Blaze

“You’re assuming the cops would be called in. If you scared the family bad enough, they’d deal privately.” He paused. “And even if the money was hot — you saying you don’t know some guys?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“There are guys who buy hot money. It’s just another investment to them, like gold or government bonds.”

“But collecting the swag — what about that?”

Burgess shrugged. He pulled on his ear. “Easy. Have the marks drop it from a plane.” Then he got up and walked away.

Blaze was sentenced to four years on the Jesus-gag. George told him it would be a tit if he kept his nose clean. Two at most, he said, and two was what it turned out to be. Those years inside weren’t much different than the jail-time he’d put in after beating up The Law; only the inmates had grown older. He didn’t spend any time in solitary. When he got the heebie-jeebies on long evenings, or during one interminable lockdown when there were no exercise privileges, he wrote George. His spelling was awful, the letters long. George didn’t answer very often, but in time the very act of composition, laborious as it was, became soothing. He imagined that when he wrote, George was standing behind him, reading over his shoulder.

“Prisin laundre,” George would say. “My fuckin word.”

“That wrong, George?”

“P-r-i-s-o-n, prison. L-a-u-n-d-r-y, laundry. Prison laundry.”

“Oh yeah. Right.”

His spelling and even his punctuation improved, even though he never used a dictionary. Another time:

“Blaze, you’re not using your cigarette ration.” This was during the golden time when some of the tobacco companies gave out little trial packs.

“I don’t hardly smoke, George. You know that. They’d just pile up.”

“Listen to me, Blazer. You pick em up on Friday, then sell em the next Thursday, when everybody’s hurtin for a smoke. That’s how you roll.”

Blaze began to do this. He was surprised how much people would pay for smoke that didn’t even get you stoned.

Another time:

“You don’t sound good, George,” Blaze said.

“Course not. I just had four fuckin teeth out. Hurts like hell.”

Blaze called him the next time he had phone privileges, not reversing the charges but feeding the phone with dough he’d made selling ciggies on the black market. He asked George how his teeth were.

“What teeth?” George said grumpily. “Fuckin dentist is probably wearin em around his neck like a Ubangi.” He paused. “How’d you know I had em out? Someone tell you?”

Blaze suddenly felt he was on the verge of being caught in something shameful, like beating off in chapel. “Yeah,” he said. “Someone told me.”

They drifted south to New York City when Blaze got out, but neither of them liked it. George had his pocket picked, which he took as a personal affront. They took a trip to Florida and spent a miserable month in Tampa, broke and unable to score. They went north again, not to Boston but to Portland. George said he wanted to summer in Maine and pretend he was a rich Republican fuckstick.

Not long after they arrived, George read a newspaper story about the Gerards: how rich they were, how the youngest Gerard had just gotten married to some good-looking spic chick. Burgess’s kidnap idea resurfaced in his mind — that one big score. But there was no baby, not then, so they went back to Boston.

The Boston-in-the-winter, Portland-in-the-summer thing became a routine over the next two years. They’d roll north in some old beater in early June, with whatever remained of the winter’s proceeds stashed in the spare tire: seven hundred one year, two thousand the next. In Portland, they pulled a gag if a gag presented itself. Otherwise, Blaze fished and sometimes laid a trap or two in the woods. They were happy summers for him. George lay out in the sun and tried to get a tan (hopeless; he only burned), read the papers, swatted blackflies, and rooted for Ronald Reagan (who he called Old White Elvis Daddy) to drop dead.

Then, on July 4th of their second summer in Maine, he noticed that Joe Gerard III and his Narmenian wife had become parents.

Blaze was playing solitaire on the porch of the shack and listening to the radio. George turned it off. “Listen, Blazer,” he said, “I got an idea.”

He was dead three months later.

They had been attending the crap-game regularly, and there had never been any trouble. It was a straight game. Blaze didn’t play, but he often faded George. George was very lucky.

On this night in October, George made six straight passes. The man kneeling across from him on the other side of the blanket bet against him every time. He had lost forty dollars. The game was in a warehouse near the docks, and it was full of smells: old fish, fermented grain, salt, gasoline. When the place was quiet, you could hear the tack-tack-tack of seagulls walking around on the roof. The man who had lost forty dollars was named Ryder. He claimed to be half Penobscot Indian, and he looked it.

When George picked up the dice a seventh time instead of passing them, Ryder threw twenty dollars down on the crapout line.

“Come, dice,” George said — crooned. His thin face was bright. His cap was yanked around to the left. “Come big dice, come come come now!” The dice exploded across the blanket and came up eleven.

“Seven in a row!” George crowed. “Pick up that swag, Blazerino, daddy’s goin for number eight. Big eighter from Decatur!”

“You cheated,” Ryder said. His voice was mild, observational.

George froze in the act of picking up the dice. “Say what?”

“You switched them dice.”

“Come on, Ride,” someone said. “He didn’t—”

“I’ll have my money back,” Ryder said. He stretched his hand out across the blanket.

“You’ll have a broken arm if you don’t cut the shit,” George said. “That’s what you’ll have, Sunshine.”

“I’ll have my money back,” Ryder said. His hand still out.

It was one of those quiet times now, and Blaze could hear the gulls on the roof: tack-tack- tack.

“Go fuck yourself,” George said, and spat on the outstretched hand.

So then it happened quickly, as those things do. The quickness is what makes the mind reel and refuse. Ryder reached his spit-shiny hand into the pocket of his jeans, and when it came out, it was holding a spring-knife. Ryder thumbed the chrome button in the imitation ivory handle, and the men around the blanket scattered back.

George shouted: “Blaze!”

Blaze lunged across the blanket at Ryder, who rocked forward on his knees and put the blade in George’s stomach. George screamed. Blaze grabbed Ryder and slammed his head against the floor. It made a cracking sound like a breaking branch.

George stood up. He looked at the knife-handle sticking out of his shirt. He grabbed it, started to pull, then grimaced. “Fuck,” he said. “Oh fuck.” He sat down hard.

Blaze heard a door slam. He heard running feet on hollow boards.

“Get me outta here,” George said. His yellow shirt was turning red around the knife-handle. “Get the swag, too — oh Jesus this hurts!”

Blaze gathered up the scattered bills. He stuffed them into his pockets with fingers that had no feeling in them. George was panting. He sounded like a dog on a hot day.

“George, let me pull it out—”

“No, you crazy? It’s holding my guts in. Carry me, Blaze. Oh my fuckin Jesus!”