Public Burning by Robert Coover

Brandt of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , one of the weak links in the American press system, was trying in his tenacious hangdog way to stir up trouble with further questions about this, when Herb Brownell, the Attorney General, came in, looking dark and secretive. Of course, this was easy for Brownell with that high dome and fixed gaze, he always gave you the impression there was nothing he didn’t know, even when he was half dozing, but today he looked less cool and collected than usual. He motioned me aside. We huddled, scowling importantly, and the newsguys watched us; I was beginning to catch on to some of these angles. “Pete Brandt’s trying to get up a fight between Ike and Joe,” I whispered.
    Herb didn’t seem to hear me. Up close, I realized he was very agitated. “It’s all off, Dick!” he whined. “Douglas called it off!”
    â€œOff?” I said. “What’s off, Herb?”
    â€œThe executions! The Rosenbergs! The anniversary! Tomorrow night!”
    My heart jumped, seemed to lodge in my throat. I worried that the reporters would notice this, but there was nothing I could do about it. I’d been very tense about this thing since that golf game with Uncle Sam over the weekend, and I wasn’t sure whether this new situation was good or bad. I was pretty sure Uncle Sam wouldn’t like it—we’d been building up toward this thing for two years, everything was ready up in Times Square, we’d thought the last hurdle had been cleared: and now this! The fat was really in the fire! Or rather, it wasn’t…. There’d been delays before, of course—Uncle Sam had originally scheduled the executions just before the balloon drop at our Inaugural Ball last January—but none so shocking as this. On the other hand, I realized, it at least gave me more time. I’d been pressing very hard, going over everything, and I still hadn’t figured out what it was Uncle Sam wanted me to do. I’d thought I was safe, I who’d single-handedly vanquished Alger Hiss and put Voorhis and the Pink Lady to rout, but now I was feeling vulnerable again.
    â€œBut I… I thought the Supreme Court had recessed!” I whispered.
    â€œThey have!” wheezed Herb. “Douglas waited until all the other Justices had left town on their vacations, and then issued a stay of execution! It’s a helluva mess!”
    â€œWe’ve got to get word to the General, before one of these organ grinders asks the wrong question,” I said.
    â€œGenerally speaking,” the President was saying, “that is exactly what I believe. But I do say I don’t have to be a party to my own self-destruction, that is the limit and the other limit I draw is decency, we have certain books we bar from the mails, and all that sort of thing, I think that is perfectly proper and I would do it now, I don’t believe that standards of essential human dignity ought to be violated in these things. And human decency.”
    I scratched out a note: ROSENBERG EXECUTIONS CALLED OFF ! and passed it to the press secretary, Jim Hagerty. Hagerty blanched, seemed uncertain what to do with it. I motioned toward the President, but Jim seemed reluctant to pass it on. Probably afraid the Old Man would read it out loud like an announcement. Or get confused and become completely unintelligible. Maybe even blow his stack.
    â€œHow many of you have read Stalin’s Problems of Leninism?” the President was asking the reporters. We didn’t even know he knew the title. “How many of you have really studied Karl Marx and looked at the evolution of the Marxian theory down to the present application?” Everybody thought he had said “Martian theory” and he was getting a lot of laughs. This was very successful, the reporters had completely forgotten what they’d asked him, but I thought: My God, I could never do this! I wrote a new note: URGENT