Robert Coover - Public Burning

“I take it back!”

He didn’t even seem to hear me. “Maybe, as our Early Warning Sentinels have put it, some healthy tissue will have to— pant! — have to be destroyed — but what the hell, rondyvoos with destiny ain’t beanbag!”

“I don’t want to!” I wailed in agony, twisting and pitching about. “I quit!”

“Jehu Nimshi!” he bellowed. “If you ain’t the all-starten skittiest crittur in all Hail Columbia! I’m bewarin’ you, Throttlebottom: I propose to— fah! — fight it out on this yere line, if it takes all summer! Why are you nervous?”

“Oh my God!” I wept.

“Ain’t you always said: when a man’s— ugh! — constrained or— huff! — arty-fishal, he don’t get through, so be not a— coo! — a-quail neither awestrucken! Thar ain’t nothin’ to fear but fear itself and a dry hole! Opportunity— ungff! — is a-knockin’, boy, but if you’re gonna stay all stobbed up, then by hokey I say— grunt! — let’s call for a hatchet!”

“No!” I shrieked, giving way. And in he came, filling me with a ripping all-rupturing force so fierce I thought I’d die! This…this is not happening to me alone, I thought desperately, or tried to think, as he pounded deeper and deeper, destroying everything, even my senses, my consciousness — but to the nation as well!

“Whoop! clean as a hound’s tooth!” he enthused. “Hoo hah! I do believe our form of guvvament, be it ever so humble, is deeply— oof! ah! — imbedded in ole Slippery Gulch at last! a miracle of fit and flattery! Yow! Fooff!”

Jesus, he was killing me! I’d been right about it all along! It was my execution! I was utterly gorged by him, he was slamming away in my belly, my chest, my very skull! I couldn’t even breathe! I thought my heart would burst, my eyeballs would pop out! I was screaming and howling horribly but nobody came to my rescue.

“Now— puff! — don’t be a baby, baby!” Uncle Sam crooned softly, leaning down to blow in my ear. He seemed to be wrapping me round, pressing his flesh against mine, inside and out — I felt like a tissue of pure pain, lodged like a condom between two grinding surfaces.… “I know, it— grunt! — always hurts the first time— hoo! — gettin’ exposed like this to a crool invasion from— pant! — without and convulsions within, but bear up: heaven holds all for which you— whuff! — sigh — so there, little boy, don’t — don’t cry!” He was breathing heavily now, whamming away like a steam engine — I felt like I was being blown up like a balloon. “We’re gonna do— phew! — great things together, we’re— nngh! — doin’ great things together right now — we— yow! — look out, son, my— gasp! — my cup— oh! ah! — runneth over—!”

My insides were rent suddenly with a powerful explosion, sending me skidding on my face several feet across the floor, and there was a terrific inundation! I seemed to be leaking at all pores and orifices — I couldn’t even scream! Uncle Sam let out a fearsome groan and seemed to fall away — yet he remained inside me, throbbing and exploding. I lay there on the spare-room floor, gurgling, sweating, half-senseless, bruised and swollen and stuffed like a sausage, thinking: Well, I’ve been through the fire. After this, very few, if any, difficult situations could seem insurmountable if anything personal is involved. Nothing could match this. Nothing could top it. Not without being fatal.

Finally, when I felt able to speak, I lifted my head and asked feebly: “Please…! When…when are you going to…to get out?” But I saw then that he was out. He was buttoning up his striped pantaloons, which were now stained with the lipstick off my ass. Or maybe this time it was blood. I fell back, curled up around my pain. Oh my God, so this was what it was like! I felt like a woman in hard labor, bloated, sewn up, stuffed with some enormous bag of gas I couldn’t release. I recalled Hoover’s glazed stare, Roosevelt’s anguished tics, Ike’s silly smile: I should have guessed….

“Well, this is the end of a perfect day,” Uncle Sam was saying. He seemed radiant, aglow, almost as though lit from within. His smile was gentle now, and there was a merry twinkle in his blue eyes. “Tell me, son, speakin’ theorectally,” he asked with a wink as he reknotted his string tie, “how did you love our little…afterclap?”

“I feel sick,” I groaned.

“Ha ha, you’re not sick, you’re just in love,” he grinned and leaned down to kiss my cheek. “Hey, you’re the one, you know!” he whispered, or seemed to whisper — it was strange his voice: almost as though he were no longer speaking aloud. His words seemed to fall silently from his lips, curl in silence down the channels of my ears, blossoming finally in a kind of audible puff against my inner ear like flowers, like seed pods.… “I mean it, Gus! You’re my handsome carny barker, my wild Irish rocker-socker, my fellow travelin’ salesman, my little accident, my pretty sailorboy!” He patted my bum affectionately. “You’re my everything, sunshine— you’re my boy!”

His words warmed me and chilled me at the same time. Maybe the worst thing that can happen to you in this world is to get what you think you want. And how did we know what we wanted? It was a scary question and I let it leak away, unanswered. Of course, he was an incorrigible huckster, a sweet-talking con artist, you couldn’t trust him, I knew that — but what did it matter? Whatever else he was, he was beautiful (how had I ever thought him ugly?), the most beautiful thing in all the world. I was ready at last to do what I had never done before. “I… I love you, Uncle Sam!” I confessed.

But he was already gone, I was alone. Only the last of his words remained, bursting tenderly now against my inner ear, as I lay there, eyes watering up and chest heaving, in the lonesome darkness…“Well, something attempted, something done, my boy, has earned a night’s repose, so let the tent be struck. I leave off as I began. Vaya con Dios, my darklin’, and remember: vote early and vote often, don’t take any wooden nickels, and”—by now I was rolling about helplessly on the spare-room floor, scrunched up around my throbbing pain and bawling like a baby—“always leave ’em laughin’ as you say good-bye!”

I wish to thank the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation for grants which were of great help in writing this book.