Blaze

Chapter 12

ONCE BACK AT HETTON HOUSE, Blaze caused no trouble. He kept his head down and his mouth shut. The boys who had been big ‘uns when he and John had been little ‘uns either made out, went out to work, went away to vocational schools, or joined the Army. Blaze grew another three inches. Hair sprouted on his chest and grew lushly on his crotch. This made him the envy of the other boys. He went to Freeport High School. It was all right, because they didn’t make him do Arithmetic.

Martin Coslaw’s contract was renewed, and he watched Blaze come and go unsmilingly, watchfully. He did not call Blaze into his office again, although Blaze knew he could. And if The Law told him to bend over and take the paddle, Blaze knew he would do it. The alternative was North Windham Training Center, which was a formatory. He had heard that in the formatory boys were actually whipped — like on ships — and sometimes put in a little metal box called The Tin. Blaze didn’t know if these things were true, and had no wish to find out. What he knew was he was afraid of the formatory.

But The Law never called him in to be paddled, and Blaze never gave him cause. He went to school five days a week, and his chief contact with the Head became The Law’s voice, bellowing over the intercoms first thing in the morning and before lights-out at night. At Hetton House the day always began with what Martin Coslaw called a homily (homily grits, John sometimes said when he was feeling funny) and ended with a Bible verse.

Life moved along. He could have become the King of the Boys if he had wished, but he did not wish. He wasn’t a leader. He was the farthest thing from a leader. He tried to be nice to people, though. He tried to be nice to them even when he was warning them he would crack their skulls open if they didn’t lay off his friend Johnny. Pretty soon after Blaze came back, they did lay off him.

Then, on a summer night when Blaze was fourteen (and looking six years older in the right light), something happened.

The boys were hauled to town on an ancient yellow bus every Friday, assuming that as a group they didn’t have too many DDs — discipline demerits. Some would just wander aimlessly up and down Main Street, or sit in the town square, or go up an alley to smoke cigarettes. There was a pool hall, but it was off-limits to them. There was also a second-run movie theater, the Nordica, and those boys who had enough money to buy a ticket could go in and see how Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, or Clint Eastwood looked when those gentlemen were younger. Some of the boys earned their money delivering papers. Some mowed lawns in the summer and shoveled snow in the winter. Some had jobs at HH itself.

Blaze had become one of those. He was the size of a man — a big one — and the chief custodian hired him to do chores and odd jobs. Martin Coslaw might have objected, but Frank Therriault didn’t answer to that priss. He liked Blaze’s broad shoulders. A quiet man himself, Therriault also liked Blaze’s way of saying yes and no and not much more. The boy didn’t mind heavy work, either. He’d lug packs of Bird shingles up a ladder or hundred-pound sacks of cement all afternoon. He’d move classroom furniture and filing cabinets up and down stairs, not saying boo to a goose. And there was no quit in him. Best thing? He seemed perfectly happy with a dollar-sixty an hour, which allowed Therriault to pocket an extra sixty bucks a week. Eventually he bought his wife a swanky cashmere sweater. It had a boat neck. She was delighted.

Blaze was delighted, too. He was making a cool thirty bucks a week, which was more than enough to pay for the movies, plus all the popcorn, candy, and soda he could put away. He bought John’s ticket, too, cheerfully, as a matter of course. He would have been happy to throw in all the usual snacks, as well, but for John the movie was usually enough. He watched greedily, his mouth agape.

Back at Hetton, John was beginning to write stories. They were stumbling things, cribbed from the movies he watched with Blaze, but they began to earn him a certain popularity with his peers. The other boys didn’t like you to be smart, but they admired a certain kind of cleverness. And they liked stories. They were hungry for stories.

On one of their trips they saw a vampire movie called Second Coming. John Cheltzman’s version of this classic ended with Count Igor Yorga ripping the head from a half-clad young lovely with “quakeing breasts the size of watermelons” and jumping into the River Yorba with the head under his arm. The strangely patriotic name of this underground classic was The Eyes of Yorga Are Upon You.

But this night John didn’t want to go, even though another horror movie was playing. He had the runs. He’d been five times that morning and afternoon despite half a bottle of Pepto from the infirmary (a glorified closet on the second floor). He thought he wasn’t done, either.

“Come on,” Blaze urged. “The Nordica’s got a terrific crapper downstairs. I took a shit there once myself. We’ll stick real close to it.”

Thus persuaded, despite the dire rumblings in his vitals, John went with Blaze and got on the bus. They sat up front, behind the driver. They were almost the big ‘uns now, after all.

John was okay during the previews, but just as the Warner Bros logo was coming on, he stood up, slid past Blaze, and started up the aisle in a crabwise walk. Blaze was sympathetic, but that was life. He turned his attention back to the screen where a dust storm was blowing around in what looked like the Desert of Maine, only with pyramids. Soon he was deeply involved in the story, frowning with concentration.

When John sat back down beside him, he was hardly aware of him until John started yanking his sleeve and whispering, “Blaze! Blaze! F’God sakes, Blaze!”

Blaze came out of the movie like a sound sleeper waking from a nap. “Whats’sa matter? You sick? You shit yourself?”

“No…no. Look at this!”

Blaze peered at what John was holding just below seat-level. It was a wallet.

“Hey! Where’d you —”

“Shh!” Somebody in front of them hissed.

“— get that?” Blaze finished in a whisper.

“In the men’s!” John whispered back. He was trembling with excitement. “It musta fallen out of some guy’s pants when he sat down to take a dump! There’s money in it! Lots of money!”

Blaze took the wallet, holding it well out of sight. He opened the bill compartment. He felt his stomach drop. Then it seemed to bounce, and cram itself halfway up his throat. The bill compartment was full of dough. One, two, three fifty-dollar bills. Four twenties. Couple of fives. Some ones.