Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [48]
The man is not more than thirty, and filled with great energy that is made even stronger, I suppose, by his insanity. He takes the thin, tapered end of the handle, and swings the heavy end at the truck. It hits forcefully, and cracks run quickly from the point of impact along Ladder 31’s windshield. Lieutenant Lierly, thinking of the damaged property report, yells “Goddammit,” and Charlie McCartty, the blanket held at eye level, yells “Now.” Seven firemen run towards the pathetic figure, and the whip swings frantically, but not fast enough. Charlie has the blanket around him, and the man is on the ground before I reach them.
“Pick him up, and carry him into a hallway until the ambulance comes,” Chief Niebrock orders. The man is a wriggling mass, but I manage to grab his legs as Charlie lifts his shoulders. Somehow, the man frees his arms from the confines of the blanket, and lashes out, his nails digging into Charlie’s cheeks. Both sides of his face are scratched, and slightly bleeding, but Charlie doesn’t drop his end. “Get his arms!” he yells, but not before Billy-o and Tom Leary have grasped them. The man never stops squirming, and it is a continuous struggle to carry him.
In the hall, we lie the man face-down on the floor. The building is one of many old brick tenements lining the boulevard, and the hall reeks with strange odors. It looks like the floor has not felt the soft surface of a mop for months. Cagey Dulland enters with another blanket, and puts it under the man’s face. At least he won’t be able to smash his head against the hard marble floor.
“We can handle him,” Charlie says. He and Billy-o have a firm grip on the restraining blanket, and Leary is holding the man’s shoulders to the ground.
Benny and I, knowing that our part of the job is done, return to the street. There a man is saying to the Chief, “I know him. His name is Juan. We were together.”
He talks in rapid, hard-to-understand, broken English. In small, sharp phrases, he relates what has happened to his friend Juan.
“Juan and me drink together across the street in the Blue Velvet. Juan say something to a girl. The girl’s boyfriend was there. An argument. Then a fight. Other men join in. Juan is on the floor. I run out of the bar, and stay across the street. For five minutes maybe. Then Juan is thrown out from the Blue Velvet by men who take off his clothes.”
“Where did he pick up the whip?” asks Chief Niebrock.
But, the man doesn’t answer. He shrugs his shoulders. Nobody knows.
“Did the cops get here yet?”
“Not yet, Chief.”
“Well, stay with this man until the cops get here. He’ll have to tell this story to them.”
As we return to quarters I am thinking about the events that drove Juan from the edge of sanity. Time, it seems, is a circling tower. The action is always the same, only the actors change. It was only last week that Benny and I were sitting at a bar in the North Bronx. We had worked a tough day tour—more hours of the tour were spent inside of burning buildings than not—and decided to go for a few beers after work. We needed the relaxation that is easily found hopping from bar to bar. The hours passed quickly, and it was almost ten o’clock as we entered a small place on East Tremont Avenue. The joint was nearly empty. There was no one at the bar—only a group of four men sitting at a table in the rear.
“Two beers,” Benny said, laying a five dollar bill on the bar. I threw up three singles, and some change. The bartender looked at us coldly, with a suspicious glance, pulled the stick for the two steins, and took one of my dollars. He rang it up, walked to the other end of the bar, picked up the Daily News, and ignored us. “Friendly, huh?” I said to Benny.
“Say no more,” he replied.
We were going to drink