Blaze

George knew how to stick it in, all right. Only finally he’d gone and stuck it in the wrong guy, too often and too far. That was how you ended up dead, with nothing smart to say. Now George was just dead, and Blaze was making his voice up in his mind, giving him the good lines. George had been dead since that crap game in the warehouse.

I’m crazy for even trying to go through with this, Blaze thought. A dum-dum like me.

But he pulled on his underwear shorts (checking them carefully for stains first), then a thermal undershirt, then a flannel top shirt and a pair of heavy corduroy pants. His Sears workboots were under the bed. His Army surplus parka was hanging on the doorknob. He hunted for his mittens and finally found them on the shelf over the dilapidated woodstove in the combination kitchen-living room. He got his checkered cap with the earflaps and put it on, careful to give the visor a little good-luck twist to the left. Then he went out and got the broom leaning against the door.

The morning was bright and bitter. The moisture in his nose crackled immediately. A gust of wind drove snow as fine as powdered sugar into his face, making him wince. It was all right for George to give orders. George was inside drinking coffee by the stove. Like last night, taking off for a beer, leaving Blaze to figure out the car. And there he would still be if he hadn’t had the dumb luck to find the keys somewhere, either under the floormat or in the glove compartment, he forgot which. Sometimes he didn’t think George was a very good friend.

He swept the tracks away with the broom, pausing several minutes to admire them before he started. How the treads stood up and cast shadows, mostly, little perfect things. It was funny how little things could be so perfect and no one ever saw them. He looked at this until he was tired of looking (no George to tell him to hurry up) and then worked his way down the short driveway to the road, brushing the tracks away. The plow had gone by in the night, pushing back the snow-dunes the wind made across these country roads where there were open fields to one side and t’other, and any other tracks were gone.

Blaze tromped back to the shack. He went inside. Now it felt warm inside. Getting out of bed it had felt cold, but now it felt warm. That was funny, too — how your sense of things could change. He took off his coat and boots and flannel shirt and sat down to the table in his undershirt and cords. He turned on the radio and was surprised when it didn’t play the rock George listened to but warmed right up to country. Loretta Lynn was singing that your good girl is gonna go bad. George would laugh and say something like, “That’s right, honey — you can go bad all over my face.” And Blaze would laugh too, but down deep that song always made him sad. Lots of country songs did.

When the coffee was hot he jumped up and poured two cups. He loaded one with cream and hollered, “George? Here’s your coffee, hoss! Don’t let it go cold!”

No answer.

He looked down at the white coffee. He didn’t drink coffee-with, so what about it? Just what about it? Something came up in his throat then and he almost hucked George’s goddam white coffee across the room, but then he didn’t. He took it oversink and poured it down instead. That was controlling your temper. When you were a big guy, you had to do that or get in trouble.

Blaze hung around the shack until after lunch. Then he drove the stolen car out of the shed, stopping by the kitchen steps long enough to get out and throw snowballs at the license plates. That was pretty smart. It would make them hard to read.

“What in the name of God are you doing?” George asked from inside the shed.

“Never mind,” Blaze said. “You’re only in my head, anyway.” He got in the Ford and drove out to the road.

“This isn’t very bright,” George said. Now he was in the back seat. “You’re driving around in a stolen car. No fresh paintjob, no fresh plates, no nothing. Where you going?”

Blaze didn’t say anything.

“You ain’t going to Ocoma, are you?”

Blaze didn’t say anything.

“Oh, fuck, you are,” George said. “Fuck me. Isn’t the once you have to go enough?”

Blaze didn’t say anything. He was dummied up.

“Listen to me, Blaze. Turn around. You get picked up, it’s out the window. Everything. The whole deal.”

Blaze knew that was right, but wouldn’t turn back. Why should George always get to order him around? Even dead, he wouldn’t stop giving orders. Sure, it was George’s plan, that one big score every small-timer dreams of. “Only we could really make it happen,” he’d say, but usually when he was drunk or high and never like he really believed it.