying on them a real eye-opening, tub-thumping, hackle-raising sermon on world history (I’ve always been basically a history buff): the rise, development, and—as s
ome would argue—partial decay of the philosophy called “liberalism”; the parallel emergence of a liberal heresy called Communism; the assumption of world leadership by two superpowers, America and Russia, each wedded to a competing faith; and finally, the present confrontation of these two faiths and these two superpowers in every part of the world. “America today stands almost alone between Communism and the Free Nations of the world!” I told them, and now I was addressing myself to all the people leaning out of hotel and business block windows and the anonymous masses crammed into the distant streets and avenues all the way up to Central Park as well, Jesus, I was in good voice. “If you could lift the United States bodily off today’s globe, the rest of the world would live in sheer terror!” This was my big play, and, egged on by my father’s grins and grimaces, I swung into it with all my might. I told them we had to roll back the Phantom’s power, had to give up the negative, futile, and immoral policy of containment which abandoned countless human beings to a despotism and godless terrorism, and set out immediately to liberate the captive peoples. “All that is needed is the will to win—and the courage to use our power—ALL our power—NOW!” The mussed-up clown trying to crawl over the lip of the stage gasped and slipped back, clinging to the edge by his fingertips. Conscious of the cameras on me, I flashed a smile and demanded that the Russians dismantle the Iron Curtain, free the satellites, and unite Germany under free elections. I called for all-out victory in Korea: “The only way to end the war in Korea is to win it on the battlefield!”—and made it clear that we should warn the Chinese Communists that “unless they cease their aggression against Korea by a certain date, our commanders in the field will be given the authority to bomb Manchurian bases! History tells us we are on the right side! Man needs God, and Communism is atheistic, so what we must do is to act like Americans and not put our tails between our legs and run every time some Communist bully tries to bluff us!” Hoo boy, I was really wound up! I thought of things I hadn’t even thought of yet! I argued for a naval blockade of Red China, a massive invasion of Southeast Asia, and if necessary, a preventative attack against mainland China itself: “All we have to do is take a look at the map and we can see that if Formosa falls, the next frontier is the coast of California!” I bounded forward, coins and belt buckle jangling against the stage floor, and shouted that we should not be afraid to use—wherever and whenever—all the massive, mobile, retaliatory power at our disposal! “Remember, it’s a cause bigger than yourself! It’s the cause of making this the greatest nation in the world—the leader in the world—because without our leadership the world will know nothing but war, possibly starvation or worse in the years ahead! With our leadership it will know peace, it will know plenty—“
“What a shifty-eyed goddamn liar,” complained somebody in the front pew. I recognized that sour country whine. “I can’t figure out why people listen to him!”
This set off more derisive laughter from the horde, but I welcomed the challenge and wheeled to meet it: “I am not going to engage in personalities,” I cried, “but I charge that Mr. Truman is a traitor to the high principles of his own Party! I charge that the buried record will show that he and his associates, either through stupidity or political expedience, were primarily responsible for the unimpeded growth of the Communist conspiracy within the United States—the one that has led us here to this historic occasion tonight!” The crowd cheered at this and Truman took a mocking bow, but I forged on, confident now, back on the tracks once more and returning to the fold, so feeling the power wax in me. Dad was still scowling, but he seemed pleased. I caught Darryl Zanuck’s eye and he threw me a thumbs-up sign. Truman was maybe not as discomfited as I might have wished, but then I bore him no grudge, and in fact I was grateful to him for throwing me a cue. “If the Russians had been running our State Department during the seven years of Trumanism, they couldn’t have developed a better Asiatic foreign policy from the Soviet viewpoint! I say we must deal sharply but fairly with internal Communism as an idea, but with its agents as DOUBLE-DYED TRAITORS!” Some goddamn donkey had started braying in the middle of this and a lot of the crowd were heehawing along with it, including (I could hardly believe it!) my old man, but I shouted them all down: “When our administration came to Washington on January twentieth, we found in the files a blueprint for socializing America! This dangerous well-oiled scheme called for socialized medicine, socialized housing, socialized agriculture, socialized water and power, and perhaps most disturbing of all, socialization of America’s greatest source of power, atomic energy! For the first time in American history, the security of the nation was directly and imminently threatened!” Uncle Sam was still jumping up and down and pointing frantically up at the clock, but I wasn’t about to quit now. I was coming home, I could feel it, running up the walk from that long exile up at my aunt’s to be kissed at the front door by little Arthur just a few months before he died, stepping down from the war in my Navy whites onto U.S. soil and into Pat’s arms and Mom’s, returning to the fold of the Party and Ike’s grandfatherly embrace in Wheeling—for me, I thought, this whole thing: it’s all been for me! And as my mind cleared at last, the mad dreams fading like spent fireworks, the old familiar phrases came rolling back to me about the competitive spirit and moral values and history will be the final judge and shooting Reds like rats. “When an egg is rotten you throw it out!” I recalled Tom Paine’s times that try men’s souls and Harding’s God-given destiny of our Republic, remembered Teddy Roosevelt’s counterattack on the professional pacifists seeking to Chinafy this country and Calvin Coolidge’s American legions armed with the cross, Wilson’s summons to all honest men—and our own Great Crusade, Ike’s and mine…“The American people will be eternally grateful for the achievements of the Eisenhower administration which is kicking Communists, fellow travelers, and sex perverts out of the federal government by the thousands! The Communists conspiracy to which Julius and Ethel Rosenberg devoted themselves with such blind fanaticism is being smashed to bits by this administration!” I slapped the electric chair with my free hand for emphasis (luckily it wasn’t live) and glanced toward Uncle Sam for approval: surely now—but he was in a furious temper, his blue eyes blazing, his elbows and coattails starchily akimbo, stamping his feet and holding up eight fingers, all atremble with rage…and what was amazing was that he seemed to be holding all of them up on one hand!
What was wrong? What was he trying to say? The Paramount clock said 7:53, but all I could think of at the moment were the eight minutes on the Doomsday Clock, and I broke out in a cold sweat—though it wasn’t any goddamn international apocalpyse, which I only half believed in anyway, that I was thinking of, but my own: I was at the cliff’s edge! This was sink or swim, do or die! “Fellow citizens!” I gasped, trying to calm myself, keep the words (something about liberty, the incomparable Constitution, and shrinking violets) from disintegrating in my mouth. Would he strike me? “We must seize the moment! Complacency is dangerous! So, uh, we must stir our stumps and go to work. I remember our mother used to get up at five o’clock every morning to bake pies, and…and…what I am saying is that America is what made hard work great! Or rather…” I could feel it all breaking down inside, like wires fusing, burning at the ends, bulbs blowing: why did this always happen to me? Why could I never please him, no matter what I did? “That and a certain inner drive, and the power of prayer, and moral fiber, and, uh, moral—dignity! No, decency!” Was that right?
My head was fizzing and popping. Out front, people were shouting: “SPEAK UP! CAN’T HEAR!” A fight had broken out in the VIP section between some business types (lawyers?) and some larger-than-life Suffragettes who seemed to be trying to drag the poor bastards off to a beached whale a couple of blocks away, Harold Stassen was grimacing openly and poking Bob Bliss meaningfully in the ribs, and back in the wings Brownell, Kaufman, Saypol, and the rest were all whey-faced with some sudden terror, which so far as I could tell had something to do with the baggy-eyed character who was still trying
to crawl up onto the stage in front of me—he had one elbow over the top now and was groping about for something to grab a hold of with his other hand.
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