Blaze

by Richard Bachman

  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.

  Chapter 18

  THE SUMMER AFTER their Boston adventure, Blaze and Johnny Cheltzman went out blueberry raking with some other boys from Hetton House. The man who hired them, Harry Bluenote, was a straight. Not in the contemptuous sense in which Blaze would later hear George use the word, but in the best Lord Baden-Powell tradition. He owned fifty acres of prime blueberry land in West Harlow, and burned it over every other spring. Each July he hired a crew of two dozen or so young misfits to rake it. There was nothing in it for him other than the thin money any small farmer gets from a cash crop. He might have hired boys from HH and girls from the Wiscassett Home for Troubled Girls and given them three cents a quart; they would have taken it and counted themselves lucky to be out in the fresh air. Instead he gave them the straight seven that local kids asked for and got. The money for bus transportation to and from the fields came out of his own pocket.

  He was a tall, scrawny old Yankee with a deeply seamed face and pale eyes. If you looked into those eyes too long, you came away with the conviction that he was crazy. He was not a member of the Grange or any other farmers’ association. They would not have had him, anyway. Not a man who hired criminals to pick his berries. And they were criminals, dammit, whether they were sixteen or sixty-one. They came into a decent little town and decent folks felt like they had to lock their doors. They had to watch out for strange teenagers walking the roads. Boys and girls. Put them together — criminal boys and criminal girls — and what you got was no better than Sodom and Gomorrah. Everyone said so. It was wrong. Especially when you were trying to raise your own young ones up right.

  The season lasted from the second week of July into the third or fourth week of August. Bluenote had constructed ten cabins down by the Royal River, which ran smack through the middle of his property. There were six boys’ cabins and four girls’ cabins in another cluster at a little distance. Because of their relative positions on the river, the boys’ quarters were called Riffle Cabins and the girls’ Bend Cabins. One of Bluenote’s sons — Douglas — stayed with the boys. Bluenote advertised each June for a woman to stay at Bend Cabins, someone who could double as a “camp mom” and a cook. He paid her well, and this came out of his own pocket too.

  The whole scandalous affair came up at town meeting one year, when a Southwest Bend coalition tried to force a reassessment of the taxes on Bluenote’s property. The idea seemed to be to cut his profit
margin enough to make his pinko social welfare programs impossible.

  Bluenote said nothing until the discussion’s close. His boy Dougie and two or three friends from his end of town had more than held up his side. Then, just before Mr. Moderator gaveled the discussion to a close, he rose and asked to be recognized. Which he was. Reluctantly.

  He said, “There’s not a single one of you lost a single thing during raking-time. There’s never been a single car-theft or home break-in or act of barn-arson. Not so much as a stolen soup-spoon. All I want to do is show these kids what a good life gets you. What they do about it after they’ve seen it is up to them. Ain’t none of you ever been stuck in the mud and needed a push? I won’t ask you how you can be for this and still call yourselves Christians, because one of you would have some kind of answer out of what I call the Holy-Joe-Do-It-My-Way Bible. But, Jeezly-Crow! How can you read the parable of the Good Samaritan on Sunday and then say you’re for a thing like this on Monday night?”

  At that, Beatrice McCafferty exploded. Heaving herself up from her folding chair (which might have given a creak of thanks) and without waiting for so much as a nod of recognition from Mr. Moderator, she trumpeted: “All right, let’s get to it! Hanky-panky! You want to stand there, Harry Bluenote, and say there’s never been none between the boys in that one bunch of cabins and the girls in t’other?” She looked around, grim as a shovel. “I wonder if Mr. Bluenote was born yesterday? I wonder what he thinks goes on in the dead of night, if it ain’t robbery or barn-burning?”

  Harry Bluenote did not sit during this. He stood on the other side of the meeting hall with his thumbs hooked into his suspenders. His face was the dusty, ruddy color of any farmer’s face. His pale, peculiar eyes might have been tipped just the slightest bit at the corners with amusement. Or not. When he was sure she was finished, had said her say, he spoke calmly and flatly. “I ain’t never peeked, Beatrice, but it sure as hell ain’t rape.”