Blaze

Hetton House, A stood for asshole. Not to mention ass-kicking.

Blaze was starting to get his size by then. He didn’t have it, not at eleven or twelve, but he was starting to get it. He was as big as some of the big boys. And he didn’t join in the playground beatings or the towel-snappings. One day John Cheltzman walked up to him while Blaze was standing beside the fence at the far end of the playground, not doing anything but watching crows light in the trees and take off again. He offered Blaze a deal.

“You’ll have The Law again for math this half,” John said. “Fractions continue.”

“I hate fractions,” Blaze said.

“I’ll do your homework if you don’t let those lugs tune up on me anymore. It won’t be good enough to make him suspicious — not good enough to get you caught — but it’ll be good enough to get you by. You won’t get stood after.” Being stood after wasn’t as bad as being stropped, but it was bad. You had to stand in the corner of Room 7, face to the wall. You couldn’t look at the clock.

Blaze considered John Cheltzman’s idea, then shook his head. “He’ll know. I’ll get called on to recite, and then he’ll know.”

“You just look around the room like you’re thinking,” John said. “I’ll take care of you.”

And John did. He wrote down the homework answers and Blaze copied them in his own numbers that tried to look like the Palmer Method numbers over the blackboard but never did. Sometimes The Law called on him, and then Blaze would stand up and look around — anywhere but at Martin Coslaw, and that was all right, that was how just about everyone behaved when they were called on. During his looking-around, he’d look at Johnny Cheltzman, slumped in his seat by the door to the book closet with his hands on his desk. If the number The Law wanted was ten or under, the number of fingers showing would be the answer. If it was a fraction, John’s hands would be in fists. Then they’d open. He was very quick about it. The left hand was the top half of the fraction. The right hand was the bottom. If the bottom number was over five, Johnny went back to fists and then used both hands. Blaze had no trouble at all with these signals, which many would have found more complex than the fractions they represented.

“Well, Clayton?” The Law would say. “We’re waiting.”

And Blaze would say, “One-sixth.”

He didn’t always have to be right. When he told George, George had nodded in approval. “A beautiful little con. When did it break down?”

It broke down three weeks into the half, and when Blaze thought about it — he could think, it just took him time and it was hard work — he realized that The Law must have been suspicious about Blaze’s amazing mathematical turnaround all along. He just hadn’t let on. Had been paying out the rope Blaze needed to hang himself with.

There was a surprise quiz. Blaze flunked with a grade of Zero. This was because the quiz was all fractions. The quiz had really been given for one purpose and one purpose only, and that was to catch Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. Below the Zero was a note scrawled in bright red letters. Blaze couldn’t make it out, so he took it to John.

John read it. At first he didn’t say anything. Then he told Blaze, “This note says, ?John Cheltzman is going to resume getting beat up.’”

“What? Huh?”

“It says ?Report to my office at four o’clock.’”

“What for?”

“Because we forgot about the tests,” John said. Then he said, “No, you didn’t forget. I forgot. Because all I could think about was getting those overgrown Blutos to stop hurting me. Now you’re gonna beat me up and then The Law is gonna strop me and then the Blutos are gonna start in on me again. Jesus Christ, I wish I was dead.” And he did look like he wished it.

“I’m not gonna beat you up.”

“No?” John looked at him with the eyes of one who wants to believe but can’t quite.

“You couldn’t take the test for me, could you?”

Martin Coslaw’s office was a fairly large room with HEADMASTER on the door. There was a small blackboard in it, across from the window. The window looked out on Hetton House’s miserable schoolyard. The blackboard was dusted with chalk and — Blaze’s downfall — fractions. Coslaw was seated behind his desk when Blaze came in. He was frowning at nothing. Blaze gave him something else to frown at. “Knock,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Go back and knock,” said The Law.

“Oh.” Blaze turned, went out, knocked, and came back in.

“Thank you.”

“Sure.”

Coslaw frowned at Blaze. He picked up a pencil and began to tap it on his desk. It was a red grading pencil. “Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.,” he said. He brooded. “Such a long name for such a short intellect.”

“The other kids call me—”

“I don’t care what the other kids call you, a kid is a baby goat, a kid is a piece of slang passed around by idiots, I don’t care for it or those who use it. I am an instructor of Arithmetic, my task is to prepare young fellows such as yourself for high school — if they can be prepared — and also to teach them the difference between right and wrong. If my responsibilities ceased with the instruction of Arithmetic — and sometimes I wish they did, often I wish they did — that would not be the case, but I am also Headmaster, hence the instruction of right versus wrong, quod erat demonstrandum. Do you know what quod erat demonstrandum means, Mr. Blaisdell?”

“Nope,” Blaze said. His heart was sinking and he could feel water rising in his eyes. He was big for his age but now he felt small. Small and getting smaller. Knowing that was how The Law wanted him to feel didn’t change it.

“No, and never will, because even if you ever attain your sophomore year in high school — which I doubt — you will never get closer to Geometry than the drinking fountain at the end of the hall.” The Law steepled his fingers and rocked back in his chair. His bowling shirt was hung over the back of his chair, and it rocked with him. “It means, ?that which was to be demonstrated,’ Mr. Blaisdell, and what I demonstrated by my little quiz is that you are a cheater. A cheater is a person who does not know the difference between right and wrong. QED, quod erat demonstrandum. And thus, punishment.”

Blaze cast his eyes down at the floor. He heard a drawer pulled open. Something was removed and the drawer was slid closed. He did not have to look up to know what The Law was now holding in his hand.

“I abhor a cheater,” Coslaw said, “but I understand your mental shortcomings, Mr. Blaisdell, and thus I understand there is one worse than you in this little plot. That would be the one who first put the idea into your obviously thick head and then abetted you. Are you following me?”

“No,” Blaze said.

Coslaw’s tongue crept out a bit and his teeth engaged it firmly. He gripped The Paddle with equal or greater firmness.

“Who did your assignments?”

Blaze said nothing. You didn’t tattle. All the comic-books, TV shows, and movies said the same thing. You didn’t tattle. Especially not on your only friend. And there was something else. Something that struggled for expression.

“You hadn’t ought to strop me,” he said finally.

“Oh?” Coslaw looked amazed. “Do you say so? And why is that, Mr. Blaisdell? Elucidate. I am fascinated.”

Blaze didn’t know those big words, but he knew that look. He had been seeing it his whole life.

“You don’t care nothing about teaching me. You just want to make me feel small, and hurt whoever stopped you doing it for a little while. That’s wrong. You hadn’t ought to strop me when you’re the one who’s wrong.”

The Law no longer looked amazed. Now he only looked mad. So mad a vein was pulsing right in the middle of his forehead. “Who did your assignments?”

Blaze said nothing.

“How could you answer in class? How did that part work?”