Robert Coover - Public Burning

“But—”

“Shut up, boy, and lissen! If you don’t say nuthin’, you won’t be called on to repeat it! I’m tellin’ you, true as preachin’, he’s a rantankerous mean shape a the brumal rain, and the darkness fearful and formless, lean, hongry, savage, anti-everything, the maker a deserts and the wall-eyed harbinger a deevastation whose known rule a warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions! the Hog-Eye Man! the arch-degenerate! alien to us in ever’ way — habits, hopes, blood even — and he infects everything, our litterchur, art, religion, games, deemocratic system and free enterprise, with the pizen — you remember all this, son, you can use it yourself some day — with the pizen of his evil sinister influence! Why, even our decision to burn them two lefties in Times Square mought not be ours at all, but his! A trap! That sassy rascal, he’s capable of anything!”

“You…you think there’s a chance,” I gasped, “that the Phantom can actually break, uh, this thing up?”

“Yea, I tell you, mister, we are at the precipice, it is a bloody desput condition what confronts us, and if we don’t mind our P’s and Q’s, we shall all be fissionated quicker’n a allagator can chew a puppy!”

“You mean—!?”

“I mean what I say!” Uncle Sam glared ominously at me through the storm of notes and documents now fluttering slowly to the floor, then turned on his heel and went in to use my John.

I was struck dumb. Was this it, then? Of course, I knew it could happen, we all knew it could happen any day, we talked about it all the time, Rockefeller had his bomb-shelter business in high gear, we were already counting out the holy remnant — but now, so close, so sudden? Was this the bloody condition, the perilous fight, the evil hour? Had Uncle Sam not announced, long ago, an uproarious tumult, a time of tribulation but a redemption which shall last forever? Was this more than a mere symbolic expiation? Were the Rosenbergs in fact the very trigger — living high-explosive lenses, as it were — for the ultimate holocaust? And was this what Uncle Sam wanted me to share in? The crashing roar of his urine drowned out my thoughts — he’d smashed up more than one solid-marble toilet bowl in this building with that mighty Niagara of his, and I always worried when he used mine. Like those fire hoses on Bleecker Street, I thought, oh fuck my luck. “Whew,” he groaned from in there, “this is the most magnificent movement of all!” It was said that he could generate enough power with his flow to light up all Latin America, so long as they didn’t mind the odor, and that once, to prove he could stop time, had pissed Old Faithful back down its hole, and thereby had created the Hot Springs of Arkansas. Something to look forward to during the Incarnation…if I survived….

Uncle Sam emerged, looking pleased with himself, buttoning up his pantaloons. “I promised you a veritable day of havoc, my friend, and it ain’t over yet! Nosirree, hob, I know what I’m explanigatin’ about, there’ll be a hot tamale in the old town tonight, so you better get a grip on your braces, boy — when Jesus comes to claim us all, it’s gonna be no place for skonks and cookie pushers! We’re in for a turrible grumble and rumble and roar, a most strenuous and fearful concatenation of orful circumstances, so stay with the procession or you’ll never catch up!” Maybe the pissing had done him good, he seemed more relaxed and playful again. I felt hopeful. But then he poked his nose into my refrigerator and his face fell. Nothing in there, I knew, but an empty cottage-cheese carton and a bottle of moldy ketchup. “Damn it, you spread a wuss table even than that Yankee pinch-fart Coolidge — only thing I ever got outa him was his wife’s apple pie, which was like eatin’ raw shrapnel, but even that was more wholesome than — hullo! what’s this! Say, I ain’t smoked an Optimo since before the last Depression!” He sniffed it, peeled the cellophane, bit off the end. “Do you mind?”

“Well, no, but—”

“But me no buts, son, you gotta learn to give a little!” he scolded, tucking the cigar in his cheek. “No, like I’m noratin’, this is no local matter up in Times Square tonight, are you listenin’? The whole pesky world’s in on this one, always has been. It is, and I shit you not, it is a irrepressible conflict betwixt opposin’ and endurin’ forces! Why, it’s said that when the very angels fell — now, this was a long time ago, son, before your time, even before Grant’s time — it’s said their fall was on accounta unnatural lust and the betrayal of ‘etarnal secrets which were presarved in Heaven.’ You see? Even then! And you know what them secrets were?” He fumbled behind his ear, took off his plug hat and searched the inside band, slapped at his pockets. He swept the stacks of paper off my desk, finally found buried there a lighter Pat had once given me on some anniversary. “Well, come on, boy, I asked you a question, don’t stand there dumb as a dead nigger in a mudhole! You know what the secrets them angels betrayed were?”

“N-no, sir!” I replied with a start.

“They taught men how to make weapons!” said Uncle Sam solemnly.

“Ah…!”

“Whereupon, God stretched forth his little finger…” He flicked the lighter importantly, but nothing happened. “What the hell…?” He thumbed it several times, but it wouldn’t light. I knew this would happen, it had never worked since she gave it to me. “Goddamn world’s goin’ to the dogs!” he muttered irritably, “it’s them poxtaked Japs, the shiftless cusses,” and he struck it like a match on the seat of his pants. “Right…stretched forth his little pinky, then, and them traitor angels was consumed…”—he drew the flame slowly toward the cigar—“by ( puff! puff! )…”—glancing up as smoke began to curl out between his lips, tossing the lighter out the window: “… FIRE!” The cigar exploded in his face.

I couldn’t breathe. I stared at him in disbelief. His eyes were bugged out and crossed over his nose with astonishment, his face tarred with soot, his white eyebrows bobbing like a minstrel comic’s, the peeled-back cigar butt still quivering in his puckered lips like a blackened daisy. I’ve lost it, I wept. I’ll never be President!

“BY GOD!” he roared. The few papers left on my desk lifted and settled again, and Ike’s framed prayer crashed from the wall. “WHAT IN TARNATION IS GOIN’ ON HERE!?!”

“I’m — I’m sorry!” I cried. “I didn’t—!”

“OHH! DUMB BE PASSION’S STORMY RAGE, WHEN HE WHO MIGHT A LIGHTED UP AND LED HIS AGE, FALLS BACK IN NIGHT!” he bellowed — the chandelier splintered and crashed, and the refrigerator door blew open and fell off its hinges. He was in a truly awesome rage, his face puffy and almost ugly, like a choleric John Adams or Teddy Roosevelt, and now black as Rochester’s to boot. I was clutching my breast in absolute terror. It is not a pleasant picture to see a whole brilliant career destroyed before your eyes, I thought, tears streaming down my cheeks, especially when it is your own! My knees had turned to Jell-O — jelly, I mean — and my—

Suddenly his index finger sprang forward and waggled in front of my nose — it was just like those new 3-D movies, he didn’t seem to move an inch, just flashed that pointing finger out at me — I jumped right out of my shoes, even the one with the lace in it, and fell back against the wall. “LISTEN TO ME, MISTER!” he thundered, cracking the mirror over the fireplace and pinning me back against the wall with a look that not even the worst of the Democrats or the most vicious of the Phantom’s blackhearted agents ever gave me. I felt the wall behind me tremble — or perhaps it was only my own terror. “YOU’VE GOT JUST SIX HOURS TO GET YOURSELF STRAIGHTENED OUT OR ELSE!”