Robert Coover - Public Burning

We pulled out of the suburbs of Baltimore, picking up speed, and as I felt the train propelling me toward New York, I reminded myself, thinking back on that night in Los Angeles: whatever happens, there’s not much I can do about it now — start down the aisle, there’s no turning back. This is always true, the stream of events has a terrific force and momentum of its own. Once a man gets into an important position of leadership — mine, for example — he can set off a lot of big waves, but he can’t turn the river around completely. All about me, people were singing “Go Get the Axe” and “Tea for Two” and, changing the words somewhat to suggest the electric chair, “On Top of Old Smokey.” I didn’t join in, I felt less and less a part of them. I sat by myself, huddled up against the window in my homburg and sunglasses, reminded of the Inauguration: looking out over the stone banister at all those strange people. After the General’s pontifications, they had all erupted in whistling: wolf-whistles, they’d sounded like, as though it had been Eisenhower’s legs they’d liked, not his speech. Some applause, too, but the shrill brutish whistling was what you’d been able to hear best out there in that cold wind. Most people, I’ve found, are complete fools — that’s why it was so easy to get ahead, there just wasn’t any serious competition out there….

We were now ripping along through open country, and the excitement seemed to build as we drew toward New York. The air was heavy with smoke, singing, intense talk, and the smell of booze, which was beginning to make me nauseous. Nobody offered me any of the liquor getting passed around, but just as well. I loosened my collar, leaned my head back. Jesus, that was all I needed now, to get sick. Nothing to throw up, I knew. “Hollow, hollow — like the case against the Rosenbergs.” I’d missed lunch again, hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and though I couldn’t remember what I’d had then, I was sure it wasn’t much. No goddamn corned-beef hash, nothing that would have helped . All I could recall about breakfast was scolding the girls and barking at Pat, which I regretted, even if she did deserve it. She didn’t understand me any more, damn it. I had this big thing to do and she wasn’t paying any attention. She’d lost interest. She said she didn’t like politics — but it was me she didn’t like! I could never count on her when I was really down. Take election day two years ago against Helen Douglas: I was sure I’d lost, I knew my whole political career was ended, but I didn’t want to show this, I had to make it look like it didn’t matter. So I decided we’d all go to the beach. The children, too, I made everybody go. It was a terrible day, I admit, cold and gray, with a bitter offshore wind beating in — it seemed to confirm my worst suspicions and I reveled in its punishment. The girls cried and wanted to go home. I wanted to hit them. Instead, I smiled and told them to go dig in the goddamn sand and shut up. But the worst thing was that Pat didn’t understand either. She sat there on the sand wrapped up in a blanket, sulking and nagging, until I finally gave up and took them all home. I was so disgusted I just pulled up to the curb and dumped them out, then went off to a movie by myself. And now, Christ, she was even complaining publicly about my thrashing around in bed, about my jumping up in the middle of the night to take notes, waking her up with my sudden fears or enthusiasms — I’d made her the Number Two lady in the nation, did she think you got something like that for nothing? Some woman had wandered into the car and by request had sat down on the armrest of the empty seat beside me to sing “I’d Rather Die Young” for everybody, which was apparently a big new hit. I stared at the way her bottom plumped out over the armrest, thinking: I was the only goddamn faithful husband in national politics, and where had it got me? Stranded here on the Whip with a carload of boozy loonies, the cockeyed Community of God. Cast Intact.

“Hey, how about ‘Down the Trail of Achin’ Hearts!’”

“‘Doggie in the Window!’”

“‘Changin’Partners!’”

I sat there in all that smoke and ruckus, feeling sour and overburdened, slumped over my broken fly as over the law books in Durham, wishing the whole thing would get called off somehow. The real crisis of America today, I thought sullenly, is the crisis of the spirit. I’d failed to button my shirt cuffs and the sleeves were bunched up inside my jacket. I knew I should stand and take the jacket off, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Besides, I was too nauseous. The thick smoke, the noise, the dust from the old seats were getting to me. I was afraid I might have a hay-fever attack. I leaned my head back again and from under the brim of my homburg read the blow-ups of letters written to the Rosenberg Clemency Committees, mounted over the windows and at each end of the car like advertisements…

To whom it may concern. All I say is why have they been wasting so much time when the government Knows how guilty they are!.. Its traitors like these human snakes that cause wars. I say Kill them before our silly government turns them loose to cause further hell and treachery and torture to our Sons. Just because they are Jews like yourselves you selfishly want them released. You have taken over nearly all the U.S.A. you ungrateful Dogs. If your friends are released I’m no longer an American.

The distraction helped, but not much. I kept seeing Uncle Sam’s finger shooting out and trembling in front of my nose. Somewhere a glass smashed and a woman squealed.

Build a strong wailing wall with four sides, and put dear little Mammala and Papala Rosenberg in the big middle of this wailing wall in Sing Sing, and let them wail and wail and wail. What do the Jew$ do in return [for being] permitted to live in the U.S.? He is without exception the spy, the Saboteur, “Commies,” Left Wingers, Infiltrators, hate mongers and all around trouble-makers, to say nothing of their intense Zionism which makes Hitler look like an amateur.

These 2 Rats should of been hung long ago & so should you.

A good American

There were more, they were plastered all over the goddamn car, but I was getting too train-sick to keep on reading them. Jesus, we seemed to be picking up speed — racing through piled-up industry now, must be in New Jersey already, the slums and factories were racing past so fast you could hardly see them, flashing by like the flipping of pages in a picture book! Somewhere a whistle screamed, the wheels clacked and banged, I whacked my head on the window and my homburg fell off! I grabbed it up and pulled it down over my ears. The drunks in the car were now singing train-wreck songs at the top of their lungs, but they were completely drowned out by the thunderous ruckety-pucketa of the wildly careening Look Ahead, Neighbor Special . I like campaign trains, I’m no front porcher, but this was too goddamn much! I once read in a dictionary of quotations that politicians were said by someone to be “monsters of self-possession.” Well, we may show this veneer on the outside, but inside the turmoil could become almost unbearable, and that was how it was with me now, I wasn’t even doing so good on the outside! I was perspiring heavily, feeling very clammy, clinging to the seat with both hands. It had always been my lifelong conviction that a man should give battle to his physical ailments, fight to stay out of the sickbed, and learn to live with and be stimulated by tension — in fact, I once said these very words to Bob Taft to cheer him up when he first fell ill with cancer — but now, eyes squeezed shut against the impending disaster, mouth dry, stomach knotted up, and smelling very funky, all I could think of was: I quit! Just let me out of here!