Blaze (13 page)

“In Cumberland, Maine,” John said. “They let us go to the movies in Freeport on Friday night. I found a wallet in the men's bathroom. There was money inside. So we ran away to have a holiday, just like Blaze said.”

“Just happened to find a wallet, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how much was in this fabled wallet?”

“About two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Baldheaded Jaysus, and I bet you got it all in your pockets, too.”

“Where else?” John looked mystified.

“Baldheaded
Jaysus,
” the big man said again. He looked up at the scalloped tin ceiling. He rolled his eyes. “And you tell a stranger. Just as easy as kiss your hand.”

The big man leaned forward with his fingers splayed on the bar. His face had been cruelly handled by the years, but it wasn't cruel.

“I believe you,” he said. “You got too much hay in your hair to be liars. But that cop down there…boys, I could sic him on you like a dog on a rat. You'd be cellbound while him and me was splittin that money.”

“I'd bust you one,” Blaze said. “That's our money. Me and Johnny found it. Look. We been in that place, and it's a bad place to be in. A guy like you, maybe you think you know stuff, but…aw, never mind. We
earned
it!”

“You're gonna be a bruiser when you get your full growth,” the big man said, almost to himself. Then he looked at John. “Your friend here, he's a few tools short of a full box. You know that, right?”

John had recovered himself. He didn't say anything, only returned the big man's gaze steadily.

“You take care of him,” the big man said, and he smiled suddenly. “Bring him back here when he gets his full growth. I want to see what he looks like then.”

John didn't smile back—looked more solemn than ever, in fact—but Blaze did. He understood it was all right.

The big man produced the twenty-dollar bill—it seemed to come from nowhere—and shoved it at John. “These steaks are on the house, boys. You take that and go to the baseball tomorrow. If you ain't had your pockets picked by then.”

“We went today,” John said.

“Was it good?” the big man asked.

And now John did smile. “It was the greatest thing I ever saw.”

“Yeah,” the big man said. “Sure it was. Watch out for your buddy.”

“I will.”

“Because buddies stick together.”

“I know it.”

The big man brought the steaks, and Caesar salads, and new peas, and huge mounds of string-fries, and huge glasses of milk. For dessert he brought them wedges of cherry pie with scoops of vanilla ice cream melting on top. At first they ate slowly. Then Detective Monahan of Boston's Finest left (without paying nothing, so far as Blaze could see) and they both pitched to. Blaze had two pieces of pie and three glasses of milk and the third time the big guy refilled Blaze's glass, he laughed out loud.

When they left, the neon signs in the street were coming on.

“You go to the Y,” the big man said before they did. “Do it right away. City's no place for a couple of kids to be wandering around at night.”

“Yes, sir,” John said. “I already called and fixed it.”

The big man smiled. “You're all right, kid. You're pretty good. Keep the bear close, and walk behind him if anyone comes up and tries to brace you. Especially kids wearing colors. You know, gang jackets.”

“Yes sir.”

“Take care of each other.”

That was his final word on it.

The next day they rode the subways until the novelty wore off and then they went to the movies and then they went to the ballgame again. It was late when they got out, almost eleven, and someone picked Blaze's pocket, but Blaze had put his share of their money in his underwear the way Johnny told him to and the pickpocket got a big handful of nothing. Blaze never saw what he looked like, just a narrow back weaving its way into the crowd exiting through Gate A.

They stayed two more days and saw more movies and one play that Blaze didn't understand, although Johnny liked it. They sat in something called the lodge that was five times as high as the balcony at the Nordica. They went into a department store photo booth and had their pictures made: some of Blaze, some of Johnny, some of them both together. In the ones together, they were laughing. They rode the subways some more until Johnny got train-sick and threw up on his sneakers. Then a Negro man came over and shouted at them about the end of the world. He seemed to be saying it was their fault, but Blaze couldn't tell for sure. Johnny said the guy was crazy. Johnny said there were a lot of crazy people in the city. “They breed here like fleas,” Johnny said.

They still had some money left, and it was Johnny who suggested the final touch. They took a Greyhound back to Portland, then spent the rest of their dividend on a taxi. John fanned the remaining bills in front of the startled driver—almost fifty dollars' worth of crumpled fives and ones, some smelling fragrantly of Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.'s underpants—and told him they wanted to go to Hetton House, in Cumberland.

The cabbie dropped his flag. And at five minutes past two on a sunny late summer afternoon, they pulled up at the gate. John Cheltzman took half a dozen steps up the drive toward the brooding brick pile and fainted dead away. He had rheumatic fever. He was dead two years later.

B
Y THE TIME
B
LAZE
got the baby into the shack, Joe was screaming his head off. Blaze stared at him in wonder. He was furious! The face was flushed across the forehead and the cheeks, even the bridge of the tiny nose. His eyes were squinched shut. His fists made tiny circles of rage in the air.

Blaze felt sudden panic. What if the kid was sick? What if he had the flu or something? Kids caught the flu every day. Sometimes they died of it. And he couldn't very well take him to a doctor's office. What did he know about kids, anyway? He was just a dummy. He could barely take care of himself.

He had a sudden wild urge to take the baby back out to the car. To drive him to Portland and leave him on somebody's doorstep.

“George!” he cried. “George, what should I do?”

He was afraid George had gone away again, but George answered up from the bathroom. “Feed him. Give him something out of one of those jars.”

Blaze ran into the bedroom. He clawed one of the cartons out from under the bed, opened it, and selected a jar at random. He took it back to the kitchen and found a spoon. He put the jar on the table beside the wicker basket and opened the lid. What was inside looked awful, like puke. Maybe it was spoiled. He smelled it anxiously. It smelled all right. It smelled like peas. That was all right, then.

He hesitated, just the same. The idea of actually putting food in that open, screaming mouth seemed somehow…irreversible. What if the little motherfucker choked on it? What if he just didn't want it? What if it was somehow the wrong stuff for him and…and…

His mind tried to put up the word POISON, and Blaze wouldn't look at it. He stuffed half a spoonful of cold peas in the baby's mouth.

The cries stopped at once. The baby's eyes popped open, and Blaze saw they were blue. Joe spit some of the peas back and Blaze tucked the goop back in with the end of the spoon, not thinking about it, just doing it. The baby sucked contentedly.

Blaze fed him another spoonful. It was accepted. And another. In seven minutes, the entire jar of Gerber Peas was gone. Blaze had a crick in his back from bending over the wicker basket. Joe belched a runnel of green foam. Blaze mopped it off the small cheek with the tail of his own shirt.

“Bring it up again and we'll vote on it,” he said. This was one of George's witticisms.

Joe blinked at the sound of his voice. Blaze stared back, fascinated. The baby's skin was clear and unblemished. His head was capped with a surprising thatch of blond hair. But his eyes were what got Blaze. He thought they were old eyes somehow, wise eyes. They were the washed-out blue of desert skies in a Western movie. The corners turned up a little, like the eyes of Chinese people. They gave him a fierce look. Almost a warrior look.

“You a fighter?” Blaze asked. “You a fighter, little man?”

One of Joe's thumbs crept into his mouth and he began to suck it. At first Blaze thought he might want a bottle (and he hadn't figured out the Playtex Nurser gadget yet), but for the time being the kid seemed content with his thumb. His cheeks were still flushed, not with crying now but from his trip through the night.

His lids began to droop, and the corners of his eyes lost that fierce upward tilt. But still he peered at this man, this six-foot-seven stubbled giant with the crazed and scarecrowed brown hair who stood over him. Then the eyes closed. His thumb dropped out of his mouth. He slept.

Blaze straightened up and his back popped. He turned away from the basket and started for the bedroom.

“Hey dinkleballs,” George said from the bathroom. “Where do you think you're going?”

“To bed.”

“The hell you are. You're going to figure out that bottle gadget and fix the kid four or five, for when he wakes up.”

“The milk might go sour.”

“Not if you put it in the fridge. You warm it up when you need it.”

“Oh.”

Blaze got the Playtex Nurser kit and read the instructions. He read them twice. It took him half an hour. He didn't understand hardly anything the first time and even less the second.

“I can't, George,” he said at last.

“Sure you can. Throw those instructions away and just
roll
.”

So Blaze threw the instructions into the stove and then just fooled with the gadget, the way you did with a carb that wasn't set quite right. Eventually, he figured out that you fitted the plastic liner over the gadget's nozzle and then plunged it into the bottle shell. Bingo. Pretty slick. He prepared four bottles, filled them with canned milk, and put them away in the fridge.

“Can I go to bed now, George?” he asked.

No answer.

Blaze went to bed.

Joe woke him in the first gray light of morning. Blaze stumbled out of bed and went into the kitchen. He had left the baby in the basket, and now the basket was rocking back and forth on the table with the force of Joe's anger.

Blaze picked him up and laid him against his shoulder. He saw part of the problem right away. The kid was soaked through.

Blaze took him into the bedroom and laid him on his bed. He looked amazingly small, lying there in the indentation of Blaze's body. He was wearing blue pj's, and he kicked his feet indignantly.

Blaze took off his pajamas and the rubber pants beneath. He put a hand on Joe's belly to hold him still. Then he bent close to observe the way the diapers were pinned together. He took them off and threw them in the corner.

He observed Joe's penis and felt instant delight. Not much longer than his thumbnail, but standing straight up. Pretty cute.

“That's quite a rod you got there, skinner,” he said.

Joe left off crying to stare up at Blaze with wide, surprised eyes.

“I said that's quite a rod you got on you.”

Joe smiled.

“Goo-goo,” Blaze said. He felt an unwilling idiot grin tug the corners of his mouth.

Joe gurgled.

“Goo-goo-baby,” Blaze said.

Joe laughed aloud.

“Goo-goo-bayyy-beee,” Blaze said, delighted.

Joe pissed in his face.

The Pampers were another struggle. At least they didn't have pins, just tapes, and they seemed to have their own built-in rubber pants—plastic, actually—but he wrecked two before he finally got one on like the picture on the box. When the job was done, Joe was wide awake and chewing on the ends of his fingers. Blaze supposed he wanted something to eat, and thought a bottle might be best.

He was heating it under the hot water faucet in the kitchen, turning it around and around, when George said: “Did you dilute it the way the broad in the store said to?”

Blaze looked at the bottle. “Huh?”

“That's straight canned milk, isn't it?”

“Sure, right out of the can. Is it spoiled, George?”

“No, it isn't spoiled. But if you don't take off the cap and put in some water, he'll puke.”

“Oh.”

Blaze used his fingernails to pull the top off the Playtex Nurser and poured about a quarter of the bottle down the sink. He added enough water to fill it back up, stirred it with a spoon, and put the nipple back on.

“Blaze.” George didn't sound mad, but he sounded awful tired.

“What?”

“You gotta get a baby book. Somethin that tells you how to take care of him. Like the manual to a car. Because you keep forgetting things.”

“Okay, George.”

“You better get a newspaper, too. Only don't buy them too close to here. Buy them someplace bigger.”

“George?”

“What?”

“Who's gonna take care of the kid while I'm gone?”

There was a long pause, one so long Blaze thought George had gone away again. Then he said: “I will.”

Blaze frowned. “You can't, George. You're—”

“I said I will. Now get your ass in there and feed 'im!”

“But…if the kid gets in trouble…chokes, or some thin and I'm gone—”

“Feed him, goddammit!”

“Okay, George, sure.”

He went into the other room. Joe was fussing and kicking on the bed, still chewing his fingers. Blaze burped the bottle the way the lady showed him, pushing a finger up inside the plastic bag until a drop of milk formed on the nipple. He sat down by the baby and carefully removed Joe's fingers from his mouth. Joe started to cry, but when Blaze put the rubber nipple where his fingers had been, the lips closed over it and he began to suck. The small cheeks went in and out.

“That's right,” Blaze said. “That's right, you little bagger.”

Joe drank all of it. When Blaze picked him up to burp him, he spit a little back, getting some on the shirt of Blaze's thermal underwear. Blaze didn't mind. He wanted to change the baby into one of his new outfits, anyway. He told himself he only wanted to see if it fit.

It did. When Blaze was done with that, he took off his own top and smelled the baby's burp-up. It smelled vaguely cheesy. Maybe, he thought, the milk was still a little too thick. Or maybe he should have stopped and burped the kid halfway through the bottle. George was right. He needed a book.

He looked down at Joe. The baby had bunched a small piece of blanket in his hands and was examining it. He was a cute little shit. They were going to be worried about him, Joe Gerard III and his wife. Probably thinking the kid had been tucked away in a bureau drawer, screaming and hungry, with crappy diapers. Or worse still, lying in a shallow hole chipped out of frozen earth, a tiny scrap of manchild gasping away its last few breaths in frozen vapor. Then into a green plastic Hefty Bag…

Where had he gotten that idea?

George. George had said that. He had been talking about the Lindbergh snatch. The kidnapper's name had been Hope-man, Hoppman, something like that.

“George? George, don't you hurt 'im while I'm gone.”

No answer.

He heard the first item on the news, while he was making his breakfast. Joe was on the floor, on a blanket Blaze had spread for him. He was playing with one of George's newspapers. He had pulled a tent of it over his head and was kicking with excitement.

The announcer had just finished telling about a Republican Senator who had taken a bribe. Blaze was hoping George heard it. George liked stuff like that.

“Topping area news is an apparent kidnapping in Ocoma Heights,” the announcer said. Blaze stopped stirring his potatoes around in the frying pan and listened carefully. “Joseph Gerard IV, infant heir to the Gerard shipping fortune, was taken from the Gerards' Ocoma Heights estate either late last night or early this morning. A sister of Joseph Gerard, the boy's great-grandfather—once known as ‘the boy wonder of American shipping'—was found unconscious on the kitchen floor by the family cook early this morning. Norma Gerard, said to be in her mid-seventies, was taken to the Maine Medical Center, where her condition is listed as critical. When asked if he had called for FBI assistance, Castle County Sheriff John D. Kellahar said he could not comment at this time. He would also not comment on the possibility of a ransom note—”

Oh yeah, Blaze thought. I got to send one of those.

“—but he did say police have a number of leads which are being actively investigated.”

Like what? Blaze wondered, and smiled a little. They always said stuff like that. What leads could they have, if the old lady was
el zonko
? He had even taken the ladder with him. They said stuff like that, that was all.

He ate his breakfast on the floor and played with the baby.

When he got ready to go out that afternoon, the kid had been fed and freshly changed and lay sleeping in the cradle. Blaze had tinkered with the formula a little more, and this time had burped him halfway through. It worked real good. It worked like a charm. He'd also changed the kid's diapers. At first all that green shit had scared him, but then he remembered. Peas.

“George? I'm going now.”

“Okay,” George said from the bedroom.

“You better come out here and watch him. In case he wakes up.”

“I will, don't worry.”

“Yeah,” Blaze said, without conviction. George was dead. He was talking to a dead man. He was asking a dead man to babysit. “Hey, George. Maybe I oughta—”

“Oughtta-shmotta, coulda-woulda. Go on, get out of here.”

“George—”

“Go on, I said! Roll!”

Blaze went.

The day was bright and sparkling and a little warmer. After a week of single-number temperatures, twenty degrees felt like a heatwave. But there was no pleasure in the sunshine, no pleasure to be had in driving the back roads to Portland. He didn't trust George with the baby. He didn't know why, but he sure didn't. Because, see, now George was a part of himself, and he most likely took all the parts with him when he went somewhere, even the George part. Didn't that make sense?