Robert Coover - Public Burning

“It wasn’t like that at all—!” Why was I arguing with him? I knew no one could keep pace with a concerted smear campaign. The man in political life must come to expect the smear and to know that, generally, the best thing to do about it is to ignore it — and hope it will fade away. “I was only doing my—”

“Duty! Right? I know, and you couldn’t stop doin’ it! We hadn’t even got around to makin’ them Jap warlords cry cockles, and you was already down there in Los fuckin’ Angeles, all duded out in your gold-braid monkey suit and good-conduct ribbon, runnin’ for a suck at the public teat, tellin’ the yokels hack home how it was in the fuckin’ foxholes! ‘The clean forthright young American what fought in defense of his country in the stinkin’ mud and jungles of the Solomons!’ Hoo hah! — Nick , ya break me up! Fuckin’ genius, you are, a real bullwhacker — you shoulda been in show business!”

“Now, see here—!”

“Aw, Commander, don’t — haw haw! — don’t gimme that look! Save it for your dumb fuckin’ mutt!” He seemed to remember something and broke into more guffaws. The two dogs we ran down probably. I recalled there was a drugstore hack there across from the Willard Hotel, and I needed more antacids. Not the time to go hack, though. Do it later. I was furious, but I knew I couldn’t let myself he seen to lose my equanimity. The burdens of life sometimes outweigh the pleasures, you can’t let it get you down, makes a bad impression on the public. After all (I told myself) I believe in the battle, it’s always there wherever I go. I perhaps carry it more than others because that’s my way. Besides, this would soon he over, we were coming onto Constitution now. Lot of activity up there, toward the Capitol…. “And now, by the sweet cock o’ Uncle Jesus, you’re the Vice fuckin’ General Manager of the whole — WHOA!”

He swerved suddenly over to the curb where a lady was handing out pamphlets. She looked like a Jehovah’s Witness type. This was my chance to get out. I reached down and tugged at my shoe. But he rolled on by, grabbing one of her pamphlets on the run, dragging her along a few clumsy steps, then roared ahead. “What…what is it?” I asked.

He peered at it, turned his nose down. “Ahh, it ain’t nothin’,” he grumped. He handed it hack over the seat to me. It was Ethel Rosenberg’s final appeal for clemency, with two sketches above, one of her and the other of Julius, signed by Picasso. I’d seen them before. Picasso was a notorious Red, the Rosenbergs were just hurting their own cause with blatant associations like this, but it was nothing they hadn’t been doing all along. “You shoulda seen the ones they was handin’ out last night! Haw! There was some cute ones of you, Nick! You’d be prouda the dong they hung on ya!” He winked at me in the rear-view mirror and spread his hands out like he was measuring some big fish. “Of course, I can’t say it was gettin’ put to the best use! R-raw -haw-haw-haw-haw!”

“Now, that’s uh, just about—!”

“Easy, Nick, haw haw, don’t let it go to your head! I mean, there was a lot of ’em showin’ you with your face smeared with shit, too. Or eatin’ it — I gotta admit the shit looked good there, Nick, you’d make a terrific President! Yaw-haw-haw!” He was crumpled up over the wheel with laughter. “Hey, ya know? I seen that lady back there before! She was up at the White House tryin’ to get in!”

“The White House—!”

“Yeah, she said she wanted to have an intercourse with the President!”

“You mean, interview…”

“Yeah, that’s what the guard said, but she says, ‘Naw, I mean intercourse! I wanna see the nuts that’re runnin’ this country!’ Waw-haw-haw! ”

We’d stopped behind a sightseeing bus and I meant to jump out, but I couldn’t get my goddamn shoe loose from under the seat. He reached around suddenly and nearly poked me in the face with a big cigar. “Woops! Excuse me, Nick! Whaddaya doin’ down there on the floor? Here, no hard feelin’s, have a cigar! I remember how you loved to blow through these things out on Green Island, I been savin’ it for ya!”

“Oh, well, thanks, but I don’t—”

The bus started up. The cabbie thrust the cigar in my hand, swung around to get moving again.

I sat back, I had to think, I had to keep my head. It would have been stupid to have jumped out there anyway, the place was full of demonstrators. No mistake about it this time: they carried pictures of the Rosenbergs with pleas for mercy printed on them. All along, I’d been noticing something peculiar about these pro-Rosenberg people, I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it, but suddenly it came to me: they were all middle-aged! There was hardly a kid among them, the young ones were all over on the other side, my side, these Rosenberg people were all…well…my age.…

“Hey, you may not believe this, Nick,” the cabdriver said, “but I know that broad on all them posters there.”

“Who, you mean—?”

“Yeah, Rosenblatt, the atom spy. I went to fuckin’ school with her!”

“You mean, uh, Rosenberg—?”

“Yeah, she lived around the corner from me there on Whatchamacallit Street…”

“Sheriff?”

“That’s it! Sheriff Street! Ain’t that a laugh, Nick? Just goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction, don’t it? Sheriff Street! Jumpin’ Jesus, lemme tell ya, she had a sweet ass on her, Nick! We useta sneak into the back lot there and peep in her window—”

“But she slept on the second floor, didn’t she? I think I read—”

“We used ladders, Nick! We climbed trees! There was a fire escape. I had a buddy in the building behind — shit, we saw everything!”

“The other rooms, too?”

“What other rooms, Nick?”

“They say that sometimes, uh, prostitutes rented out—”

“Right, Nick! It was a kinda whorehouse! Did I forget to mention that? That’s probably where she learnt her game, right? Listen, by the time she was fifteen years old, buddy, she could do more things with a banana than you and me could ever dream a’ doin’ with our dingdongs in a lifetime! She sure showed all us boys a trick or two — I mean, I’m lucky to have a cock left at all, Nick, she subverted the goddamn thing to ribbons!”

“Really? But they always said she never even had a boyfriend until—”

“Don’t you believe it, Nick! She was one hot little twat — all them Commies are, you know that! It’s part of their religion! Sweet Betsy, she couldn’t keep her pants on! I mean, it turned into a real act, she got famous, she went all over the fuckin’ town doin’ it in the moviehouses!”

“You mean the Major, uh, Bowes Amateur Nights—?”

“Haw haw! Amateur, my ass! Amateur, my ass , Nick!”

“I… I thought she always sang ‘Ciribiribin’—”

“She didn’t sing it, Nick — she did it! God in ass-fuckin’ star-spangled heaven, she was a sensation! They finally had to move her into the burlesque circuit to accommodate the mobs, it was worsen back there at the White House! We useta catch her act ever Saturday night. We was pretty dumb, don’t hold it against us, Nick, but we thought it was innocent —ya know, just dirty sex, twirlin’ her tits, suckin’ up quarters with her cunt, things like that. We didn’t realize she was suckin’ up a lot more than quarters, and then flushin’ it all straight to Russia! You read about it, Nick: she had A-bombs up there, Jell-O boxes, Red herrings, passport photos, Klaus Fucks, the Fifth Amendment — shit, she could probably get a whole fuckin’ P-38 up her snatch and have room for Yucca Flat and the Sixth Fleet to boot! They say there was a ray gun in her navel, a walkie-talkie hid in her G-string, and a camera stuffed up her ass — when she spread her cheeks at us, we always heard this click and thought she was blowin’ kisses at us out her rectum! What fuckin’ innocents we was, Nick! Never again, hunh? I mean, we’ve grown up, ain’t we, Nick? We’re through suckin’ Russky hind tit like babies, ain’t we? We ain’t on Green Island no more—!”