Blaze

To Blaze, the floorwalker said: “Will you come with me, sir?”

“Yeah.” Blaze glared at Hogan. “Just let me get the shirt I wanted.”

“I think you’ll find that your shirt is a gift from Hardy’s today. But we would like to see you briefly on the third floor, ask for Mr. Flaherty. Room 7.”

Blaze nodded and turned to the shirts again. The floorwalker left. Not far away, one of the clerks was getting ready to punch NO SALE on the register George had robbed.

“Hey, you!” Blaze said to him, then beckoned.

The clerk came over…but not too close. “May I help you, sir?”

“This joint got a lunch counter?”

The clerk looked relieved. “First floor.”

“You the man,” Blaze said. He made a gun of his right thumb and forefinger, tipped the clerk a wink, and strolled off toward the escalator. The clerk watched him go. By the time he got back to his register, where all the bill compartments in the tray were now empty, Blaze was out on the street. George was waiting in a rusty old Ford. And off they drove.

They scored three hundred and forty dollars. George split it right down the middle. Blaze was ecstatic. It was the easiest job he had ever done. George was a mastermind. They would pull the gag all over town.

George took all this with the modesty of a third-rate magician who has just run the jacks at a children’s birthday party. He didn’t tell Blaze the gimmick went back to his grammar school days, when two buckies would start a fight by the meat-counter and a third would scoop the till while the owner was breaking it up. Nor did he tell Blaze they would be collared the third time they tried it, if not the second. He simply nodded and shrugged and enjoyed the big guy’s amazement. Amazement? Blaze was fucking awestruck.

They drove into Boston, stopped at a liquor store, and picked up two fifths of Old Granddad. Then they went to a double feature at the Constitution on Washington Street and watched car-chases and men with automatic weapons. When they left at ten o’clock that evening, they were both blotto. All four hubcaps had been stolen off the Ford. George was mad, even though the hubcaps had been as shitty as the rest of the car. Then he saw someone had also keyed off his VOTE DEMOCRAT bumper-sticker and started to laugh. He sat down on the curb, laughing until tears rolled down his sallow cheeks.

“Taken off by a Reagan-lover,” he said. “My fuckin word.”

“Maybe the guy who spoiled your fumper-licker wasn’t the same guy was took your wheelcaps,” Blaze said, sitting down beside George. His head was whirling, but it was a good whirl. A nice whirl.

“Fumper-licker!” George cried. He bent over as if he had a stomach cramp, but he was screaming with laughter. He tromped his feet up and down. “I always knew there was a word for Barry Goldwater! Fuckin fumper-licker!” Then he stopped laughing. He looked at Blaze with swimming, solemn eyes and said, “Blazer, I just pissed myself.”

Blaze began to laugh. He laughed until he fell back on the sidewalk. He had never laughed so hard, not even with John Cheltzman.

Two years later, George was busted for passing bad checks. Blaze’s luck was in again. He was getting over the flu, and George was alone when the cops grabbed him outside of a Danvers bar. He got three years — a stiff sentence for first-time forgery — but George was a known bunco and the judge was a known hardass. Perhaps even a fumper-licker. It was twenty months, with time served and time off for good behavior.

Before the sentencing, George took Blaze aside. “I’m going to Walpole, big boy. A year at least. Probably longer.”

“But your lawyer —”

“The fuckhead couldn’t defend the Pope on a rape charge. Listen: you stay away from Moochie’s.”

“But Hank said if I came around, he could —”

“And stay away from Hankie, too. Get a straight job until I come out, that’s how you roll. Don’t go trying to pull any cons on your own. You’re too goddam dumb. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Blaze said, and grinned. But he felt like crying.

George saw it and punched Blaze on the arm. “You’ll be fine,” he said.

Then, as Blaze left, George called to him. Blaze turned. George made an impatient gesture at his forehead. Blaze nodded and swerved the bill of his cap around to the good-luck side. He grinned. But inside he still felt like crying.

He tried his old job, but it was too square after life with George. He quit and looked for something better. For awhile he was a bouncer at a place in the Combat Zone, but he was no good at it. His heart was too soft.