Blaze

He straightened the ladder, then balanced the basket on the top rung, steadying it with one hand while he swung carefully onto a lower rung. The ladder shifted a little, and he paused. Then it held still.

He went down the ladder with the basket. At the bottom, he crooked the ladder under one arm again and crossed to where the Ford was parked.

He put the baby on the passenger seat, opened the back door, and worked the ladder inside. Then he got in behind the wheel.

But he couldn’t find the key. It wasn’t in either of his pants pockets. Not in his coat pockets, either. He was afraid he had lost it falling down and would have to go back over the fence to look for it when he saw it poking out of the ignition. He had forgotten to take it along. He hoped George hadn’t seen that part. If George hadn’t, Blaze wouldn’t tell him. Never in a million years.

He started the car and put the basket in the passenger footwell. Then he drove back to the little booth. The guard came out. “Leaving early, sir?”

“Bad cards,” Blaze said.

“It happens to the best of us. Good night, sir. Better luck next time.”

“Thanks,” Blaze said.

He stopped at the road, looked both ways, then turned toward Apex. He carefully observed all the speed limits, but he never saw a police car.

Just as he was pulling into his own driveway, baby Joe woke up and started to cry.

Chapter 12

ONCE BACK AT HETTON HOUSE, Blaze caused no trouble. He kept his head down and his mouth shut. The boys who had been big ‘uns when he and John had been little ‘uns either made out, went out to work, went away to vocational schools, or joined the Army. Blaze grew another three inches. Hair sprouted on his chest and grew lushly on his crotch. This made him the envy of the other boys. He went to Freeport High School. It was all right, because they didn’t make him do Arithmetic.

Martin Coslaw’s contract was renewed, and he watched Blaze come and go unsmilingly, watchfully. He did not call Blaze into his office again, although Blaze knew he could. And if The Law told him to bend over and take the paddle, Blaze knew he would do it. The alternative was North Windham Training Center, which was a formatory. He had heard that in the formatory boys were actually whipped — like on ships — and sometimes put in a little metal box called The Tin. Blaze didn’t know if these things were true, and had no wish to find out. What he knew was he was afraid of the formatory.

But The Law never called him in to be paddled, and Blaze never gave him cause. He went to school five days a week, and his chief contact with the Head became The Law’s voice, bellowing over the intercoms first thing in the morning and before lights-out at night. At Hetton House the day always began with what Martin Coslaw called a homily (homily grits, John sometimes said when he was feeling funny) and ended with a Bible verse.

Life moved along. He could have become the King of the Boys if he had wished, but he did not wish. He wasn’t a leader. He was the farthest thing from a leader. He tried to be nice to people, though. He tried to be nice to them even when he was warning them he would crack their skulls open if they didn’t lay off his friend Johnny. Pretty soon after Blaze came back, they did lay off him.

Then, on a summer night when Blaze was fourteen (and looking six years older in the right light), something happened.

The boys were hauled to town on an ancient yellow bus every Friday, assuming that as a group they didn’t have too many DDs — discipline demerits. Some would just wander aimlessly up and down Main Street, or sit in the town square, or go up an alley to smoke cigarettes. There was a pool hall, but it was off-limits to them. There was also a second-run movie theater, the Nordica, and those boys who had enough money to buy a ticket could go in and see how Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, or Clint Eastwood looked when those gentlemen were younger. Some of the boys earned their money delivering papers. Some mowed lawns in the summer and shoveled snow in the winter. Some had jobs at HH itself.

Blaze had become one of those. He was the size of a man — a big one — and the chief custodian hired him to do chores and odd jobs. Martin Coslaw might have objected, but Frank Therriault didn’t answer to that priss. He liked Blaze’s broad shoulders. A quiet man himself, Therriault also liked Blaze’s way of saying yes and no and not much more. The boy didn’t mind heavy work, either. He’d lug packs of Bird shingles up a ladder or hundred-pound sacks of cement all afternoon. He’d move classroom furniture and filing cabinets up and down stairs, not saying boo to a goose. And there was no quit in him. Best thing? He seemed perfectly happy with a dollar-sixty an hour, which allowed Therriault to pocket an extra sixty bucks a week. Eventually he bought his wife a swanky cashmere sweater. It had a boat neck. She was delighted.