Free Our Gang by Philip Roth Page B

seriousness of what we're
    about ... ?
    TRICKY HAS ANOTHER CRISIS 81
    (To the General) Excuse me, but who did you vote
    for again?
    MILITARY COACH: Hanoi and Haiphong. SPIRITUAL
    COACH (to Political Coach) : And
    you?
    POLITICAL COACH: Hanoi, without Haiphong.
    SPIRITUAL COACH (to Legal Coach) : And you
    have the five-in-one-and what were the others?
    LEGAL COACH: Berrigans, Panthers and Flood.
    SPIRITUAL COACH (throwing his hands up) : Oh,
    this is just impossible! Each one sounds better than
    the one before! Oh-the heck with it! Eeny, meeny,
    miney, moe ... Okay! Jane Fonda and Curt Flood!
    Done!
    TRICKY: (Records the Reverend's vote) Now that all
    the ballots have been cast, gentlemen, I am going
    once again to pass this sheet of paper among you
    so that you may be certain that your votes have
    been correctly tabulated. Even the President of the
    United States, you know, is capable of making a
    clerical error, and if he has, he certainly hopes that
    he can be a big enough man to admit it. (He passes
    the paper among them)
    LEGAL COACH: Jimi Hendrix, Mr. President
    the first name is spelled J-i-m-i, not J-i-m-m-y, as
    you've written it here.
    TRICKY: Well, let's correct it then, because that is just
    the sort of error, inadvertently made, that tends to
    be totally misconstrued by the press.
    82 OUR GANG
    Now I never claimed to know how to spell the
    names of every colored person in this country, but
    I will tell you this much: where someone's name is
    concerned, colored or not, he has a constitutional
    right to have it spelled correctly on any indictment
    that is handed down on him, no matter how absurd
    or outrageous the charges themselves. And so long
    as I am President, I am going to make every effort
    to see that this is done. Now, J-i-m what?
    LEGAL COACH: I.
    TRICKY: J-i-m-i. There. And I'll initial the change,
    just to make clear exactly who is responsible for
    both the error and the correction. There!
    Now I only wish that the wonderful colored
    people of this country could have seen the scrupulosity
    with which I attended to a matter
    seemingly so picayune as this one. Oh sure, the
    media would still find something to carp about, you
    can bank on that. But I am certain, if I know the
    great majority of good, hard-working colored
    people in this country, that the time I just took
    from my pressing duties as President of the United
    States and Leader of the Free World to correct a
    single letter in one of their names would not have
    gone unnoticed and unappreciated. Call me a
    dreamer; call me a believer in humanity; call me, as
    the song has it, a'cockeyed optimist; and be sure to
    call me a big man too,
    TRICKY HAS ANOTHER CRISIS 83
    for admitting to my error; but I am sure that they
    would understand just how difficult a problem this
    is for us to solve, given the kinds of ways they
    spell those names of theirs, and I think they would
    have that wonderful wisdom, such as comes to
    people who work in menial occupations, to realize
    that a job of these proportions is not going to be
    completed overnight, and that consequently we are
    not about to be bullied into spelling their names
    correctly by marches or demonstrations or mule
    trains parked on the White House lawn. We will
    spell them right but in our own sweet time, and
    according to our own secret timetable, on earth as
    it is in Heaven.
    SPIRITUAL COACH: Amen.
    TRICKY And, my friends, on that sanctimonious
    note, I am going to call this conference to a close.
    At ten A.M., we shall meet to settle upon the exact
    nature of the crime. In the meantime, I will remain
    here in the locker room, in uniform .. .
    SPIRITUAL COACH: Mr. President, it is nearly
    dawn. You must get some rest. You must take
    your helmet off and go to bed.
    TRICKY: I couldn't sleep now, Reverend, if I tried.
    Not with a smear campaign of this magnitude
    before me.
    SPIRITUAL COACH: But a man has only so much
    to give ...
    TRICKY: When it comes to something like this,,
    84 OUR GANG
    Reverend,