Blaze

But Blaze didn’t. Blaze backed away. A million Georges advanced on him, holding out their hands to take the baby. Blaze turned and plunged down another glittering aisle, bouncing from side to side like a pinball, trying to hold Joe protectively. This was no place for a kid.

Chapter 15

BLAZE CAME AWAKE in the first thin light of dawn, at first not sure where he was. Then everything came back and he collapsed on his side, breathing hard. His bed was drenched in sweat. Christ, what an awful dream.

He got up and padded into the kitchen to check on the baby. Joe was deeply asleep, lips pursed as if he was having big serious thoughts. Blaze looked at him until his eyes picked up the slow, steady rise of the kid’s chest. His lips moved, and Blaze wondered if Joe was dreaming about the bottle, or his mother’s titty.

Then he put on the coffee and sat down at the table in his long underwear. The paper he had bought yesterday was still there, amid the scraps of his kidnap note. He began to read the story about the kidnapping again, and his eye once more fell on the box at the bottom of page 2: Appeal to Kidnappers from Father, Page 6. Blaze turned over to page six, where he found a half-page broadside, outlined in black. He read:

TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE OUR CHILD!

WE WILL MEET ANY DEMANDS, ON CONDITION THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE US WITH EVIDENCE THAT JOE IS STILL ALIVE. WE HAVE THE GUARANTEE OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) THAT THERE WILL BE NO INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR COLLECTION OF THE RANSOM, BUT

WE MUST HAVE PROOF THAT JOE IS ALIVE

!

HE IS EATING THREE TIMES A DAY, CANNED BABY DINNERS AND VEG FOLLOWED BY 1/2 A BOTTLE. THE FORMULA HE’S USED TO IS CANNED MILK AND BOILED, STERILIZED WATER IN A RATIO OF 1:1.

PLEASE DO NOT HURT HIM, BECAUSE WE LOVE HIM SO VERY MUCH.

JOSEPH GERARD III

Blaze closed the paper. Reading that made him feel unhappy, like hearing Loretta Lynn sing “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad.”

“Oh Jeez, boo-hoo,” George said so suddenly from the bedroom that Blaze jumped.

“Shh, you’ll wake ‘im up.”

“Fuck that,” George said. “He can’t hear me.”

“Oh,” Blaze said. He guessed that was true. “What’s a ratty-o, George? It says make him his bottles in a ratty-o of one-something-one.”

“Never mind,” George said. “Really worried about him, aren’t they? ‘He is eating three times a day, followed by a half a bottle…don’t hurt him, cuz we wuv him-wuv him-wuv him.’ Man, this piles the pink horseshit to a new high.”

“Listen —” Blaze began.

“No, I won’t listen! Don’t tell me to listen! He’s all they have, right? That and about forty million smackareenies! Ought to get the money and then send the kid back in pieces. First a finger, then a toe, then his little —”

“George, you shut up!”

He clapped a hand over his mouth, shocked. He had just told George to shut up. What was he thinking about? What was wrong with him?

“George?”

No answer.

“George, I’m sorry. It’s just that you shouldn’t say things, you know, like that.” He tried to smile. “We have to give the kid back alive, right? That’s the plan. Right?”

No answer, and now Blaze started to feel really miserable.

“George? George, what’s wrong?”

No answer for a long time. Then, so softly he might not have heard it, so softly it might have only been a thought in his own head:

“You’ll have to leave him with me, Blaze. Sooner or later.” Blaze wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. “You better not do anything to ‘im, George. You just better not. I’m warning you.”

No answer.

By nine o’clock, Joe was up, changed, fed, and playing on the kitchen floor. Blaze was sitting at the table and listening to the radio. He had cleared off the scraps of paper and thrown out the hardened flour paste, and the only thing on the table was his letter to the Gerards. He was trying to figure out how to mail it.

He had heard the news three times. The police had picked up a man named Charles Victor Pritchett, a big drifter from Aroostook County who had been laid off some sawmill job a month earlier. Then he had been released. Probably that scrawny little door-opener Walsh couldn’t make him for it, Blaze reasoned. Too bad. A good suspect would have taken the heat off for awhile.

He shifted restlessly in his chair. He had to get this kidnapping off the ground. He had to make a plan about mailing the letter. They had a drawing of him, and they knew about the car. They even knew about the color — that bastard Walsh again.