Blaze

Going down the ladder with a sleeping infant was impossible, and Blaze did not even consider it. He went to the stairs. The hallway was carpeted, but the stairs weren’t. His first footfall on the first polished wood riser was loud, obvious, and unmuffled. He paused, listening, drawn straight to attention in his anxiety, but the house slept on.

Now, though, his nerves began to unravel. The baby seemed to gain weight in his arms. Panic nibbled at his will. He could almost glimpse movement in the corners of his eyes — first one side, then the other. At each step he expected the baby to stir and cry. And once it started, its wails would wake the house.

“George —” he muttered.

“Walk,” George said from below him. “Just like in the old joke. Walk, don’t run. Toward the sound of my voice, Blazer.”

Blaze began to walk down the stairs. It was impossible to be soundless, but at least none of his steps was as loud as that horrible first one. The baby joggled. He couldn’t hold him perfectly still, no matter how he tried. So far the kid was still sleeping, but any minute, any second —

He counted. Five steps. Six. Seven. Eighter from Decatur. It was a very long staircase. Made, he supposed, for colorful cunts to sweep up and down at big dances like in Gone with the Wind. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nine —

It was the last step and his unprepared foot came down hard again: Clack! The baby’s head jerked. It gave a single cry. The sound was very loud in the stillness.

A light went on upstairs.

Blaze’s eyes widened. Adrenaline shot into his chest and belly, making him stiffen and squeeze the baby to him. He made himself loosen up — a little — and stepped into the shadow of the staircase. There he stood still, his face twisted in fear and horror.

“Mike?” a sleepy voice called.

Slippers shuffled to the railing just overhead.

“Mikey-Mike, is that you? Is it you, you bad thing?” The voice was directly overhead, speaking in a stage-whispery, others-are-sleeping tone. It was an old voice, querulous. “Go in the kitchen and see the nice saucer of milk Mama left out.” A pause. “If you knock over a vase, Mama will spank.”

If the kid cried now —

The voice over Blaze’s head muttered something too full of phlegm for him to make out, and then the slippers shuffled away. There was a pause — it felt like a hundred years long — and then a door clicked softly shut, closing away the light.

Blaze stood still, trying to control his need to tremble. Trembling might wake the kid. Probably would wake the kid. Which way was the kitchen? How was he going to take the ladder and the kid both? What about the electric wire? What — how — where —

He moved in order to stifle the questions, creeping up the hall, bent over the wrapped child like a hag with a bindle. He saw double glass doors standing ajar. Waxed tiles glimmered beyond. Blaze pushed through and was in a dining room.

It was a rich room, the mahogany table meant to hold twenty-pound turkeys at Thanksgiving and steaming roasts on Sunday afternoons. China glowed behind the glass doors of a tall, fancy dresser. Blaze passed on like a wraith, not pausing, but even so, the sight of the great table and the chairs with their soldierly high backs awoke a smoldering resentment in his breast. Once he had scrubbed kitchen floors on his knees, and George said there were lots more just like him. Not just in Africa, either. George said people like the Gerards pretended people like him weren’t there. Well let them put a doll in that crib upstairs and pretend it was a real baby. Let them pretend that, if they were so good at pretending.

There was a swing door at the far end of the dining room. He went through it. Then he was in the kitchen. Looking out the frost-jeweled window next to the stove, he could see the legs of his ladder.

He looked around for a place to lay the baby while he opened the window. The counters were wide, but maybe not wide enough. And he didn’t like the idea of putting a kid on the stove even if the stove was turned off.

His eye lit on an old-fashioned market basket hanging from a hook on the pantry door. It looked roomy enough, and it had a handle. It had high sides, too. He took it down and put it on a small wheeled serving cart standing against one wall. He tucked the baby into it. The baby stirred only slightly.

Now the window. Blaze lifted it, and was confronted with a storm window beyond that. There had been no storm windows upstairs, but this one was screwed right into the frame.

He began opening cupboards. In the one below the sink, he found a neat pile of dishwipers. He took one out. It had an American eagle on it. Blaze wrapped his mittened hand in it and punched out the storm window’s lower pane. It shattered with relative quiet, leaving a large, jagged hole. Blaze began to poke out the pieces that pointed in toward the center like big glass arrows.

“Mike?” That same voice. Calling softly. Blaze stiffened.

That wasn’t coming from upstairs. That was —