That last pitch — the mounting rhythms, the repetitions, the “right now!” evangelical challenge — all that was straight out of Dr. Rader’s memorable Los Angeles sermon, and I looked about now for friends of the cloth — Billy Graham, Dr. Peale, Father Sheen, Ezra Benson — seeking their support and encouragement: maybe I could even get one of them up here with me! But the person who caught my eye out there in the mob was my own father: he looked like somebody had just hit him between the eyes. He blinked twice, looked around in amazement, then leapt out of his chair and, thumbing off his elastic braces, cried: “That’s tellin ’em, sonny!” Down went his baggy britches, underneath which he was wearing his old white longjohns (good old-fashioned homespun appeal in that flannel underwear, I told myself hopefully, though in fact I felt myself turning fifteen colors of the rainbow, as embarrassed for him as I was for myself), and while he fumbled with the big white buttons, others began to follow suit — or unsuit: first, friends like Bill Rogers and Bert Andrews, Mundt and O’Konski, then Bill Jenner, Tom Dewey, my brothers Donald and Edward, Homer Capehart, Strom Thurmond, George Smathers, and with that some of the Democrats, too, guys like Stennis and Rivers, Don Wheeler, Jimmy Byrnes…
“IT’S A SHOWDOWN!” they cried.
“PANTS DOWN FOR GOD AND COUNTRY!”
“PANTS DOWN FOR JESUS CHRIST!”
“WHOOPEE!”
“FOR THE COMMON MAN!”
“DEEDS NOT WORDS!”
“PANTS DOWN FOR DICK!”
It was spreading now, spreading fast, some of those larger-than-life Cowboys were dropping their chaps, the Pilgrims, Riverboat Gamblers, and Doughboys, governors and judges, secretaries and bureaucrats, and on out into the masses beyond: I saw old Joe Kennedy’s pants come down in a twinkling, Herbert Philbrick’s, too, Yehudi Menuhin’s and Hopalong Cassidy’s, Rocky Marciano’s, Sumner Pike’s — and it was even catching on among some of the left-wing radicals — Humphrey Bogart, Dean Acheson, Walter Lippmann and Herbert Lehman, Ralph Bunche, John L. Lewis — the din of crashing belt buckles and ripping zips was deafening! And women as well — Eisa Maxwell, Teresa Wright, Bess Truman, all the ladies in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — all hiking their skirts and pulling down their drawers, corsets, girdles, whatever they had up there! A few of the more fastidious types were pulling their pants all the way off, but most of them just left them in a heap around their feet, staggering about in tight little circles to cheer the others on and see what their neighbors had. There were scattered screeches of protest from the timid, a few ugly assaults by the lunatic fringe, small riots breaking out in the vicinity of Mickey Mantle, Marilyn Monroe, Captain Video, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and a major stir when Christine Jorgensen’s drawers came down, but essentially it was a great success, a real vote of confidence! Not that it wasn’t a pretty traumatic experience to see Mom with her underwear ballooning down around her feet, Dad in a ferocious Black Irish fit, still tied up in his longjohns, or Pat, the strain showing on her thin sad face from trying to hold back the tears, stoically raising her printed cotton skirt and fumbling with her garters, but I knew that, whatever the cost, I’d won the day, the victory was mine!
“I have a profound conviction,” I cried, “that with that kind of patriotism, that kind of love of country, we shall never lose sight of the American dream! And with that spirit, we shall make that dream come true! I pledge to you tonight that I shall meet—“
“Hey, dat’s ma boy, over dere, doing dat!” laughed Uncle Sam coldly, striding forward to cut me off at last. Behind him, I saw Herb Brownell and Irving Kaufman, their pants half-lowered, not knowing which way to jump. “Lo, how he urges and urges, leavin’ the masses no rest nor britches neither! Hoo boy! it takes a long cumbustificashun to throw dust in the eyes a commonal sense!” He looked outwardly cheerful, but under the forced laughter it was plain to see he was really smoldering — and for good reason: after all, if I was right about his having rigged this entire humiliation ceremony for my dubious benefit, I had turned the tables on the old coot and fucked up his timetable to boot!
I glanced coolly up at the clock: Wha—?! It still said seven minutes to eight! “Just…just let me say this last word!” I stammered. “Regardless of what happens, I–I am going to continue this fight! I am going to—.!”
“Great Beltashashur!” stormed Uncle Sam, lifting me up in the air by my collar, the dead weight of flag and pants dragging down my dangling feet. “One more last word outa you, mister, and I tell you what you’re gonna do: you’re gonna find your damfool sittin’-piece on ‘tuther side a the Great Divide! The thrill is gone, boy, every rainmaker becomes a bore at last, so zip your lip! In times like the presence, men shouldn’t utter nothin’ for which they wouldn’t willingly be responsible from here to eternity and back — you ain’t the only pebble on the beach! We got a couple burnin issues on the docket tonight, we gotta ‘sist a coupla flamin Reds, firebrands a the infernal Phantom, to see the light, and we don’t need no more of your hissin’ and blowin’ and generally discom-bobulatin’ splutterations!”
Well, I might have taken his warning to heart — true luck consists, after all, not in the cards, but in knowing just when to rise and go home, Green Island had taught me that and Uncle Sam himself had put it into words for me — if only he hadn’t blown at my shirttails (“What is that which the breeze,” he wondered aloud, “as it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?”), clucked his tongue ruefully, and with all the cameras dollying in, remarked wistfully to the mob at large: “Ah, vanished is the ancient splendor!”