Blaze Read online

  “George?” he whispered.

  Somewhere — up the road? — a voice whispered: “Jump the fucker.”

  He backed off — still nothing coming on the road in either direction — and ran at the hedge. A second before he got there his legs bunched and thrust him upward in an awkward, rolling broad-jump. He scraped through the top of the hedge and landed sprawling in the snow beside his ladder. His leg, lightly scratched coming over the Oakwood Cyclone fence, left droplets of type AB-negative blood on both the snow and several branches of the hedge.

  Blaze picked himself up and took stock. The house was a hundred yards away. Behind it was a smaller building. Maybe a garage or a guest house. Maybe even servants’ quarters. In between was a wide snowfield. He would be easily observed there, if anyone was awake. Blaze shrugged. If they were, they were. There was nothing he could do about it.

  He grabbed the ladder and trotted toward the protecting shadows of the house. When he got there he crouched down, getting his breath back and looking for any signs of alarm. He saw none. The house slumbered.

  There were dozens of windows upstairs. Which one? If he and George had figured this out — if he had known — he had forgotten. Blaze laid his hand against the brick as if expecting it to breathe. He peered into the nearest window and saw a large, gleaming kitchen. It looked like the control room of the Starship Enterprise. A nightlight over the stove cast a soft glow across Formica and tile. Blaze wiped his palm across his mouth. Indecision was trying to crowd in, and he went back to get the ladder to forestall it. Any action, even the most trivial. He was trembling.

  This is life! a voice inside him screamed. For this they give you the long bomb! There’s still time, you can still –

  “Blaze.”

  He almost cried out.

  “Any window. If you don’t remember, you’ll have to creep the joint.”

  “I can’t, George. I’ll knock something over — they’ll hear and come and shoot me — or—”

  “Blaze, you got to. It’s the only thing.”

  “I’m scared, George. I want to go home.”

  No answer. But in a way, that was the answer.

  Breathing in harsh, muffled grunts that sent out clouds of vapor, he unhooked the latches that held the ladder’s extension and pulled it to its greatest length. His fingers, clumsy in the mittens, had to fumble twice to secure the latches again. He had threshed about a great deal in the snow now, and he was white from head to toe — a snowman, a Yeti. There was even a little snowdrift on the bill of his cap, still twisted to the good-luck side. Yet except for the click-clunk of the latches and the soft plosives of his breathing, it was quiet. The snow muffled everything.

  The ladder was aluminum, and light. He raised it easily. The top rung reached to just below the window over the kitchen. He would be able to reach the catch on that window from two or three rungs farther down.

  He began to climb, shaking off snow as he went. The ladder settled once, making him freeze and hold his breath, but then it was solid. He started up again. He watched the bricks go down in front of him, then the windowsill. Then he was looking in a bedroom window.

  There was a double bed. Two people slept in it. Their faces were nothing but white circles. Just blurs, really.

  Blaze stared in at them, amazed. His fear was forgotten. For no reason he could understand — he wasn’t feeling sexy, or at least he didn’t think he was — he started getting a hardon. He had no doubt that he was looking at Joseph Gerard III and his wife. He was staring at them but they didn’t know it. He was looking right into their world. He could see their bureaus, their nightstands, their big double bed. He could see a big full-length mirror with himself in it, looking in from out here where it was cold. He was looking in at them and they didn’t know it. His body shook with excitement.

  He tore his eyes away and looked at the window’s inside catch. It was a simple little slip-lock, easy enough to open with the right tool, what George would have called a gimme. Of course Blaze didn’t have the right tool, but he wouldn’t need one. The lock wasn’t engaged.

  They’re fat, Blaze thought. They’re fat, stupid Republicans. I may be dumb, but they’re stupid.

  Blaze placed his feet as far apart on the ladder as they would go, to increase his leverage, then began to apply pressure to the window, increasing it gradually. The man in the bed shifted from one side to the other in his sleep and Blaze paused until Gerard had settled back into the rut of his dreams. Then he put the pressure back on.

  He was beginning to think that maybe the window had been sealed shut somehow — that that was why the lock wasn’t engaged — when it came open the tiniest crack. The wood groaned softly. Blaze let up immediately.

  He considered.

  It would have to be fast: open the window, climb through, close the window again. Otherwise the inrush of cold January air would wake them for sure. But if the sliding window really squalled against the frame, that would wake them up, too.

  “Go on,” George said from the base of the ladder. “Take your best shot.”

  Blaze wriggled his fingers into the crack between the bottom of the window and the jamb, then lifted. The window rose without a sound. He swung a leg inside, followed it with his body, turned, and closed the window. It did groan coming back down, and thumped into place. He froze in a crouch, afraid to turn and look at the bed, ears attuned to catch the slightest sound.

  Nothing.

  But oh yes there was. Yes, there were plenty. Breathing, for instance. Two people breathing nearly together, as if they were riding a bicycle built for two. Tiny mattress creaks. The tick of a clock. The low whoosh of air — that would be the furnace. And the house itself, exhaling. Running down as it had been for fifty or seventy-five years. Hell, maybe a hundred. Settling on its bones of brick and wood.

  Blaze turned around and looked at them. The woman was uncovered to the waist. The top of her nightgown had pulled to the side and one breast was exposed. Blaze looked at it, fascinated by the rise and fall, by the way the nipple had peaked in the brief draft –

  “Move, Blaze! Christ!”

  He high-stepped across the room like a caricature lover who has hidden under the bed, his breath held and his chest puffed out like a cartoon colonel’s.

  Gold gleamed.

  There was a small triptych on one of the bureaus, three photos bound in gold and shaped like a pyramid. On the bottom were Joe Gerard III and his olive-skinned Narmenian wife. Above them was IV, a hairless infant with a baby blanket pulled to his chin. His dark eyes were popped open to look at the world he had so lately entered.

  Blaze reached the door, turned the knob, and paused to look back. She had flung one arm across her bared breast, hiding it. Her husband was sleeping on his back with his mouth open, and for a moment, before he snorted thickly and wrinkled his nose, he looked dead. This made Blaze think of Randy, and how Randy had lain on the frozen ground with the fleas and ticks leaving his body.

  Beyond the bed, there was a splotched sugaring of snow on the inside window ledge and on the floor. Both were already melting.

  Blaze eased the door open, ready to halt at the first hint of a squeak, but there was no squeak. He slipped through to the other side as soon as the gap was wide enough. Outside was a kind of combination hallway and gallery. There was a thick, lovely carpet under his feet. He closed the bedroom door behind him, approached the darker darkness of the railing that went around the gallery, and looked down.

  He saw a staircase that rose in two graceful twists from a wide entrance hall that went out of sight. The polished floor threw up scant, glimmering light. Across the way was a statue of a young woman. Facing her, on this side of the balcony, was a statue of a young man.

  “Never mind the statues, Blaze, find the kid. That ladder’s standin right out there—”

  One of the two staircases went down to the first floor on his right, so Blaze turned left and padded up the hall. Out here there was no sound but the faint whisper of hi
s feet on the rug. He couldn’t even hear the furnace. It was eerie.

  He eased the next door open and looked into a room with a desk in the middle and books on the walls — shelves and shelves of books. There was a typewriter on the desk and a pile of papers held down by a chunk of black glassy-looking rock. There was a portrait on the wall. Blaze could make out a man with white hair and a frowning face that seemed to be saying You thief. He closed the door and went on.

  The next door opened on an empty bedroom with a canopy bed. Its coverlet looked tight enough to bounce nickels on.

  He moved up the line, feeling trickles of sweat start on his body. He was hardly ever conscious of time passing, but now he was. How long had he been in this rich and sleeping house? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?

  The third room was occupied by another sleeping man and woman. She was moaning in her sleep, and Blaze closed that door quickly.

  He went around the corner. What if he had to go upstairs, to the third floor? The idea filled him with the kind of terror he felt in his infrequent nightmares (these were usually of Hetton House, or the Bowies). What would he say if the lights went on right now and he was caught? What could he say? That he came in to steal the silverware? There was no silverware on the second floor, even a dummy knew that.

  There was one door on the short side of the hallway. He opened it and looked into the baby’s room.

  He stared for a long moment, hardly believing he had gotten so far. It wasn’t a pipe dream. He could do it. The thought made him want to run.

  The crib was almost exactly like the one he had bought himself. There were Walt Disney characters on the walls. There was a changing table, a rack crowded with creams and ointments, and a little baby dresser painted some bright color. Maybe red, maybe blue. Blaze couldn’t tell in the dark. There was a baby in the crib.

  It was his last chance to run and he knew it. As of now, he might still be able to melt away as unknown as he had come. They would never guess what had almost happened. But he would know. Perhaps he would go in and lay one of his big hands on the baby’s small forehead, then leave. He had a sudden picture of himself twenty years from now, seeing Joseph Gerard IV’s name on the society page of the paper, what George called news of rich bitches and whinnying horses. There would be a picture of a young man in a dinner jacket standing next to a young girl in a white dress. The young girl would be holding a bouquet of flowers. The story would tell where they had been married and where they were going on their honeymoon. He would look at that picture and he would think: Oh buddy. Oh buddy, you never had no idea.

  But when he went in, he knew it was for keeps.

  This is how we roll, George, he thought.

  The baby was sleeping on his stomach, head turned to the side. One small hand was tucked under his cheek. His breathing moved the blankets over him up and down in small cycles. His skull was covered with a fuzz of hair, no more than that. A red teething ring lay beside him on the pillow.

  Blaze reached for him, then pulled back.

  What if he cried?

  At the same instant he spotted something that brought his heart into his mouth. It was a small intercom set. The other end would be in the mother’s room, or the babysitter’s room. If the baby cried –

  Gently, gently, Blaze reached out and pushed the power button. The red light over it died out. As it did, he wondered if there was a buzzer or something that went off when the power went off. As a warning.

  Attention, mother. Attention, babysitter. The intercom is on the blink because a big stupid kidnapper just turned it off. There is a stupid kidnapper in the house. Come and see. Bring a gun.

  Go on, Blaze. Take your best shot.

  Blaze took a deep breath and let it out. Then he untucked the blankets and scooped them around the baby as he picked him up. He cradled him gently in his arms. The baby whined and stretched. His eyes flickered. He made a kitteny neeyup sound. Then his eyes closed again and his body relaxed.

  Blaze exhaled.

  He turned, went back to the door, and went back into the hall, realizing he was doing more than just leaving the kid’s room, the nursery. He was crossing a line. He could no longer claim to be a simple burglar. His crime was in his arms.

  Going down the ladder with a sleeping infant was impossible, and Blaze did not even consider it. He went to the stairs. The hallway was carpeted, but the stairs weren’t. His first footfall on the first polished wood riser was loud, obvious, and unmuffled. He paused, listening, drawn straight to attention in his anxiety, but the house slept on.

  Now, though, his nerves began to unravel. The baby seemed to gain weight in his arms. Panic nibbled at his will. He could almost glimpse movement in the corners of his eyes — first one side, then the other. At each step he expected the baby to stir and cry. And once it started, its wails would wake the house.

  “George—” he muttered.

  “Walk,” George said from below him. “Just like in the old joke. Walk, don’t run. Toward the sound of my voice, Blazer.”

  Blaze began to walk down the stairs. It was impossible to be soundless, but at least none of his steps was as loud as that horrible first one. The baby joggled. He couldn’t hold him perfectly still, no matter how he tried. So far the kid was still sleeping, but any minute, any second –

  He counted. Five steps. Six. Seven. Eighter from Decatur. It was a very long staircase. Made, he supposed, for colorful cunts to sweep up and down at big dances like in Gone with the Wind. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nine –

  It was the last step and his unprepared foot came down hard again: Clack! The baby’s head jerked. It gave a single cry. The sound was very loud in the stillness.

  A light went on upstairs.

  Blaze’s eyes widened. Adrenaline shot into his chest and belly, making him stiffen and squeeze the baby to him. He made himself loosen up — a little — and stepped into the shadow of the staircase. There he stood still, his face twisted in fear and horror.

  “Mike?” a sleepy voice called.

  Slippers shuffled to the railing just overhead.

  “Mikey-Mike, is that you? Is it you, you bad thing?” The voice was directly overhead, speaking in a stage-whispery, others-are-sleeping tone. It was an old voice, querulous. “Go in the kitchen and see the nice saucer of milk Mama left out.” A pause. “If you knock over a vase, Mama will spank.”

  If the kid cried now –

  The voice over Blaze’s head muttered something too full of phlegm for him to make out, and then the slippers shuffled away. There was a pause — it felt like a hundred years long — and then a door clicked softly shut, closing away the light.

  Blaze stood still, trying to control his need to tremble. Trembling might wake the kid. Probably would wake the kid. Which way was the kitchen? How was he going to take the ladder and the kid both? What about the electric wire? What — how — where –

  He moved in order to stifle the questions, creeping up the hall, bent over the wrapped child like a hag with a bindle. He saw double glass doors standing ajar. Waxed tiles glimmered beyond. Blaze pushed through and was in a dining room.

  It was a rich room, the mahogany table meant to hold twenty-pound turkeys at Thanksgiving and steaming roasts on Sunday afternoons. China glowed behind the glass doors of a tall, fancy dresser. Blaze passed on like a wraith, not pausing, but even so, the sight of the great table and the chairs with their soldierly high backs awoke a smoldering resentment in his breast. Once he had scrubbed kitchen floors on his knees, and George said there were lots more just like him. Not just in Africa, either. George said people like the Gerards pretended people like him weren’t there. Well let them put a doll in that crib upstairs and pretend it was a real baby. Let them pretend that, if they were so good at pretending.

  There was a swing door at the far end of the dining room. He went through it. Then he was in the kitchen. Looking out the frost-jeweled window next to the stove, he could see the legs of his ladder.

  He looked around for a place to lay the
baby while he opened the window. The counters were wide, but maybe not wide enough. And he didn’t like the idea of putting a kid on the stove even if the stove was turned off.

  His eye lit on an old-fashioned market basket hanging from a hook on the pantry door. It looked roomy enough, and it had a handle. It had high sides, too. He took it down and put it on a small wheeled serving cart standing against one wall. He tucked the baby into it. The baby stirred only slightly.

  Now the window. Blaze lifted it, and was confronted with a storm window beyond that. There had been no storm windows upstairs, but this one was screwed right into the frame.

  He began opening cupboards. In the one below the sink, he found a neat pile of dishwipers. He took one out. It had an American eagle on it. Blaze wrapped his mittened hand in it and punched out the storm window’s lower pane. It shattered with relative quiet, leaving a large, jagged hole. Blaze began to poke out the pieces that pointed in toward the center like big glass arrows.

  “Mike?” That same voice. Calling softly. Blaze stiffened.

  That wasn’t coming from upstairs. That was—

  “Mikey, what did you-ums knock over?”

  —from down the hall and coming closer—

  “You’ll wake the whole house, you bad boy.”

  —and closer—

  “I’m going to put you down cellar before you spoil it for yourself.”

  The door swung open, and a silhouette woman entered behind a battery-powered nightlight in the shape of a candle. Blaze got a blurred impression of an elderly woman, walking slowly, trying to preserve the silence like juggled eggs. She was in rollers; her head, in silhouette, looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Then she saw him.

  “Who—” That one word. Then the part of her brain that dealt with emergencies, old but not dead, decided talking wasn’t the right thing in this situation. She drew in breath to scream.