Blaze

twice before you tote that fucking shit into the living room again.”

Unfortunately, Clay never thought twice about much of anything again. He lay unconscious in Portland General Hospital for three weeks. The doctor in charge of his case voiced the opinion that he would remain so until he died, a human carrot. But the boy woke up. He was, unfortunately, soft in the head. His days of carrying books under his arm were over.

The authorities did not believe Clay’s father when he told them the boy had done all that damage falling downstairs once. Nor did they believe him when he said the four half-healed cigarette burns on the boy’s chest were the result of “some kind of peelin disease.”

The boy never saw the second floor apartment again. He was made a ward of the state, and went directly from the hospital to a county home, where his parentless life began by having his crutches kicked out from under him on the playground by two boys who ran away chortling like trolls. Clay picked himself up and re-set his crutches. He did not cry.

His father did some protesting in the Freeport police station, and more in several Freeport bars. He threatened to go to law in order to regain his son, but never did. He claimed to love Clay, and perhaps he did, a little, but if so, his love was the kind that bites and burns. The boy was better off out of his reach.

But not much better. Hetton House in South Freeport was little more than a poor farm for kids, and Clay’s childhood there was wretched, although a little better when his body was mended. Then, at least, he could make the worst of the bullies stand away from him in the play yard; him and the few younger children who came to look to him for protection. The bullies called him Lunk and Troll and Kong, but he minded none of those names, and he left them alone if they left him alone. Mostly they did, after he licked the worst of them. He wasn’t mean, but when provoked he could be dangerous.

The kids who weren’t afraid of him called him Blaze, and that was how he came to think of himself.

Once he had a letter from his father. Dear Son, it said. Well, how are You doing. I am fine. Working these days up in Lincoln rolling Lumber. It would be good if the b*****ds didn’t steal all the Overtime, HA! I am going to get a little place and will send for You once I do. Well, write me a little Letter and tell Your old Pa how it goes. Can you send a Foto. It was signed With Love, Clayton Blaisdell.

Blaze had no photo to send his father, but would have written — the music teacher who came on Tuesdays would have helped him, he was quite sure — but there was no return address on the envelope, which was dirty and simply addressed to Clayton Blaisdell JR “The Orfan-Home” in FREEPORT MAINE.

Blaze never heard from him again.

He was placed with several different families during his Hetton House tenure, every time in the fall. They kept him long enough to help pick the crops and help keep their roofs and dooryards shoveled. Then, when spring thaw came, they decided he wasn’t quite right and sent him back. Sometimes it wasn’t too bad. And sometimes — like with the Bowies and their horrible dog-farm — it was real bad.

When he and HH were quits, Blaze knocked around New England on his own. Sometimes he was happy, but not the way he wanted to be happy, not the way he saw people being happy. When he finally settled in Boston (more or less; he never put down roots), it was because in the country he was lonely. Sometimes when he was in the country he would sleep in a barn and wake in the night and go out and look at the stars and there were so many, and he knew they were there before him, and they would be there after him. That was sort of awful and sort of wonderful. Sometimes when he was hitchhiking and it was going on for November, the wind would blow around him and flap his pants and he would grieve for something that was lost, like that letter which had come with no address. Sometimes he would look at the sky in the spring and see a bird, and it might make him happy, but just as often it felt like something inside him was getting small and ready to break.

It’s bad to feel like that, he would think, and if I do, I shouldn’t be watching no birds. But sometimes he would look up at the sky anyway.

Boston was all right, but sometimes he still got scared. There were a million people in the city, maybe more, and not one gave a shake for Clay Blaisdell. If they looked at him, it was only because he was big and had a dent in his forehead. Sometimes he would have a little fun, and sometimes he would just get frightened. He was trying to have a little fun in Boston when he met George Rackley. After he met George, it was better.

Chapter 5

THE LITTLE MOM-N-POP STORE was Tim & Janet’s Quik-Pik. Most of the rear shelves were overflowing with jug wine and beer stacked in cardboard cases. A giant cooler ran the length of the back wall. Two of the four aisles were dedicated to munchies. Beside the cash register stood a bottle of pickled eggs as large as a small child. Tim & Janet’s also stocked such necessaries as cigarettes, sanitary napkins, hot dogs, and stroke-books.

The night man was a pimple-pocked dude who attended the Portland branch of the University of Maine during his days. His name was Harry Nason, and he was majoring in animal husbandry. When the big man with the dented forehead walked in at ten minutes of one, Nason was reading a book from the paperback rack. The book was called Big and Hard. The late-night rush had dried up to a trickle. Nason decided that after the big man had bought his jug or his six, he’d close up and go home. Maybe take the book along and beat off. He was thinking that the part about the traveling preacher and the two horny widows might be good for that when the big man put a pistol under his nose and said, “Everything in the register.”

Nason dropped the book. Thoughts of beating off left his mind. He gaped at the gun. He opened his mouth to say something intelligent. The kind of thing a guy being stuck up on TV might say, if the guy being stuck up happened to be the hero of the show. What came out was “Aaaa.”

“Everything in the register,” the big man repeated. The dent in his forehead was frightening. It looked deep enough for a frog-pond.

Harry Nason recalled — in a frozen sort of way — what his boss had told him he should do in the event of a hold-up: give the robber everything with no argument. He was fully insured. Nason’s body suddenly felt very tender and vulnerable, full of bags and waters. His bladder loosened. And all at once he seemed to have an absolute assful of shit.

“Did you hear me, man?”

“Aaaa,” Harry Nason agreed, and punched NO SALE on the cash register.

“Put the money in a bag.”

“Okay. Yes. Sure.” He fumbled among the sacks under the counter and dumped most of them on the floor. At last he managed to hold onto one. He flipped up the bill-holders in the cash drawer and began to drop money into the bag.

The door opened and a guy and a girl, probably college kids, walked in. They saw the gun and stopped. “What’s this?” the guy asked. He was smoking a cigarillo and wearing a button that said POT ROCKS.

“It’s a hold-up,” Nason said. “Please don’t, uh, antagonize this gentleman.”

“Too much,” the guy with the POT ROCKS button said. He started to grin. He pointed at Nason. His fingernail was dirty. “Dude’s ripping you off, man.”

The hold-up man turned to POT ROCKS. “Wallet,” he said.

“Dude,” POT ROCKS said, not losing the grin, “I’m on your side. The prices this place charges — and everybody knows Tim and Janet Quarles are, like, the biggest right-wingers since Adolf —”

“Give me your wallet or I’ll blow your head off.”

POT ROCKS suddenly realized he might be in some trouble here; for sure he wasn’t in a movie. The grin went bye-bye and he stopped talking. Several zits stood out brightly on his cheeks, which were suddenly pale. He dug a black Lord Buxton out of his jeans pocket.

“There’s never a cop when you need one,” his girlfriend said coldly. She was wearing a long brown coat and black leather boots. Her hair matched the boots, at least this week.

“Drop the wallet in the bag,” the hold-up guy said. He held the bag out. Harry Nason always thought he could have become a hero at that point by braining the hold-up man with the giant bottle of pickled eggs. Only the hold-up