by Clark Howard
Richie and Louis and Russ sat and watched as the seemingly endless line of kids snaked its way down the aisle, up the stairs, across the stage. They watched Buck’s lips barely move as he greeted each one of them, and Richie was positive that at no time did Buck say to any other kid the exact words he had said to Richie. How are you, pardner? Richie smiled at the fresh memory of the words. Fine, Buck, he thought. Just fine. Basking in the glow of the great man, Richie began making silent promises to himself. He was going to stop swearing. And telling lies. He was going to buy Savings Stamps instead of comic books. He was going to be a square shooter and a good citizen.
When the last kid had finally shaken his hand, Buck turned back to the microphone and said, “Well, little friends, it’s about time for me to hit the trail. I’ve got to go downtown to some fancy grown-up party. Tell the truth, I’d rather stay right here with all of you and spin a few cowboy yarns, but I promised I’d go down there and I always keep my word, just like I know you do. So I’ll say so long for now. Remember to buy those Savings Stamps, and encourage your folks to buy War Bonds. Let’s all work to get this awful war over with.” Once again the white Stetson was raised high. “Adios, pardners!” Buck shouted.
The following Sunday morning, Richie awoke to the sound of Louis calling his name from the alley behind his building.
“Yo, Richie!” he yelled. “Yo-oh, Rich-ie!” Over and over. Before Richie got to the window, he heard an adult’s voice shout, “Shut up down there, for Christ’s sake! It’s Sunday!”
Raising the window, Richie stuck his head out. Before he could say anything, Louis waved a newspaper and yelled, “Buck Jones got burned in a fire!”
Richie’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. It was a mistake! His mind immediately seized on a defense. “What paper’s that?” he called down suspiciously. Probably the stinking Tribune.
“Times,” Louis said.
“Be right down,” Richie told him.
Breaking all previous records for dressing, Richie was in the alley in three minutes. The story was on the front page, with a photograph of a building in flames. The headlines read: BLAZE SWEEPS BOSTON NIGHTCLUB. Below that: 300 FEARED DEAD.
“Here’s where it says about Buck,” Louis pointed to a place in the story and Richie read: “Among the scores of victims taken to Massachusetts General Hospital was Charles ‘Buck’ Jones, popular cowboy motion picture star. Jones was attending a party in his honor at the end of a successful ten-city personal appearance tour on behalf of the current War Bond drive.”
Richie read the story all the way through, then reread twice the part about Buck.
“T’ink he’s gonna die?” Louis asked solemnly. Richie shook his head emphatically.
“No.” Handing the paper back to Louis, he said, “I gotta go eat breakfast. See you later.”
Back upstairs, he went directly to the radio and turned it on. As he waited impatiently for it to warm up, he tuned it to the Mutual Broadcasting network, on which his mother listened to the war news each evening. There was religious music playing when it came on, so Richie stretched out on the floor with his head under the table and waited. At nine o’clock the news came on.
“In Boston,” the commentator said, “police and fire department officials have determined that the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire that has claimed at least 350 lives was accidentally started by a sixteen-year-old bus boy attempting to replace a light bulb which had been removed by a partying patron in the club’s basement room known as the Melody Lounge. Standing on a chair, the boy struck a match to see where to screw the bulb in, and accidentally ignited an artificial palm tree nearby. The burning palm set fire to decorative silk loops festooning the ceiling, and the blaze spread quickly across the lounge. There were an estimated one-hundred-thirty patrons in the downstairs lounge, while above them some seven hundred more were dining and dancing in the nightclub’s huge main room.
“The fire, which started about ten o’clock last night, swept into the main room in what has been described as a ‘flash’ or ‘burst’ of flame. Leather-covered walls of the nightclub had been treated with a fire-resistant compound which kept them from igniting in flames but which caused them to give off dense clouds of thick smoke. It was this thick smoke which caused panic among the patrons and caused hundreds of them to rush blindly for exits already jammed shut by crushed human bodies.
“Army and navy officers and enlisted men dining and dancing at the nightclub were credited with acts of bravery in attempting to control the panic-stricken crowd, and Western movie star Buck Jones, who was a patron in the main room, is reported to have at least twice reentered the blazing building after successfully escaping, to help others get out. Jones is reported to be badly burned and in serious condition at Massachusetts General Hospital . . . .”
Under the table, tears came out of the sides of Richie’s eyes and ran down into his ears.
Twelve hours later, the news had only become worse.
“Mutual Broadcasting has learned that the death toll from the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Boston has now reached four hundred and fifty. Firemen, National Guardsmen, and military and civilian volunteers continue to remove burned, crushed, and asphyxiated bodies from the ruins. Since noon today they have been working in a cold winter rain which has made their terrible job even more difficult. Taxicabs, delivery vans, and newspaper trucks have been pressed into service to transfer the bodies to mortuaries throughout the city. Earlier, ambulances from twenty-two hospitals worked through the night and early morning transporting the burned and injured to medical facilities. The city’s doctors and nurses have been on duty for more than twenty hours. Some five hundred Red Cross volunteers are assisting them.
“As the hours pass, stories of individual heroism have begun to emerge. One movie hero who has become a real-life hero is Charles ‘Buck’ Jones, cowboy idol of millions of American youngsters. Jones, attending a party at the end of a ten-city War Bond tour, apparently was one of the fortunate patrons who escaped the doomed premises. But he is reported to have gone back into the holocaust at least twice, and perhaps as many as four times, to help rescue others. Jones apparently reentered the burning building the first time to help his personal manager and longtime friend Scott R. Dunlap who had been in attendance at the party given for Jones by area motion picture distributors. After successfully aiding Dunlap, the veteran Western actor returned up to three more times to assist others before finally collapsing and being rushed to the hospital. At Massachusetts General, physicians reported that Jones was suffering burned lungs from extensive smoke inhalation, as well as third and second degree burns on his face and neck. Although still tenaciously clinging to life at this hour, doctors state that his condition is critical and he is given only a slight chance of survival. . . .”
Sitting on the floor in a corner of the living room, Richie’s face was buried in arms crossed over upraised knees. His stomach growled in emptiness; he had not eaten all day. Periodically throughout the morning and afternoon, he had heard Louis calling him again from the alley, but he had not responded. His mother had gotten out of bed around noon, had several cups of coffee and smoked several cigarettes, then dressed and gone out, admonishing him not to leave the block. He had paid no attention to her because his mind was so caught up in the tragedy of Buck; nevertheless, he was still sitting where she had left him when she returned four hours later. He knew where she had been, knew what she was doing when she locked herself in the bathroom with a cup and a spoon and the sugar bowl and her purse, in which Richie knew she had several small bottles wrapped in drugstore paper. He did not even have to look in the garbage can for empty bottles anymore; his mother’s two moods—preoccupation and lethargy—told him all he needed to know.
“I can’t fix supper tonight, Richie,” she told him later. “I’m just too tired.” She gave him a quarter. “Go get a hamburger, okay?”
He did not move and she did not care; her responsibility had been taken care of.
/> Still later, Chloe glided back into the room and abruptly moved the radio dial. “For God’s sake, isn’t there anything on besides all this talk, talk, talk? Can’t we have some music, for God’s sake?”
Richie got up, got his coat and cap, and walked out.
It was after dark now and the block was quieting down. Mrs. Chaney’s, the little basement store on the corner, was closed, so Richie walked over there and sat in the dark on the steps that led down to it from the sidewalk. Occasionally someone walked by, but nobody noticed him there; the night was getting cold and people hurried. With his collar turned up and the flaps of his cap pulled down over his ears, he sat on the cold steps as he had sat on the living room floor: knees up, arms folded, head down. Soon he was very cold, cold all over, cold inside and out, cold in his stomach and in his heart, cold even in his mind and thoughts.
Only the tears streaking his cheeks were warm.
The next morning, before he went to school, Richie could get nothing on the radio about Buck. Because he felt ill and weak from not eating, he fixed a bowl of Wheaties and managed to get it down. Chloe, as usual, was already gone; she started at the bakery at six. Before she left, she always reset the alarm for him. Every morning Richie got up, got ready for school by himself, fixed his own breakfast, and left when he heard Louis call him. This morning, because there was no news on the radio, he was going to leave early and go buy a paper. Before he left, he opened a John Ruskin cigar box that Johnny Eaton had given him, and got out his three Buck Jones badges. Two of them were round, made of tin: one white with black lettering reading FAMOUS COWBOY SERIES, with a black line drawing of Buck; the other with black lettering that read FOR u.s. MARSHAL—BUCK JONES, with an actual photo of Buck against a red background. The third was brass, shaped like a horseshoe, BUCK JONES CLUB lettered around the curve, and a drawing of Buck in the middle. Thinking maybe that wearing the badges might somehow bring Buck good luck, Richie pinned them to the inside of his coat.
There was a newsstand outside Mrs. Chaney’s. Richie bought a Times and sat on the steps of the store to read it. The front page was all war news: the Russian army, driving the Germans back from Moscow, had killed 15,000 and captured 66,000; on the other side of the world, two Japanese destroyers had been sunk off New Guinea. Johnny Eaton was fighting on New Guinea, and ordinarily Richie would have read the item thoroughly, but today was different. Quickly turning to page two, he was, in spite of everything, unprepared for what he found there. Tears welled in his eyes as he read the ominous headline: BUCK JONES DEAD OF FIRE INJURIES.
The story followed. “Charles (Buck) Jones, cowboy motion picture star, died late Sunday night of burns suffered in the Cocoanut Grove fire. A longtime favorite of American boy movie fans, he became the 481st fatality of the disaster—”
Richie could not read the rest of it. Tearing the column out and putting it in his pocket, he left the rest of the paper on the steps and walked away.
He did not go to school. For the rest of the day, he wandered. He walked up and down the streets, up and down alleys. He rode streetcars to the end of the line and back. For hours he kept moving, like a zombie, expression slack, eyes dull, shoulders slumped. Twice someone stopped on the street to ask if he was all right, but Richie ignored them and kept going. By one o’clock, after five hours, he made his way back home, exhausted. To his surprise, he found his mother there, packing dishes in a cardboard box.
“We’re moving,” Chloe said. “To a cheaper place. I couldn’t take that bakery one more day, so I quit. There’s a man coming to buy the furniture. I’ve got us a little furnished flat down on Adams Street where we can get along just on Johnny’s allotment check.” Pausing, she saw his desolate expression. “Now, don’t look at me like that, Richie. I know you don’t like to change schools but this can’t be helped. You have no idea what working in that bakery has been like. My nerves are absolutely shot. There’s a box on your bed; you just pack all your clothes and things in it, and don’t give me any trouble, you hear me? Go on now . . . .”
In the bedroom, Richie put his Buck Jones badges back in the cigar box and packed that first. He felt all hollow inside, vacant, useless, like an empty popcorn bag. Everything was systematically being taken away from him: Johnny Eaton, the stadium job, Buck Jones, the first school where he had someone to protect him, everything. Everything of value was going from his life, Popsicle sticks floating in the gutter, heading for the sewer.
“Hurry up with your packing, Richie,” he heard his mother say. “Before we leave, I want you to go to a couple places for me.”
Floating in the gutter, heading for the sewer.
Just like him.
24
Richie walked out of the tenement building on Adams Street and sat on the front stoop. Pushing down one long sock and pulling up the leg of his knickers, he examined several small red bumps on his leg. They were on his other leg also, and all over the rest of him, even on his face. They itched fiercely.
As he sat there, another boy came out of the building and saw him looking at the sores. Sitting down beside Richie, he asked, “Di’nt you have no candle?”
Richie frowned. “What?”
“Candle. Ain’t you got a candle? Them’s bedbug bites, ain’t they?”
Richie shrugged again. The other boy looked closely at Richie’s face.
“Them’s bedbug bites,” he declared. “C’mon, I’ll show you what to do about ’em.”
“I gotta go to school,” Richie said.
“You transferrin’ to Brown?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck it. Go tomorrow. Tell ’em you couldn’t find it today. C’mon.”
Richie followed him back into the building and up the creaky wooden stairs past the second floor, where Chloe, Richie knew, was still sleeping, to the third floor, where the boy gestured for Richie to be quiet and wait. “My old lady’s asleep,” he explained. “She works nights.” Richie watched as he carefully opened a door next to a hall garbage can and slipped into one of the flats.
“Stan, what are you doing back?” a female voice asked. Through the open door, Richie saw a girl about fifteen, in a tight sweater, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette at a cluttered kitchen table.
“Forgot something,” the boy answered.
“You’d better get to school on time,” the girl warned. “If you get expelled one more time, Ma’s gonna kill you.”
When Stan came back into the hall, he had a thick white candle about four inches long, and a book of matches. “Okay, show me where you sleep,” he said.
Richie took him down a flight and opened the door to his and Chloe’s flat as quietly as Stan had done. “My old lady’s asleep too,” he whispered, using Stan’s vernacular. He led Stan to an alcove on one side of the kitchen, where there was a cot with a thin, blue-striped mattress on it, covered by a rumpled sheet and a brown blanket. Stan folded everything back, mattress and all, exposing bluish metal springs.
“Watch,” he said. Down on his knees, he lighted the candle wick and held its flame under one of the sections of bedsprings. Within seconds, Richie began hearing a series of soft pops. “Them’s the bedbugs,” Stan said. “They live in the coils an’ on’y come out when it’s dark to suck your blood. The fire from the candle explodes ’em; that’s what makes the popping sound.”
While Richie watched in fascination, Stan systematically moved the flame from coil to coil, remaining at each until the popping stopped before moving on. After a while, he gave the candle to Richie. “G’on, you try it.”
Itching madly all over his body, Richie burned the bedbugs with relish. When they had done the entire bedspring, Stan said, “G’on, keep the candle. I’ll get anudder.”
When they got back outside, Stan said, “Some of them bedbugs go down into the mattress too. We’ll swipe a bottle of alcohol today an’ I’ll show you what to do about them little bastards.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, Stan looked up and down the street as if evaluating it. He was a confiden
t-looking boy with curly, shiny black hair and thick black eyebrows that all but grew together at the top of his nose. A slightly enlarged lower lip gave him a pouty look when his mouth was closed, a rather stupid look when it was open, but Stan was neither. The same age as Richie, he was not as skinny. As he surveyed the block of Adams Street just below Damen Avenue, the expression on his face clearly indicated that the street was his; he had no fear of it. “Wanna go rat-killing?” he asked almost nonchalantly.
Richie shrugged. “I don’t know how.”
“C’mon, I’ll show you.”
Stan took Richie to a grocery on Ashland Avenue that had a dozen fruit and vegetable bins lining the sidewalk outside. Stopping two doors away, he said, “Okay, when I say ‘go’, we both run like hell past the store. You grab a couple of them apples for us. I’ll snatch the potatoes.”
“The potatoes?”
“Yeah, the potatoes. For the rat killing. Okay, all set?”
“Yeah—”
“Go!” Stan ordered without warning.
Stan broke into a run, Richie half a step behind him. They came to the potato bin first, where, without breaking stride, Stan grabbed an Irish potato with each hand and kept going. The apples were on the other side of the doorway, through which, as he passed, Richie could see a man in a white apron already hurrying out. Two bushel baskets of apples were set next to the door, and from them Richie grabbed an apple with each hand. Fumbling the one in his left hand, he dropped it and saw it bounce into the gutter as he pumped his legs to catch up with Stan.
“You little sons of bitches!” a voice behind them yelled, but Richie heard no running footsteps coming after them. Stan beat it around the comer, with Richie right behind him. They ran another block, then slowed, panting, to a walk. Richie handed Stan the apple.