Blaze

no matter how hard he tried, and so resorted to the only form of subterfuge with which he was familiar: the con.

“I been out of state,” he said, and bared his teeth at the saleslady in a grin that would have frightened a cougar. The saleslady smiled back bravely. The top of her head almost reached the midpoint of his ribcage. “I just found out my sister-in-law had a kid…a baby…while I was gone, see, and I want to outfit him. The whole works.”

She lit up. “I see. How generous of you. How sweet. What would you like in particular?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know nothing…anything…about babies.”

“How old is your nephew?”

“Huh?”

“Your sister-in-law’s child?”

“Oh! Gotcha! Six months.”

“Isn’t that dear.” She twinkled professionally. “What’s his name?”

Blaze was stumped for a moment. Then he blurted, “George.”

“Lovely name! From the Greek. It means, ‘to work the earth.’”

“Yeah? That’s pretty far out.”

She kept smiling. “Isn’t it. Well, what does she have for him now?”

Blaze was ready for this one. “None of the stuff they got now is too good, that’s the thing. They’re really strapped for cash.”

“I see. So you want to…start from the ground up, as it were.”

“Yeah, you catch.”

“Very generous of you. Well, the place to begin would be at the end of Pooh Avenue, in the Crib Corner. We have some very nice hardwood cribs…”

Blaze was stunned at how much it took to keep one tiny scrap of human being up and running. He had considered his take from the beer-store to be quite respectable, but he left Planet Baby with a nearly flat wallet.

He purchased a Dreamland crib, a Seth Harney cradle, a Happy Hippo highchair, an E-Z Fold changing table, a plastic bath, eight nightshirts, eight pairs of Dri-Day rubber pants, eight Hager’s infant undershirts with snaps he couldn’t figure out, three fitted sheets that looked like table napkins, three blankets, a set of crib bumpers that were supposed to keep the kid from whamming his brains out if he got restless, a sweater, a hat, bootees, a pair of red shoes with bells on the tongues, two pairs of pants with matching shirts, four pairs of socks that were not big enough to fit over his fingers, a Playtex Nurser set (the plastic liners looked like the bags George used to buy his dope in), a case of stuff called Similac, a case of Junior Fruits, a case of Junior Dinners, a case of Junior Desserts, and one place-setting with the Smurfs on them.

The baby food tasted shitty. He tried it when he got home.

As the bundles piled up in the corner of the Baby Shoppe, the glances of the shy young matrons became longer and more speculative. It became an event, a landmark in memory — the huge, slouching man in woodsman’s clothes following the tiny saleslady from place to place, listening, then buying what she told him to buy. The saleslady was Nancy Moldow. She was on commission, and as the afternoon progressed, her eyes took on an almost supernatural glow. Finally the total was rung up and when Blaze counted out the money, Nancy Moldow threw in four boxes of Pampers. “You made my day,” she said. “In fact, you may have made my career in infant sales.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Blaze said. He was very glad about the Pampers. He had forgotten the diapers after all.

And as he loaded up two shopping carts (a stockboy had the cartons containing the highchair and the crib), Nancy Moldow cried: “Be sure to bring the young man in to have his picture taken!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Blaze mumbled. For some reason a memory of his first mug shot flashed into his mind, and a cop saying, Now turn sideways and bend your knees again, High-pockets — Christ, who grew you so fuckin big?

“The picture is compliments of Hager’s!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lotta goodies, man,” the stockboy said. He was perhaps twenty, and just getting over his adolescent acne. He wore a little red bowtie. “Where’s your car parked?”

“The lot in back,” Blaze said.

He followed the stockboy, who insisted on pushing one of the carts and then complained about how it steered on the packed snow. “They don’t salt it down back here, see, and the wheels get packed up. Then the damn carts skid around. You can give your ankles a nasty bite if you don’t watch out. Real nasty. I’m not complaining, but…”

Then what are you doing, Sporty? Blaze could hear George asking. Eating cat-food out of the dog’s bowl?

“This is it,” Blaze said. “This is mine.”

“Yeah, okay. What do you want to put in the trunk? The highchair, the crib, or both?”

Blaze suddenly remembered he didn’t have a trunk key.

“Let’s put it all in the back.”

The stockboy’s eyes widened. “Ah, Jeez, man, I don’t think it’ll fit. In fact, I’m positive —”