Hetton.
He had no idea how powerful Harry Bluenote’s liking for him had become. The big boy was a natural peacemaker and the picking had never gone more sweetly. Only one fistfight had broken out. Usually there were half a dozen. A boy named Henry Gillette accused one of the other South Portland boys of cheating at blackjack (technically not poker). Blaze simply picked Gillette up by the scruff of the neck and hauled him off. Then he made the other boy give Gillette his money back.
Then, in the third week of August, the icing on the cake. Blaze lost his virginity.
The girl’s name was Anne Bradstay. She was in Pittsfield for arson. She and her boyfriend had burned down six potato warehouses between Presque Isle and Mars Hill before getting caught. They said they did it because they couldn’t think of anything else to do. It was fun to watch them burn. Anne said Curtis would call her up and say “Let’s go French-fryin,” and off they’d go. The judge — who had lost a son Curtis Prebble’s age in Korea — had no understanding of such boredom, nor sympathy for it. He sentenced the boy to six years in Shawshank State Prison.
Anne got a year in what the girls called The Pittsfield Kotex Factory. She didn’t really mind. Her stepfather had busted her cherry for her when she was thirteen and her older brother beat her when he was drunk, which was often. After that shit, Pittsfield was a vacation.
She was not a bruised girl with a heart of gold, only a bruised girl. She was not mean, but she was acquisitive, with a crow’s eye for shiny things. Toe, Brian Wick, and two other boys from South Portland pooled their resources and offered Anne four dollars to lay Blaze. They had no motive save curiosity. Nobody told John Cheltzman — they were afraid he might tell Blaze, or even Doug Bluenote — but everyone else in camp knew.
Once a night, someone from the boys’ cabins went down to the well on the road to the big house with two pails — one for drinking, one for washing. That particular night was Toe-Jam’s turn, but he said he had the belly-gripe and offered Blaze a quarter to go in his stead.
“Naw, that’s okay, I’ll go for free,” Blaze said, and got the buckets.
Toe smirked at the quarter saved and went to tell his friend Brian.
The night was dark and fragrant. The moon was orange, just risen. Blaze walked stolidly, thinking of nothing. The buckets clashed together. When a light hand fell on his shoulder, he didn’t jump.
“Can I walk with you?” Anne asked. She held up her own buckets.
“Sure,” Blaze said. Then his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he began to blush.
They walked side by side to the well. Anne whistled softly through her rotting teeth.
When they got there, Blaze shifted the boards aside. The well was only twenty feet deep, but a pebble dropped into its rock-lined barrel made a mysterious, hollow splash. Timothy grass and wild roses grew luxuriously all around the concrete pad. Half a dozen old oaks stood around, as if on guard. The moon peered through one of them now, casting pale gleams.
“Can I get your water?” Blaze asked. His ears were burning.
“Yeah? Tha’d be nice.”
“Sure,” he said, grinning thoughtlessly. “Sure it would.” He thought of Margie Thurlow, although this girl looked nothing like her.
There was a length of sunbleached rope tied to a ringbolt set in one corner of the cement. Blaze tied the free end of this rope to one of the buckets. He dropped it into the hole. There was a splash. Then they waited for it to fill up.
Anne Bradstay was no expert in the art of seduction. She put her hand on the crotch of Blaze’s jeans and grasped his penis.
“Hey!” he said, surprised.
“I like you,” she said. “Why don’t you screw me? Want to?”
Blaze looked at her, struck dumb with amazement…although, within her hand, part of him was now beginning to speak its piece in the old language. The girl was wearing a long dress, but she had pulled it up to show her thighs. She was scrawny, but the moonlight was kind to her face. The shadows were even kinder.
He kissed her clumsily, wrapping his arms around her.
“Jeez, you got a real woodie, don’tcha?” she asked, gasping for breath (and grasping his cock even harder). “Now take it easy, okay?”
“Sure,” Blaze said, and lifted her in his arms. He set her down in the timothy. He unbuckled his belt. “I don’t know nothin bout this.”
Anne smiled, not without bitterness. “It’s easy,” she said. She pulled her dress over her hips. She wasn’t wearing underpants. He saw a thin triangle of dark hair in the moonlight and thought if he looked at it too long, it would kill him.
She pointed matter-of-factly. “Stick your pecker in here.”
Blaze dropped his pants and climbed on. At a distance of about twenty feet, hunkered in some high pucky, Brian Wick looked at Toe-Jam with wide eyes. He whispered, “Get a load of that tool!”
Toe tapped the side of his head and whispered, “I guess what God took away here he put back down there. Now shut up.”
They turned to watch.
The next day, Toe mentioned that he’d heard Blaze got more than water at the well. Blaze turned almost purple and showed his teeth before walking away. Toe never dared mention it again.
Blaze became Anne’s cavalier. He followed her everywhere, and gave her his second blanket in case she got cold during the night. Anne enjoyed this. In her own way, she fell in love with him. She and he carried water for the girls’ and boys’ cabins for the rest of the picking and no one ever said anything about it. They would not have dared.
