The Little Friend (46 page)

“He was white?” said the preacher. He wore a leather vest over his short-sleeved white shirt, and his gray hair was slicked back in a high, wavy pompadour. “You sure about that?”

Harriet nodded; with a show of shyness she pulled a strand of hair over her face.

“You’re running around out here mighty late this evening. Aint I seen you down at the square earlier?”

Harriet shook her head, glanced back studiously at the house—and saw Hely, blank-faced, white as a bedsheet, skimming rapidly down the stairs. Down he flew, without seeing Harriet or anybody—and bumped smack into the one-eyed man, who was muttering into his beard and striding towards the house with his head down, very fast.

Hely staggered back, let out a ghastly, wheezing little scream. But Farish only shoved past him and clomped up the stairs. He was jerking his head, talking in a clipped, angry voice (“… better not try it,
better
not …”) as if to some invisible but definite creature about three feet high which was scrabbling up the steps after him. All at once his arm flew out and slapped empty air: hard, as if making contact with an actual presence, some pursuing hunchbacked evil.

Hely had vanished. Suddenly a shadow fell over Harriet. “Who you?”

Harriet—badly startled—glanced up to find Danny Ratliff standing over her.

“Just happened to see it?” he said, hands on hips, tossing the hair out of his face. “Where was you when all this window-breaking was going on? Where’d she come from?” he said to his brother.

Harriet stared up at him, flabbergasted. From the sudden
surprised flare of Danny Ratliff’s nostrils she knew that her revulsion was written plain all over her face.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped. Up close, he was wolfishly brown and thin, dressed in jeans and a skanky-looking long-sleeved T-shirt; his eyes—hooded, under heavy brows—had a mean, off-center cast that made her nervous. “What’s the matter with you?”

The preacher, who seemed quite agitated, glancing up and down the street, crossed his arms over his shirt-front and tucked his hands into his armpits. “Don’t worry,” he said, in his high-pitched, over-friendly voice. “We aint gone bite you.”

As afraid as she was, Harriet could not help noticing the blotchy blue tattoo on his forearm, and wondering what the picture was supposed to be. What kind of a preacher had tattoos on his arms?

“What’s wrong?” the preacher said to her. “You’re afret of my face, aren’t you?” His voice was pleasant enough; but then, quite without warning, he caught Harriet by the shoulders and thrust his face in hers, in a manner suggesting that his face was something to be very afraid of indeed.

Harriet stiffened, less at the burn (glossy red, with the fibrous, bloody sheen of raw membrane) than at his hands on her shoulders. From beneath a slick, lashless eyelid, the preacher’s eye sparkled, colorfully, like a blue chip of glass. Abruptly, his cupped palm darted out, as if to slap her, but as she flinched his eyes lit up: “Uh uh
uh!
” he said, triumphantly. With a light, infuriating touch, he stroked her cheek with his knuckle—and, passing his hand in front of her, produced unexpectedly a bent stick of gum, which he twirled between his first and middle fingers.

“Aint got much to say now, do you?” said Danny. “You was talking pretty good up there a minute ago.”

Harriet stared diligently at his hands. Though they were bony and boyish-looking, they were heavily scarred, the bitten nails rimmed in black, and covered with big ugly rings (a silver skull; a motorcycle insignia) like a rock star might wear.

“Whoever it was done this sure run off mighty fast.”

Harriet glanced up at the side of his face. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. He was looking up and down the street, and his eyes jumped around in a quick, jittery, suspicious way, like a bully on the playground who wanted to make sure that the teacher wasn’t looking before he hauled off and punched somebody.

“Ont it?” said the preacher, dangling the stick of gum in front of her.

“No thank you,” said Harriet, and was sorry the instant it was out of her mouth.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Danny Ratliff demanded suddenly, wheeling as if she’d insulted him. “What’s your name?”

“Mary,” whispered Harriet. Her heart pounded.
No thank you
, indeed. Grubby though she was (leaves in her hair, dirt on her arms and legs), who was going to believe she was a little redneck? Nobody: rednecks, least of all.

“Hoo!” Danny Ratliff’s high-pitched giggle was sharp and startling. “Can’t hear you.” He spoke fast, but without moving his lips much. “Speak up.”

“Mary.”

“Say Mary?” His boots were big and scary-looking, with lots of buckles. “Mary who? Who you belong to?”

A shivery little wind blew through the trees. Leaf-shadow trembled and shifted on the moonlit pavement.

“John—Johnson,” said Harriet, weakly.
Good grief
, she thought.
Can’t I do better than that?

“Johnson?” the preacher said. “Which Johnson is that?”

“Funny, you look like one of Odum’s to me.” Danny’s jaw muscles worked, furtively, on the left side of his mouth, biting down on the inside of his cheek. “How come you out here all by yourself? Aint I seen you down at the pool hall?”

“Mama …” Harriet swallowed, decided to start over. “Mama, she aint …”

Danny Ratliff, she noticed, was eyeing the expensive new camp moccasins Edie had ordered for her from L. L. Bean.

“Mama aint allow me to go there,” she said, awkwardly, in a small voice.

“Who is your mama?”

“Odum’s wife is past on,” said the preacher, primly, folding his hands.

“I aint askin you, I ast
her.
” Danny was gnawing at the side of his thumbnail and staring at Harriet in a stony way that made her feel very uncomfortable. “Look at her eyes, Gene,” he said to his brother, with a nervous toss of his head.

Congenially, the preacher stooped to peer into her face. “Well, derned if they’re not green. Where you get them green eyes from?”

“Look at her, staring at me,” said Danny shrilly. “Staring like that. What’s the matter with you, girl?”

The Chihuahua was still barking. Harriet—off in the distance—heard something that sounded like a police siren. The men heard it, too, and stiffened: but just then, from upstairs, rang a hideous scream.

Danny and his brother glanced at each other, and then Danny bolted for the stairs. Eugene—too shocked to move, able to think of nothing but Mr. Dial (for if this caterwauling failed to bring Dial and the sheriff, nothing would)—passed a hand over his mouth. Behind, he heard the slap of feet on the sidewalk; he turned to see the girl running off.

“Girl!” he shouted after her. “You, girl!” He was about to go after her when up above, the window sailed up with a crash and out flew a snake, the white of its underbelly pale against the night sky.

Eugene jumped back. He was too startled to cry out. Though the thing was stomped flat in the middle and its head was a bloody pulp, it filliped and twitched in convulsions on the grass.

Loyal Reese was all of a sudden behind him. “This isn’t right,” he said to Eugene, looking down at the dead snake, but Farish was already pounding down the back stairs with fists clenched and murder in his eyes and before Loyal—blinking like a baby—could say another word Farish swung him around and punched him in the mouth and sent him staggering.

“Who you working for?” he bellowed.

Loyal stumbled backward and opened his mouth—which was wet and bleeding thinly—and when nothing came out of
it after a moment or two, Farish glanced quickly over his shoulder and then punched him again, this time to the ground.

“Who sent you?” he screamed. Loyal’s mouth was bloody; Farish grabbed his shirtfront and jerked him up to his feet. “Whose idea was this? You and Dolphus, yall just thought you’d fuck with me, make some easy money, but yall are fucking with the wrong person—”

“Farish,” called Danny—white as chalk, running down the stairs two at a time—“you got that .38 in the truck?”

“Wait,” said Eugene, panic-stricken—guns in Mr. Dial’s rental apartment? a dead body? “Yall got it wrong,” he called, waving his hands in the air. “Everybody calm down.”

Farish pushed Loyal to the ground. “I got all night,” he said. “
Motherfucker
. Double-cross me and I’m on break ye teeth out and blow a hole in your chest.”

Danny caught Farish’s arm. “Leave him, Farish, come
on
. We need the gun upstairs.”

Loyal, on the ground, raised himself up on his elbows. “Is they out?” he said; and his voice was full of such innocent astonishment that even Farish stopped cold.

Danny staggered back in his motorcycle boots and wiped a dirty arm across his forehead. He looked shellshocked. “All over the fucking place,” he said.

————

“We’re missing one,” said Loyal, ten minutes later, wiping the blood-tinged spit from his mouth with his knuckle. His left eye was purple and swollen to a slit.

Danny said: “I smell something funny. This place smells like piss. Do you smell it, Gene?” he asked his brother.

“There he goes!” cried Farish suddenly, and lunged for a defunct heating register from which protruded six inches of snake tail.

The tail flicked, with a parting rattle, and disappeared down the register like a whiplash.

“Quit,” said Loyal to Farish, who was pounding the register with the toe of his motorcycle boot. Moving quickly to the register, he bent over it fearlessly (Eugene and Danny and
even Farish, ceasing his dance, stepping well back). Pursing his lips, he emitted an eerie, cutting little whistle:
eeeeeeeee
, like a cross between a teakettle and a wet finger rubbed across a balloon.

Silence. Loyal puckered up again, with bloodied and swollen lips
—eeeeeeee
, a whistle to raise the hair on the back of your neck. Then he listened, with his ear to the ground. After a full five minutes of silence he climbed painfully to his feet and rubbed the palms of his hands on his thighs.

“He’s gone,” he announced.

“Gone?” cried Eugene. “Gone where?”

Loyal wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He’s went down in that other apartment,” he said gloomily.

“You ort to be in the circus,” said Farish, looking at Loyal with newfound respect. “That’s some trick. Who taught you how to whistle like that?”

“Snakes mind me,” said Loyal, modestly, as they all stood staring at him.

“Ho!” Farish clapped an arm around him; the whistle had so impressed him that he’d forgotten all about being angry. “Reckon you can teach me to do that?”

Staring out the window, Danny muttered: “Something funny’s going on around here.”

“What’s that?” snapped Farish, wheeling on him. “You got something to say to me, Danny boy, you say it to my face.”

“I said
something funny’s going on around here
. That door was open when we come up here tonight.”

“Gene,” said Loyal, clearing his throat, “you need to call these people downstairs. I know exactly where that fellow’s gone. He’s went down that retchister, and he’s making himself comfortable in the hot water pipes.”

“Reckon why he don’t come on back?” said Farish. He pursed his lips and tried, unsuccessfully, to imitate the unearthly whistle that Loyal had employed to lure six timber rattlers, one by one, from varying parts of the room. “Aint he trained as good as the others?”

“Aint none of em trained. They don’t like all this hollering and stomping. Nope,” said Loyal, scratching his head as he looked down into the register, “he’s gone.”

“Hi you going to get him back?”

“Listen, I got to get to the doctor!” wailed Eugene, wringing his wrist. His hand was so swollen that it looked like a blown-up rubber glove.

“I be damned,” Farish said brightly. “You
are
bit.”

“I told you I was bit! There, there, and there!”

Loyal said, coming over to see: “He don’t always use all his venom in one strike.”

“The thing was hanging off of me!” The room was starting to turn black at the edges; Eugene’s hand burned, he felt high and not unpleasant, the way he felt in the sixties, back in prison before he was saved, when he’d got off by huffing cleaning fluid in the laundry room, when the steamy cinder-block corridors closed in around him until he was seeing everything in a narrow but queerly pleasing circle, like looking through an empty toilet-paper roll.

“I been bit worse,” said Farish; and he had, years before, while lifting a rock from a field he was bush-hogging. “Loyle, you got a whistle to fix that?”

Loyal picked up Eugene’s swollen hand. “Oh, my,” he said glumly.

“Go on!” said Farish gaily. “Pray for him, preacher! Call down the Lord for us! Do your stuff!”

“It don’t work like that. Boy, that little fellow got you good!” Loyal said to Eugene. “Right in the vein here.”

Restlessly, Danny ran a hand through his hair and turned away. He was stiff and aching from adrenaline, muscles strung like a high-tension wire; he wanted another bump; he wanted to get the hell out of the Mission; he didn’t care if Eugene’s arm fell off, and he was good and sick of Farish too. Here Farish had dragged him all the way into town—but had Farish gone out and secured the drugs in Loyal’s truck while he had the chance? No. He’d sat around for nearly half an hour, reared back luxuriantly in his chair, relishing the captive audience he had in the polite little preacher, bragging and boasting and telling stories that his brothers had heard a million times already and just generally running his mouth. Despite all the not-so-subtle hints that Danny had dropped, he
still
hadn’t gone out and moved the drugs from the army-surplus
bag to wherever he was going to hide them. No: he was far too interested now in Loyal Reese and the rattlesnake roundup. And he’d let up on Reese too easy:
way
too easy. Sometimes, when Farish was high, he locked into ideas and fancies and couldn’t shake them loose; you could never tell what was going to seize his attention. Any irrelevant little thing—a joke, a cartoon on television—could distract him like a baby. Their father had been the same. He might be beating Danny or Mike or Ricky Lee half to death over some triviality, but let him overhear some irrelevant news item and he’d stop in mid-blow (leaving his son crumpled and crying on the floor) and run into the next room to turn up the radio.
Cattle prices rising!
Well, imagine that.