“I hate to see that evenin’ sun go down when day is done and all de worl’ am sad and dreary,” sing the multitudes up in the Square as though in antiphonal response, but sad and dreary nothing, they’re all atremble with joy and anticipation, awaiting the climax of the ceremonies with such fierce eagerness — goldurn! it’s a big night, Maude! — that the minutes seem to crawl by like hours. The jam-up makes it hard to shift about now so the boys from City Hall are working the crowd like church ushers, passing community bottles up and down the lines. Eisenhoppers are bounding and squeaking, toy chairs smoking, Fourth of July firecrackers popping. “As John Brown once said,” says Uncle Sam, come up from below to watch the proceedings, “this is a beautiful country! Ubi libido ibi patria!” He signals and Oliver Allstorm and His Pentagon Patriots, illuminated now by weird red, white, and blue flashing lights and supported by the Radio City Rockettes, fan out across the stage to lead the people in their last big number of the night, the hit that has made the Patriots famous and assured their immortality: “Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Traitors to the U.S.A., Must Die”…
“This man and wife, this guilty pair
Must die in the Electric Chair,
So rang the Judge’s fervent Cry
These traitors are condemned to die!
And burn for treason, guilt and shame,
So let us note each traitor’s name—
Julius Rosenberg
And Ethel Rosenberg
Both tried to sell
America to
A Russian hell…”
Threading her way now through the dignitaries, comedians, musicians, evangelists, and police detachments backstage, dressed in a dark suit with lace frills, a crisp white handkerchief in her breast pocket and her graying hair neatly but not severely combed back, comes General Mills’s famous daughter Betty Crocker, hostess for the VIP processional to follow. Uncle Sam greets her with an ebullient wave of his star-spangled plug hat—“Let Grandmaw through there!” he shouts — and invites her to share his peephole.
She bends over stiffly to peer out, and what she sees out there is a terrible excitement, an impressive agitation: thousands upon thousands of people, singing at the top of their lungs, most of them well beyond either sobriety or modesty, led by a noisy group of musicians, even more rambunctious and ostentatious than Rudy Vallee and his Connecticut Yankees, and though they’re singing about “cooking” and “frying,” she certainly doesn’t recognize it as a recipe from her cookbook! Goodness! Fights are breaking out here and there in the heat of the packed masses, hard liquor is being passed about freely, girls are kicking their bare legs high in the sky, and there’s a lot of rude behavior — but there’s a positive excitement out there, too. She sees flags being unfurled everywhere, patriotic lighting displays, fireworks, Red Cross teams rushing through the crowds with bromides, film crews hovering from derricks and lifts, capturing it all for posterity, which Betty, like all Americans, believes in. Every window of every building looking out on the Square is packed with happy cheering people, even the rooftops, and the billboards and theater marquees bear impassioned messages like NEW YORK, THY NAME’S DELIRIUM! and LET NO GUILTY MAN ESCAPE! and WHAT A SWELL PARTY THIS IS! “My sakes,” she remarks, squinting out through the peephole, “it’s getting a bit wild, isn’t it?”
“Yes, honey,” laughs Uncle Sam, “there yam a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last act of the Patriots, what I greatly admire! We ain’t had so much as a skumpy lynching in this land o’ hope and glory for a year and a half, there’s a real bodacious belly-wringin’ appetite up! You feel it, too? O, it sets my heart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock…!”
“…Now should this pair outwit the law
And wriggle from death’s bloody maw;
An outraged nation with a yell
Shall drag them from their prison cell
And hang them high
Beyond life’s hope,
To swing and die
And dangle from
The Hangman’s Rope…!”
“But aren’t they a little bit…well…extreme?”
“Don’t worry,” smiles Uncle Sam, stroking her pastry-fattened thighs. “This is their big moment, but they won’t last the night out.”
“…Then, while the buzzards make a feast
On their Red flesh as on a beast;
Our natives shall rejoice and sing
And shout while these two traitors swing,
And freedom’s cry shall soar and swell
With songs that echo—’All is…’”
“Well,” quoth Uncle Sam as the Pentagon Patriots swing into their final chorus, “the ole Doomsday Clock on the wall tells me it is the hour of fate and the last full measure of devotions, so step up, all you screamers — it’s outa the strain of the Doing, and inta the peace of the Done!” Besides all the preachers, comics, and politicians crowding backstage with Uncle Sam, there are also scores of actors, dressed up as American Patriots and Presidents, Pilgrims and Pioneers, famous Warriors, Broncbusters, Prophets, Prospectors, and Railroad Barons, all part of the pageant to come. “You are about to embark upon a great crusade, my children, toward which we have strove these many months, so make sure your fly’s buttoned up and your seams are straight! I wanna see a lotta hustle tonight — when your name is called up there I want you to move! Let the catamount of the inner varmint loose and prepare the engines of vengeance, for the long looked-for day has come!”
“…So when the Rosenbergs lie dead
Wrapped in a shroud of Kremlin-red;
All future traitors should beware
They, too, will burn within the ‘chair…!’”
23. The Warden’s Guided Tour
The Warden led me down a path through a garden by a house. His apparently, very nice. The sun was dipping low over the Hudson; not so hot now, and there was a breeze off the river. The gun towers were momentarily out of sight, and looking down through the trees toward the river, what I saw was a baseball diamond. Next to it, a tall stack was belching smoke into the pale blue sky. The trees were full of birds. There was even a prison bird-watching society, the Warden told me. Hilly and Dilly Hiss would have enjoyed themselves here, Whittaker, John McDowell, all those ornithological nuts.
“Ever see a prothonotary warbler?” I asked.
“A what?”
My stomach was still tight as a knot, but I didn’t feel all that displaced here, now that I’d made it inside. All in all, it wasn’t as hostile a place as I’d anticipated. Pleasant even, in its way. I’d always liked cells, whether it was bell towers, library cubicles, or private inner offices. A sweaty animal odor seemed to pervade the place, but you could probably get used to it after a while. Might even get to like it. Like the Whittier locker rooms, the Duke gym. I had the sensation in here of having escaped something wild and unpredictable outside, of having found a peaceful corner in a wound-up and turbulent world. On the other hand, I’d shifted rather heavily back into being the Vice President again, and was therefore beginning to have serious second thoughts about this whole project. Did I really want an out-and-out confrontation with the FBI? What did they know over there about me?