Blaze

On the night before they were to go back to Hetton, Harry Bluenote asked Blaze if he would stay a bit after supper. Blaze said sure, but he began to feel uneasy. His first thought was that Mr. Bluenote had found out what he and Anne were doing down by the well and was mad. This made him feel bad, because he liked Mr. Bluenote.

When everyone else was gone, Bluenote lit a cigar and walked twice around the cleared supper-table. He coughed. He rumpled his already rumpled hair. Then he nearly barked: “Look here, you want to stay on?”

Blaze gaped, unable at first to get across the chasm between what he had believed Mr. Bluenote was going to say and what he had said.

“Well? Would you?”

“Yes,” Blaze managed. “Yes, sure. I…sure.”

“Good,” Bluenote said, looking relieved. “Because Hetton House isn’t for a boy like you. You’re a good boy, but you need taking in hand. You try goddam hard, but —” He pointed at Blaze’s head. “How’d that happen?”

Blaze’s hand went immediately to the bashed-in dent. He blushed. “It’s awful, ain’t it? To look at, I mean. Lordy.”

“Well, it ain’t pretty, but I seen worse.” Bluenote dropped into a chair. “How’d it happen?”

“My dad go an pitch me downstair. He ‘us hungover or somethin. I don’t remember very well. Anyway…” He shrugged. “That’s all.”

“That’s all, huh? Well, I guess it was enough.” He got up again, went to the cooler in the corner, drew himself a Dixie cup of water. “I went to the doctor’s today — I been puttin it off because sometimes I get these little flutters — and he gave me a clean bill. I was some relieved.” He drank his water, crumpled the cup, and tossed it into the wastebasket. “A man gets older, that’s the thing. You don’t know nothin about that, but you will. He gets older and his whole life starts to seem like a dream he had durin an afternoon nap. You know?”

“Sure,” Blaze said. He hadn’t heard a word of it. Live here with Mr. Bluenote! He was just beginning to grasp what that might mean.

“I just wanted to make sure I could do right by you if I went and took you on,” Bluenote said. He cocked a thumb at the picture of the woman on the wall. “She liked boys. She give me three and died havin the last. Dougie’s the middle boy. Eldest is in Washington state, buildin planes for Boeing. Youngest died in a car accident four year ago. That was a sad thing, but I like to think he’s with his ma now. Could be that’s a stupid idea, but we take our comfort where we can. Don’t we, Blaze?”

“Yessir,” Blaze said. He was thinking about Anne at the well. Anne in the moonlight. Then he saw there were tears in Mr. Bluenote’s eyes. They shocked him and frightened him a little.

“Go on,” Mr. Bluenote said. “And don’t linger too long at the well, you hear me?”

But he did stop at the well. He told Anne what had happened, and she nodded. Then she began to cry, too.

“What’s wrong, Annie?” he asked her. “What’s wrong, dear?”

“Nothin,” she said. “Draw my water, will you? I brought the buckets.”

He drew the water. She watched him raptly.

The last day’s picking was over by one o’clock, and even Blaze could see the final haul didn’t amount to much. Berries was over.

He always drove now. He was in the cab of the truck, idling along in low, when Harry Bluenote called: “Okay, youse! Up in the truck! Blaze’ll drive back! Change y’duds and come on down to the big house! Cake n ice cream.”

They scrambled over the tailgate, yelling like a bunch of kiddies, and John had to yell back at them to watch out for the berries. Blaze was grinning. It felt like the kind of grin that might stay on all day.

Bluenote walked around to the passenger side. His face looked pale under his tan, and there was sweat on his forehead.

“Mr. Bluenote? Are you okay?”

“Sure,” Harry Bluenote said. He smiled his last smile. “Just ate too much lunch, I guess. Take her in, Bla —”

He grabbed his chest. Cords popped out on both sides of his neck. He stared full at Blaze, but not as if he was seeing him.

“What’s wrong?” Blaze asked.

“Ticker,” Bluenote remarked, then fell forward. His forehead smacked the metal dashboard. For a moment he clutched at the old torn seatcover with both hands, as if the world had turned upside-down. Then he tilted sideways and fell out the open door onto the ground.

Dougie Bluenote had been ambling around the hood of the truck. Now he broke into a run. “Poppa!” he screamed.

Bluenote died in his son’s arms on the wild, jouncing ride back to the big house. Blaze hardly noticed. He was hunched over the big, cracked wheel of the I-H truck, glaring at the unrolling dirt road like a madman.

Bluenote shivered once, twice, like a dog caught out in the rain, and that was it.

Mrs. Bricker — the camp mom — dropped a pitcher of lemonade on the floor when they carried him in. Icecubes sprayed every whichway on the plank pine. They took Bluenote into the parlor and put him on the couch. One arm dangled on the floor. Blaze picked it up and put it on Bluenote’s chest. It fell off again. After that, Blaze just held it.

Dougie Bluenote was in the dining room, standing beside the long table, which was set for the end-of-picking ice cream party (a small going-away present had been set beside each kid’s plate), talking frantically on the phone. The other pickers clustered on the porch, looking in. All of them looked horrified except for Johnny Cheltzman, who looked relieved.