Robert Coover - Public Burning

But maybe it was not. Maybe I had not done enough. I fussed about, choosing a ball for teeing up, worried about this. Everything was remarkably green, the sky was deep blue, the balls a blinding white: my senses were still on edge from the transmutation. Uncle Sam was now balancing a putter on his sharp thin nose while juggling the golf balls. The empty tee awaited me: the novice called upon to show what he knows. I’d built my reputation on the thoroughness with which I’d pursued the Hiss case, after all, and maybe I’d gone soft on this one, lost some of my fabled diligence and so part of my image as well, perhaps this was the thrust of Uncle Sam’s question now. He somehow had his old plug hat up on top of the putter and was twirling it around. His playfulness could be deceptive. Don’t take chances, I thought — stick with what you know. I wasn’t sure whether or not the actual conspiracy charge had been proven, but let’s be frank about it, it was just a technicality anyway — mainly because of the statute of limitation, I supposed, and the fact that in these espionage cases there were rarely two witnesses to anything. They were being tried in fact for treason, never mind what the Constitution might say, which was anyway written a long time ago — and on that charge, J. Edgar Hoover’s word was as good as a conviction.

“Well,” I said finally, poking around bravely in my golf bag, “well, I believe they’re, uh, probably guilty.”

Uncle Sam blinked in amazement, gathering in the balls with one big hand, catching the putter and hat as they fell with the other. “Guilty!” he roared, his chinwhiskers bristling. I realized, glancing away, pretending to study the distant green, that Abraham Lincoln, whom I’d always admired, was probably the most terrifying man of his age. “Well, hell, yes, they’re guilty!”

I knew by his reaction I must be miles off the mark, but my answer still made sense to me and I resented what seemed like some kind of entrapment. Instinctively, I counterattacked: “Well, naturally, I haven’t had ample opportunity to study the transcripts carefully, but I, uh, from what I’ve seen of them, the case has not been proven—”

“The case!” he snorted incredulously. “Proven! Gawdamighty, you do take the rag off the bush, boy!”

I stared miserably into my golf bag while he railed at me. Not only was I giving all the wrong goddamn answers, I was also having trouble with my drives. I do not believe that some men are just naturally cool, courageous, and decisive in handling crisis situations, while others are not. I chose a number two wood for a change. I knew this was a mistake and put it back. “There…there was no hard evidence,” I said, pressing on desperately. “And since the Rosenbergs refused to cooperate, all we had left really was the brother’s story!” I wasn’t sure this was true. I’d read it somewhere. I thought: there is less than a 50 percent chance that what I’m doing will help me. “And to get that , we’d had to make this deal with him and his wife which—”

“So all that courtroom splutteration was a frame-up,” he blustered — he was in a ferocious state, “what trial isn’t?”

“Wait, that’s not what I meant!” I protested. “Irving Saypol’s a fine trial lawyer!” I wished I could keep my mouth shut. But I’d always admired Saypol, the greatest of the anti-Communist trial lawyers, though I knew he was mean and ornery with a mind about as broad as a two-by-four, and a Tammany Democrat to boot. I pulled out my driver, swished it around a little. My hands were so sweaty it nearly slipped right out. “I don’t think he’d ever—”

“Rig a prosecution?” Uncle Sam laughed sourly. I knew better, of course, I was being a fool. “Hell, all courtroom testimony about the past is ipso facto and teetotaciously a baldface lie, ain’t that so? Moonshine! Chicanery! The ole gum game! Like history itself — all more or less bunk, as Henry Ford liked to say, as saintly and wise a pup as this nation’s seen since the Gold Rush — the fatal slantindicular futility of Fact! Appearances, my boy, appearances! Practical politics consists in ignorin’ facts! Opinion ultimately governs the world!”

“Yes, but… I thought—”

“You thought! Cry-eye, look out when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet, we’re all in for it! I’m tellin’ you, son, the past is a bucket of cold ashes: rake through it and all you’ll get is dirty! A lousy situation, but dese, as the man says, are de conditions dat prevail!”

I felt my neck flush, so, to cover up, I stooped and concentrated on teeing up my golf ball, grunting to kill time. My hand was shaking and the ball kept falling off. I seemed to see my father down in the front row at a school debate, flushing with rage as I disgraced myself with a weak rebuttal.

“And so a trial in the midst of all this flux and a slippery past is just one set of bolloxeratin’ sophistries agin another — or call ’em mettyfours if you like, approximations, all the same desputt humbuggery — and God shine his everlastin’ light on the prettiest ringtailed roarer in the court room! Am I right? You remember that Ayn Rand play you were in years ago: a game for actors!”

I didn’t know he knew about that. If he knew that, what didn’t he know? How could I compete? I felt like a fighter wearing sixteen-ounce gloves and bound by the Marquis of Queensberry rules, up against a bareknuckle slugger who gouged, kneed, and kicked. But life for everyone is a series of crises, I cautioned myself, it’s not just you, and with that I finally got the ball on the tee. I stood, gazed off toward the seventh green, trying to see the flag there. It was red, I knew. I was on to what this golf game was all about, all right, but I still hadn’t figured out what Uncle Sam was up to. Did he mean the Rosenbergs might be innocent? Or their crime insignificant? I addressed the ball. My brand-new golf shirt was wet with sweat. I remembered my opening line from that Ayn Rand play: Gentlemen of the jury — on the sixteenth of January — near midnight — the body of a man came hurtling through space, and crashed — a disfigured mass — at the foot of the Faulkner Building . That was just how I felt. “But you said — I mean, President Eisenhower said, and J. Edgar Hoover, Judge Kaufman, everybody: a crime that has endangered the lives of millions, maybe even the whole planet—!”

“Damn right! — and much of Madness to boot, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot, but we’re not just talkin’ about that little piece of technological cattle-rustlin’! Even though that’s more than enough to scrag a man all right — like Sweet Andy Carnegie used to say: upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends — but still, we all know how he got his: no, a little healthy thievin’ never hurt anybody. But real guilt, real evil — listen, son, get that right hand around there on that club, like you’re shakin’ hands with it, not jerkin’ it off!”

I twisted my hand around on the club: the toe turned in and tapped the ball accidentally, knocking it off the tee again.

“God may forgive sins,” Uncle Sam observed grimly, “but awkwardness has not forgiveness in heaven or earth — that’ll cost you a stroke.” He could be as cold as a New England parson sometimes. “No, guilt, real guilt, is like grace: some people got it, some don’t. These people got it. Down deep. They wear it like a coyote wears its lonesomeness or a persimmon its pucker. They are suffused with the stuff, it’s in their bones, their very acids, it’s no doubt a gift of the promptuary, even their organs are guilty, their feet are guilty, their ears and noses—”

“You mean, because…because they’re Jews?”