Blaze

He didn’t. He read Oliver Twist instead. He knew it by heart; he could even say the words he didn’t know. Outside, the dogs yapped. They were hungry. It was their feeding time. No one called him to feed them, though he would have, if asked.

He read Oliver Twist until the station wagon from HH came for him. The Law was driving. His eyes were red with fury. His mouth was nothing but a stitch between his chin and his nose. The Bowies stood together in the long shadows of a January dusk and watched them drive off.

When they got to Hetton House, Blaze felt an awful sense of familiarity fall over him. It felt like a wet shirt. He had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out. Three months and nothing had changed. HH was the same pile of red and everlasting shit-brick. The same windows threw the same yellow light onto the ground outside, only now the ground was covered with snow. In the spring the snow would be gone but the light would be the same.

In his office, The Law produced The Paddle. Blaze could have taken it away from him, but he was tired of fighting. And he guessed there was always someone bigger, with a bigger paddle.

After The Law had finished exercising his arm, Blaze was sent to the common bedroom in Fuller Hall. John Cheltzman was standing by the door. One of his eyes was a slit of swelling purple flesh.

“Yo, Blaze,” he said.

“Yo, Johnny. Where’s your specs?”

“Busted,” he said. Then cried: “Blaze, they broke my glasses! Now I can’t read anything!”

Blaze thought about this. He was sad to be here, but it meant a lot to find Johnny waiting. “We’ll fix em.” An idea struck him. “Or we’ll get shovel-chores in town after the next storm and save for new ones.”

“Could we do that, do you think?”

“Sure. You got to see to help me with my homework, don’t you?”

“Sure, Blaze, sure.”

They went inside together.

Chapter 10

APEX CENTER was a wide place in the road boasting a barber shop, a VFW hall, a hardware store, The Apex Pentecostal Church of the Holy Spirit, a beer-store, and a yellow blinker-light. It was walking distance from the shack, and Blaze went down there the morning after he held up Tim & Janet’s Quik-Pik for the second time. His goal was Apex Hardware, a scurgy little independent where he bought an aluminum extension ladder for thirty dollars, plus tax. It had a red tag on it saying PRICED 2 SELL.

He carried it back up the road, tromping stolidly along the plowed shoulder. He looked neither right nor left. It did not occur to him that his purchase might be remembered. George would have thought of it, but George was still away.

The ladder was too long for the trunk or the back seat of the stolen Ford, but it fit when he placed it with one end behind the driver’s seat and the other jutting into the front passenger’s seat. Once that was taken care of, he went into the house and turned the radio on to WJAB, which played until the sun went down.

“George?”

No answer. He made coffee, drank a cup, and lay down. He fell asleep with the radio on, playing “Phantom 409.” When he woke up it was dark and the radio was just playing static. It was quarter past seven.

Blaze got up and fixed him some dinner — a bologna sandwich and a can of Dole pineapple chunks. He loved Dole pineapple chunks. He could eat them three times a day and never get his fill. He swallowed the syrup in three long gulps, then looked around. “George?”

No answer.

He prowled restlessly. He missed the TV. The radio wasn’t company at night. If George was here, they could play cribbage. George always beat him because Blaze missed some of the runs and most of the fifteen-twos (they were Arithmetic), but it was fun charging up and down the board. Like being in a hoss-race. And if George didn’t want to do that, they could always shuffle four decks of cards together and play War. George would play War half the night, drinking beer and talking about the Republicans and how they fucked the poor. (“Why? I’ll tell you why. For the same reason a dog licks his balls — because they can.”) But now there was nothing to do. George had showed him a solitaire game, but Blaze couldn’t remember how it went. It was way too early to do the kidnapping. He hadn’t thought to steal any comic-books or skin mags when he was in that store.

He finally settled down with an old issue of X-Men. George called the X-Men the Homo Core, as if they’d come from an apple, Blaze didn’t know why.

He dozed off again at quarter to eight. When he woke up at eleven, he felt muzzy-headed and only halfway in the world. He could go now if he wanted — by the time he got to Ocoma Heights it would be past midnight — but all at once he didn’t know if he wanted to. All at once it seemed very frightening. Very complicated. He had to think it over. Make plans. Maybe he could think of a way to get into the house on his own. Look it over. Make like he was from The Public Water-works, or The Lectric Company. Draw out a map.

The empty cradle standing by the stove mocked him.

He fell asleep again and had an uneasy dream of running. He was chasing someone through deserted waterfront streets while seagulls whirled over the piers and warehouses in crying flocks. He didn’t know if he was chasing George or John Cheltzman. And when he began to catch up a little and the figure looked back over one shoulder to grin mockingly at him, he saw it was neither one. It was Margie Thurlow.

When he woke, he was still sitting in the chair, still dressed, but the night was over. WJAB was on again. Henson Cargill was singing “Skip A Rope.”

He got ready to go again the second night, but he didn’t go. The day after that he went out and shoveled a long and senseless track toward the woods. He shoveled until he was winded and his mouth tasted like blood.

I’m going tonight, he thought, but the only place he went that night was to the local beer-store, to see if the