“You shall know, my sons, shall know
why we leave the song unsung,
the book unread, the work undone
to rest beneath the sod…”
It was her voice. She was singing her poem, the one she’d written when the year began. I could hear her outside the spare-room window…
“Mourn no more, my sons, no more
why the lies and smears were framed,
the tears we shed, the hurt we bore
to all shall be proclaimed…”
Ah, tears, hurt: what did she know? I sat inside on the carpeted floor, curled up in the dark, there among all those dog biscuits and blankets, kennels, knitted sweaters, and rubber bones that the American people in their love and simplicity had sent to Checkers, whimpering softly to myself, nuzzling the curtains, scratching my itches, feeling sick and bitter and hairy and abused. I’d worked myself ill over this thing, and where had it got me? Cast out. Disgraced. Triped and fell on and kiked in the side — oh Jesus, I felt a pain all over…
“Earth shall smile, my sons, shall smile
and green above our resting place,
the killing end, the world rejoice
in brotherhood and peace…”
I hadn’t stayed around after for Uncle Sam’s new instant-replay gimmick or for the boxing or wedding ceremonies, I’d had all I could take for one night, and besides I smelled too bad — instead I’d dashed off to that country-club boodle banquet in New Jersey, hoping to lose myself in the smoke of old-fashioned backroom politicking. But I hadn’t been able to get up any appetite for that shit either, I’d just sat there amid all those beaming fatsos, part of the waxworks, feeling ugly, very low-down and smarmy and ugly, deep in post-crisis fatigue, suffering their smirks and grimaces and thinking: Ah fuck, I’ve done it again. No matter how many times I warn myself, no matter how many goddamn notes I write myself or how many quotations I copy out, I always forget: the point of greatest danger is not in preparing to meet the crisis or fighting the fucking battle — it occurs after the crisis of battle is over. It is then, with all his emotional resources shot to shit and his guard down, that a guy can easily, if confronted with another battle, even a minor skirmish, blow it.
When I got home I was very sore, feeling restless and troubled. I’d wanted to talk about it all somehow with Pat, but she’d been busy with the girls, still up and overexcited apparently by all the big-city entertainments, and she’d looked completely pooped. Of course, she always looked pooped, it was her way of advertising to the world what a joy it was to be married to me, but tonight there was something zombielike in her eyes that hinted at a final turning-off, an end of the road. She’d only had one thing to say to me all night. That was when I’d collapsed into my seat beside her at the burnings after having had to run the gauntlet of the VIP aisles from the Whale’s mouth. I’d been close to tears. I’d wanted her to hug me close and comfort me. Instead, she’d patted my hand absently and, staring blankly up at the electric chair, had said: “That was a nice speech, dear.”
Now she’d come into the bedroom where I’d just commenced to get undressed, thinking to take a bath, and had asked flatly: “What does ‘I am a scamp’ mean, Dick?”
“How the hell should I know?” I’d yelped. I was still very jumpy.
“I don’t know. But it’s written there on your backside,” she’d said.
“What—?!!” I’d turned my butt toward a mirror: sure enough, there it was, in big greasy red letters, still more or less legible though badly smeared. “Ah…well…that!” A moustache too, stuck there on one cheek, that one I’d bought for a disguise — I’d wondered where I’d lost the damned thing. All the time, feeling it pasted back there, I’d thought I’d somehow fouled myself. I’d snatched it away irritably and pulled my pants back up: “It’s, uh, it’s my enemies, Pat…they—”
But Pat had already left the room: she was back in the bathroom picking up Julie, who’d fallen asleep on the toilet. I’d chased after her, holding my pants up, feeling hurt and misunderstood. Hated even: Jesus Christ, what an anniversary…! She’d brushed past me impatiently, carrying Julie into the girls’ bedroom, and I’d followed. Tricia was in there, jumping about in little circles with her hands over her eyes, singing out: “Help, help, the Phantom’s got me!” Checkers was bounding at her heels, yapping and wagging his tail.
“Pat!” I’d cried. “Listen to me! It’s not what you think!” It had welled up in me: that new fondness for her I’d been feeling ever since the near-betrayal. “I did it for the nation, Pat! For the Party!” I’d be nowhere without her, I knew. She was the only one I trusted, the only one I loved — I needed her, couldn’t she see that? “I did it for you, Pat! For us!” But she’d acted like I didn’t even exist. I’d recalled suddenly that game we used to play when we were just engaged: “Hey, look, Pat! Rrowf! Snort! Gr-r-roww-ff!” I’d squatted down and hunched my shoulders, roughed up my hair, bared my teeth, and gone lumbering about the room, barking and yelping and rolling my eyes up at Pat and Tricia. If I’d had a tail, I would have wagged it.
“Oh, Dick, grow up,” Pat had snapped irritably.
“I don’t wanna play monsters, Daddy,” Tricia had whined, breaking into tears. “I wanna play Run, Sheep, Run with Mommy!”
“We’re not playing anything, young lady. Your Daddy’s leaving this room right now and you’re going nighty-night! It’s very late! Now get your pajamas on!”
“Yarf, Pat!” I’d pleaded, scratching my armpits, bounding up and down pathetically, then rolling around on the floor. If only she’d patted my head, scratched my ears, anything! My elbow had bumped Julie’s doll Tiny and it had fallen off a chair, banged its head on the floor, and let out a little crying noise. This had started Checkers barking at me, in turn waking up Julie. “Gruff! Yip!” I’d bellowed over her wailing. “Hrr-r-roiiwl-ll!”
“Now stop that, Dick!” Pat had scolded, her voice cold and angry. “You’re going to give them bad dreams!”
Grunting and huffing, I’d lurched for the doll and tipped over a table full of games and building blocks. I’d squatted amid the debris, clutching Tiny. Now everybody was screaming. Because of the doll. Somehow I’d managed to take Tiny’s head off. What was happening to me? I’d struggled for words, I’d wanted to tell Pat that she was the only one who could free me from this terrible enchantment, but all I could think of were arf and whine and snarl.
“Get out of here!” Pat had cried. “Right now! Or you’ll be sorry!”
I’d gone galumphing out into the hallway on all fours, feeling hunted, banging my shoulder — the sore one — on the doorjamb, skinning my face on the hallway carpet. That swarm of black thing was coming down on me again. I could feel it in Checkers’s fangs as he growled and nipped at my shins. I could smell it in my skunky armpits and foul breath. And I could see it coming out of Pat’s mouth as she passed me to go into our bedroom. What she’d said was: “Put Checkers in the basement, Dick, before you go to bed,” but what I’d seen coming out was: “You make me sick.” I’d reared up on my hind feet to follow after, but she’d slammed the door in my face. Oh, the bitch! I’d fallen back, howling and moaning like a wounded bear, then had gone lunging about, crashing into things, batting the walls, falling through doorways, ending up finally in a dark corner of the spare room, curled up, pawing my ears in misery, listening to Ethel Rosenberg’s aria drifting in through the window on the midsummer-night’s breeze, howling along pathetically and thinking: in the end, I’m not hard enough for politics, I don’t deserve to be President, I’m too good, the world’s not like that, my mother and my grandmother ruined me…
“Work and build, my sons, and build
a monument to love and joy,
to human worth, to faith we kept
for you, my sons, for you…”
Well, poor Ethel — let’s face it, she hadn’t had it easy either. I’d envied her her equanimity at the end: she’d died a death of almost unbearable beauty. In fact, it was unbearable — that was probably why we’d all fought our way up to the switch when the electrician bungled it. Ultimately anyway: I’d have to admit that wasn’t exactly what was on my mind at the time. I’d been thinking more about just getting the goddamn thing over with. I was hanging on then by the grace of one thought only: that the day had to end, it would all be got past. Had to. Time marches on. Shakespeare said that in some play, I believe. Some tomorrow would inevitably become today and we could start forgetting, that was the main thing. I’d never doubted this until that moment the doctors said she was still alive: then suddenly I’d felt like we were teetering on the brink of infinity. Scared the hell out of me. The rest was simple reflex.
Like the way I’d left the stage earlier on. When the lights went out, everybody had started screaming. It was terrible. Somebody was screaming wildly right where I was! It was me, I’d realized. Christ, I’d leapt completely outside myself! I’d pulled myself together as best I could, swallowed down my yelping panic, groped around in the dark for something to hang onto. What was awful was the terrible emptiness—it had felt like there was nothing holding anything together any more! I’d hit upon a chair and sat down in it. I’d felt safer. Thank God for gravity! I’d remembered my pants: I had to get them untangled before the lights came up again. I’d worked one shoe off. Then I’d felt the leather on my butt, the studs, and it had come to me suddenly where I was sitting. For one dreadful moment I’d felt locked to the chair, as though the leather of the seat and the skin of my ass had got interchanged somehow — then I’d ripped free at last, and the rest, as I say, was reflex. The momentum had carried me right off the edge of the stage and down with a bruising splat onto that sea of turbulent flesh below. Don’t know who I hit, but it had felt like Bess Truman. I’d pitched and rolled blindly through the turmoil, carried along by the tide. Everything was wet and slippery and violent, with high crests and deep troughs: like rape, I’d thought. I was afraid I was going to get seasick.
Then I’d opened my eyes and discovered I could see after all, even though everybody else in the Square had still seemed to be flopping about helplessly with glazed looks in their eyes, screaming about the darkness. I’d understood this. When I was very young, just a freshman in high school, my father took Harold and Don and me to Los Angeles to hear Dr. Paul Rader preach a revival sermon and give ourselves to Jesus. Mother did not go. I grasped, even then, that this was not her Jesus, not the Jesus I’d grown up with, the Jesus of little boys. This was a ferocious Jesus who lived in a wild place only grown-up men could go to. Or anyway this was the impression I got from my father, who seemed very serious, even frightened. My mother was sad to see us go and I felt sorry for her — it was like some kind of conspiracy against her. At the meeting, everyone became very emotional. My own father became very emotional, in a way I’d never seen before — he cried and seemed to lose control of himself, seemed to want to lose control of himself, as though the very firmness of his will — and he was always a very willful man — depended on this momentary release. Harold and Don cried, too. So did I, it seemed to be important to my father that I did so and I obeyed as I always obeyed. And like the rest of them, I walked down the aisle through that dark forest of wild emotions and pledged my life to that fierce Jesus. But all the time I felt as though I were walking in a dream, somebody else’s dream, not mine — I didn’t really quite believe in what I was doing. It was like being in a play and I could throw myself into the role with intensity and conviction, but inside I was holding something back. Even as I wept: later I was to recall this scene to help me to weep on cue in Bird-in-Hand, in the back seat of my Dad’s car with Ola, up at Wheeling — but that night I felt guilty about it. I worried that I had not been completely saved. Grace, I knew, was a matter of luck — after all, there were peoples all over the world who had missed out, who were still missing out, who’d never even heard of the name of Jesus, much less had a chance to be baptized, so grace wasn’t a blanket promise…and maybe I was not one of the chosen ones. I wept and knelt and prayed with the others, but I couldn’t really give myself to Jesus, not entirely, not the way the others did. Later, after I’d seen more of the world, I felt pleased with myself for not having given in. I was proud of my discipline — what my mother called Self-Regulation and Self-Restraint — and even though I envied my brothers’ ability to plunge uncritically out into Dad’s world, I nevertheless felt a notch above them. I felt singled out, touched by a special kind of grace, a unique destiny: I was God’s undercover agent in a secular world. For such a one, emotional release was a kind of debauchery. An impiety. My way was harder, but at least I could see where I was going.
And so it had been there in Times Square: the lights had been snuffed all right, the marquees and billboards now as dead as the old city trolleys, but though it had been like peering through pea soup, I could nevertheless make out what was happening, even if nobody else could. It was awesome to look at, of course — flesh, as far as you could see, engaged in every grab-assing obscenity imaginable, a frantic all-community grope that my own privates did not entirely escape — but the dimensions had taken the excitement out of it. In fact, if anything, it had been spooky, unnerving: all that desperate weakness, that frenzied vulnerability, everybody screaming and reaching out and plunging haplessly away in one another — it was like something out of Fantasia or The Book of Revelation. I’d bobbed along on the flood, longing for the old bell tower back home, some place of refuge where I could lock myself away, think things over, work out the parameters of this new situation, get my pants back up. Maybe, I’d thought, this is what hell will be like for me: endless self-exposure. This was a Self that was not in my mother’s lexicon. It was the toughest part about being a politician, the one thing I personally hated the most. I’m no shrinking violet, I’m not unduly shy or modest, but I’m a private man and always have been. Formal. When I have sex I like to do it between the sheets in a dark room. When I take a shit I lock the door. My chest is hairy but I don’t show it off. I don’t even like to eat in public and just talking about one’s personal life embarrasses me. And now all this today — Christ, I believed in touching the pulse of the nation, but this was going too fucking far! It was probably a good thing I was all washed up.
I’d beached finally in the mouth of a whale, one of Disney’s exhibits evidently. A dismal cavernous maw, dark and foreboding, but under the circumstances I’d found it inviting. I’d dragged myself inside, down the throat, away from the murky insanity of the mainstream out in the Square, clutching my poor bruised nuts and glad of any sanctuary. This has been worse than Bougainville, I’d thought. I’d wished Pat were with me and I’d wondered if I should go looking for her once I’d got my pants on — but then I’d realized I’d already seen her out there, part of her anyway (or was that a dream I’d had? it was all getting mixed up in my mind), it was really my mother I’d wished were with me. Jesus, I’d sighed, crawling along, drawn toward the belly by a distant flickering light, this has been the longest day of my life!
What had I expected to find inside the Whale? I’d seen the film with my daughters, and so had anticipated the craggy cathedral-like walls, the tremulous shadows cast by a lonely lantern, eerie digestive noises. Past that? A little benevolent magic maybe? a touch of the Mission Inn, Gepetto with a stiff drink and fried fish? Probably just a little peace and quiet where, covered in darkness, I could draw myself together, stop gesturing, jerking about, come to rest. What I certainly had not expected was to find my grandmother Almira Burdg Milhous sitting there in her rocking chair, gazing sternly down upon me over her rimless spectacles.
“Pull yourself together, Richard,” she’d said gravely. “Seek the soul’s communion with the Eternal Mind!”
“Grandmother!” I’d gasped, unable to believe my eyes. “My God, what are you doing here?”
“No swearing, Richard. And put your trousers on.”
She’d sat there in her creaky old chair, gently rocking, her hair rolled up in a tight little bun on her head, her delicate white throat ringed round by a small lace collar, watching me with her sad deepset eyes, a melancholic smile on her lips, as I struggled with my pants, tearing them off, unknotting them, tugging them back on again. “I–I’m sorry, Grandmother!” For everything that had been happening out there, I’d meant, my own indecency included — just seeing her there, quietly juxtaposed against all that madness, had thrown it all into a new perspective: what must she think of us? I’d lost buttons and belt and the zipper didn’t work: I’d had to hold my pants up with my hands.
“Where are your shoes, Richard?”
“I…uh, must have lost them! I—” But I’d reached the point where I had exhausted all my emotional reserve. Tears had rushed into my eyes, and I’d pitched forward into her lap. I’d wanted to hide myself there forever. “Good old Grandmother!” I’d wept.
“Stand up, Richard,” she’d commanded. “Remember the Four Selfs!”
“But why has this happened to me, Grandmother?” I’d wailed. “I’ve always been a good man!”
“Not always,” she’d replied matter-of-factly. “What about that time your father caught you swimming in the ditch?”
“The…the others dared me!”
“And you used to smoke cornsilks, steal grapes and watermelons, don’t tell me you didn’t, and you were mean to your brother Donny!”
“He was a smart aleck, he asked for it!” Why was she challenging me like this?
“You were jealous of poor Harold and didn’t really care when he died.”
“I did!” I’d protested, drawing back, and had shed some more tears just to prove it. “And I was really sorry when Arthur died!”
The tears were real now, but she’d pressed on mercilessly: “Why didn’t you ever have any friends? Why did you go off by yourself at our picnics and not join in the fun? What’s the matter with you, Richard? Why have you always been so moody and proud and selfish and standoffish?”
“I had friends! They voted for me! But in politics—”
“Politics! Yes, I heard about that, too, Richard. All those naughty tricks you played on poor Jerry Voorhis and Mrs. Douglas and that nice Mr. Warren—”
“Nice, my foot! The world is rough, Grandmother, and when they hit you, you have to hit them back, and the best way to do that is to hit them before they hit you! I don’t apologize for that — I’m a political animal, Grandmother, and—”
“Yes, and you smell like one, too,” she’d sniffed. “You’ve lost your Quaker spirit, Richard.”
“Only on domestic issues, Grandmother! I’m still a Quaker on foreign issues!”
“Drinking, smoking, swearing, cheating, telling untruths and tricking people — tsk tsk! You never talk about God or Jesus any more, Richard — and you play cards and take money from people—”
“Not for myself!” I’d insisted. “I don’t take anything for myself!”
“And all those paragraphs about you in the college yearbooks — you wrote them yourself!”
“Not — not my senior year, I didn’t, Grandmother!”
“‘Great things are expected…’ My my! You should be ashamed, Richard!”
“Well, you…you have to be conceited in this business…”
“And what did you do up in that bell tower all by yourself? You know, Richard, your mother and father used to wonder if perhaps you weren’t a bit disturbed. You were a very strange boy. I used to defend you, just as I defended all the boys, but…”
“I… I like to go my own way, Grandmother, keep my own counsel. That’s the way I am, and one thing I always have to be—”
“You used to peck up the hired girls’ skirts. You even tried to peek up my skirts!”
“I…did—?!”
“And you harbored wicked thoughts about little Ola and Marjorie and those burlesque dancers you used to go see with your cousin—”
“That was a long time ago, Grandmother, before I was married. I—”
“Oh yes? What about that secretary at the OPA, that nurse out in the Pacific Ocean—”
“I… I was lonely—”
“And this afternoon? Were you lonely this afternoon?”
“Wha—?! How…how did you—?”
“‘Oh, Ethel! I’d do anything for you!’ Shame, shame, Richard! No wonder they’ve been punishing you!”
“I… I was just pretending! It’s true! I’d gone up there to — Grandmother! Why are you writing all this down?”
“Ah…the, uh, better to counsel you with, my dear,” she’d replied with a faint tight-lipped smile.
It was about this time that I’d begun to recall all those notes to myself about letting down too soon after crisis. For one thing, my Grandmother Milhous was dead, had been for years. For another, there hadn’t been any secretary at the OPA, that had just been — and then it had come to me, like the punch line of an old joke heard a thousand times over, who it was: “Edgar! You!”
“You know, Dick,” he’d smiled, chucking me under the chin, “the reason you’ve never been any good at making out is that you talk too much about yourself!”
“Goddamn you, Edgar!” I’d stormed, slapping his hand away. “It’s been you all along!”
There were noises out in the Square now and crowds of hostile people were being shoved toward us into the Whale. “Come on, Dick,” Hoover had said, smoothing down his heavy skirts, “I’d better get you out of here before the choice between the quick and the dead goes the wrong way for you….”
Ah, why should an honest man enter public life and submit himself and his family to this kind of thing? Of course, a man who goes voluntarily into the political arena must expect some wounds in the battles in which he engages, but it seemed to me I suffered more than I deserved to. Both Pat and I had perhaps what one might describe as an overdeveloped sense of privacy. I know, people in political life have to live in a fishbowl. Every public figure, whose most important asset is his reputation, is at the mercy of the smear artists and the rumormongers, that’s politics, but no matter how often you tell yourself that “this is part of the battle,” or that “an attack is a compliment because your adversaries never bother taking on someone who amounts to nothing,” there are times when you wonder if you shouldn’t chuck the whole business.
Ethel’s aria had faded and in its place, somewhere in the distance, far beyond the bedroom window, I seemed to hear somebody whistling, and what they were whistling was: “Happy Days Are Here Again!” My song! Oh my God! I knew who it was — was he coming here? I shrank back, panting wheezily, my heart in my throat, tears springing to my eyes. I felt like I used to feel whenever I’d hear my old man approaching in a rage, clutching his razor strap. Even if it wasn’t for me. Things would sort of light up and get reddish all around me, inside as well as out, and that was what happened now. I squeezed my eyes shut: oh shit, hadn’t I suffered enough? And when I opened them again, sure enough, there he was: standing in front of me near the fluttering curtains, his eyes glittering with animal menace, a cold sneer on his lips, the pallid gray light falling through the open window on his goateed face making him look suddenly old and ugly.
“Come here, boy,” he said, smiling frostily and jabbing his recruitment finger at me with one hand, unbuttoning his striped pantaloons with the other: “I want YOU!”
“But—!”
“Speech me no speeches, my friend, I had a bcllyfulla baloney — what I got a burnin’ yearnin’ for now is a little humble toil, heavenward duty, and onmittygated cornholin’ whoopee! So jes’ drap your drawers and bend over, boy — you been ee-LECK-ted”
“Wha—?!”
“You heerd me!” he roared. “E pluribus the ole anum, buster, and on the double!” He dragged me backwards into the light, whipped my pants down, gave my ass a cracking caress: “Ah, an old old sight, you scamp, and yet somehow so young — aye, and not changed a wink since first I seen it! Bless me, you look purtier’n a tree frog on a fence rail with the wind up!”
“Please!” I whimpered. “I can’t—!”
“I’ll help you,” he whispered girlishly, tickling my rectum. “Come on, loosen up, Nick! unlock the ole Snack Shack and impart to me summa your noble spirit, like, eh, like the lady says…”
But I scrambled out of his grip while he was fumbling with his braces, bounded back into the blankets and dog biscuits. “My God, you’ve—gasp! — just killed her!” I cried, cowering in a dark corner. “How can you make fun of her like that, she’s not even cold yet—!”
“Cause I’se wicked, I is,” he replied with a wolfish grin, flashing his incisors. The air seemed thick with a heavy doggy stink, but I didn’t know if it came from him, me, or Checkers’s gear. “I’se mighty wicked, anyhow, I can’t help it — she’s part a me now, both her and her brave engineer, just as much as Pocahontas, Billy the Kid, or Bambi—”
“You didn’t have to kill them! You just did it for fun! You’re a…a butcher! a beast! You’re no better than the Phantom!”
“Aw fidgety fudge, them two raskils was lucky—”
“Lucky!”
“Sure! It ain’t easy holdin’ a community together, order ain’t what comes natural, you know that, boy, and a lotta people gotta get killt tryin’ to pretend it is, that’s how the game is played — but not many of ’em gets a chance to have it done to ’em onstage in Times Square!”
I knew that what he was telling me was the truth — but what about the way I felt? He wasn’t telling me everything, I thought…. “All they wanted was what you promised them, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration—”
“Bah! The wild oats of youth! Listen, bein’ young and rearin’ up agin the old folks makes you fotch up a lotta hootin’ and hollerin’ you live to regret — puritanism! whoo, worse’n acne! It’s great for stirrin’ up the jism when you’re nation-breedin’, but it ain’t no way to live a life!”
“You’ve…you’ve changed,” I said, my voice shaking. “You’re not the same as when I was a boy!”
He laughed softly and reached into the darkness to snatch me by the nape in his viselike grip. “You’re forty years old, son: time you was weaned!”
“No!” I begged. “Please—!”
“You wanta make it with me,” he panted, dragging me brutally out of the shadows and spinning me around, “you gotta love me like I really am: Sam Slick the Yankee Peddler, gun-totin’ hustler and tooth-’n’-claw tamer of the heathen wilderness, lusty and in everthing a screamin’ meddler, novus ball-bustin’ ordo seclorum, that’s me, boy — and goodnight Mrs. Calabash to any damfool what gets in my way!” He licked his finger.
“But you…you can’t—!”
“Can and will, my beauty, can and will! You said it yourself: they’s a political axiom that wheresomever a vacuum exists, it will be filled by the nearest or strongest power! Well, you’re lookin’ at it, mister: an example and fit instrument, big as they come in this world and gittin’ bigger by the minute! Towerin’ genius disdains a beaten path — it seeks regions hitherto unexplored — so clutch aholt on somethin’ and say your prayers, cuz I propose to move immeejitly upon your works!”
“No!” I cried. “Stop!” But too late, he was already lodged deep in my rectum and ramming it in deeper — oh Christ! it felt like he was trying to shove the whole goddamn Washington Monument up my ass! “For God’s sake!” I screamed. “You’re tearing me apart!”
“No gains without—grunt! — pains, son,” he replied coldly, forcing his way in inch by inch — or was it yard by yard? Why had I ever doubted him? “You hanker for the fast track, the—mmf! — dust of the arena, the big leagues — well, these things are what you—uff! ah! — pay!”
“I take it back!”
He didn’t even seem to hear me. “Maybe, as our Early Warning Sentinels have put it, some healthy tissue will have to—pant! — have to be destroyed — but what the hell, rondyvoos with destiny ain’t beanbag!”
“I don’t want to!” I wailed in agony, twisting and pitching about. “I quit!”
“Jehu Nimshi!” he bellowed. “If you ain’t the all-starten skittiest crittur in all Hail Columbia! I’m bewarin’ you, Throttlebottom: I propose to—fah! — fight it out on this yere line, if it takes all summer! Why are you nervous?”
“Oh my God!” I wept.
“Ain’t you always said: when a man’s—ugh! — constrained or—huff! — arty-fishal, he don’t get through, so be not a—coo! — a-quail neither awestrucken! Thar ain’t nothin’ to fear but fear itself and a dry hole! Opportunity—ungff! — is a-knockin’, boy, but if you’re gonna stay all stobbed up, then by hokey I say—grunt! — let’s call for a hatchet!”
“No!” I shrieked, giving way. And in he came, filling me with a ripping all-rupturing force so fierce I thought I’d die! This…this is not happening to me alone, I thought desperately, or tried to think, as he pounded deeper and deeper, destroying everything, even my senses, my consciousness — but to the nation as well!
“Whoop! clean as a hound’s tooth!” he enthused. “Hoo hah! I do believe our form of guvvament, be it ever so humble, is deeply—oof! ah! — imbedded in ole Slippery Gulch at last! a miracle of fit and flattery! Yow! Fooff!”
Jesus, he was killing me! I’d been right about it all along! It was my execution! I was utterly gorged by him, he was slamming away in my belly, my chest, my very skull! I couldn’t even breathe! I thought my heart would burst, my eyeballs would pop out! I was screaming and howling horribly but nobody came to my rescue.
“Now—puff! — don’t be a baby, baby!” Uncle Sam crooned softly, leaning down to blow in my ear. He seemed to be wrapping me round, pressing his flesh against mine, inside and out — I felt like a tissue of pure pain, lodged like a condom between two grinding surfaces.… “I know, it—grunt! — always hurts the first time—hoo! — gettin’ exposed like this to a crool invasion from—pant! — without and convulsions within, but bear up: heaven holds all for which you—whuff! — sigh — so there, little boy, don’t — don’t cry!” He was breathing heavily now, whamming away like a steam engine — I felt like I was being blown up like a balloon. “We’re gonna do—phew! — great things together, we’re—nngh! — doin’ great things together right now — we—yow! — look out, son, my—gasp! — my cup—oh! ah! — runneth over—!”
My insides were rent suddenly with a powerful explosion, sending me skidding on my face several feet across the floor, and there was a terrific inundation! I seemed to be leaking at all pores and orifices — I couldn’t even scream! Uncle Sam let out a fearsome groan and seemed to fall away — yet he remained inside me, throbbing and exploding. I lay there on the spare-room floor, gurgling, sweating, half-senseless, bruised and swollen and stuffed like a sausage, thinking: Well, I’ve been through the fire. After this, very few, if any, difficult situations could seem insurmountable if anything personal is involved. Nothing could match this. Nothing could top it. Not without being fatal.
Finally, when I felt able to speak, I lifted my head and asked feebly: “Please…! When…when are you going to…to get out?” But I saw then that he was out. He was buttoning up his striped pantaloons, which were now stained with the lipstick off my ass. Or maybe this time it was blood. I fell back, curled up around my pain. Oh my God, so this was what it was like! I felt like a woman in hard labor, bloated, sewn up, stuffed with some enormous bag of gas I couldn’t release. I recalled Hoover’s glazed stare, Roosevelt’s anguished tics, Ike’s silly smile: I should have guessed….
“Well, this is the end of a perfect day,” Uncle Sam was saying. He seemed radiant, aglow, almost as though lit from within. His smile was gentle now, and there was a merry twinkle in his blue eyes. “Tell me, son, speakin’ theorectally,” he asked with a wink as he reknotted his string tie, “how did you love our little…afterclap?”
“I feel sick,” I groaned.
“Ha ha, you’re not sick, you’re just in love,” he grinned and leaned down to kiss my cheek. “Hey, you’re the one, you know!” he whispered, or seemed to whisper — it was strange his voice: almost as though he were no longer speaking aloud. His words seemed to fall silently from his lips, curl in silence down the channels of my ears, blossoming finally in a kind of audible puff against my inner ear like flowers, like seed pods.… “I mean it, Gus! You’re my handsome carny barker, my wild Irish rocker-socker, my fellow travelin’ salesman, my little accident, my pretty sailorboy!” He patted my bum affectionately. “You’re my everything, sunshine—you’re my boy!”
His words warmed me and chilled me at the same time. Maybe the worst thing that can happen to you in this world is to get what you think you want. And how did we know what we wanted? It was a scary question and I let it leak away, unanswered. Of course, he was an incorrigible huckster, a sweet-talking con artist, you couldn’t trust him, I knew that — but what did it matter? Whatever else he was, he was beautiful (how had I ever thought him ugly?), the most beautiful thing in all the world. I was ready at last to do what I had never done before. “I… I love you, Uncle Sam!” I confessed.
But he was already gone, I was alone. Only the last of his words remained, bursting tenderly now against my inner ear, as I lay there, eyes watering up and chest heaving, in the lonesome darkness…“Well, something attempted, something done, my boy, has earned a night’s repose, so let the tent be struck. I leave off as I began. Vaya con Dios, my darklin’, and remember: vote early and vote often, don’t take any wooden nickels, and”—by now I was rolling about helplessly on the spare-room floor, scrunched up around my throbbing pain and bawling like a baby—“always leave ’em laughin’ as you say good-bye!”