Public Burning (33 page)

Spithead, Goliath, Frankenstein, Eternal Son: as always, it is names that provide resonance to the experience of the daily pilgrimage. Guilmartin, Frauenglass, Finerty, and Krock. Kirk. Ike. Braque. Bortz, Bricker, and Bobo Olson. If anything on these slabs is sacred, it is these names. It's an ancient maxim of the tribe: If you violate the name, you violate the man. Even if he is dead. In the old days, before
The New York Times
, if you wished to destroy a man, you inscribed his name on a pot and smashed it. Or stuck a clay image with a pin. Now you attach his name to a sin and print it. Such an act is beyond mere insult or information, it is a magical disturbance of History. It is a holy act and an act of defilement at the same time. It may bring peace and prosperity, it may result in madness and disaster. Is Alger Hiss a Communist? Is Joe McCarthy a Fascist? Is Justice Douglas a Traitor? Is Richard Nixon a Farting Quacker who dreamt of selling his pajamas at Coney Island? What matters is: where are such questions being asked? The great experience of the twentieth century has been to accept the objective reality of time and thus of process—history does not repeat, the universe is not changeless, masses dissolve and slide through the fingers, there are no precognitions—and out in that flow all such assertions may be true, false, inconsequential, or all at the same time. Such things are said every day, and no marvels ensue. But
The New York Times
transforms this time-process into something hard and—momentarily anyway—durable: it is as if these slabs, these great stone tablets, were being hurled out into the timestream, causing the river evermore to eddy and swirl around them. And thus the danger. Envoûtements have been known to destroy the priests who practiced them: the keepers of
The New York Times
, though fascinated by the possibilities, are cautious, and they do not stray often into this dreadful domain. Ike's hard-on is not here this morning. Instead, they report that Dutch Schoch is hopeful. Universal-International wants Ruth Roman to share the adventuresome life with James Stewart in “The Far Country.” Timothy J. Doody has entered bankruptcy proceedings. The President had breakfast with Bridges, Dirksen, Magnuson, and Dodge.
RHEE
IS
ASSAILED
BY
HAMMAR-SKJOLD
. They hie to the world where the commonplace unfolds, the place of freedom and property and ease and security, the land of the more or less likely. They celebrate the names—Sinclair Weeks! Virgil Trucks! Bojangles Robinson and Jabbo Jablonski!—but they avoid the sorcery, the terrible center, the edgeless edge. Louis Appelbaum will be buried today. Okay. And Barfield, Bluhm, and Carrie Batt.
BERKMAN—
Joseph. You are always with us. Jeremiah Troup. Teresa Love, Eva Roller, and Kathryn Ripberger. Sacred stuff, to be sure, but ritualized.
QUICK
START
FOR
MISS
SWIFT
.
Catch Ma Perkins at 1:15
. No breakaway wildness, no terrible conjurations, just the easy knell of names in mild parade. General Withers Burress. Coach Callow. Nero. Ifu-de.
MISS
BAREA
LAMB
/
BECOMES
FIANCEE
. Marie Trotzky. Corliss Lamont and Licurgo Costa. Leo Tolstoy. Walt Dropo. Sugarfoot.

Like gongs in the mind, hinting at echoing infinities, names, names and number: Sarah Dougherty sells the 4-story 1-family dwelling at 825 Carroll Street to Mrs. Rudolphine Dick. General Van Fleet kills a 1950-pound Kodiak bear and the 1952 profit ratio for department stores is the 2nd worst in 19 years.
Mangrum Posts 69
. There are big numbers like the $4998732500 foreign aid bill, little numbers like the 5 tons of gravel and dirt that Jimmy Willis is buried under in Lambertsville. The 6-2 record of Vinegar Bend Mizell.
The 500 Fingers of Dr. T
by Dr. Seuss—You've got to see the 480,000-key piano hit an atomic clinker!
WITH STEREOPHONIC
SOUND!
Allison Choate of Apawamis cards a 77, 55 Chinese are ordered out of the country, Eleanor Hortense Almond dies at 103. Volume declines to 1010000 shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The President is visited by 100 schoolchildren, and the Vice President tells Senator Taft: “I broke 100 at Burning Tree Sunday, Bob!” A kind of accountability, but without irrevocable consequence, gently disturbing the timestream on occasions, but never causing it to leap its banks. The Red Sox scored a record 17 runs in one inning, canteloupe is selling at 19 cents for one pound. Even the patterns are usually familiar ones, suggesting cribbage runs, the inflationary spiral, countdowns: Eighth Race: Perón arrests 7 Radicals, a 4-nation chase nets 6 thieves, the French crisis enters its 5th week, Nick Condos was Martha Raye's 4th husband, and Willi Goettling, leaving 3 dependents, is shot between his 2 eyes by the Russians, losing his 1 life. 37 Down:
Zero
. NIL.

Despite all this effort at secularity, some communicants are nevertheless disturbed by these litanies, discovering in them hints of the terrible abysses beyond the tablets. The very enormity of the monument, at first thought comforting, begins to smother and overwhelm them. A few duck out. Others withdraw to a familiar corner, content to follow a recognizable time-line or two and keep their heads intact. But many begin to lose control. They twitch, lurch forward, jerk back, rush ahead, cower, circle back, then panic and race recklessly through the sanctuary as though lost in a circus or a ceremonial abattoir.
Prince Karl Rudolf Marries
.
SOME
HOPES
FOR
U
.
N
.
/
TOO
HIGH
. Trouble on First Hole.
HERE
IS
WHAT
YOU
CAN
DO
ABOUT
IT
(if you really care…):
The Goddess Strapless in fine white
Push-Button Loading.
DULLES'
REMARKS
SHARP
: Don't Neglect Slipping
FALSE
liquid will help you to handle expanding demands as well as to weather adjustments Fair and a little warmer today highest temperature near 23980 entries in McCalls' dress-your-best
Candidate for the worst-dressed woman
scattered with black polka dots RED PLOT! “What's happening? Where am I?” they scream, tearing frantically through the shrine, plowing into other pilgrims, slapping up against the slabs:
“Let me out!”
But Papagos Sees Need for Speed and
CLARK
KNEW
OF
RHEE
VIEW,
all seams are bound:
PHARMACISTS
ELECT
Michigan Assassin ‘
BLIND
FATHER OF 1953'
Following Crude Advance with that priceless
American Quality
—FRESHNESS
! 19
COPIES
OF
THIS
successful businessman keeps abreast of
FAILLE
LASTEX
WANTED IN
Mr. Divine's imaginary atomic explosion bathing suit and bra colors *(T-T) TIMES tested! Churchill Voices Shock
STEAK FOR FATHER'S DAY
Wired for sun it'll blast space helmets back to Mars and put all the cowboy hats out to pasture
HOGS
moderately active.
HOW
DOES
THIS
AFFECT
YOU
? Sabers Down.
Margaret Truman Passes
. “How long has it been…?”

11
.

How to Handle a Bloodthirsty Mob

I was getting dizzy trying to read
The New York Times
on the ride in. Actually, I felt very comfortable with a newspaper in my hands, reading them was a lifetime habit of mine, I'd been an enthusiast since I was a little kid, eccentric about it in fact, but I couldn't read
anything
in the back seat of a moving car. And of all the papers, the goddamn
Times
was the worst. Letters too small and uneven, too gray, too much crammed onto a page—what the hell do we want with all this high-minded gossip, anyway? Had to get through it, though; you never knew what you might need in the middle of a Cabinet meeting. I did know what I was likely to need on the way in, however, and so turned to the sports pages: sooner or later my chauffeur was bound to ask me about yesterday's ballgames or tonight's pitchers. Who are you betting on tonight, Mr. Nixon? He was a Negro and so I always tried to have something good to say about Jackie Robinson or Roy Campanella of the Dodgers. Usually this was pretty easy because both those colored boys were having terrific seasons, they were hot and the team was hot, but not yesterday: I was glad to see that they'd both gone hitless and the Cardinals had whipped the Bums' asses, 12 to 4. On the other hand, my own team, the Washington Senators, had lost to the White Sox and dropped back into the second division, overtaken by the Boston Red Sox, who had made a complete mockery of the game by scoring seventeen runs in one inning—the goddamn
seventh
, needless to say—crushing Detroit, 23 to 3. My God, what's baseball coming to? By coincidence, 23 was exactly how many Boston batters had gone to the plate in that seventh-inning outrage. And it was also, it occurred to me, the number of my football jersey back at Whittier College…23. Well, what of it? Nothing.

I leaned my head back a moment, closed my eyes for a little stomach-stroking seventh-inning stretch of my own, then braced myself and turned back to the front pages. Full of the Berlin, Rosenberg, Korean stories, the government crisis in France, the foreign-aid-bill fight in the House, the port strikes. I glanced through for my own name, noticed that Joe McCarthy was still getting a lot of headlines. That FBI agent's hairy tale of the “goon squad” plot to assassinate Joe had made the front pages of all the papers this morning, Joe was also being widely quoted on his anti-Administration support of Rhee's prisoner release in Korea, and there was even a long story on a new member of his staff, yet another “veteran Red-hunter.” Certainly, I wasn't getting that kind of press these days, but this was probably for the best. I wouldn't be running for office again for at least three years, and if I was going to create a sense of momentum, I couldn't start from too near the peak. And I hadn't gone hitless, they'd covered my work in the Senate yesterday, even if it was back in the middle pages, and there was even a report on my casual encounter with Bob Taft: “The Eisenhower Administration is improving its collective golf score, whatever luck it is having with its larger problems.” At first glance, I was flattered, pleased I'd pulled it off, but I began to wonder if maybe indirectly it was some kind of smear: trying to say we were out playing golf when we should be facing up to our national problems…? I didn't care if they said that about Eisenhower, but it wasn't fair to hit me with that one, I was only doing my goddamn duty. And then the score, too, they were obviously making fun about that: “‘I broke 100 at Burning Tree Sunday,' Nixon declared, then bowed acknowledgement to Senator Taft's congratulations. Taft was on crutches and appeared to have lost considerable weight, but was ‘gay' as he exchanged golfing talk with Nixon.” Gay? Maybe I'd made a mistake warming up to a dying man. “Bob, I have news for you…”

I sighed. News and more news: I read that New York City was installing “Atomic Age” city lights that turned on by radio, that several teachers had been axed in New York City in apparent reprisals against Albert Einstein, and that they were letting Trotsky's killer out of jail—thank God I wasn't paranoid, or I'd begin to worry it was yet another goddamn anniversary gift to Pat and me. At one time in my life, I actually thought I wanted to be a journalist and took some courses in it at college, but I hated it. Only C's I ever got all through school. It was one thing to witness an event, another to go home and make up some story about it. Anyway, if it was worth witnessing, it was worth getting into—I couldn't just stand stupidly on the sidelines and take notes, I had to jump in and play a part. Move things around. And then, whenever I did, and chanced to glance back over my shoulder at those cynical bastards watching me, grinning, jotting it all down, making a fat living off my spent hide and life-force like some kind of cannibals, even contributing to my suffering with their niggardly reports and mud-slinging insinuations, how was I expected to respect and admire them? Besides, it's a fact, while most publishers might be Republicans, most reporters were Democrats, or worse—look at how they'd smeared me last fall with that phony manufactured “fund crisis,” for example, hurling charges, ignoring my refutations—trial by press, that's what it was, worse than trial by ordeal, not even Tass would have dared to do so much to damage our national prestige at home and abroad—to hell with them.

Pat was luckier, they were kinder to her. Always had been. “Patricia Ryan as Daphne Martin had a role which called for temperament, and did she have it? Plenty. She did some fine acting as she wheeled in and out of the room, always in a semi-rage. Richard Nixon had a small part but carried his assignment well.” No smaller than hers, goddamn it. That was from the
Whittier News
in its review of that play we were in,
The Dark Tower
, the one where we met. It was about actors in the big city. An evil man's possession of a young girl's mind. Murder. I was the playwright, Barry Jones, “a faintly collegiate, eager blushing youth of 24,” a small-town greenhorn outsider among these snide and pompous Easterners, a rare part for me since I usually played old men. Pat played the part of Daphne Martin, “a tall, dark, sullen beauty of 20, wearing a dress of great chic and an air of permanent resentment,” in short, a hot-pants actress on the make, tough and lethal. In the play we ended up going off to get married, but it was meant as a kind of cynical joke. “Jones & Martin, card tricks and sex appeal.” It wasn't an altogether pleasant part to play. All the way through the thing, they made fun of me, whether I was onstage or not, made fun of my open-faced self-confidence, my naïveté, my youth, my name, my piano playing, my writing, my taste, it probably put Pat off me for months. Even as she and I made our final exit, Pat slipped back onstage to tell the real hero: “Listen—as soon as he's tucked in his crib I'll call you up!” But they all forgot one thing. I wrote the play that was the title of this play, the play within the play—or perhaps the play that embraced the play.
The Dark Tower
was mine, and they all lived in it….