The Butcher's Son (8 page)

And then it was time for Judy. The lights dimmed, a small spot focused on the purple curtains, and they opened to reveal a sad-looking Judy Garland. As usual, she paid absolutely no attention to the customers and was apparently oblivious to the fact there weren’t all that many people there anyway.

She stood a moment in silence; then, the music started and she went into “The Man that Got Away.”

Jesus Christ!
I thought.
What a fucking song to sing in front of two guys who are breaking up!

Chris and I studiously avoided looking at one another but joined in the enthusiastic applause when the song ended. Once again, I was sure I had seen the performer out of drag somewhere. Our mailman? The guy in the office down the hall from C.C.’s?

Next, she did “The Boy Next Door”—another unfortunate choice, under the circumstances. I was hoping she’d lighten up, but she ended her set with “You Made Me Love You.”

Three out of three!

As usual, a rousing ovation, and as usual, no curtain call.

We sat there for awhile, sort of hoping T/T might come out to brighten things up, but he didn’t. We took our time finishing our drinks, reluctant to have the evening end.

“Dog Collar?” Chris asked.

“Why not?”

*

It had turned rather cool by the time we reached
the street. After circling around to the car to drop off the plastic grapes, we turned toward the Dog Collar.

I didn’t much care for the place. It was a big, cavernous dump that boasted four pool tables and a downstairs “dungeon” for those into group sex. Like a lot of older buildings, it had very high ceilings, which the management had recently tried to make appear lower by stretching some sort of black mesh fabric from wall to wall.

The clientele, as the bar’s name might indicate, was supposedly ultra-butch. I’ve got nothing at all against being butch, mind you—if it’s authentic. The Dog Collar crowd was plastic-grapes butch. Still, it always drew a good crowd, and was packed tonight.

We were about two doors down when we heard a muffled
whoomp!
that sounded like it came from the alley behind the bar. Moments later, the double front doors burst open, and a tidal wave of men washed out into the street, running. Shouts of “
Fire!
” could be heard from inside and from those in the flood of men gushing through the door.

Chris and I froze in mid-step; then, we moved away from the buildings with the crowd and into the street. A wide, flat ribbon of smoke unfurled slowly out the top of the door over the heads of those scrambling to get out.

No dictionary could ever have described the word
chaos
more vividly. Men were running, pushing, tripping over one another as they emerged, turning around to shout for friends still inside. Two or three guys fought against the tide, trying to go back in, but they couldn’t buck the crowd coming out, and the smoke was getting heavy now. The outward-opening double door was all that prevented a human logjam forming at the entrance, and blessedly, anyone who made it that far was able to escape.

Sirens could already be heard in the distance. The street was a milling mass of men: leathermen, pseudo leathermen, male strippers in g-strings and loincloths, college types, hunks, average Joes, older, younger—a cross-section of the male gay community. Ironically, music still blared inside the bar.

Small clusters of guys gathered, some holding each other, some holding others back. Some pushed through the crowd trying to locate friends. There were many people obviously hurt; most were coughing uncontrollably as they ran out. The ones who collapsed just outside the door were dragged away then carried across the street to be laid out on the sidewalk where others huddled over them, doing what they could to help. Some just stood staring wide-eyed as a few snake-tongues of orange fire began to lick out over the top of the doorway, as if tasting the air.

The cacophony outside couldn’t hide the screams coming from inside. The music had stopped.

Chris and I were walled in by people on one side of the semicircle of onlookers. We weren’t close enough to the front to be able to do anything, and we were sick with the feeling of helplessness. Still they kept coming out—guys at the front of the crowd, which was being driven back by the increasing heat and billowing smoke, would rush forward to grab anyone who made it through the doors and lead or drag them to safety, or run interference to prevent others from trying to reenter the building to save friends or lovers.

Pressed against those around us, we tried to see if there was anyone we knew; Chris stood on tiptoe to see over the heads of those directly around us. Fewer were coming out now. One, probably one of the strippers, stumbled through the doorway naked and badly burned, his hair smoldering. Backlit by an angry pulsating orange, he leaned against the door frame as though the pose were a part of his number. Then he pushed forward, made it just outside the door, and toppled like a fallen tree onto the sidewalk before those dashing in to help him could reach him.

They picked him up and carried him across the street, the crowd parting to allow them through.

An instant later, another guy appeared, crawling on all fours, his shirt on fire. He was grabbed by several guys, who slapped at his shirt with their hands to put out the flames. They got him to his feet, but he looked frantically around at the crowd then broke away and ran back toward the door, which was by this time totally engulfed. Two of those who’d helped him ran after and grabbed him just before he reached it.

They dragged him back as he fought to break free, straining forward and yelling something we couldn’t make out over the incredible din. There were no more screams coming from inside the bar, just crashing sounds and the triumphant roar of the flames.

The first squad car came racing down the street, siren wailing, lights flashing, horn blasting, followed by no fewer than three fire trucks; the lights of others closed in from both directions. The crowd scattered before them.

Then, over all the sirens, and the yells, and the dull thrum of the fire, which was now pouring out of the door and had broken through the roof, I heard someone calling me.

“Dick! Dick!”

I looked around, and Chris pointed to the guy whose shirt had been on fire, who was still being held by his rescuers.

It was Bob Allen.

Ambulances began to arrive as the firemen rolled out their hoses and the police—several squads of them by this time—started moving the crowd back. We shouldered our way through the mass of guys to Bob. He had blood running down his left temple from a gash somewhere just above the hairline.

But his face! I hope I never again see an expression on anyone’s face like the one I saw on Bob’s.

The two guys holding him, seeing that we knew him, reluctantly released him. He grabbed us both, one with each hand, and his knees started to buckle. We grabbed him and held him up between us.

He tightened his grip on our arms.

“You’ve got to help me go back in!” he pleaded, and my eyes jerked to meet Chris’s, which mirrored my own shock.

“Ramón!” Bob cried, pointing to the inferno. “Ramón’s still in there!”

Chapter 6

Ramón was one of twenty-three men who
never
made it out of the Dog Collar. Another six died later in the hospitals—one from burns and five from smoke inhalation. Apparently, whatever the ceiling mesh was made from had been fatally toxic when burned in the confines of a closed space.

Despite Bob’s dazed insistence that he had to stay at the fire scene until Ramón was found, his arms and back were badly burned; we all but dragged him to one of the many ambulances shuttling back and forth to hospitals. I recognized one of the paramedics who helped him into the ambulance and was told he’d be taken to St. Anthony’s.

We made our way back to the car through drifting smoke without looking back and rode in complete silence to the hospital to wait for word on Bob. The waiting room was already filled with friends and families of the burned and injured, and more were coming in. The number of injured taxed the hospital beyond its capacity, and those less badly injured were treated and released. Luckily, Bob was one of them.

His burns, apparently less severe than they’d appeared to us, were treated and bandaged, the cut on his head stitched up, and he was released to us with instructions to return immediately if there were any complications or in two days if there were not.

It was close to four a.m. by the time we started for home, again in complete silence. Bob sat in the back seat with Chris, staring straight ahead. We did not even consider the possibility of his returning to his own apartment and took him directly to ours, leading him into the guest room. I’m not sure he even knew where he was, let alone cared. We carefully helped him out of what remained of his clothes and guided him into bed, on his stomach.

Neither Chris nor I slept much that night, thinking of Bob, of Ramón, and of all those others—and how, had we been a few minutes earlier getting to the bar, or had the fire started a few minutes later, we might well have been inside with Bob and Ramón, watching the strippers strut their stuff on the makeshift stage at the far back of the bar.

We got up at seven-thirty, unable to even pretend to sleep any longer. Chris went to the kitchen to make coffee, and I went to the guest room and quietly opened the door a crack to check on Bob. He was sitting on the edge of the bed staring at the floor.

I knocked softly then entered.

“Chris has the coffee on,” I said, having no idea what else to say.

He looked up.

“Thanks.”

“We’ve got a couple extra robes, if you’d like one,” I volunteered. “And later, if you want to give me the keys to your place, I can go up and get you some clothes.”

“Ramón has them,” Bob said in a monotone. “He drove last night, and he kept the keys.”

Shit! What can anyone possibly do or say in a situation like this?

“Well, we’ll figure something out after awhile. There’s no rush.”

He only nodded, and I hurried to the bathroom to get Chris’s spare robe. Bob was coming out of the guest room when I returned.

“Can I use your phone?”

“Sure,” I said, wondering who he wanted to call. Ramón’s folks, maybe—if he knew their number.

“I’ve got to call…” He hesitated. “…somebody to find out if they’ve found Ramón.”

“Well, come and sit down first. We’ll have some coffee. Can I get you some aspirin or something?” I was concerned about the physical pain he must be in.

He shook his head.

“I’ll be fine.”

We sat in the living room and had coffee in almost complete silence. Chris asked if Bob felt like eating anything, and he shook his head.

“Chris,” I said, “didn’t I see Jason Young there last night?” Jason was, I was sure, one of the firemen on the scene. His partner Arnie was on Chris’s bowling team.

“Yeah, I think you may be right. Kind of hard to tell in all the confusion.”

“Do you have their phone number?” I knew it was very unlikely Bob—who was in no condition to be making phone calls in any case—would be able to find out any pertinent information other than where the bodies had been taken. I knew Jason probably hadn’t slept much last night, either, if at all, and he was almost definitely still on his shift. Still, I wanted to give it a try, to help Bob start getting some sense of closure. I could not begin to imagine the mental agony he must be going through, and I was selfishly glad I couldn’t.

Chris got up to get us some more coffee.

“I’m sure I’ve got the number somewhere,” he said. “I’ll go check.”

Bob and I sat in silence, me feeling painfully awkward at not being able to do something to help and he lost in his own world.

Then, after a moment, he said, without looking at me, “I left him there. He depended on me, and I left him there.”

It was a ghost’s voice, expressionless and chilling.

“Oh, God, Bob, no. No, you didn’t! It wasn’t your fault.”

Chris had come back with the coffee but stopped short, pot in hand, not wanting to interrupt.

“Whenever we’d go into a crowded bar,” Bob went on, his voice almost conversational, “I’d always go first to lead the way, and Ramón would hook his hand through the back of my belt so we wouldn’t get separated.”

Neither Chris nor I dared to move, totally focused on Bob.

“We were in the back, near the stage. Ramón was leaning up against the end of the bar. The place was packed solid, and the strippers were making a fortune, with guys shoving bills into their g-strings. The music was too loud, as always.

“We didn’t even know anything was wrong at first, until a couple guys pointed down the hallway leading to the back door and the stairway to the dungeon, and started yelling ‘Fire!’

“Everything happened so damned fast! Everyone started backing away, and then fire was running in little waves across the ceiling of the hallway and out into the main room, and the place panicked! The guys in the dungeon never had a chance!

“Ramón and I looked at each other, and I grabbed his hand and started pulling him toward the front door. God! There were so many people! Pushing and shouting, with the fire slithering across the ceiling over our heads. I was sure I could feel him holding on to my belt, but when I got about halfway to the front, I looked back for Ramón, and he wasn’t there. Just guys…so many guys.

“And the fire had crept around the corner of the hallway and was moving across the back wall toward the stage, and I looked up, and I couldn’t see the flames on the ceiling because the smoke was there, hiding it, and getting thicker and moving down towards our heads, and little bits of burning party decorations and God knows what were falling on us…

“I yelled for Ramón, but he couldn’t have heard me in all that racket. And the damned music was still blaring away like nothing was wrong! I turned around and tried to go back to where we’d been standing, but I just kept getting carried forward by the crowd. I tried to at least work my way over to the bar. I thought if I could get behind the bar, I could go almost the entire length of the place without having to fight my way there.