Public Burning

by Robert Coover

  “If all little girls were atomical spies,

  And I were the hot seat, I’d juice up their thighs!

  Oh roll your leg over, oh roll your leg over,

  Oh roll your leg over, the man in the moon!”

  What was I to do? I had to think! I knew, if I was to avoid a no-win policy, I had to launch a counterattack—but how? and against whom? What I needed was an issue, just one good issue—when you’re in trouble like that, you’ve got to find an issue and concentrate on it, not yourself—I was back on my own one-yard line, it was time to throw a long one! time to punt and pray! Maybe that was it, maybe I ought to pray! My Quaker upbringing and religious experience in the Society of Friends had got me out of tough jams in the past, maybe they’d work for me now! But it had been too goddamn noisy. I couldn’t even think.

  Young women had gone bouncing around the car as though being tossed by the violent rocking of the train, waggling their boobs and falling into guys’ laps, grabbing on to whatever they’d found there. Somehow they’d missed me. They hadn’t missed me with the food they were throwing around, though—nor with the bottles of pop they were shaking up and firing off at each other like…fire hoses…. Oh shit, I’m sorry about what I’ve done, I’d thought, feeling the tears spring on cue to my eyes. That was the play I’d learned to cry in, Bird-in-Hand. I’d played the old innkeeper—those lines had come rolling back to me now like an ancient judgment: I shall be sorry for it till the end of my life! Ah, that poor old fellow! I knew that coolness—or perhaps the better word for it was serenity—in battle was a product of faith, but this was more than I could take! And all because I believed in the American ideal of trying to do my best, trying harder, wanting to do good in the world, to build a structure of peace! Oh, I’ve behaved so as I ought to be ashamed, I know, I’d wept unprompted as an egg salad sandwich hit the window beside me and splattered into my lap—but this business ‘as pretty near broke me ‘eart…!

  “This Communist spy had showbizz aspirations,

  Tonight she will be Broadway’s hottest sensation!

  Oh roll your leg over, oh roll your leg over…!”

  But wait a minute, wait a minute—what about all these plays, I’d wondered? We’d all been in them, even Eisenhower in high school at the turn of the century—he’d played the sheeny buffoon in a parody of The Merchant of Venice and stolen the show: “Dwight Eisenhower as Launcelot Gobbo, servant to Shylock,” the town newspaper had reported, “was the best amateur humorous character seen on the Abilene stage in this generation!” It was as though we’d all been given parts to play decades ago and were still acting them out on ever-widening stages. Tragic lover, young author, athlete, host, father, and businessman—I’d played them all and was playing them still…

  “I wish little girls were all Jews from the slums,

  And I were the Judge, I’d blister their bums!

  Oh roll your leg over…!”

  Yes, and a bum, too, one of my best roles, in George M. Cohan’s Tavern, our senior play—and a prosecuting attorney: when I laid my case before the American people and asked them to judge me, yea or nay, during the fund crisis last fall, I was in effect presenting them with the climax of Night of January 16th. But the important one—right now, anyway—was my lead in Bird-in-Hand! That play was about the conflict between political parties, and how love bridged the gap between ideologies. I hadn’t played the lover, of course, that role was long behind me, I’d been old Thomas Greenleaf, the girl’s father who stood in the way: “But look here, my girl, class is class, we’ve always known who was who and which hat fitted which head!” But as the villain, I was also the hero, the bridging took place in me, and I had ever since been the healer of rifts, the party unifier, the fundamentalist who could perceive the Flux, the hardliner who knew how to cry…

  “I wish little girls were all free-loving Commies,

  And I were Joe Stalin, I’d make them all mommies!

  Oh roll your leg over, oh roll your leg over,

  Oh roll your leg over, the man in the moon!”

  And then I’d realized what it was that had been bothering me: that sense that everything happening was somehow inevitable, as though it had all been scripted out in advance. But bullshit! There were no scripts, no necessary patterns, no final scenes, there was just action, and then more action! Maybe in Russia History had a plot because one was being laid on, but not here—that was what freedom was all about! It was what Uncle Sam had been trying to tell me: Act—act in the living present! I’d been sitting around waiting for the sudden inspiration, the stroke of luck, the chance encounter, forgetting everything that life had taught me! Like that night I gave myself to Jesus in Los Angeles, I had to get up off my ass and move, I had to walk down that aisle—not this aisle, of course (I cautioned myself and sat back down), it was too full of crazy people—but the point was I had to make a commitment and act on it! Deeds, not words: that was Ike’s hewgag, but now, unless I wanted to break my back on the railroad track, I had to make it mine!

  This, then, was my crisis: to accept what I already knew. That there was no author, no director, and the audience had no memories—they got reinvented every day! I’d thought: perhaps there is not even a War between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness! Perhaps we are all pretending! I’d been rather amazed at myself, having thoughts like these. Years of debate and adversary politics had schooled me toward a faith in denouement, and so in cause and consequence. The case history, the unfolding pattern, the rewards and punishments, the directed life. Yet what was History to me? I was never one to keep diaries or save old letters, school notes, or even old legal briefs, and I had won both sides of a debating question too often not to know what emptiness lay behind the so-called issues. It all served to confirm an old belief of mine: that all men contain all views, right and left, theistic and atheistic, legalistic and anarchical, monadic and pluralistic; and only an artificial—call it political—commitment to consistency makes them hold steadfast to singular positions. Yet why be consistent if the universe wasn’t? In a lawless universe, there was a certain power in consistency, of course—but there was also power in disruption! I’d let go of the armrests and, farting liberally, had begun to feel a lot better—though troubled at the same time with the uneasy feeling of having learned something truly dangerous, like the secret of the atom bomb—which was not a physical diagram or a chemical formula, but something like a hole in the spirit. The motive vacuum. And I’d understood at last the real meaning of the struggle against the Phantom: it was a war against the lie of purpose!

  A secretary had staggered through the aisle on her way to the toilet, and three guys and a woman, shouting, “PANTY RAID!”, had tackled her and commenced to rip her skirt off. She’d tumbled hard into the empty seat next to me, giving me a jarring thump, but I’d hardly noticed—I could have been hurt, but I’d given little thought to the possibility of personal injury to myself, not because I was “being brave” but because such considerations just were not important in view of the larger issues involved. The whole nation is falling on its ass, I’d thought, my own career is atrophying, only a wild and utterly unprecedented action will save it, will save them, get things going again! But what?

  And then, as they’d dragged the dazed woman out of the seat and spread-eagled her down at one end of the car, it had suddenly come to me what I had to do! I had to step in and change the script! It was dangerous, I knew, politically it could be the kiss of death, but it was an opportunity as well as a risk, and my philosophy had always been: don’t lean with the wind, don’t do what is politically expedient, do what your instinct tells you is right! As Uncle Sam had once lectured me, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts and there abide, the huge world will come round to him—and my instincts now told me, as down at the far end the secretary screamed, the crowd roared, and the Look Ahead, Neighbor Special shot underground and began to decelerate: You must go on up to Sing Sing! You’ve got to reach them! Promise them
anything—first-class passage to Moscow, free time on TV, box seats at Ebbetts Field, a Cabinet post, anything! But get those confessions! Stop these executions! Don’t let that show go on tonight! Hurry!

  In Penn Station, the others—hastily combing their hair, wiping away the blood and vomit—had jumped down off the train and rushed to follow the signs to the Times Square subway trains, but I’d ducked away, found a phone booth, called the Warden up at Sing Sing Prison: “Hello, Warden? This is Vice President, uh, Richard Nixon calling. Are the, the atom spies still up there?”

  “Yes, sir. We’re keeping them here under guard until the last possible moment.”

  “Good. I will, ah, be coming up to talk to them.”

  “You will—?”

  “I’m catching the next train.”

  “I see…uh…is it clemency, Mr. Nixon?” he’d asked hopefully.

  “A new offer,” I’d said.

  “Boy, you fellows are really keeping the pressure on them, aren’t you?”

  “Pressure?”

  “Well, I mean, since you sent Bennett here a couple of weeks ago, you’ve hardly let up.”

  “Bennett—?”

  “The Bureau of Prisons Director—”

  “Ah.” I didn’t know about this. “Well, we’ve, uh, got some new information. Listen, will it be difficult for me to get in?”

  “It’s all cordoned off, but you should have no trouble passing through.”

  “No, that’s true, but, uh, it’s important that I draw as little attention to myself as possible. You know, in case it, ah, all falls through…”

  “Oh yes…”

  “Could you arrange to pass me through under some other name?”

  “Yes, I could do that. What…?”

  “Eh… Greenleaf. Thomas Greenleaf.”

  “Greenleaf. Like the poet…”

  “That’s it.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll arrange it.”

  On my way across the glass-domed concourse, I’d spotted a novelty shop, and it had occurred to me that maybe I ought to have a disguise, a beard maybe, like Greenleaf had in Bird-in-Hand. No beards in the shop, though—the best I’d been able to find was a cheap handlebar moustache. At the New York Central ticket window, the guy had asked me: “Sure you want on that train, bud? Just runnin’ it north to pick up the Albany crowd, wasn’t plannin’ to stop.” That’d be Tom Dewey and his lot—Jesus, what if I failed and had to suffer another one of these goddamn trainrides, and this time with Dewey’s bullyboys? Probably have that man-eating Great Dane with him, too. “Yes, hurry it up, I don’t want to miss it!” I sure as hell hoped I could pull this thing off.

  Hustling toward the train, running all alone against the tide, I’d sniffed hastily at my armpits and wished this place was actually one of those Roman baths it’d been modeled after. It was hot and I’d felt sticky and ugly with sweat. Why do I always perspire so much? “Oh, you work hard at stirring up a good stew,” Uncle Sam once told me, “but people see you work, they see the sweat drop in the soup.” Well, couldn’t be helped, a man had to live with his liabilities. I needed a shave, too, a clean suit—I’d be playing out this hand looking more like Beetle Bailey than Steve Canyon, but it would have to do. Hadn’t eaten since breakfast, I’d realized. My stomach was churning, my mouth was dry, but I’d recognized these symptoms as the natural and healthy signs that my system was keyed up for battle. When a man has been through even a minor crisis, he learns not to worry when his muscles tense up, his breathing comes faster, his nerves tingle, his temper becomes short—in fact, far from worrying when this happens, he should worry when it does not. And I was also feeling an exhilaration, a sense of release and excitement. The worst, I’d reassured myself, was over. Making the decision to meet a crisis is far more difficult than the test itself. And I had made mine: I was changing trains for the future! I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but I’d felt I’d found my form again. I understood the Rosenbergs as no one else in the world could understand them—not their families, their children, their co-conspirators, the FBI, not even each other. And out of that understanding I could provoke a truth for the world at large to gape at: namely, that nothing is predictable, anything can happen.

  I’d reached the train and had stepped aboard, but I’d suddenly been shaken by a cold chill and had stepped back down: was I making a mistake? The train was completely empty, I’d be all alone. I could see others jumping down off the incoming trains and racing eagerly for the subways uptown, and I’d nearly lost heart. The American people are very volatile. They can be caught up emotionally with a big move, but if it fails, they can turn away just as fast. I always felt guilty whenever I deviated from the majority, and now I was bolting the executive party to boot. But what was the alternative? It was Hobson’s choice: certain failure, if perhaps less spectacular and final, up at Times Square—or a possible long-shot breakthrough up at Sing Sing, however hazardous. Maybe I should call Pat, I’d thought, maybe she could help me decide. But what would I say? Anyway, she’d probably left home already—for all I knew, she and the girls might be somewhere here in Penn Station right this minute! Couldn’t let her catch me like this, she’d never understand. Saint or no, she could be a real bitch at chewing people out, and right now I couldn’t take it, not in public anyway. She was like the good fairy who was all right in her place but wouldn’t leave you alone. Besides, the choice, the decision, I’d reminded myself, had already been taken. Had it not? Had it not? The whistle had screamed and I’d leapt aboard the empty train, thinking: Oh my God! they’ve left me alone to do it all!

  Once we’d pulled out and started to roll north out of the city, I’d begun to feel better. It always helped to move. Connected me with time somehow, made me feel like things were in mesh. Like that time I came flying back from the Caribbean to find all those microfilms in Whittaker Chambers’s pumpkin patch. Or my wedding day when Pat and I struck off for Mexico City, the whole fantastic world out in front of us, timeless, borderless, ripe and golden as the unspecified fortune sought by all of the poor but honest boys of the fairy tales. Motion—even random movements—made me feel closer to reality, closer to God. Not that I ever thought much about God—but I knew what I was talking about. Ask the man in the street and he’ll tell you that God is a ‘“Supreme Being.” But “being” is only the common side of God—his transcendent side is motion. Monks on hilltops know nothing about contemplation, all that’s just idle daydreaming. I knew a lot about that, too, I’d spent a lot of time flat out in the back yard staring off into infinity, but I knew you had to keep moving if you wanted to find out who you really were and what the world was all about. It was the real reason I’d always loved trains—not to escape west or east or any other direction like that, but to pull back from the illusions of fixed places so as to make the vital contact. If I’d had time for theology, I might have revolutionized the goddamn field.

  It had felt spooky being all alone on the train—the echoey emptiness had seemed to emphasize the essential loneliness of all critical decision-making, to set me apart in some awful way—but I’d been grateful for the chance to relax, take off my hat and sunglasses, my shoes, unbutton and stretch out a little, without having to worry about what other people might think. I’d tried the moustache on. It had felt funny. Stiff. Ticklish. I’d stuffed it in my pocket. It’s not enough to break the play open with one face, I’d thought, saving the other one to use later in case it didn’t work. If I was going to do this thing at all, I had to do it as Richard Nixon—and not even as Richard Nixon, which was already, even in my own mind, something other than myself, but as just…me. I’d realized that in some obscure way, through my contact with the Rosenbergs, even as remote and unintentional as it was, I had somehow become tainted myself—as though I’d had some ancient curse laid on me (though I didn’t believe in curses, I was getting carried away by those stories from my childhood, the ones our hired girl used to tell, and by this train, its lonesome whistle, the daydreaming—contempla
tion, I mean): in short, I was in a lot of trouble and I’d stay in trouble unless I could somehow absorb this contact, intensify it, and turn it finally to my own advantage. In a sense I was no more free than the Rosenbergs were, we’d both been drawn into dramas above and beyond those of ordinary mortals, the only real difference between us being the Rosenbergs’ rashness and general poor judgment—but then wait: if that was so, was my breaking out a part of the script, too? Oh shit! but then—I hadn’t wanted to think about this, I’d pushed it out of my mind, forcing myself to concentrate on the Rosenbergs instead, how I was going to approach them, what kind of strategy I might best use, what in the end I wanted out of them.