by Philip Roth
MILITARY COACH: Objection! Enough mollycoddling of the enemy. Let’s get it over with once and for all. Shoot ’em!
TRICKY (considering): Interesting idea. I mean that is just about as decisive as you can get, isn’t it? But may I ask, General, shoot ’em after we round ’em up, or before? This of course is the problem we always have, isn’t it?
MILITARY COACH: After, sir, and we are running the same old risk.
LEGAL COACH: On the other hand, General, before and don’t think you aren’t running a risk too. Before, and I can tell you now, sure as we’re sitting here, you are going to get those civil-rights nuts down on your neck, and I tell you they are a great big pain in the ass to everybody involved, and can tie up my staff for days at a time.
MILITARY COACH: Granted, they are a nuisance. But after, and you are going to get yourself mired down with these Boy Scouts just the way we are mired down in Southeast Asia. After, and you are sacrificing what is fundamental to the success of any attack: the element of surprise. Common sense tells us that even the enemy is not so stupid as to stand around waiting to be shot, but if he has had sufficient warning that he is about to be killed, will take some kind of cowardly and, often enough, vicious means of protecting his life, such as fighting back. Now I, of course, abhor that kind of deviousness as much as anyone; nonetheless we must face up to it: these people haven’t the slightest sense of fair play, and many of them will not even stand still waiting around to be jailed, let alone killed.
And what about the moral issue? I have a conscience to live with, gentlemen, I have a tradition to uphold, I am responsible to something more important than dollars and cents. And I tell you, I will not mollycoddle the enemy at the risk of American lives, unless of course I am ordered to do so. Mr. President, I must speak from my heart, I would be remiss as a General of the United States Army if I did not. Mr. President, if on the day you took office we had, with your permission, lined up and shot every single Vietnamese we could find, by so doing we would have saved fifteen thousand American lives. Instead, sir, following the course of action that you have ordered as Commander-in-Chief, and shooting and blowing them up piecemeal, catch as catch can, ten here, twenty there, and so on, we have suffered severe losses of both men and materials.
Admittedly, by doggedly pursuing your strategy, we are now beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. And I have every hope that we will be able to help you make good on your promise to the American people, that by Election Day 1972, and according to your own secret timetable, you will have accomplished the complete withdrawal of the Vietnamese people from Vietnam.
My point, sir, is that we have ways of accomplishing such withdrawals in a matter of hours. I beg of you, Mr. President, let us not repeat the errors of Vietnam in our own backyard.
LEGAL COACH: Of course, Mr. President, I cannot fault the General on his tactical wisdom, and believe me, I am not for a moment worried about taking on these civil-rights nuts. It’s just that if we shoot these Scouts in the street before we round ’em up and jail ’em, it is, as I said, going to create an awful lot of unnecessary busy-work for my staff, many of them first-rate young men whom I can employ at far more useful and worthwhile tasks.
However, before or after, Mr. President, whichever you choose, you can count on my support. But for you to go on TV and make a confession, or an apology, or any kind of explanation for yourself whatsoever, well, to my mind, nothing could more seriously undermine your moral and political authority, or constitute a graver threat to the cause of law and order. I will even go so far as to say that if you appear in any way to give ground on this issue—or any issue for that matter—you will be opening the floodgates to anarchy, socialism, communism, welfarism, defeatism, pacifism, perversion, pornography, prostitution, mob rule, drug addiction, free love, alcoholism, and desecration of the flag. You’ll see a rise just in jaywalking that will stagger the imagination. Now I don’t mean to throw a scare into anyone, but the fact is a vast criminal element in this country is waiting for just a single sign of weakness in our leader, so as to make its move. Anything at all that might suggest to them that Trick E. Dixon is not totally in control, of himself and the nation, and I hate to tell you what would follow.
TRICKY (interrupting): That’s exactly why I’m having my sweat glands removed, to show how in control I am.
LEGAL COACH (continuing): Now, as you know, there is bound to be a certain amount of blood shed, when we go ahead and kill these young people, whether we do it before or after. This blood is something we seem always to run into with the killings, one of those facts of death we have to live with. Reverend, I see you shaking your head. Are you suggesting that it is possible to kill people, even youngsters like this, without spilling blood? If so, I’d like to hear about it.
SPIRITUAL COACH (anguished): Well… what about gas … poison gas … Something like that? Surely enough blood has been shed in our century.
MILITARY COACH: The only trouble with gas, Reverend, if I may speak here on the basis of my own firsthand experience—the trouble with gas is that unfortunately we don’t have these Scouts in a big open space. If we had them, say, smack in the middle of a desert somewhere, sure, spray ’em and it’s over with.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Couldn’t we get them to a desert then?
LEGAL COACH: How? (Wary) Are you suggesting bussing them there?
SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, yes, busses would do it, I suppose.
TRICKY: No, I’m afraid they wouldn’t, Reverend. I have thought this matter through and I have made my decision: this administration will not bus children from Washington, D.C., all the way to the state of Arizona to poison them. That is a matter in which the federal government simply will not intervene. This is a free country, and certainly one of your fundamental freedoms here is choosing the place where you want your child to be killed.
SPIRITUAL COACH: And there’s simply no way you can poison them right here?
MILITARY COACH: Much too dangerous, Reverend. Start out gassing these kids, and next thing, you get a wind or something, and you have poisoned some perfectly innocent adult miles away.
LEGAL COACH: Of course, you’re going to get some guilty adults too, you know, if you let it spread far enough.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Gentlemen, please! I stand utterly opposed to any course of action wherein the welfare of a single innocent adult is even remotely threatened. I don’t care how many guilty adults you get in the process.
MILITARY COACH: All right with me, Reverend. I’d rather shoot ’em anyway. I have always maintained that it gives the individual soldier a stronger sense of participation and accomplishment to pull the trigger and see the results with his own eyes.
SPIRITUAL COACH (to Legal Coach): And you?
LEGAL COACH: Fine with me. So long as we all realize beforehand that there is going to be this blood, and sure as we are sitting here, the media are going to exploit it to the hilt. I don’t have any doubt whatsoever, given the kind of people who pull the strings in the press and TV, that they are going to blow this whole thing out of proportion, and, for instance, are not going to have a word to say about the restraint that’s been displayed by our not using poison gas, or bussing. I mean, we could subject these kids to what is virtually a cross-country bus trip, a long hot grueling drive out to Arizona, without food, water, toilet facilities and so on, prior to killing them, and yet, as we all know, with the exception of the Reverend here, not a single member of the administration has spoken in support of such a proposal. But will you hear about that on TV? I think not.
TRICKY: Oh no. They never tell that side of the story. It’s not sensational enough for them, not enough gore. Not enough violence to suit their taste. No, it’s never what we didn’t do, it’s always what we’ve done. That, unfortunately, is what these people consider newsworthy.
LEGAL COACH: Luckily, Mr. President, the people of this country are still by and large passive and indifferent enough not to get all stirred up by this kind of irresponsible sensat
ionalism on the part of the media.
TRICKY: Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve never lost my faith in the wonderful indifference of the American people. Just because they happen to see a little Boy Scout blood on TV… Boy Scout blood on TV? (His lip is suddenly drenched with perspiration) They’ll impeach me! They’ll—!
LEGAL COACH: Nothing of the sort, Mr. President, nothing of the sort. It’s only another crisis, you have nothing to worry about. Come on now—cool, confident and decisive. Come on, repeat it after me, you know how to behave in a crisis: cool, confident and decisive.
TRICKY: Cool, confident and decisive. Cool, confident and decisive. Cool, confident and decisive. Cool, confident and decisive.
LEGAL COACH: Feel better now? Crisis over?
TRICKY: I think so, yes.
LEGAL COACH: You see, you mustn’t be frightened of Boy Scouts, Mr. President. Of course they’re going to bleed a little and there may even be this hue and cry about it on TV, but when the country sees this sign that one of them was carrying before the bleeding began (extracts from his briefcase a sign reading DIXON FAVORS EFFING—The Reverend gasps), I think our worries are going to be over. Let the newspapers run all the photos of Boy Scout corpses they want—we’ll just run a photo of this sign, and of the five thousand replicas that I have asked the Government Printing Office to run off by morning. We’ll see who gets the support of the nation then.
TRICKY: Look! I’ve stopped sweating!
LEGAL COACH: See? You’ve weathered another crisis, Mr. President.
TRICKY: Wow! That makes six hundred and one! (Congratulations all around, from everyone except the Highbrow Coach, who speaks now for the first time)
HIGHBROW COACH: Gentlemen, I wonder if I may take a somewhat different approach to the problem that we have been assembled here to solve. All the while I have been listening to your suggestions, I have simultanously been bringing to bear upon the problem all my brainpower, wisdom, academic credentials, cunning, opportunism, love of power and so on, and the result is this list that I am holding in my hand, of the names of five individuals and/or organizations upon whom I think we can safely—if I may use the vernacular for a moment—pin the rap.
LEGAL COACH (his interest suddenly aroused, after initial suspiciousness of “the Professor”): The rap?
HIGHBROW COACH: “The rap.”
LEGAL COACH: Which rap?
HIGHBROW COACH: You name it. Inciting to riot. Tampering with the morals of minors. If you prefer, corrupting the youth of the nation.
POLITICAL COACH: “Corrupting the youth.” Hey, that’s got a real campaign ring to it!
HIGHBROW COACH: And a certain historical resonance, I would think.
SPIRITUAL COACH: At the risk of sounding “square,” may I put in a good word for “tampering with the morals of minors”? I’ve always found it to have tremendous appeal. It seems there is something in the word “tampering” that particularly infuriates people.
LEGAL COACH: That may be, Reverend, but in my book you still can’t beat “inciting to riot” for scaring the hell out of the public.
TRICKY: And you, General? You look distressed again.
MILITARY COACH: I am distressed again! I am distressed every time the Professor opens his mouth! What is this business of bringing charges? Oh, mind you, they’re good charges and I don’t have anything against them personally, but the last thing I remember we were talking about shooting the bastards.
HIGHBROW COACH: General, despite your low opinion of intellectuals, I happen to have the highest regard for Army officers such as yourself, particularly in their devotion to their men and to their country. I wonder if once you have heard me read my list, you won’t agree that to charge any of these five self-avowed enemies of America with the crime, to fix the responsibility for the uprising of the Boy Scouts on any one of them, will simultaneously absolve the Boy Scouts themselves of any real guilt, while totally discrediting the charges they have made against the President. The Scouts will retreat in panic …
MILITARY COACH: But without our firing a shot!
HIGHBROW COACH: The country isn’t going away, General.
TRICKY: Sounds interesting, Professor. But why only one of the five? That strikes me as highly unusual.
HIGHBROW COACH: Well, perhaps, but I was just wondering if we haven’t gone the route with the conspiracy business.
TRICKY: Oh, but it’s so much fun when you get to choose two or three. Each person picks his favorites—and then all the wheeling and dealing, until we come up with the conspiracy that suits everybody.
LEGAL COACH: And, of course, Mr. President, to put in a word here in behalf of the cause of justice, the more choice you’re allowed, the greater the chance of catching the right culprit. My feeling is that just to stay on the safe side, each of us should choose a minimum of three.
SPIRITUAL COACH: I know I’m outside my bailiwick again, but if it is going to improve the chances for justice being done, why can’t we choose all five?
MILITARY COACH: Mr. President, I am growing more and more exasperated by the moment. Here we sit, in the comfort and splendor of this fully equipped underground locker room, in full football regalia, deliberating over the niceties of justice, while, with every passing moment, those Boy Scouts are readying themselves for battle against my men. I think it is high time we reminded the Professor that he is no longer up there in his ivory tower, where you can talk yourself blue in the face about this one’s rights and that one’s rights and how many rights fit on the head of a pin. There is an angry mob of Boy Scouts out there, Eagle Scouts among them, and they are growing angrier and more threatening by the moment. I say shoot ’em and shoot ’em now!
TRICKY: General, you are a brave soldier and a loyal American. But, I must say, I sense in your remarks a certain disregard for fundamental constitutional liberties such as I have pledged myself to uphold in my oath of office.
MILITARY COACH: Mr. President, I have the highest regard for the Constitution. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have devoted my life to fighting to defend it. But the fact of the matter is, we are playing with a time bomb. Right now it is still only the Boy Scouts. By morning, and I can guarantee you this, their ranks are going to be infiltrated by dissolute Brownies and Cub Scouts looking for adventure. Now it’s one thing to ask my men to mow down Eagle Scouts; it is another for them to have to deal with little boys and girls half that size. Those kids can run like the dickens, and they’re small As a result, what right now would still be a routine street massacre, will be converted into dangerous house-to-house fighting, in which we are bound to sustain heavy losses by way of our soldiers shooting mistakenly at each other.
TRICKY: I think you know, General, that nobody wants to save the lives of our boys—by that I mean, of course, our men—any more than I do. But I repeat: I will not do so by trampling upon the Constitution. I campaigned for this office as a strict constructionist where the Constitution of this country is concerned, and if I were now to take the course that you suggest and acted to prevent this group from voting in open and honest elections on the Professor’s list, then the American people would have every right to throw me out of office tomorrow.
And let me make one thing perfectly clear: nobody is ever going to do that again. They have thrown me out of office enough in my lifetime! I will not be cast in the role of a loser—of a war, or of anything. And if that means bringing the full firepower of our Armed Forces to bear upon every last Brownie and Cub Scout in America, then that is what we are going to do. Because the President of the United States and Leader of the Free World can ill-afford to be humiliated by anyone, let alone by third- and fourth-graders who have nothing better to do than engage the United States Army in treacherous house-to-house combat. I don’t care if we have to go into the nursery schools. I don’t care if our men have to fight their way through barricades constructed of lanyards and hula hoops and bubble gum, under a steady barrage of toys being grossly misused as weapons—I, as Commander-in-Chief, will not ru
n from the battle. Not when my prestige is at stake! If I have to call in air strikes over the playgrounds, I will do it! Let’s see them try to bring down B-52’s with their bats and their balls! Let’s see them try to flee from my helicopters on those little tricycles of theirs! No, this mighty giant of a nation of which I am, by extension, the mighty giant of a President, will not have its nose tweaked by a bunch of little brats who should be at home with their homework in the first place!
(All applaud)
Now, as to the voting. Since I am a decisive man, as you can see from my book Six Hundred Crises, I am now going to decide how many of these five enemies of America each of you will be allowed to choose to charge with the crime. Of course, we still have to decide which of the three crimes that the Professor mentioned we’re going to use, but in that it is getting on to morning, perhaps we can put that off to a later date. In the meantime, we will come to a decision as to who is guilty. (Impish endearing smile) That’s the best part, anyway!
Now (back to serious business), we will proceed in the following manner: the Professor will read his list, and each person present will select as many as he wants, up to three … No, two … No, three … Uh-oh, my lip’s sweating—uh-oh, I think I’m having another crisis! Two! Two! Say two!
POLITICAL COACH: Good going, Mr. President—you’ve weathered it!
TRICKY: Wow! That makes six hundred and two crises! Wait’ll I tell the girls what Daddy did!
LEGAL COACH: Mr. President, in that we are to be allowed only two of the candidates from the Professor’s list, may I ask if we can each add two names of our own, should we think we have two more that warrant suspicion?
TRICKY: Well, let me ask you a question. Is this a deal you want to make?
LEGAL COACH: Well, if you want to think of it that way, that’s okay with me.
TRICKY: I’d prefer to. Otherwise it might seem that I was changing my mind because I’m indecisive. But if it’s just a matter of a payoff for something or other you’ll deliver in the future, I think everybody here will understand.