Robert Coover - Public Burning

Thus he yatters on a moment, telling them how he got struck by lightning himself once back in 1917 and recounting in his own inimitable way the saga of the A-bomb theft: “Finally, my friends, we have here this evening to duscuss with you our problems of keeping the internal house. Uh, secure against the boring of subversies and that sort of thing. Now as late as 1949 certain imminent scientists…” But slowly, even as they watch, Eisenhower the happy-go-lucky bumbling oaf gives way to the World Hero, the Man of Destiny: Ike the Divine. Even physically he seems to grow in stature and poise, his voice taking on a new authority and depth as he speaks of the national desire to “stamp out all traces of Communism” and the “power in the Federal Government to defend itself against any kind of internal disease, if it wants to put its heart into it,” the loose charming twaddle fading away, and in its stead: his celebrated “Vision of the War between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness”: “The shadow of fear has darkly lengthened across the world!” he thunders, and in awe they listen. “We sense with all our faculties that forces of Good and Evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history!”

While he lays it on them, smacking his lips and cracking his jaws like a Dallas radio preacher, ten men slip out quietly from the door downtage right, unheralded and unapplauded, to take up their assigned positions for the final act in tonight’s program. Four of the men — U.S. Marshal William Carroll, Sing Sing Warden Wilfred Denno, and prison doctors George McCracken and H. V. Kipp — line up just inside the door through which they have entered. The official Executioner, Joseph P. Francel, moves upstage past them into his special alcove, and the other five — Marshal Carroll’s deputy Thomas Farley, three FBI agents (technically, the Rosenbergs will be able to confess right up to the last moment, though this is not anticipated; the real hope is that, because God is good, some clue, some word or name, will fly involuntarily like sparks from their charged tongues at the moment of their deaths), and a prison attendant — cross the stage left in front of the electric chair to line up by the disconnected radiator along the wall, just downstage of the Dance Hall door, through which the Rosenbergs are scheduled presently to enter. The prison attendant is carrying a bucket of ammonia with a dark brown sponge floating in it, which he deposits on the floor beside the death chair as he crosses over.

“It is, friends, a spiritual struggle!” the President is declaiming. Dr. Kipp’s stethoscope is showing; he tucks it inside his suit jacket, holding his hand over the button. “And at such a time in history, we who are free must proclaim anew our faith: we are called as a people to give testimony in the sight of the world to our faith that the future shall belong to the free!” Executioner Francel flicks on the spotlight in his alcove, checks the switches, wiring, ammeters, voltmeters, rheostats, flicks the light off again. “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid — we must be ready to dare all for our country! Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America!” The Marshal and the Warden clasp their hands behind their backs, feet slightly apart, a formal at-ease position the others on the stage emulate. Two of the FBI agents tip their heads toward each other. One of them glances at the chair, at the Executioner’s alcove, back at the other agent, who nods somberly as though in agreement. “ I know of nothing I can add to make plainer the sincere purpose of the United States!” the President declares.

The stage lights gradually come up and throughout Times Square the houselights dim, casting the people in soft shadows, as Eisenhower moves toward the prayerful climax of his Vision, asking all Americans to beseech “Gawt’s guidance” and pray never to be proven guilty of “the one capital offense against freedom, a lack of staunch faith!” Whereupon, avoiding the nettlesome dilemma of choosing amongst the various schisms — priest, preacher, or rabbi — imported from Europe, he calls upon his own Guardian of the Harvests, Ezra Taft Benson of the Council of Twelve Apostles, former missionary for both the Boy Scouts of America and the Salt Lake Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to give the Invocation to the Electric Chair. “For now, good-bye! It has been wonderful to meet you! I will see you again!” he says, and steps down to take his seat, front and center, in the pew beside Mamie — what seat there is left: during his address, Joe McCarthy has managed to elbow his way up into the front row in between Herb Brownell and Helen Rosenberg Kaufman, and Ike only has room on the pew for one cheek. A ripple of unconcealed disgust passes briefly over Eisenhower’s face as he squeezes into his slot, having to alternate between Herb’s lap and Mamie’s, but he can’t seem to bring himself to ask Joe to move.

The stage lights are up full now in a darkened Square and the Death House set is bathed in a glaring white light as Brother Ezra, in the name of Jehovah, Jesus, and Joseph Smith, leads the people in blessing those whose duty it is “to shed the blood of those who are destined to be slain in consequence of their guilt…. For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts….” But even before he has finished, another voice can be heard back in the wings, saying: “Julius, follow me!” It is not Jesus; it is the young prison chaplain, Rabbi Irving Koslowe. Distantly, like something out of “Inner Sanctum,” a cell door rattles open. The antiphon dies away and after a brief gust of anxious shushing, unwinding from the center out to the edge like a dying cyclone, a respectful hush settles over Times Square: they are about to see a man die….

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” intones Rabbi Koslowe, his voice echoing eerily down the concrete corridor of the Dance Hall, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters…” Hollow footsteps accompany the rabbi’s voice, falling with measured tread like dripping water. It is as though they are all emerging from some deep cave, the steps striking ever firmer ground as they approach, the voice filling out, losing its damp resonance, until suddenly, as the rabbi, fitted out in a black robe, prayer shawl, and yarmulke, and reading from a prayer book held stiffly out in front of him, enters through the door in the corner upstage left under the sign that reads SILENCE, the footsteps disappear and his voice abruptly flattens out, becomes ordinary, muffled, a bit nasal: “He restoreth my soul, He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake…” He is followed through the door by two dark-suited prison guards and, wedged between them, a third man, a skinny young scruffy-headed fellow incongruously underdressed in a plain white T-shirt and wrinkled khaki pants and looking somehow like Harry Langdon — maybe it’s the white face, the ludicrous flopping slippers on his feet, or perhaps the way he peers around the set in exaggerated astonishment, blinking at the bright lights, his knees sagging when he spies the electric chair: the clown who has stumbled into the wrong room somehow and got mistaken for somebody else who’s been expected. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” says the rabbi, “I will fear no evil, for thou art with me!” The four men pause at the chair. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me…” The door is closed. No one else has come through it. This then must be that one they have been waiting for: the Master Spy, the Big Thumb, C.C. 110,649, the murderer of millions, the man who, alone with his wife, destabilized the whole world, the mortal enemy of the entire human race — this must be—! A soft gasp of amazement flutters through the Square: he’s so…so small! And young! Julius Rosenberg and Rabbi Koslowe are known to be both the same age, both thirty-five, but the rabbi looks at least a generation older! What is it? the short rumpled hair maybe, the scrawny neck—