Robert Coover - Public Burning

“I don’t think this, uh, has any—”

“You tell ’em, Nick! By God, you tell ’em! You remember that persecuter — what’s his name?”

“Saypol?”

“That’s it! Saypol! ‘Imagine a wheel,’ he says. Remember that? ‘In the center o’ the wheel, Rosenblatt, reachin’ out like the tentacles of a octopus—’”

“Uh, Rosenberg…”

“Right! Well, that sonuvabitch knew what he was talkin’ about, Nick, he musta caught the act! She was like Plastic Man, I shit you not! Her hair wriggled out at ya like snakes, wrappin’ ya up, ticklin’ your ear, creepin’ down your shirt, her toes jigged in all the aisles at once, she’d clip your foreskin with fingernails willowy as reeds, sock ya in the snoot with her clit!” I used to go to the burlesque in Los Angeles with my cousin. We must have gone to the wrong shows. “What an act! Her tits popped out at ya and lit up like beacons: one if by land, two if by sea — and Iemme tell ya, those weren’t the only two fuckin’ options Julie had, Nick, not with them bazooms! She’d do the Dirty Crab on her back, slappin’ out Morse-code spy messages with the cheeks of her ass and then—”

“Did you say, uh, Julie…?”

“Yeah, right, Juliet. Juliet Rosen—”

“His name is Julie. Her name, uh, is Ethel.”

“Oh…?” He looked confused, crestfallen; but there was a sly grin twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Musta been a different Juliet Rosenblatt…” I realized we’d been stopped in front of the Senate Office Building for some time. I reached into my pocket for some money, noticing too late that my hand was smeared with horsedung. “Forget it, Commander. It’s on the house. For old time’s sake. Anchors aweigh, Nick. Lest we forget…”

“Oh. Well…” Some vague suspicion troubled me. Then, as I reached down to work my shoe free, I noticed for the first time the label on the cigar he’d given me: OPTIMO! I glanced up in alarm. He was gazing at me, the grin gone, his eyes dark with a kind of weariness, a kind of resignation, as though…as though he knew too much. I’ve got to keep calm, I cautioned myself. And I’ve got to get the hell out of here.

“Look,” he said, his voice mellowing, losing its hard twang, “can’t we get past all these worn-out rituals, these stupid fuckin’ reflexes?” It wouldn’t do any good to grab him, I knew. The ungraspable Phantom. He was made of nothing solid, your hand would just slip right through, probably turn leprous forever. “They got nothin’ to do with life, you know that, life’s always new and changing, so why fuck it up with all this shit about scapegoats, sacrifices, initiations, saturnalias—?”

“I know who you are,” I rasped. I could hardly hear myself. “The game’s up!”

I braced myself. I expected him to flash back in fury, I expected demonic sparks to fly from his eyes, fire from his parted lips, something violent and amazing. I was ready to die. But he only sighed. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m only a lousy cabdriver. Shit, I don’t know everything. But I think you’re on the wrong track. Easter Trials, Burning Tree, morality plays, cowtown vendettas — life’s too big, you can’t wrap it up like that!”

Where the battle against the Phantom is concerned, victories arc never final so long as he is still able to fight. There is never a time when it is safe to relax or let down. How had I let myself lose my shoe under his seat like this?

“I seen that mess you rigged up in Times Square. It’s frivolous, Nick! You oughta burn Connie Mack and Sonja Henie up there. Or Native Dancer and Elsa Maxwell…”

I should carry a gun in my hip pocket like Irving Saypol, I thought. But you couldn’t shoot him either, bullets just go through him. I fought to tear my shoe free — was he holding onto it somehow?

“Listen, it ain’t too late, Nick, there’s still time to turn back — forget this dumb circus, get on to something more—”

The shoe came loose! I threw my shoulder against the door and tumbled out. “You’ll never get away with this!” I cried, shaking my shoe at him. I didn’t know exactly what I meant by this, but I needed a line for the other people on the street and this was the first one that came to me. I jumped up and brushed myself off. Chief Newman would have been proud of my form. He always said I played every scrimmage as though the championship were at stake — and now, literally, it was. My shoulder hurt like hell, though.

He was shouting at me, something about the war, or the whore, or maybe he was hollering at me to shut the door, but I scrambled to my feet and made for the Senate Office Building — and crashed into a crowd of newsguys just coming out: Drew Pearson, Westbrook Pegler, Walter Winchell, Elmer Davis, Bob Considine, Gabriel Heatter, the whole goddamn Fourth Estate.

“Whoa, what’s up, Dick?” Pearson asked.

“The Phantom!” I cried. “He tried to get me!”

“What Phantom, Dick?” Pegler asked. “Where?”

“That driver, watch out—!” But the cab was gone. I swallowed, tried to stop gulping air. Couldn’t let these bastards get the wrong impression. “There was a cab…”

“What’d he try to do,” Pearson asked, “steal your shoe?” He was stifling a grin, bugging his eyes. Making fun. Was this the thanks I got for saving his life when Joe McCarthy tried to kill him?

“Hmmm,” said Winchell, taking it from my hand and sniffing it. “Seems like he tried to take a crap in it.”

“That’s pretty serious, all right,” said Elmer Davis, mock-solemnly. “Maybe we oughta tell Louella about it.” They all yuff-huff-huffed.

“You newsguys are all the same,” I said, snatching back my shoe. I was disgusted by their cheap cynical laughter. It wasn’t me I was thinking about, it was the nation. Didn’t they understand that the Vice President of the United States of America had just been locked in a one-on-one battle with the Phantom? That the security of the whole country and the cause of free men everywhere were at stake? They were sick with their own self-importance — I knew I had to blitz them, I had to shame them. “You think you’re such big public heroes, but ultimately you’re all dupes of the Phantom!” I cried. “What do you know about the truth? It’s all sensationalism, cheap scandals, a lot of irresponsible rumor-mongering in the name of a free press!” I took out on them all of the fury and frustration that had been building up within me on the ride over. “That’s just the kind of loose fellow-traveling attitude that got us into the mess we were in in the forties! Well, just wait! The people of this country are getting fed up with hucksters like you! There’s going to be a day of reckoning—!”

“Whoa there, Dick,” said Pegler. “If you’re gonna fling your hand around like that, use your clean one!”

This wisecrack brought a few guilty titters, but the audience gathering around us now were there, I knew, to hear me . Opinion makers, people in all walks of life…. “The Pentagon Patriots have got you bums pegged,” I declared. “Preachers of lies, prophets of deceit, garblers of truth—”

“Say,” said Winchell, sniffing, “did anyone ever consider that the Phantom might be a horse?”

“Dick the Horse?”

“Alan (the Horse) Ameche?”

“Horace Greeley?”

“Some donkey, more likely,” said Heatter wryly. “One of the Phantom’s more famous disguises…”

“Can’t you SOBs take anything seriously?” I demanded. “I’m telling you, the Phantom is out to destroy this thing today! The heat is on! Look what’s happening around the world! Germany, Korea, Africa — you saw what he did up in Times Square last night! This place may be next! He’ll do anything to stop us! We have the fight of our lives on our hands! I was lucky to get away from him just now — and it’s not just me he’s after! He’s after us all! He…he even wanted to get Sonja Henie!”