The Little Friend (36 page)

“Farish,
I
can’t eat that much,” she was murmuring (despite the fact that the moment had passed, and her grandsons all had plates of their own now). “Give this plate to Brother Eugene.”

Danny rolled his eyes and pushed back slightly from the table. His patience was badly frayed from the crank, and everything in his grandmother’s manner (her weak gesture of refusal, her tone of suffering) was calculated—sure as the multiplication table—to make Farish whip around and blow up at Eugene.

And sure enough it did.
“Him?”
Farish glowered down at the end of the table at Eugene, who sat gobbling his food with hunched shoulders. Eugene’s appetite was a sore point, a source of relentless strife, since he ate more than anyone in the household and contributed little to the expenses.

Curtis—mouth full—reached out a greasy paw to take the piece of chicken that his grandmother proffered with trembling hand across the table. Quick as a flash, Farish slapped it down: an ugly whack that made Curtis’s mouth drop open.

A few globules of half-chewed food fell out on the tablecloth.

“Aww … let im have it if he wants it,” Gum said, tenderly. “Here, Curtis. You want you some more to eat?”

“Curtis,” said Danny, bristling with impatience; he didn’t think he could stand to watch this unpleasant little suppertime drama unroll for the thousandth time. “Here. Take mine.” But Curtis—who didn’t understand the exact nature of this game and never would—was smiling and reaching out for the chicken leg trembling in front of his face.

“If he takes that,” growled Farish, looking up at the ceiling, “I swear I’ll knock him from here to—”

“Here, Curtis,” Danny repeated.
“Take mine.”

“Or mine,” said the visiting preacher, quite suddenly, from his place by Eugene at the end of the table. “There’s plenty. If the child wants it.”

They had all forgotten that he was there. Everyone turned to stare at him, an opportunity Danny seized, inconspicuously, to lean over and scrape his entire disgusting dinner onto Curtis’s plate.

Curtis burbled ecstatically at his windfall. “Love!” he exclaimed, and clasped his hands.

“It all sure tastes mighty good,” said Loyal, politely. His blue eyes were feverish, and too intense. “I thank you all.”

Farish paused with the cornbread. “You don’t favor Dolphus in the face one bit.”

“Well, you know, my mother thinks I do. Dolphus and me are fair, like her side of the family.”

Farish chuckled, and began to shovel peas into his mouth with a wedge of cornbread: though he was visibly, clatteringly, high, he always managed to pack his dinner down around Gum so as not to hurt her feelings.

“Tell you one thing about Cain, Brother Dolphus sho did know how to raise it,” he said through a mouthful of food. “Back there in Parchman, he told you to hop, you jumped. And you
didn’t
jump, well then, he’d jump
you
. Curtis, goddamn,” he exclaimed, scraping his chair back, rolling his eyes. “You like to make me sick. Gum, can’t you make him get his hands out of the food plate?”

“He don’t know any better,” said Gum, standing creakily
to push the serving platter out of Curtis’s range and then easing herself back down into her chair, very slowly, as if into an ice-cold bath. To Loyal she made a nod of obeisance. “I’m afret the Good Lord didn’t spend quite enough time on this one here,” she said, with an apologetic wince. “But we love our little monstrer, don’t we, Curtis?”

“Love,” cooed Curtis. He offered her a square of cornbread.

“Naw, Curtis. Gum don’t need that.”

“God don’t make mistakes,” said Loyal. “His loving eye is on us all. Blessed is He who varies the aspect of all His creatures.”

“Well, yall better hope God’s not looking the other way when yall start handling them rattlesnakes,” said Farish, casting a sly eye at Eugene as he poured himself another glass of iced tea. “Loyal? That your name?”

“Yes sir. Loyal Bright. The Bright is after my mama’s side.”

“Well, tell me this, Loyal, what’s the point in hauling all them reptiles down here if they have to stay in the damn box? How many days you been running this revival?”

“One,” said Eugene, through a mouthful of food, not looking up.

“I can’t predetermine to handle,” said Loyal. “God sends the anointment on us, and sometimes he don’t. The Victory is His to bestow. Sometimes it pleases Him to try our faith.”

“I reckon that makes you feel pretty foolish, standing up in front of all those people and not a snake in sight.”

“No sir. The serpent is His creation and serves His will. If we take up and handle, and we’re not in accordiance with His will, we’ll be hurt.”

“All right, Loyal,” said Farish, leaning back in his chair, “would you say that Eugene here isn’t quite right with the Lord? Maybe that’s what’s holding you up.”

“Well, tell you one thing,” said Eugene very suddenly, “it don’t help for people to poke at the snakes with sticks and blow cigarette smoke in on em and mess with em and tease em—”

“Now wait just a—”

“Farsh, I seen you fooling with them out back in the truck there.”

“Farsh,”
said Farish, in a high derisive voice. Eugene had a funny way of pronouncing certain words.

“Don’t make mock of me.”

“Yall,” said Gum weakly. “Yall, now.”

“Gum,” said Danny and then, more softly: “Gum”; for his voice was so loud and sudden that it had made everybody at the table jump.

“Yes, Danny?”

“Gum, I meant to ast …” He was so wired that he could not now remember the connection between what everyone was talking about and what was now coming out of his mouth. “Did you get picked for Jury Duty?”

His grandmother folded a piece of white bread in half and dipped it in a puddle of corn syrup. “I did.”

“What?” said Eugene. “When’s the trial start?”

“Wednesday.”

“Hi you going to get there with the truck broke?”

“Jury Duty?” said Farish, sitting bolt upright. “How come I aint heard of this?”

“Poor old Gum don’t like to bother you, Farish.…”

“The truck’s not bad broke,” said Eugene, “just broke so she can’t drive it. I can hardly turn the wheel on it.”

“Jury duty?”
Roughly, Farish pushed his chair back from the table. “And why are they calling up an invalid? Looks like they could find some able-bodied man—”

“I’m happy to serve,” said Gum, in a martyred voice.

“Hun, I know it, all I’m saying is that looks like they could find somebody else. You’ll have to sit down there all day, in those hard chairs, and what with your arthritis—”

Gum said, in a whisper: “Well, I’ll tell you the truth, what worries me is this nausea I’ve got from the other medicine I’m taking.”

“I hope you told them that this is like to put you in the hospital again. Dragging a poor old crippled lady out of her house—”

Diplomatically, Loyal interrupted: “What kindly trial are you on, maam?”

Gum sopped her bread in the syrup. “Nigger stoled a tractor.”

Farish said: “They’re going to make you go all the way down there? Just for that?”

“Well, in my time,” Gum said peacefully, “we didn’t have all this nonsense about a big trial.”

————

When there was no answer to her knock, Harriet nudged Tat’s bedroom door open. In the dimness, she saw her old aunt dozing on the white summer bedspread with her glasses off and her mouth open.

“Tat?” she said, uncertainly. The room smelled of medicine, Grandee water, vetivert and Mentholatum and dust. A fan purred in sleepy half-circles, stirring the filmy curtains to the left and then the right.

Tat slept on. The room was cool and still. Silver-framed photographs on the bureau: Judge Cleve and Harriet’s great-grandmother—cameo at her throat—before the turn of the century; Harriet’s mother as a 1950s debutante, with elbow gloves and a fussy hairdo; a hand-tinted eight-by-ten of Tat’s husband, Mr. Pink, as a young man and a glossy newspaper shot—much later—of Mr. Pink accepting an award from the Chamber of Commerce. On the heavy dressing table stood Tat’s things: Pond’s cold cream, a jelly jar of hairpins, pincushion and Bakelite comb and brush set and a single lipstick—a plain, modest little family, neatly arranged as if for a group picture.

Harriet felt as if she might cry. She flung herself on the bed.

Tat woke with a jolt. “
Gracious
. Harriet?” Blindly, she struggled up and fumbled for her glasses. “What’s wrong? Where’s your little company?”

“He went home. Tatty, do you love me?”

“What’s the matter? What time is it, honey?” she said, squinting uselessly at the bedside clock. “You’re not crying, are you?” She leaned over to feel Harriet’s forehead with her palm, but it was damp and cool. “What on earth’s the matter?”

“Can I spend the night?”

Tat’s heart sank. “Oh, darling. Poor Tatty’s half dead with allergies.… Please tell me what’s wrong, honey? Are you feeling bad?”

“I won’t be any trouble.”

“Darling. Oh, darling. You are
never
any trouble for me and Allison isn’t either, but—”

“Why don’t you or Libby or Adelaide
ever
want me to stay over?”

Tat was flummoxed. “Now Harriet,” she said. She reached over and switched on her reading lamp. “You know that’s not true.”

“You never ask me!”

“Well, look, Harriet. I’ll get the calendar. Let’s pick a date next week, and by then I’ll be feeling better and …”

She trailed away. The child was crying.

“Look here,” she said, in a sprightly voice. Though Tat tried to act interested when her friends rhapsodized about their grandchildren, she wasn’t sorry that she didn’t have any of her own. Children bored and irritated her—a fact she struggled valiantly to conceal from her little nieces. “Let me run get a washcloth. You’ll feel better if.… No, you come with me. Harriet, stand up.”

She took Harriet’s grubby hand and led her down the dark hall to the bathroom. She turned on both faucets in the sink and handed her a bar of pink toilet soap. “Here, sweetheart. Wash your face and hands … hands first. Now then, splash a little of that cool water on your face, that’ll make you feel better.…”

She moistened a washcloth and, busily, dabbed Harriet’s cheeks with it, then handed it to her. “There, darling. Now, will you take this nice cool rag and wash around your neck and under your arms for me?”

Harriet did—mechanically, a single pass over her throat and then reaching the cloth up under her shirt for a couple of feeble swipes.

“Now. I know you can do better than that. Doesn’t Ida make you wash?”

“Yes, maam,” said Harriet, rather hopelessly.

“How come you’re so dirty, then? Does she make you get in the bathtub every day?”

“Yes, maam.”

“Does she make you stick your head under the faucet and check to see if the soap is wet after you get out? It doesn’t do a bit of good, Harriet, if you climb into a tub of hot water and just sit there. Ida Rhew knows good and well that she needs to—”

“It’s not Ida’s fault! Why does everybody blame everything on Ida?”

“Nobody’s
blaming
her. I know you love Ida, sweetheart, but I think your grandmother may need to have a little talk with her. Ida hasn’t done anything wrong, it’s just that colored people have different ideas—oh, Harriet. Please,” said Tatty, wringing her hands. “No.
Please
don’t start with that again.”

————

Eugene, rather anxiously, followed Loyal outside after dinner. Loyal looked at peace with the world, ready for a leisurely after-dinner stroll, but Eugene (who had changed into his uncomfortable black preaching suit after dinner) was clammy all over with anxiety. He glanced at himself in the side mirror of Loyal’s truck and ran a quick comb through his greasy gray ducktail. The previous night’s revival (off on a farm somewhere, on the opposite side of the county) had not been a success. The curiosity seekers who’d shown up at the brushwood arbor had snickered, and thrown bottle tops and bits of gravel, and ignored the collection plate, and got up and jostled away before the service was over—and who could blame them? Young Reese—with his eyes like blue gas flames, and his hair blown backwards as if he’d just seen an angel—might have more faith in his little finger than the lot of these sniggerers combined, but not one snake had come out of the box, not one; and though Eugene was embarrassed by this, neither was he eager to bring them out with his own hands. Loyal had assured him of a warmer reception tonight, at Boiling Spring—but what did Eugene care about Boiling Spring? Sure, there was a regular congregation of the faithful over
there, and it belonged to somebody else. Day after tomorrow, they were going to try drumming up a crowd on the square—yet how in the world could they when their biggest crowd draw—the snakes—was prohibited by law?

Loyal seemed not at all bothered by any of this. “I’m here to do God’s work,” he’d said. “And God’s work is to battle Death.” The previous night, he’d been untroubled by the jeers of the crowd; but though Eugene feared the snakes, and knew himself incapable of taking them up in his own hands, neither was he looking forward to another such night of public humiliation.

They were standing out on the lighted concrete slab they all called “the carport,” with a gas grill at one end and a basketball goal at the other. Eugene glanced nervously at Loyal’s truck—at the tarp which draped the caged snakes piled in back, at the bumper sticker which read, in slanted, fanatical letters:
THIS WORLD IS NOT MY HOME!
Curtis was safely inside, watching television (if he saw them leaving, he would cry to come along), and Eugene was about to suggest that they just get in the truck and go when the screen door creaked open and out shuffled Gum, in their direction.

“Hello there, maam!” called Loyal cordially.

Eugene turned partially away. These days he was having to fight a constant hatred of his grandmother, and he had to keep reminding himself that Gum was only an old lady—sick, too, sick for years. He remembered the day long ago when he and Farish were little, his father stumbling home drunk in the middle of the afternoon and yanking them out of the trailer into the yard, as if for a whipping. His face was bright red, and he spoke through clenched teeth. But he wasn’t angry: he was crying.
O Lord, I been sick this morning every since I heard. Lord God have mercy. Poor Gum won’t be with us more than a month or two. The doctors say she’s eat to the bone with cancer
.