“Oh, yes!” I said, flushing with pride and joy and eager to begin, for he’d just singled me out among all men: that fractured echo from the past was a piece of Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” which Grandma Milhous penned by hand under a photo of Abe Lincoln she gave me on my thirteenth—thirteenth! — birthday! I kept it on the wall above my bed all through high school and college: Learn to labor and to wait! “I will!”
“Good boy!” he said. “I press thee to my heart as Duty’s faithful childering! Be prepared for anything, for this is one a them hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold, dear! But be brave, and whatever happens, just remember the sagassitous words of that other Poor Richard long ago: ‘Fools make feasts…and wise men eat ’em!’ So whet up that appetite!” He hugged me, then gave me his club to swing with, saying: “Now, listen here, a golf ball is propelled forward by the verlocity imparted to it by a club-head, see — this is physics, now, my boy — and it’s kept aloft by under-rotation or backspin, which producifies a cushion of air, and this is what gives the ball lift. To get this backspin, the clubhead’s gotta travel downward, right swat whippety-snap through the center of the ball, and this is where you been goin’ wrong. You think you gotta lift the ball up, and this is makin’ you pull your swing…”
“Ah…”
“Actually the uplift is projectorated by the spin, and the spin is got by hittin’ down and through, you got it? Now, another problem is movin’ your maximum verlocity back to six inches…”
Down and through, got it. I took a practice swing, keeping my shoulder down, my eye on the ball — then, because when I looked up I realized that people were staring at me (got to watch it, can’t let my guard down like that), swung on up into a friendly wave at a carload of Senators disembarking the subway car. “See ya, Dick!” “Don’t miss the show!” “Not for the world!” “Take it easy!” Down and through. And out and up, back to the office, get rid of this goddamn thing. With maximum verlocity.
6. The Phantom’s Hour
The curtain rises upon the Warden’s office, a large old unfriendly apartment, with bare floors and staring whitewashed walls, furnished only with the Warden’s flat-topped desk and swivel chair, a few straight-backed chairs, and an eight-day clock. On the Warden’s desk are a telephone instrument, a row of electric bell-buttons, and a bundle of forty or fifty letters. There are two large windows, crossed with heavy bars, at the back of the room, and doors left and right. The Warden is verging toward sixty, and his responsibilities have printed themselves in italics upon his countenance. With him, staring out the window, is the Prison Chaplain, dressed in slightly shabby clericals. The Chaplain’s face, normally calm, intellectual, and inspiring, is presently depressed. The Warden blows a cloud of smoke to the ceiling, drums on the desk, and peers over his shoulder at the Chaplain. He clears his throat and speaks brusquely: “Has it started raining?” “Yes, it has,” says the Chaplain, without turning around. The Warden glares at his long thin cigar and impatiently tosses it aside. He is wearing a dark brown suit, open shirt, and black string tie. “It would rain tonight,” he complains.
In fact, it is not raining tonight at Sing Sing. It is a warm clear evening, a little heavy, and there are rumors of an impending heat wave, maybe as early as Saturday. The prison officials, who have had to proceed today with all the usual death-chair preparations, are dressed in short-sleeved shirts with open collars. Not until Justice Burton’s announcement of the Supreme Court recess at 6:29 p.m. has the evening’s Death Watch been canceled, the electrician and rabbi sent off duty. Yesterday on the central radio speaker, during the seventh-inning stretch of the Dodgers’ baseball game, the Rosenbergs heard the news of Justice Douglas’s stay, and Warden Denno reported that they were “overjoyed,” but all that joy was soon dispelled by Attorney General Brownell’s rapid countermoves. The Rosenbergs still cling to hopes of further delays, but among the professionals it is generally felt that Douglas has overstepped himself on this one, and the odds are on for a vacated stay and a quick execution. They have their own reasons: all those preparations down in Times Square, the other executions stacking up, the daily expense: Ethel alone is costing the state $38.60 a day, Julius is due for more dental treatment, and there’s the burden of keeping 290 prison police and nearly as many New York State Troopers on constant guard, defending the prison against protest marches by the Phantom’s Legions of Darkness, even who knows? (guards in the tower gun emplacements flex their shoulders, scrutinize the prison borderland, now losing definition in the gathering dusk) — a mad attempt at escape.
Not that the Rosenbergs are showing any signs of sudden defiance — if anything, they seem to be mellowing as they near their exterminations. It could be a ruse, the kind of trick Errol Flynn often uses on his way to a last-minute rescue. Or it might be saltpeter in their diets. Most likely, though, they’ve known for years that the Phantom has intended this role for them, and they’ve been practicing. Ethel especially: for some time now she has ceased resisting and has taken the part on and made it her own. Julie still seems unable to believe it is all really happening to him, and continues to search frantically for the legalistic dodge that will get him out of here. “Everything seems so unreal and out of focus,” he writes, “it seems like we’re suspended somewhere, far off…” Today is their fourteenth wedding anniversary, and as a present from Sing Sing prison, they were allowed a full ninety minutes together at the dividing screen this evening. Not that they made much use of it — they sat as though tongue-tied half the time. What is there really to talk about on a warm June evening through a fine mesh screen with someone one’s been married to for fourteen years, after one’s been preparing all day to go to the electric chair? It’s all been said. Too many times. They’re weary of each other’s arguments, illusions, complaints. They’re weary of their own. Talking about the children only makes them cry or feel angry or guilty. They love each other, of course, more than ever — love indeed is why they’re here — so they could talk about the night they met at the Seamen’s ball on New Year’s Eve or their Sunday strolls through the Palisades or that first room they had together in Marcus Pogarsky’s apartment, but none of that seems real any more — it’s somebody else’s past, it belongs to those other people whose Death House letters are being read around the world. Anyway, they’re boxed in by prison guards and snoopy FBI agents with big ears, why give them a thrill? So they talked about things they’ve heard on the prison radio. How their suppers have settled down. The demonstrations. What they’ll do next if Justice Douglas’s stay is upheld. An interesting magazine article about the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Julius said he read in LIFE that Henry Ford II’s personal income in 1951 after taxes was $87,000,000. After taxes! This was on his mind because of his intention to write out their own last will and testament later tonight. Ethel repeated her wish to see Arthur Miller’s The Crucible playing in New York. She’s heard that the audience applauds when a character says toward the end that he’d rather burn in hell than become a stool pigeon. They sat silent a good part of the time, not even looking at each other, as though afraid of what they might see in the other’s face, yet like a pair of octogenarians at the fireside, finding familiar solace in each other’s company, glancing up from time to time, then away, listening to the trains rattling by along the river, sounds floating up from the town below: music, kids playing softball, trucks grinding up a hill. Now they are separated, Julius struggling with the text of his will, Ethel perhaps dreaming of opening night many years ago of the Clark House Players’ production in the settlement house on Rivington Street of The Valiant, in which she starred as the sister of the condemned man, who was played by Paul Muni in the movies….