The Little Friend

Everyone was looking at him—Catfish, Odum, Farish, the men from the shrimp boat and the fat guy at the cash register.

As if from a great distance, he heard Lasharon Odum say, in her clear acidic voice: “He’s just looking at the funny books wi’ me Diddy.”

“Is that true? Is it?”

Hely—too petrified to speak—nodded.

“What’s your name?” This, gruffly from across the room. Hely glanced over and saw Farish Ratliff’s good eye trained on him like a power drill.

“Hely Hull,” said Hely without thinking, and then, aghast, clapped a hand over his mouth.

Farish chuckled dryly. “That’s the spirit, boy,” he said, screwing a square of blue chalk on the end of his cue, his good eye still fixed on Hely. “Never tell nothing that you aint made to tell.”

“Aw, I know who this little shit-weasel is,” Danny Ratliff said to his big brother, and then tossed his chin at Hely. “Say you called Hull?”

“Yes, sir,” said Hely miserably.

Danny let out a high, harsh laugh. “Yes sir. Listen at that. Don’t you sir me, you little—”

“Nothing wrong with the boy having manners,” said Farish rather sharply. “Hull, your name is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s kin to that Hull boy, drives an old Cadillac convertible,” said Danny to Farish.

“Diddy,” said Lasharon Odum loudly, in the tense silence. “Diddy, kin me and Rusty go look at the funny books?”

Odum gave her a pat on the bottom. “Run along, sugar. Lookahere,” he said drunkenly to Farish, stabbing the butt of his cue on the floor for emphasis, “we’re going to play this game let’s go on and play it. I got to get going.”

But Farish—much to Hely’s relief—had already begun to rack the balls, after one last, long, stare in his direction.

Hely concentrated every ounce of his attention on the comic book. The letters jumped slightly with his heartbeat. Don’t look up

, he told himself, even for a second. His hands were trembling, and his face burned so red that he felt it was drawing the attention of everyone in the room, as a fire would.

Farish made the break, and it was a resounding one, so loud that Hely flinched. A ball clunked into a pocket, followed four or five long, rolling seconds later by another.

The men from the shrimping boat went silent. Somebody was smoking a cigar, and the stink made Hely’s head ache, as did the garish ink jittering across the newsprint in front of him.

A long silence. Clunk. Another long silence. Very very quietly, Hely began to slink towards the door.

Clunk, clunk. The stillness practically vibrated with tension.

“Jesus!” someone cried. “You said the bastard couldn’t see!”

Confusion. Hely was past the cash register and nearly out the door when a hand shot out and grabbed him by the back of his shirt, and he found himself blinking into the face of the bald, bull-faced cashier. With horror, he realized that he was still clutching Secrets of Sinister House, which he had not yet paid for. Frantically, he dug in the front pocket of his shorts. But the cashier was not interested in him—was not even looking at him, though he had him by the shirt firmly enough. He was interested in what was going on at the pool table.

Hely dropped a quarter and a dime on the counter and—as soon as the guy let go his shirt—shot out the door. The afternoon sun hurt his eyes after the darkness of the pool hall; he broke into a run down the sidewalk, his vision so light-dazzled that he was hardly able to see where he was going.

There were no pedestrians on the square—too late in the afternoon—and only a few parked cars. Bicycle—where was it? He ran past the post office, past the Masonic Temple, and was halfway down Main Street before he remembered that he’d left it all the way back in the alley, behind the City Hall.

He turned and ran back, panting. The alley was slippery with moss and very dim. Once, when Hely was younger, he had ducked into it without paying attention where he was going and stumbled headlong over the shadowy, supine form of a tramp (an odorous heap of rags) stretched out nearly half the alley’s length. When Hely fell, smack over him, he sprang up, cursing, and grabbed Hely by the ankle. Hely had screamed as if boiling gasoline was being poured over him; in his agony to escape, he’d lost a shoe.

But now Hely was so frightened that he didn’t care who he stepped on. He darted in the alley—skidding on the moss-slick concrete—and retrieved his bicycle. There wasn’t enough room to ride it out, and hardly enough room to turn it around. He grabbed it by the handlebars, sawed and twisted it until he’d maneuvered the front wheel forward, and then he ran it out—where, to his horror, Lasharon Odum and the baby were standing on the sidewalk, waiting for him.

Hely froze. Languidly, she hiked the baby higher on her hip and looked at him. What she wanted from him he had absolutely no idea, but yet he was afraid to say anything and so he just stood there and looked back at her, heart galloping.