“My mother wouldn’t let me take music lessons!”
“I nearly died of pneumonia!”
“I have terrible backaches!”
“I get hay fever in September!” We looked into each other’s faces. Tears were streaming down our cheeks. “Oh, Ethel! You’re so—so understanding!”
“Hold me close, Richard! I feel cold! Warm me with your warmth!”
We kissed again. This time languorously, purposefully, intently. The sweet salt of tears mingled with the now-familiar taste of our lips. I thought: all strength lies in giving, not taking. I wanted to serve. We held each other’s hands. In this long chaste embrace, I felt an incredible new power, a new freedom. Where did it come from? Uncle Sam? The Phantom? Both at once? From neither, I supposed. There was nothing overhead any more, I had escaped them both! I was outside guarded time! I was my own man at last! I felt like shouting for joy!
We separated. We stared at each other through our tears. We laughed. We hugged each other, stared, laughed again. We pecked playfully at each other’s lips. We patted each other’s bottoms. We rubbed noses. It was a bit prominent her nose. Of course. I liked it though: so different from Pat’s.
She cocked her head to one side and grinned. “You’ve got a funny nose,” she said. We laughed and laughed.
“I’ve never been able to let my hair down with anyone before,” I said. I licked her lips, kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her throat, caressed her breasts. “I’ve always been afraid of seeming square. But with you it’s not like that—I feel I can talk about anything with you!”
“Yes,” she said, and squeezed me happily. “I’ve always been afraid of seeming weak. Why can’t people let other people just be what they are?”
“People are always sweating about their image instead of about loving other people. Why can’t we all talk to each other, just say what we feel?”
She kissed my throat, nibbled my earlobe. “You’re so serious-minded, so sincere, Richard, I could eat you in sheer extremity of feeling!” she whispered huskily.
We kissed again. Passionately this time, and now that train was passing through Yorba Linda again, or was still passing, was forever passing and whistling, it was beautiful, I had a very warm and heartaching feeling about it, I was waving at it, the engineer was smiling and waving back, it was Herbert Hoover, I was also the engineer, smiling and waving, guiding my train through lands new, exotic, verdant, vast, my hand sure on the throttle. Everywhere I went people cheered and waved. I could actually hear them cheering! Aunt Edith. Tom Dewey. Chief Newman. Foster and Allen and Moneybags Wunder: I saw them as we went hooting past! Clickety-clock! clickety—all this motion… What was I—? “Ethel!” I gasped, breaking away, nuzzling behind her ear, trying to catch my breath. “We have to get out of here somehow! We have to think of something to tell the Warden!”
She gave me a tremulous hug, shook her head. “No,” she said breathlessly. “They’d never let me go now. Just hold me for a few more minutes. I’ve been so lonely. I don’t feel lonely any more.”
“But, Ethel, we could make something up, you could tell them you were drugged or brainwashed or your children would be murdered if you didn’t—”
“Did you like my letters?” she asked dreamily.
“What? What?”
“Didn’t you read—?”
“Yes! Yes, they were beautiful, Ethel! Like everything about you!” Should we use the Warden as a hostage? Or just tell him she’d confessed and walk right out? Hide somewhere until it all blows over? I glanced about but everything was bare and exposed. “And, uh…your poetry! I liked your poetry, too!”
“Do you like poetry?” she whispered, holding me close.
“I’ve… I’ve always had a feeling for literature,” I said. I knew I had to keep thinking, but it was hard to think with her tongue in my ear. “Plays especially. I’ve written some. Uh…one or two—I just had a new idea for one last night! It was—”
“You could write the plays and I could act in them! I could even sing!”
“Yes! Yes, it’s not too late!” I cried. “We’re still young, Ethel!” A vast new panorama seemed to be opening up before my eyes. We could go away! to Mexico!—the South Pacific! Why not? We looked at each other, our faces began to twist up—and we burst into tears again. Now we were both sobbing frantically, hanging on to each other for dear life. “Oh, Ethel!” I wept. “We’ve got to—we’ve got to do something!”
“It’s no use!” she bawled.
I knew deep in my heart she was right, but I didn’t want to seem to believe it. “There’s…there’s still time…!”
She was weeping as if she could never stop, her tears running down my neck in a flood. Her hand was under my shirt and trying to squeeze down behind past my belt. I was sobbing in her hair, clutching at it with one hand (a bald spot! no, shaved! for the electrode! oh my God!), clinging to her bottom with the other. I felt like Aeneas, throwing himself on Dido’s bier. I sucked in my stomach so she could push her hand down another inch or so.
“Oh, Ethel! I’d do anything for you!” I sobbed. “If we could only—!”
“Richard!” she gasped, pulling back, her dark eyes flashing through the tears. “Richard, please! You can do something! You must!”
“Yes! Yes, I—!”
“You must take me! Here!”
“Ye—what?”
“Now! Before I die! Give me a chance! It’s the one thing you can do for me!”
“But…but—here—?”
“Quickly! We only have a few minutes!”
“But what if the Warden—”
“We’ve still got time! He said thirty minutes!”
“He did?”
“Hurry!” she gasped. “Now!” She was tearing at my belt. “I’ll help you!” she whispered, and it sent fresh shivers up and down my spine. I tried to help, too, not knowing what else to do. Certainly I was ready if it came to it and if I could be quick enough… I usually was…nobody would ever know…“Two whole years, Richard! Two whole years!”
Our fingers were hopelessly engangled at the buckle. “Try…try to rush things…,” I wheezed.
It fell out through my broken fly then, as big as I’d ever seen it, throbbing like the breast of a wounded bird. I hardly recognized it. She slapped my hands away from the buckle playfully and unhooked it, whipped the belt apart, snapped my pants down to my ankles. She tried to pull them off my feet, but they were getting tangled. “We haven’t a minute to lose!” she cried, glancing anxiously over her shoulder. “Hurry! Get them off!”
“But, but—!”
“You’re not going fast enough, Richard! Get them off!”
“Th-they’re caught on my shoes!” I cried. Damn it, I was doing my best! I seemed to hear my mother getting me ready for school. You’re going to be late!
Ethel tried to help, but the pants were getting hopelessly knotted up. We were staggering about, slapping up against the walls and radiators (fortunately they were turned off), but the goddamn pants would not come off.
I sat down. The bare waxed floor felt cold and hostile to my bum. But I was still terribly excited. I wanted her to do again what she’d been doing just before. “Give a pull!” I shouted.
“We’ll never make it!” she whimpered, hauling frantically on my pants, pulling them inside out and bouncing me around the corridor on my rump in a screeching rubbery skid.
“Hey! Ethel! Ow!” I felt like I was on some kind of awful carnival ride. I was afraid of getting blisters. “You’re hurting me—!”
She caught her breath suddenly, spun toward the door. “We’re too late!” she gasped.
“Oh no!” I cried. “What is it?”
“Can’t you hear it?” It sounded like distant chains rattling. “It’s the other prisoners banging their tin cups on their bars! They’re coming! They’re coming to take me away!”
I scrambled clumsily to my feet—they’d got crossed somehow in the tangle of pants and I kept tipping over. “Help m
e, Ethel! What am I going to do?!”
“Quick!” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter about me! You must save yourself!” She clutched my arm, looked about wildly, spied the open door. “In there!” she cried, and pushed me toward the execution chamber. “It’s your only chance!”
I didn’t argue, I could hear the rattling getting louder, I hobbled and stumbled toward the door with her, hauling at my pants. “Well, it is…it is important for the nation…!” I stammered. She seemed to be rubbing something on my behind. “What are you—!?”
“Your bottom’s all filthy,” she explained breathlessly. “I’m just cleaning it off—now hurry! I’ll try to stall them!” She grabbed up my battered homburg and clapped it down around my ears. She must have been standing on it. The sign over the door into the electrocution chamber, I saw, said: ENTER TO GROW IN WISDOM, DEPART BETTER TO SERVE THY COUNTRY AND MANKIND.
The lights dipped. “Oh my God! What—!?”
“They’re testing the dynamos!” she cried. She spun me around, threw her arms about me, held me tight. “Don’t…don’t forget me, Richard!” she gasped.
“Ethel! I don’t know what to…” I could hardly think, the noises had got louder and I could hear footsteps now, marching up toward the far door. “You’ve been…it’s been great—meeting you, I mean!”
She took my face in her hands, kissed it. I was trying not to panic. “You will be a great man,” she said softly, speaking as though she had all the time in the world. “I have faith in you. You will unite the nation and bring peace to mankind. But above all they shall say of you: Richard Nixon was a great lover!” She kissed me again, long and passionately. “You need a shave,” she said with a shy smile, and tweaked my peter gently. There was a tear in her eye.
“Ethel!” I was afraid I was going to start crying again. I was trying to remember the lines of that play she was in. “Ethel, remember, the valiant die many—I mean, the valiant, uh, taste of death—damn it, I’ve forgotten it!” I could hear keys being shoved into the locks of the door at the other end of the corridor. The autopsy room, I thought! I can hide in there!
“Cowards die many times before their deaths,” she said, “the valiant never taste of death but once.” Was there something caustic in her tone? It came to me as though through an echo chamber. I felt terrible that I’d muffed the line.
“Ethel, forgive me!” I pleaded, backing away. I was cold and hot all at once and there was a roaring in my ears. I had the strange sensation of a body lying on the floor of the execution chamber, but I couldn’t bring myself to look. Behind Ethel, the door was opening!
I was afraid she might reach out, pull me back, try to kiss me again—she just couldn’t seem to get enough! But instead she only grinned sheepishly and winked. “I’ll be thinking of you, Richard,” she said. They were coming in behind her. I ducked back out of sight, reflecting that a man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life’s mountaintop experiences: only in losing himself does he find himself.
26.
Spreading the Table of Glory
JACK: Now let’s see, there
must be something here in these letters I can use for the contest…
(Welcoming applause.)
JACK: A thousand dollars for first prize! I’ve got to choose something that—ah! here’s what I’m looking for: “An eternity of time is crawling along and it seems we’re in a bottomless pit with no connection to reality…” Hmmm…
DENNIS: Hello, Mr. Benny! Did you get stuck down in your vault again?
JACK: Oh, hello, Dennis…
(Laughter and welcoming applause.)
JACK: No, I did not get stuck in my vault, I was just practicing my lines for—Dennis! Why on earth are you dressed up like a cowboy? And what are you doing with that silly hat on your head?
DENNIS: Hat?
JACK: Yes, with that…that cherry on top!
(Laughter.)
DENNIS: Oh, that’s not a hat, Mr. Benny, that’s a pie crust! I’m going to enter a contest!
JACK: What contest?
DENNIS: A Tom Mix Pie contest!
(Laughter.)
JACK: A Tom Mix Pie contest! Well, I never—!
DENNIS: Bang, bang, yummy, yummy, Mr. Benny!
(Laughter, whistles, enthusiastic applause.)
DENNIS: Are you going to the contest, Mr. Benny?
JACK: Well, yes…yes, I am, Dennis. But I’m going to do a more dramatic reading, something on the order of John Barrymore…
DENNIS: Playing it for laughs, hunh?
(Laughter and applause.)
JACK: Now, stop that, Dennis, that’s quite enough—!
DENNIS: Well, I gotta go now, Mr. Benny! Betty Crocker’s waiting for me…
JACK: Betty Crocker—!
DENNIS: Yes, she’s gonna help me with my crusts, Mr. Benny. My top crust’s light and flaky, but my bottom’s a bit soggy—
JACK: Dennis—!
(Laughter, whistles, prolonged applause.)
DENNIS: So long, Mr. Benny! I’ll see you at the contest!
(Farewell applause.)
JACK: That boy! A Tom Mix Pie—that’s the silliest thing I ever heard of! It was a cute costume though…
(Light laughter.)
Probably I ought to have something…hmmm…what do spies wear, I wonder…? Oh, Rochester! Where is that—? Rochester!
ROCHESTER: Heah, boss!
(Welcoming applause.)
JACK: Rochester… Rochester, go get me those old wire-rimmed glasses, and my black gloves and…let’s see…a black eyepatch, and my old trench coat!
ROCHESTER: Trench coat? You ain’t got no trench coat, boss!
JACK: Of course I have! The one I wore in the war!
ROCHESTER: They didn’t have no trench coats in the Spanish-American War, boss!
(Laughter.)
JACK: NOW cut that out, Rochester, and go get my trench coat! The Spanish-American War—!
MARY: What coat is that, Jack?
JACK: Oh, hello, Mary…
(Welcoming applause.)
You know, Mary, the one I wore in the war…
MARY: With the gold buttons and fancy shoulder boards?
JACK: That’s right. You see, Rochester? Mary remembers the coat! Now, you—
MARY: The one that had ‘Remember the Maine!’ stitched on the collar…
(Laughter.)
JACK: Yes, it—what?
MARY: Oh, Jack, I gave that coat away to a poor old man during the last Depression!
JACK: You…gave it away?
(Laughter.)
MARY: Yes—in fact, look out there: isn’t that your coat that old panhandler is wearing?
JACK: Hmmm…yes. Well, it does look like my coat at that…
(Laughter.)
Oh, Rochester!
ROCHESTER: Yeah, boss?
JACK: Rochester, go give that man a dime and make him give you my coat back!
ROCHESTER: A whole dime, boss? Ain’t you gittin’ a little loose wit’ your change?
(Laughter.)
JACK: It’s worth it, Rochester—if I wear that coat, I’m sure to win the thousand dollars!
ROCHESTER: Well, okay, boss…
JACK: And Rochester… Rochester, tell the man that if I win the prize I’ll give him…well, I’ll… I’ll let him have the coat back!
(Laughter.)
ROCHESTER: Yassuh, boss!
JACK: Providing…
ROCHESTER: Yeah, boss?
JACK: Providing he gives me my dime back!
Out front, a hundred million mouths open wide, a hundred million sets of teeth spring apart like dental exhibits, a hundred million bellies quake, and a hundred million throats constrict and spasm, gasp and wheeze, as America laughs. At much the same things everybody laughs at everywhere: sex, death, danger, the enemy, the inevitable, all the things that hurt about growing up, something that Americans especially, suddenly caught with the whole world in their hands, are loath to
do. What makes them laugh hardest, though, are jokes about sexual inadequacy—a failure of power—and the cruder the better, for crudity recalls their childhood for them: the Golden Age. Grandpa Jones delivering lines to Cousin Minnie Pearl about dammed-up passions cracks them up. So does Stan Laurel telling Oliver Hardy (sitting deadly serious in the electric chair with his suit and derby on and one of Ethel’s skirts stretched around his fat belly, split ludicrously down one side) in his soft singsong voice: “Your smile, Bunny, your warm kiss, your sweet voice and your understanding mind are my greatest treasure and pleasure!” (Oliver winces and glances irritably at Stan on hearing this last phrase, cocks his head thoughtfully, repeating the words under his breath, then resumes his pose…) Or the brash little puppet Charlie McCarthy, nothing but a small polished knurl between his wooden legs, fantasizing doing a Rosenbergs sketch with Marilyn Monroe, in which he slips into her cell at night disguised as the prison chaplain (Mortimer Snerd, the sucker, plays the husband, of course)…
BERCEN: I can’t see one little reason why we should ask Marilyn Monroe to be in this skit with us, Charlie…
CHARLIE: I can see two pretty big ones, Bergen!
BERGEN: (through the laughter) Now, Charlie…!
CHARLIE: Say, Bergen…?
BERGEN: Yes, Charlie?
CHARLIE: That chair works by electricity, doesn’t it?
BERGEN: Yes.
CHARLIE: Well, what’ll happen if it doesn’t kill ’em? They’re only singers, you know, not conductors…
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