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The screaming never stops.
Sometimes Joe Louis Gonzales moans in his sleep.
Sometimes his own screams awaken him.
When they do, he lies still, perfectly quiet in the dark.
He doesn't want the fire people to find him again.
• • •
THE FIRE PEOPLE
An 11-year-old is haunted by the loss of his family
By Carol Rust
Their hands are made of fire. Anything they touch is licked by flames.
Over and over and over again, they carry off his mother.
She is screaming.
Joe can still hear her, in his nightmares, inside the flaming house two years ago. The house where his parents and two brothers died. "Go get Gussie," she shrieks, referring to their friend next door. "Call 911."
His father has squeezed Joe through a corner of the front living room window, one of the few not boarded up to keep out the fire people.
He has broken the windowpane with the butt of a shotgun he borrowed when their home was burglarized for the third time in a month. Joe is shoved to the soft ground of the front yard, landing on his feet.
Greedily gulping air into his smoke-filled lungs, he dashes to the front door of his house and frantically tries to open it from the outside.
The flames snake out from under the door and along the sides. They grasp at his already singed shorts, his arms.
Joe hears the screams of his family - his mother, daddy and two brothers. He can pick out each voice, but mostly he hears his mother.
In his nightmares, Joe can't run fast enough to get next door. He is choking from running so hard, yet he isn't moving.
The smoke engulfs his face like a dark, evil glove, trying to smother him.
The screaming never stops.
Sometimes Joe Louis Gonzales moans in his sleep.
Sometimes his own screams awaken him.
When they do, he lies still, perfectly quiet in the dark.
He doesn't want the fire people to find him again.
A
T 11, JOE KNOWS the meaning of the words, "No mercy."
It was May 11, 1989, when he, his parents and brothers returned to
their Denver Harbor home to find that chilling message written on their
kitchen wall in gold spray paint. The letters were almost as tall as
Joe.
The words were repeated on their back door.
Joe knew the burglars had done it.
Once, they broke in and cooked and ate food while they watched the
Gonzales' television.
Then, they took the TV, along with a VCR, Nintendo games and tools.
They set fire to the family's pool table in an outside storeroom.
They took the ornamental vase that Joe's father had given his wife,
Liz, on Mother's Day.
The third time, they took almost everything else - including the
three boys' clothes.
That night, they would take much more.
As she had done after the other burglaries, Liz Gonzales called the
police.
The policeman who answered the call examined the open kitchen
window, the spray paint can left behind, the words on the wall.
Once again, he took some notes.
And, once again, he told them there was nothing he could do.
Joe still wonders what was written on the wall of the bedroom he
shared with his two brothers. On that wall, his parents had painted a
unicorn under a rainbow against a blue sky with a big yellow sun. Under
the mural, they painted the names of their three sons: 10-year-old
Mario Jr., 9-year-old Joe and 7-year-old Michael.
Mario Gonzales Sr. went into the room that evening and exclaimed,
"Oh, my gosh," Joe recalls.
"And I said, `what's wrong, what's wrong?"'
His father didn't answer, but sternly told his sons not to go in
there. His parents kissed them good night and tucked them instead into
the king-sized water bed in the master bedroom, which they had recently
converted from a garage.
Joe's parents were angry. They stayed up late, wondering out loud
why the police couldn't do anything.
As they were talking in the den, Joe tried to sneak into his room
to see why his parents wouldn't let him go in there.
His father called to him.
"So I got scared and ran into the other room and acted like I was
asleep," Joe said.
He later awoke to an acrid smell.
"I knew I smelled something, but I didn't want to walk out of the
room," he said. "I looked all over the room. My mom wasn't there. My
dad wasn't there."
He looked into the living room and saw his father, sleeping as he
sat upright in a chair, holding the shotgun against his shoulder.
"I just went back to sleep because if I went over there, he
probably would have woke up and saw me," Joe said.
He wishes now he had awakened his father.
"Then I woke up and he was saying, `Fire, fire, fire.'
"I tried to wake my brothers because they didn't want to wake up.
"When I heard him say, `Fire' again, I thought `This is a dream,
this is a bad dream.' "
T
WO HOUSES DOWN, the dog's barking jostled Dolores Abrego from her
sleep.
It was about 12:15 a.m.
She didn't know why, this time, the barking woke her up. The dog
always had something to bark about these days in this neighborhood.
It hadn't always been this way.
At one time, this mostly Hispanic neighborhood had been nice.
No, it was never anything fancy, but the modest homes had never
lacked paint and the lawns were tidy, many trimmed in flowers.
Over the fences in their yards, neighbors exchanged greetings and
family news and vegetables from their tiny summer gardens.
It was a good place to raise children.
Folks weren't preoccupied with locking their doors.
That was before drug dealers overran the neighborhood.
Now, Dolores locked the door and said to the night, "You leave me
and my family alone, and I'll leave you alone."
Families who had lived there for years moved away. Some of the
houses were left vacant and crack users swarmed them like cockroaches.
New families moved in, but no one trusted anyone anymore.
Dolores didn't even know her neighbors.
Except for Liz.
The mother of three, who grew up two houses down from Dolores and
now lived there with her husband and sons, was the same age as Dolores'
daughter.
Her grandson, John Robicheaux, played basketball with Liz's sons
under the basketball goal Mario Sr. had put up for them.
It was John who mentioned the burglaries.
He wanted to know if he had any spare pants at his grandmother's
house that he could give to the Gonzales boys, because burglars had
taken all their clothes and they didn't have anything to wear to
school.
When Dolores asked Liz about it, Liz gazed back with worried,
frustrated eyes and said, "This is the third time."
I
T WASN'T AS IF the Gonzales family hadn't had its share of
problems.
Liz and Mario married early. Liz was 16 and quit school to become a
wife - against her father's wishes. They had babies early.
Mario Sr. moved from job to job.
Finances became sparks for more and more frequent arguments.
The couple separated once, but Mario and Liz were reconciled.
Liz earned her general equivalency diploma. At the Houston
Chronicle, she worked her way up from answering phones in the customer
service division to telemarketing supervisor.
She took a college English course to improve her language skills,
an area her boss had said she needed to work on.
She and Mario saved enough money to buy Liz a car so that he didn't
have to pick her up from work anymore. She gave rides home to
co-workers whose cars were broken, even if they lived in the opposite
direction from her home.
Their sons went to a parochial school because Liz and Mario wanted
them to have an educational advantage, - even if it meant not moving to
a nicer neighborhood.
The Gonzales family went to basketball and baseball games, went out
for pizza and hamburgers.
Just the week before, Liz had told Dolores, "I never thought I'd
see the day when I would be so happy. It's a new life for us."
They had worked through their problems, and they didn't need any
more, Dolores thought. Why wouldn't the drug dealers leave them alone?
One of the burglars even told Liz he would return the stolen items
for $150. Liz told the police where the man was, and the police
arrested him for possession of cocaine.
Dolores had an uneasy feeling there would be hell to pay for that,
but Liz was a fighter.
That's my Liz, Dolores thought.
T
HE DAMN DOG was still barking. Dolores told her husband, Fred, to
go see what was wrong.
As Fred went to the back door, the front doorbell started ringing
non-stop.
A hysterical Joe stumbled in, screaming. His face was black. His
tears made white stripes on his cheeks.
"Call 911! Call 911!"
As Dolores called the fire department and woke her daughter,
Gussie, Fred dashed next door and broke a side window with a rock. He
began spraying water inside with a garden hose until the heat beat him
back.
Another neighbor banged on the front door and rattled the burglar
bars that fortified nearly every window - bars that members of the
Gonzales family had hoped would protect them.
For Dolores, the sounds coming from within the burning home were
unbearable.
She could hear Liz screaming, "Help us, Dolores, help us!"
Joe wriggled in Dolores' arms, trying to get away to go help his
parents, as he screamed, "My Mommy! My Mommy!"
He could hear his two brothers and his father, screaming as they
huddled together in the living room with his mother.
Then the screaming stopped.
Just the crackle and hiss of the flames, the sound of windows
breaking and the murmur of spectators remained.
Nine-year-old Joe looked at Dolores and said, "They're dead,
aren't they, Dolores? They're dead."
L
IZ'S PARENTS, Rudy and Margarita Espinosa, had just returned to
their Bandera home from a trip to Laredo when the telephone rang.
Margarita always answered the phone, this time shaking her head at the
lateness of the call.
It was her longtime friend and former neighbor, Dolores.
"You need to get down here - Liz's house burned down," she told
Margarita.
"What? Is she all right? My grandbabies - are they all right?"
"Yes, they're fine. You've got to find the phone numbers for your
sons in Houston."
"Are my grandbabies all right?"
"If you don't give me the numbers, I'm going to hang up on you."
Margarita found the numbers and gave them to Dolores, who
immediately hung up so she wouldn't have to tell her friend any more
lies.
Margarita and Rudy jumped into their car and headed for Houston.
Just outside Columbus, they heard a report on the radio about a
husband, wife and two sons who died in a Houston house fire.
R
UDY AND MARGARITA Espinosa returned to Houston this weekend - the
second anniversary of the fire. They brought Joe with them to put
flowers on his parents' and brothers' graves.
Since the fire, he has lived with his grandparents in their modest
home, tucked into a hillside out of Bandera, where the Espinosas run a
small restaurant.
They didn't pass by the remains of their old home Saturday - it is
too hard on Joe, Margarita says.
But Denver Harbor has changed.
After the fire, the once terrorized residents started a citizens
patrol. They frequently call police with information on illegal
activities in the area.
Five people were convicted and served time in connection with the
burglaries at the Gonzales home. Petition drives by Denver Harbor
residents have kept three behind bars each time they've become eligible
for parole.
Alfredo Guardiola, 36, served four months of a two-year sentence in
state prison for charges stemming from the burglaries and is now in the
Harris County Jail awaiting trial in connection with the fire. He is
charged with two counts of capital murder and two counts of murder. A
source told police he hired a man who poured gasoline over a natural
gas line behind the house and shot at the gas meter, causing an
explosion and the fire.
Dolores Abrego plans to attend every minute of the trial once a
date is set, "because Liz can't be there.
"That night of the fire changed my life - I will never be the
same," she says. "I used to lock my door and try to forget what was
going on outside, but I make sure now I worry about my neighbor, that I
know what is going on in the neighborhood - like we should have been
before the fire. I can't lock it out anymore."
Joe has had some trouble adjusting, Rudy and Margarita say, but
they're confident he will be all right.
Rudy has had to be strict to get him to do his homework, he says,
but "that's just normal with kids."
He saw a San Antonio psychiatrist several times when he first moved
in with his grandparents, but he doesn't anymore.
His bedroom is plastered with posters of the rock group, Poison. He
also likes Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue.
A Brat skateboard is high on his wish list. Lately, he's been
keeping a lookout for pretty girls. He is looking forward to the
summer, when he will stay with Mario's parents, Pablo and Maria
Gonzales, in Houston.
On his dresser shelf is a little shrine, of sorts. On either end
are pictures of his family: smiling parents, and the Gonzales boys,
their teeth in various stages of missing and growing back.
Joe speaks of his family in the present tense: "Mario - he's 12
now. And Mama, she's -" Then he catches himself, and says haltingly,
"Sometimes I forget they're gone."
Set between the pictures is one of the few articles that survived
the fire: a white sign that used to be on the front of their house,
showing their address: 314 Kress.
Sitting on top of the sign is a picture of his mother in full-flare
bell bottoms. In his lighter moments, Joe laughingly points out the
dated fashion.
No one knows where the family picture is, the one a neighbor found
as she sifted through the ashes of the home the next day. It was a
group shot taken just weeks before the fire. The blaze burned the
images of all the family members, except one.
Joe.
U
NLIKE JOE, MARGARITA never forgets for a second that her daughter
is gone.
Joe is there to remind her.
She worries about his grades. She worries that he still needs help.
At times, he buries his head into her bosom and cries, not with
gasping, purging sobs, but with the sounds of a small wounded animal.
"I want my mama," he tells her.
She smiles a little sheepishly when she says she talks to her
daughter as if she is still alive, speaking to a picture of her in a
gold-colored frame on the mantle over the fireplace.
"I say, `Liz, what am I going to do about Joe?' I say, `Please
talk to Joe. Please help me with Joe.'
"Deep down, I know he's still hurting - he was very close to his
mother," she says. "Sometimes he wakes up screaming. I know he still
has dreams."