Blaze (20 page)

Blaze looked at him dumbly.

“You want to drive truck?”

Blaze gulped. There seemed to be something caught in his throat that wouldn't go down. “I don't know how to drive, sir.”

“I'll teach you,” Bluenote said. “It ain't hard. Go on in and get y'self y'dinner.”

Blaze went in. The table was mahogany. It glittered like a pool. Places were set up and down both sides. Overhead glittered a chandelier, just like in a movie. Blaze sat down, feeling hot and cold. There was a girl on his left and that made his confusion worse. Every time he glanced that way, his eye fell on the jut of her breasts. He tried to do something about this and couldn't. They were just…
there
. Taking up space in the world.

Bluenote and the camp mom served out. There was beef stew and a whole turkey. There was a huge wooden bowl heaped with salad and three kinds of dressing. There was a plate of wax beans, one of peas, one of sliced carrots. There was a ceramic pot filled with mashed potatoes.

When all the food was on the table and everyone was seated before their shining plates, silence dropped like a rock. The boys and girls stared at this feast as if at a hallucination. Somewhere a belly rumbled. It sounded like a truck crossing a plank bridge.

“All right,” Bluenote said. He was sitting at the head of the table with the camp mom on his left. His son sat at the foot. “Let's have some grace.”

They bowed their heads and awaited the sermon.

“Lord,” Bluenote said, “bless these boys and girls. And bless this food to their use. Amen.”

They blinked at each other surreptitiously, trying to decide if it was a joke. Or a trick. Amen meant you could eat, but if that was the case now, they had just heard the shortest goddam grace in the history of the world.

“Pass me that stew,” Bluenote said.

That summer's raking crew fell to with a will.

Bluenote and his son showed up at the big house the next morning after breakfast driving two Ford two-tons. The boys and girls climbed into the backs and were driven to the first blueberry field. The girls were dressed in slacks this morning. Their faces were puffy with sleep and mostly free of make-up. They looked younger, softer.

Conversations began. They were awkward at first, but became more natural. When the trucks hit field-bumps, everyone laughed. There were no formal introductions. Sally Ann Robichaux had Winstons and shared out the pack; even Blaze, sitting on the end, got one. One of the ball-busters from South Portland began discussing girly books with Toe-Jam. It turned out that this fellow, Brian Wick, just happened to have come to the Bluenote farm equipped with a pocket-sized digest called
Fizzy
. Toe allowed that he had heard good things about
Fizzy,
and the two of them worked out a trade. The girls managed to ignore this and look indulgent at the same time.

They arrived. The low blueberry bushes were in full fruit. Harry and Douglas Bluenote dropped the truck tailgates and everyone jumped down. The field had been divided into strips with white cloth pennants fluttering from low stakes. Another truck—older, bigger—pulled up. This one had high canvas sides. It was driven by a small black man named Sonny. Blaze never heard Sonny say a single word.

The Bluenotes gave their crew short, close-tined blueberry rakes. Only Blaze did not get one. “The rake is designed to take nothin but ripe berries,” Bluenote said. Behind him, Sonny got a fishing pole and creel out of the big truck. He clapped a straw hat on his head and started across the field toward a line of trees. He didn't look back.

“But,” Bluenote said, raising a finger, “bein an invention of human hand, it ain't perfect. It'll get some leaves and greenies as well. Don't let that worry you, or slow you down. We pick em over back at the barn. And you'll be there, so don't worry we're shorting your wages. Got that?”

Brian and Toe-Jam, who would be inseparable pals by the end of the day, stood side by side, arms folded. They both nodded.

“Now, just so's you know,” Bluenote went on. His strange pale eyes glittered. “I get twenty-six cents the quart. You get seven cents. Makes it sound like I'm makin nineteen cents a quart on the sweat of your brow, but it ain't so. After all expenses, I make ten cents the quart. Three more'n you. That three cents is called capitalism. My field, my profit, you take a share.” He repeated: “Just so's you know. Any objections?”

There were no objections. They seemed hypnotized in the hot morning sunshine.

“Okay. I got me a driver; that be you, Hoss. I need a counter. You, kid. What's your name?”

“Uh, John. John Cheltzman.”

“Come over here.”

He helped Johnny up into the back of the truck with the canvas sides and explained what had to be done. There were stacks of galvanized steel pails. He was to run and hand one to anyone who called for a bucket. Each empty bucket had a blank strip of white adhesive tape on the side. Johnny had to print the picker's name on each full bucket. Full buckets were tucked into a slotted frame that kept them from falling over and spilling while the truck was moving. There was also an ancient, dusty chalkboard to keep running totals on.

“Okay, son,” Bluenote said. “Get em to line up and give em their buckets.”

John went red, cleared his throat, and whispered for them to line up. Please. He looked as though he expected to be ganged-up on. Instead, they lined up. Some of the girls were putting on headscarves or tucking gum into their mouths. John handed them buckets, printing their names on the ID tapes in big black capital letters. The boys and girls chose their rows, and the day's work began.

Blaze stood beside the truck and waited. There was a great, formless excitement in his chest. To drive had been an ambition of his for years. It was as if Bluenote had read the secret language of his heart.
If
he meant it.

Bluenote walked over. “What do they call you, son? Besides Hoss?”

“Blaze, sometimes. Sometimes Clay.”

“Okay, Blaze, c'mere.” Bluenote led him to the cab of the truck and got behind the wheel. “This is a three-speed International Harvester. That means it's got three gears ahead and one for reverse. This here stickin up from the floor's the gearshift. See it?”

Blaze nodded.

“This I got my left foot on is the clutch. See that?”

Blaze nodded.

“Push it in when you want to shift. When you got the gearshift where you want it, let the clutch out again. Let it out too slow and she'll stall. Let it out too fast—pop it—and you're apt to spill all the berries and knock your friend on his fanny into the bargain. Because she'll jerk. You understand?”

Blaze nodded. The boys and girls had already worked a little distance up their first rows. Douglas Bluenote walked from one to the next, showing them the best way to handle the rake and avoid blisters. He also showed them the little wrist-twist at the end of each pull; that spilled out most of the leaves and little twigs.

The elder Bluenote hawked and spat. “Don't worry about y'gears. To start with, all you need to worry about is reverse and low range. Now watch here and I'll show you where those two are.”

Blaze watched. It had taken him years to get the hang of addition and subtraction (and carrying numbers had been a mystery to him until John told him to think of it like carrying water). He picked up all the basic driving skills in the course of one morning. He stalled the truck only twice. Bluenote later told his son that he had never seen anyone learn the delicate balance between clutch and accelerator so quickly. What he said to Blaze was, “You're doin good. Keep the tires off the bushes.”

Blaze did more than drive. He also picked up everyone's pails, trotted them back to the truck, handed them to John, and brought back empties to the pickers. He spent the whole day with an unvarying grin on his face. His happiness was a germ that infected everyone.

A thundersquall came up around three o'clock. The kids piled into the back of the big truck, obeying Bluenote's admonition to be damn careful where they sat.

“I'll drive back,” Bluenote said, getting up on the running-board. He saw Blaze's face fall and grinned. “Give it time, Hoss—Blaze, I mean.”

“Okay. Where's that man Sonny?”

“Cookin,” Bluenote said briefly, punching the clutch and engaging first gear. “Fresh fish if we're lucky; more stew if we ain't. You want to run into town with me after dinner?”

Blaze nodded, too overcome to speak.

That evening he looked on silently with Douglas as Harry Bluenote haggled with the buyer from Federal Foods, Inc., and got his price. Douglas drove home behind the wheel of one of the farm's Ford pick-ups. No one talked. Watching the road unroll before the headlights, Blaze thought: I'm going somewhere. Then he thought: I
am
somewhere. The first thought made him happy. The second was so big it made him feel like crying.

Days passed, then weeks, and there was a rhythm to it all. Up early. Huge breakfast. Work until noon; huge lunch in the field (Blaze had been known to consume as many as four sandwiches, and nobody told him no). Work until the afternoon thundersqualls put an end to it or Sonny rang the big brass dinner-bell, strokes that came across the hot, fleeting day like sounds heard in a vivid dream.

Bluenote began letting Blaze drive to and from the fields along the back roads. He drove with increasing skill, until it was something like genius. He never spilled a single container from the low wooden slat-holders. After dinner he often went to Portland with Harry and Douglas and watched Harry do his dickers with the various food companies.

July disappeared wherever used months go. Then half of August. Soon summer would be over. Thinking of that made Blaze sad. Soon, Hetton House again. Then winter. Blaze could barely stand to think of another winter at Hetton.

He had no idea how powerful Harry Bluenote's liking for him had become. The big boy was a natural peacemaker and the picking had never gone more sweetly. Only one fistfight had broken out. Usually there were half a dozen. A boy named Henry Gillette accused one of the other South Portland boys of cheating at blackjack (technically not poker). Blaze simply picked Gillette up by the scruff of the neck and hauled him off. Then he made the other boy give Gillette his money back.

Then, in the third week of August, the icing on the cake. Blaze lost his virginity.

The girl's name was Anne Bradstay. She was in Pittsfield for arson. She and her boyfriend had burned down six potato warehouses between Presque Isle and Mars Hill before getting caught. They said they did it because they couldn't think of anything else to do. It was fun to watch them burn. Anne said Curtis would call her up and say “Let's go French-fryin,” and off they'd go. The judge—who had lost a son Curtis Prebble's age in Korea—had no understanding of such boredom, nor sympathy for it. He sentenced the boy to six years in Shawshank State Prison.

Anne got a year in what the girls called The Pittsfield Kotex Factory. She didn't really mind. Her stepfather had busted her cherry for her when she was thirteen and her older brother beat her when he was drunk, which was often. After that shit, Pittsfield was a vacation.

She was not a bruised girl with a heart of gold, only a bruised girl. She was not mean, but she was acquisitive, with a crow's eye for shiny things. Toe, Brian Wick, and two other boys from South Portland pooled their resources and offered Anne four dollars to lay Blaze. They had no motive save curiosity. Nobody told John Cheltzman—they were afraid he might tell Blaze, or even Doug Bluenote—but everyone else in camp knew.

Once a night, someone from the boys' cabins went down to the well on the road to the big house with two pails—one for drinking, one for washing. That particular night was Toe-Jam's turn, but he said he had the belly-gripe and offered Blaze a quarter to go in his stead.

“Naw, that's okay, I'll go for free,” Blaze said, and got the buckets.

Toe smirked at the quarter saved and went to tell his friend Brian.

The night was dark and fragrant. The moon was orange, just risen. Blaze walked stolidly, thinking of nothing. The buckets clashed together. When a light hand fell on his shoulder, he didn't jump.

“Can I walk with you?” Anne asked. She held up her own buckets.

“Sure,” Blaze said. Then his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he began to blush.

They walked side by side to the well. Anne whistled softly through her rotting teeth.

When they got there, Blaze shifted the boards aside. The well was only twenty feet deep, but a pebble dropped into its rock-lined barrel made a mysterious, hollow splash. Timothy grass and wild roses grew luxuriously all around the concrete pad. Half a dozen old oaks stood around, as if on guard. The moon peered through one of them now, casting pale gleams.

“Can I get your water?” Blaze asked. His ears were burning.

“Yeah? Tha'd be nice.”

“Sure,” he said, grinning thoughtlessly. “Sure it would.” He thought of Margie Thurlow, although this girl looked nothing like her.