Robert Coover - Public Burning

The Warden stepped into an alcove to the left of the chair and turned on a big barn-door spotlight. “This is where the electrician works,” he said. The switch was a long handle with a big knob on the end, like a gearshift lever on an old Ford. It was in full view of the chair, lit up like a special exhibit. The victim was denied nothing.

“Must be hard to find anybody to take the job,” I said.

“Last time there was an opening,” said the Warden, “there were over seven hundred applicants. That was when we hired Mr. Francel.” This seemed to prove something to me that I’d always believed, though I couldn’t remember exactly what it was. The Warden stood in the alcove, talking about volts and cycles and amperes, rheostats and dynamos, but I was thinking: the old legends about Death were closer to the truth than the ones we had now — it was a substantial reality, a kind of person, an active intervention in the endless process of life. “The current enters the body through a metal electrode lined with a wet sponge and placed on top of the head, toward the back, the hair having been shaved from this area to provide a good contact.”

“I see…”

“It leaves the body through a similar electrode strapped to the calf of the left leg. The flesh’s resistance to such a current generates a great heat and the body’s temperature shoots up as high as a hundred and forty degrees — which is enough in itself to render most of the vital organs inoperative.” The cables coiled out from under the chair like snakes, like thick turds, then disappeared into the floor somehow. There were elegantly paneled benches for the witnesses, and near them, oddly, a lavatory. For washing up? But who—? No, I thought: for throwing up in. “The body in the chair struggles convulsively against the straps — it can be pretty appalling to watch, but it’s believed to be just involuntary muscle spasms induced by the current.”

“Aha…” That’s what they said about little Arthur when he went into his meningitis death throes. I wondered if the Warden planned to remain throughout the interview. He was probably hanging around trying to find out what the fresh information was I’d mentioned earlier as an excuse for coming here. “Where does that door—?”

“That’s the corridor that leads to the Death Cells,” said the Warden. There was a sign tacked up over the door that read SILENCE. “We could isolate it for you.”

“All…all right…”

“Do you want to see both of them at the same time?”

“No! Uh…no, just one…” I think that when a third person is present, one is distracted, wondering what his reaction is. Or people sometimes show off to the third man. But if there are just two of you—

“Which…?”

“Either one. Uh, the woman.”

While I thought about that, the suddenness of my decision, the Warden led me out into the corridor and asked a guard posted there to have “C.C. 110.510” brought down. I realized that I’d been planning to talk to her first all along, since back aboard the Look Ahead, Neighbor Special , maybe before. There were black blinds on all the windows, giving the whitewashed corridor the appearance of being somehow lit from within. Aglow. Empty except for the old steam radiators. The Last Mile. I was reminded of the Ambassador Hotel corridor in Los Angeles, the night of my Checkers speech. “It’s so, uh…polished…”

“The convicts here call it the Dance Hall,” smiled the Warden around his long cigar.

“The what—!?”

The Warden watched me a moment as though to ask me: Why are you nervous? — then said: “I think they’re coming.” And he walked away from me down the corridor to let them in.

He’d left the door into the death chamber open, but there was no time to close it now. I stared in at the electric chair, the coiled cables, the white hospital cart, the long black switch, thinking: So this is it, then. I felt suddenly like running, but my feet seemed stuck to the floor. I looked down on myself and saw the Vice President of the United States of America standing, rooted in panic, in the Sing Sing Dance Hall, awaiting the arrival of the notorious Spy Queen, Mrs. Ethel Rosenberg, and I felt just like I’d felt before the Checkers speech: I just don’t think I can go through with this one, I’d said to Pat. Of course you can, she’d said firmly, confidently. Of course you can…

I squared my shoulders and turned to face the door at the other end of the Last Mile (it is a challenging world, yes! I told myself, trying to stop my knees from shaking — but what an exciting time to be alive!) just as Ethel Rosenberg, flanked by a pair of matrons, stepped through. I nodded at the Warden and the two matrons, and they left us, pulling the door shut. We were alone.

“It’s…it’s all right,” I said. “Don’t be afraid. It’s just me, Richard Nixon.”

“And now, oh God of our fathers, we will bless Thy name forever, for we are the people of thine inheritance! With our fathers, eight score and seventeen years ago, didst Thou make a Covenant, and Thou hast confirmed and amended it with their seed throughout all Enlightened Time! Thou hast made us unto Thee an eternal people, and hast cast our lot in the portion of light, that we may evince Thy truth, and from old hast Thou charged our Angel of Light, Uncle Sam, to help us. In his hand are all works of righteousness, and all spirits of truth are under his sway. But for corruption Thou hast made the Phantom, an angel of hostility. All his dominion is in darkness, and his purpose is to bring about wickedness and guilt. All the spirits that are associated with him are but angels of destruction. But we — we are in the portion of Thy truth!”

It’s knee-bending, God-hollering, crying-in-the-chapel time in Times Square for the sons and daughters of Sam Slick the Yankee Peddler. The restless razzle-dazzle of the Pentagon Patriots and the Radio City Rockettes has been displaced on the Death House stage by the Singing Saints of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, whose eyes have seen the glory, and a spirit of communion, like half time at a big football game, has settled on the gathered masses. There’s been a moment of silent prayer (as silent as one can hope for amid so much bubbling excitement) in memory of the late U.S. Army Master Sergeant John C. Woods, the world-famous Nuremberg hangman; the Reverend Bob Jones, Sr., has unleashed his new sermon, “Shoving Jesus Christ Around,” and the Notre Dame Law Dean Clarence Manion of the Holy Six has blistered the so-called intellectuals of the nation for their heretical “allergy to absolutes,” their reluctance to accept the basic facts of the existence of God and the divine origin of American rights and duties:

“…For the sake of pure political hypothesis, it makes little difference whether man is a creature of God or the hind end of a happenstance. But for the sake of American freedom in its life and death struggle with Communism, it makes all the difference in the world!”

His fellow Holy Sixers — Rabbi Bill Rosenblum, Editor Dan Poling, Father Joe Moody, Presidential Aide Sam Rosenman, and Businessman Electric Charlie Wilson — join him onstage and together they reaffirm their righteous fury against the reckless Rosenberg Committee clemency seekers, who “have knowingly or unwittingly given assistance to Communist propaganda…”

…Crafty men are they;

they think base thoughts,

seek Thee with heart divided,

stand not firm in Thy truth!

With stammering tongue

and with barbarous lips

they speak unto Thy people,

seeking guilefully

to turn their deeds to delusion!

I SAY THE REAL AND PERMANENT GRANDEUR OF THESE STATES MUST BE THEIR RELIGION! says the Wrigley Chewing Gum sign, and around the Times Tower on the electric bulletin runs Reverend Phillips Brooks’s evangel: “… In thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight!”