“Just what you said to Mellon and what he said to you.”
“Oh Christ.” Webby rolled his eyes.
“Come on, Webby,” Hughes’s partner said.
Webby Garton rolled his eyes and began again.
5
Garton saw the two of them, Mellon and Hagarty, mincing along with their arms about each other’s waists and giggling like a couple of girls. At first he actually thought they were a couple of girls. Then he recognized Mellon, who had been pointed out to him before. As he looked, he saw Mellon turn to Hagarty… and they kissed briefly.
“Oh, man, I’m gonna barf!” Webby cried, disgusted.
Chris Unwin and Steve Dubay were with him. When Webby pointed out Mellon, Steve Dubay said he thought the other fag was named Don somebody, and that he’d picked up a kid from Derry High hitching and then tried to put a few moves on him.
Mellon and Hagarty began to move toward the three boys again, walking away from the Pitch Til U Win and toward the carny’s exit. Webby Garton would later tell Officers Hughes and Conley that his “civic pride” had been wounded by seeing a fucking faggot wearing a hat which said I LOVE DERRY. It was a silly thing, that hat-a paper imitation of a top hat with a great big flower sticking up from the top and nodding about in every direction. The silliness of the hat apparently wounded Webby’s civic pride even more.
As Mellon and Hagarty passed, each with his arm linked about the other’s waist, Webby Garton yelled out: “I ought to make you eat that hat, you fucking ass-bandit!”
Mellon turned toward Garton, fluttered his eyes flirtatiously, and said: “If you want something to eat, hon, I can find something much tastier than my hat.”
At this point Webby Garton decided he was going to rearrange the faggot’s face. In the geography of Mellon’s face, mountains would rise and continents would drift. Nobody suggested he sucked the root. Nobody.
He started toward Mellon. Mellon’s friend Hagarty, alarmed, attempted to pull Mellon away, but Mellon stood his ground, smiling. Garton would later tell Officers Hughes and Conley that he was pretty sure Mellon was high on something. So he was, Hagarty would agree when this idea was passed on to him by Officers Gardener and Reeves. He was high on two fried doughboys smeared with honey, on the carnival, on the whole day. He had been consequently unable to recognize the real menace which Webby Garton represented.
“But that was Adrian,” Don said, using a tissue to wipe his eyes and smearing the spangled eyeshadow he was wearing. “He didn’t have much in the way of protective coloration. He was one of those fools who think things really are going to turn out all right.”
He might have been badly hurt there and then if Garton hadn’t felt something tap his elbow. It was a nightstick. He turned his head to see Officer Frank Machen, another member of Derry’s Finest.
“Never mind, little buddy,” Machen told Garton. “Mind your business and leave those little gay boyos alone. Have some fun.”
“Did you hear what he called me?” Garton asked body. He was now joined by Unwin and Dubay-the two of them, smelling trouble, tried to urge Garton on up the midway, but Garton shrugged them away, would have turned on them with his fists if they had persisted. His masculinity had borne an insult which he felt must be avenged. Nobody suggested he sucked the root. Nobody.
“I don’t believe he called you anything,” Machen replied. “And you spoke to him first, I believe. Now move on, sonny. I don’t want to have to tell you again.”
“He called me a queer!”
“Are you worried you might be, then?” Machen asked, seeming to be honestly interested, and Garton flushed a deep ugly red.
During this exchange, Hagarty was trying with increasing desperation to pull Adrian Mellon away from the scene. Now, at last, Mellon was going.
“Ta-ta, love!” Adrian called cheekily over his shoulder.
“Shut up, candy-ass,” Machen said. “Get out of here.”
Garton made a lunge at Mellon, and Machen grabbed him.
“I can run you in, my friend,” Machen said, “and the way you’re acting, it might not be such a bad idea.”
“Next time I see you I’m gonna hurt you!” Garton bellowed after the departing pair, and heads turned to stare at him. “And if you’re wearing that hat, I’m gonna kill you! This town don’t need no faggots like you!”
Without turning, Mellon waggled the fingers of his left hand-the nails were painted cerise-and put an extra little wiggle in his walk. Garton lunged again.
“One more word or one more move and in you go,” Machen said mildly. “Trust me, my boy, for I mean exactly what I say.”
“Come on, Webby,” Chris Unwin said uneasily. “Mellow out.”
“You like guys like that?” Webby asked Machen, ignoring Chris and Steve completely. “Huh?”
“About the bum-punchers I’m neutral,” Machen said. “What I’m really in favor of is peace and quiet, and you are upsetting what I like, pizza face. Now do you want to go a round with me or what?”
“Come on, Webby,” Steve Dubay said quietly. “Let’s go get some hot dogs.”
Webby went, straightening his shirt with exaggerated moves and brushing the hair out of his eyes. Machen, who also gave a statement on the morning following Adrian Mellon’s death, said: “The last thing I heard him say as him and his buddies walked off was, “Next time I see him he’s going to be in serious hurt.”
6
“Please, I got to talk to my mother,” Steve Dubay said for the third time. “I’ve got to get her to mellow out my stepfather, or there is going to be one hell of a punching-match when I get home.”
“In a little while,” Officer Charles Avarino told him. Both Avarino and his partner, Barney Morrison, knew that Steve Dubay would not be going home tonight and maybe not for many nights to come. The boy did not seem to realize just how heavy this particular bust was, and Avarino would not be surprised when he learned, later on, that Dubay had left school at age sixteen. At that time he had still been in Water Street Junior High. His IQ was 68, according to the Wechsler he had taken during one of his three trips through the seventh grade.
“Tell us what happened when you saw Mellon coming out of the Falcon,” Morrison invited.
“No, man, I better not.”
“Well, why not?” Avarino asked.
“I already talked too much, maybe.”
“You came in to talk,” Avarino said. “Isn’t that right?”
“Well… yeah… but…”
“Listen,” Morrison said warmly, sitting down next to Dubay and shooting him a cigarette. “You think me and Chick here like fags?”
“I don’t know-”
“Do we look like we like fags?”
“No, but…”
“We’re your friends, Steve-o,” Morrison said solemnly. “And believe me, you and Chris and Webby need all the friends you can get just about now. Because tomorrow every bleeding heart in this town is going to be screaming for you guys’s blood.”
Steve Dubay looked dimly alarmed. Avarino, who could almost read this hairbag’s pussy little mind, suspected he was thinking about his stepfather again. And although Avarino had no liking for Derry’s small gay community-like every other cop on the force, he would enjoy seeing the Falcon shut up forever-he would have been delighted to drive Dubay home himself. He would, in fact, have been delighted to hold Dubay’s arms while Dubay’s stepfather beat the creep to oatmeal. Avarino did not like gays, but this did not mean he believed they should be tortured and murdered. Mellon had been savaged. When they brought him up from under the Canal bridge, his eyes had been open, bulging with terror. And this guy here had absolutely no idea of what he had helped do.
“We didn’t mean to hurt “im,” Steve repeated. This was his fall-back position when he became even slightly confused.
“That’s why you want to get out front with us,” Avarino said earnestly. “Get the true facts of the matter out in front, and this maybe won’t amount to a pisshole in the snow. Isn’t that right, Barney?”
“As rain,” Morrison agreed.
“One more time, what do you say?” Avarino coaxed.
“Well… ” Steve said, and then, slowly, began to talk.
7
When the Falcon was opened in 1973, Elmer Curtie thought his clientele would consist mostly of bus-riders-the terminal next door serviced three different lines: Trailways, Greyhound, and Aroostook County. What he failed to realize was how many of the passengers who ride buses are women or families with small children in tow. Many of the others kept their bottles in brown bags and never got off the bus at all. Those who did were usually soldiers or sailors who wanted no more than a quick beer or two-you couldn’t very well go on a bender during a ten-minute rest-stop.
Curtie had begun to realize some of these home truths by 1977, but by then it was too late: he was up to his tits in bills and there was no way that he could see out of the red ink. The idea of burning the place down for the insurance occurred to him, but unless he hired a professional to torch it, he supposed he would be caught… and he had no idea where professional arsonists hung out, anyway.
He decided in February of that year that he would give it until July 4th; if things didn’t look as if they were turning around by then, he would simply walk next door, get on a “hound, and see how things looked down in Florida.
But in the next five months, an amazing quiet sort of prosperity came to the bar, which was painted black and gold inside and decorated with stuffed birds (Elmer Curtie’s brother had been an amateur taxidermist who specialized in birds, and Elmer had inherited the stuff when he died). Suddenly, instead of drawing sixty beers and pouring maybe twenty drinks a night, Elmer was drawing eighty beers and pouring a hundred drinks… a hundred and twenty… sometimes a hundred and sixty.
His clientele was young, polite, almost exclusively male. Many of them dressed outrageously, but those were years when outrageous dress was still almost the norm, and Elmer Curtie did not
