Blaze

by Richard Bachman

  “Big job for a kid,” the cop said.

  “I’m a little scared,” John said, and Blaze bet he was telling the truth there. He was scared, too. Scared plenty.

  The cop nodded to Blaze and said, “Does he understand—?”

  “What happened to her? Not too good.”

  The cop looked sad.

  “I’m takin him to his auntie’s house. That’s where he’s gonna stay for a few days.” John brightened. “Me, I might get to go to a Red Sox game. As sort of a reward for — you know—”

  “Well, I hope you do, son. It’s an ill wind that don’t blow somebody a little good.”

  They were both silent, considering this. Blaze, newly mute, was silent, too.

  Then the cop said, “He’s a big one. Think you can handle him?”

  “He’s big, but he minds. Want to see?”

  “Well—”

  “Here, I’ll make ’im stand up. Watch.” John made a number of meaningless finger-gestures in front of Blaze’s eyes. When he stopped, Blaze stood up.

  “Say, that’s pretty good!” the cop said. “He always mind you? Because, a big boy like this on a bus full a people—”

  “Naw, he always minds. No more harm in ’im than a paper sack.”

  “Okay. I take your word for it.” The cop got to his feet. He hitched up his gunbelt and pushed on Blaze’s shoulders. Blaze sat back down again on the bench. “You take care, young fella. You know his auntie’s phone number if you get in trouble?”

  “Yes sir, I sure do,” John said.

  “Okay, keep em flyin, sarge.” He flipped John a little salute and went strolling out of the bus station.

  When he was gone, they looked at each other and almost broke into giggles. But the ticket agent was now watching and they looked down at the floor instead, Blaze biting the insides of his lips.

  “You got a bathroom in here?” John called to the ticket agent.

  “Over there.” She pointed.

  “C’mon, Marty,” John said, and Blaze just about had to howl at that. When they got into the john, they finally collapsed into each other’s arms.

  “That was really good,” Blaze said when he could talk again without laughing. “Where’d you get that name?”

  “When I saw him, all I could think of was how The Law was going to get us again. And Griffin, that’s the name of a mythical bird — you know, I helped you with that story in your English book—”

  “Yeah,” Blaze said delightedly, not remembering the griffin at all. “Yeah, sure, right.”

  “But they’ll know it was us when they find out we’re gone from Hell House,” John said. He had turned serious. “That cop’ll remember for sure. He’ll be mad, too. Christ, won’t he!”

  “We’re gonna get caught, aren’t we?”

  “Naw.” John still looked tired, but the exchange with the cop had put the sparkle back in his eyes. “Once we get to Boston, we’ll drop right out of sight. They aren’t gonna look too hard for a couple of kids.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “But I better buy the tickets. You keep on bein a mutie until we get to Boston. It’s safer that way.”

  “Sure.”

  So Johnny bought the tickets and they got on the bus, which seemed mostly filled with guys in uniform and young women traveling with little kids. The driver had a pot belly and a satchel ass, but his gray uniform had creases in the pants and Blaze thought it was really sharp. He thought he would like to be a Greyhound Bus driver when he grew up.

  The doors hissed shut. The heavy engine rumbled up to a roar. The bus backed out of its dock and turned onto Congress Street. They were moving. They were going somewhere. Blaze couldn’t fill his eyes up enough.

  They went over a bridge and got on Route 1. Then they began to roll faster. They went past oiltanks and billboards advertising motels and PROUTY’S, MAINE’S BEST LOBSTER RESTAURANT. They went past houses and Blaze saw a man out watering his lawn. The man was wearing Bermuda shorts and wasn’t going nowhere. Blaze felt sorry for him. They went past tidal flats with seagulls flying over them. What John called Hell House was behind them. It was summer and the day was brightening.

  Finally he turned to John. If he didn’t tell someone how good he felt, he thought he would split wide open. But John had fallen asleep with his head on one shoulder. In his sleep he looked old and tired.

  Blaze considered this for a moment — uneasily — then turned back to the Scenicruiser window. It pulled him like a magnet. He sightsaw and forgot about John for awhile as he watched the tawdry Seacoast Strip between Portland and Kittery slide by. In New Hampshire they got on the turnpike and then they were in Massachusetts. Not long after that they were crossing a big bridge, and then he guessed they were in Boston.

  There were miles of neon, thousands of cars and buses, and buildings in every direction. Yet still the bus kept going. They passed an orange dinosaur guarding a car lot. They passed a huge sailing ship. They passed a herd of plastic cows in front of some restaurant. He saw people everywhere. They frightened him. He also loved them because they were strange to him. John slept on, snoring a little in the back of his throat.

  Then they breasted a hill and there was an even bigger bridge with even bigger buildings beyond it, skyscrapers shooting into the blue like silver and gold arrows. Blaze tore his eyes away, as if it had been an atomic bomb blast.

  “Johnny,” he said, almost moaning it. “Johnny, wake up. You gotta see this.”

  “Huh? Wha?” John woke slowly, knuckling his eyes. Then he saw what Blaze had been seeing through the big Scenicruiser window, and his eyes popped wide. “Mother of God.”

  “Do you know where we should go?” Blaze whispered.

  “Yeah, I think so. My God, are we goin over that bridge? We got to, don’t we?”

  It was the Mystic, and they went over it. It first took them up to the sky and then below the ground, like a giant version of the Wild Mouse at Topsham Fair. And when they finally came out into the sun again, it was shining between buildings so tall you couldn’t see the tops of them through the Big Dog’s windows.

  When Blaze and Johnny finally got off at the Tremont Street terminal, the first thing they did was look for cops. They need not have bothered. The terminal was huge. Announcements blared from overhead like the voice of God. Travelers schooled like fish. Blaze and Johnny huddled close together, shoulder to shoulder, as if afraid opposing currents of travelers might sweep them apart, never to see each other again.

  “Over there,” Johnny said. “Come on.”

  They walked over to a bank of phones. They were all in use. They waited by the one on the end until the black man using it finished his call and walked away.

  “What was that thing around his head?” Blaze asked, staring after the black man with fascination.

  “Aw, that’s to keep his hair straight. Like a turban. I think they call em doo-rags. Don’t stare, you look like a hick. Squeeze up next to me.”

  Blaze did.

  “Now gimme a di — holy shit, this thing takes a quarter.” John shook his head. “I don’t know how people live here. Gimme a quarter, Blaze.”

  Blaze did.

  There was a phone book bound in stiff plastic covers on the shelf of the kiosk. John consulted it, dropped his quarter, and dialed. When he spoke, he deepened his voice. When he hung up, he was smiling.

  “We got two nights at the Hunington Avenue YMCA. Twenty bucks for two nights! Call me a Christian!” He raised his hand.

  Blaze slapped it, then said, “But we can’t spend almost two hundred bucks in two days, can we?”

  “In a town where a phone-call costs a quarter? You shittin me?” John looked around with glowing eyes. It was as though he owned the bus terminal and everything in it. Blaze would not see anyone with that exact same look in his eyes for a long time — not until he met George.

  “Listen, Blaze, let’s go to the ballgame now. What do you say?”

  Blaze scratched his head. It was all going too fas
t for him. “How? We don’t even know how to get there.”

  “Every cab in Boston knows how to get to Fenway.”

  “Cabs cost money. We ain’t—”

  He saw Johnny smiling, and he began to smile, too. Sweet truth dawned in a burst. They did. They did have money. And this was what money was for: to cut through the bullshit.

  “But — what if there’s no day game?”

  “Blaze, why do you think I picked today to go?”

  Blaze began to laugh. Then they were in each other’s arms again, just like in Portland. They pounded each other on the back and laughed into each other’s faces. Blaze never forgot it. He picked John up and twirled him around twice in the air. People turned to look, most of them smiling at the big galoot and his skinny pal.

  They went out and got their cab, and when the hackie dropped them on Lansdowne Street, John tipped him a buck. It was quarter to one and the scant daytime crowd was just starting to trickle in. The game was a thriller. Boston beat the Birds in ten, 3-2. Boston fielded a bad team that year, but on that August afternoon they played like champs.

  After the game, the boys wandered the downtown area, rubbernecking and trying to avoid cops. The shadows were growing long by then, and Blaze’s belly was rumbling. John had gobbled a couple of dogs at the game, but Blaze had been too enthralled by the spectacle of the ballplayers on the field — real people with sweat on their necks — to eat. He had also been awed by the size of the crowd, thousands of people all in the same place. But now he was hungry.

  They went into a dim narrow place called Lindy’s Steak House that smelled of beer and charring beef. A number of couples sat in high booths padded with red leather. To the left was a long bar, scratched and pitted but still glowing like there was light in the wood. There were bowls of salted nuts and pretzels spotted along it every three feet or so. Behind the bar were photos of ballplayers, some signed, and a painting of a barenaked woman. The man presiding over the bar was very large. He bent toward them.

  “What’s yours, boys?”

  “Uh,” John said. For the first time that day he appeared stymied.

  “Steak!” Blaze said. “Two big steaks, n milk to go with.”

  The big man grinned, showing formidable teeth. He looked like he could have chewed a phone book to ribbons. “Got money?”

  Blaze slapped a twenty on the counter.

  The big man picked it up and checked Andy Jackson by the light. He snapped the bill between his fingers. Then he made it disappear. “Okay,” he said.

  “No change?” John asked.

  The big man said, “No, and you won’t be sorry.”

  He turned, opened a freezer, and took out two of the biggest, reddest steaks Blaze had ever seen in his life. There was a deep grill at the end of the bar, and when the big man tossed the steaks on, almost contemptuously, flames leaped up.

  “Hicks’ special, comin right up,” he said.

  He drew a few beers, put out new dishes of nuts, then made salads and put them on ice. When the salads were taken care of, he flipped the steaks and walked back to John and Blaze. He placed his dishwater-reddened mitts on the bar and said, “You fellas see that gent at the far end of the bar, sittin all by his lonesome?”

  Blaze and John looked. The gent at the end of the bar was dressed in a natty blue suit and was morosely sipping a beer.

  “That’s Daniel J. Monahan. Detective Daniel J. Monahan, of Boston’s Finest. I don’t suppose you’d like to talk to him about how a couple of hicks such as your fine selves have twenty to put down on prime beef?”

  John Cheltzman looked suddenly sick. He reeled a little on his stool. Blaze put a hand out to steady him. Mentally he set his feet. “We got that money fair and square,” he said.

  “That right? Who’d you stick up fair and square? Or was it a fair and square muggin?”

  “We got that money fair and square. We found it. And if you spoil it for Johnny and me, I’ll bust you one.”

  The man behind the bar looked at Blaze with a mixture of surprise, admiration, and contempt. “You’re big, but you’re a fool, boy. Close either fist and I’ll put you on the moon.”

  “If you spoil our holiday, I’ll bust you one, mister.”

  “Where you from? New Hampshire Correctional? North Windham? Not from Boston, that’s for sure. You boys got hay in your hair.”

  “We’re from Hetton House,” Blaze said. “We ain’t crooks.”

  The Boston detective at the end of the bar had finished his beer. He gestured with the empty glass for another. The big man saw it and cracked a smile. “Sit tight, the both of you. No need to put on your skates.”

  The big man brought Monahan another beer and said something that made Monahan laugh. It was a hard sound, not much humor in it.

  The bartender-cook came back. “Where’s this Hetton House place?” Now it was John he was speaking to.

  “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.