Tom and Wayne and even Kurt seemed like they were who they always had been, and maybe prison had solidified or changed that, but they really remained the same as described in their files.
Not Blaze. His file indicated that when he’d gotten arrested, he’d been doing and dealing drugs. Maybe being in prison had become a poison in his system. But not once, at least not in Gabe’s presence, had Blaze behaved like someone for whom drugs were the goal. He seemed too smart for that, too alert to his surroundings, as if looking for which way to jump.
Suddenly Gabe wished he’d had more than a two-hour seminar on the drug world because if he had, he wouldn’t be so puzzled now.
“Can I sit?” asked Gabe. When Blaze shrugged, Gabe sat on Tom’s cot, hoping he wouldn’t mind. “I’m here to listen, if you need it.”
“It won’t matter,” said Blaze. “You won’t want to hear what I have to say.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because nobody else believes me about what happened, even if it is the truth.”
Gabe considered this as he leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, hands loosely clasped between his legs, which was the least aggressive stance he knew. “You talking about whether or not you’re guilty?” asked Gabe.
During every day of their training, they had been reminded as to how many times they’d hearI wasn’t even thereorI’m not guiltyorIt was a setup.
Gabe believed in the law, and felt that most of the time, if you got arrested, it was for a good reason. Then again, he couldn’t jump to conclusions; he needed to hear what Blaze had to say. That was, if Gabe could get Blaze to trust him, even for a minute.
“Blaze—”
“Look, it doesn’t matter, okay?” Blaze’s expression was hard as he sat up and pulled his hands into even tighter fists. “My family is shit. It’s in my file, which you have no doubt read. We’re carnies. We follow carnivals. We work the booths. We scam people all the time. I was taught to pick pockets at a young age. Then we started doing the driveway scam.”
“I read a bit about the driveway scam,” said Gabe. “But it was only a paragraph. How did it work?”
With a glance at Gabe, Blaze’s words slowed down, as though to make sure he could get the idea into Gabe’s obviously stupid head that way.
“You get an old person,” said Blaze. “Or two old people, a couple. Doesn’t matter. Old people are lonely and they are rich. You tell them you’ve been authorized to redo their driveway. The longer the driveway, the better. You tell them that you need a deposit and could they write a check, please? Mostly they do because we’ve got uniforms, and badges, and a pickup truck dressed to look like it’s from a company in the area. Then we pocket the check and never come back. That’s the scam.”
“That’s pretty mean,” said Gabe. He almost wasn’t worried about making that particular judgment, because Blaze seemed so upset and indignant about it.
“I didn’t like it.” Blaze frowned, his lips pressed together. “I couldn’t stand their old faces trying to comprehend what we were asking for. It was like they didn’t have anybody to check in with about it, and my dad would put the pressure on so hard, there wasn’t anything they could do but write the check. We could have made thousands, but we stopped doing it.”
“That’s not what you got arrested for,” said Gabe. “Though it’s easy to see there was something in this scam that didn’t sit right with you.”
“Listen, I was raised to scam people from the day I was born.” Blaze’s scowl trembled like he was holding himself back from bursting out screaming. “But yeah, the driveway scam was too much.”
“You were arrested for doing drugs, possibly dealing, and for domestic violence.” Gabe nodded, because the arrest record had been written quite clearly.
“I wasarrested,” said Blaze, quite firmly and slowly, “because I was getting my GED and my family didn’t like it.”
“Your GED?” asked Gabe, though he knew that Blaze had been studying for it while behind bars. It also occurred to him that since Blaze was twenty-four years old, the gap between him and any formal education was at least five years. Blaze had been trying to better himself, to lift himself out of the swamp of his own past, which took hard work and guts.
“I was trying to get it, but they didn’t like it. And I wasarrestedbecause my brother Alex was doing and dealing drugs and he had a hard-on for teaching me a lesson about it. When he attacked me and tried to beat me up and the cops came? My folks said I was the guilty one. Me. Not Alex.”
“You were arrested,” said Gabe, feeling solemn and still at the certainty he had inside of him at that moment. “Because you weren’t following the family tradition.” Anger flared all over again at Blaze’s plight. He knew what that felt like to be rejected by an entire family, but he stemmed his reaction, knowing that sharing his feelings wasn’t what Blaze needed now.
“That’s why they won’t visit me.” Blaze seemed to crumple, shoulders rolling forward, his hair falling in his eyes again. “They’ve cut me off and now I don’t have nobody.”
Blaze’s eyes looked hot and shiny, as though he was near to tears and Gabe was horrified with himself for pushing so hard, too hard, because it was suddenly obvious to him that Blaze hadn’t been completely hardened by prison, had never developed a poker face. Was struggling, more than Tom or Wayne seemed to be.
Gabe was the only one to blame for bringing Blaze to where he was, sitting on his cot, struggling to compose himself. To pretend he was rubbing the corner of his eye with a hard palm because there was something in his eye and he needed to get it out.
“That sounds rough,” said Gabe, wanting to allow Blaze his privacy at the same time he wanted to help Blaze feel more settled. “I know what it’s like to be alone, and I’m sorry I suggested that you call them.”
“Get out,” said Blaze, barking it. “Pleaseget out.”
Enough was enough, and Gabe knew it. Anything more he might say, however kindly intended, would only make it worse.
