Blaze

He went back in and looked around rather wildly. He took the radio from its place on the windowsill, unplugged it, wrapped the cord around it, and set it on the table. In the bedroom he hauled his old brown suitcase — battered and scuffed white at the corners — from under the bed. He piled the remainder of his clothes in, helter-skelter. On top of these he put a couple of girly magazines and a few comic-books. He took the suitcase and his radio out to the car, which was starting to get full. Then he went back to the house for the last time.

He spread a blanket, put Joe on it, wrapped him up, and put the entire bundle inside his jacket. Then he zipped the jacket up. Joe was awake now. He peered out of his cocoon like a gerbil.

Blaze carried him out to the car, got in behind the wheel, and put Joe down on the passenger seat.

“Now, don’t go rolling around there, Skinner,” he said.

Joe smiled and promptly pulled the blanket over his head. Blaze snorted a little chuckle, and in the same instant he saw himself putting the pillow over Joe’s face. He shuddered.

He backed out of the shed, turned the car around, and trundled down the driveway…and although he didn’t know it, he was beating an area-wide necklace of roadblocks by less than two hours.

He used back roads and secondary roads to skirt Portland and its suburbs. The steady sound of the motor and the heater’s output sent Joe back to dreamland almost immediately. Blaze tuned to his favorite country music station, which came on at sunrise. He heard the morning scripture reading, then a farm report, then a right-wing editorial from Freedom Line in Houston that would have sent George into paroxysms of profanity. Finally came the news.

“The search for the kidnappers of Joseph Gerard IV continues,” the announcer said gravely, “and there may be at least one new development.”

Blaze pricked up his ears.

“A source close to the investigation claims that the Portland Postal Authority received a possible ransom demand in the mail last night, and sent the letter by car directly to the Gerard home. Neither local authorities nor Federal Bureau of Investigation lead agent Albert Sterling would offer any comment.”

Blaze paid no attention to that part. The Gerards had gotten his letter, and that was good. Next time he would have to call them. He hadn’t remembered to bring any newspapers or envelopes or anything to make paste with, anyway. And calling was always better. It was quicker.

“And now the weather. Low pressure centered over upper New York State is expected to sweep east and hit New Englanders with the biggest snowstorm of the season. The National Weather Service has posted blizzard warnings, and snow may begin as early as noon today.”

Blaze turned onto Route 136, then turned off it two miles up and onto the Stinkpine Road. When he passed the pond — now frozen — where he and Johnny had once watched beavers building their dam, he felt a dreamy and powerful sense of deja vu. There was the abandoned farmhouse where Blaze and Johnny and an Italian-looking kid had once broken in. They had found a stack of shoeboxes in one closet. There had been dirty pictures in one of them — men and women doing everything, women and women, even one of a woman and a horse or donkey — and they had looked all afternoon, their emotions drifting from amazement to lust to disgust. Blaze couldn’t remember the Italian-looking kid’s real name, only that everyone had called him Toe-Jam.

Blaze turned right at the fork a mile up and onto a pitted tertiary road that had been carelessly (and narrowly) plowed, then allowed to drift back in. A quarter of a mile up, beyond a curve the boys had called Sweet Baby Turn (Blaze had known why in the long-ago, but it escaped him now), he came to a chain hung across the road. Blaze got out, went over to it, and pulled the rusted padlock free of its hasp with one gentle tug. He had been here before, and then half a dozen hard yanks had been needed to break the lock’s old mechanism.

Now he laid the chain down and surveyed the road beyond. It hadn’t been plowed since the last storm, but he thought the Mustang would roll okay if he backed up first and got some speed. He’d come back later and fix the chain across the road; it wouldn’t be the first time. This place drew him.

And best? Snow was coming, and snow would bury his tracks.

He dropped his bulk into the bucket seat, shifted into reverse, and backed up two hundred feet. Then he dropped the drive-selector all the way down into low range and hit the gas. The Mustang went like its name. The engine was snarling and the RPM gauge the owner had installed was redlining, so Blaze knocked the gearshift up into drive with the side of his hand, figuring he could downshift again if his little stolen pony really started to labor.