Blaze

even send some of the stuff I — we, I mean — use on his bottom.” A witticism occurred to him. “No extra charge.”

Then he looked at his free hand and saw he had crossed his fingers when he said they could have Joe back. Just like a little kid telling his first lie.

“Don’t hang up!” Gerard said. “I don’t think I quite understand —”

“You’re a smart guy,” Blaze said. “I think you do.”

He hung up and left the Exxon station at a dead run, not sure why he was running, only knowing that it seemed like the right thing to do. The only thing. He ran under the blinker-light, angled across the road, and scaled the embankment in giant leaps. Then he disappeared into the spruce-lined rows of the County Reserve.

Behind him, a giant monster with glaring white eyes came snarling over the hill. It plunged through the teeming air, nine-foot sidewings sending up sprays of snow. The plow obliterated Blaze’s tracks where they angled across the road. When two State Police cars converged on the Exxon station nine minutes later, Blaze’s footprints up the embankment to the Reserve were no more than blurry indentations. Even as the Troopers stood around the pay phone with their flashlights pointed, the wind did its work behind them.

Sterling’s phone rang five minutes later. “He was here,” the State cop on the other end said. Sterling could hear wind blowing in the background. No, shrieking. “He was here but he’s gone.”

“Gone how?” Sterling asked. “Car or on foot?”

“Who knows? Plow went through just before we got here. But if I had to guess, I’d say he drove.”

“Nobody’s asking you to guess. Gas station? Anybody see him?”

“They’re closed because of the storm. Even if they’d been open…the phone’s on a wall around to the side.”

“Lucky sonofabitch,” Sterling said. “Blind-lucky sonofabitch. We surround that crappy little cabin in Apex and arrest four girly magazines and a jar of strained peas. Tracks? Or did the wind take em?”

“There were still tracks around the phone,” the Trooper said. “Wind blurred the treads, but it was him.”

“Guessing again?”

“No. They were big.”

“Okay. Roadblocks, right?”

“Every road big and small,” the Trooper said. “It’s happening as we speak.”

“Logging roads, too.”

“Logging roads, too,” the Trooper said. He sounded insulted.

Sterling didn’t care. “So he’s bottled up? Can we say that, Trooper?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We’re going in there with three hundred guys soon as the weather lifts tomorrow. This has gone on too long.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Snow plow,” Sterling said. “My sister’s rosy chinchina.” He hung up.

By the time Blaze got back to HH, he was exhausted. He climbed the Cyclone fence and fell face-first into the snow on the other side. His nose was bloody. He had made his way back in just thirty-five minutes. He picked himself up, staggered around the building, and went inside.

Joe’s furious, agonized howls met him.

“Christ!”

He ran up the stairs two at a time and burst into Coslaw’s office. The fire was out. The cradle was tipped over. Joe was lying on the floor. His head was covered with blood. His face was purple, his eyes were squeezed shut, his small hands powdered white with dust.

“Joe!” Blaze cried. “Joe! Joe!”

He swept the baby into his arms and ran into the corner where the diapers were stacked. He grabbed one and swabbed the gash on Joe’s forehead. The blood seemed to be pouring out in freshets. There was a splinter sticking out of the wound. Blaze plucked it out and threw it on the floor.

The baby struggled in his arms and screamed more loudly still. Blaze wiped away more blood, holding Joe firmly, and bent in for a closer look. The cut was jagged, but with the big splinter removed, it didn’t look so bad. Thank Christ it hadn’t been his eye. It could have been his eye.

He found a bottle and gave it to Joe cold. Joe grabbed it with both hands and began to suck greedily. Panting, Blaze got a blanket and wrapped the baby in it. Then he lay down on his own blankets with the wrapped baby on his chest. Blaze closed his eyes and was immediately seized by horrible vertigo. Everything in the world seemed to be slipping away: Joe, George, Johnny, Harry Bluenote, Anne Bradstay, birds on wires and nights on the road.

Then he was all right again.

“From now on, it’s us, Joey,” he said. “You got me and I got you. It’ll be all right. Okay?”

Snow struck the windows in hard, rattling bursts. Joe turned his face from the rubber nipple and coughed thickly, his tongue popping out with the effort of his chest to clear itself. Then he took the nipple again. Beneath his hand, Blaze could feel the small heart hammering.

“It’s how we roll,” Blaze said, and kissed the baby’s bloody forehead.

They fell asleep together.