The Little Friend (37 page)

That was two decades ago. Four brothers had been born since then—and grown up, and left home, or been disabled, or sent to prison; father and uncle and mother—as well as a stillborn baby sister—were all in the ground. Yet Gum thrived. Her death sentences from various doctors and health department officials had arrived, quite regularly, all throughout
Eugene’s childhood and adolescence, and Gum continued to receive them every six months or so. She delivered the bad news herself now, apologetically, now that their father was dead. Her spleen was enlarged and about to rupture; her liver, or her pancreas, or her thyroid had given out; she was eaten up with this kind of cancer or that kind of cancer—so many different kinds that her bones were blackened to charcoal from it, like chicken bones charred in the woodstove. And indeed: Gum did look eaten up. Unable to kill her, the cancer had taken up residence within her, and made her its comfortable home—nesting in her ribcage, rooted firmly and pushing its tentacle tips up through the surface of her skin in a spatter of black moles—so (it seemed to Eugene) if someone was to cut Gum open at this point, there was apt to be no blood in her at all, only a mass of poisonous sponge.

“Maam, if you don’t mind my asting,” Eugene’s visitor said, politely, “hi come your boys come to call you Gum?”

“Aint none of us know why, the name just
stuck,
” chortled Farish, bursting from his taxidermy shed accompanied by a beam of electric light on the sawgrass. He charged up behind her and put his arms around her and tickled her like they were sweethearts. “Ont me to chunk you in the back of that truck with them snakes, Gum?”

“Quit,” said Gum listlessly. She felt it undignified to show how much she liked this sort of rough attention, but she did like it all the same; and though her expression was blank, her tiny black eyes were bright with pleasure.

Eugene’s visitor peered, suspiciously, inside the open door of the taxidermy/methamphetamine shack, which was windowless, bathed in the bald light of a ceiling bulb: beakers, copper pipe, an incredibly complex and jerry-rigged network of vacuum pumps and tubing and burners and old bathroom faucets. Gruesome reminders of the taxidermy work—like an embryo cougar preserved in formaldehyde, and a clear plastic fishing tackle box full of different kinds of glass eyes—gave the set-up a feel of Frankenstein’s laboratory.

“Come on, come on in,” said Farish, wheeling around. He let go of Gum and grabbed up Loyal by the back of his shirt and half-rushed, half-threw him through the laboratory door.

Eugene followed, anxiously. His visitor—perhaps accustomed to similar rough behavior from brother Dolphus—did not seem nervous but Eugene had seen enough of Farish to know that Farish’s good humor was plenty to be nervous about.

“Farsh,” he said, stridently. “Farsh.”

Inside, the dark shelves were lined with glass jars of chemicals and rows of whiskey bottles with the labels scraped off, filled with some dark liquid that Farish used in his laboratory work. Danny, wearing a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves, was seated upon an up-ended plastic bucket picking at something or other with a small utensil. A glass filtering flask bubbled behind him; a stuffed chicken hawk, wings outspread, glowered from the shadowy rafters as if to sweep down and strike. On the shelves were also large-mouth bass, mounted on crude wooden displays; turkey feet, fox heads, house cats—from grown toms down to tiny kittens; woodpeckers, snake-birds, and an egret, half-stitched, and stinking.

“Tell you what, Loyal. I had somebody bring me in a bull moccasin
this
big around, wish I still had him to show to you because I do believe he was bigger than any you’ve got out in the truck there.…”

Chewing his thumbnail, Eugene edged inside and looked over Loyal’s shoulder, perceiving as if for the first time through Loyal’s eyes the stuffed kittens, the droop-necked egret with eye sockets wrinkled like cowrie shells. “For his taxidermy,” he said, aloud, when he felt Loyal’s gaze lingering upon the rows of whiskey bottles.

“The Lord means for us to love His kingdom, and guard it, and shepherd it beneath us,” said Loyal, gazing up at the grim walls which, between stink and carcass and shadow, were like a cross-section of Hell itself. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t know whether that means it’s right for us to mount ’em and stuff ’em.”

In the corner, Eugene spotted a pile of
Hustler
magazines. The picture on the top one was sickening. He laid an arm on Loyal’s arm. “Come on, let’s go,” he said; for he didn’t know what Loyal might say or do if he saw the picture, and unpredictable behavior of any sort was unwise around Farish.

“Well,” said Farish, “I don’t know but what you’re right, Loyal.” To Eugene’s horror, Farish leaned over his aluminum work-table and—tossing his hair over his shoulder—sniffed up a white streak of something Eugene presumed to be dope through a rolled-up dollar bill. “Excuse me here. But am I wrong in supposing, Loyal, that you’d eat a nice fat T-bone steak as fast as my brother here?”

“What is that?” inquired Loyal.

“Headache powder.”

“Farish here is disabled,” Danny chimed in helpfully.

“My goodness,” Loyal said mildly to Gum—who, at her snail’s creep, had only now just managed to shuffle from truck bed to doorway. “Affliction is certainly a fierce teacher amongst your children.”

Farish tossed his hair back and straightened from the table with a loud sniff. No matter that he was the only person in the household who collected disability checks; he did not care for his own misfortune to be mentioned in the same breath with Eugene’s facial disfigurement and certainly not with Curtis’s more extensive problems.

“Aint that the truth, Loyle,” said Gum, wagging her head mournfully. “The Good Lord has give me a terrible time with the cancer, and the arthuritis, and the sugar diabetes, and thisyere.…” She indicated a decayed-looking black-and-purple scab on her neck the size of a quarter. “That’s where poor old Gum had to have her veins scraped,” she said solicitously, craning her neck to one side so Loyal could have a better view. “That’s where they come right in with that cathetur, right in through there, you see.…”

“What time tonight yall fixing to revive these folks?” said Danny brightly, finger to nostril, after straightening up from his own dose of headache powder.

“We ort to leave,” said Eugene to Loyal. “Come on.”

“And then,” Gum was saying to Loyal, “then they insertioned this what-you-call balloon into my neck veins here, and they—”

“Gum, he’s got to go.”

Gum cackled, and caught the sleeve of Loyal’s long-sleeved white dress shirt with a black-speckled claw. She was
delighted to have discovered such a considerate listener, and was reluctant to let him get away quite so easily.

————

Harriet walked home from Tatty’s. The wide sidewalks were shaded by pecan and magnolia trees, littered with crushed petals from the crape myrtles; faintly, across the warm air, floated the sad evening chimes from the First Baptist Church. The houses on Main Street were grander than the Georgians and carpenter-Gothic cottages of George Street—Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire Victorian, relics of a cotton economy gone bust. A few, but not many, were still owned by descendants of the families who had built them; a couple had even been bought by rich people from out of town. But there were also a growing number of eyesores, with tricycles in the yard and clotheslines strung between the Doric columns.

The light was failing. A firefly blinked, down at the end of the street, and practically by her nose two more flashed in quick sequence,
pop pop
. She wasn’t quite ready to go home—not yet—and though Main Street got desolate and a bit frightening this far down, she told herself that she would walk a little further, down to the Alexandria Hotel. Everyone still called it the Alexandria Hotel though no hotel had existed there in Harriet’s lifetime—or indeed, even Edie’s. During the yellow fever epidemic of ’79, when the stricken town was deluged by ill and panicked strangers fleeing north from Natchez and New Orleans, the dying had been packed like sardines on the porch and the balcony of the overflowing hotel—screaming, raving, crying out for water—while the dead lay heaped on the sidewalk out front.

About every five years, someone tried to open up the Alexandria Hotel again and use it for a dry goods shop, or a meeting hall, or something or other; but such efforts never lasted long. Simply walking past the place made people uncomfortable. A few years ago, some people from out of town had tried to open a tearoom in the lobby, but now it was closed.

Harriet stopped on the sidewalk. Down at the end of the empty street loomed the hotel—a white, staring-eyed wreck,
indistinct in the twilight. Then, all of a sudden, she thought she saw something move in an upstairs window—something fluttery, like a piece of cloth—and she turned and fled, heart pounding, down the long darkening street, as if a flotilla of ghosts were skimming after her.

She ran all the way home without stopping, and clattered in at the front door—breathless, exhausted, spots jumping in front of her eyes. Allison was downstairs, sitting in front of the television.

“Mother is worried,” she said. “Go tell her you’re home. Oh, and Hely called.”

Harriet was halfway up the stairs when her mother flew down at her, with a great
flap flap flap
of bedroom slippers. “
Where
have you been? Answer me this minute!” Her face was flushed and shiny; she had thrown on a wrinkled old white dress shirt that belonged to Harriet’s father over her nightgown. She grabbed Harriet’s shoulder and shook her and then—incredibly—shoved her against the wall so that Harriet’s head knocked against a framed engraving of the singer Jenny Lind.

Harriet was mystified. “What’s the matter?” she said, blinking.

“Do you know how worried I’ve been?” Her mother’s voice was high and peculiar. “I’ve been
sick
wondering where you are.
Out … of … my … mind …
”

“Mother?” In confusion, Harriet smeared an arm over her face. Was she drunk? Sometimes her father behaved like this when he was home for Thanksgiving and had too much to drink.

“I thought you were dead. How dare you—”

“What’s wrong?” The overhead lights were harsh, and all Harriet could think of was getting upstairs to her bedroom. “I was only at Tat’s.”

“Nonsense. Tell me the truth.”

“I
was,
” said Harriet impatiently, attempting again to sidestep her mother. “Call her if you don’t believe me.”

“I certainly will, first thing in the morning. Right now, you tell me where you’ve been.”

“Go on,” said Harriet, exasperated at having her path blocked. “
Call
her.”

Harriet’s mother took a quick, angry step towards her, and Harriet, just as quickly, moved two steps down. Her frustrated gaze landed on the pastel portrait of her mother (spark-eyed, humorous, with a camel hair coat and a glossy teen-queen ponytail) which had been drawn on the street in Paris, during junior year abroad. The portrait’s eyes, starry with their exaggerated highlights of white chalk, seemed to widen with lively sympathy at Harriet’s dilemma.

“Why do you want to torture me like this?”

Harriet turned from the chalk portrait to stare back into the same face, much older, in a vaguely unnatural-looking way which suggested that it had been reconstructed after some terrible accident.

“Why?” screamed her mother. “Do you want to drive me crazy?”

A tingle of alarm prickled at Harriet’s scalp. Every so often Harriet’s mother behaved oddly, or got confused and upset, but not like this. It was only seven o’clock; in the summer, Harriet often stayed out playing past ten and her mother didn’t even notice.

Allison was standing at the foot of the stairs, with one hand on the tulip-shaped knob of the newel post.

“Allison?” Harriet asked, rather gruffly. “What’s the matter with Mama?”

Harriet’s mother slapped her. Though it didn’t hurt much, it made a lot of noise. Harriet put a hand to her cheek and stared at her mother, who was breathing fast, in odd little huffs.

“Mama? What did I do?” She was too shocked to cry. “If you were worried, why didn’t you call Hely?”

“I can’t be calling over at the Hulls and rousing the whole house at this hour of the morning!”

Allison, at the foot of the stairs, looked as stunned as Harriet felt. For some reason, Harriet suspected that she was at the bottom of the misunderstanding, whatever it was.

“You did something,” she roared. “What did you tell her?”

But Allison’s eyes—round, incredulous—were fastened on their mother. “Mama?” she said. “What do you mean, ‘morning’?”

Charlotte, a hand on the banister, looked stricken.

“It’s
night
. Tuesday night,” said Allison.

Charlotte was dead-still for a moment, eyes wide and her mouth slightly parted. Then she ran down the stairs—her heel-less slippers slapping loudly—and looked out the window by the front door.

“Oh, my word,” she said, leaning forward, both hands on the sill. She unsnapped the deadbolt; she stepped onto the front porch in the twilight. Very slowly—like she was dreaming—she walked to a rocking chair and sat down.

“Heavens,” she said. “You’re right. I woke up and the clock said six-thirty and, so help me, I thought it was six in the morning.”

For a while, there was no sound at all except the crickets, and the voices from up the street. The Godfreys had company: an unfamiliar white car stood in the driveway, and a station wagon was pulled along the curb in front. Wisps of smoke from the barbecue grill rose in the yellowy light on their back porch.

Charlotte looked up at Harriet. Her face was sweaty, too white, and the pupils of her eyes so huge and black and swallowing that the irises were shrunk to nothing, blue coronas glowing at the edges of eclipsed moons.

“Harriet, I thought you’d been gone all night.…” She was clammy and gasping, as if half-drowned. “Oh, baby. I thought you were kidnapped or dead. Mama had a bad dream and—oh, dear God. I hit you.” She put her hands over her face and started to cry.

“Come inside, Mama,” said Allison, quietly. “Please.” It wouldn’t do for the Godfreys or Mrs. Fountain to see their mother crying on the front porch in her nightgown.