Blaze

He fell into a doze of thought. He thought all that morning, which passed with snow whooping in its throat.

Chapter 7

HE WAS AS OUT OF PLACE in the Baby Shoppe of Hager’s Mammoth Department Store as a boulder in a living room. He was wearing his jeans and his workboots with the rawhide laces, a flannel shirt, and a black leather belt with the buckle cinched on the left side — the good-luck side. He had remembered his hat this time, the one with the earflaps, and he carried it in one hand. He was standing in the middle of a mostly pink room that was filled with light. He looked left and there were changing-tables. He looked right and there were carriages. He felt like he’d landed on Planet Baby.

There were many women here. Some had big bellies and some had small babies. Many of the babies were crying and all of the women looked at Blaze cautiously, as if he might go berserk at any moment and begin laying waste to Planet Baby, sending torn cushions and ripped teddy bears flying. A saleslady approached. Blaze was thankful. He had been afraid to speak to anyone. He knew when people were afraid, and he knew where he didn’t belong. He was dumb, but not that dumb.

The saleslady asked if he needed help. Blaze said he did. He had been unable to think of everything he needed no matter how hard he tried, and so resorted to the only form of subterfuge with which he was familiar: the con.

“I been out of state,” he said, and bared his teeth at the saleslady in a grin that would have frightened a cougar. The saleslady smiled back bravely. The top of her head almost reached the midpoint of his ribcage. “I just found out my sister-in-law had a kid…a baby…while I was gone, see, and I want to outfit him. The whole works.”

She lit up. “I see. How generous of you. How sweet. What would you like in particular?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know nothing…anything…about babies.”

“How old is your nephew?”

“Huh?”

“Your sister-in-law’s child?”

“Oh! Gotcha! Six months.”

“Isn’t that dear.” She twinkled professionally. “What’s his name?”

Blaze was stumped for a moment. Then he blurted, “George.”

“Lovely name! From the Greek. It means, ‘to work the earth.’”

“Yeah? That’s pretty far out.”

She kept smiling. “Isn’t it. Well, what does she have for him now?”

Blaze was ready for this one. “None of the stuff they got now is too good, that’s the thing. They’re really strapped for cash.”

“I see. So you want to…start from the ground up, as it were.”

“Yeah, you catch.”

“Very generous of you. Well, the place to begin would be at the end of Pooh Avenue, in the Crib Corner. We have some very nice hardwood cribs…”

Blaze was stunned at how much it took to keep one tiny scrap of human being up and running. He had considered his take from the beer-store to be quite respectable, but he left Planet Baby with a nearly flat wallet.

He purchased a Dreamland crib, a Seth Harney cradle, a Happy Hippo highchair, an E-Z Fold changing table, a plastic bath, eight nightshirts, eight pairs of Dri-Day rubber pants, eight Hager’s infant undershirts with snaps he couldn’t figure out, three fitted sheets that looked like table napkins, three blankets, a set of crib bumpers that were supposed to keep the kid from whamming his brains out if he got restless, a sweater, a hat, bootees, a pair of red shoes with bells on the tongues, two pairs of pants with matching shirts, four pairs of socks that were not big enough to fit over his fingers, a Playtex Nurser set (the plastic liners looked like the bags George used to buy his dope in), a case of stuff called Similac, a case of Junior Fruits, a case of Junior Dinners, a case of Junior Desserts, and one place-setting with the Smurfs on them.

The baby food tasted shitty. He tried it when he got home.

As the bundles piled up in the corner of the Baby Shoppe, the glances of the shy young matrons became longer and more speculative. It became an event, a landmark in memory — the huge, slouching man in woodsman’s clothes following the tiny saleslady from place to place, listening, then buying what she told him to buy. The saleslady was Nancy Moldow. She was on commission, and as the afternoon progressed, her eyes took on an almost supernatural glow. Finally the total was rung up and when Blaze counted out the money, Nancy Moldow threw in four boxes of Pampers. “You made my day,” she said. “In fact, you may have made my career in infant sales.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Blaze said. He was very glad about the Pampers. He had forgotten the diapers after all.

And as he loaded up two shopping carts (a stockboy had the cartons containing the highchair and the crib), Nancy Moldow cried: “Be sure to bring the young man in to have his picture taken!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Blaze mumbled. For some reason a memory of his first mug shot flashed into his mind, and a cop saying, Now turn sideways and bend your knees again, High-pockets — Christ, who grew you so fuckin big?