Robert Coover - Public Burning

“I’ve never been able to let my hair down with anyone before,” I said. I licked her lips, kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her throat, caressed her breasts. “I’ve always been afraid of seeming square. But with you it’s not like that — I feel I can talk about anything with you!”

“Yes,” she said, and squeezed me happily. “I’ve always been afraid of seeming weak. Why can’t people let other people just be what they are?”

“People are always sweating about their image instead of about loving other people. Why can’t we all talk to each other, just say what we feel?”

She kissed my throat, nibbled my earlobe. “You’re so serious-minded, so sincere, Richard, I could eat you in sheer extremity of feeling!” she whispered huskily.

We kissed again. Passionately this time, and now that train was passing through Yorba Linda again, or was still passing, was forever passing and whistling, it was beautiful, I had a very warm and heartaching feeling about it, I was waving at it, the engineer was smiling and waving back, it was Herbert Hoover, I was also the engineer, smiling and waving, guiding my train through lands new, exotic, verdant, vast, my hand sure on the throttle. Everywhere I went people cheered and waved. I could actually hear them cheering! Aunt Edith. Tom Dewey. Chief Newman. Foster and Allen and Moneybags Wunder: I saw them as we went hooting past! Clickety-clock! clickety — all this motion… What was I—? “Ethel!” I gasped, breaking away, nuzzling behind her ear, trying to catch my breath. “We have to get out of here somehow! We have to think of something to tell the Warden!”

She gave me a tremulous hug, shook her head. “No,” she said breathlessly. “They’d never let me go now. Just hold me for a few more minutes. I’ve been so lonely. I don’t feel lonely any more.”

“But, Ethel, we could make something up, you could tell them you were drugged or brainwashed or your children would be murdered if you didn’t—”

“Did you like my letters?” she asked dreamily.

“What? What?”

“Didn’t you read—?”

“Yes! Yes, they were beautiful, Ethel! Like everything about you!” Should we use the Warden as a hostage? Or just tell him she’d confessed and walk right out? Hide somewhere until it all blows over? I glanced about but everything was bare and exposed. “And, uh…your poetry! I liked your poetry, too!”

“Do you like poetry?” she whispered, holding me close.

“I’ve… I’ve always had a feeling for literature,” I said. I knew I had to keep thinking, but it was hard to think with her tongue in my ear. “Plays especially. I’ve written some. Uh…one or two — I just had a new idea for one last night! It was—”

“You could write the plays and I could act in them! I could even sing!”

“Yes! Yes, it’s not too late!” I cried. “We’re still young, Ethel!” A vast new panorama seemed to be opening up before my eyes. We could go away! to Mexico! — the South Pacific! Why not? We looked at each other, our faces began to twist up — and we burst into tears again. Now we were both sobbing frantically, hanging on to each other for dear life. “Oh, Ethel!” I wept. “We’ve got to — we’ve got to do something!”

“It’s no use!” she bawled.

I knew deep in my heart she was right, but I didn’t want to seem to believe it. “There’s…there’s still time…!”

She was weeping as if she could never stop, her tears running down my neck in a flood. Her hand was under my shirt and trying to squeeze down behind past my belt. I was sobbing in her hair, clutching at it with one hand (a bald spot! no, shaved! for the electrode! oh my God!), clinging to her bottom with the other. I felt like Aeneas, throwing himself on Dido’s bier. I sucked in my stomach so she could push her hand down another inch or so.

“Oh, Ethel! I’d do anything for you!” I sobbed. “If we could only—!”

“Richard!” she gasped, pulling back, her dark eyes flashing through the tears. “Richard, please! You can do something! You must!”

“Yes! Yes, I—!”

“You must take me! Here!”

“Ye — what?”

“Now! Before I die! Give me a chance! It’s the one thing you can do for me!”

“But…but— here —?”

“Quickly! We only have a few minutes!”

“But what if the Warden—”

“We’ve still got time! He said thirty minutes!”

“He did?”

“Hurry!” she gasped. “Now!” She was tearing at my belt. “I’ll help you!” she whispered, and it sent fresh shivers up and down my spine. I tried to help, too, not knowing what else to do. Certainly I was ready if it came to it and if I could be quick enough… I usually was…nobody would ever know…“Two whole years, Richard! Two whole years!”

Our fingers were hopelessly engangled at the buckle. “Try…try to rush things…,” I wheezed.

It fell out through my broken fly then, as big as I’d ever seen it, throbbing like the breast of a wounded bird. I hardly recognized it. She slapped my hands away from the buckle playfully and unhooked it, whipped the belt apart, snapped my pants down to my ankles. She tried to pull them off my feet, but they were getting tangled. “We haven’t a minute to lose!” she cried, glancing anxiously over her shoulder. “Hurry! Get them off!”

“But, but—!”

“You’re not going fast enough, Richard! Get them off!”

“Th-they’re caught on my shoes!” I cried. Damn it, I was doing my best! I seemed to hear my mother getting me ready for school. You’re going to be late!

Ethel tried to help, but the pants were getting hopelessly knotted up. We were staggering about, slapping up against the walls and radiators (fortunately they were turned off), but the goddamn pants would not come off.

I sat down. The bare waxed floor felt cold and hostile to my bum. But I was still terribly excited. I wanted her to do again what she’d been doing just before. “Give a pull!” I shouted.

“We’ll never make it!” she whimpered, hauling frantically on my pants, pulling them inside out and bouncing me around the corridor on my rump in a screeching rubbery skid.

“Hey! Ethel! Ow!” I felt like I was on some kind of awful carnival ride. I was afraid of getting blisters. “You’re hurting me—!”

She caught her breath suddenly, spun toward the door. “We’re too late!” she gasped.

“Oh no!” I cried. “What is it?”

“Can’t you hear it?” It sounded like distant chains rattling. “It’s the other prisoners banging their tin cups on their bars! They’re coming! They’re coming to take me away!”

I scrambled clumsily to my feet — they’d got crossed somehow in the tangle of pants and I kept tipping over. “Help me, Ethel! What am I going to do?!”

“Quick!” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter about me! You must save yourself!” She clutched my arm, looked about wildly, spied the open door. “In there!” she cried, and pushed me toward the execution chamber. “It’s your only chance!”

I didn’t argue, I could hear the rattling getting louder, I hobbled and stumbled toward the door with her, hauling at my pants. “Well, it is…it is important for the nation…!” I stammered. She seemed to be rubbing something on my behind. “What are you—!?”

“Your bottom’s all filthy,” she explained breathlessly. “I’m just cleaning it off — now hurry! I’ll try to stall them!” She grabbed up my battered homburg and clapped it down around my ears. She must have been standing on it. The sign over the door into the electrocution chamber, I saw, said: ENTER TO GROW IN WISDOM, DEPART BETTER TO SERVE THY COUNTRY AND MANKIND.