While I struggled, sweating furiously in the hot lights, with the birds-nest of trouser legs around my feet — Judas Priest, what a mess, I couldn’t even find the cuffs, and the belt seemed to be looped into some kind of cat’s cradle! — I tried to collect my thoughts for the statement I had to make, the one I’d been working on such long hours this week, but which just now I’d thought I’d somehow got out of. But I was too confused — all those dreams, Ethel’s mouth, the train wheels rolling underneath me — I could smell still the heady fragrance of newfound freedom, new beginnings (what was it? ah! the shampoo in her hair — suddenly I felt double-crossed in every direction at once!) — Christ! I thought in a moment of numbing terror: I can’t even remember my name! I fought to recover that name, that self, even as I grappled with my trousers, hobbling about in a tight miserable circle, fought to drag myself back to myself, my old safe self, which was — who knows? — maybe not even a self at all, my frazzled mind reaching out for the old catchwords, the functional code words of the profession, but drawing a blank. I ought to quit, I knew, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. I only knew how to plunge forward: no matter what the consequences — in college football, it was always the off-side penalty; now, I thought, God only knows what I’m in for! Which reminded me that I was supposed to be praying and the minute of grace was fast running out. Uh…fiscal integrity! Paramount question! Yes…ah…make no mistake about it! What this country needs is…eh…no more pussyfooting! a new departure! ragged individualism — rugged, I mean (“Tell the truth, son,” I could just hear Uncle Sam saying, “or trump — but get the trick!”) — yes, it was time to piss or cut bait, time to basically hunker down, hold the line, take off the gloves and bind up the nation’s wounds — but the gloves were off (what wasn’t off?) and if my own wounds got bound up any tighter than they were already, I wouldn’t be able to breathe (I wasn’t able to breathe!)!
I was also feeling suddenly very airy and exposed, almost like a bad wind had got up between my legs, like a French kiss in the wrong place — I glanced up and discovered that everybody in goddamn Times Square was still watching me, not a reverent sonuvabitch in the lot, they’d been watching me all the time, all except Pat, I spotted her now, she was the only one with her head down — even my daughters were gaping at me with stupid smirks on their faces. It looked as though everybody were laughing, but I couldn’t hear anything over the whumping thunder of my heart beating in my ears (my God, I can’t even let my hair down in public, much less my pants! this was worse even than the time I got diarrhea in that jeep in Bougainville!). What crazy things we do, I thought, as I lurched, grunting, wheezing, half-blind from panic and glare, squatting and bobbing about the stage in one last desperate effort to pull my pants up — it was always best, I knew, to do the unexpected if you could get away with it, but this time, damn it, I’d overreached myself. I’d forgotten all the things my Mom had taught me: Don’t make a fool of yourself, Richard, don’t stick your neck out, don’t give yourself away, don’t expose yourself! What was it led me up there, led me up here? I remembered the ticket seller’s caution: “Sure you want on that train, bud?” The cops at the Hunter Street barricades, the dissuasive phalanx of newsguys, the Warden’s curious lecture on history and the convulsive struggle: all warnings I had failed to heed — and yet I was sure I’d been right. “To be great,” Ethel had said (I think it was Ethel — was it Ethel?), “is to be misunderstood.” She was back there, I knew, standing in the wings somewhere, her head shaved for the electrodes, her own heart beating so wildly in her little breast that you could see it through that sad ragged dress she wore, and I had a sudden impulse to dash back there, grab her up, and make a run for it. But I restrained myself, or my pants did, reminding myself (I was much encouraged by the return of this thought) that I had to think of the effect of my decision on the next generation, and on the future of peace and freedom in America, and in the world. Ethel would want it that way. Courage, confidence, and perspective. Which meant that I had to carry through to the finish, whatever the personal agony it would involve — I had to fight back! No crawfishing, no whining, whimpering, or groveling — if you’re always on the defensive, take it from me, you always lose in the end — no, they were asking for it and they were going to get it! I’m a pessimist, but if I figure I’ve got a chance, I’ll fight for it, and I always figure I’ve got a chance — I think that has been a hallmark of my political career. In that respect I’m an Optimo. Optimist, I mean! (Jesus.) But how was I going to do it? Well, I’m a poker player, one of the best, and a good poker player knows it’s important to get good cards, but also that most big pots are won by a bluff. Yes, I had to let fly with everything in the arsenal, throw up a real smoke screen and let out, as Uncle Sam would say, the dark (“Cuttlefish it, boy! If you can’t convince ’em, confuse ’em!”) — whereupon, having intended something entirely different by such determinations, I stumbled over that old lady’s body (Judas, it was Betty Crocker!), touched my toes to keep from falling over on my head, and cracked a stupendous fart. “AMEN, BROTHER!” some dingbat bellowed, and then I did hear them — Jesus Christ, they were all howling their asses off!
What was to be done? I stared gloomily at the bespattered electric chair, the famous Sing Sing hot seat, and — my own butt on fire from shame and floor burns — listened to the mob in Times Square behind my back. The door to the Dance Hall was now closed and above it was a sign that said SILENCE. I wondered if it was a message to me. I knew that the only defense I had was offense, that I had to somehow talk my way around this humiliation without admitting to any mistakes, but if I couldn’t get my pants up past my ankles, how was I to begin? There was a white hospital cart behind the chair and it looked very comfortable, very restful. I realized I was close to breaking — a man can only take so much! — and that it was now or never. But if now, what? I didn’t know whether to point with pride, view with alarm, or just let my ass go on speaking for me. The stage itself offered no clues, only soberingly lethal realities. I was afraid to look at Uncle Sam. I tried to wargame my situation, to reduce it to some set of constants I could work with, but all I could think of was the time my old man caught me swimming in the Anaheim irrigation ditch. On that occasion, he’d picked me up and thrown me back into the ditch — that’s right: fire with fire, ditches with ditches!