Robert Coover - Public Burning

“What? What?” roars Churchill. He puts two fingers in his mouth and lets rip a deafening whistle. People hear troops marching, singing “Yankee Doodle”—they open up to let them pass through — but wait! they’re not Americans after all, they’re Redcoats! A Patriot comes loping up ahead of them, slapping his thigh, hippety-hopping as though galloping in on an imaginary horse: it’s Paul Revere! He warns the Minutemen, and they fall into defensive formations against the attackers. “Stand your ground! Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war let it begin here!” There’s musket fire! Screams! Eight Minutemen drop dead! The Redcoats march on into the center, led by the likes of Hair-Buyer Hamilton, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, and Lord Cornwallis, strutting like peacocks! George Washington organizes his forces and a full-scale free-for-all breaks out! Rhetoric is flying through the air like musket fire: “The die is now cast,” bellows Churchill, popping his buttons with excitement and looking for all the world like John Bull himself, “the Colonies must either submit or triumph!”

“There’s something absurd in supposin’ a Continent to be perpetually governed by an island!” snorts Uncle Sam. “Come on, boys! From the East to the West blow the trumpet to treason and make the most of it! Now is the seedtime of Continental union, faith and the clash of resounding arms, the original Merrycunt Revilusion! I know not what chorus others may take, but as for me, stick a feather in your girl and call her Maggie Rooney! Whee-oo! I must fight somethin’ or I’ll ketch the dry rot — burnt brandy won’t save me! C’mon, you varmints, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the massacree! Laxation without intoxification is tyranny, so give me Molly Stark or liberty sleeps a widder!”

Blood is splattering everywhere. Washington’s tattered troops shrink to a shivering handful. But the old vestryman of Truro Parish gathers them into a make-believe ark and, invoking Divine Providence, they paddle across one of the aisles in the VIP section and take the wassailing intruders by surprise. “A race of convicts — a pack of rascals, sir!” storms Churchill. “They are a set of tatterdemalions, there is hardly a whole pair of breeches in an entire regiment! Bugger the lot!” But it’s not to be: the swamp foxes and backwoodsmen scatter through the forest of VIP seats and pick off the Redcoats like sleeping coons, teaching Burgoyne and Cornwallis with buckshot to their retreating rears the fundamentals of guerrilla warfare. “All right, then,” says the P.M., reaching inside his siren suit to scratch his distinguished ballocks, “we have been subdued.”

Cheers erupt through the Square and beyond as Uncle Sam unveils the stone tablets of the Constitution, said to be the same ones that George Washington brought down off Bunkum Hill. All the “dead” soldiers get up and sing “Yankee Doodle” together, then step back to help guard the perimeter of the VIP area. Winston Churchill and Uncle Sam pick each other’s pockets clean, and Winnie is sent off, amid wild cheering, Uncle Sam’s Dr. T beanie on his head, its yellow rubber fingers flashing his famous V-for-Victory sign.

Then George Washington, the American Fabius, so-called, brushes himself off and leads out all the other Presidents: His Rotundity the Machiavelli of Massachusetts, Long Tom the Sage of Monticello, Withered Little Apple-John, the Last of the Cocked Hats, Old Man Eloquent, King Andrew, Little Van the Red Fox of Kinderhook, Old Tippecanoe and Turncoat Tyler, too, Young Hickory the Sly, Old Rough and Ready, the American Louis Philippe, Yankee Purse, Old Buck the Bachelor, the Illinois Baboon, Sir Veto, the Butcher, the Fraud of ‘77 and his wife Lemonade Lucy, the Evangelist, the Gentleman Boss, the Stuffed Prophet, Cold Ben, Prosperity’s Advance Agent, Tiddy the Bull Moose, High-Tariffs Fats, Dr. God-on-the-Mountain, the Mainstreeter with the Soft Heart, the American Primitive, the Great Humanitarian, Old Again and Again and Again, and Give ’em Hell Harry. As they emerge, wearing their shiny papier-mâché heads modeled from official portraits, they’re accompanied by iconic figures from the epochs they represent: Pilgrims, Pirates, Planters and Pioneers, Boston Merchants, Virginia Orators, Inventors, Southern Gentlemen and their Darkies, Canal Boatmen, Land Speculators, Powder Monkeys and Brave Engineers, Pony Express Riders, Bible Belters, Village Blacksmiths and Forty-Niners, Raftsmen and Dirt Farmers, Roving Gamblers, Lumberjacks, Johnny Rebs and Damyankees, Sheepherders and Cattle Kings, River Boat Captains, Desert Rats, Millionaires, Whalers, Cowboys and Indians and the U.S. Cavalry, Carpetbaggers and Ku Klux Klansmen, Country Fiddlers, Coalminers, Oil Barons and Outlaws, Bluebloods and Rednecks, Wall Streeters, Suffragettes, Rough Riders, Motorists, Movie Stars and Moonshiners, Stockbrokers, Shortstops and Traveling Salesmen, Gangbusters, Quarterbacks, Songwriters, Private Eyes, Self-Made Men, and more, all doing skits, singing songs, dancing in chorus lines, miming the high drama of building a nation and taking over the world. A lot of the performers are as stiff-kneed and self-conscious as those of any home-town centennial pageant — many of them are Secret Service agents in disguise and ambitious amateurs with influential relatives — but the acts flow in and over one another so fast there’s no time to notice, all watched over by a ceaselessly inventive and unpredictable Uncle Sam, who’s out there stirring up a veritable feast of Train Robberies, Famous Debates, Lynchings, Brawls, and Dust Storms, and carrying on his running patter of Yankee proverbs and prophecies, the Singing Saints humming gospel songs in the background.

“Hoo boy!” gasps Uncle Sam, ducking backstage for a second during the Battle of Gettysburg, “what I like mostes’ is showin off!” He mops his broad brow with a red-white-and-blue bandanna and conducts a hasty roll call. Some of the Senators and judges are by now too drunk to recognize their own names, but that’s hardly noticed. What does rile the old Superhero, though, is the continued absence of his Number Two Gun. “As I’m a cockeyed Christian,” he barks, “that craven, chickenbred, toad-hoppin’, duck-nosed mother’s son of a unbroke sea-horse is gonna make me slip my cable and unloose more than my matchless magnanimity around here!” He glances at his fob watch. Sundown’s at 8:31 tonight, still a couple of hours to go, but the Jewish Sabbath starts eighteen minutes before that, the period of “anticipation,” as they call it. It’ll take him five or six minutes each to fry the two thieves, so the most leeway he can allow the young maverick is, say, twelve minutes. “Awright, you bandy-shanked double-jawed desperaydos! Zero Hour is one minute after eight — he’s got better’n a hour to make it! So hustle up them epistolary numbers! We’ll stall till the last minnit with the contest, but if that monkey ain’t here by 20:01 we’re goin’ on without him!”

This epistolary-contest announcement stirs a fresh backstage jostle: Uncle Sam will be awarding silver-dollar jackpots and new top ratings to the funniest, saddest, most terrifying, etc., skits and readings from the Rosenbergs’ Death House Letters, and so all the actors in town are suddenly pressing excitedly into the wings, eager to go on for a crack at the winnings, not to mention a chance to play before this fantastic house. This audience is a dream!

Pretty dismal material, of course, these prison letters, but real professionals are never daunted by poor scripts. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, for example, are working up a dance routine around a single line from one letter of each of them…

JULIE: Honey, I sat so reserved and pent up looking at you through the screen, and all the time I wanted to take you in my arms, smother you with kisses and tell you in more than words of my consuming love for you!