The Little Friend (80 page)

He was scary, smelly, huge. Harriet—gasping, practically weeping with terror—clattered down towards the water. His shadow fell across the open trapdoor, blocking out the sun.
Clang:
ugly motorcycle boots stepped on the ladder overhead. Down he came after her,
clang clang clang clang
.

Harriet turned and threw herself off the ladder. She hit the water feet-first. Down she plunged, into the dark and cold, down until her feet struck bottom. Sputtering, gagging from the filthy taste, she pulled back her arms and shot up to the surface in a mighty breaststroke.

But just as she broke the surface, a strong hand closed fast on her wrist and hauled her up out of the water. He was chest-deep in the water, holding on to the ladder and leaning out sideways to grasp her by the arm, and his silvery eyes—glowing light and powerful in his sunburnt face—pierced her like a stab.

Flailing, twisting, fighting as hard as it was possible for her to fight and with a strength she’d never known she had before, Harriet struggled to get away but though she raised a tremendous spray of water it was no use. Up he hauled her—her waterlogged clothes were heavy; she could feel his muscles trembling from the strain—as Harriet kicked fan after fan of nasty water up into his face.

“Who you?” he shouted. His lip was split, his cheeks greasy and unshaven. “What you want with me?”

Harriet let out a strangled gasp. The pain in her shoulder was breathtaking. On his bicep squirmed a blue tattoo: murky octopus shape, a blurred Old English script, illegible.

“What are you doing up here? Speak up!” He shook Harriet by the arm until a scream burst unwilling from her throat and she kicked around desperately in the water for something to brace herself on. In a flash he pinned her leg with his knee and—with a high, womanish cackle—caught her up by the hair of the head. Swiftly, he pushed her face down into the filthy water and then hauled her up again, dripping. He was trembling all over.

“Now answer me, you little bitch!” he screamed.

————

In truth, Danny trembled as much from shock as anger. He’d acted so fast he hadn’t had time to think; and even though the girl was in his grasp, he could hardly believe it.

The girl’s nose was bloody; her face—rippling in the watery light—was streaked with rust and dirt. Balefully, she stared at him, all puffed up like a little barn owl.

“You’d better start talking,” he shouted, “and I mean
now.
” His voice boomed and ricocheted crazily inside the tank. Sunbeams filtered in through the dilapidated roof, breathing and flickering heavily on the claustrophobic walls, a sickly, remote light like a mine-shaft or a collapsed well.

In the dimness, the girl’s face floated above the water like a white moon. He became aware of the fast, small noise of her breaths.

“Answer me,”
he screamed, “what the hell are you doing up here,” and he shook her again, as hard as he could, leaning out over the water and holding tight to the ladder with his other hand, shook her by the neck until a scream burst from her throat; and as tired and frightened as he was, a surge of anger twisted through him and he roared over her cries so ferociously that her face went blank and the cries died upon her lips.

His head hurt.
Think
, he told himself,
think
. He had her, all right—but what to do with her? He was in a tricky position. Danny had always told himself he could dog-paddle in a pinch, but now (chest-deep in water, hanging on to the flimsy
ladder) he wasn’t so sure. How hard could it be, swimming? Cows could swim, even cats—why not him?

He became aware of the kid, craftily, trying to ease out of his grip. Sharply he caught her up again, digging his fingers deep into the flesh of her neck so that she yelped out.

“Listen here, prissy,” he said. “You speak up right quick and tell me who you are and maybe I won’t drownd you.”

It was a lie, and it sounded like a lie. From her ashy face, he could tell that she knew that, too. It made him feel bad because she was just a kid but there wasn’t any other way.

“I’ll let you go,” he said, convincingly he thought.

To his annoyance, the girl puffed out her cheeks and settled down into herself even further. He jerked her into the light so that he could see her better and a beam of sunlight fell across her white forehead in a clammy streak. Warm as it was, she looked half-frozen; he could practically hear her teeth clacking.

Again he shook her, so hard his shoulder hurt—but though the tears streamed down her face, her lips were clamped tight and she didn’t make a sound. Then, suddenly, from the corner of his eye, Danny caught sight of something pale floating in the water: little white blobs, two or three of them, half-sunk and washing in the water near his chest.

He drew back—frog eggs?—and the next instant screamed: a scream that astonished him, that boiled up high and scalding from his very bowels.

“Jesus Christ!” He stared at what he was seeing, unable to believe it, and then up at the top of the ladder, at the shreds of black plastic hanging in ribbons from the top rung. It was a nightmare, it wasn’t real: the drugs spoilt, his fortune gone. Farish dead, for nothing. Murder One if they caught him. Jesus.

“You done this?
You?
”

The kid’s lips moved.

Danny spotted a waterlogged bubble of black plastic floating on the water, and a howl broke from his throat like he’d stuck his hand in the fire. “What’s this? What’s this?” he screamed, forcing her head to the water.

Strangled reply, the first words she’d spoken: “A garbage bag.”

“What you done to it? Huh? Huh?” The hand tightened on Harriet’s neck. Down—quick—he plunged her head to the water.

————

Harriet had just enough time to breathe (horrified, eyes starting at the dark water) before he pushed her under. Bubbles charged white before her face. Soundlessly, she fought, amidst phosphorescence, pistol shots and echoes. In her mind, she saw a locked suitcase clatter along a riverbed,
thump thump, thump thump
, swept by the current, rolling end over end over smooth mucky stones, and Harriet’s heart was a struck piano key, the same deep note thumped sharp and urgent, as a vision like scratched sulfur flared behind her closed eyelids, a white Lucifer-streak leaping in the dark—

Pain tore through Harriet’s scalp as
splash
, up he jerked her, up by the roots of the hair. She was deafened by coughs; the din and echo overwhelmed her; he was shouting words she couldn’t understand and his face was stony red, swollen with rage and fearful to see. Retching, choking, she beat the water with her arms and kicked out for something to brace herself against, and when her toe struck the wall of the tank, she drew a full, satisfying breath. The relief was heavenly, indescribable (magical chord, harmony of the spheres); in she breathed, in and in until he shrieked and pushed her head down and the water crashed in her ears again.

————

Danny gritted his teeth and held on. Fat ropes of pain twisted deep in his shoulders, and the screeching and bouncing of the ladder had broken him out in a sweat. Against his hand, her head bobbed light and unstable, a balloon that might slide from beneath his hand at any moment, and the kicking and churning of her body made him seasick. No matter how he tried to brace himself, or settle into his position, he couldn’t get comfortable; dangling off the ladder, with nothing
solid under him, he kept kicking his legs around in the water and trying to step on something that wasn’t there. How long did it take to drown somebody? It was an ugly job and twice as ugly if you were doing it with only one arm.

A mosquito whined infuriatingly around his ear. He’d been jerking his head from side to side, trying to avoid it, but it seemed to sense, the fucker, that his hands weren’t free to swat it.

Mosquitos everywhere:
everywhere
. They’d finally found him, and they understood he wasn’t moving. Maddeningly, luxuriously, the stingers sank into his chin, his neck, the trembling flesh of his arms.

Come on, come on, just get it over with
, he told himself. He was holding her down with the right hand—the stronger hand—but his eyes were fixed on the hand that gripped the ladder. He’d lost a lot of the feeling in it, and the only way he could be sure he was still holding on was by staring at his fingers wrapped tight around the rung. Besides, the water frightened him, and if he looked at it, he was afraid he would black out. A drowning kid could pull down a grown man—a trained swimmer, a lifeguard. He’d heard those stories.…

All at once he realized she’d stopped struggling. For a moment he was quiet, waiting. Her head was soft beneath his palm. He let up a little. Then, turning to look, because he had to (but not really wanting to look) he was relieved to see her form washing limply in the green water.

Cautiously he eased up the pressure. She didn’t move. Pins and needles showered down his aching arms and he swung around on the ladder, swapping his grip and swatting the mosquitos out of his face as he did so. For a while longer he looked at her: indirectly, from the tail of his eye, as if at some accident on the highway.

All of a sudden, his arms started shaking so hard that he could scarcely hold on to the ladder. With a forearm, he wiped the sweat from his face, spit out a mouthful of something sour. Then, trembling all over, he grasped the rung above and straightened both elbows and hoisted himself up, the rusted iron squealing loudly beneath him. As tired as he was, as
badly as he wanted to get away from the water, he forced himself to turn back and give her body one long, last stare. Then he prodded her with his foot and watched her spin away, as inert as any log, off into the shadows.

————

Harriet had stopped being scared. Something strange had taken her over. Chains snapped, locks broke, gravity rolled away; up she floated, up and up, suspended in airless night: arms out, an astronaut, weightless. Darkness trembled in her wake, interlinked circlets, swelling and expanding like raindrop rings on water.

Grandeur and strangeness. Her ears buzzed; she could almost feel the sun, beating hot across her back, as she soared above ashy plains, vast desolations.
I know what it feels like to die
. If she opened her eyes, it would be to her own shadow (arms spread, a Christmas angel) shimmering blue on the floor of the swimming pool.

The water lapped the underside of Harriet’s body, and the roll approximated, soothingly, the rhythm of breath. It was as if the water—outside her body—were doing the breathing for her. Breath itself was a forgotten song: a song that angels sang. Breath in: a chord. Breath out: exultation, triumph, the lost choirs of paradise. She’d been holding her breath for a long time; she could keep on holding it for just a little longer.

A little longer. A little longer. Suddenly a foot pushed Harriet’s shoulder and she felt herself spinning, to the dark side of the tank. Gentle shower of sparks. On she sailed in the cold. Twinkle twinkle: shooting stars, lights far below, cities sparkling in the dark atmosphere. An urgent pain burned in her lungs, stronger every second but
a little longer
, she told herself,
just a little longer, must fight it out to the last …

Her head bumped the opposite wall of the tank. The force rolled her back; and in the same movement, the same backwards wash, her head bobbed just enough for her to sneak the tiniest split-second breath before she sloshed face down again.

Darkness again. A
darker
darkness, if that were possible,
draining the last glimmer of light from her eyes. Harriet hung in the water and waited, her clothes washing gently about her.

She was on the sunless side of the tank near the wall. The shadows, she hoped, and the motion of the water had camouflaged the breath (only the tiniest breath, at the very top of her lungs); it hadn’t been enough to relieve the terrible pain in her chest but it was enough to keep her going a little longer.

A little longer. Somewhere a stopwatch was ticking. For it was only a game, and a game she was good at.
Birds can sing and fish can swim and I can do this
. Sparkling needle-pricks, like icy raindrops, pattered over her scalp and the back of her arms.
Hot concrete and chlorine smells, striped beach balls and kiddie floats, I’ll stand in line to get a frozen Snickers bar or maybe a Dreamsicle.…

A little longer. A little longer. Deeper she sank, down into airlessness, her lungs glowing bright with pain. She was a small white moon, floating high over trackless deserts.

————

Danny clung to the ladder, breathing hard. The ordeal of drowning the kid had made him forget, temporarily, about the drugs, but now the reality of his situation had sunk in on him again, and he wanted to claw his face, to wail aloud. How the fuck was he going to get out of town with a blood-spattered car and no money? He’d been counting on the crystal meth, on moving that, in bars or on streetcorners if he had to. He had maybe forty dollars on him (had considered that driving over; couldn’t very well pay the man at the Texaco with methamphetamine) and there was also that Best Friend of Farish’s, that bill-stuffed wallet Farish always kept in his hip pocket. Farish liked to pull it out sometimes, and flash it around, at the poker table or at the pool hall, but how much money was actually in it, Danny didn’t know. If he was lucky—really lucky—maybe as much as a thousand dollars.

So there was Farish’s jewelry (the Iron Cross wasn’t worth anything, but the rings were) and the wallet. Danny passed a hand over his face. The money in the wallet would keep him going for a month or two. But after that—

Maybe he could get a fake ID. Or maybe he could get a job where he wouldn’t need one, doing migrant work, picking oranges or tobacco. But it was a poor reward, a poor future, next to the jackpot he’d expected.

And when they found the body, they’d be looking for him. The gun lay in the weeds, wiped clean, Mafia style. The smart thing to do would be to dump it in the river, but now that the drugs were gone, the gun was one of his only remaining assets. The more he thought about his choices the fewer and shittier they seemed.