Public Burning

by Robert Coover

  (Laughter and light applause.)

  BERGEN: (chuckling loosely) Well, I don’t think you have to worry about that, Charlie. Even if they did survive the chair, there are other ways…

  CHARLIE: You mean, there’s more than one way to cook a crook—I mean, juice a goose…!

  (Laughter and appreciative applause.)

  BERGEN: Yes, Charlie, only twenty-six states use electrocution. Thirteen prefer hanging, and eight use lethal gas.

  CHARLIE: I get it, Bergen: you either yoke ’em, choke ’em, or coke ’em!

  (Prolonged laughter and applause.)

  BERGEN: Yes, that’s the idea, Charlie. But I confess I find it rather depressing to talk about it. Somehow, ever since I passed my fortieth birthday, I—

  CHARLIE: Fortieth! The last time you passed forty, Bergen, they were still using Roman numerals!

  BERGEN: (through the laughter) Now, Charlie…!

  CHARLIE: Well, chin up, Bergen, we all have to go some time.

  BERGEN: Yes, I suppose so…

  CHARLIE: Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, sawdust to sawdust…

  BERGEN: (through the loose laughter) Yes, well…

  CHARLIE: When it comes my turn, Bergen, I hope they give me a choice. If I gotta croak, I don’t wanna be smoked, broke, soaked, or choked to death!

  BERGEN: No? Then how—?

  CHARLIE: I wanna be stroked to death, Bergen—by Marilyn Monroe!

  BERGEN: (through the uproar) Charlie—!

  The naughty boy who gets away with it, the old man who needn’t try, the dumb broad who doesn’t know what’s happened when it’s happened, plus a little danger, a little violence, anticipation and surprise: these are the things that open the Whale’s mouth. As when Buster Keaton, sitting deadpan in the electric chair, calmly turns and throws a custard pie at the Executioner just as he’s about to throw the switch: SPLAT! Some have contended that it was America’s love of pie-throwing that led the nation to develop the atomic bomb. This may or may not be true, but certainly it does help explain the country’s current panic over the possible proliferation of the bombs to unfriendly nations: it’s a cardinal rule of the act that one custard pie leads to another, and he who throws one must sooner or later face one coming from the other direction. Which is what’s happening to Buster Keaton right now, though he seems unaware of it. The Executioner, forgetting his office, has grabbed up another pie and is rearing back to hurl it at Keaton, who has meanwhile settled back in the chair to await, stonily, his electrocution. One foot, however, is loose from its strap, and after thinking about this foot for a moment, Keaton leans forward to buckle it in—just that split second before the pie would have hit him: it hits the prison chaplain instead. Buster, apparently oblivious to what’s happening at either side of him, satisfies himself that his foot is securely buckled to the chair, then sits back once more like a patient bridegroom to await the shock. But now the chaplain has a pie…

  While this is going on, the countdown has begun—55 minutes to Zero Hour…54…53—and backstage there is a frenzied shuffling about as Betty Crocker, wielding a soup ladle, lines up all the bigwigs for their Grand Processional. All the major officials who are assigned, according to the Dead Sea statutes, “to attend to the burnt-offerings and the sacrifices, to set out the incense of ‘pleasant savor’ for God’s acceptance, to perform rites of atonement in behalf of His congregation, and constantly to clear away the fat ashes which lie before Him on the ‘table of glory,’” must now be introduced and guided to their respective places, and who better to set this table than America’s matron saint of the kitchen? Sprung full-formed and all buttoned up from the fat fertile head of General Mills in 1936, Betty is everything one would want in a Holy Mother: sober, efficient, old-fashioned, unblemished, bountiful, and the only undoubted virgin in all America (indeed, it’s been said she hasn’t even changed her corset since ’36), as protective as Athena, as merciful and mild as Mary, as resourceful as the pioneer women who settled America—she is, it could be said, their reincarnation. Her name, which sounds like bullfrogs burping on soft prairie nights, suggests crockery, Crockett, rocking chairs, rockets. “Betty” is a down-home version of traditional majesty, a country nickname for the Mother Country’s greatest monarch and now her newest one. A pie, flung from the stage into the wings, slaps the wall inches from her face, causing Cabinet members and their wives to shriek and duck, but Betty, unruffled, only gazes at it with her cool imperturbable blue eyes, sticks a finger in it and tastes the filling: mm, as she suspected, too much cornstarch.

  Virtually every significant political figure in the nation is back here tonight, ready to go on, ready to demonstrate their wholehearted enthusiasm for Uncle Sam’s purification-by-fire spectacular…all but a few like Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Black, boycotting the show from his hospital bed, is a lousy loser, just about everybody’s given up on him long ago, but the absence of that old rocking socking Phantom-fighter and Early Warning Sentinel Dick Nixon is a more disturbing matter. Uncle Sam himself, backstage briefly during the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland act, is heard to mutter: “Maybe a boxcar of pussyfooters woulda been better after all!” Which is all Harold Stassen needs: “I say, let’s dump the sonuvabitch! Nobody likes him anyway, he just drags us all down! I don’t want anything for myself, of course—I’m only thinking of what’s good for the country…” This provokes a lot of harsh nervous laughter, and the next time a pie comes flying into the wings, everybody ducks and lets Stassen take it on the snoot.

  Out front meanwhile, a lot of famous people have had a go at the prize money, but the performers who steal the show (and anything else they can get their hands on) are the fabulous Marx Brothers. Partly it’s their act, catching the mood of the night; partly it’s the deep affection felt toward these local boys, downtrodden city Jews like the Rosenbergs, but without their crybaby ways; and partly it’s simply the astonishing cartoon resemblance Groucho and Harpo bear to Julius and Ethel—so real that people gasp when they first appear onstage, Harpo (Ethel) sitting in the electric chair and writing desperate letters to Groucho (Julius), which Chico (the Executioner) reads aloud in his Jewish-Italian accent as Groucho goes stalking restlessly about the set in his famous bent-kneed crouch, puffing a cigar and bobbing his eyebrows…

  CHICO: “Canna we ever forget da turbulence and struggle, da joy and beauty uvva da early years of our relationship whenna you courted me?”

  GROUCHO: I dunno, but we can try…

  CHICO: “Togedder we hunted down da answers to alia da seemingly insoluble riddles w’ich a complex and callous society presented.”

  GROUCHO: The answer’s a cracked egg.

  CHICO: “It’sa because we did’n’ hesitate to blazon fort’ dose answers datta we sit wit’in da wallsa Sing Sing!”

  GROUCHO: Loudmouth…

  CHICO: “It’sa incredible dat I should sit in a cell inna Sing Sing awaitin’ my own legal murder, after da twelf’ yearsa da kinda principled, connastructive, wholesome livin’ dat we did!”

  GROUCHO: It ain’t incredible—that’s the reason!

  CHICO: “Incidentally, da clinic doctor he examine my back lasta week and sent a report to da head doctor.”

  GROUCHO: Yeah, that’s what you need all right, a head doctor!

  The plot of their sketch—if anything the Marx Brothers do can be said to have a plot—turns around the American Government’s offer to commute their death sentences in exchange for information about the spy ring. Harpo can’t talk, of course, being mute, and so is strapped into the electric chair, but Groucho snaps up the offer:

  GROUCHO: I’ll name anybody! My mother, my agent, even my mistress!

  CHICO: Whatta you sayin’? You ain’ got a misteriss! You ain’ even got a cockyerbine!

  GROUCHO: I’ll name her, too!

  CHICO: Whatta you gonna name her?

  GROUCHO: (singing and rolling his eyes) I think I’ll name her “Jasmine”…

  CHICO: Jas�
� yours?

  GROUCHO: (continuing)… Cuz she’s mighty lak’a rose!

  CHICO: Oh, a Pinko, eh? We’re gettin’ to da bottomma dis!

  GROUCHO: You been there, too, hunh?

  CHICO: She’sa da one what’s stole-a da bum’, eh?

  GROUCHO: She didn’t steal it, she was born with it!

  CHICO: And she gave it to da Russians?

  GROUCHO: She gave it to everybody!

  CHICO: Dat’sa terrible! Murder is dwarfed by comparitson!

  GROUCHO: Yeah, she gave it to dwarfs, too!

  CHICO: She’s gonna get da hot seat for dis!

  GROUCHO: That’s no good.

  CHICO: No good?

  GROUCHO: She’s already got it.

  CHICO: Hey, you know somet’in’? I t’ink you gotta somet’in’ to hide!

  GROUCHO: Yeah, well, it ain’t nothing to brag about, I admit.

  CHICO: Iff a you don’ talk, Mr. Roastenbug, we gonna givva you da chair!

  GROUCHO: Okay, don’t bother to wrap it, I’ve got my car.

  CHICO: I mean-a you gotta sit in dat chair and face-a da music!

  GROUCHO: Face the music! That’s why you call it Sing Sing, hunh?

  CHICO: Dat’sa what I say: you gotta face-a da music music!

  Harpo meanwhile has been listening to all of this with goggle-eyed astonishment, and now this talk about music has aroused his curiosity. He searches about the chair and finds two loose wires. He holds one of them expectantly up to his ear: he hears nothing. He tries the other: still nothing. He frowns and rolls his eyes. He holds the two wires a few inches apart and sparks fly. He thinks about this a minute, then, smiling idiotically, sticks both wires in his ears at the same time. There’s a buzzing crackling noise and Harpo’s smile spreads. His eyes roll round and round and his lashes flutter. He seems slowly to levitate from the chair, his body aglow. Chico, the Executioner, looks up in alarm. “Hey, whatcha doin’!” he cries, and rushes to the switch to turn off the current. Harpo drops back into the chair. Groucho and Chico lift him out and stand him on his feet. He’s still grinning blissfully, his head lolling about, his eyes crossing and rolling as though unassociated with each other, his feet barely touching the floor. He makes little fluttering motions with his hands to suggest he’s been hearing music. Chico puts his ear to Harpo’s chest to listen to his heart: “It’sa Duh-four-shocksa New Worlt Sinfunny!” he cries in amazement. “It is, hunh?” says Groucho. “Well, put another nickel in, maybe the old one’s on the other side!” He leans his head in under Chico’s to have a listen, but Harpo keels over: his legs and arms twitch and shake, then collapse. “It musta been-a da las’ movement,” says Chico. “Looked more like Madame Butterfly to me!” says Groucho, bobbing his eyebrows.

  CHICO: No, I mean-a he kick-a da bucket!

  GROUCHO: Bucket? What bucket?

  CHICO: (looking around) Ain’t dere a bucket?

  GROUCHO: No! Let’s get outa here before they think we stole that, too!

  43…42…Uncle Sam comes hurrying out, bobbing his stern white brows and imitating Groucho’s famous stiff-backed ass-to-the-ground stride, to garner the last burst of laughter and applause and shower crisp greenbacks like confetti on the many prize-winners, reminding all present with his freehanded beneficence of America’s greatest asset: her bottomless kitty. Then he rears up straight and tall and hollers out: “Now is the hour, fellers and citizens! Enough of this monkey business! We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” And with a grand wave of his red-white-and-blue plug hat, he brings on a Texas high-school marching band, batons flying, legs kicking, drums rolling, plumes fluttering, to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The people bellow forth, drunk enough now to try the high notes, rapturous tears springing to their eyes, their hearts beating faster…it’s coming now…40…

  During the suspenseful “say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave” line, Uncle Sam suddenly whips his top hat high into the air, far out of sight, then dashes backstage, crying out to Betty Crocker: “Okay, get your sweet buns out there, dumplin’, and preparest a table before me in the presents a mine inimies!” He whacks her lovingly on her corseted butt as he flies by, popping all her stays and reminding old-timers in the wings of the slap Teddy Roosevelt laid on his favorite niece, Eleanor, as he gave her away in holy wedlock to the Great I Am, or of crusty Zack Taylor smacking Old Whitey on the rump as he sent him out to pasture on the White House lawn. And then the next time he’s seen is when he comes riding up from behind the crowd, out of the Disney menagerie tent, astride the gigantic GOP elephant, its red-white-and-blue crown studded with spangles that spell out Long Tom Jefferson’s article of faith: WE ARE ALL REPUBLICANS!

  Just as the people sing, “What is that which the breeze…half conceals, half discloses,” Uncle Sam reaches far up into the darkening sky and snatches his plug hat as it comes spinning down…

  “’Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave

  O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

  Uncle Sam pops his hat back on his head, but it doesn’t sit there—it keeps hopping up and down and seems to have little feet sticking out. He takes it off and peers inside, and with a surprised look on his face plucks out: a dove! the dove of peace! He lets it go—no, not a dove after all, it’s the famous floo-floo bird: there it goes, winging its way backwards over the crowd, squawking raucously and crumpling its tail-feathers on billboards and skyscrapers. The people cheer the bird and shout misdirections at it, fight for the coins spilling out of the pantaloon pockets of Uncle Sam, who’s now doing a handstand on the elephant’s head. The Democrats’ mascot donkey comes trailing behind, evidently excited by all this patriotic brouhaha and so bearing—besides the familiar legend you NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD! stitched on its saddle blanket—a hard-on the size of Mickey Mantle’s baseball bat. As they near the stage, it nearly gets dumped on by the Republican elephant, which chooses just the moment it’s down front to unloose its considerable bowels, making such windy plopping noises you can hardly hear the marching band now playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

  ALL HAIL, THOU WESTERN WORLD! BY HEAVEN DESIGN’D

  TH’ EXAMPLE BRIGHT, TO RENOVATE MANKIND!

  reads the Loew’s State marquee, and down the street the Roxy announces:

  A BOUNDLESS VISION GROWS UPON US…

  Uncle Sam posts the elephant and donkey at either side of the Sing Sing stage and signals for the Disney Rat Pack. Mickey and Minnie, Goofy, Horace, and the rest take up prearranged aisle positions in support of the Secret Service (still in their papier-mâché heads) and to help direct the VIPs; other pageant figures line up around the periphery of the VIP section; the film crews pan their cameras around to focus on the main entrance, stage left, zooming in, and the band plays Mess Call. Which is the cue for Betty Crocker: she emerges, prim and matronly, wiping her hands on her apron, to introduce, like the ingredients for one of her famous stuffed turkeys, all the Very Important People who have come here tonight to witness the public burning of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

  And while Uncle Sam, using his corncob pipe as a baton, conducts the band in playing “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” out they come, not marching, but jogging on like tensed-up ballplayers, everybody who’s anybody in the above-board American Power Structure, each one introduced by Betty in her somewhat tremulous old-lady voice (though if anything, it must be said she’s getting younger every day) and welcomed with a rousing “He’s our man!” cheer led by the Indiana University cheerleaders. The first few to lope out pull up momentarily before that unfortunate mound of elephant dung, but since there’s no way around it and no way back, they flash their vote-getting smiles, square their shoulders, and slog on through, and once a path is laid there are no further hesitations. There’s an old panhandler out there, stuffed into a thick wool overcoat like an antique shopwindow dummy from the Great Depression and seemingly rooted to the spot, who’s something of an obstacle, too, but the VIP’s jogging by
merely assume he’s some kind of turnstile (couldn’t be real, after all, not in prosperous postwar America) and stuff quarters in as they pass.

  The VIP area has been divided into three sections, one each for the three branches of government who together have made these executions possible, with pride of place tonight given to the judiciary, the legislative branch seated to their left and the executive to their right. A special section of box seats, decorated with flags and bunting and exhibits from the trial, has been set aside just in front of the stage for those directly associated with the Rosenberg case: the FBI director and agents who broke the case, the Judge, jury, prosecution team and witnesses, the Attorney General, and a ringside front-and-center seat for President Eisenhower, who’s never been one to settle for a side-aisle pew. The back rows of the three sections are reserved for state and local officials from around the country—legislators, judges, administrators, mayors, National Guard officers, tax collectors, Lieutenant-Governors, sheriffs, and the like—and these are the first to come out, followed by all the auxiliary personnel who serve the three federal branches, all the agencies, bureaus, departments, commissions, institutes, foundations, boards, councils, societies, administrations, appeal and claims courts, funds, organizations, banks, services, systems, committees, national centers, offices, and authorities, and all their staff, counsel, secretaries, chiefs, directors, clerks, treasurers, personnel officers, confidential assistants, managers, commissioners, auditors, recorders, consultants, editors, superintendents, chairmen, military aides, receptionists, curators, and parliamentarians. Next come all the key personnel from the major executive departments attached to Cabinet officers, the federal district judges and senior circuit judges in the appeals courts, and all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s a colorful lot, and even plain-spoken self-possessed Betty Crocker gets a certain itchy pleasure out of calling out their names: Laurie Battle! Porque Patten! Zeke Gathings! Rubie Scudder! Jimmy Utt! J. Edgar Chenoweth! Prince H. Preston, Jr.! Gracie Pfost! Hamer Budge! Runt Bishop! Shepard Crumpacker! Errett P. Scrivner! Hale Boggs! Tip O’Neill! Richard B. Wigglesworth! Thaddeus M. Machrowicz! Kit Clardy! Elford A. Cederberg! Dewey Short! Morgan M. Moulder! Norris Cotton! T. Millet Hand! Jack Dempsey! Stuyvesant Wainwright! Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.! Jake Javits! Usher Burdick! James G. Polk! Page Belcher! Sam Coon! Homer D. Angelí! Wally Mumma! L. Mendel Rivers and Gerry Ford! Percy Priest! Olin E. Teague! Homer Thorn-berry! Winston Prouty! Thor C. Tollefson! Harley Staggers! Melvin Laird! Clem Zablocki!