Mr. Holloway sat on the table in the middle of the room, his ass half on and half off, one of his legs swinging back and forth, one of those elegant black shoes moving like the pendulum in a clock. He gave Blaze a friendly grin and said, “Want to talk, son?”
Blaze began to stammer. Yes, he did want to talk. If someone really wanted to listen, and be a little bit friendly, he did.
Holloway told the others to get out.
Blaze asked if he could go to the bathroom.
Holloway pointed across the room to a door Blaze hadn’t even noticed and said, “What are you waiting for?” He was wearing that same friendly grin when he said it.
When Blaze came out, there was a pitcher of icewater and an empty glass on the table. Blaze looked at Holloway, and Holloway nodded. Blaze drank three glasses in a row, then sat back with what felt like an icepick planted in the center of his forehead.
“Good?” Holloway asked.
Blaze nodded.
“Yeah. Answering questions is thirsty work. Cigarette?”
“Don’t use em.”
“Good kid, that’ll never get you in trouble,” Holloway said, and lit one for himself. “Who are you to your pals, son? What do they call you?”
“Blaze.”
“Okay, Blaze, I’m Frank Holloway.” He stuck out his hand, then winced and clamped the end of his cigarette with his teeth as Blaze wrung it. “Now tell me exactly what you did to wind up here.”
Blaze began to pour out his story, beginning with The Law’s arrival at Hetton and Blaze’s problems with Arithmetic.
Holloway held up his hand. “Mind if I get a stenographer in on this, Blaze? That’s a kind of secretary. Save you repeating all this.”
No. He didn’t mind.
Later, at the end, the others came back in. When they did, Blaze noticed that Holloway’s eyes had lost their friendly glint. He slipped off the table, dusted his ass with two brisk whacks, and said, “Type it up and have the dummy sign it.” He left without looking back.
He left prison not quite two years after entering it — he got four months off for good behavior. They gave him two pairs of prison jeans, a prison denim jacket, and a holdall to carry them in. He also had his prison savings: a check for $43.84.
It was October. The air was flushed sweet with wind. The gate-guard waved one hand back and forth like a windshield wiper and told him to stay clean. Blaze walked past without looking or speaking, and when he heard the heavy green gate thud shut behind him, he shivered.
He walked until the sidewalks ended and the town disappeared. He looked at everything. Cars whipped past, looking strangely updated. One slowed, and he thought maybe he would be offered a ride. Then someone shouted, “Heyyy, JAILBIRD,” and the car scooted away.
At last he sat down on the rock wall surrounding a little country graveyard and just looked down the road. It came to him that he was free. He had no one to boss him, but he was bad at bossing himself and had no friends. He was out of solitary, but had no job. He didn’t even know how to turn the piece of stiff paper they’d given him into money.
Still, a wonderful soothing gratitude stole over him. He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sun, filling his head with red light. He smelled the grass and fresh asphalt where some road-crew had recently fixed a pothole. He smelled exhaust from cars that went wherever their drivers wanted to go. He clutched himself with relief.
He slept in a barn that night and the next day got a job picking taters for a dime a basket. That winter he worked in a New Hampshire woolen mill, strictly non-union. In the spring he took a bus to Boston and got a job in the laundry of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He had been working there six months when a familiar face from South Portland turned up — Billy St. Pierre. They went out and bought each other many beers. Billy confided to Blaze that he and a friend were going to hold up a liquor store in Southie. The place was a tit. He said there was room for one more.
Blaze was up for it. His cut was seventeen dollars. He went on working at the laundry. Four months later, he and Billy and Billy’s brother-in-law Dom knocked over a combination gas station and grocery store in Danvers. A month after that, Blaze and Billy, plus another South Portland alum named Calvin Surks, knocked over a loan agency with a betting room in the back. They took over a thousand dollars.
“We’re hitting the big time now,” Billy said as the three of them split the swag in a Duxbury motel room. “This is just the start.”
Blaze nodded, but went on working in the hospital laundry.
For awhile life rolled like that. Blaze had no real friends in Boston. His only acquaintances were Billy St. Pierre and the loosely orbiting crew of small-timers of which Billy was a member. Blaze took to hanging out with them during his off-hours in a Lynn candy-store called Moochie’s. They played pinball and horsed around. Blaze had no girl, steady or otherwise. He was painfully shy and self-conscious about what Billy called his busted head. After they did a successful job, he sometimes bought a whore.
About a year after Blaze fell in with Billy, a fast-talking part-time musician introduced him to heroin — a skin-pop. It made Blaze violently sick, either from some additive or a natural allergy. He never tried it again. He would sometimes take a few tokes on a reef or fry-daddy just to be sociable, but he had no use for harder drugs.
Not long after the heroin experiment, Billy and Calvin (whose proudest possession was a tattoo reading LIFE SURKS, THEN YA DIE) were busted trying to heist a supermarket. There were others willing to take Blaze on their current gags, however. Eager, even. Someone nicknamed him The Boogeyman, and it stuck. Even with a mask to hide his disfigured forehead, his immense size made any clerk or storekeeper think twice about grabbing the piece he might have under the counter.
In the two years after Billy fell, Blaze just missed going down himself half a dozen times, some of those by the narrowest of margins. On one occasion, two brothers with whom he had heisted a clothing store in Saugus were grabbed just around the corner from where Blaze said thanks and got out of their car. The brothers would have been glad to give Blaze up in order to earn a break, but they only knew him as The Big Boogie, thus giving the police the idea that the third member of the gang had been African-American.
In June, Blaze was laid off at the laundry. He didn’t even bother looking for another straight job. He simply drifted through the days until he met George Rackley, and when he met George, his future was set.
Chapter 21
ALBERT STERLING was dozing in one of the overstuffed chairs in the Gerard study when the first hints of dawn crept into the sky. It was February first.
There was a knock on the side of the door. Sterling’s eyes opened. Granger was standing there. “We might have something,” Granger said.
“Tell me.”
“Blaisdell grew up in an orphanage — well, state home, same difference — called Hetton House. It’s in the area his call came from.”
Sterling got up. “Is it still operating?”
“Nope. Closed fifteen years ago.”
“Who lives there now?”
“Nobody. The town sold it to some people who tried to run a day-school out of it. Place went broke and the town took it back. It’s been vacant ever since.”
“I bet that’s where he is,” Sterling said. It was just intuition, but it felt true. They were going to nail the bastard this morning, and anyone who was running with him. “Call the State Police. I want twenty Troopers, twenty at least, plus you and me.” He thought. “And Frankland. Get Frankland out of the office.”
“He’ll be in bed, actually—”
“Get him out. And tell Norman to get his ass over here. He can mind the phone.”
“You’re sure that’s how you want to—”
“Yes. Blaisdell’s a crook, he’s an idiot, and he’s lazy.” That crooks were lazy was an article of faith in Albert Sterling’s private church of beliefs. “Where else would he go?” He looked at his watch. It was 5:45. “I just hope the k
id’s still alive. But I’m not betting on it.”
Blaze woke up at 6:15. He turned on his side to look at Joe, who had slept the night with him. The extra body-warmth seemed to have done the little guy some good. His skin was cool, and the bronchial sound of his breathing had diminished. Those hectic red spots were still on his cheeks, though. Blaze put a finger in the baby’s mouth (Joe began to suck at once), and felt a new swelling in the left gum. When he pressed down, Joe moaned in his sleep and pulled his face away.
“Damn teeth,” Blaze whispered. He looked at Joe’s forehead. The wound had clotted, and he didn’t think it would leave a scar. That was good. Your forehead led the charge through life. It was a lousy place to have a scar.
His inspection was finished, but still he looked into the baby’s sleeping face, fascinated. Except for the jagged, healing scratch, Joe’s skin was perfect. White, but with glowing olive undertones. Blaze thought he would never burn in the sun but tan to the color of nice old wood. He’ll get so dark some people will take him for a black guy, maybe, Blaze thought. He won’t get all lobster red like me. Joe’s lids were a faint but discernible blue. That same blue made a pair of tiny arcs beneath his closed eyes. The lips were rosy and slightly pursed.
Blaze picked up one of the hands and held it. The fingers curled instantly over his pinky. Blaze thought they were going to be big hands. They might someday hold a carpenter’s hammer or a mechanic’s wrench. Even an artist’s brush.
The dawning of the child’s possibilities made him shiver. He felt an urge to snatch the baby up. And why? So he could watch Joe’s eyes open and look at him. Who knew what those eyes might see in the years ahead? Yet now they were closed. Joe was closed. He was like a wonderful, terrible book where a story had been written in invisible ink. Blaze realized he didn’t care about the money anymore, not really. What he cared about was seeing what words would appear on all those pages. What pictures.
He kissed the clean skin just above the scrape, then threw back his blankets and went to the window. It was still snowing; air and earth were white on white. He figured there must have been eight inches come down in the night. And it wasn’t done yet.
They’ve almost got you, Blaze.
He whirled around. “George?” he called softly. “That you, George?”
It wasn’t. That had come from his own head. And why in the name of God would he have a thought like that?
He looked out the window again. His mutilated brow drew down in thought. They knew who he was. He had been stupid and given that operator his real name, right down to the Junior on the end. He had thought he was being smart, but he was being stupid. Again. Stupid was a prison they never let you out of, no time off for good behavior, you were in for life.
George would have given him the old horselaugh for sure. George would have said, I bet they went right to work diggin up your records. Clayton Blaisdell’s Greatest Hits. It was true. They’d read about the religious con, his stay in South Portland, his time at HH –
And then, like a meteor streaking across his troubled consciousness: This was HH!
Blaze looked around wildly, as if to verify this.
They’ve almost got you, Blaze.
He began to feel hunted again, trapped in a narrowing circle. He thought of the white interrogation room, of having to go to the bathroom, of having questions thrown at you that they didn’t even give you time to answer. And this time it wouldn’t be a little trial in a half-empty courtroom. This time it would be a circus, with every seat full. Then prison forever. And solitary confinement if he went stir.
These thoughts filled him with terror, but they were far from the worst. The worst was thinking of them bursting in with their guns drawn and taking the baby back. Kidnapping him again. His Joe.
Sweat sprang up on his face and arms in spite of the room’s chill.
You poor sucker. He’ll grow up hating your guts. They’ll see to that.
That wasn’t George, either. That was his thought, and it was true.
He began to rack his brains furiously, trying to make a plan. There ought to be a place to go. There had to be.
Joe began to stir awake, but Blaze didn’t even hear him. A place to go. A safe place. Someplace close by. A secret place where they couldn’t find him. A place that even George wouldn’t know about, a place –
Inspiration burst upon him.
He whirled to the bed. Joe’s eyes were open. When he saw Blaze, he gave him a grin and stuck his thumb in his mouth — a gesture that was almost jaunty.
“Gotta eat, Joe. Quick. We’re on the run, but I got an idea.”
He fed Joe strained beef and cheese. Joe had been woofing down a full jar of this stuff at a go, but this time he started turning his head aside after the fifth spoonful. And when Blaze tried to force the issue, he began to cry. Blaze switched to one of the bottles and Joe sucked at it greedily. Trouble was, there were only three left.
While Joe lay on the blanket with the bottle clasped in his starfish hands, Blaze raced around the room picking up and packing up. He broke open a package of Pampers and stuffed his shirt with them until he puffed out like the circus fatman.
Then he knelt and began to dress Joe as warmly as he could: two shirts, two pairs of pants, a sweater, his tiny knitted hat. Joe screamed indignantly all through this tribulation. Blaze took no notice. When the baby was dressed, he folded his two blankets into a small, thick pouch and slipped Joe inside.
The baby’s face was now purple with rage. His screams echoed up and down the decaying hallway when Blaze carried him from the headmaster’s office to the stairs. At the foot of the stairs, he put his own cap on Joe’s head, taking care to cock it to the left. It covered him down to the shoulders. Then he stepped out into the driving snow.
Blaze crossed the back yard and clambered awkwardly over the cement wall at its far end. The land on the other side had once been the Victory Garden. There was nothing here now but scrub bushes (only rounded humps beneath the snow) and scraggly young pines that were growing with no rhyme or reason. He jogged with the baby pulled tightly to his chest. Joe wasn’t crying now, but Blaze could feel his short, quick gasps for breath as he struggled with the ten-degree air.
At the far end of the Victory Garden was another wall, this one of piled rock. Many of the stones had fallen out of it, leaving big gaps. Blaze crossed at one of these and descended the steep grade on the other side in a series of skidding leaps. His heels drove up clouds of powdery snow. At the bottom, woods took over again, but a fire had burned through here thirty-five or forty years before, a bad one. The trees and underbrush had grown back helter-skelter, fighting each other for space and light. There were blowdowns everywhere. Many were concealed by the snow, and Blaze had to slow down in spite of his need to hurry. The wind howled in the treetops; he could hear the trunks groaning and protesting.
Joe began to whimper. It was a guttural, out-of-breath sound.
“It’s all right,” Blaze said. “We’re gettin there.”
He wasn’t sure the old bobwire fence would still be there, but it was. It was drifted in right to the top, though, and he almost stumbled over it, plunging both himself and the baby into the snow. He stepped over instead — carefully — and walked down a deepening cleft of ground. The soil parted here and the land’s skeleton showed. The snow was thinner. The wind was now howling over their heads.
“Here,” Blaze said. “Here someplace.”
He began to hunt back and forth about halfway to where the ground leveled off again, peering at jumbles of rocks, half-exposed roots, snow pockets, and caches of old pine needles. He couldn’t find it. Panic began to rise in his throat. The cold would be seeping through the blankets now, and through Joe’s layers of clothes.
Farther down, maybe.
He began to descend again, then slipped and fell on his rump, still clutching the baby to his chest. There was a sharp flare of pain in his right ankle, as if someone had struck sparks inside his flesh. And he found himself s
taring at a triangular patch of shadow between two rounded rocks that bulged toward each other like breasts. He crawled toward it, still holding Joe against him. Yes, that was it. Yes and yes and yes. He ducked his head and crawled inside.
The cave was dark and moist and surprisingly warm. The floor was covered with soft, ancient pine-boughs. Blaze was swept with déjŕ vu. He and John Cheltzman had dragged the boughs in after stumbling on this place by accident on a forbidden afternoon away from HH.
Blaze set the baby down on a bed of boughs, fumbled in his jacket pocket for the kitchen matches he always kept in there, and lit one. By its wavering light he could see Johnny’s neatly made printing on the wall.
Johnny C and Clay Blaisdell. August 15th. Third year of Hell.
It was written in candlesmoke.
Blaze shivered — not from the cold, not in here — and shook out the match.
Joe was staring up at him in the gloom. He was gasping. His eyes were full of dismay. Then he stopped gasping.
“Christ, what’s wrong with you?” Blaze cried. The rock walls knocked his voice back into his own ears. “What’s wrong? What’s—”
Then he knew. The blankets were too tight. He had pulled them around Joe when he put him down, and he’d pulled too hard. Kid couldn’t breathe. He loosened them with trembling fingers. Joe whooped in a huge lungful of damp cave air and began to cry. It was a weak, trembling sound.
Blaze shook the Pampers out of his shirt, then got one of the bottles. He tried to give Joe the nipple, but Joe turned his head away.
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