Blaze Page 4

  Blaze: “I’m gonna kill him! Get out of my way and let me kill him! I’m gonna throw him out the window!”

  (Terrified squeals from the marks — there had been eight or ten in all.)

  George: “Please, let me tell you.”

  Blaze: “I’m gonna rip his balls off!”

  (The mark begins to plead for his life and his sexual equipment, not necessarily in that order.)

  George: “No, you’re not. You’re going to go quietly down to the lobby and wait for me.”

  At this point, Blaze would make another lunge for the mark. George would restrain him — barely. Blaze would then tear the wallet from the mark’s pants.

  Blaze: “I got your name and address, bitch! I’m gonna call your wife!”

  At this point, most marks forgot about their lives and their sexual equipment and began to concentrate on their sacred honor and neighborhood standing instead. Blaze found this strange, but it seemed always to be true. More truth was to be found in a mark’s wallet. The mark would tell George he was Bill Smith, from New Rochelle. He was, of course, Dan Donahue, from Brookline.

  The play, meanwhile, resumed; the show had to go on.

  George: “Go downstairs, Dana — be a dear and go downstairs.”

  Blaze: “No!”

  George: “Go downstairs or I will never speak to you again. I am sick of your tantrums and your possessiveness. I mean it!”

  At this point Blaze would go, clutching the wallet to his breast, muttering threats, and making baleful eye-contact with the mark.

  As soon as the door closed, the mark was all over George. He had to have his wallet back. He would do anything to get his wallet back. The money didn’t matter, but the identification did. If Sally found out — and Junior! Oh God, think of little Junior

  George soothed the mark. He was good at this part. Perhaps, he would say, Dana could be reasoned with. In fact, Dana could almost certainly be reasoned with. He just needed a few minutes to cool down, and then for George to talk to him alone. To reason with him. And pet him a little, the big lunk.

  Blaze, of course, was not in the lobby. Blaze was in a room on the second floor. When George went down there, they would count the take. Their worst score was forty-three dollars. Their best, taken from the executive of a large food-chain, was five hundred and fifty.

  They gave the mark enough time to sweat and make bleak promises to himself. George gave the mark time enough. George always knew the right amount. It was amazing. It was like he had a clock in his head, and it was set different for each mark. At last he would return to the first room with the wallet and say that Dana finally listened to reason, but he won’t give back the money. George had all he could do to make him give back the credit cards. Sorry.

  The mark doesn’t gave a tinker’s damn about the money. He is thumbing through his wallet feverishly, making sure he still has his driver’s license, Blue Cross card, Social Security, pictures. It’s all there. Thank God, it’s all there. Poorer but wiser, he dresses and creeps away, probably wishing his balls had never dropped in the first place.

  During the four years before Blaze took his second fall, this con was the one they fell back on, and it never failed. They never had a bit of trouble from the heat, either. Although not bright, Blaze was a fine actor. George was only the second real friend he had ever had, and it was only necessary to pretend that the mark was trying to persuade George that Blaze was no good. That Blaze was a waste of George’s time and talents. That Blaze, in addition to being a dummy, was a busher and a fuck-up. Once Blaze had convinced himself of these things, his rage became genuine. If George had stood aside, Blaze would have broken both of the mark’s arms. Maybe killed him.

  Now, turning the Polaroid snap over and over in his fingers, Blaze felt empty. He felt like when he looked up in the sky and saw the stars, or a bird on a telephone wire or chimbly with its feathers blowing. George was gone and he was still stupid. He was in a fix and there was no way out.

  Unless maybe he could show George he was at least smart enough to get this thing rolling. Unless he could show George he didn’t mean to get caught. Which meant what?

  Which meant diapers. Diapers and what else? Jesus, what else?

  He fell into a doze of thought. He thought all that morning, which passed with snow whooping in its throat.

  Chapter 7

  HE WAS AS OUT OF PLACE in the Baby Shoppe of Hager’s Mammoth Department Store as a boulder in a living room. He was wearing his jeans and his workboots with the rawhide laces, a flannel shirt, and a black leather belt with the buckle cinched on the left side — the good-luck side. He had remembered his hat this time, the one with the earflaps, and he carried it in one hand. He was standing in the middle of a mostly pink room that was filled with light. He looked left and there were changing-tables. He looked right and there were carriages. He felt like he’d landed on Planet Baby.

  There were many women here. Some had big bellies and some had small babies. Many of the babies were crying and all of the women looked at Blaze cautiously, as if he might go berserk at any moment and begin laying waste to Planet Baby, sending torn cushions and ripped teddy bears flying. A saleslady approached. Blaze was thankful. He had been afraid to speak to anyone. He knew when people were afraid, and he knew where he didn’t belong. He was dumb, but not that dumb.

  The saleslady asked if he needed help. Blaze said he did. He had been unable to think of everything he needed no matter how hard he tried, and so resorted to the only form of subterfuge with which he was familiar: the con.

  “I been out of state,” he said, and bared his teeth at the saleslady in a grin that would have frightened a cougar. The saleslady smiled back bravely. The top of her head almost reached the midpoint of his ribcage. “I just found out my sister-in-law had a kid — a baby — while I was gone, see, and I want to outfit him. The whole works.”

  She lit up. “I see. How generous of you. How sweet. What would you like in particular?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know nothing — anything — about babies.”

  “How old is your nephew?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your sister-in-law’s child?”

  “Oh! Gotcha! Six months.”

  “Isn’t that dear.” She twinkled professionally. “What’s his name?”

  Blaze was stumped for a moment. Then he blurted, “George.”

  “Lovely name! From the Greek. It means, ‘to work the earth.’”

  “Yeah? That’s pretty far out.”

  She kept smiling. “Isn’t it. Well, what does she have for him now?”

  Blaze was ready for this one. “None of the stuff they got now is too good, that’s the thing. They’re really strapped for cash.”

  “I see. So you want to — start from the ground up, as it were.”

  “Yeah, you catch.”

  “Very generous of you. Well, the place to begin would be at the end of Pooh Avenue, in the Crib Corner. We have some very nice hardwood cribs—”

  Blaze was stunned at how much it took to keep one tiny scrap of human being up and running. He had considered his take from the beer-store to be quite respectable, but he left Planet Baby with a nearly flat wallet.

  He purchased a Dreamland crib, a Seth Harney cradle, a Happy Hippo highchair, an E-Z Fold changing table, a plastic bath, eight nightshirts, eight pairs of Dri-Day rubber pants, eight Hager’s infant undershirts with snaps he couldn’t figure out, three fitted sheets that looked like table napkins, three blankets, a set of crib bumpers that were supposed to keep the kid from whamming his brains out if he got restless, a sweater, a hat, bootees, a pair of red shoes with bells on the tongues, two pairs of pants with matching shirts, four pairs of socks that were not big enough to fit over his fingers, a Playtex Nurser set (the plastic liners looked like the bags George used to buy his dope in), a case of stuff called Similac, a case of Junior Fruits, a case of Junior Dinners, a case of Junior Desserts, and one place-setting with the Smurfs on them.


  The baby food tasted shitty. He tried it when he got home.

  As the bundles piled up in the corner of the Baby Shoppe, the glances of the shy young matrons became longer and more speculative. It became an event, a landmark in memory — the huge, slouching man in woodsman’s clothes following the tiny saleslady from place to place, listening, then buying what she told him to buy. The saleslady was Nancy Moldow. She was on commission, and as the afternoon progressed, her eyes took on an almost supernatural glow. Finally the total was rung up and when Blaze counted out the money, Nancy Moldow threw in four boxes of Pampers. “You made my day,” she said. “In fact, you may have made my career in infant sales.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Blaze said. He was very glad about the Pampers. He had forgotten the diapers after all.

  And as he loaded up two shopping carts (a stockboy had the cartons containing the highchair and the crib), Nancy Moldow cried: “Be sure to bring the young man in to have his picture taken!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Blaze mumbled. For some reason a memory of his first mug shot flashed into his mind, and a cop saying, Now turn sideways and bend your knees again, High-pockets — Christ, who grew you so fuckin big?

  “The picture is compliments of Hager’s!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Lotta goodies, man,” the stockboy said. He was perhaps twenty, and just getting over his adolescent acne. He wore a little red bowtie. “Where’s your car parked?”

  “The lot in back,” Blaze said.

  He followed the stockboy, who insisted on pushing one of the carts and then complained about how it steered on the packed snow. “They don’t salt it down back here, see, and the wheels get packed up. Then the damn carts skid around. You can give your ankles a nasty bite if you don’t watch out. Real nasty. I’m not complaining, but—”

  Then what are you doing, Sporty? Blaze could hear George asking. Eating cat-food out of the dog’s bowl?

  “This is it,” Blaze said. “This is mine.”

  “Yeah, okay. What do you want to put in the trunk? The highchair, the crib, or both?”

  Blaze suddenly remembered he didn’t have a trunk key.

  “Let’s put it all in the back.”

  The stockboy’s eyes widened. “Ah, Jeez, man, I don’t think it’ll fit. In fact, I’m positive—”

  “We can put some in front, too. We can stand that carton with the crib in it in the passenger footwell. I’ll rack the seat back.”

  “Why not the trunk? Wouldn’t that be, like, simpler?”

  Blaze thought, vaguely, of starting some story about how the trunk was full of stuff, but the trouble with lies was one always led to another. Soon it was like you were traveling on roads you didn’t know. You got lost. I always tell the truth when I can, George liked to say. It’s like driving close to home.

  So he held up the dupe. “I lost my car-keys,” he said. “Until I find em, all I got is this.”

  “Oh,” the stockboy said. He looked at Blaze as though he were dumb, but that was okay; he had been looked at that way before. “Bummer.”

  In the end, they got it all in. It took some artful packing, and it was a tight squeeze, but they made it. When Blaze looked into the rearview mirror, he could even see some of the world outside the back window. The carton holding the broken-down changing table cut off the rest of the view.

  “Nice car,” said the stockboy. “An oldie but a goodie.”

  “Right,” Blaze said. And because it was something George sometimes said, he added: “Gone from the charts, but not from our hearts.” He wondered if the stockboy was waiting for something. It seemed like he was.

  “What’s she got, a 302?”

  “342,” Blaze said automatically.

  The stockboy nodded. He still stood there.

  From inside the back seat of the Ford, where there was no room for him but where he was, anyway — somehow — George said: “If you don’t want him to stand there for the rest of the century, tip the dipshit and get rid of him.”

  Tip. Yeah. Right.

  Blaze dragged out his wallet, looked at the limited selection of bills, and reluctantly selected a five. He gave it to the stockboy. The stockboy made it disappear. “All right, man, increase the peace.”

  “Whatever,” Blaze said. He got into the Ford and started it up. The stockboy was trundling the shopping carts back to the store. Halfway there, he stopped and looked back at Blaze. Blaze didn’t like that look. It was a remembering look.

  “I should’ve remembered to tip him quicker. Right, George?”

  George didn’t answer.

  Back home, he parked the Ford in the shed again and carted all the baby crap into the house. He assembled the crib in the bedroom and set up the changing table next to it. There was no need to look at the directions; he only looked at the pictures on the boxes and his hands did the rest. The cradle went in the kitchen, near the woodstove — but not too near. The rest of the stuff he piled in the bedroom closet, out of sight.

  When it was done, a change had come over the bedroom that went deeper than the added furniture. Something else had been added. The atmosphere had changed. It was as if a ghost had been set free to walk. Not the ghost of someone who had left, someone who had gone down dead, but the ghost of someone yet to come.

  It made Blaze feel strange.

  Chapter 8

  THE NEXT NIGHT, Blaze decided he ought to get cool plates for his hot Ford, so he stole a pair off a Volkswagen in the parking lot of Jolly Jim’s Jiant Groceries in Portland. He replaced the plates from the VW with the Ford’s plates. It could be weeks or months before the VW’s owner realized he had the wrong set of plates, because the number on the little sticker was 7, meaning the guy didn’t have to re-register until July. Always check the registration sticker. George had taught him that.

  He drove to a discount store, feeling safe with his new plates, knowing he would feel safer still when the Ford was a different color. He bought four cans of Skylark Blue auto paint and a spray-gun. He went home broke but happy.

  He ate supper sitting next to the stove, thumping his feet on the worn linoleum as Merle Haggard sang “Okie from Muskogee.” Old Merle had really known how to dish it up to those fucking hippies.

  After the dishes were washed, he ran the adhesive-patched extension cord out to the shed and hung a bulb over a beam. Blaze loved to paint. And Skylark Blue was one of his favorite colors. You had to like that name. It meant blue like a bird. Like a skylark.

  He went back to the house and got a pile of old newspapers. George read a newspaper every day, and not just the funnies. Sometimes he read the editorials to Blaze and raged about the Redneck Republicans. He said the Republicans hated poor people. He referred to the President as That Goddam Wet in the White House. George was a Democrat, and two years ago they had put stickers for Democratic candidates on three different stolen cars.

  All the newspapers were way old, and ordinarily that would have made Blaze feel sad, but tonight he was too excited about painting the car. He papered the windows and wheels. He Scotch-taped more pieces to the chrome trim.

  By nine o’clock, the fragrant banana-smell of spray-paint filled the shed, and by eleven, the job was done. Blaze took off the newspapers and touched up a few places, then admired his work. He thought it was good work.

  He went to bed, a little high from the paint, and woke up the next morning with a headache. “George?” he said hopefully.

  No answer.

  “I’m broke, George. I’m busted to my heels.”

  No answer.

  Blaze moped around the house all day, wondering what to do.

  The night man was reading a paperback epic called Butch Ballerinas when a Colt revolver was shoved in his face. Same Colt. Same voice saying gruffly, “Everything in the register.”

  “Oh no,” Harry Nason said. “Oh Christ.”

  He looked up. Standing before him was a flat-nosed, Chinese horror in a woman’s nylon stocking that trailed down his back like t
he tail of a ski-cap.

  “Not you. Not again.”

  “Everything in the register. Put it in a bag.”

  No one came in this time, and because it was a week-night, there was less in the drawer.

  The stick-up man paused on the way out and turned back. Now, Harry Nason thought, I will be shot. But instead of shooting him, the stick-up man said, “This time I remembered the stocking.”

  Behind the nylon, he appeared to be grinning.

  Then he was gone.

  Chapter 9

  WHEN CLAYTON BLAISDELL, JR., came to Hetton House, there was a Headmistress. He didn’t remember her name, only her gray hair, and her big gray eyes behind her spectacles, and that she read them the Bible, and ended every Morning Assembly by saying Be good children and you shall prosper. Then one day she wasn’t in the office anymore, because she had a stroke. At first Blaze thought people were saying she had a stork, but finally he got it straight: stroke. It was a kind of headache that wouldn’t go away. Her replacement was Martin Coslaw. Blaze never forgot his name, and not just because the kids called him The Law. Blaze never forgot him because The Law taught Arithmetic.

  Arithmetic was held in Room 7 on the third floor, where it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey in the winter. There were pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Sister Mary Hetton on the walls. Sister Hetton had pale skin and black hair scrooped back from her face and balled into a kind of doorknob on the back of her head. She had dark eyes that sometimes came back to accuse Blaze of things after lights-out. Mostly of being dumb. Probably too dumb for high school, just as The Law said.

  Room 7 had old yellow floors and always smelled of floor-varnish, a smell that made Blaze sleepy even if he was wide awake when he walked in. There were nine fly-specked light globes that sent down thin, sad light on rainy days. There was an old blackboard at the front of the room, and over it were green placards upon which the alphabet marched in rolling Palmer Method letters — both the capital letters and the little fellows. After the alphabet came the numbers from 0 to 9, so beautiful and nice they made you feel stupid and clumsier than ever just looking at them. The desks were carved with overlapping slogans and initials, most worn to ghosts by repeated sandings and re-varnishings but never erased completely. They were bolted to the floor on iron discs. Each desk had an inkwell. The inkwells were filled with Carter’s Ink. Spilled ink got you a stropping in the washroom. Black heel-marks on the yellow floor got you a stropping. Fooling in class got you a stropping, only class fooling was called Bad Deportment. There were other stropping offenses; Martin Coslaw believed in stropping and The Paddle. The Law’s paddle was more feared in Hetton House than anything, even the bogeyman that hid under the beds of the little kids. The Paddle was a birch spatula, quite thin. The Law had drilled four holes in it to lessen air resistance. He was a bowler with a team called The Falmouth Rockers, and on Fridays he sometimes wore his bowling shirt to school. It was dark blue and had his name — Martin — in cursive gold over the breast pocket. To Blaze those letters looked almost (but not quite) like Palmer Method. The Law said that in bowling and in life, if a person made the spares, the strikes would take care of themselves. He had a strong right arm from making all those strikes and spares, and when he gave someone a stropping with The Paddle, it hurt a lot. He had been known to bite his tongue between his teeth while applying The Paddle to a boy with especially Bad Deportment. Sometimes he bit it hard enough to make it bleed, and for awhile there was a boy at Hetton House who called him Dracula as well as The Law, but then that boy made out, and they didn’t see him anymore. Making out was what they called it when someone got placed with a family and stuck, maybe even adopted.