Robert Coover - Public Burning

I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best

Scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already

Caused, in my opinion, the Communist

Aggression in Korea, with the

Resultant casualties exceeding fifty thousand and who knows but millions more of

Innocent people may pay the price

Of your treason. Indeed by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered

The course of history to the disadvantage of our country!

The Sons of Light fall to their knees: “O Lord, how long shall we cry, and thou wilt not hear?” Behind the fading echoes of the noontime bells can be heard the distant evil laughter of the Phantom. The whole world seems to be falling down, imploding upon Room 110 of the Foley Square Courthouse! But then Judge Kaufman gathers up his strength and says: “I have deliberated! It is not in my power, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, to forgive you — only the Lord can find mercy for what you have done! The sentence of the Court upon Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is that, for their crime, they are sentenced to death!” And then Uncle Sam says: “Those who have cast their lot with me shall come to dominion! Those who have cast it with the Phantom shall get their ass stacked!” And then the people say: “Bless Uncle Sam and all His unerring works!” And then Julius turns to Ethel and sings “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It’s as though a great weight has been lifted from the courtroom. “Mine eyes have seen the glory!” They all join in. All except Morton Sobell, ever the spoilsport, now in a deep sulk over being sentenced to thirty years in Alcatraz. “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” At the conclusion of which, Rabbi William Rosenblum of New York’s Temple Israel, soon to enter History as the first of the Holy Six, steps forward and delivers a “Worse Than Murder” sermon, declaring that the death sentence would be applauded by all decent Americans…

Such acts of treason…are always an invitation to our enemies to attack us in the hope that they will find countless others who are ready to sell us down the river! However, equally guilty with these atomic spies, though they are rarely brought before the courts, are the men in our arts, science and even the clergy, who are constantly making appeals for appeasement of those foreign nations which any schoolboy knows are just waiting for a propitious moment to unleash their weapons against us! Judge Kaufman has done the American people a great service!

The Boy Judge accepts the many honors due him, gives his wife and J. Edgar Hoover a hug, then goes fishing off Palm Beach with Thomas Dodd, leans back, lights a cigar, and while the rest of the nation settles back to await the inevitable finale, lands a five-foot wahoo….

So, Sam cocked his gun an’ Dave pulled the trigger,

But the one killed the ‘hog was old Joe Digger!

The chil’ren screamed an’ the chil’ren cried,

They love groun’-hog cooked an’ fried!

To-my-ring-a-ding-doodle-all-DAY!

I was with the President at his news conference that Wednesday morning when the maverick Supreme Court Justice William Douglas dropped his bombshell in the Rosenberg case. Everything had been proceeding according to plan, the appeals had been exhausted, the Rosenbergs were due to be executed the next night, and Eisenhower had called the news conference the day before to confirm the details and remind the nation: “I think I am as implacable a foe of the Communistic theory as there is in this world!” The General had been submitting himself to these confrontations at the rate of nearly three a month since taking office in January, and this worried me. They exercised a visible drain on his powers, he seemed almost to deflate, to simplify, from beginning to end, and from one news conference to the next. As a precaution, we had begun weighing him — down to 180 already — but I didn’t need medical proofs, I could see for myself. He won’t last, I thought. Not at this rate. Can the Phantom see this? Am I ready, if it comes to that?

The President was talking now about the so-called book-burning scandal — Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man and one of the guys who had helped Irving Saypol send the Rosenbergs to the Death House in the first place, had been flying around Europe with his buddy G. David Schine, purging U.S. libraries there of what they considered dangerous authors — people like Howard Fast, Mrs. Clifton Fadiman, Theodore White, Bert Andrews, Dashiell Hammett — and yukking it up in their peejays with hotel clerks and cub reporters. Foster Dulles had had to admit that as a result somebody over there had actually set fire to eleven of the damned books, and now the press was in an uproar about it. The President was clearly confused on this issue. This was because, except for the odd western, he’d never read books, and so respected them more than he ought. Even the westerns were just part of the exercises associated with the reinforcement of his superpowers — he usually skipped past all the technicalities about such things as horse-breeding, trial procedures, and prospecting, all the interesting parts. As for the book-burners themselves, well, Roy’s devices were crude maybe, but after all they were also consistent, just like his courtroom prosecutions and his cloak-and-dagger work for McCarthy’s committee. Roy was smart and close to the hot center, but like Joe, he lacked real cunning. This was ironical because this is just what they were always accused of. They looked mean and shrewd — but they always outreached themselves. I warned Joe about this three years ago, but he wouldn’t listen, he was too excited. In the end, through excess and discredit, they served the Phantom. Risks of the holy encounter. Well, a Jew, a Catholic — maybe they lacked certain defenses, being spiritual outsiders, not quite true full-blooded Americans — too fearful of being misunderstood, of being victimized. Probably. Also Joe was piling up a lot of dough through privileged information — that was okay, but you couldn’t do that and be a crusader, too.

The President was saying: “By no means am I talking, when I talk about books or the right of dissemination of knowledge, am I talking about any document, or any other kind of thing that attempts to persuade, or propagandize America into Communism, so manifestly, I am not talking about that kind of thing when I talk about free access to knowledge.”

His clumsiness, I thought, is part of his disguise, part of his armor, a kind of self-defense mechanism — he seems most sincere just when he makes the least sense. I knew I still had much to learn. People still took me for a carnival barker, a used-car salesman, a fast-buck lawyer — I was still too fluent, too intense, too logical. I had to study this awkward confusion, this easy stupid grin, this casual good-natured gruffness that blunted all the questions. It angered me that Eisenhower had seemed to come by all this naturally. He’d never had to study for anything, not even war. Who else in all history had ever become the world’s greatest living military hero without so much as firing a shot or suffering a wound, without so much as a field command, a single battle, even five minutes of real combat? I was no hero, but at least I’d got sent to the goddamn South Pacific and had had a pretty frantic month on Bougainville, while the nearest Ike had ever got to real battle was the White House Egg Roll this year. He was a lucky man. They all said this, it was true. It all seemed to fall in his lap. How could you imitate something like that? I felt cheated. I’d been studying all my life, and I still wasn’t there. I worried that I’d never learn enough, worried that Uncle Sam would never use me, and then worried about the worrying. Eisenhower, damn him, never worried at all.