Free Public Burning by Robert Coover Page A

sinister look, putting a whole different slant on what I was saying (isn’t that a hell of a thing—that the fate of a great country can depend on camera angles?), and said: “I broke a hundred at Burning Tree Sunday, Bob!”
    The Senator shrank back as though suddenly aged, but he smiled and congratulated me. I bowed acknowledgments, smiling generously, trying to make the best of it, but I was suddenly sorry for him, felt suddenly like a brother, regretted my little joke—hadn’t he said when he fell ill that the first thing he’d noticed was a great weariness when he started “whaling golf balls” early last spring? Shit, I was just rubbing it in. I wanted to reach out and embrace him, give him my shoulder to lean on instead of those damned crutches, make him well again, make him President or something.
    We went on talking about golf, he seemed cheerful enough, but I felt like hell. I saw that the news reporters had stopped grinning, too, most of them had turned away, I’d been misunderstood again. I’d only wanted to give Taft something to laugh about in these troubled times, I’d meant no harm. He was one of the few guys, after all, who’d stood by me through the Fund Crisis last fall—even if the reason was that he was afraid Bill Knowland would be the guy to take my place. Taft had made a lot of mistakes, but he still might have gone to the White House if he hadn’t opposed NATO and collective security in Europe—what the hell, let’s face it, he would have gotten there anyway if a few of us hadn’t axed him, he could have won last year, that was clear now. And but a few short weeks ago, he was the most powerful man outside the White House in all America—maybe the most powerful Senator in history. Cut down. Last summer he’d been my enemy. It was I who’d busted up the unity of the California delegation and so assured Eisenhower of the Party’s nomination, had beat him out myself for the vice-presidential nomination—but now, looking at him there, shrunken, held up by those crutches, smiling gamely, his belly hanging low in his pants, I thought: Jesus, he’s a goddamn saint! I wanted to tell him everything, about the National Security Council meeting, about my talks with Uncle Sam, about the moves soon to be made, about the Rosenberg letters strewn around my office, about my hopes, my fears, the whole works.
    I remembered the time he came to my office and asked for my support for the Party’s presidential nomination—me, just a green junior Senator from California—and I’d had to put him off. I think in part I objected to the fact he’d asked me. As though he’d demeaned himself. It was too personal, coming to my office like that. It embarrassed me—it flattered me, too, but mostly it made me uneasy, and I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him. Besides, with him I had no shot at something bigger myself. It must have been a terribly difficult thing for him to do, I could never do it, I could never walk into some other guy’s office and ask him to help make me President, any more than I could fly. I could send somebody else, but I could never do it myself. But now, if he’d come today, I thought, I’d have said yes. Now that it was too late. He smiled feebly but kindly, adjusted his clear horn-rimmed spectacles, said we’d have to get up a game soon, shifted his weight, and hobbled away on his crutches, showing me his bald spot like a kind of halo. Was he needling me now? I wanted to call out to him, but I didn’t.
    This often happened to me, this sudden flush of warmth, even love, toward the people I defeat. It worried me, worries me still. It could backfire someday. Back when I was in the Navy, I wrote a note to myself on the subject, I have it still, taped inside my desk drawer: DON’T BECOME OVERGENEROUS ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT ! But I kept forgetting. It