Red Jacket

by Joseph Heywood

  Vairo said, “Ladder to fire escape is outside.”

  My God, it was the Chicago theater all over again. But where was the smoke? Chicago had smoke. You could smell it before you saw it.

  The game wardens ran outside and quickly scrambled up the side of the building to a door that opened onto the landing by the meeting hall’s ticket office. Inside they found adults and children screaming, some of them running around and waving their arms, while others were at the top of the stairs above the jam, trying to pull people upward and away from the writhing pile.

  The two men worked their way down, accepting injured and dead from below and passing them back until they were at the front line of bodies, working frantically but as gently as possible to extract people. All the while, the elongated, shrill scream continued.

  Zakov worked a boy loose and looked at Bapcat and shook his head, and handed the dead child up to hands behind them, saying Gentle to those above.

  “Where’s the actual fire?” Bapcat asked. “I don’t smell smoke.”

  “What fire?” someone behind him said.

  Bapcat peeled a woman away from the mass. She had a broken arm and bloody mouth. He got her to her feet and helped her move back next to those behind them. He looked down and saw a child on her back, eyes open and staring up, unmoving.

  “Pinkhus, help me!” Bapcat got a hand under the girl and Zakov a hand under her other side, and they pulled her up to them. When helping hands reached for her, Bapcat said no, and he and the Russian climbed up the stairs and carried her into the auditorium where bodies were being laid out in rows. They lay her down with them.

  “You’re weeping,” Zakov said.

  “We know her.”

  He heard the air go out of Zakov, followed by a choking sound. “Draganu Skander,” he said, stifling a sob. “Beloved quiet one,” he said.

  Bapcat pulled his friend back to the stairs. “We can’t help her, gospodin. The others need us now.”

  Eventually the wall of twisted, crushed, broken, bleeding suffocated corpses and wounded began to clear as rescuers from below began to make headway toward those trapped at the bottom of the stairs. Someone passed a ladle of water to Bapcat, who drank and held it for Zakov, who handed it to Dominick Vairo, who looked hot and shaky. Tears and sweat everywhere, vomit, blood, shit . . . it was like a battlefield.

  “Keep working,” Bapcat said.

  It was well after dark, light snow still falling, breath clouds shrouding the street where hundreds of people had gathered in silence, staring at the scene as bodies were carried out: relatives, neighbors, the curious, police, firemen, deputies, a conglomerate of sorrow. And agony.

  Bapcat and Zakov went down the outside fire escape and back into the bar. Vairo looked disconsolate, pointing at his empty cash register drawer and empty shelves where bottles had been only hours before. “Cleaned out,” he said.

  “What is the time?” Zakov asked.

  Vairo looked at his watch. “Seven.”

  “Widow Frei,” the Russian said to Bapcat.

  Photographer Nara poked his head into the saloon from the hallway and waggled a finger at Bapcat “We’re going to shoot in here, make a record. We didn’t expect to see you here.”

  Bapcat wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand, and as they went into the street and started to move through the crowd, he saw Jaquelle and Jordy at the edge of the jam. There was no talking, no sound other than muffled coughs. Bapcat, Zakov, Frei, and the boy all embraced, and Jaquelle said to the Russian, “You are going to get a room and eat with us tonight.”

  “I can still help,” Zakov said.

  “You can’t,” Bapcat said. “Let others take it from here.”

  It was a two-block walk to the Calumet Hotel, and the whole way they were moving against crowds of curious and panicked people surging toward the Italian Hall.

  “How?” Jaquelle asked as they walked through the fresh snow.

  “It just happened,” Bapcat said.

  “So many children,” she said. “Innocents.”

  That word stuck in Bapcat’s mind, and no matter how hard he tried to banish it, the word remained, blinking like a candle the wind was trying to extinguish.

  109

  Red Jacket

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1913

  They ate a meager breakfast in the hotel dining room before first light. The place was crowded, the other patrons quiet, the town reeling under the tragic events of yesterday’s disaster.

  Someone at a nearby table said quietly, “I heard seventy, and I heard eighty; I don’t think they even know how many yet. The whole thing was chaos.”

  Bapcat had given Jordy his gift before they went to breakfast. It was a Krag-Jørgensen.

  “It came from Denver. I had to mail-order it.”

  “Just like yours?” the boy asked.

  “Just like mine.”

  “We’ll have our Christmas later,” Jaquelle whispered to him.

  “We have to get back,” he told her.

  “I know. We’ll be here.”

  Vairo and Rousseau were in the tavern. The Barber was with them, and they each had a glass of amber liquid in front of them.

  The smell of death hung in the air. “You’re here,” Bapcat said.

  Labisoniere said, “The world gone mad.”

  “How many dead?”

  “Seventy-three. There were seventy-four, but a girl in one of the morgues acted as Lazarus and came back to life. She’ll live. Or she won’t,” he added. “Once again I find myself asking, What are you two doing here?”

  “Fate” Zakov said. “We were here when it happened.”

  “You heard someone call Fire?”

  Bapcat said, “We heard stamping feet and a scream that never ended. There was no yell of Fire down here, and we didn’t hear it mentioned until later, when we were pulling people out, and even that was just panic.”

  “Well, witnesses are saying it got yelled upstairs. That’s what caused the stampede. There was never any fire.”

  “Why would someone do such a thing?” Vairo asked.

  The doctor said. “Think of all that has transpired these past five months—the killings, beatings, all of it.”

  “Intentional?” Bapcat asked.

  The Barber shrugged. “A prank gone wrong, a bored child? Who knows. But we will spend all day today making out death certificates. Paper brings us into the world and paper takes us out. There are bodies spread among several different temporary morgues, but they all have the same look inside: rows of dead innocents struck down without reason.”

  “What can we do to help?” Bapcat asked.

  “Keep Cruse away from me. He’s telling newspapers the union did this to its own people in order to create sympathy.”

  An outraged Zakov said, “Slanderous, libelous, scandalous nonsense!”

  “Yet that is what our dear sheriff is saying, unchallenged. I asked him if a reward would be offered as it was after Seeberville, and he glared at me like I am a cretin, and he said, ‘It was an accident.’ I told him I heard him tell reporters the union had engineered the event, and therefore he had linked cause with effect, which removed it from the realm of accident. He ordered me to mind my own business.”

  “Is there a victim list?” Bapcat asked.

  “Not yet. We’re working diligently on assembling one. Every morgue is in pandemonium as adults search for their children and children search for their parents and relatives search for loved ones, and the nosy come just to satisfy their morbid sense of curiosity. It is sad . . . so damn sad. Eventually we’ll get the dead identified and a list made.”

  “There’s a girl, Draganu Skander,” said Bapcat. “I will help when it is time to bury her.”

  The Barber took out a small notebook
and pencil and made a note.

  “We will help,” Zakov said.

  “Anything more on the robbery?” Bapcat asked.

  “Not one of our regular customers,” Rousseau answered. “We are like a family here. This was an outsider taking advantage. Family does not steal from family.”

  “It was beyond chaos—it was pure Dante,” Zakov declared.

  “There are opportunists everywhere,” Rousseau said. “You should see Italia.”

  “Can I use your telephone?” Bapcat asked Vairo.

  “Line was cut yesterday. Go next door to A and P Tea and tell Frankie Meyers I sent you. Show him your badge. He was up there last night with you boys, pulling out bodies.”

  “No party line?”

  “No, we each got our own.”

  “And only yours got cut?”

  Vairo shrugged.

  Photographer Nara went up the stairs with a camera on his shoulder, his brother and another camera behind him.

  Next door, Meyers looked exhausted, his back bent. He barely looked at the badge and just pointed at the phone. Bapcat got the number he needed from his own notebook and placed the call to Rollie Echo’s home number.

  “Echo.”

  “Bapcat.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Red Jacket.”

  “You heard the news.”

  “Zakov and I were there.”

  “You were inside the Italian Hall?”

  “Downstairs in the bar. We helped pull out bodies.”

  Echo took a long time to respond. “We should talk, soon.”

  “Cruse is telling reporters the union did this to its own people as a way to stimulate sympathy.”

  “We saw that in today’s paper. You got a theory?”

  “Not yet. You?”

  “Not for phone talk. The Fat Man is acting like chief engineer on the whitewash express.”

  “On whose orders?”

  “Guess.”

  MacNaughton. “Where’s your boss?”

  “Somewhere up there with you, wringing his hands. The Fat Man and the Citizens’ Alliance want an inquest to empanel jurors, to be impartially selected by the Fat Man himself, not by the medical examiner.”

  “Can he do that—legally?”

  “Lucas talked to Judge O’Brien, and he acquiesced; he’s fed up with everyone and everything.”

  “They told Cruse yes?”

  “More like they didn’t tell him no.”

  “And you?”

  “Disappointed in my friend. Deeply so.”

  “Where exactly is your boss?”

  “The unanswerable question. Supposedly he is up there with you, taking statements and talking to witnesses. He calls me every hour or so, says there’s too many, too much, a biblical flood of information to be sorted through. I want to talk to sane, calm men, like you and Zakov.”

  “All right, we’ll call back.”

  “What’re you doing now?”

  “Going to find a father to tell him his daughter is dead.”

  “Done this sort of thing before?”

  “No.”

  “Make up words to say and put them in your head and think only about those words, not what they mean, and not what you’ve seen. Be prepared for any kind of reaction. It’s always different.”

  “You’ve done this?”

  “Too many times to count.”

  They found Jerko Skander in his shack, on his back, blood everywhere, a large knife by his side, his eyes open, same as his daughter. Bapcat said, “We’ll tell the Barber, and let him decide what has to be done here. Do you think he is with his daughter now?”

  Zakov said, “He made vertical cuts down his arms. He intended to die, not simply to make a plea for help. It would seem we are late with the news of the child. As to your question, Heaven is a pathetic fable, a narcotic for the masses. What great, loving God would randomly extinguish the lives of so fucking many innocents on the eve of his big-shot son’s alleged birthday?”

  110

  Bumbletown Hill

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1913

  Capicelli was on time.

  “Did you know anyone in the Italian Hall?” Bapcat asked, guessing that from now on, the disaster would serve as some sort of marker in the lives of everyone who lived in the area.

  “Everybody knows someone. Word is youse was there, helping rescue people.”

  “Not much rescue with so many dead,” Bapcat said. “What do you have for us?”

  “Tuesday night this peculiar fella came up to the Rev’rend’s house. They talked at the door, and then the fella, he went over to the church and went inside. He not come out till after he was inside almost one hour, so I stand and wait, and suddenly I see my brother Paulie, who’s following the captain. We look at each other, like, what is this? And Paulie he tells me, ‘My man inna church too—got there before your man.’

  “So then the peculiar fella comes outta the church, starts walking toward the depot, and he’s yelling to beat all get-out, only there’s a pretty stiff wind, and we ain’t quite close enough to make out what it is he’s yellin’ about. Then my man comes out of the church and goes home, and the captain comes out and Paulie follows him.”

  “What was so peculiar about the one fella?”

  “I dunno. Maybe how short he was, how funny he looked in an overcoat that almost dragged on the ground, big black hat pulled down over his eyes, big, bushy black mustache, you know—peculiar.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Around nine. You want us to keep on?”

  “Please.”

  “You know what’s going on?” the man asked.

  “Not quite.”

  “You want we meet again next week, Friday?”

  “Yes,” Bapcat said, guessing it would be sooner.

  Trudging up the hill to meet Zakov at the truck, the word innocent continued to roil his mind, but more than that, he wondered if cameras like the one Nara used might someday be smaller and be of some value to police and game wardens. Maybe if there were cameras that also acted like telescopes, they would be good tools for the sort of work Capicelli was doing.

  The mental meanderings of an uneducated man, he chided himself. Stay here in the now, not in the make-believe world of what might be. Accept the world as it is, not what it might become in some imaginary future.

  111

  Red Jacket

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1913

  The massive St. John the Baptist Croatian Catholic Church on Seventh Street was overrun with mourners and the curious, inside and out. Bapcat and Zakov sat at the ends of two pews, across from each other, a small white coffin bearing the body of Draganu Skander between them in the aisle. The congregants were a single mass of black clothing.

  There were four men assigned to each body. Bapcat’s partner, a stranger, sat beside him, Zakov’s partner beside him. Ten caskets were lined up in the church on unpainted sawhorses. Fresh flowers were on the coffins, and Bapcat wondered where in the world they had gotten them in December, in the Keweenaw. Other churches in town had caskets, as well, no one house of worship carrying all the burden.

  The overpowering smell of tallow, incense, human perspiration, and wet leather hung in the air as Father Niklas Polyek droned on in a language Bapcat couldn’t understand. Croatian and Latin were both strange in cadence, in tone. The massive priest with his square-cut black beard stood in a pulpit shaped like a ship’s bow and cast his thundering voice out over the crowd, echoes ricocheting in the cavernous church like runaway bullets, crossing each other, magnifying each other, canceling each other.

  Polyek suddenly switched to English and his big hands were balled into hairy fists as he said without prologue, “I know we got Alli
ance spies out here in God’s house. To you I say, you watch us today. You watch how we bury our dead without tears. This strike our people make is moral and makes God happy. These murders are criminal, mortal sins. You Alliance men must understand Croatians are people of iron will. We will die before we surrender, and these little children’s broken bodies are to us the bodies of soldiers fallen in war. You are warned here today by me—and by God Himself. Amen.”

  The priest concluded by crossing himself and making his way back to the altar and the bevy of altar boys and priests in colorful garb assisting him.

  Bapcat heard music he had never heard before, coming from an organ in the loft above, slow, heavy music filled with inexpressible sadness. Yet people did not sob or let their emotions loose. They brooded in steely silence, their faces dark masks of anger.

  When Polyek finished the mass, he signaled the pallbearers to stand by their coffins, and when the music changed they hefted their loads and marched slowly into the street where thousands were gathered, waiting quietly, too many to count. The church’s bells began to peal and blend into a chorus of bells across the city. The procession moved north on Seventh toward Pine. There they merged onto the road where horse-drawn hearses waited for them to load the coffins. Out front were automobiles also carrying bodies, and the main sounds were the engines of motorcars, the whinny of horses, and boots sliding through the snowy mush. It had been salting snow all day, but on the way to the staging area on Pine, the snow picked up and the wind gave it some added muscle.

  A brass band struck up a heart-rending dirge ahead of them, and Bapcat couldn’t tell where in the procession they were. Once they had Draganu Skander safely in her hearse, Bapcat, Zakov, and the other two bearers fell in behind it to walk to Lake View Cemetery, carefully avoiding steaming horse apples as they marched.