places that need destroying. It seems to me, in fact, that as regards the destruction of Copenhagen, you’ll find that even among the President’s staunchest critics in the Senate, there was a sense that a decision of that magnitude simply couldn’t have been arrived at lightly or arbitrarily. I think most of the truly responsible members of the Congress feel as I do, that having made a strong show of strength such as this in Scandinavia now, we are not going to get ourselves bogged down there later the way we did in Southeast Asia.”
“So you see no connection between the ‘Something is Rotten in Denmark’ speech and the assassination?”
“No, no. Frankly I can’t believe that the murder of the President has to do with anything he has ever said or done, including his courageous remarks in behalf of the unborn and the sanctity of human life. No, this is one of those wild, crazy acts, just as the FBI describes it — the work of a madman, and, as the First Lady suggests, a pretty ill-mannered madman, at that. It seems to me that any attempt to find some rational political motive in anything so bizarre and boorish as stuffing the President of the United States unclothed into a water-filled baggie in the fetal position is so much wasted effort. It’s an act of violence and disrespect, utterly without rhyme or reason, and cannot but arouse the righteous indignation of reasonable and sensible men everywhere.”
“—the hairy, the half-cocked if you know what I mean, the hammer-and-sickle supporters, the hard-core pornographers, the hedonists, the Hell’s Angels, those whom God won’t help because they won’t help themselves, the hermaphrodites, the highbrows, the hijackers, the hippies, the Hisses, the homos, the hoodlums of all races, the heroin pushers, the hypocrites—”
“Yes, the tribute has begun, the tribute to the man they loved more than they knew. By trains they come, by busses, by cars, by planes, by wheelchairs, by feet. Come some on canes and crutches, and some on artificial limbs. But come undaunted they do, like pilgrims of yesteryear and yore, to honor pay to him they loved more than they knew. Reaped by the Grim Reaper before his reaping was due, he brings us together at last, as he promised he one day would do. And doing it he is. For in they come, the ordinary people, his people, barbers and butchers and brokers and barkers, tycoons and taxidermists and the taciturn who till the land. It is, I daresay, a demonstration the likes of which he who has been grimly reaped by the Grim Reaper did not, alas, survive to witness. No, during his brief residence on this planet Earth, and his three years in the White House, they demonstrated not to honor him but to humiliate him, not to pay him homage and respect but to shout their obscenities at, and display their disrespect toward, him. But these are not the obscenity-shouters and the disrespect-displayers gathering here tonight along the banks of the Potomac — banks as old as the Republic itself — and beneath the cherry blossoms he so loved, and in the brooding grandeur of this the city which embodies that which he who has been untimely reaped would have himself willingly laid down his life for, had of him it been asked instead of cruelly being stolen in the night from him by an ill-mannered madman with a baggie. Yet madmen there have been and madmen there will be, and still this nation has endured. And, I daresay, endure it will, while the madmen pass through these corridors of power and halls of justice and closets of virtue and dumbwaiters of dignity and cellars of idealism, leaving us in the end, if not stronger, wiser; and if not wiser, stronger; and if, alas, not either, both. This is Erect Severehead with a cogent news analysis from the nation’s capital.”
“This is Brad Bathos. I’m down here in the streets of Washington now, and it is a moving and heartrending sight I see. Ever since the news first broke that the President had been found dead in a baggie at Walter Reed Hospital, the people of this great country, his people, have been pouring into the capital from all over the nation. Thousands upon thousands simply standing here in the streets surrounding the White House, with heads bowed, visibly shaken and moved. Many are crying openly, not a few of them grown men. Here is a man seated on the curbstone holding his head in his hands and quietly sobbing. I’m going to ask him if he will tell us where he comes from.”
“I come from here, I come from Washington.”
“You’re sitting on the curbstone quietly sobbing into your hands. Can you tell us why? Can you put it into words?”
“Guilt.”
“You mean you feel a personal sense of guilt?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I did it.”
“You did it? You killed the President?”
“Yes.”
“Well, look, this is important — have you told the police?”
“I’ve told everyone. The police. The FBI. I even tried to call Pitter Dixon to tell her. But all they kept saying was that it was kind of me to think of them at a time like this and Mrs. Dixon appreciated my sympathy and thought it was in very good taste, and then they hung up. Meanwhile, I should be arrested. I should be in the papers — my picture, and a big headline, DIXON’S MURDERER. But nobody will believe me. Here, here’s the notebooks where I’ve been planning it for months. Here are tape recordings of my own telephone conversations with friends. Here, look at this: a signed confession! And I wasn’t even under duress when I wrote it. I was in a hammock. I was fully aware of my constitutional rights. My lawyer was with me, as a matter of fact. We were having a drink. Here — just read it, I give all my reasons and everything.”
“Sir, interesting as your story is, we have to move on. We must move on through this immense crowd… Here’s a young attractive woman holding a sleeping infant in her arms. She is just standing on the sidewalk gazing blankly at the White House. Heaven only knows how much anguish is concealed in that gaze. Madam, will you tell the television audience what you’re thinking about as you look at the White House?”
“He’s dead.”
“You appear to be in a state of shock.”
“I know. I didn’t think I could do it.”
“Do what?”
“Kill. Murder. He said, ‘Let me make one thing perfectly—’ and before he could say ‘clear,’ I had him in the baggie. You should have seen the look on his face when I turned the little twister seal.”
“The look on the President’s face when you—?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen such rage in my life. I’ve never seen such anger and fury. But then he realized I was staring at him through the baggie, and suddenly he looked just the way he does on television, all seriousness and responsibility, and he opened his mouth, I guess to say ‘clear,’ and that was it. I think he thought the whole thing was being televised.”
“And — well, was your baby with you, when you allegedly—?”
“Oh yes, yes. Of course, she’s too young to remember exactly what happened. But I want her to be able to grow up to say, ‘I was there when my mother murdered Dixon.’ Imagine it my little girl is going to grow up in a world where she’ll never have to hear anybody say he’s going to make something perfectly clear ever again! Or, ‘Let’s make no mistake about it!’ Or, ‘I’m a Quaker and that’s why I hate war so much —' Never never never never. And I did it. I actually did it. I tell you, I still can’t believe it. I drowned him. In cold water. Me.”
“And you, young man, let’s move on to you. You’re just walking up and down here outside the White House, very much as though you’ve lost something. You seem confused and bewildered. Can you tell us, in a few words, what it is you’re searching for?”
“A cop. A policeman.”
“Why?”
“I want to turn myself in.”
“This is Brad Bathos, from the streets of Washington, where the mourners have come to gather, to pray, to weep, to lament, and to hope. Back to Erect Severehead.”
“Erect, we’re up here on top of the Washington Monument with the Chief of the Washington Police Force. Chief Shackles, how many people would you say are down there right now?”
“Oh, just around the monument alone we’ve got about twenty-five or thirty thousand; and I’d say there are twice that many over by the White House. And of course more are pouring in every hour.”
“Can you describe these people? Are they the usual sort of demonstrators you get here in Washington?”
“Oh no, no. These people don’t want to disrupt anything. I would say they are actually bending over backwards to cooperate with the authorities. So far, at any rate.”
“What do you mean by so far?”
