Robert Coover - Public Burning

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”…