I crossed the small space to Beep’s bed and felt for him. I tried to punch him awake, but he seemed to not care, as though he would be perfectly happy to sleep through it. Fully awake now and terrifically frightened, I pulled on his arm and punched him again, but I wanted so much to be out of there I almost left him. Beep came awake and started coughing. I grabbed him by the front of his t-shirt and pulled him up and out of bed across the room and into the hall. The house lights were still on, but the smoke occluded much of what would have been visible. Beep was trying to speak, but he continued to cough and I shouted in his ear to go out the rear hall door to the fire escape. Thank God this place used to be a resort and the law required iron stairways down the outside of the building!
I had grabbed my robe in the rush from the bedroom and now I threw it over my head and let it fall down around me while I pulled the edge of the cowl across my face to breathe through. It helped a little. I could hear the other men shouting now and as one passed, he grasped my robe and towed me along down the hallway and out the door on to the fire escapes platform, where I was able to gulp some air.
"Who's out?" I shouted.
"I'll do a count," said Bouncer, who had dragged me out with him.
"Get down the stairs and get them around you on the ground," I said, remembering how we used to account for everyone after a raid in Africa.
"Don't stay here, Jesse," Bouncer said.
"Get going!" I shouted in his face and pushed him toward the steps.
"Listen Up!" he shouted as he started down the iron stairs. "Harpo, let's hear you! Cat! Headless!"
A moment later he shouted up from the gound, "No Agnes! No Kickstart!"
"I'm here!" shouted Kickstart in the confusion.
I knew I had to go back in for Agnes. I could hear crackling, but still saw no fire. There were no flames showing. None I could see. Hall lights winked through the smoke so I knew we still had electricity. It was perfectly safe. But I couldn't move. I was petrified.
All I ever wanted to be was a man, but a live one. Physically I'd been a coward all my life. I proved it on the snowy afternoon of the plane crash years before. It had taken a long time, but eventually I came to accept myself and my limitations. At my age, I did not need to show myself I was something I was not and never could be. And on this horrible night, I did not need to go back in for a man who would be dead in a few months. True, I did not have a long and productive life rolling out ahead of me ... not at age 67 ... but it seemed fruitless to risk what time I had left for a dying alcoholic who couldn't find his way out of his room and down the hall to this fire escape.
So much for self-serving rationalization. I was the Abbot. Maybe Brother Jesse could justify not going back in, but as abbot I knew I had to go. It occurred to me to wonder how often the soul of a coward is moved to action by the role he has agreed to play. Pin a medal on the poor son of a bitch and he'll act like a hero. Such a concept of ennobling has probably gotten a lot of people killed.
I pulled my robe over my head and threw it in the corner of the fire escape where a drift of snow had built up. Kicking it into the icy mix and stamping the rough fabric with my feet to get it as wet as possible, I shouted down to Bouncer.
"I'm going in. DO NOT come back up." I don't know why I said that. I guess because John Wayne would have. He wore a lot of medals.
As soon as I pulled my wet robe on and moved through the door I saw Agnes standing 30 feet down the hall. The breeze behind me cleared some of the smoke, but it was still thick. I could see flames a short distance beyond where he stood, licking out from under doors and moving along the ceiling. Agnes might be quite confused from his medicines, I thought, but I suspected this was not the case.
"Come on! This way, Agnes!" I shouted, but he did not budge. I huffed to his side and repeated myself. Tears were carving white streaks down his smoke stained face. "No," he mouthed.
"Agnes, this is no way to end it," I whined. "Follow me," and I pulled on his arm.
"Stop!" he cried. "Leave me be!"
"You know goddamn well I can't leave you here, Agnes!" I shouted in his face.
"Can't you do this one thing for me?" he said. "Can't you just leave a man in peace to die?"
"You don't really want to die this way," I said.
"YOU don't want to die this way," he shouted at me, "so Leave!"
"Agnes, I can't leave you!" I repeated.
"I know. You don't have the guts to let a man die. You've never had the guts to do anything! Goddammit, Jesse! Do the right thing!"
If I did what he asked I would spend the rest of my life agonizing in guilt, for it is a terrible thing and a mortal sin to let a man take his own life.
"Order me to leave you, my abbot," I said to him.
"No," he replied. "Do it yourself. Be MY abbot. Help me to die!"
How can leaving a man to his death be the right thing? I still ask myself that. I turned and ran down the hall to the fire escape. When I got to the foot of the stairs and staggered across the icy ground, Bouncer ran to me.
"You didn't find him, for chrissakes? His room is right down the hall!"
"He wouldn't come with me," I said.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Bouncer turned toward the fire escape, but I grabbed his arm and stopped him.
"Stay here, Brother," I said.
"You can't just leave a man in there," he cried.
"He deserves to make his own fate," I said. "Right or wrong," I added.
Bouncer looked me in the eye and then looked away. A fireman in his rubber coat and helmet rushed up to us and screamed, "Is everyone out?"
"Yes," I said, "everyone who was able."
"What the hell does that mean?" asked the man.
"There's a dead man in the fire," I said.
Fire In The Sky
Fire In The Sky
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