Robert Coover - Public Burning

I had to stop in a washroom on my way to the office to clean up, couldn’t let my staff see me like this. I slapped through the swinging doors, still keyed up, ready for battle, but the place was empty. Those goddamn organ grinders out there pissed me off, Pearson especially — Winchell wasn’t so bad, he’d never got past the sixth grade, after all, never read a book, probably couldn’t, you had to make allowances. Understood his role, too: an entertainer; you could work with that. Apparently we were in the same class of reserve Lieutenant Commanders, he also was up for promotion. Shit, maybe I ought to quit politics and go back in, the Korean War’s nearly over, shouldn’t be too dangerous, and it sure as hell would be easier than this. I recalled those days in the Navy with a lot of affection, I’d grown up there, tried everything I’d been scared to try till then — I hated to think how square I’d been before, a silly little Sunday-school bigot, ranting about the disgusting evils of tobacco and alcohol and gambling, never saying anything worse than “hell” or “damn,” shying from women, hadn’t even gone with a whore — well, all that’d be different now. Commander Nixon of the USN. I was still young enough to cut the mustard, so why not? Well, for one thing, the seasickness…and having to kill all that time, kiss the asses of a lot of clowns who kissed mine now — no, it was a drop in rank, I was better off here, in the thick of it, no matter how rough it got: once you get used to the fast track, once you’ve hit the big leagues like I have, you can’t resign yourself to just puttering around. Anyway, I’m at my best when the going is hardest — that’s when you find out who has what it takes. I once wrote a note to myself, I made it up myself, I still have it somewhere: “Live so that you can look any man in the face and tell him to go to hell!” I looked up at myself in the mirror. “Go to hell!” I shouted.

I realized I was still very wrought up. Something of a mess, too. My shirt was limp with sweat, face and hands streaked with horseshit, some on my suit, my jacket shoulder scuffed and splitting at the seam, jowls already darkening with bristle, hair mussed, face bruised, Jesus. I’ve always been very particular about my physical appearance, even as a little boy. Something deep in my character. I used to get up at least half an hour early on school mornings so I’d have plenty of time, my mother always remarked on this. I brushed each tooth, using all the right motions, gargled ritually, made Mom smell my breath to make sure I wouldn’t offend anybody on the bus. I was always afraid this might be part of my problem with girls. I never could get used to kissing them on the mouth — I thought I could smell my own and worried that they did, too. Even at Duke, where we had no running water in our cramped room, and where a certain unkemptness was fashionable, presumably bespeaking a student too involved in his studies to take proper care of himself, I maintained my tidiness. The other guys thought, when I snuck out of bed early every morning, lit their fire for them, and disappeared, that I was off cracking the books somewhere, but in reality I was in the gym using the showers. Had the whole place to myself then, I liked the feeling of it, stalking around in the dawn light like a wild animal, it set me up for my day in the law library. In fact it was in there, in front of the gymnasium mirrors in the morning grayness, where I first tested out some of the great trial-lawyer gestures that became my hallmark as a politician.

I washed up as best I could, combed my hair, straightened my tie, brushed my clothes off with toilet paper. I found my handkerchief stuffed in a jacket pocket, remembered where it had been that day, and flushed it down a stool. Weirdly, as it got sucked down the hole, I seemed to hear a child cry — I realized my imagination was working overtime, like I still hadn’t come out the other end of those goddamn dreams. Have to take a vacation when this thing is over. I cleaned my shoe with soap and water. The lace was crusted with the stuff and had got broken when I tore the shoe out from under the cabbie’s seat, so I threw it away. To get at the crud in between the sole and top of the shoe, I wrapped toilet paper around a pencil point, an old trick I learned long ago on those long hot evenings after cleaning out the stables at the Prescott rodeo. Sooner or later, my enemies in the press would try to use that rodeo job against me, too — he got his start in life with both feet in the shit, they’ll say. Just as they’ll claim that I learned all I knew about politics when the bosses took notice of my good work and promoted me out front to bark for the Wheel of Fortune. Well, that’s fair game, you’ve got to be able to take it in politics, but they’ll be wrong about it, as usual. The stables taught me discipline and silence — the best test of a man is not how well he does the things he likes but how well he does the things he doesn’t like — while the Wheel of Fortune gave me an appreciation of risk and the rudiments of mob psychology. I learned out there how to make my mark among total strangers, people whose lives were totally different from my own, and how to keep quiet about it after. The whole Frontier Days Rodeo scene gave me a special ceremonial perspective on the legend of the American West, too, and it ended once and for all whatever squeamishness I might have had toward the cruder side of life. I can be around blood, shit, dead bodies, beatings, tragedy, any kind of garbage or ugliness, and not be bothered like most. In a concentration camp, I not only would survive, I would probably even prosper. And it was why Uncle Sam, I knew, could count on me tonight at the electrocutions, where others might lose their color, if not their courage and suppers as well. Tonight! Whew, it hardly seemed possible that it was really going to happen, after all, just a few hours from now! I didn’t know if I was pleased or not. I felt like I used to feel when an exam was rushing up on me I wasn’t prepared for. Hey! I had to get that speech written!

I hustled out of there and on up to my office. The girls greeted me as usual, but they were less than natural about it, something in the way they ducked their heads, glanced at each other, fussed with the pamphlets and brochures stacked out for tourists. Had they spotted so quickly my laceless shoe? Caught a whiff? Or — ah! I’d forgotten to lock the door to my inner office last night, they’d witnessed the mess in there. Encountering so much disorder in an office kept as neat as mine must have been as shocking to them as finding Foster Dulles’ office filled with empty gin bottles or Cardinal Spellman’s quarters littered with lace panties. I should get them out of there, I thought. I didn’t have much time left, and they were no help at a time like this. A nuisance, in fact.

I checked the mail, signed some letters, remarked favorably on a peculiar-looking beanie with five fingers sticking up that one of them had bought for a nephew, asked for a cup of coffee, looked over the advance copy of a special feature article on me for this Sunday’s Washington Post , apologized laughingly for the confusion in the other room, glanced at the appointments calendar. “I was working late last night on a report for the President, and let me say frankly, I, uh, didn’t get a chance to straighten up after,” I said with a loose chuckle. For some reason, I didn’t recognize a single name on the appointments calendar. “This Rosenberg thing, you know — the President wanted all the, uh, facts before making any final, I’ve been working sixteen hours a day on this thing, any final judgment on their petition for clemency.”

“What’s going to happen, Mr. Nixon? Has it been postponed again? We heard all the shouting—”