Robert Coover - Public Burning

My head was fizzing and popping. Out front, people were shouting: “SPEAK UP! CAN’T HEAR!” A fight had broken out in the VIP section between some business types (lawyers?) and some larger-than-life Suffragettes who seemed to be trying to drag the poor bastards off to a beached whale a couple of blocks away, Harold Stassen was grimacing openly and poking Bob Bliss meaningfully in the ribs, and back in the wings Brownell, Kaufman, Saypol, and the rest were all whey-faced with some sudden terror, which so far as I could tell had something to do with the baggy-eyed character who was still trying to crawl up onto the stage in front of me — he had one elbow over the top now and was groping about for something to grab a hold of with his other hand.

“We must communicate the facts and save the American dream because it is related to the innermost striving of the whole world!” I cried desperately. “And I can promise you that we will usher in an era unbelievably prosperous with three television sets in every garage —J mean, automobiles! No… “What the hell was I talking about? What was the issue? Where was Rose — why wasn’t she getting me out of this?

“These people have stones for hearts,” the guy trying to clamber over the edge of the stage complained huskily, pausing a moment to get his wind back and peer up at me. “They have the souls of murderers!”

Aha. I understood now who he was. The Rosenbergs’ shyster Manny Bloch! I hopped forward to kick him in the face. But my feet and pants got tangled up in the flag and I went sprawling there in the puddle of stars, stripes, and inseams, engulfed yet again in belly laughs, and wondering if I could ever, like Truth, rise again. Just like the old potato-sack races at the Friends’ Sunday School picnics, I thought: my head always ahead of my feet. I’d given all I had to give, and all for nothing, it was too little and too late and now — and then it came to me what I had to do! Despite the lack of sleep or even of rest over the past six days, despite the abuse to which I had subjected my nerves and body — some way, somehow in a moment of great crisis a man calls up resources of physical, mental, and emotional power he never realized he had. This I was now able to do, because the hours and days of preparation had been for this one moment, and as I picked myself up and rose naked once more to yet another occasion (or was it the same occasion, infinite in its challenge, that I was forever rising to?), I put into it everything I had. I knew what I wanted to say, and I said it from the heart: “Now, my friends, I am going to suggest a course of conduct — and I am going to ask you to help! This is a war and we are all in it together! So I would suggest that under the circumstances, everybody here tonight should come before the American people and bare himself as I have done!” There was a moment of stunned silence. It was apparent they didn’t entirely understand me. I was frightened, of course; but basically I am fatalistic about politics. The worst may happen but it may not. Don’t worry, I counseled myself, hang in there. It’ll play. Just bring ’em down that aisle! “ I want to make my position perfectly clear! We have nothing to hide! And we have a lot to be proud of! We say that no one of the 167 million Americans is a little man! The only question is whether we face up to our world responsibilities, whether we have the faith, the patriotism, the willingness to lead in his critical period! I say it is time for a new sense of dedication in this country! I ask for your support in helping to develop the national spirit, the faith that we need in order to meet our responsibilities in the world! It is a great goal! And to achieve it, I am asking everyone tonight to step forward — right now! — and drop his pants for America!”

That last pitch — the mounting rhythms, the repetitions, the “right now!” evangelical challenge — all that was straight out of Dr. Rader’s memorable Los Angeles sermon, and I looked about now for friends of the cloth — Billy Graham, Dr. Peale, Father Sheen, Ezra Benson — seeking their support and encouragement: maybe I could even get one of them up here with me! But the person who caught my eye out there in the mob was my own father: he looked like somebody had just hit him between the eyes. He blinked twice, looked around in amazement, then leapt out of his chair and, thumbing off his elastic braces, cried: “That’s tellin ’em, sonny!” Down went his baggy britches, underneath which he was wearing his old white longjohns (good old-fashioned homespun appeal in that flannel underwear, I told myself hopefully, though in fact I felt myself turning fifteen colors of the rainbow, as embarrassed for him as I was for myself), and while he fumbled with the big white buttons, others began to follow suit — or unsuit: first, friends like Bill Rogers and Bert Andrews, Mundt and O’Konski, then Bill Jenner, Tom Dewey, my brothers Donald and Edward, Homer Capehart, Strom Thurmond, George Smathers, and with that some of the Democrats, too, guys like Stennis and Rivers, Don Wheeler, Jimmy Byrnes…

“IT’S A SHOWDOWN!” they cried.

“PANTS DOWN FOR GOD AND COUNTRY!”

“PANTS DOWN FOR JESUS CHRIST!”

“WHOOPEE!”

“FOR THE COMMON MAN!”

“DEEDS NOT WORDS!”

“PANTS DOWN FOR DICK!”

It was spreading now, spreading fast, some of those larger-than-life Cowboys were dropping their chaps, the Pilgrims, Riverboat Gamblers, and Doughboys, governors and judges, secretaries and bureaucrats, and on out into the masses beyond: I saw old Joe Kennedy’s pants come down in a twinkling, Herbert Philbrick’s, too, Yehudi Menuhin’s and Hopalong Cassidy’s, Rocky Marciano’s, Sumner Pike’s — and it was even catching on among some of the left-wing radicals — Humphrey Bogart, Dean Acheson, Walter Lippmann and Herbert Lehman, Ralph Bunche, John L. Lewis — the din of crashing belt buckles and ripping zips was deafening! And women as well — Eisa Maxwell, Teresa Wright, Bess Truman, all the ladies in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — all hiking their skirts and pulling down their drawers, corsets, girdles, whatever they had up there! A few of the more fastidious types were pulling their pants all the way off, but most of them just left them in a heap around their feet, staggering about in tight little circles to cheer the others on and see what their neighbors had. There were scattered screeches of protest from the timid, a few ugly assaults by the lunatic fringe, small riots breaking out in the vicinity of Mickey Mantle, Marilyn Monroe, Captain Video, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and a major stir when Christine Jorgensen’s drawers came down, but essentially it was a great success, a real vote of confidence! Not that it wasn’t a pretty traumatic experience to see Mom with her underwear ballooning down around her feet, Dad in a ferocious Black Irish fit, still tied up in his longjohns, or Pat, the strain showing on her thin sad face from trying to hold back the tears, stoically raising her printed cotton skirt and fumbling with her garters, but I knew that, whatever the cost, I’d won the day, the victory was mine!

“I have a profound conviction,” I cried, “that with that kind of patriotism, that kind of love of country, we shall never lose sight of the American dream! And with that spirit, we shall make that dream come true! I pledge to you tonight that I shall meet—“

“Hey, dat’s ma boy, over dere, doing dat!” laughed Uncle Sam coldly, striding forward to cut me off at last. Behind him, I saw Herb Brownell and Irving Kaufman, their pants half-lowered, not knowing which way to jump. “Lo, how he urges and urges, leavin’ the masses no rest nor britches neither! Hoo boy! it takes a long cumbustificashun to throw dust in the eyes a commonal sense!” He looked outwardly cheerful, but under the forced laughter it was plain to see he was really smoldering — and for good reason: after all, if I was right about his having rigged this entire humiliation ceremony for my dubious benefit, I had turned the tables on the old coot and fucked up his timetable to boot!