Robert Coover - Public Burning

“A free society stimulates the efficiency of millions,” Wilson said. Engine Charlie smelled the end of this meeting, and his eyes had come uncrossed. So did I, and I leaned forward to gather up my papers. “We should urge that we accomplish more with the same effort for the good of all!”

“It is on a high plane and for the occasion it is very good,” said Ezra Benson, understanding Wilson’s remarks as a criticism. It would be Ezra’s role to deliver the invocation tonight and to ask God to forgive the Rosenbergs for their sins, a touch of charity we all approved of. “I think it is wonderful.”

“We want to keep it largely on a high spiritual plane with exhortation, but at the same time,” said Ike, gesturing broadly, “trying to relate it to our everyday living.”

“I did not see anything I would want to change,” Wilson said.

I got ready to stand up, but then Cabot Lodge objected to a reference to Moscow as having been formerly the center of autocracy and as being now the center of revolution. He said he thought that implied that the Russian government was no longer autocratic — and as for revolution, well, that was a word that appealed to a lot of downtrodden people in the world.

“Despotism?” suggested Ike. “You are right.” He seemed pleased at Lodge’s suggestion, and cast a brief curious glance at me. In my resolve to keep quiet, I realized, I’d let Lodge steal a line from me there.

“If you gave us a flip from autocracy to despotism,” Wilson chimed in, “it would be better.” Now that he was awake, Charlie couldn’t seem to stop talking.

It suddenly came to me what my problem was: I’d spent too much time on reviewing the trial, not enough on everything else. Hadn’t Uncle Sam warned me about this? Nothing had been or could be proven. I could have challenged Brownell on that suppressed evidence, for example, but I’d sensed somehow it wasn’t relevant — it might have been a week ago, or even yesterday, but it wasn’t any more. Why had I been so slow to see this? Why had I waited so long to get into this case at all? I wasn’t just a Congressman from Southern California any longer, I was a heartbeat away from the Incarnation! Everything mattered! This was the central problem as one rose higher in the echelons of national power: how could one continue to isolate and define the essential debate, keep it clean from diffuseness and mind-numbing paradox? I’ve only begun, I thought. There’ll never be time enough! I had to reread the letters, the biographies, search out the hidden themes, somehow reach a panoramic view of the event, and write a speech! That was the point: I had to go before the people tonight and unleash a real philippic, communicate the facts, publicize the truth, help them all stand taller and feel proud to be Americans! That was what Uncle Sam was expecting of me! That was what language was for: to transcend the confusions, restore the spirit, recreate the society! Ahead of me, I knew, was a day of almost superhuman effort.

“I personally am a little bit reluctant ever to talk,” said the President, “in terms that look like we are running a school. I do believe in this particular one — Lincoln himself didn’t say, ‘Eighty-seven years ago.’ He said, ‘Fourscore and seven years ago.’ He, instantly on the opening of that speech, established a certain stateliness, he didn’t use the language that he knew better than anybody else — if you will read some of the stories that he told. I am open to argument on this, but in this speech I deliberately tried to stay in the level of talk that would make as good reading as possible at the Quai d’Orsay or Number Ten Downing but I particularly tried to make the words that would sound good to the fellow digging the ditch.”

Wilson, beaming (we were all beaming): “You flew the flag! It was wonderful!”

“Uh, my nose…” I began.

But just then in burst Sherman Adams with the news: The Court has met! The stay has been vacated! The crowds on the Hill and in the Mall are on the move— and they’re headed this way!

Here they come, streaming up the Mall toward the White House, and leading them it’s TIME himself, America’s laureate balladeer, carrying a blow-up of Gary Cooper crashing through a door with the legend “BLOOD, SWEAT AND TENSION,” and singing his own words to the famous tune:

high noon united artists creeping

on hadleyville pop four oh oh

one hot sunday morning is the

moment of crisis

of crisis for the

the little western cow-ow town

desperado fra-hank miller

whose jail sentence has been commuted

through a political deal is coming

on — the — noon — train

the marshal is no hero he is

g cooper leaving with his wife

grace kelly to open a general sto-hore

but he turns ba-hack

there is a jo-hob

law and order-her are at stake

the solid citizens of hadleyvi-hille

are laying odds that the marshal is dea-head

five minutes after miller gets off

off — the — noon — train

left high and dry in a town para

lyzed by fear and morally

bankrupt the sweating marshal has to

face miller and three

three of his fellow

fellow desperadoes alone

the picture builds to its high noon climax

in a crescendo of ticking clo-hocks

railroad tracks stretching long and level

hushed — deser — ted — streets

throughout the action dmitri tiomkin’s

plaintive high noon ballad sounds

a recurring note of impending doo-oom

as the heat and drama

mount relentlessly to

to the crisi-hiss of high noon…

The poet shows none of Lloyd Bridges’ shameful funk, but moves jauntily, a proud and eager Deputy, grinning like Jack Palance and shaking his hips to Tiomkin’s thumping music like Smiley Burnette, and the people follow. The law has prevailed. The law and the spirit. Judge Fred Vinson’s court, its subversive heavies Douglas and Black shot down, the Jew Judge Frankfurter locked up in uncertainties, has spoken for the last time. The lives of the A-bomb rustlers are now in the hands of that gangly wire-tough old general, Ike (Swede) Eisenhower, who’s seen a lot of border action himself in his day, in Eisenhower’s hands and the hands of the old clock on the wall. In the House of Representatives, Democrat Frank Chelf of Kentucky rears up like Tom Mix on Tony to interrupt the debate on the foreign aid bill with the excited announcement that “the Supreme Court has just voted to set aside the stay of execution in the Rosenberg case. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow! We thank the Supreme Court!”

Not that it’s all over. No, already the Phantom’s desperate last-ditch mob action is mounting. A steady trickle of unwholesome-looking extras leaks out of Inspiration House on Kalorama Road, moving toward Pennsylvania, like Miller and his gang debouching from the noon train.

Pickets appear: WE ARE INNOCENT! WE WILL NOT TRADE DECENCY & TRUTH FOR LIFE! DON’T LET THE ROSENBERGS DIE ON THE WORD OF A LIAR! The air, as in Hadleyville, is oppressive, weighted with the stagnant threat of time and swarthiness. Something is not yet clean. “Ah nevuh believed ah would li-yuv to see whut ah have seen in WAW-shinton in the past few days!” The people streaming from the Court to the White House pause to listen to the elegant old cadences of Congressman E. L. Forrester, Democrat from Georgia’s Third District, pouring out at this instant from the Capitol, as though through the swinging doors of the town saloon…

Last Sunday I saw six or seven thousand mongrels picketing the White House, parading with banners, charging that our Government had bribed witnesses, and with banners demanding that two particular children not be made orphans. Not one of that crowd was concerned over the widows and orphans of our fine young men who died fighting communism in Korea. Yesterday the Capitol Grounds were alive with hundreds of people who have no interest whatsoever in our country except to destroy it, even to take our country over. Today as I came down to the office, I saw that riff-raff picketing the President of the United States!.. Mr. Chairman, I despise communism! And the people I represent despise communism!.. I want you to know that the section, which I come from— the section where there is no communism —will gladly make every sacrifice and risk every danger and fight until this scourge is completely removed as a menace!