Robert Coover - Public Burning

GROUCHO: It ain’t incredible — that’s the reason!

CHICO: “Incidentally, da clinic doctor he examine my back lasta week and sent a report to da head doctor.”

GROUCHO: Yeah, that’s what you need all right, a head doctor!

The plot of their sketch — if anything the Marx Brothers do can be said to have a plot — turns around the American Government’s offer to commute their death sentences in exchange for information about the spy ring. Harpo can’t talk, of course, being mute, and so is strapped into the electric chair, but Groucho snaps up the offer:

GROUCHO: I’ll name anybody! My mother, my agent, even my mistress!

CHICO: Whatta you sayin’? You ain’ got a misteriss! You ain’ even got a cockyerbine!

GROUCHO: I’ll name her, too!

CHICO: Whatta you gonna name her?

GROUCHO: ( singing and rolling his eyes ) I think I’ll name her “Jasmine”…

CHICO: Jas’ yours?

GROUCHO: ( continuing )… Cuz she’s mighty lak’a rose!

CHICO: Oh, a Pinko, eh? We’re gettin’ to da bottomma dis!

GROUCHO: You been there, too, hunh?

CHICO: She’sa da one what’s stole-a da bum’, eh?

GROUCHO: She didn’t steal it, she was born with it!

CHICO: And she gave it to da Russians?

GROUCHO: She gave it to everybody!

CHICO: Dat’sa terrible! Murder is dwarfed by comparitson!

GROUCHO: Yeah, she gave it to dwarfs, too!

CHICO: She’s gonna get da hot seat for dis!

GROUCHO: That’s no good.

CHICO: No good?

GROUCHO: She’s already got it.

CHICO: Hey, you know somet’in’? I t’ink you gotta somet’in’ to hide!

GROUCHO: Yeah, well, it ain’t nothing to brag about, I admit.

CHICO: Iff a you don’ talk, Mr. Roastenbug, we gonna givva you da chair!

GROUCHO: Okay, don’t bother to wrap it, I’ve got my car.

CHICO: I mean-a you gotta sit in dat chair and face-a da music!

GROUCHO: Face the music! That’s why you call it Sing Sing, hunh?

CHICO: Dat’sa what I say: you gotta face-a da music music!

Harpo meanwhile has been listening to all of this with goggle-eyed astonishment, and now this talk about music has aroused his curiosity. He searches about the chair and finds two loose wires. He holds one of them expectantly up to his ear: he hears nothing. He tries the other: still nothing. He frowns and rolls his eyes. He holds the two wires a few inches apart and sparks fly. He thinks about this a minute, then, smiling idiotically, sticks both wires in his ears at the same time. There’s a buzzing crackling noise and Harpo’s smile spreads. His eyes roll round and round and his lashes flutter. He seems slowly to levitate from the chair, his body aglow. Chico, the Executioner, looks up in alarm. “Hey, whatcha doin’!” he cries, and rushes to the switch to turn off the current. Harpo drops back into the chair. Groucho and Chico lift him out and stand him on his feet. He’s still grinning blissfully, his head lolling about, his eyes crossing and rolling as though unassociated with each other, his feet barely touching the floor. He makes little fluttering motions with his hands to suggest he’s been hearing music. Chico puts his ear to Harpo’s chest to listen to his heart: “It’sa Duh-four-shocksa New Worlt Sinfunny!” he cries in amazement. “It is, hunh?” says Groucho. “Well, put another nickel in, maybe the old one’s on the other side!” He leans his head in under Chico’s to have a listen, but Harpo keels over: his legs and arms twitch and shake, then collapse. “It musta been-a da las’ movement,” says Chico. “Looked more like Madame Butterfly to me!” says Groucho, bobbing his eyebrows.

CHICO: No, I mean-a he kick-a da bucket!

GROUCHO: Bucket? What bucket?

CHICO: ( looking around ) Ain’t dere a bucket?

GROUCHO: No! Let’s get outa here before they think we stole that, too!

43…42…Uncle Sam comes hurrying out, bobbing his stern white brows and imitating Groucho’s famous stiff-backed ass-to-the-ground stride, to garner the last burst of laughter and applause and shower crisp greenbacks like confetti on the many prize-winners, reminding all present with his freehanded beneficence of America’s greatest asset: her bottomless kitty. Then he rears up straight and tall and hollers out: “Now is the hour, fellers and citizens! Enough of this monkey business! We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” And with a grand wave of his red-white-and-blue plug hat, he brings on a Texas high-school marching band, batons flying, legs kicking, drums rolling, plumes fluttering, to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The people bellow forth, drunk enough now to try the high notes, rapturous tears springing to their eyes, their hearts beating faster…it’s coming now…40…

During the suspenseful “say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave” line, Uncle Sam suddenly whips his top hat high into the air, far out of sight, then dashes backstage, crying out to Betty Crocker: “Okay, get your sweet buns out there, dumplin’, and preparest a table before me in the presents a mine inimies!” He whacks her lovingly on her corseted butt as he flies by, popping all her stays and reminding old-timers in the wings of the slap Teddy Roosevelt laid on his favorite niece, Eleanor, as he gave her away in holy wedlock to the Great I Am, or of crusty Zack Taylor smacking Old Whitey on the rump as he sent him out to pasture on the White House lawn. And then the next time he’s seen is when he comes riding up from behind the crowd, out of the Disney menagerie tent, astride the gigantic GOP elephant, its red-white-and-blue crown studded with spangles that spell out Long Tom Jefferson’s article of faith: WE ARE ALL REPUBLICANS!

Just as the people sing, “What is that which the breeze…half conceals, half discloses,” Uncle Sam reaches far up into the darkening sky and snatches his plug hat as it comes spinning down…

“’Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

Uncle Sam pops his hat back on his head, but it doesn’t sit there — it keeps hopping up and down and seems to have little feet sticking out. He takes it off and peers inside, and with a surprised look on his face plucks out: a dove! the dove of peace! He lets it go — no, not a dove after all, it’s the famous floo-floo bird: there it goes, winging its way backwards over the crowd, squawking raucously and crumpling its tail-feathers on billboards and skyscrapers. The people cheer the bird and shout misdirections at it, fight for the coins spilling out of the pantaloon pockets of Uncle Sam, who’s now doing a handstand on the elephant’s head. The Democrats’ mascot donkey comes trailing behind, evidently excited by all this patriotic brouhaha and so bearing — besides the familiar legend you NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD! stitched on its saddle blanket — a hard-on the size of Mickey Mantle’s baseball bat. As they near the stage, it nearly gets dumped on by the Republican elephant, which chooses just the moment it’s down front to unloose its considerable bowels, making such windy plopping noises you can hardly hear the marching band now playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

ALL HAIL, THOU WESTERN WORLD! BY HEAVEN DESIGN’D

TH’ EXAMPLE BRIGHT, TO RENOVATE MANKIND!

reads the Loew’s State marquee, and down the street the Roxy announces:

A BOUNDLESS VISION GROWS UPON US…

Uncle Sam posts the elephant and donkey at either side of the Sing Sing stage and signals for the Disney Rat Pack. Mickey and Minnie, Goofy, Horace, and the rest take up prearranged aisle positions in support of the Secret Service (still in their papier-mâché heads) and to help direct the VIPs; other pageant figures line up around the periphery of the VIP section; the film crews pan their cameras around to focus on the main entrance, stage left, zooming in, and the band plays Mess Call. Which is the cue for Betty Crocker: she emerges, prim and matronly, wiping her hands on her apron, to introduce, like the ingredients for one of her famous stuffed turkeys, all the Very Important People who have come here tonight to witness the public burning of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.