Blaze

After the dishes were washed, he ran the adhesive-patched extension cord out to the shed and hung a bulb over a beam. Blaze loved to paint. And Skylark Blue was one of his favorite colors. You had to like that name. It meant blue like a bird. Like a skylark.

He went back to the house and got a pile of old newspapers. George read a newspaper every day, and not just the funnies. Sometimes he read the editorials to Blaze and raged about the Redneck Republicans. He said the Republicans hated poor people. He referred to the President as That Goddam Wet in the White House. George was a Democrat, and two years ago they had put stickers for Democratic candidates on three different stolen cars.

All the newspapers were way old, and ordinarily that would have made Blaze feel sad, but tonight he was too excited about painting the car. He papered the windows and wheels. He Scotch-taped more pieces to the chrome trim.

By nine o’clock, the fragrant banana-smell of spray-paint filled the shed, and by eleven, the job was done. Blaze took off the newspapers and touched up a few places, then admired his work. He thought it was good work.

He went to bed, a little high from the paint, and woke up the next morning with a headache. “George?” he said hopefully.

No answer.

“I’m broke, George. I’m busted to my heels.”

No answer.

Blaze moped around the house all day, wondering what to do.

The night man was reading a paperback epic called Butch Ballerinas when a Colt revolver was shoved in his face. Same Colt. Same voice saying gruffly, “Everything in the register.”

“Oh no,” Harry Nason said. “Oh Christ.”

He looked up. Standing before him was a flat-nosed, Chinese horror in a woman’s nylon stocking that trailed down his back like the tail of a ski-cap.

“Not you. Not again.”

“Everything in the register. Put it in a bag.”

No one came in this time, and because it was a week-night, there was less in the drawer.

The stick-up man paused on the way out and turned back. Now, Harry Nason thought, I will be shot. But instead of shooting him, the stick-up man said, “This time I remembered the stocking.”

Behind the nylon, he appeared to be grinning.

Then he was gone.

Chapter 9

WHEN CLAYTON BLAISDELL, JR., came to Hetton House, there was a Headmistress. He didn’t remember her name, only her gray hair, and her big gray eyes behind her spectacles, and that she read them the Bible, and ended every Morning Assembly by saying Be good children and you shall prosper. Then one day she wasn’t in the office anymore, because she had a stroke. At first Blaze thought people were saying she had a stork, but finally he got it straight: stroke. It was a kind of headache that wouldn’t go away. Her replacement was Martin Coslaw. Blaze never forgot his name, and not just because the kids called him The Law. Blaze never forgot him because The Law taught Arithmetic.

Arithmetic was held in Room 7 on the third floor, where it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey in the winter. There were pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Sister Mary Hetton on the walls. Sister Hetton had pale skin and black hair scrooped back from her face and balled into a kind of doorknob on the back of her head. She had dark eyes that sometimes came back to accuse Blaze of things after lights-out. Mostly of being dumb. Probably too dumb for high school, just as The Law said.