Public Burning (76 page)

43…42…Uncle Sam comes hurrying out, bobbing his stern white brows and imitating Groucho's famous stiff-backed ass-to-the-ground stride, to garner the last burst of laughter and applause and shower crisp greenbacks like confetti on the many prize-winners, reminding all present with his freehanded beneficence of America's greatest asset: her bottomless kitty. Then he rears up straight and tall and hollers out: “Now is the hour, fellers and citizens! Enough of this monkey business!
We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!”
And with a grand wave of his red-white-and-blue plug hat, he brings on a Texas high-school marching band, batons flying, legs kicking, drums rolling, plumes fluttering, to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The people bellow forth, drunk enough now to try the high notes, rapturous tears springing to their eyes, their hearts beating faster…it's coming now…40…

During the suspenseful “say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave” line, Uncle Sam suddenly whips his top hat high into the air, far out of sight, then dashes backstage, crying out to Betty Crocker: “Okay, get your sweet buns out there, dumplin', and preparest a table before me in the presents a mine inimies!” He whacks her lovingly on her corseted butt as he flies by, popping all her stays and reminding old-timers in the wings of the slap Teddy Roosevelt laid on his favorite niece, Eleanor, as he gave her away in holy wedlock to the Great I Am, or of crusty Zack Taylor smacking Old Whitey on the rump as he sent him out to pasture on the White House lawn. And then the next time he's seen is when he comes riding up from behind the crowd, out of the Disney menagerie tent, astride the gigantic GOP elephant, its red-white-and-blue crown studded with spangles that spell out Long Tom Jefferson's article of faith:
WE ARE ALL REPUBLICANS!

Just as the people sing, “What is that which the breeze…half conceals, half discloses,” Uncle Sam reaches far up into the darkening sky and snatches his plug hat as it comes spinning down…

Uncle Sam pops his hat back on his head, but it doesn't sit there—it keeps hopping up and down and seems to have little feet sticking out. He takes it off and peers inside, and with a surprised look on his face plucks out: a dove! the dove of peace! He lets it go—no, not a dove after all, it's the famous floo-floo bird: there it goes, winging its way backwards over the crowd, squawking raucously and crumpling its tail-feathers on billboards and skyscrapers. The people cheer the bird and shout misdirections at it, fight for the coins spilling out of the pantaloon pockets of Uncle Sam, who's now doing a handstand on the elephant's head. The Democrats' mascot donkey comes trailing behind, evidently excited by all this patriotic brouhaha and so bearing—besides the familiar legend you
NEVER
HAD
IT
SO
GOOD
! stitched on its saddle blanket—a hard-on the size of Mickey Mantle's baseball bat. As they near the stage, it nearly gets dumped on by the Republican elephant, which chooses just the moment it's down front to unloose its considerable bowels, making such windy plopping noises you can hardly hear the marching band now playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

reads the Loew's State marquee, and down the street the Roxy announces:

A
BOUNDLESS
VISION
GROWS
UPON
US…

Uncle Sam posts the elephant and donkey at either side of the Sing Sing stage and signals for the Disney Rat Pack. Mickey and Minnie, Goofy, Horace, and the rest take up prearranged aisle positions in support of the Secret Service (still in their papier-mâché heads) and to help direct the VIPs; other pageant figures line up around the periphery of the VIP section; the film crews pan their cameras around to focus on the main entrance, stage left, zooming in, and the band plays Mess Call. Which is the cue for Betty Crocker: she emerges, prim and matronly, wiping her hands on her apron, to introduce, like the ingredients for one of her famous stuffed turkeys, all the Very Important People who have come here tonight to witness the public burning of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

And while Uncle Sam, using his corncob pipe as a baton, conducts the band in playing “When the Saints Go Marchin' In,” out they come, not marching, but jogging on like tensed-up ballplayers, everybody who's anybody in the above-board American Power Structure, each one introduced by Betty in her somewhat tremulous old-lady voice (though if anything, it must be said she's getting younger every day) and welcomed with a rousing “He's our man!” cheer led by the Indiana University cheerleaders. The first few to lope out pull up momentarily before that unfortunate mound of elephant dung, but since there's no way around it and no way back, they flash their vote-getting smiles, square their shoulders, and slog on through, and once a path is laid there are no further hesitations. There's an old panhandler out there, stuffed into a thick wool overcoat like an antique shopwindow dummy from the Great Depression and seemingly rooted to the spot, who's something of an obstacle, too, but the VIP's jogging by merely assume he's some kind of turnstile (couldn't be real, after all, not in prosperous postwar America) and stuff quarters in as they pass.

The VIP area has been divided into three sections, one each for the three branches of government who together have made these executions possible, with pride of place tonight given to the judiciary, the legislative branch seated to their left and the executive to their right. A special section of box seats, decorated with flags and bunting and exhibits from the trial, has been set aside just in front of the stage for those directly associated with the Rosenberg case: the FBI director and agents who broke the case, the Judge, jury, prosecution team and witnesses, the Attorney General, and a ringside front-and-center seat for President Eisenhower, who's never been one to settle for a side-aisle pew. The back rows of the three sections are reserved for state and local officials from around the country—legislators, judges, administrators, mayors, National Guard officers, tax collectors, Lieutenant-Governors, sheriffs, and the like—and these are the first to come out, followed by all the auxiliary personnel who serve the three federal branches, all the agencies, bureaus, departments, commissions, institutes, foundations, boards, councils, societies, administrations, appeal and claims courts, funds, organizations, banks, services, systems, committees, national centers, offices, and authorities, and all their staff, counsel, secretaries, chiefs, directors, clerks, treasurers, personnel officers, confidential assistants, managers, commissioners, auditors, recorders, consultants, editors, superintendents, chairmen, military aides, receptionists, curators, and parliamentarians. Next come all the key personnel from the major executive departments attached to Cabinet officers, the federal district judges and senior circuit judges in the appeals courts, and all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. It's a colorful lot, and even plain-spoken self-possessed Betty Crocker gets a certain itchy pleasure out of calling out their names: Laurie Battle! Porque Patten! Zeke Gathings! Rubie Scudder! Jimmy Utt! J. Edgar Chenoweth! Prince H. Preston, Jr.! Gracie Pfost! Hamer Budge! Runt Bishop! Shepard Crumpacker! Errett P. Scrivner! Hale Boggs! Tip O'Neill! Richard B. Wigglesworth! Thaddeus M. Machrowicz! Kit Clardy! Elford A. Cederberg! Dewey Short! Morgan M. Moulder! Norris Cotton! T. Millet Hand! Jack Dempsey! Stuyvesant Wainwright! Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.! Jake Javits! Usher Burdick! James G. Polk! Page Belcher! Sam Coon! Homer D. Angelí! Wally Mumma! L. Mendel Rivers and Gerry Ford! Percy Priest! Olin E. Teague! Homer Thorn-berry! Winston Prouty! Thor C. Tollefson! Harley Staggers! Melvin Laird! Clem Zablocki!

“Whoopee-ti-yi-yo!” laughs Uncle Sam, herding them in, “the whole dingbusted United States guvvamint is corraled in here tonight, I see, everybody from the guinea pigs at Disease Control to the coffee steward at the Pentagon! It's a real smorgasbord! Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity, and a appetizin' lot they are, too!” Then he suddenly starts and glances up at the sky, lost beyond the bright lights and hovering smog of Times Square. “God
damn
that tarnacious Phantom if he lets one fly tonight!” he mutters, and a collective gasp shakes the Square. Could it happen? “What am I sayin'? Anything he can do I can do better! I yam strong as the breezes w'ich blows down big treeses, so c'mon, get on with it, punkin, dish 'em up! In skatin' over thin ice our safety is in our speed!”