Public Burning

by Robert Coover

  The rights of defendants and the protection of the Constitution no longer operate!

  These are the plain facts!

  It is happening here!

  Yesterday, the U.S. Marshals were up to serve us with papers setting down our executions for our fourteenth wedding anniversary, June 18, eleven p.m.

  JULIUS

  ETHEL

  My wife and I are to be horribly united in death on the very day of our greatest happiness, our wedding day!

  When, oh when will our agony be over and how soon will we see some daylight? Seriously, this is political prosecution, shameless, blatant, cynical!

  But it must not be a cause for pessimism!

  It is the relentless struggle to live life that defeats death!

  JULIUS

  (tenderly)

  Honey dear, the Sunday issue of The New York Times had an excellent editorial on the essence of June, with particular emphasis on the physical beauty of the lush green around us! This month was ours! Because then we were united as husband and wife and found the boundless joy of a flourishing beautiful relationship! Precious noble woman, even to the end, I am completely devoted to you!

  ETHEL

  My darling husband—!

  (They move to embrace, but are separated by the prison officials. There is an anguished pause.)

  JULIUS

  (to the audience, with sudden intensity)

  WHAT WILL BE THE ANSWER OF AMERICA TO ALL THIS?

  (JULIUS and ETHEL are led out through separate exits by the TURNKEY and the MATRON, respectively. The WARDEN studies the diagram a moment, then checks his watch by the clock on the wall. He exits, in fading lights, through a door with a sign above it. A lone spotlight lingers momentarily on this sign, which reads: SILENCE.)

  CURTAIN

  PART FOUR: FRIDAY NIGHT

  22.

  Singalong with the Pentagon Patriots

  “Between the dark and the daylight,

  When the night is beginning to lower,

  Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,

  That is known as the Children’s Hour…”

  sing the multitudes massed in Times Square—they are enjoying an old-fashioned singalong, led by Oliver Allstorm and His Pentagon Patriots, a bit of commemorative showbiz hoopla to honor the setting and get the night’s entertainment under way. “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,” cries Uncle Sam, peering out on the Sons of Light from backstage. “‘Tis grand! ’tis solemn! ’tis an education of itself to look upon!” The Patriots are decked out in bright star-spangled Yankee Doodle outfits, complete with macaroni and bloody bandages, reminiscent of the uniforms worn by Nelson Eddy in The Chocolate Soldier, by George Washington in the French and Indian Wars, and by Bojangles Robinson when he danced with Shirley Temple. A bit far out maybe, like the Patriots themselves, not the sort of gear the nation is accustomed to seeing in its nightclubs and churches—you’d never catch Percy Faith and His Orchestra rigged out with so much pomp and flash—but the crowd seems to enjoy it, seems to like the excitement the Patriots generate, and they all sing along with open-faced enthusiasm, full throated and glad hearted…

  “There’s a building in Noo Yawk

  That’s sixteen stories high,

  And every story in that house

  Is full of chicken pie…!”

  The starred, barred, and booted Patriots bounce merrily about the electrocution-chamber mock-up with their fifes and drums like court minstrels for a king who’s not yet come to sit his throne, leading the jubilant citizenry through the good old songs of yesteryear, songs their mothers taught them, the hands of mem’ry weaving the blissful dreams of long ago. They recall heroes and hangings, grief and grace, traitors and liars and bloody battles, city lights and purple shadows. They are ecstatic, somewhat drunk as well. They haven’t forgotten the Phantom—indeed, rumors circulate even now of riots and uprisings around the world—but somehow the rest of the world is growing more distant, there’s the feeling that it’s all happening here, here in the street where the whole world meets, on the avenue I’m takin’ you to, Forty-second Street…

  “In the middle,

  In the heart of little old New York,

  You’ll find the crowds all there!

  In the middle,

  It’s a part of little old New York,

  Runs into old Times Square…!”

  The sun has hunkered down behind the Paramount Building on its way to Hoboken, but though elsewhere shadows fall and trees whisper day is ending, here the day seems to reverse itself and brighten again toward high noon, so starry bright is the Great White Way. It’s a real Old Glory blowout! The stage where the Patriots work (they’ve drawn together now, barbershop-fashion, and along with all the others are crooning a set of gentle oldies…“Now Is The Hour”…“The Farmer Comes to Town”…“Let the Rest of the World Go By”…) is spotlit; the VIP area, empty still, is bright as a ballpark; newsmen’s flashguns pop like Fourth of July fireworks; multicolored electric arrows dart relentlessly at floodlit theaters and hotels; and vast neon spectaculars hawk everything from Planters Peanuts to patriotism, campaign quips to Kleenex: all direct and glaring evidence of the sheer power of Uncle Sam and his Legions of Light. The name of the Square itself is picked out in lights atop the Times Tower twice, once in Old English for the origins of the nation and once for its progress in modern sans-serif, and up and down all the streets as far as the eye can see, marquees and billboards glow with apothegms from the Prophets and the Fathers…

  CHEER UP, THE WORST IS YET TO COME!

  WHAT THE PURITANS GAVE THE WORLD WAS NOT THOUGHT, BUT ACTION

  SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!

  THIS WORLD IS BUT CANVAS TO OUR IMAGINATIONS!

  The Paramount Building has spread an all-electric United States flag across its broad façade, incorporating its starry-digited clock in the blue field like a bittle bit of heaven, reminding oldtimers of the moonclock Al Jolson sat in with Ruby Keeler to sing to her “About a Quarter to Nine,” while over the Elpine Drinks counter on Forty-sixth Street, a gigantic flashlight, powered with Evereadies—“the battery with Nine Lives”—shines on a Kodak ad that says: “You press the button, we do the rest!”

  EVERYTHING IS FUNNY AS LONG AS IT IS HAPPENING TO SOMEBODY ELSE!

  The U.S. map between the two four-story-tall bodies atop the Bond store (tonight figleafed with flags: a Dixie diaper for the woman, and “Don’t Tread On Me!” coiled around the man’s joint) is bejeweled coast-to-coast with flickering red-white-and-blue bulbs, giving the appearance of an entire nation boiling over with excitement. There are no dark corners. The singing celebrants, their minds full of old revival meetings, busrides, campfires, and beer blasts of the past, stand in pools of luminous shadows, as though steadfastly afloat in a river of light, while overhead, searchlights sweep the fading sky as beacons to the gathering tribe, traditional signals of a Broadway opening, a casting out of demons, a World Premier, a Tent Chautauqua, a Night among the Stars…

  “Bring the good old bugle, boys, we’ll sing another song;

  Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along,

  Sing it as we used to sing it—fifty thousand strong,

  While we were marching through Georgia…!”

  They’re all whooping their hearts out as they plunge headlong, hand-in-hand with Oliver and the Patriots, down memory lane—which is, itself, from sea to shining sea a marvelous and unending labyrinth: through the streets of Laredo, across the wide Missouri and up Springfield Mountain, over the Old Chisholm Trail on the sunny side of a winter wonderland, in and out of Chattanooga, Detroit City, honkytonk heaven and the Durant jail, up the Brazos, along the E-ri-e, and down by the old mill stream, just travelin’ along, singin’ a song, side by side…

  “Some folks might say that I’m no good,

  That I wouldn’t settle down if I could,

  But when that open road starts to callin’ me,

  There’s somethin’ o’er the
hill that I gotta see!

  Sometimes it’s hard but you gotta understand:

  When the Lord made me, He made a ramblin’man…!”

  So hand me down my walkin’ cane and let us go then, you and I, beyond the sunset, the river, and the blue, down to that crawdad hole above Cayuga’s waters, travelin’ on down the line from out the wide Pacific to the broad Atlantic shore, over hill, over dale, up a lazy river and down the road feelin’ bad, dashing through the snow on a bicycle built for two to catch the night train to Memphis, comin’ round the mountain on a wing and a prayer and tramp! tramp! tramp! leaving the Red River valley white with foam to walk in the King’s Highway down Moonlight Bay, prospecting and digging for gold…

  “Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,

  I have already come!

  ‘Tis grace hath bro’t me safe thus far,

  And grace will lead me home…”

  … where the buffalo roam and the whangdoodle sings way down upon de Swanee Ribber with the greatest of ease, then a turn to the right (every road has a turning), a little white light, and it’s off for Montan’ on the driftin’ banks of the Sacramento, up Sourwood Mountain, over the rainbow, round the rosie and Hitler’s grave mid pleasures and palaces, down to St. James’ Infirmary on the trail of the lonesome pine, and back to ole Virginny in the State of Arkansas, that toddlin’ town where sunshine turns the blue to gold in the shade of the old apple tree—then whoa, buck! open up that Golden Gate ’cause it’s back in the saddle again and glide ‘cross the floor while the dew is still on the roses, struttin’ with some barbecue up Blueberry Hill on the lone pray-ree, bound for the promised land…

  “I’ve been to the East, I’ve been to the West,

  I’ve traveled this wide world around,

  I’ve been to the river and I’ve been baptized,

  And now I’m on the hangin’ ground, oh boy!

  Now I’m on the hangin’ ground…!”

  And here on that ground they stand, all these natural-born ramblin’ men, traveling salesmen, driftin’ cowboys, these knights of the road and brave engineers, rovin’ gamblers, easy riders, and wayfarin’ strangers in paradise, slap up against each other as thick as hasty pudding, jiggling about in unison (they all got rhythm), elbow to elbow and belly to butt, to the beat of the Pentagon Patriots. They watch the clocks tick away the last of the Rosenbergs’ time on this earth, and, voices raised on high, feel the heat rise, the light brighten, their own pulses quicken. The political bigwigs have not come out yet, but celebrities, preachers, warriors, and millionaires are popping up all over, picked out in the roaming spots of the camera crews, and they’re greeted with tumultuous democratic cheers: he too! even he is here tonight! Dale Carnegie! Ty Cobb! Gordon Dean! Admiral Bill Halsey and Hank DuPont! Ezio Pinza, Connie Mack, Cole Porter—and America’s answer to Michelangelo, James Montgomery Flagg! Some duck shyly away when discovered, some wave, others take a turn onstage with the Patriots, now swinging into one of their Electrocution Night specials, Lu Ann Simms’s current smash hit, “It’s the End of the Line”—“It’s all over but the blues!” they groan, and the place goes wild.

  Underground meanwhile, in the closed-off Times Square subway station, Uncle Sam is busily sorting out the official celebrants and lining them up for the procession to come: first the legislative branch, which passed the operant laws, then the judiciary, which has brought the convictions, and finally the executive branch, whose task it is tonight to pull the switch: not even during the frenzy of such a grand national festival as this one does Uncle Sam miss the opportunity for a little civics lesson. He glances about impatiently for the missing Vice President. “Hark! For his voice I listen and yearn; it is growing late and my boy does not return!”

  “My sources indicate he was on the afternoon train,” reports J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, and Allen Dulles of the CIA concurs: “Maybe the rube got lost on the subways.”

  “C-r-e-a-t-i-o-n!” growls Uncle Sam. “Nature never makes any blunders, when she makes a fool she means it!” He is irate, but oddly there is a frosty twinkle in his eye. Tipping his plug hat threateningly down over his eyebrows like a Marine corporal’s, he turns on the Boss of the FBI to snap: “Goddamn it, Speed, what’re ya just standin’ around here for? You better find that rapscallious young giddyfish and haul him back here in three double quick time, or cuss me if I don’t wool blue lightnin’ outa your nancy-pantsy fanny! I can drag my boots and hold the earth back a notch or two, but it’s got a slick axle and I can’t grip it to a standstill! So get that snoot in the dirt, houn’-dog! If we don’t pull that switch before the sun goes down, I wouldn’t risk a huckleberry to a persimmon that we’ll none of us see it whistle up again!”

  “I hate to see that evenin’ sun go down when day is done and all de worl’ am sad and dreary,” sing the multitudes up in the Square as though in antiphonal response, but sad and dreary nothing, they’re all atremble with joy and anticipation, awaiting the climax of the ceremonies with such fierce eagerness—goldurn! it’s a big night, Maude!—that the minutes seem to crawl by like hours. The jam-up makes it hard to shift about now so the boys from City Hall are working the crowd like church ushers, passing community bottles up and down the lines. Eisenhoppers are bounding and squeaking, toy chairs smoking, Fourth of July firecrackers popping. “As John Brown once said,” says Uncle Sam, come up from below to watch the proceedings, “this is a beautiful country! Ubi libido ibi patria!” He signals and Oliver Allstorm and His Pentagon Patriots, illuminated now by weird red, white, and blue flashing lights and supported by the Radio City Rockettes, fan out across the stage to lead the people in their last big number of the night, the hit that has made the Patriots famous and assured their immortality: “Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Traitors to the U.S.A., Must Die”…

  “This man and wife, this guilty pair

  Must die in the Electric Chair,

  So rang the Judge’s fervent Cry

  These traitors are condemned to die!

  And burn for treason, guilt and shame,

  So let us note each traitor’s name—

  Julius Rosenberg

  And Ethel Rosenberg

  Both tried to sell

  America to

  A Russian hell…”

  Threading her way now through the dignitaries, comedians, musicians, evangelists, and police detachments backstage, dressed in a dark suit with lace frills, a crisp white handkerchief in her breast pocket and her graying hair neatly but not severely combed back, comes General Mills’s famous daughter Betty Crocker, hostess for the VIP processional to follow. Uncle Sam greets her with an ebullient wave of his star-spangled plug hat—“Let Grandmaw through there!” he shouts—and invites her to share his peephole.

  She bends over stiffly to peer out, and what she sees out there is a terrible excitement, an impressive agitation: thousands upon thousands of people, singing at the top of their lungs, most of them well beyond either sobriety or modesty, led by a noisy group of musicians, even more rambunctious and ostentatious than Rudy Vallee and his Connecticut Yankees, and though they’re singing about “cooking” and “frying,” she certainly doesn’t recognize it as a recipe from her cookbook! Goodness! Fights are breaking out here and there in the heat of the packed masses, hard liquor is being passed about freely, girls are kicking their bare legs high in the sky, and there’s a lot of rude behavior—but there’s a positive excitement out there, too. She sees flags being unfurled everywhere, patriotic lighting displays, fireworks, Red Cross teams rushing through the crowds with bromides, film crews hovering from derricks and lifts, capturing it all for posterity, which Betty, like all Americans, believes in. Every window of every building looking out on the Square is packed with happy cheering people, even the rooftops, and the billboards and theater marquees bear impassioned messages like NEW YORK, THY NAME’S DELIRIUM! and LET NO GUILTY MAN ESCAPE! and WHAT A SWELL PARTY THIS IS! “My sakes,” she remarks, squinting out through the peephole, “it’s getting a bit wild,
isn’t it?”

  “Yes, honey,” laughs Uncle Sam, “there yam a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last act of the Patriots, what I greatly admire! We ain’t had so much as a skumpy lynching in this land o’ hope and glory for a year and a half, there’s a real bodacious belly-wringin’ appetite up! You feel it, too? O, it sets my heart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock…!”

  “…Now should this pair outwit the law

  And wriggle from death’s bloody maw;

  An outraged nation with a yell

  Shall drag them from their prison cell

  And hang them high

  Beyond life’s hope,

  To swing and die

  And dangle from

  The Hangman’s Rope…!”

  “But aren’t they a little bit…well…extreme?”

  “Don’t worry,” smiles Uncle Sam, stroking her pastry-fattened thighs. “This is their big moment, but they won’t last the night out.”

  “…Then, while the buzzards make a feast

  On their Red flesh as on a beast;

  Our natives shall rejoice and sing

  And shout while these two traitors swing,

  And freedom’s cry shall soar and swell

  With songs that echo—’All is…’”

  “Well,” quoth Uncle Sam as the Pentagon Patriots swing into their final chorus, “the ole Doomsday Clock on the wall tells me it is the hour of fate and the last full measure of devotions, so step up, all you screamers—it’s outa the strain of the Doing, and inta the peace of the Done!” Besides all the preachers, comics, and politicians crowding backstage with Uncle Sam, there are also scores of actors, dressed up as American Patriots and Presidents, Pilgrims and Pioneers, famous Warriors, Broncbusters, Prophets, Prospectors, and Railroad Barons, all part of the pageant to come. “You are about to embark upon a great crusade, my children, toward which we have strove these many months, so make sure your fly’s buttoned up and your seams are straight! I wanna see a lotta hustle tonight—when your name is called up there I want you to move! Let the catamount of the inner varmint loose and prepare the engines of vengeance, for the long looked-for day has come!”