Blaze

Chapter 17

THE BABY WOKE HIM UP at quarter to four in the morning, and a bottle didn’t comfort him. When the crying continued, Blaze began to be a little scared. He put a hand on Joe’s forehead. The skin felt cool, but the screams he was producing were frightening in their intensity. Blaze was afraid he’d bust a blood vessel, or something.

He put Joe on the changing table. He took off his diapers and didn’t see how they could be the problem, either. They were dewy but not pooey. Blaze powdered the kid’s bottom and put on fresh didies. The screams continued. Blaze began to feel desperate as well as frightened.

Blaze hoisted the shrieking infant onto his shoulder. He began to walk him in large circles around the kitchen. “Hushabye,” he said. “You’re all right. You’re okay. You’re rockin’. Go to sleep. Hushabye-hushaboo, zippity-doo. Shhh, baby, shhh. You’ll wake up a bear sleepin in the snow and he’ll want to eat us. Shhhhhhh.”

Maybe it was the walking. Maybe it was the sound of Blaze’s voice. In any case, Joe’s screams shortened, then stopped. A few more turns around the shack’s kitchen and the baby’s head fell against the side of Blaze’s neck. His breathing lengthened into the long slow strokes of sleep.

Blaze put him carefully down in the cradle and began to rock it. Joe stirred but did not wake. One small hand found its way into his mouth, and he began to chew furiously. Blaze started feeling better. Maybe there was nothing wrong, after all. The book said they chewed their hands that way when they were teething or hungry, and he was pretty sure Joe wasn’t hungry.

He looked down at the baby and thought, more consciously this time, that Joe was sort of nice. Cute, too. Anybody could see that. It would be interesting to see him grow through all the stages the doctor talked about in Child and Baby Care. Joe was about ready to start crawling right now. Several times since Blaze had brought him to the shack, the little fucker had been right up on his hands and knees. Then he’d walk — and words would start coming out of all that babble — and then… then…

Then he’d have somebody.

The thought was unsettling. Blaze couldn’t sleep anymore. He got up and turned on the radio, keeping the volume low. He searched through the before-sunrise chatter of a thousand competing stations until he found the strong signal of WLOB.

The four AM news had nothing fresh about the kidnapping. That seemed all right; the Gerards wouldn’t be getting his letter until later today. Maybe not even until tomorrow, depending on when the mail got picked up from the mall. Besides, he couldn’t see why they should have any leads. He’d been careful, and except for that guy at Oakwood (Blaze had already forgotten his name), he thought this was what George would have called “a real clean gag.”

Sometimes, after they pulled a good con, he and George would buy a bottle of Four Roses. Then they would go to a movie and chase the Roses with Coke they bought from the theater’s refreshment stand. If the movie was a long one, George would sometimes be almost too drunk to walk by the time the final credits rolled. He was smaller, and the booze got to him quicker. They had been good times. They made Blaze think about the times when him and old Johnny Cheltzman had palled around, snickering at those old movies the Nordica showed.

Music came back on the radio. Joe was sleeping easily. Blaze thought he should go back to bed himself. There was a lot to do tomorrow. Or maybe even today. He wanted to send the Gerards another ransom note. He’d had a good idea for collecting the swag. It had come to him in a dream — a crazy one — he’d had the night before. He hadn’t been able to make head or tail of it then, but the sweet, heavy, dreamless sleep from which the baby’s crying had just roused him seemed to have clarified it. He’d tell them to drop the ransom from a plane. A small one that didn’t fly very high. In the letter he would say that the plane should fly south along Route 1 from Portland to the Massachusetts border, looking for a red signal light.

Blaze knew just how to do it: road-flares. He would buy half a dozen from the hardware store in town, and set them out in a little bunch at the place he picked. They would make a good hard light. He knew just the place, too: a logging road south of Ogunquit. There was a clearing on that road where the truckers sometimes pulled over to eat their lunches or catch a snooze in the sleepers they had behind their cabs. The clearing was close to Route 1, and a pilot flying down the highway couldn’t miss road-flares there, bunched close and shooting up like a big red flashlight. Blaze knew he still wouldn’t have much time, but he thought he’d have enough. That first logging road led to a network of unmarked rambles with names like Boggy Stream Road and Bumpnose Road. Blaze knew them all. One of them led to Route 41 and from there he could turn back north. Find a place to hide out until the heat cooled down. He had even considered Hetton House. It was empty and boarded up now, with a FOR SALE sign in front of it. Blaze had been by there several times in the last few years, drawn back like a little kid who’s had a scare in the neighborhood’s supposedly haunted house.

Only for him, HH really was haunted. He should know; he was one of the ghosts.

Anyway, it was going to be all right, that was the main thing. It had been scary for awhile, and he was sorry about the old lady (whose first name he had also forgotten), but now it was turned into a real clean g –

“Blaze.”

He glanced toward the bathroom. It was George, all right. The bathroom door was ajar, the way George always left it when he wanted to talk while he took a dump. “Crap coming out at both ends,” he’d said once when he was doing that, and both of them laughed. He could be funny when he wanted to, but he didn’t sound like he was in a funny mood this morning. Also, Blaze thought he had closed that door when he came out of the bathroom himself the last time. He supposed a draft could have blown it open again, but he didn’t feel any dra –

“They’ve almost got you, Blaze,” George said. Then, in a kind of despairing growl: “Dumb shit.”

“Who does?” Blaze asked.

“The cops. Who did you think I meant, the Republican National Committee? The FBI. The State Police. Even the local humps in blue.”

“No they ain’t. I been doin real good, George. Honest. It’s a clean gag. I’ll tell you what I did, how careful I w—”

“If you don’t blow this shack, they’ll have you by noon tomorrow.”

“How — what—”

“You’re so stupid you can’t even get out of your own way. I don’t even know why I bother. You’ve made a dozen mistakes. If you’re lucky, the cops have only found six or eight so far.”

Blaze hung his head. He could feel his face heating up. “What should I do?”

“Roll outta this pop-stand. Right now.”

“Where—”

“And get rid of the kid,” George said. Almost as an afterthought.

“What?”

“Did I stutter? Get rid of him. He’s dead fuckin weight. You can collect the ransom without him.”

“But if I take him back, how will I—”

“I’m not talking about taking him back!” George stormed. “What do you think he is, a fuckin returnable bottle? I’m talking about killing him! Do it now!”

Blaze shifted his feet. His heart was beating fast and he hoped George would get out of the bathroom soon because he had to pee and he couldn’t pee around no fuckin ghost. “Wait — I got to think. Maybe, George, if you went for a little walk — when you came back, we could work this out.”

“You can’t think!” George’s voice rose until it was almost a howl. It was as if he were in pain. “Do the cops have to come and put a bullet in that stone you carry around on top of your neck before you realize that? You can’t think, Blaze! But I can!”

His voice dropped. Became reasonable. Almost silky.

“He’s asleep now, so he’ll never feel a thing. Get your pillow — it even smells like you, he’ll like that — and put it over his face. Hold it down real tight. I bet the parents are sure it’s happened already. They probably got to work making a little replacement Republican the next fuckin night. Then you can take your shot at collecting the swag. And go someplace warm. We always wanted that. Right? Right?”

It was right. Someplace like Acapulco or the Bahamas.

“What do you say, Blaze-a-roonie? Am I right or am I right with Eversharp?”

“You’re right, George. I guess.”

“You know I am. It’s how we roll.”

Suddenly nothing was simple anymore. If George said the police were close and getting closer, on that he was probably right. George had always had a sharp nose for blue. And the kid would slow him down if he left here in a hurry — George was right about that, too. His job now was to collect that fuckin ransom and then hide out someplace. But killing the kid? Killing Joe?

It suddenly occurred to Blaze that if he did kill him — and very, very gently — Joe would go right to heaven and be a baby angel there. So maybe George was right about that, too. Blaze himself was pretty sure he himself was going to hell, as were most other people. It was a dirty world, and the longer you lived, the dirtier you got.

He grabbed his pillow and carried it back to the main room, where Joe slept by the stove. His hand had fallen out of his mouth, but the fingers still bore the marks of his frantic chewing. It was a painful world, too. Not just dirty but painful. Teething was only the first and least of it.

Blaze stood over the cradle, holding the pillow, its case still dark with layers of hair-tonic he’d left on it. Back when he still had hair to put it on.

George was always right — except when he wasn’t. To Blaze this still felt wrong.

“Jeez,” he said, and the word had a watery sound.

“Do it quick,” George said from the bathroom. “Don’t make him suffer.”

Blaze knelt down and put the pillow over the baby’s face. His elbows were in the cradle, placed on either side of that small ribcage, and he could feel Joe’s breath pull in twice — stop — pull in once more — stop again. Joe stirred and arched his back. He twisted his head at the same time, and began to breathe again. Blaze pressed the pillow tighter.

He didn’t cry. Blaze thought it might be better if the kid would cry. For the baby to die silently, like an insect, seemed worse than pitiful. It was horrible. Blaze took the pillow away.

Joe turned his head, opened his eyes, closed them, smiled, and put his thumb in his mouth. Then he was just sleeping again.

Blaze was breathing in ragged gasps. Sweat stood out in beads on his dented forehead. He looked at the pillow, still in his fisted hands, and dropped it as if it were hot. He began to tremble, and he grasped his belly to stop it. It wouldn’t stop. Soon he was shaking all over. His muscles hummed like telegraph wires.

“Finish it, Blaze.”

“No.”

“If you don’t, I’m in the breeze.”

“Go, then.”

“You think you’re going to keep him, don’t you?” In the bathroom, George laughed. It sounded like a chuckling drain-pipe. “You poor sap. You let him live and he’ll grow up hating your guts. They’ll see to it. Those good people. Those good rich asshole Republican millionaires. Didn’t I never teach you nothing, Blaze? Let me say it in words even a sap can understand: if you were on fire, they wouldn’t piss on you to put you out.”

Blaze looked down at the floor, where the terrible pillow lay. He was still shaking, but now his face was burning, too. He knew George was right. Still he said, “I don’t plan to catch on fire, George.”

“You don’t plan nothing! Blazer, when that happy little goo-goo doll of yours grows up to be a man, he’ll go ten miles out of his way just to spit on your fuckin grave. Now for the last time, kill that kid!”

“No.”

Suddenly George was gone. And maybe he really had been there all along, because Blaze was sure he felt something — some presence — leave the shack. No windows opened and no doors slammed, but yes: the shack was emptier than it had been.

Blaze walked over to the bathroom door and booted it open. Nothing there but the sink. A rusty shower. And the crapper.

He tried to go back to sleep and couldn’t. What he’d almost done hung inside his head like a curtain. And what George had said. They’ve almost got you. And If you don’t blow this shack, they’ll have you by noon tomorrow.

And worst of all: When he grows up to be a man, he’ll go ten miles out of his way just to spit on your fuckin grave.

For the first time Blaze felt really hunted. In a way he felt already caught — like a bug struggling in a web from which there is no escape. Lines from old movies started occurring to him. Take him dead or alive. If you don’t come out now, we’re comin in, and we’re comin in shootin. Put up your hands, scumbucket — it’s all over.

He sat up, sweating. It was going on five, about an hour since the baby’s cries had awakened him. Dawn was on the way, but so far it was just a faint orange line on the horizon. Overhead, the stars turned on their old axle, indifferent to it all.

If you don’t blow this shack, they’ll have you by noon.

But where would he go?

He actually knew the answer to that question. Had known for days.

He got up and dressed in rapid, jerky gestures: thermal underwear, woolen shirt, two pairs of socks, Levi’s, boots. The baby was still sleeping, and Blaze had time only to spare him a glance. He got paper bags from under the sink and began filling them with diapers, Playtex Nurser bottles, cans of milk.

When the bags were full, he carried them out to the Mustang, which was parked beside the stolen Ford. At least he had a key for the Mustang’s trunk, and he put the bags in there. He ran both ways. Now that he had decided to go, panic nipped his heels.

He got another bag and filled it with Joe’s clothes. He collapsed the changing table and took that, too, thinking incoherently that Joe would like it in a new place because he was used to it. The Mustang’s trunk was small, but by transferring some of the bags to the back seat, he managed to cram the changing table in. The cradle could also go in the back seat, he reckoned. The baby dinners could go in the passenger seat footwell, with some baby blankets on top of them. Joe was really getting into the baby dinners, chowing down bigtime.

He made one more trip, then started the Mustang and turned on the heater to make the car nice and toasty-warm. It was five-thirty. Daylight was advancing. The stars had paled; now only Venus glowed brightly.

Back in the house, Blaze lifted Joe out of his cradle and put him on his bed. The baby muttered but didn’t wake. Blaze took the cradle out to the car.

He went back in and looked around rather wildly. He took the radio from its place on the windowsill, unplugged it, wrapped the cord around it, and set it on the table. In the bedroom he hauled his old brown suitcase — battered and scuffed white at the corners — from under the bed. He piled the remainder of his clothes in, helter-skelter. On top of these he put a couple of girly magazines and a few comic-books. He took the suitcase and his radio out to the car, which was starting to get full. Then he went back to the house for the last time.

He spread a blanket, put Joe on it, wrapped him up, and put the entire bundle inside his jacket. Then he zipped the jacket up. Joe was awake now. He peered out of his cocoon like a gerbil.

Blaze carried him out to the car, got in behind the wheel, and put Joe down on the passenger seat.

“Now, don’t go rolling around there, Skinner,” he said.

Joe smiled and promptly pulled the blanket over his head. Blaze snorted a little chuckle, and in the same instant he saw himself putting the pillow over Joe’s face. He shuddered.

He backed out of the shed, turned the car around, and trundled down the driveway — and although he didn’t know it, he was beating an area-wide necklace of roadblocks by less than two hours.

He used back roads and secondary roads to skirt Portland and its suburbs. The steady sound of the motor and the heater’s output sent Joe back to dreamland almost immediately. Blaze tuned to his favorite country music station, which came on at sunrise. He heard the morning scripture reading, then a farm report, then a right-wing editorial from Freedom Line in Houston that would have sent George into paroxysms of profanity. Finally came the news.

“The search for the kidnappers of Joseph Gerard IV continues,” the announcer said gravely, “and there may be at least one new development.”

Blaze pricked up his ears.

“A source close to the investigation claims that the Portland Postal Authority received a possible ransom demand in the mail last night, and sent the letter by car directly to the Gerard home. Neither local authorities nor Federal Bureau of Investigation lead agent Albert Sterling would offer any comment.”

Blaze paid no attention to that part. The Gerards had gotten his letter, and that was good. Next time he would have to call them. He hadn’t remembered to bring any newspapers or envelopes or anything to make paste with, anyway. And calling was always better. It was quicker.

“And now the weather. Low pressure centered over upper New York State is expected to sweep east and hit New Englanders with the biggest snowstorm of the season. The National Weather Service has posted blizzard warnings, and snow may begin as early as noon today.”

Blaze turned onto Route 136, then turned off it two miles up and onto the Stinkpine Road. When he passed the pond — now frozen — where he and Johnny had once watched beavers building their dam, he felt a dreamy and powerful sense of déjŕ vu. There was the abandoned farmhouse where Blaze and Johnny and an Italian-looking kid had once broken in. They had found a stack of shoeboxes in one closet. There had been dirty pictures in one of them — men and women doing everything, women and women, even one of a woman and a horse or donkey — and they had looked all afternoon, their emotions drifting from amazement to lust to disgust. Blaze couldn’t remember the Italian-looking kid’s real name, only that everyone had called him Toe-Jam.

Blaze turned right at the fork a mile up and onto a pitted tertiary road that had been carelessly (and narrowly) plowed, then allowed to drift back in. A quarter of a mile up, beyond a curve the boys had called Sweet Baby Turn (Blaze had known why in the long-ago, but it escaped him now), he came to a chain hung across the road. Blaze got out, went over to it, and pulled the rusted padlock free of its hasp with one gentle tug. He had been here before, and then half a dozen hard yanks had been needed to break the lock’s old mechanism.

Now he laid the chain down and surveyed the road beyond. It hadn’t been plowed since the last storm, but he thought the Mustang would roll okay if he backed up first and got some speed. He’d come back later and fix the chain across the road; it wouldn’t be the first time. This place drew him.

And best? Snow was coming, and snow would bury his tracks.

He dropped his bulk into the bucket seat, shifted into reverse, and backed up two hundred feet. Then he dropped the drive-selector all the way down into low range and hit the gas. The Mustang went like its name. The engine was snarling and the RPM gauge the owner had installed was redlining, so Blaze knocked the gearshift up into drive with the side of his hand, figuring he could downshift again if his little stolen pony really started to labor.

He hit the snow. The Mustang tried to skid but he went with it and its pretty little nose came back around. He drove like a man in a memory that is half a dream, counting on that dream to keep him out of the hidden ditches to either side where the Mustang would mire. Snow spumed up in fans on either side of the speeding car. Crows rose from trashwood pines and lumbered into the scum-white sky.

He crested the first hill. Beyond it, the road bent left. The car tried to skid again, and Blaze once more rode it, on the very edge of control, the wheel turning itself under his hands for a moment, then coming back to his grip as the tires found some thin traction. Snow flew up and covered the windshield. Blaze started the wipers, but for a moment he was driving blind, laughing with terror and exhilaration. When the windshield cleared again, he saw the main gate dead ahead. It was closed, but it was too late to do anything about it except put a steadying hand on the sleeping baby’s chest and pray. The Mustang was doing forty and running rocker panel-deep in snow. There was a bitter clang that shivered the car’s frame and no doubt destroyed its alignment forever. Boards split and flew. The Mustang fishtailed — spun —stalled.

Blaze reached out a hand to re-start the engine, but it faltered and fell away.

There, in front of him, brooded Hetton House: three stories of sooty redbrick. He looked at the boarded-up windows, transfixed. It had been the same way the other times he’d come out here. Old memories stirred, took on color, started to walk. John Cheltzman doing his homework for him. The Law finding out. The discovered wallet. The long nights spent planning how they’d spend the money in the wallet, whispering bed to bed after lights-out. The smell of floor-varnish and chalk. The forbidding pictures on the walls, with eyes that seemed to follow you.

There were two signs on the door. One said NO TRESPASSING BY ORDER OF SHERIFF, CUMBERLAND COUNTY. The other said FOR SALE OR LEASE SEE OR CALL GERALD CLUTTERBUCK REALTY, CASTLE ROCK, MAINE.

Blaze started the Mustang, shifted to low, and crept forward. The wheels kept trying to spin, and he had to keep the steering-wheel lefthauled in order to stay straight, but the little car was still willing to work and he slowly made his way down the east side of the main building. There was a little space between it and the long low storage shed next door. He drove the Mustang in there, mashing the accelerator all the way to the floorboards to keep it moving. When he turned it off, the silence was deafening. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that the Mustang had finished its tour of duty, at least with him; it would be here until spring.

Blaze shivered, although it wasn’t cold in the car. He felt as if he had come home.

To stay.

He forced the back door and brought Joe inside, wrapped snugly in three of his blankets. It felt colder inside than out. It felt as if cold had settled into the building’s very bones.

He took the baby up to Martin Coslaw’s office. The name had been scraped off the frosted glass panel, and the room beyond was a bare box. There was no feel of The Law in here now. Blaze tried to remember who had come after him and couldn’t. He’d been gone by then, anyway. Gone to North Windham, where the bad boys go.

He laid Joe down on the floor and began to prowl the building. There were a few desks, some scattered hunks of wood, some crumpled paper. He scavenged an armload, carried it back to the office, and built a fire in the tiny fireplace set into the wall. When it was going to his satisfaction and he was sure the chimney was going to draw, he went back to the Mustang and began to unload.

By noon he was established. The baby was tucked into his cradle, still sleeping (although showing signs of waking up). His diapers and canned dinners were carefully arranged on the shelves. Blaze had found a chair for himself and spread two blankets in the corner for a bed. The room was a little warmer but a fundamental chill remained. It oozed from the walls and blew under the door. He would have to keep the kid bundled up good.

Blaze shrugged on his jacket and went out, first down the road to the chain. He strung it back in place and was pleased to find that the lock, although broken, would still close. You’d have to get your nose practically right down on top of it to see it wasn’t right. Then he retreated to the destroyed main gate. Here he propped up the big pieces as well as he could. It looked pretty shitty, but at least when he jammed the pieces down in the snow as far as they’d go (he was sweating heavily now), they stood upright. And hell — if anyone got this close, he was in trouble, anyway. He was dumb but not that dumb.

When he got back, Joe was awake and screaming lustily. This no longer terrified Blaze as it had at first. He dressed the kid in his little jacket (green — and cute), then set him on the floor to paddle around. While Joe tried to crawl, Blaze opened a beef dinner. He couldn’t find the damn spoon — it would probably show up eventually, most things did — and so he fed the kid off the end of his finger. He was delighted to find Joe had gotten another tooth through in the night. That made a total of three.

“Sorry it’s cold,” Blaze said. “We’ll work somethin out, okay?”

Joe didn’t care that his dinner was cold. He ate greedily. Then, after he was finished, he began to cry with the bellyache. Blaze knew that for what it was; he now knew the difference between bellyache crying, teething crying, and I’m tired crying. He put Joe on his shoulder and walked around the room with him, rubbing his back and crooning. Then, when he kept crying, Blaze walked up and down the cold corridor with him, still crooning. Joe began to shiver as well as to cry, so Blaze wrapped him in a blanket and flipped the corner of it over Joe’s head like a hood.

He climbed to the third floor and went into Room 7, where he and Martin Coslaw had originally met in Arithmetic. There were three desks left, piled in the corner. On top of one, nearly hidden by entwinings of later graffiti (hearts, male and female sexual equipment, adjurations to suck and bend over), he saw the initials CB, done in his own careful block letters.

Wonderingly, he took off a glove and let his fingers trail over the ancient cuts. A boy he barely remembered had been here before him. It was incredible. And, in a strange way that made him think of birds sitting alone on telephone wires, sad. The cuts were old, the damage to the wood rubbed smooth by time. The wood had accepted them, made them part of itself.

He seemed to hear a chuckle behind him and whirled.

“George?”

No answer. The word echoed away, then bounced back. It seemed to mock him. It seemed to say there was no million, there was just this room. This room where he had been embarrassed and frightened. This room where he had failed to learn.

Joe stirred on his shoulder and sneezed. His nose was red. He began to cry. The noise was frail in the cold and empty building. The damp brick seemed to suck it up.

“There,” Blaze crooned. “It’s all right, don’t cry. I’m here. It’s all right. You’re fine. I’m fine.”

The baby was shivering again and Blaze decided to take him back down to The Law’s office. He would put him in his cradle by the fireplace. With an extra blanket.

“It’s all right, honey. It’s good. It’s fine.”

But Joe cried until he was exhausted, and not too long after that, it began to spit snow.