Robert Coover - Public Burning

In New York, however, the iron curtain around the Statue of Liberty continues to vex the American Superhero. He moves the wage dispute directly to Washington, and there are hints of an operation along the lines of the Berlin Airlift if the boats don’t get moving again in time for the gathering of the tribe during the atom-spy burnings. And when is that to be? Crowds have been drifting all day through Times Square, but there seems to have been no sense of conviction — it is still scheduled for eleven o’clock tonight, but there is no jostling for front-row seats. Uncle Sam joins Cecil De Mille and Busby Berkeley briefly on the Astor Roof for a cinematic overview of the rebuilt Times Square arena, and gets the image of isolated thunderheads scudding through the Square but without the final massing up of unbroken storm clouds. And some of those thunderheads, he sees, are hostile, threatening tempests of another sort — he assigns Allen Dulles and Edgar Hoover the task of collecting and collating I.D. data from these gathering pro-Rosenberg clemency demonstrations, and sends the Holy Six out on the streets to propagandize against them, try to break them up. The Six — Rabbi William Rosenblum, Father Joseph Moody, Christian Herald editor Daniel Poling, former Presidential adviser Sam Rosenman, Notre Dame law dean and mystic Clarence Manion, and “Electric Charlie” Wilson, ex-president of General Electric — have formed a kind of transcendentalist brotherhood with the aims of discrediting the Rosenberg clemency drive, preserving America’s Judeo-Christian heritage intact, and laying their own claim to a piece of the exorcisory action. In newspaper ads across the nation recently, they declared:

The case of the convicted atom spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, is being exploited by typical Communist trickery to destroy faith in our American institutions…. Racial and religious groups as such have no special interest in the Rosenberg case and cannot properly become involved in appeals on their behalf. Those who join in organized campaigns for clemency in this case have knowingly or unwittingly given assistance to Communist propaganda!

This campaign has in fact effectively scared a lot of people, but many others of weak faith are still putting their signatures to clemency appeals and turning up in the streets bearing inflammatory placards. The streets of New York and most other great cities are clogging up with them, and a special Clemency Train has this very day brought hundreds of these people to the very precincts of the Supreme Court — most of them are ganged up around the steps of the Court, but some have actually slipped by into the gallery up on the main floor — where now Chief Justice Fred Vinson is rapping the special term to order.

The government’s task is a formidable one, in spite of the known sympathies of most of the Justices — the point is, they don’t want to set any precedents for slapping each other down. Uncle Sam’s proxy is Acting Solicitor Robert L. Stern, dressed impeccably in striped pants and black cutaway coat. The Rosenbergs are represented (if that is the word) by four noisy belligerent outsiders — John Finerty, Dan Marshall, Fyke Farmer, and Emanuel Bloch — whose clothes look like they’re been slept in and who don’t seem even to know each other. Bob Stern argues that the Rosenbergs have already been allowed too many appeals, the new point is frivolous, further delays would make a mockery of our judicial system, and the stay should be vacated. “The defendants have been convicted of a most terrible crime,” he reminds the Court (two of whom are already starting to doze off), “nothing less than the stealing of the most important weapon in history, and giving it to the Soviet Union. Haven’t the Rosenbergs had their full day in court and more? The public’s rights and safety are no less precious than the Rosenbergs’. We do not think those rights should be violated any longer!”

The Rosenbergs’ lawyers scramble about these points, attempting to blur the sharp edges, cast doubt on the applicability of the various laws, and question the need for such haste and impatience in deciding the issue — at one point, tall loose-jointed Dan Marshall even grabs the counsel stand with both hands and does a fair imitation of a country preacher, though he lacks the radiance of a true Man of God, rocking back and forth and crying out: “I doubt whether even a justice of the peace would call the meanest pimp before the bar on such short notice!’

“Now, now,” scolds the Chief Justice, “don’t let your temperature rise!”

But it is cranky old jut-jawed John Finerty — whose connections with the Phantom go back to Tom Mooney, and to Sacco and Vanzetti — who really wakes up the nodding Bench and reveals his team’s true colors, or color: he denounces the special term as an insult to the Court and the integrity of Justice Douglas, scathingly accuses Brownell and Vinson of a kind of legalistic conspiracy, attacks the Justice Department for perpetrating along with Judge Kaufman a knowing fraud based on rigged testimony and phony evidence, and caps the whole outrage with a blustering assault on Irving Saypol, the original U.S. prosecutor in the case and one of the most admired men in America: “There never was a more crooked district attorney in New York!” he cries. Justice Tom Clark, himself a former Attorney General and a personal friend of Kaufman, Saypol, and Brownell, is offended by this frontal attack and leans forward to put a stop to it. Even Hugo Black grimaces at Finerty’s tirade, but this may only be a gas cramp. “If you lift the stay,” snaps Finerty, his Irish cheeks aflush, “then God save the United States and this honorable Court!” There are gasps in the courtroom at this old reprobate’s vain use of the Lord’s name, and many are sure they heard him say “dis-honorable Court.”

Argument has been edging toward violence, so Fred Vinson cuts it off and the Nine Old Men retire to their private conference room, where a very hostile atmosphere prevails. Black and Douglas are fit to be tied, and Vinson is not confident he has any of the other three New Dealers with him on this one either. It helps, of course, that they’re all browned off at Douglas for playing the devil with their holiday like this, this special term being a disconcerting precedent. On the other hand, the new impeachment threat against Douglas may provoke a show of solidarity — they don’t want any precedents set in that direction either. Listening to them wrangle like schoolgirls, Vinson figures he’s about had it with this goddamn job. If he doesn’t quit soon, it’ll kill him. He tells them all to go home and sleep on it, they’ll announce their decision whether to vacate the stay or not tomorrow at high noon. That’s right, high noon, why the hell not. He makes Burton go out front to pass the word, since he’s been drowsing through most of the arguments and so is less riled than most.

The public — jammed not only into the courtroom, but into all the corridors of the building as well, and in the doorways, stairwells, windows, down the steps, out into the street and onto the lawns of the Methodist Building and the Library of Congress — takes the news with mixed feelings. Apparently the Rosenberg lawyers have not been persuasive enough to convince the Court, or they’d have said so; the delay is most likely just to give the old fellows time to work up a few eloquent touches to their decisions, something to be remembered by in Bartlett’s Quotations . Also, let’s face it, the delay heightens the drama, and as long as everything turns out well in the end, that’s probably a good thing, makes everybody feel more alive. Okay, but the troubling thing is, it should have been easier than this. No matter what happens tomorrow, Uncle Sam has plainly lost this night to the Phantom! Though the day is warm and the sun though lowering still high in the sky, a faint shudder passes through the crowd as they drift away from the Court, not together toward Times Square as they’d hoped and planned, but separately toward their own private executions, slow, but inexorable; uncelebrated. Alone in the dark, tonight anyway. With the Phantom loose in the world. Scary…. By the time Uncle Sam staggers, bruised and bedraggled, into the courtroom, it is empty. The drapes have been pulled and dust floats sullenly in the beams of afternoon sunlight.