Robert Coover - Public Burning

“Gee, that’s terrible, Dick,” said Pearson, winking at the others.

“Maybe he wants to take a crap in her ice-skate,” said Winchell.

“Ah, go to hell!” I muttered, and brushed on past them. I moved quickly, planning my next move. I was tensed up, I admit, and my shoulder was nagging me, but I still had control of my temper. The kind of treatment I was getting was pretty hard to take, but I knew the greatest mistake I could make would be to lose my head. I’d suffered these smear attacks before, I’d suffer them again. But the people on the street, I knew, were with me. Some of them applauded as I jogged away, rocking somewhat with only one shoe on, but feeling sure of myself, confident of my timing, pleased with the points I’d made. Maybe I should throw a line from Lincoln at them, I thought.

But before I could come up with a good one. Bob Considine forced the issue: “Hey, Mr. Vice President!” he called from behind me. “Give us a hint! Who’s behind the Rosenbergs?”

I spun around at the doorway. “I don’t know,” I said gravely, “but I do, uh, know this: you guys are so lost in your Fourth Estate fantasyland,” a good line, I thought, a damned good line, “that if he were standing right here in front of you as obvious as King Kong, you wouldn’t recognize him!”

“Is that a clue, Dick?” asked Winchell.

“Straight from the horse’s mouth,” said Gabriel Heatter.

“Anyway, it explains King Kong’s five-o’clock shadow,” said Pearson.

With that I really blew my stack. I just couldn’t take any more. Those vicious mudslinging irresponsible Commie-stooge idiot bastards! But even as the circuits popped and sizzled in my head, I hung onto myself, clung to the old debate discipline, bit my tongue, kept my movements in check. As best I could — I kept flashing from smiles to scowls and back faster than I would have liked. I jabbed a finger at Pearson through the ugly laughter, even though it hurt my shoulder, and cried: “All right, gentlemen, you’ve had a lot of fun with all this jackassery, but when it comes to the manure hitting the fan, let me just say this, you can give me the shaft, I expect a lot of blood to be spilled and you have a right to call it as you see it, but make no mistake, you’re not just giving me the shaft, you’re sticking it in the butt of the whole American Way of Life!” I tried to smile, scowled, found myself smiling again. “I won’t say you’re traitors to your country, but I will say I’m not known for being rough on rats for nothing, and when you go out to shoot rats, just remember, if an egg is bad, then let’s call for the hatchet!”

I let that sink in a second, not quite sure just what I’d been saying, but trusting my reflexes, then brought my hand down to my side, chopping off any rejoinder they might have thrown back (but in fact they seemed speechless — well, they asked for it and they got it), turned sharply on my stockinged foot, and made my exit. Entrance, rather. Yet another ordeal. Fortunately, I thrive on them.

It is on. The Rosenbergs are to die at last. Television networks interrupt scheduled programs with the announcement: “President Eisenhower and the Supreme Court of the United States of America have refused to spare the lives of atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.” At the Bernard Bach home in Toms River, New Jersey, a small ten-year-old boy is watching the baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers on Channel 11 when the announcement is made. The score is 0–0, but Yankee first-baseman Joe Collins has just beat out a drag bunt in the bottom of the fourth. It is a sunny day and the boy is thinking about going out to play baseball with friends in the neighborhood. That’s what Sonia Bach wants him to do. But he’s fascinated by the television and can’t pry himself away from it. The announcer says the executions are scheduled to take place tonight. He looks very intent and serious. The boy tries to see past him to the ballgame again, but the announcer won’t go away. “My Mommy and Daddy,” the boy whispers, feeling that someone or something is watching him. But he doesn’t know what to add. A prayer? A seventh-inning stretch? At the ballgame, nobody seems even to have noticed that the announcement has been made. Yankee outfielder Gene Woodling has come to the plate during the interruption, and he now watches a ball go by. There’s something very magical about TV, everything seems to happen at once on it, the near and the far, the funny and the sad, the real and the unreal. Tonight! Collins, taking a big lead off first base, is not thinking about this. He doesn’t care. The boy hates Collins for his cheap hit. Just like the Yankees. His Mom and Dad like the Brooklyn Dodgers; the New York Yankees are Judge Kaufman’s team. Judge Kaufman is rich and lives on Park Avenue and takes his sons to see them play. The boy feels that awful lump growing in his stomach again. His little brother is out on the front porch with Leo painting a homemade Father’s Day card with watercolors. Father’s Day is Sunday, a long time away. “That was their last chance,” the boy tells himself, trying to picture this new finality in the same way he sees the Tiger pitcher stretch, study Collins at first, then whip the ball toward the plate: ball two! Are the other guys in the neighborhood watching the game, did they hear the announcement? His Mom and Dad have told him it’s not manly to be afraid, but he is afraid, he can’t help it. He feels like there are two of himself loose in the world, one who likes to play baseball with friends and come home to Mom and Dad and sometimes push his little brother around, and another one on television and in the newspapers who is threatening to eat the other one up. Both of them, the one eating and the one getting eaten, are frightened, because they both believe the world is not crazy, how could it be? and yet why is it doing these maniac things? why is it killing his Mom and Dad like this, and why is everybody so excited about it, and what is it they want with him, a plain ten-year-old boy who’s still learning his fractions and doesn’t even know how to fix a television or throw a curve ball yet. “Why don’t you go play catch with Steve?” says Sonia gently. She is being too nice to him. Like everybody else of late, even Mr. Bloch. Sometimes he feels like shouting at them: damn you all! Woodling slams a one-strike, two-balls pitch clean out of the ballpark, and the Yankees lead, 2–0. The television camera shows people cheering and waving and having a terrific time. If people really loved one another, he wonders, would the world be like this? His poor Mom! What is she thinking? How does it feel? What is love in a world where people behave like this as if it were normal? Woodling circles the bases. His little brother comes in, wearing his Brooklyn Dodgers T-shirt all smeared with paint, and asks Sonia for a glass of milk. “That’s it. That’s it,” the boy says. “Good-bye. Good-bye.” Nobody’s listening.

His folks’ lawyer Manny Bloch is having the same experience: he and his defense team are flinging themselves frenetically at any judge they can find at home or in chambers, but they all seem to have either vanished or gone deaf. A stone wall. Manny fires off a telegram to President Eisenhower, raising the Hugo Black point that the case has never been reviewed by the Supreme Court, but this wire is short-circuited by Special Counsel Bernie Shanley and “transmitted to the Justice Department”; Eisenhower never sees it. Bloch, who has fallen unprofessionally in love with this entire family, is beginning to lose his forensic cool and is having flashes of self-destructive temper, as the doors slam shut in his face. He and others plead for a stay of the eleven-p.m. executions tonight because of the Jewish Sabbath which begins at sundown. Kaufman, playing it close to the chest, says he has already spoken with Attorney General Brownell about that: the executions will not be carried out during the Sabbath. The lawyers take this to mean a delay is in the offing, past the weekend at least, and relax a moment: at Justice, they exchange knowing winks.