Blaze

by Richard Bachman

  Getting clear of Portland, and then Westbrook, seemed to take forever. It was a little bit like driving with an open jug of wine between your legs, only worse. He was sure that every car that pulled up close behind him was an unmarked police car. He actually saw only one copmobile on his trip out of the city, crossing the intersection of Routes 1 and 25, breaking trail for an ambulance with its siren howling and its lights flashing. Seeing that actually comforted him. A police car like that, you knew what it was.

  After Westbrook dropped behind, he swung off onto a secondary road, then onto two-lane blacktop that turned to frozen dirt and wound cross-country through the woods to Apex. He did not feel entirely safe even there, and when he turned into the long driveway leading to the shack, he felt as if great weights were dropping off his body.

  He drove the Ford into the shed and told himself it could stay there until hell was a skating rink. He had known that kidnapping was big, and that things would be hot, but this was scorching. The picture, the blood he’d left behind, the quick and painless way that glorified doorman had given up the organization’s private playpen

  But all those thoughts faded as soon as he got out of the car. Joe was screaming. Blaze could hear him even outside. He ran across the dooryard and burst into the house. George had done something, George had –

  But George hadn’t done anything. George wasn’t anywhere around. George was dead and he, Blaze, had left the baby all alone.

  The cradle was rocking with the force of the baby’s anger, and when Blaze got to Joe, he saw why. The kid had thrown up most of his ten o’clock bottle, and rancid, reeking milk, half-dry, was lathered on his face and soaking into his pajama top. His face was an awful plum color. Sweat stood out on it in beads.

  In a kind of shutter-frame, Blaze saw his own father, a hulking giant with red eyes and big hurting hands. The picture left him agonized with guilt and horror; he had not thought of his father in years.

  He snatched the baby out of the cradle with such suddenness that Joe’s head rolled on his neck. He stopped crying out of surprise as much as anything.

  “There,” Blaze crooned, beginning to walk around the room with the baby on his shoulder. “There, there. I’m back. Yes I am. There, there. Don’t cry no more. I’m right here. Right here.”

  The baby fell asleep before Blaze had made three full turns around the room. Blaze changed him, doing the diapers faster than before, buttoned him up, and popped him back in the cradle.

  Then he sat down to think. To really think, this time. What came next? A ransom note, right?

  “Right,” he said.

  Make it out of letters from magazines; that was how they did it in the movies. He got a stack of newspapers, girly magazines, and comic-books. Then he began to cut out letters.

  I HAVE THE BABY.

  There. That was a good start. He went over to the window and turned on the radio and got Ferlin Husky singing “Wings of a Dove.” That was a good one. An oldie but a goodie. He rummaged around until he found a tablet of Hytone paper George had bought in Renny’s and then mixed up some flour-and-water paste. He hummed along with the music as he worked. It was a rusted, grating sound like an old gate swinging on bad hinges.

  He went back to the table and pasted on the letters he had so far. A thought struck him: did paper take fingerprints? He didn’t know, but it didn’t seem very possible. Better not to take chances, though. He crumpled up the paper with the letters pasted on it and found George’s leather gloves. They were too small for him, but he stretched them on. Then he hunted out the same letters all over again and pasted them up:

  I HAVE THE BABY.

  The news came on. He listened carefully and heard that somebody had called the Gerard home demanding two thousand dollars in ransom. This made Blaze frown. Then the newscaster said a teenage boy had made the call from a phone booth in Wyndham. The police had traced the call. When they caught him, he said he had been playing a prank.

  Tell em it’s a prank all night, they’ll still put you away, kiddo, Blaze thought. Kidnapping is hot.

  He frowned, thought, cut out more letters. The weather forecast came on. Fair and a little colder. Snow on the way soon.

  I HAVE THE BABY. IF YOU WANT TO SEE HIM ALIVE AGAIN

  If you want to see him alive again, what? What? Confusion rose in Blaze’s mind. Call collect, operators are standing by? Stand on your head and whistle Dixie? Send two boxtops and fifty cents in coin? How did you go about getting the dough without getting caught?

  “George? I can’t remember this part.”

  No answer.

  He put his chin in one hand and really put on his thinking cap. He had to be very cool. Cool like George. Cool like John Cheltzman had been that day in the bus station when they had been running away to Boston. You had to use your nut. You had to use your old bean, old bean.

  He would have to pretend he was part of a gang, that was for sure. Then they couldn’t grab him when he picked up the swag. If they did, he’d tell them they had to let him go or his partners would kill the kid. Run a bluff. Hell, run a con.

  “That’s how we roll,” he whispered. “Right, George?”

  He crumpled up his second try and searched out more letters, scissoring them into neat blocks.

  OUR GANG HAS THE BABY. IF YOU WANT TO SEE HIM ALIVE AGAIN

  That was good. That was right on the jack. Blaze admired it for awhile, then went to check the baby. The baby was asleep. His head was turned, and one small fist was tucked under his cheek. His lashes were very long, and darker than his hair. Blaze liked him. He never would have said a rug-monkey could be good-looking, but this one was.

  “You’re a stud, Joey,” he said, and then ruffled the baby’s hair. His hand was bigger than the baby’s whole head.

  Blaze went back to the scattered magazines and newspapers and scraps on the table. He deliberated awhile, nibbling a little of his flour-water paste as he did. Then he got back to work.

  OUR GANG HAS THE BABY.

  IF YOU WANT TO SEE HIM ALIVE AGAIN GET $$ 1 MILLION $$ IN UNMARKED BILLS.

  PUT MONEY IN BRIFCASE. BE READY TO GO ON A MOMENTS NOTISE.

  SINCIRELY YOURS,

  THE KIDNAPERS OF JOE GERARD 4.

  There. It told them some stuff, but not too much. And it would give him some time to think out a plan.

  He found a dirty old envelope and put his letter in it, then cut out letters on the front to say:

  THE GERARDS OCOMA IMPORTANT!

  He didn’t know exactly how he was going to mail it. He didn’t want to leave the baby with George again, and he didn’t dare use the hot Ford, but he didn’t want to mail it in Apex, either. Everything would have been so much easier with George. He could have just stayed home and babysat while George took care of the brain stuff. He wouldn’t mind feeding Joe and changing him and all that stuff. He wouldn’t mind a bit. He sort of liked it.

  Well, it didn’t matter. The mail wouldn’t go until tomorrow morning anyway, so he had time to make a plan. Or remember George’s.

  He got up and checked the baby again, wishing the TV wasn’t bust. You got good ideas from the TV sometimes. Joe was still sleeping. Blaze wished he would wake up so that he could play with him. Make him grin. The kid looked like a real boy when he grinned. And he was dressed now, so Blaze could goof with him and not worry about getting pissed on.

  Still, he was asleep and there was no help for that. Blaze turned off the radio and went into the bedroom to make plans, but fell asleep himself.

  Before drifting off, it occurred to him that he felt sort of good. For the first time since George died, he felt sort of good.

  Chapter 14

  HE WAS AT A CARNIVAL—maybe the Topsham Fair, where the boys from Hetton House were allowed to go once each year on the rickety old blue bus — and Joe was on his shoulder. He felt foglike terror as he walked down the midway, because pretty soon they would spot him and it would be all over. Joe was awake. When they passed one of the funny mirrors that stret
ched you thin, Blaze saw the kid goggling at everything. Blaze kept walking, shifting Joe from one shoulder to the other when he got heavy, keeping an eye out for the cops at the same time.

  All around him, the carnival rolled in unhealthy neon majesty. From the right came the amplified beat of a pitchman’s voice: “C’mon over here, got it all over here, six beautiful girls, half a dozen honeys, they all come straight from Club Diablo in Boston, these girls will tease you please you make you think you’re in Gay Paree!”

  This ain’t no place for a kid, Blaze thought. This is the last place in the world for a little kid.

  On the left was the House of Fun with its mechanical clown out front, rocking back and forth in clockspring gales of hilarity. Its mouth was turned upward in an expression of humor so large it was like a grimace of pain. Its lunatic laugh played over and over again from a tape-loop buried deep in its guts. A huge man with a blue anchor tattooed on one bicep threw hard rubber balls at wooden milk bottles stacked in a pyramid; his slicked-back hair gleamed under the colored lights like an otter’s hide. The Wild Mouse rose and then went into a clattering dive, trailing the shrieks of country girls packed into tube tops and short skirts. The Moon Rocket rolled up, down, and all around, the faces of the riders stretched into goblin masks by the speed of the thing. A Babel of odors rose: French fries, vinegar, tacos, popcorn, chocolate, fried clams, pizza, peppers, beer. The midway was a flat brown tongue, littered with a thousand shucked wrappers and a million stamped cigarette butts. Under the glare of the lights, all faces were flat and grotesque. An old man with a runner of green snot hanging from his nose walked past, eating a candy apple. Then a boy with a plum-colored birthmark swarming up one cheek. An old black woman beneath a blonde beehive wig. A fat man in Bermuda shorts with varicose veins, wearing a tee-shirt saying PROPERTY OF THE BRUNSWICK DRAGONS.

  “Joe,” someone was calling. “Joe… Joe!”

  Blaze turned and tried to pinpoint the voice from the crowd. And then he saw her, wearing that same nightgown with her cakes practically falling out of the lace top. Joe’s pretty young mother.

  Terror seized him. She was going to see him. She couldn’t help but see him. And when she did, she would take his baby away. He held Joe tighter, as if embrace could insure possession. The little body was warm and reassuring. He could feel the flutter of the child’s life against his chest.

  “There!” Mrs. Gerard screamed. “There he is, the man who stole my baby! Get him! Catch him! Give me back my baby!”

  People turned to look. Blaze was near the merry-go-round now, and the calliope music was huge. It bounded and echoed.

  “Stop him! Stop that man! Stop the baby-thief!”

  The man with the tattoo and the slicked-back hair began to walk toward him and now, at last, Blaze could run. But the midway had grown longer. It stretched away for miles, an endless Highway of Fun. And they were all behind him: the boy with the swarming birthmark, the black woman in her blonde wig, the fat man in the Bermuda shorts. The mechanical clown laughed and laughed.

  Blaze ran past another pitchman, who was standing beside a huge guy wearing what looked like an animal skin. The sign over his head billed him as Leopard Man. The pitchman raised his microphone and began to speak. His amplified voice rolled down the midway like thunder.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry! You’re just in time to see Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., the noted babynapper! Lay that kid down, fella! He’s right over here, folks, direct from Apex where he lives on the Parker Road, and the hot car is stashed in the shed out back! Hurry, hurry, hurry, see the live babynapper, right here—”

  He ran faster, breath sobbing in and out, but they were gaining. He looked back and saw that Joe’s mother was leading the posse. Her face was changing. It was growing paler, except for her lips. They were getting redder. Her teeth were growing down over them. Her fingers were hooking into red-tipped claws. She was becoming the Bride of Yorga.

  “Get him! Catch him! Kill him! The babynapper!”

  Then George was hissing at him from the shadows. “In here, Blaze! Quick! Move, goddammit!”

  He veered in the direction of the voice and found himself in the Mirror Maze. The midway was suddenly broken up into a thousand distorted pieces. He bumped and thrust his way down the narrow corridor, panting like a dog. Then George was in front of him (and behind him, and to either side of him) and George was saying: “You have to make them drop it from a plane, Blaze. From a plane. Make them drop it from a plane.”

  “I can’t get out,” Blaze moaned. “George, help me to get out.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, asshole! Make them drop it from a plane!”

  They were all outside now, and peering in, but the mirrors made it seem as if they were all around him. “Get the babynapper!” Gerard’s wife shrieked. Her teeth were now huge.

  “Help me, George.”

  Then George smiled, and Blaze saw that his teeth were long, too. Too long. “I’ll help you,” he said. “Give me the baby.”

  But Blaze didn’t. Blaze backed away. A million Georges advanced on him, holding out their hands to take the baby. Blaze turned and plunged down another glittering aisle, bouncing from side to side like a pinball, trying to hold Joe protectively. This was no place for a kid.

  Chapter 15

  BLAZE CAME AWAKE in the first thin light of dawn, at first not sure where he was. Then everything came back and he collapsed on his side, breathing hard. His bed was drenched in sweat. Christ, what an awful dream.

  He got up and padded into the kitchen to check on the baby. Joe was deeply asleep, lips pursed as if he was having big serious thoughts. Blaze looked at him until his eyes picked up the slow, steady rise of the kid’s chest. His lips moved, and Blaze wondered if Joe was dreaming about the bottle, or his mother’s titty.

  Then he put on the coffee and sat down at the table in his long underwear. The paper he had bought yesterday was still there, amid the scraps of his kidnap note. He began to read the story about the kidnapping again, and his eye once more fell on the box at the bottom of page 2: Appeal to Kidnappers from Father, Page 6. Blaze turned over to page six, where he found a half-page broadside, outlined in black. He read:

  TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE OUR CHILD! WE WILL MEET ANY DEMANDS, ON CONDITION THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE US WITH EVIDENCE THAT JOE IS STILL ALIVE. WE HAVE THE GUARANTEE OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) THAT THERE WILL BE NO INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR COLLECTION OF THE RANSOM, BUT WE MUST HAVE PROOF THAT JOE IS ALIVE! HE IS EATING THREE TIMES A DAY, CANNED BABY DINNERS AND VEG FOLLOWED BY 1/2 A BOTTLE. THE FORMULA HE’S USED TO IS CANNED MILK AND BOILED, STERILIZED WATER IN A RATIO OF 1:1. PLEASE DO NOT HURT HIM, BECAUSE WE LOVE HIM SO VERY MUCH. JOSEPH GERARD III

  Blaze closed the paper. Reading that made him feel unhappy, like hearing Loretta Lynn sing “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad.”

  “Oh Jeez, boo-hoo,” George said so suddenly from the bedroom that Blaze jumped.

  “Shh, you’ll wake ’im up.”

  “Fuck that,” George said. “He can’t hear me.”

  “Oh,” Blaze said. He guessed that was true. “What’s a ratty-o, George? It says make him his bottles in a ratty-o of one-something-one.”

  “Never mind,” George said. “Really worried about him, aren’t they? ‘He is eating three times a day, followed by a half a bottle — don’t hurt him, cuz we wuv him-wuv him-wuv him.’ Man, this piles the pink horseshit to a new high.”

  “Listen—” Blaze began.

  “No, I won’t listen! Don’t tell me to listen ! He’s all they have, right? That and about forty million smackareenies! Ought to get the money and then send the kid back in pieces. First a finger, then a toe, then his little—”

  “George, you shut up!”

  He clapped a hand over his mouth, shocked. He had just told George to shut up. What was he thinking about? What was wrong with him?

  “George?”

  No answer.

  “George, I’m sorry. It’s just that you shouldn�
�t say things, you know, like that.” He tried to smile. “We have to give the kid back alive, right? That’s the plan. Right?”

  No answer, and now Blaze started to feel really miserable.

  “George? George, what’s wrong?”

  No answer for a long time. Then, so softly he might not have heard it, so softly it might have only been a thought in his own head:

  “You’ll have to leave him with me, Blaze. Sooner or later.” Blaze wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. “You better not do anything to ’im, George. You just better not. I’m warning you.”

  No answer.

  By nine o’clock, Joe was up, changed, fed, and playing on the kitchen floor. Blaze was sitting at the table and listening to the radio. He had cleared off the scraps of paper and thrown out the hardened flour paste, and the only thing on the table was his letter to the Gerards. He was trying to figure out how to mail it.

  He had heard the news three times. The police had picked up a man named Charles Victor Pritchett, a big drifter from Aroostook County who had been laid off some sawmill job a month earlier. Then he had been released. Probably that scrawny little door-opener Walsh couldn’t make him for it, Blaze reasoned. Too bad. A good suspect would have taken the heat off for awhile.

  He shifted restlessly in his chair. He had to get this kidnapping off the ground. He had to make a plan about mailing the letter. They had a drawing of him, and they knew about the car. They even knew about the color — that bastard Walsh again.

  His mind moved slowly and heavily. He got up, made more coffee, then got out the newspaper again. He frowned at the police sketch of himself. Big, square-jawed face. Broad, flat nose. Thick shock of hair, hadn’t been cut in quite awhile (George had done it last time, snipping away indifferently with a pair of kitchen shears). Deepset eyes. Only a suggestion of his big ole neck, and they probably wouldn’t have any idea of how big he really was. People never did when he was sitting down, because his legs were the longest part of him.