Blaze Page 5

  Martin Coslaw was hated and feared by all the boys at Hetton House, but no one hated him and feared him more than Blaze. Blaze was very bad at Arithmetic. He had been able to get back the hang of adding two apples plus three apples, but only with great effort, and a quarter of an apple plus a half an apple was always going to be beyond him. So far as he knew, apples only came in bites.

  It was during Basic Arithmetic that Blaze pulled his first con, aided by his friend John Cheltzman. John was skinny, ugly, gangling, and filled with hate. The hate rarely showed. Mostly it was hidden behind his thick, adhesive-taped glasses and the idiotic, farmerish yuk-yuk-yuk that was his frequent laughter. He was a natural target of the older, stronger boys. They beat him around pretty good. His face was rubbed in the dirt (spring and fall) or washed in snow (winter). His shirts were often torn. He rarely emerged from the communal shower without getting ass-smacked by a few wet towels. He always wiped the dirt or snow off, tucked his ripped shirt-tail in, or went yuk-yuk-yuk as he rubbed his reddening ass-cheeks, and the hate hardly ever showed. Or his brains. He was good in his classes — quite good, he couldn’t help that — but anything above a B was rare. And not welcomed. At Hetton House, A stood for asshole. Not to mention ass-kicking.

  Blaze was starting to get his size by then. He didn’t have it, not at eleven or twelve, but he was starting to get it. He was as big as some of the big boys. And he didn’t join in the playground beatings or the towel-snappings. One day John Cheltzman walked up to him while Blaze was standing beside the fence at the far end of the playground, not doing anything but watching crows light in the trees and take off again. He offered Blaze a deal.

  “You’ll have The Law again for math this half,” John said. “Fractions continue.”

  “I hate fractions,” Blaze said.

  “I’ll do your homework if you don’t let those lugs tune up on me anymore. It won’t be good enough to make him suspicious — not good enough to get you caught — but it’ll be good enough to get you by. You won’t get stood after.” Being stood after wasn’t as bad as being stropped, but it was bad. You had to stand in the corner of Room 7, face to the wall. You couldn’t look at the clock.

  Blaze considered John Cheltzman’s idea, then shook his head. “He’ll know. I’ll get called on to recite, and then he’ll know.”

  “You just look around the room like you’re thinking,” John said. “I’ll take care of you.”

  And John did. He wrote down the homework answers and Blaze copied them in his own numbers that tried to look like the Palmer Method numbers over the blackboard but never did. Sometimes The Law called on him, and then Blaze would stand up and look around — anywhere but at Martin Coslaw, and that was all right, that was how just about everyone behaved when they were called on. During his looking-around, he’d look at Johnny Cheltzman, slumped in his seat by the door to the book closet with his hands on his desk. If the number The Law wanted was ten or under, the number of fingers showing would be the answer. If it was a fraction, John’s hands would be in fists. Then they’d open. He was very quick about it. The left hand was the top half of the fraction. The right hand was the bottom. If the bottom number was over five, Johnny went back to fists and then used both hands. Blaze had no trouble at all with these signals, which many would have found more complex than the fractions they represented.

  “Well, Clayton?” The Law would say. “We’re waiting.”

  And Blaze would say, “One-sixth.”

  He didn’t always have to be right. When he told George, George had nodded in approval. “A beautiful little con. When did it break down?”

  It broke down three weeks into the half, and when Blaze thought about it — he could think, it just took him time and it was hard work — he realized that The Law must have been suspicious about Blaze’s amazing mathematical turnaround all along. He just hadn’t let on. Had been paying out the rope Blaze needed to hang himself with.

  There was a surprise quiz. Blaze flunked with a grade of Zero. This was because the quiz was all fractions. The quiz had really been given for one purpose and one purpose only, and that was to catch Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. Below the Zero was a note scrawled in bright red letters. Blaze couldn’t make it out, so he took it to John.

  John read it. At first he didn’t say anything. Then he told Blaze, “This note says, ‘John Cheltzman is going to resume getting beat up.’”

  “What? Huh?”

  “It says ‘Report to my office at four o’clock.’”

  “What for?”

  “Because we forgot about the tests,” John said. Then he said, “No, you didn’t forget. I forgot. Because all I could think about was getting those overgrown Blutos to stop hurting me. Now you’re gonna beat me up and then The Law is gonna strop me and then the Blutos are gonna start in on me again. Jesus Christ, I wish I was dead.” And he did look like he wished it.

  “I’m not gonna beat you up.”

  “No?” John looked at him with the eyes of one who wants to believe but can’t quite.

  “You couldn’t take the test for me, could you?”

  Martin Coslaw’s office was a fairly large room with HEADMASTER on the door. There was a small blackboard in it, across from the window. The window looked out on Hetton House’s miserable schoolyard. The blackboard was dusted with chalk and — Blaze’s downfall — fractions. Coslaw was seated behind his desk when Blaze came in. He was frowning at nothing. Blaze gave him something else to frown at. “Knock,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Go back and knock,” said The Law.

  “Oh.” Blaze turned, went out, knocked, and came back in.

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure.”

  Coslaw frowned at Blaze. He picked up a pencil and began to tap it on his desk. It was a red grading pencil. “Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.,” he said. He brooded. “Such a long name for such a short intellect.”

  “The other kids call me—”

  “I don’t care what the other kids call you, a kid is a baby goat, a kid is a piece of slang passed around by idiots, I don’t care for it or those who use it. I am an instructor of Arithmetic, my task is to prepare young fellows such as yourself for high school — if they can be prepared — and also to teach them the difference between right and wrong. If my responsibilities ceased with the instruction of Arithmetic — and sometimes I wish they did, often I wish they did — that would not be the case, but I am also Headmaster, hence the instruction of right versus wrong, quod erat demonstrandum. Do you know what quod erat demonstrandum means, Mr. Blaisdell?”

  “Nope,” Blaze said. His heart was sinking and he could feel water rising in his eyes. He was big for his age but now he felt small. Small and getting smaller. Knowing that was how The Law wanted him to feel didn’t change it.

  “No, and never will, because even if you ever attain your sophomore year in high school — which I doubt — you will never get closer to Geometry than the drinking fountain at the end of the hall.” The Law steepled his fingers and rocked back in his chair. His bowling shirt was hung over the back of his chair, and it rocked with him. “It means, ‘that which was to be demonstrated,’ Mr. Blaisdell, and what I demonstrated by my little quiz is that you are a cheater. A cheater is a person who does not know the difference between right and wrong. QED, quod erat demonstrandum. And thus, punishment.”

  Blaze cast his eyes down at the floor. He heard a drawer pulled open. Something was removed and the drawer was slid closed. He did not have to look up to know what The Law was now holding in his hand.

  “I abhor a cheater,” Coslaw said, “but I understand your mental shortcomings, Mr. Blaisdell, and thus I understand there is one worse than you in this little plot. That would be the one who first put the idea into your obviously thick head and then abetted you. Are you following me?”

  “No,” Blaze said.

  Coslaw’s tongue crept out a bit and his teeth engaged it firmly. He gripped The Paddle with equal or greater firmness.

  “
Who did your assignments?”

  Blaze said nothing. You didn’t tattle. All the comic-books, TV shows, and movies said the same thing. You didn’t tattle. Especially not on your only friend. And there was something else. Something that struggled for expression.

  “You hadn’t ought to strop me,” he said finally.

  “Oh?” Coslaw looked amazed. “Do you say so? And why is that, Mr. Blaisdell? Elucidate. I am fascinated.”

  Blaze didn’t know those big words, but he knew that look. He had been seeing it his whole life.

  “You don’t care nothing about teaching me. You just want to make me feel small, and hurt whoever stopped you doing it for a little while. That’s wrong. You hadn’t ought to strop me when you’re the one who’s wrong.”

  The Law no longer looked amazed. Now he only looked mad. So mad a vein was pulsing right in the middle of his forehead. “Who did your assignments?”

  Blaze said nothing.

  “How could you answer in class? How did that part work?”

  Blaze said nothing.

  “Was it Cheltzman? I think it was Cheltzman.”

  Blaze said nothing. His fists were clenched, trembling. Tears spilled out of his eyes, but he didn’t think they were feeling-small tears now.

  Coslaw swung The Paddle and struck Blaze high up on one arm. It made a crack like a small gun. It was the first time Blaze had ever been struck by a teacher anywhere except on the ass, although sometimes, when he was littler, his ear had been twisted (and once or twice, his nose). “Answer me, you brainless moose!”

  “Fuck you!” Blaze cried, the nameless thing finally leaping all the way free. “Fuck you, fuck you!”

  “Come here,” The Law said. His eyes were huge, bugging out. The hand holding The Paddle had gone white. “Come here, you bag of God’s trash.”

  And with the nameless thing that was rage now out of him, and because he was after all a child, Blaze went.

  When he walked out of The Law’s study twenty minutes later, his breath whistling raggedly in his throat and his nose bleeding — but still dry-eyed and close-mouthed — he became a Hetton House legend.

  He was done with Arithmetic. During October and most of November, instead of going to Room 7, he went to Room 19 study hall. That was fine by Blaze. It was two weeks before he could lie on his back comfortably, and then that was fine, too.

  One day in late November, he was once more summoned to Headmaster Coslaw’s office. Sitting there in front of the blackboard were a man and a woman of middle age. To Blaze, they looked dry. Like they might have been blown in on the late autumn wind like leaves.

  The Law was seated behind his desk. His bowling shirt was nowhere to be seen. The room was cold because the window had been opened to let in the bright, thin November sun. Besides being a bowling nut, The Law was a fresh air fiend. The visiting couple did not seem to mind. The dry man was wearing a gray suit-jacket with padded shoulders and a string tie. The dry woman was wearing a plaid coat and a white blouse under it. Both had blocky, vein-ridged hands. His were callused. Hers were cracked and red.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Bowie, this is the boy of whom I spoke. Take off your hat, young Blaisdell.”

  Blaze took off his Red Sox cap.

  Mr. Bowie looked at him critically. “He’s a big ‘un. Only eleven, you say?”

  “Twelve next month. He’ll be a good help around your place.”

  “He ain’t got nothin, does he?” Mrs. Bowie asked. Her voice was high and reedy. It sounded strange coming from that mammoth breast, which rose under her plaid coat like a comber at Higgins Beach. “No TB nor nothin?”

  “He’s been tested,” said Coslaw. “All our boys are tested regularly. State requirement.”

  “Can he chop wood, that’s what I need to know,” Mr. Bowie said. His face was thin and haggard, the face of an unsuccessful TV preacher.

  “I’m sure he can,” said Coslaw. “I’m sure he’s capable of hard work. Hard physical work, I mean. He is poor at Arithmetic.”

  Mrs. Bowie smiled. It was all lip and no teeth. “I do the cipherin.” She turned to her husband. “Hubert?”

  Bowie considered, then nodded. “Ayuh.”

  “Step out, please, young Blaisdell,” The Law said. “I’ll speak to you later.”

  And so, without a word spoken by him, Blaze became a ward of the Bowies.

  “I don’t want you to go,” John said. He was sitting on the cot next to Blaze’s, watching as Blaze loaded a zipper bag with his few personal possessions. Most, like the zipper bag itself, had been provided by Hetton House.

  “I’m sorry,” Blaze said, but he wasn’t, or not entirely — he only wished Johnny could come along.

  “They’ll start pounding on me as soon as you’re down the road. Everybody will.” John’s eyes moved rapidly back and forth in their sockets, and he picked at a fresh pimple on the side of his nose.

  “No they won’t.”

  “They will, and you know it.”

  Blaze did know it. He also knew there was nothing he could do about it. “I got to go. I’m a minor.” He smiled at John. “Miner, forty-niner, dreadful sorry, Clementine.”

  For Blaze, this was nearly Juvenalian wit, but John didn’t even smile. He reached out and grasped Blaze’s arm hard, as if to store its texture in his memory forever. “You won’t ever come back.”

  But Blaze did.

  The Bowies came for him in an old Ford pick-up that had been painted a grotesque and lap-marked white some years before. There was room for three in the cab, but Blaze rode in back. He didn’t mind. The sight of HH shrinking in the distance, then disappearing, filled him with joy.

  They lived in a huge, ramshackle farmhouse in Cumberland, which borders Falmouth on one side and Yarmouth on the other. The house was on an unpaved road and bore a thousand coats of road dust. It was unpainted. In front was a sign reading BOWIE’S COLLIES. To the left of the house was a huge dogpen in which twenty-eight Collies ran and barked and yapped constantly. Some had the mange. The hair fell out of them in big patches, revealing the tender pink hide beneath for the season’s few remaining bugs to eat. To the right of the house was weedy pastureland. Behind it was a gigantic old barn where the Bowies kept cows. The house stood on forty acres. Most was given over to hay, but there was also seven acres of mixed soft and hardwoods.

  When they arrived, Blaze jumped down from the truck with his zipper bag in his hand. Bowie took it. “I’ll put that away for you. You want to get choppin.”

  Blaze blinked at him.

  Bowie pointed to the barn. A series of sheds connected it to the house, zigzagging, forming something that was almost a dooryard. A pile of logs stood against one shed wall. Some were maple, some were plain pine, with the sap coagulating in blisters on the bark. In front of the pile stood an old scarred chopping block with an ax buried in it.

  “You want to get choppin,” Hubert Bowie said again.

  “Oh,” Blaze said. It was the first word he had said to either of them.

  The Bowies watched him go over to the chopping block and free the ax. He looked at it, then stood it in the dust beside the block. Dogs ran and yapped ceaselessly. The smallest Collies were the shrillest.

  “Well?” Bowie asked.

  “Sir, I ain’t never chopped wood.”

  Bowie dropped the zipper bag in the dust. He walked over and sat a maple chunk on the chopping block. He spat in one palm, clapped his hands together, and picked up the ax. Blaze watched closely. Bowie brought the blade down. The chunk fell in two pieces.

  “There,” he said. “Now they’re stovelengths.” He held out the ax. “You.”

  Blaze rested it between his legs, then spat in one palm and clapped his hands together. He went to pick up the ax, then remembered he hadn’t put no chunk of wood on the block. He put one on, raised the ax, and brought it down. His piece fell in a pair of stovelengths almost identical to Bowie’s. Blaze was delighted. The next moment he was sprawling in the dirt, his right ear ringing from the back
hand blow Bowie had fetched him with one of his dry, work-hardened hands.

  “What was that for?” Blaze asked, looking up.

  “Not knowin how to chop wood,” Bowie said. “And before you say it ain’t your fault — boy, it ain’t mine, neither. Now you want to get choppin.”