Blaze

HETTON HOUSE INCLUDED a large parcel of land in back of the main buildings, and here was planted what generations of boys had come to call the Victory Garden. The headmistress before Coslaw went slack on it, telling people she had a brown thumb rather than a green one, but Martin “The Law” Coslaw saw at least two shining potentialities in the Victory Garden. The first was to make a substantial saving in HH’s food-budget by having the boys grow their own vegetables. The second was to acquaint the boys with good hard work, which was the foundation of the world. “Work and mathematics built the pyramids,” Coslaw liked to say. And so the boys planted in the spring, weeded in the summer (unless they were “working out” on one of the neighboring farms), and harvested in the fall.

About fourteen months after the end of what Toe-Jam called “the fabulous blueberry summer,” John Cheltzman was among the pumpkin-picking crew at the north end of the VG. He took a cold, sickened, and died. It happened just that fast. He was packed off to Portland City Hospital on Halloween, while the rest of the boys were at their classes or “away schools.” He died in City Hospital’s charity ward, and he did it alone.

His bed at HH was stripped, then re-made. Blaze spent most of one afternoon sitting on his own bed and looking at John’s. The long sleeping room — which they called “the ram” — was empty. The others had gone to Johnny’s funeral. For most it was their first funeral, and they were quite excited about it.

Johnny’s bed frightened and fascinated Blaze. The jar of Shedd’s Peanut Butter that had always been stuffed down between the head of the bed and the wall was gone; he’d looked. So were the Ritz Crackers. (After lights-out, Johnny often said, “Everything tastes better when it shits on a Ritz,” which never failed to crack Blaze up.) The bed itself was made up in stark Army fashion, the top blanket pulled taut. The sheets were perfectly white and clean, even though Johnny had been an enthusiastic lights-out masturbator. Many nights Blaze lay in his own bed, looking up into the dark and listening to the soft creak of the springs as JC flogged his doggy. There were always stiff yellow places on his sheets. Christ, those stiff yellow places were on the sheets of all the bigger boys. They were on his own, right now, beneath him as he sat on his bed, looking at Johnny’s bed. It came to him like a revelation that if he died, his bed would be stripped and his come-stained sheets would be replaced with sheets like the ones that were on Johnny’s now — sheets that were perfectly white and clean. Sheets without a single mark on them to say someone lay there, dreamed there, was lively enough to squirt off there. Blaze began to cry silently.

It was a cloudless afternoon in early November, and the ram was flooded with impartial light. Squares of sun and the shadow-crosses of muntings lay on JC’s cot. After awhile Blaze got up and tore the blanket from the bed where his pal had slept. He threw the pillow the length of the ram. Then he stripped off the sheets and pushed the mattress on the floor. It still wasn’t enough. He turned the bed over on the mattress with its stupid little legs sticking up. It still wasn’t enough, so he kicked one of the jutting bed-legs and succeeded in nothing more than hurting his foot. After that he lay on his bed with his hands over his eyes and his chest heaving.

When the funeral was over, the other boys mostly left Blaze alone. No one asked him about the overturned bed, but Toe did a funny thing: he took one of Blaze’s hands and kissed it. That was a funny thing, all right. Blaze thought about it for years. Not all the time, but every now and then.

Five o’clock came. It was free time for the boys, and most of them were out in the yard, goofing around and working up an appetite for supper. Blaze went to Martin Coslaw’s office. The Law was sitting behind his desk. He had changed into his slippers and was rocked back in his chair, reading the Evening Express. He looked up and said, “What?”

“Here, you sonofabitch,” Blaze said, and beat him unconscious.

He set off walking for the New Hampshire border because he thought he would be picked up inside of four hours driving a hot car. Instead, he was collared in two hours. He was always forgetting how large he was, but Martin Coslaw didn’t forget, and it didn’t take the Maine State Police long to locate a six-foot-seven male Caucasian youth with a bashed-in forehead.

There was a short trial in Cumberland County District Court. Martin Coslaw appeared with one arm in a sling and a huge white head-bandage that dipped to cover one eye. He walked to the stand on crutches.