“Goo-goo,” Blaze said. He felt an unwilling idiot grin tug the corners of his mouth.
Joe gurgled.
“Goo-goo-baby,” Blaze said.
Joe laughed aloud.
“Goo-goo-bayyy-beee,” Blaze said, delighted.
Joe pissed in his face.
The Pampers were another struggle. At least they didn’t have pins, just tapes, and they seemed to have their own built-in rubber pants — plastic, actually — but he wrecked two before he finally got one on like the picture on the box. When the job was done, Joe was wide awake and chewing on the ends of his fingers. Blaze supposed he wanted something to eat, and thought a bottle might be best.
He was heating it under the hot water faucet in the kitchen, turning it around and around, when George said: “Did you dilute it the way the broad in the store said to?”
Blaze looked at the bottle. “Huh?”
“That’s straight canned milk, isn’t it?”
“Sure, right out of the can. Is it spoiled, George?”
“No, it isn’t spoiled. But if you don’t take off the cap and put in some water, he’ll puke.”
“Oh.”
Blaze used his fingernails to pull the top off the Playtex Nurser and poured about a quarter of the bottle down the sink. He added enough water to fill it back up, stirred it with a spoon, and put the nipple back on.
“Blaze.” George didn’t sound mad, but he sounded awful tired.
“What?”
“You gotta get a baby book. Somethin that tells you how to take care of him. Like the manual to a car. Because you keep forgetting things.”
“Okay, George.”
“You better get a newspaper, too. Only don’t buy them too close to here. Buy them someplace bigger.”
“George?”
“What?”
“Who’s gonna take care of the kid while I’m gone?”
There was a long pause, one so long Blaze thought George had gone away again. Then he said: “I will.”
Blaze frowned. “You can’t, George. You’re —”
“I said I will. Now get your ass in there and feed ‘im!”
“But…if the kid gets in trouble…chokes, or some thin and I’m gone —”
“Okay, George, sure.”
He went into the other room. Joe was fussing and kicking on the bed, still chewing his fingers. Blaze burped the bottle the way the lady showed him, pushing a finger up inside the plastic bag until a drop of milk formed on the nipple. He sat down by the baby and carefully removed Joe’s fingers from his mouth. Joe started to cry, but when Blaze put the rubber nipple where his fingers had been, the lips closed over it and he began to suck. The small cheeks went in and out.
“That’s right,” Blaze said. “That’s right, you little bagger.”
Joe drank all of it. When Blaze picked him up to burp him, he spit a little back, getting some on the shirt of Blaze’s thermal underwear. Blaze didn’t mind. He wanted to change the baby into one of his new outfits, anyway. He told himself he only wanted to see if it fit.
It did. When Blaze was done with that, he took off his own top and smelled the baby’s burp-up. It smelled vaguely cheesy. Maybe, he thought, the milk was still a little too thick. Or maybe he should have stopped and burped the kid halfway through the bottle. George was right. He needed a book.
He looked down at Joe. The baby had bunched a small piece of blanket in his hands and was examining it. He was a cute little shit. They were going to be worried about him, Joe Gerard III and his wife. Probably thinking the kid had been tucked away in a bureau drawer, screaming and hungry, with crappy diapers. Or worse still, lying in a shallow hole chipped out of frozen earth, a tiny scrap of manchild gasping away its last few breaths in frozen vapor. Then into a green plastic Hefty Bag…
Where had he gotten that idea?
George. George had said that. He had been talking about the Lindbergh snatch. The kidnapper’s name had been Hope-man, Hoppman, something like that.
“George? George, don’t you hurt ‘im while I’m gone.”
No answer.
He heard the first item on the news, while he was making his breakfast. Joe was on the floor, on a blanket Blaze had spread for him. He was playing with one of George’s newspapers. He had pulled a tent of it over his head and was kicking with excitement.
The announcer had just finished telling about a Republican Senator who had taken a bribe. Blaze was hoping George heard it. George liked stuff like that.
