It (74 page)

He paused, took another drink of water, and then went on. His eyes were bright now.

“Well, well. Fuller would have put an end to it sooner or later. If it had been sooner, a lot less people would have died. All he had to do was send in MPs and have them confiscate all the bottles of liquor that people had brought in with them. That would have been good enough—just what he wanted, in fact. It would have shut us down good and proper. There would have been court-martials and
the stockade in Rye for some of us and transfers for all the rest. But Fuller was slow. I think he was afraid of the same thing some of us was afraid of—that some of the townies would be mad. Mueller hadn't been back to see him, and I think Major Fuller must have been scared to go downtown and see Mueller. He talked big, Fuller did, but he had all the spine of a jellyfish.

“So instead of the thing ending in some put-up way that would have at least left all those that burned up that night still alive, the Legion of Decency ended it. They came in their white sheets early that November and cooked themselves a barbecue.”

He fell silent again, not sipping at his water this time, only looking moodily into the far corner of his room while outside a bell dinged softly somewhere and a nurse passed the open doorway, the soles of her shoes squeaking on the linoleum. I could hear a TV someplace, a radio someplace else. I remember that I could hear the wind blowing outside, snuffling up the side of the building. And although it was August, the wind made a cold sound. It knew nothing of
Cain's Hundred
on the television, or the Four Seasons singing “Walk Like a Man” on the radio.

“Some of them came through that greenbelt between the base and West Broadway,” he resumed at last. “They must have met at someone's house over there, maybe in the basement, to get their sheets on and to make the torches that they used.

“I've heard that others came right onto the base by Ridgeline Road, which was the main way onto the base back then. I heard—I won't say where—that they came in a brand-new Packard automobile, dressed in their white sheets with their white goblin-hats on their laps and torches on the floor. The torches were Louisville Sluggers with big hunks of burlap snugged down over the fat parts with red rubber gaskets, the kind ladies use when they put up preserves. There was a booth where Ridgeline Road branched off Witcham Road and came onto the base, and the O.D. passed that Packard right along.

“It was Saturday night and the joint was jumping, going round and round. There might have been two hundred people there, maybe three. And here came these white men, six or eight in their bottle-green Packard, and more coming through the trees between the base and the fancy houses on West Broadway. They wasn't young, not many of them, and sometimes I wonder how many cases of angina
and bleeding ulcers there were the next day. I hope there was a lot. Those dirty sneaking murdering bastards.

“The Packard parked on the hill and flashed its lights twice. About four men got out of it and joined the rest. Some had those two-gallon tins of gasoline that you could buy at service stations back in those days. All of them had torches. One of em stayed behind the wheel of that Packard. Mueller had a Packard, you know. Yes he did. A green one.

“They got together at the back of the Black Spot and doused their torches with gas. Maybe they only meant to scare us. I've heard it the other way, but I've heard it that way, too. I'd rather believe that's how they meant it, because I ain't got feeling mean enough even yet to want to believe the worst.

“It could have been that the gas dripped down to the handles of some of those torches and when they lit them, why, those holding them panicked and threw them any whichway just to get rid of them. Whatever, that black November night was suddenly blazing with torches. Some was holding em up and waving em around, little flaming pieces of burlap falling off'n the tops of em. Some of them were laughing. But like I say, some of the others up and threw em through the back windows, into what was our kitchen. The place was burning merry hell in a minute and a half.

“The men outside, they were all wearing their peaky white hoods by then. Some of them were chanting ‘Come out, niggers! Come out, niggers! Come out, niggers!' Maybe some of them were chanting to scare us, but I like to believe most of em were trying to warn us—same way as I like to believe that maybe those torches going into the kitchen the way they did was an accident.

“Either way, it didn't much matter. The band was playing louder'n a factory whistle. Everybody was whooping it up and having a good time. Nobody inside knew anything was wrong until Gerry McCrew, who was playing assistant cook that night, opened the door to the kitchen and damn near got blowtorched. Flames shot out ten feet and burned his messjacket right off. Burned most of his hair off as well.

“I was sitting about halfway down the east wall with Trev Dawson and Dick Hallorann when it happened, and at first I had an idea the gas stove had exploded. I'd no more than got on my feet when I was
knocked down by people headed for the door. About two dozen of em went marchin right up my back, an I guess that was the only time during the whole thing when I really felt scared. I could hear people screamin and tellin each other they had to get out, the place was on fire. But every time I tried to get up, someone footed me right back down again. Someone landed his big shoe square on the back of my head and I saw stars. My nose mashed on that oiled floor and I snuffled up dirt and began to cough and sneeze at the same time. Someone else stepped on the small of my back. I felt a lady's high heel slam down between the cheeks of my butt, and son, I never want another half-ass enema like that one. If the seat of my khakis had ripped, I believe I'd be bleedin down there to this day.

“It sounds funny now, but I damn near died in that stampede. I was whopped, whapped, stomped, walked on, and kicked in so many places I couldn't walk 'tall the next day. I was screaming and none of those people topside heard me or paid any mind.

“It was Trev saved me. I seen this big brown hand in front of me and I grabbed it like a drownin man grabs a life preserver. I grabbed and he hauled and up I came. Someone's foot got me in the side of my neck right here—”

He massaged that area where the jaw turns up toward the ear, and I nodded.

“—and it hurt so bad that I guess I blacked out for a minute. But I never let go of Trev's hand, and he never let go of mine. I got to my feet, finally, just as the wall we'd put up between the kitchen and the hall fell over. It made a noise like—
floomp
—the noise a puddle of gasoline makes when you light it. I saw it go over in a big bundle of sparks, and I saw the people running to get out of its way as it fell. Some of em made it. Some didn't. One of our fellas—I think it might have been Hort Sartoris—was buried under it, and for just one second I seen his hand underneath all those blazing coals, openin and closin. There was a white girl, surely no more than twenty, and the back of her dress went up. She was with a college boy and I heard her screamin at him, beggin him to help her. He took just about two swipes at it and then ran away with the others. She stood there screamin as her dress went up on her.

“It was like hell out where the kitchen had been. The flames was
so bright you couldn't look at them. The heat was bakin hot, Mikey, roastin hot. You could feel your skin going shiny. You could feel the hairs in your nose gettin crispy.

“ ‘We gotta break outta here!' Trev yells, and starts to drag me along the wall. ‘Come on!'

“Then Dick Hallorann catches hold of him. He couldn't have been no more than nineteen, and his eyes was as big as bil'ard balls, but he kept his head better than we did. He saved our lives. ‘Not that way!' he yells.
‘This
way!' And he pointed back toward the bandstand . . . toward the fire, you know.

“ ‘You're crazy!' Trevor screamed back. He had a big bull voice, but you could barely hear him over the thunder of the fire and the screaming people. ‘Die if you want to, but me and Willy are gettin out!'

“He still had me by the hand and he started to haul me toward the door again, although there were so many people around it by then you couldn't see it at all. I would have gone with him. I was so shell-shocked I didn't know what end was up. All I knew was that I didn't want to be baked like a human turkey.

“Dick grabbed Trev by the hair of the head just as hard as he could, and when Trev turned back, Dick slapped his face. I remember seeing Trev's head bounce off the wall and thinking Dick had gone crazy. Then he was hollerin in Trev's face, ‘You go that way and you goan die! They jammed up against that door, nigger!'

“ ‘You don't know that!' Trev screamed back at him, and then there was this loud
BANG!
like a firecracker, only what it was, it was the heat exploding Marty Devereaux's bass drum. The fire was runnin along the beams overhead and the oil on the floor was catchin.

“ ‘I know it!' Dick screams back. ‘I know it!'

“He grabbed my other hand, and for a minute there I felt like the rope in a tug-o-war game. Then Trev took a good look at the door and went Dick's way. Dick got us down to a window and grabbed a chair to bust it out, but before he could swing it, the heat blew it out for him. Then he grabbed Trev Dawson by the back of his pants and hauled him up. ‘Climb!' he shouts.
‘Climb,
motherfucker!' And Trev went, head up and tail over the dashboard.

“He boosted me next, and I went up. I grabbed the sides of the
window and hauled. I had a good crop of blisters all over my palms the next day: that wood was already smokin. I come out headfirst, and if Trev hadn't grabbed me I mighta broke my neck.

“We turned back around, and it was like something from the worst nightmare you ever had, Mikey. That window was just a yellow, blazin square of light. Flames was shootin up through that tin roof in a dozen places. We could hear people screamin inside.

“I saw two brown hands waving around in front of the fire—Dick's hands. Trev Dawson made me a step with his own hands and I reached through that window and grabbed Dick. When I took his weight my gut went against the side of the building, and it was like having your belly against a stove that's just starting to get real good and hot. Dick's face came up and for a few seconds I didn't think we was going to be able to get him. He'd taken a right smart of smoke, and he was close to passing out. His lips had cracked open. The back of his shirt was smoldering.

“And then I damn near let go, because I could smell the people burning inside. I've heard people say that smell is like barbecuing pork ribs, but it ain't like that. It's more like what happens sometimes after they geld hosses. They build a big fire and throw all that shit into it and when the fire gets hot enough you can hear them hossballs poppin like chestnuts, and that's what people smell like when they start to cook right inside their clo'es. I could smell that and I knew I couldn't take it for long so I gave one more great big yank, and out came Dick. He lost one of his shoes.

“I tumbled off Trev's hands and went down. Dick come down on top of me, and I'm here to tell you that nigger's head was
hard.
I lost most of my breath and just laid there on the dirt for a few seconds, rolling around and holding my bellyguts.

“Presently I was able to get to my knees, then to my feet. And I seen these shapes running off toward the greenbelt. At first I thought they were ghosts, and then I seen shoes. By then it was so bright around the Black Spot it was like daylight. I seen shoes and understood it was men wearin sheets. One of them had fallen a little bit behind the others and I saw . . .”

He trailed off, licking his lips.

“What did you see, Daddy?” I asked.

“Never you mind,” he said. “Give me my water, Mikey.”

I did. He drank most of it and then got coughing. A passing nurse looked in and said: “Do you need anything, Mr. Hanlon?”

“New set of 'testines,” my dad said. “You got any handy, Rhoda?”

She smiled a nervous, doubtful smile and passed on. My dad handed the glass to me and I put it back on his table. “It's longer tellin than it is rememberin,” he said. “You goan fill that glass up for me before you leave?”

“Sure, Daddy.”

“This story goan give you nightmares, Mikey?”

I opened my mouth to lie, and then thought better of it. And I think now that if I had lied, he would have stopped right there. He was far gone by then, but maybe not that far gone.

“I guess so,” I said.

“That's not such a bad thing,” he said to me. “In nightmares we can think the worst. That's what they're for, I guess.”

He reached out his hand and I took it and we held hands while he finished.

“I looked around just in time to see Trev and Dick goin around the front of the building, and I chased after them, still trying to catch m'wind. There was maybe forty or fifty people out there, some of them cryin, some of them pukin, some of them screamin, some of them doing all three things at once, it seemed like. Others were layin on the grass, fainted dead away with the smoke. The door was shut, and we heard people screamin on the other side, screamin to let them out, out for the love of Jesus, they were burning up.

“It was the only door, except for the one that went out through the kitchen to where the garbage cans and things were, you see. To go in you pushed the door open. To go out you had to pull it.

“Some people had gotten out, and then they started to jam up at that door and push. The door got slammed shut. The ones in the back kept pushin forward to get away from the fire, and everybody got jammed up. The ones right up front were squashed. Wasn't no way they could get that door open against the weight of all those behind. So there they were, trapped, and the fire raged.