The Little Friend

“Harriet, listen. Danny Ratliff is at the pool hall now, him and his brother. They’re the ones that shot at me from the bridge.”

“Wait,” said Harriet, who was very disoriented. With effort, she managed to suppress another sneeze.

“But I saw him, Harriet. He’s scary as hell. Him and his brother, too.”

On he babbled, about robbery and shotguns and theft and gambling; and gradually the significance of what he was saying crept in on Harriet. In wonder, she listened, her itch to sneeze now vanished; her nose was still running and, awkwardly, she twisted around and tried to scour her nose upon the skimpy cap-sleeve of her T-shirt, with a rolling motion of the head like Weenie the cat had used to do against the carpet when he had something in his eye.

“Harriet?” said Hely, breaking off in the middle of his narrative. He’d been so eager to tell her what happened that he’d forgot they weren’t supposed to be speaking.

“Here I am.”

A brief silence followed, during which Harriet became aware of the television gabbling cordially in the background on Hely’s end.

“When did you leave the pool hall?” she said.

“About fifteen minutes ago.”

“Reckon they’re still there?”

“Maybe. It looked like there was going to be a fight. The guys from the boat were mad.”

Harriet sneezed. “I want to see him. I’m going to ride my bike down there right now.”

“Whoa. No way,” said Hely in alarm, but she’d already hung up.

————

There had been no fight—nothing that Danny would call a fight, anyway. When, for a moment, it had looked like Odum was reluctant to pay up, Farish had picked up a chair and knocked him to the floor and begun to kick him methodically (while his kids cowered in the doorway) so that soon enough Odum was howling and begging Farish to take the money. The real worry was the men from the shrimp boat, who could have caused a lot of trouble if they’d wanted to. But though the fat man in the yellow sports shirt had some colorful things to say, the rest only muttered among themselves and even chuckled, though a bit angrily. They were on leave, and had money to burn.

To Odum’s pitiful appeals, Farish reacted most impassively. Eat or be eaten was his philosophy, and anything he was able to take from somebody else he regarded as his own rightful property. As Odum limped frantically back and forth, begging Farish to think of the kids, Farish’s attentive, cheerful expression reminded Danny of the way that Farish’s twin German shepherds looked after they had just killed, or were about to kill, a cat: alert, businesslike, playful.

No hard feelings, kitty. Better luck next time.

Danny admired Farish’s no-nonsense attitude, though he had little stomach for such things. He lit a cigarette even though he had a bad taste in his mouth from smoking too much.

“Relax,” said Catfish, sliding up behind Odum and laying a hand upon his shoulder. Catfish’s high spirits were inexhaustible; he was cheerful no matter what happened, and he was unable to understand that not everyone was so resilient.

With a feeble, half-crazed bluster—more pitiable than threatening—Odum swaggered back weakly and cried: “Get your hand off me, nigger.”

Catfish was unperturbed. “Anybody can play like you, brother, not going to have trouble winning that money back. Later on, if you feel like it, come find me over at the Esquire Lounge and maybe we can work out a little something.”

Odum stumbled back against the cinder-block wall. “My car,” he said. His eye was swollen and his mouth was bloody.

Unbidden, an ugly memory from early childhood flashed into Danny’s mind: pictures of naked women tucked inside a fish-and-game magazine his father had left by the commode in the bathroom. Excitement, but sick excitement, the black and pink between the women’s legs mixed up with a bleeding buck with an arrow through its eye on one page, and with a hooked fish on the next. And all this—the dying buck, sunk to its forelegs, the gasping fish—was mixed up with the memory of the struggling breathless thing in his nightmare.

“Stop it,” he said, aloud.

“Stop what?” said Catfish absent-mindedly, patting the pockets of his smoking jacket for the little vial.

“This noise in my ears. It just goes on and on.”

Catfish took a quick snort, and passed the vial to Danny. “Don’t let it drag you down. Hey Odum,” he called, across the room. “The Lord loveth a cheerful loser.”

“Ho,” said Danny, pinching his nose. Tears rose to his eyes. The icy, disinfectant taste at the back of his throat made him feel clean: everything surface again, everything sparkle on the glossy face of these waters which swept like thunder over a cesspool he was sick to death of: poverty, grease and rot, blue intestines full of shit.