Blaze

“Let’s run away,” John said. His narrow face was bright with excitement.

Blaze considered. “You mean, like…forever?”

“Naw, just till the wad’s gone. We’ll go to Boston…eat in big restaurants instead of Mickey D’s…get a hotel room…see the Red Sox play…and…and…”

But he could go no further. Joy overcame him. He leaped on Blaze, laughing and pounding his back. His body was lean under his clothes, light and hard. His face burned against Blaze’s cheek like the side of a furnace.

“Okay,” Blaze said. “That’d be fun.” He thought about it. “Jesus, Johnny, Boston? Boston!”

“Ain’t it a royal pisser!”

They began to laugh. Blaze carried John all the way around the toolshed, both of them laughing and pounding each other on the back. John finally made him stop.

“Someone’ll hear, Blaze. Or see. Put me down.”

Blaze recaptured the newspaper, which had begun to flutter all over the yard. He folded it up and rammed it down in his hip pocket. “We goin now, Johnny?”

“Not for awhile. Maybe not for three days. We gotta make a plan and we gotta be careful. If we aren’t, they’ll catch us before we get twenty miles. Bring us back. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, but I’m not very good at makin plans, Johnny.”

“That’s okay, I got most of it figured out already. The important thing is that they’ll think we just buzzed off, because that’s what kids do when they make out from this shitfarm, right?”

“Right.”

“Only we got money, right?”

“Right!”

Blaze was overcome with the deliciousness of it again, and pounded Johnny on the back until he almost knocked him over.

They waited until the following Wednesday night. In the meantime, John called the Greyhound terminal in Portland and found out there was a bus for Boston every morning at seven AM. They left Hetton House at a little past midnight, John figuring it would be safest to walk the fifteen miles into the city rather than attract attention by hitchhiking. Two kids on the road after midnight were runaways. Period.

They went down the fire escape, hearts thumping at each rusty rattle, and jumped from the lowest platform. They ran across the playground where Blaze had taken his first beatings as a newcomer many years before. Blaze helped John climb over the chainlink fence on the far side. They crossed the road under a hot August moon and started to walk, diving into the ditch whenever an infrequent car showed headlights on the horizon ahead or behind them.

They were on Congress Street by six o’clock, Blaze still fresh and excited, John with circles under his eyes. Blaze was carrying the wad in his jeans. The wallet they had thrown into the woods.

When they reached the bus depot, John collapsed onto a bench and Blaze sat down beside him. John’s cheeks were flushed again, but not with excitement. He seemed to be having trouble with his breath.

“Go over and get two round-trippers on the seven o’clock,” he told Blaze. “Give her a fifty. I don’t think it’ll be more, but have a twenty ready, just in case. Have it in your hand. Don’t let her see the roll.”

A policeman walked over, tapping his nightstick. Blaze felt his bowels turn to water. This was where it ended, before it had even gotten started. Their money would be taken away. The cop might turn it in, or he might keep it for himself. As for them, they would be driven back to HH, maybe in handcuffs. Black visions of North Windham Training Center rose before his eyes. And The Tin.

“Mornin, boys. Here kinda early, ain’tcha?” The clock on the depot wall read 6:22.

“Sure are,” John said. He nodded toward the ticket-cage. “Is that where a fella goes to get his ticket?”

“You bet,” the cop said, smiling a little. “Where you headed?”

“Boston,” John said.

“Oh? Where’s you boys’ folks?”

“Oh, him and me aren’t related,” John said. “This fella’s retarded. His name’s Martin Griffin. Deaf n dumb, too.”

“Is that so?” The cop sat down and studied Blaze. He didn’t look suspicious; he just looked like someone who had never seen a person before who’d scored the trifecta — deaf, dumb, and retarded.

“His mumma died last week,” John said. “He stays with us. My folks work, but since it’s summer vacation, they said to me, would you take ‘im, and I said I would.”

“Big job for a kid,” the cop said.

“I’m a little scared,” John said, and Blaze bet he was telling the truth there. He was scared, too. Scared plenty.

The cop nodded to Blaze and said, “Does he understand…?”

“What happened to her? Not too good.”

The cop looked sad.

“I’m takin him to his auntie’s house. That’s where he’s gonna stay for a few days.” John brightened. “Me, I might get to go to a Red Sox game. As sort of a reward for…you know…”

“Well, I hope you do, son. It’s an ill wind that don’t blow somebody a little good.”

They were both silent, considering this. Blaze, newly mute, was silent, too.

Then the cop said, “He’s a big one. Think you can handle him?”

“He’s big, but he minds. Want to see?”

“Well —”