The Little Friend

“Yes I do!” At Hely’s house, no matter how hot it was, they sat down and ate a real supper every night, big, hot, greasy suppers that left the kitchen sweltering: roast beef, lasagne, fried shrimp.

But her mother wasn’t listening. “Maybe some toast,” she said brightly, as she replaced the ice cream carton in the freezer.

“Toast?”

“Why, what’s wrong with that?”

“People don’t have toast for dinner! Why can’t we eat like regular people?” At school, in health class, when Harriet’s teacher had asked the children to record their diets for two weeks, Harriet had been shocked to see how bad her own diet looked when it was written down on paper, particularly on the nights that Ida didn’t cook: Popsicles, black olives, toast and butter. So she’d torn up the real list, and dutifully copied from a cookbook her mother had received as a wedding present (A Thousand Ways to Please Your Family) a prim series of balanced menus: chicken piccata, summer squash gratin, garden salad, apple compote.

“It’s Ida’s responsibility,” said her mother, with sudden sharpness, “to fix you something. That’s what I pay her for. If she’s not fulfilling her duties, then we’ll have to find somebody else.”

“Shut up!” screamed Harriet, overcome by the unfairness of this.

“Your father is after me all the time about Ida. He says she doesn’t do enough around the house. I know you like Ida but—”

“It’s not her fault!”

“—if she’s not doing what she should be, then Ida and I will have to have a little talk,” said her mother. “Tomorrow …”

She drifted out, with her glass of peppermint ice cream. Harriet—dazed and baffled by the turn their conversation had taken—put her forehead on the table.

Presently she heard someone come into the kitchen. Dully she glanced up to see Allison standing in the doorway.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” she said.

“Leave me alone!”

Just then, the telephone rang. Allison picked it up and said, “Hello?” Then her face went blank. She dropped the receiver so it swung by the cord.

“For you,” she said to Harriet, walking out.

The instant she said hello, Hely said in a rush: “Harriet? Listen to this—”

“Can I eat dinner at your house?”

“No,” said Hely, after a confused pause. Dinner at his house was over, but he’d been too excited to eat. “Listen, Essie did go berserk. She busted some glasses in the kitchen and left, and my dad drove by her house and Essie’s boyfriend came out on the porch and they got into a huge fight and Dad told him to tell Essie not to come back, she was fired. Yaaay! But that’s not why I called,” he said, rapidly; for Harriet had begun to stutter with horror at this. “Listen, Harriet. There isn’t much time. That preacher with the scar is down at the square right now. There’s two of them. I saw it with Dad, on the way home from Essie’s, but I don’t know how long they’re going to be there. They’ve got a loudspeaker. I can hear them from my house.”

Harriet put the telephone down on the counter and went to the back door. Sure enough, from the vine-tangled seclusion of the porch, she heard the tinny echo of a loudspeaker: someone shouting, indistinctly, the hiss and crackle of a bad microphone.

When she went back to the telephone Hely’s breath, on the other end, was ragged and secretive.

“Can you come out?” she said.

“I’ll meet you at the corner.”

It was after seven, still light outside. Harriet splashed some water on her face from the kitchen sink and went to the toolshed for her bicycle. As she flew down the driveway, the gravel popped under her tires until bump: her front wheel hit the street, and off she skimmed.

Hely, astride his bicycle, was waiting at his corner. When he saw her in the distance, he took off; pedalling furiously, she soon caught up with him. The street lamps were not yet lit; the air smelled like hedge clippings, and bug spray, and honeysuckle. Rose beds blazed magenta and carmine and Tropicana orange in the fading light. They sped past drowsy houses; hissing sprinklers; a yipping terrier who shot out after them, chased behind them for a block or two with his little short legs flying, and then fell away.