Public Burning (74 page)

“Somebody…somebody came…” She could hardly get it out, she was breaking my heart with the struggle: “…to measure me today!”

“What? To measure—?”

“They said…
they said it was for a wax museum! Oh, Richard!”
She was sobbing uncontrollably now, trembling violently all over.

“Ethel…that's…that's terrible!” And I began to cry as well. Real tears!

“I don't want
…I don't want to die!”

“I don't want you to die either, Ethel!” I sobbed. It was like a dam-burst, all falling out of me. We were clutching each other desperately, completely dissolved in tears. I don't know how we stayed on our feet. “It's terrible! I can't stand thinking about it!”

She squeezed me more tightly than ever. “You won't die, Richard! Don't be afraid!”

“Two of my brothers died!” I bawled. “I always thought… I would be
next!”

“Oohh!” she wailed. “Brothers! Don't talk about brothers!”

“It nearly killed my mother, trying to keep my brother alive! And then he died anyway!”

“My
mother made fun of me! She said there was no place in life for arty people! She sent me out to work!”

“She was cruel to you!”

“She took my money! She hated me!”

“My
mother sent me away to live with my aunt! She—she didn't want me!”

“Oh, Richard!”

“Once I went all the way to Arizona to—to clean the horsepoop out of stables just to be with her and she didn't appreciate it!”

“My mother wouldn't let me take music lessons!”

“I nearly died of pneumonia!”

“I have terrible backaches!”

“I get hay fever in September!” We looked into each other's faces. Tears were streaming down our cheeks. “Oh, Ethel! You're so—so understanding!”

“Hold me close, Richard! I feel cold! Warm me with your warmth!”

We kissed again. This time languorously, purposefully, intently. The sweet salt of tears mingled with the now-familiar taste of our lips. I thought: all strength lies in giving, not taking. I wanted to serve. We held each other's hands. In this long chaste embrace, I felt an incredible new power, a new freedom. Where did it come from? Uncle Sam? The Phantom? Both at once? From neither, I supposed. There was nothing overhead any more, I had escaped them both! I was outside guarded time! I was my own man at last! I felt like shouting for joy!

We separated. We stared at each other through our tears. We laughed. We hugged each other, stared, laughed again. We pecked playfully at each other's lips. We patted each other's bottoms. We rubbed noses. It was a bit prominent her nose. Of course. I liked it though: so different from Pat's.

She cocked her head to one side and grinned. “You've got a funny nose,” she said. We laughed and laughed.

“I've never been able to let my hair down with anyone before,” I said. I licked her lips, kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her throat, caressed her breasts. “I've always been afraid of seeming square. But with you it's not like that—I feel I can talk about anything with you!”

“Yes,” she said, and squeezed me happily. “I've always been afraid of seeming weak. Why can't people let other people just be what they are?”

“People are always sweating about their image instead of about loving other people. Why can't we all talk to each other, just say what we feel?”

She kissed my throat, nibbled my earlobe. “You're so serious-minded, so sincere, Richard, I could eat you in sheer extremity of feeling!” she whispered huskily.

We kissed again. Passionately this time, and now that train was passing through Yorba Linda again, or was still passing, was forever passing and whistling, it was beautiful, I had a very warm and heartaching feeling about it, I was waving at it, the engineer was smiling and waving back, it was Herbert Hoover, I was also the engineer, smiling and waving, guiding my train through lands new, exotic, verdant, vast, my hand sure on the throttle. Everywhere I went people cheered and waved. I could actually
hear
them cheering! Aunt Edith. Tom Dewey. Chief Newman. Foster and Allen and Moneybags Wunder: I saw them as we went hooting past! Clickety-clock! clickety—all this motion… What was I—? “Ethel!” I gasped, breaking away, nuzzling behind her ear, trying to catch my breath. “We have to get out of here somehow! We have to think of something to tell the Warden!”

She gave me a tremulous hug, shook her head. “No,” she said breathlessly. “They'd never let me go now. Just hold me for a few more minutes. I've been so lonely. I don't feel lonely any more.”

“But, Ethel, we could make something up, you could tell them you were drugged or brainwashed or your children would be murdered if you didn't—”

“Did you like my letters?” she asked dreamily.

“What? What?”

“Didn't you read—?”

“Yes! Yes, they were beautiful, Ethel! Like everything about you!” Should we use the Warden as a hostage? Or just tell him she'd confessed and walk right out? Hide somewhere until it all blows over? I glanced about but everything was bare and exposed. “And, uh…your poetry! I liked your poetry, too!”

“Do you like poetry?” she whispered, holding me close.

“I've… I've always had a feeling for literature,” I said. I knew I had to keep thinking, but it was hard to think with her tongue in my ear. “Plays especially. I've written some. Uh…one or two—I just had a new idea for one last night! It was—”

“You could write the plays and I could act in them! I could even sing!”

“Yes! Yes, it's not too late!” I cried. “We're still young, Ethel!” A vast new panorama seemed to be opening up before my eyes. We could go away! to Mexico!—the South Pacific! Why not? We looked at each other, our faces began to twist up—and we burst into tears again. Now we were both sobbing frantically, hanging on to each other for dear life. “Oh, Ethel!” I wept. “We've got to—we've got to
do
something!”

“It's no use!” she bawled.

I knew deep in my heart she was right, but I didn't want to seem to believe it. “There's…there's still time…!”

She was weeping as if she could never stop, her tears running down my neck in a flood. Her hand was under my shirt and trying to squeeze down behind past my belt. I was sobbing in her hair, clutching at it with one hand (a bald spot! no,
shaved!
for the electrode! oh my God!), clinging to her bottom with the other. I felt like Aeneas, throwing himself on Dido's bier. I sucked in my stomach so she could push her hand down another inch or so.

“Oh, Ethel! I'd do anything for you!” I sobbed. “If we could only—!”

“Richard!” she gasped, pulling back, her dark eyes flashing through the tears. “Richard, please! You
can
do something! You
must!”

“Yes! Yes, I—!”

“You must take me! Here!”

“Ye—what?”

“Now! Before I die! Give me a chance! It's the one thing you can do for me!”

“But…but—
here
—?”

“Quickly! We only have a few minutes!”

“But what if the Warden—”

“We've still got time! He said thirty minutes!”

“He did?”

“Hurry!” she gasped. “Now!” She was tearing at my belt.
“I'll help you!”
she whispered, and it sent fresh shivers up and down my spine. I tried to help, too, not knowing what else to do. Certainly I was ready if it came to it and if I could be quick enough… I usually was…nobody would ever know…“Two whole years, Richard! Two whole years!”

Our fingers were hopelessly engangled at the buckle. “Try…try to rush things…,” I wheezed.

It fell out through my broken fly then, as big as I'd ever seen it, throbbing like the breast of a wounded bird. I hardly recognized it. She slapped my hands away from the buckle playfully and unhooked it, whipped the belt apart, snapped my pants down to my ankles. She tried to pull them off my feet, but they were getting tangled. “We haven't a minute to lose!” she cried, glancing anxiously over her shoulder. “Hurry! Get them off!”

“But, but—!”

“You're not going fast enough, Richard! Get them off!”

“Th-they're caught on my shoes!” I cried. Damn it, I was doing my best! I seemed to hear my mother getting me ready for school. You're going to be late!

Ethel tried to help, but the pants were getting hopelessly knotted up. We were staggering about, slapping up against the walls and radiators (fortunately they were turned off), but the goddamn pants would not come off.

I sat down. The bare waxed floor felt cold and hostile to my bum. But I was still terribly excited. I wanted her to do again what she'd been doing just before. “Give a pull!” I shouted.

“We'll never make it!” she whimpered, hauling frantically on my pants, pulling them inside out and bouncing me around the corridor on my rump in a screeching rubbery skid.

“Hey! Ethel! Ow!” I felt like I was on some kind of awful carnival ride. I was afraid of getting blisters. “You're hurting me—!”

She caught her breath suddenly, spun toward the door. “We're too late!” she gasped.

“Oh no!” I cried. “What is it?”

“Can't you hear it?” It sounded like distant chains rattling. “It's the other prisoners banging their tin cups on their bars! They're coming! They're coming to take me away!”

I scrambled clumsily to my feet—they'd got crossed somehow in the tangle of pants and I kept tipping over. “Help me, Ethel!
What am I going to do?!”

“Quick!” she whispered. “It doesn't matter about me! You must save yourself!” She clutched my arm, looked about wildly, spied the open door. “In there!” she cried, and pushed me toward the execution chamber. “It's your only chance!”

I didn't argue, I could hear the rattling getting louder, I hobbled and stumbled toward the door with her, hauling at my pants. “Well, it is…it is important for the nation…!” I stammered. She seemed to be rubbing something on my behind. “What are you—!?”

“Your bottom's all filthy,” she explained breathlessly. “I'm just cleaning it off—now hurry! I'll try to stall them!” She grabbed up my battered homburg and clapped it down around my ears. She must have been standing on it. The sign over the door into the electrocution chamber, I saw, said:
ENTER TO GROW IN WISDOM, DEPART BETTER TO SERVE THY COUNTRY AND MANKIND
.

The lights dipped. “Oh my God! What—!?”

“They're testing the dynamos!” she cried. She spun me around, threw her arms about me, held me tight. “Don't…don't forget me, Richard!” she gasped.

“Ethel! I don't know what to…” I could hardly think, the noises had got louder and I could hear footsteps now, marching up toward the far door. “You've been…it's been great—meeting you, I mean!”

She took my face in her hands, kissed it. I was trying not to panic. “You will be a great man,” she said softly, speaking as though she had all the time in the world. “I have faith in you. You will unite the nation and bring peace to mankind. But above all they shall say of you: Richard Nixon was a great lover!” She kissed me again, long and passionately. “You need a shave,” she said with a shy smile, and tweaked my peter gently. There was a tear in her eye.

“Ethel!” I was afraid I was going to start crying again. I was trying to remember the lines of that play she was in. “Ethel, remember, the valiant die many—I mean, the valiant, uh, taste of death—damn it, I've forgotten it!” I could hear keys being shoved into the locks of the door at the other end of the corridor. The autopsy room, I thought! I can hide in there!

“Cowards die many times before their deaths,” she said, “the valiant never taste of death but once.” Was there something caustic in her tone? It came to me as though through an echo chamber. I felt terrible that I'd muffed the line.

“Ethel, forgive me!” I pleaded, backing away. I was cold and hot all at once and there was a roaring in my ears. I had the strange sensation of a body lying on the floor of the execution chamber, but I couldn't bring myself to look. Behind Ethel, the door was opening!

I was afraid she might reach out, pull me back, try to kiss me again—she just couldn't seem to get enough! But instead she only grinned sheepishly and winked. “I'll be thinking of you, Richard,” she said. They were coming in behind her. I ducked back out of sight, reflecting that a man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life's mountaintop experiences: only in losing himself does he find himself.

26.

Spreading the Table of Glory