It

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 OD 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 coining 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 th e 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 th e 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