“Shut up! You say that one more time and I’m gonna puke!”
Blaze sat down in a kitchen chair with his head down. His face was hot.
“And turn off the shit-kicking music! That woman sounds like she’s about to fly up her own cunt!”
“Okay, George.”
Blaze turned off the radio. The TV, an old Jap thing George picked up at a yard sale, was busted.
“George?”
No answer.
“George, come on, don’t go away. I’m sorry.” He could hear how scared he was. Almost blubbing.
“Okay,” George said, just when Blaze was about to give up. “Here’s what you have to do. You have to pull a little score. Not a big one. Just a little one. That mom-n-pop where we used to stop for suds off Route 1 would probably be okay.”
“Yeah?”
“You still got the Colt?”
“Under the bed, in a shoebox.”
“Use that. And wear a stocking over your face. Otherwise the guy who works nights will recognize you.”
“Yeah.”
“Go in Saturday night, at closing. Say, ten minutes of one. They don’t take checks, so you ought to get two, three hundred bucks.”
“Sure! That’s great!”
“Blaze, there’s one more thing.”
“What, George?”
“Take the bullets out of the gun, okay?”
“Sure, George, I know that, it’s how we roll.”
“It’s how we roll, right. Hit the guy if you have to, but make sure it doesn’t get to no more than page three in State and Local when it makes the paper.”
“Right.”
“You’re an asshole, Blaze. You know that, right? You’re never gonna bring this off. Maybe it’d be better if you got caught on the little one.”
“I won’t, George.”
No answer.
“George?”
No answer. Blaze got up and turned on the radio. At supper he forgot and set two places.
Chapter 4
CLAYTON BLAISDELL, JR., was born in Freeport, Maine. His mother was hit by a truck three years later while crossing Main Street with a bag of groceries. She was killed instantly. The driver was drunk and driving without a license. In court he said he was sorry. He cried. He said he would go back to AA. The judge fined him and gave him sixty days. Little Clay got Life with Father, who knew plenty about drinking and nothing about AA. Clayton Senior worked for Superior Mills in Topsham, where he ran the picker and sorter. Co-workers claimed to have seen him do this job sober upon occasion.
Clay could already read when he started the first grade, and grasped the concept of two apples plus three apples with no trouble. He was big for his size even then, and although Freeport was a tough town, he had no trouble on the playground even though he was rarely seen there without a book in his hand or tucked under his arm. His father was bigger, however, and the other kids always found it interesting to see what would be bandaged and what would be bruised when Clay Blaisdell came to school on Mondays.
“It will be a miracle if he gets his size without being badly hurt or killed,” Sarah Jolison remarked one day in the teachers’ room.
The miracle didn’t happen. One hungover Saturday morning when not much was doing, Clayton Senior staggered out of the bedroom in the second-floor apartment he and his son shared while Clay was sitting crosslegged on the living room floor, watching cartoons and eating Apple Jacks. “How many times have I told you not to eat that shit in here?” Senior inquired of Junior, then picked him up and threw him downstairs. Clay landed on his head.
His father went down, got him, toted him upstairs, and threw him down again. The first time, Clay remained conscious. The second time, the lights went out. His father went down, got him, toted him upstairs, and looked him over. “Fakin sonofabitch,” he said, and threw him down again.
“There,” he told the limp huddle at the foot of the stairs that was his now comatose son. “Maybe you’ll think twice before you tote that fucking shit into the living room again.”
Unfortunately, Clay never thought twice about much of anything again. He lay unconscious in Portland General Hospital for three weeks. The doctor in charge of his case voiced the opinion that he would remain so until he died, a human carrot. But the boy woke up. He was, unfortunately, soft in the head. His days of carrying books under his arm were over.
