He was afraid George had gone away again, but George answered up from the bathroom. “Feed him. Give him something out of one of those jars.”
Blaze ran into the bedroom. He clawed one of the cartons out from under the bed, opened it, and selected a jar at random. He took it back to the kitchen and found a spoon. He put the jar on the table beside the wicker basket and opened the lid. What was inside looked awful, like puke. Maybe it was spoiled. He smelled it anxiously. It smelled all right. It smelled like peas. That was all right, then.
He hesitated, just the same. The idea of actually putting food in that open, screaming mouth seemed somehow…irreversible. What if the little motherfucker choked on it? What if he just didn’t want it? What if it was somehow the wrong stuff for him and…and…
His mind tried to put up the word POISON, and Blaze wouldn’t look at it. He stuffed half a spoonful of cold peas in the baby’s mouth.
The cries stopped at once. The baby’s eyes popped open, and Blaze saw they were blue. Joe spit some of the peas back and Blaze tucked the goop back in with the end of the spoon, not thinking about it, just doing it. The baby sucked contentedly.
Blaze fed him another spoonful. It was accepted. And another. In seven minutes, the entire jar of Gerber Peas was gone. Blaze had a crick in his back from bending over the wicker basket. Joe belched a runnel of green foam. Blaze mopped it off the small cheek with the tail of his own shirt.
“Bring it up again and we’ll vote on it,” he said. This was one of George’s witticisms.
Joe blinked at the sound of his voice. Blaze stared back, fascinated. The baby’s skin was clear and unblemished. His head was capped with a surprising thatch of blond hair. But his eyes were what got Blaze. He thought they were old eyes somehow, wise eyes. They were the washed-out blue of desert skies in a Western movie. The corners turned up a little, like the eyes of Chinese people. They gave him a fierce look. Almost a warrior look.
“You a fighter?” Blaze asked. “You a fighter, little man?”
One of Joe’s thumbs crept into his mouth and he began to suck it. At first Blaze thought he might want a bottle (and he hadn’t figured out the Playtex Nurser gadget yet), but for the time being the kid seemed content with his thumb. His cheeks were still flushed, not with crying now but from his trip through the night.
His lids began to droop, and the corners of his eyes lost that fierce upward tilt. But still he peered at this man, this six-foot-seven stubbled giant with the crazed and scarecrowed brown hair who stood over him. Then the eyes closed. His thumb dropped out of his mouth. He slept.
Blaze straightened up and his back popped. He turned away from the basket and started for the bedroom.
“Hey dinkleballs,” George said from the bathroom. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To bed.”
“The hell you are. You’re going to figure out that bottle gadget and fix the kid four or five, for when he wakes up.”
“The milk might go sour.”
“Not if you put it in the fridge. You warm it up when you need it.”
“Oh.”
Blaze got the Playtex Nurser kit and read the instructions. He read them twice. It took him half an hour. He didn’t understand hardly anything the first time and even less the second.
“I can’t, George,” he said at last.
“Sure you can. Throw those instructions away and just
So Blaze threw the instructions into the stove and then just fooled with the gadget, the way you did with a carb that wasn’t set quite right. Eventually, he figured out that you fitted the plastic liner over the gadget’s nozzle and then plunged it into the bottle shell. Bingo. Pretty slick. He prepared four bottles, filled them with canned milk, and put them away in the fridge.
“Can I go to bed now, George?” he asked.
No answer.
Blaze went to bed.
Joe woke him in the first gray light of morning. Blaze stumbled out of bed and went into the kitchen. He had left the baby in the basket, and now the basket was rocking back and forth on the table with the force of Joe’s anger.
Blaze picked him up and laid him against his shoulder. He saw part of the problem right away. The kid was soaked through.
Blaze took him into the bedroom and laid him on his bed. He looked amazingly small, lying there in the indentation of Blaze’s body. He was wearing blue pj’s, and he kicked his feet indignantly.
Blaze took off his pajamas and the rubber pants beneath. He put a hand on Joe’s belly to hold him still. Then he bent close to observe the way the diapers were pinned together. He took them off and threw them in the corner.
He observed Joe’s penis and felt instant delight. Not much longer than his thumbnail, but standing straight up. Pretty cute.
“That’s quite a rod you got there, skinner,” he said.
Joe left off crying to stare up at Blaze with wide, surprised eyes.
“I said that’s quite a rod you got on you.”
Joe smiled.
