The Little Friend

Cleaning made Danny feel good: in control. The trailer was trim and ship-shape, like the galley of a boat. Even Farish commented on how neat things were looking. Though Danny knew better than to touch any of Farish’s “projects” (the partially assembled machinery, the broken lawn mowers and carburetors and table lamps) it was possible to clean up around them, and getting rid of all the needless mess helped a lot. Twice a day he drove the trash to the garbage dump. After heating alphabet soup or frying bacon and eggs for Curtis, he washed the dishes and dried them immediately, instead of letting them sit. He’d even figured out how to stack everything in the cabinet so it didn’t take up as much room.

At night, he sat up with Farish. This was another good thing about speed: it doubled your day. There was time to work, time to talk, time to think.

And there was a lot to think about. The recent attacks—on the Mission, on Gum—had marshaled Farish’s attention to a single point. In the old days—before his head injury—Farish had a knack for reasoning out certain kinds of practical and logistical problems, and some of this quiet old calculating shrewdness was in the cock of his head as he and Danny stood together on the abandoned overpass, checking out the crime scene: the cobra’s decorated dynamite box, empty; a child’s red wagon; and a bunch of little footprints running back and forth in the cement dust.

“If it was her that done this,” said Farish, “I’m on kill the little bitch.” He was silent, hands on hips, staring down at the cement dust.

“What are you thinking?” Danny said.

“I’m thinking how did a kid move this heavy box.”

“With the wagon.”

“Not down the stairs at the Mission, she didn’t.” Farish chewed on his lower lip. “Also, if she stole the snake, why knock on the door and show her face?”

Danny shrugged. “Kids,” he said. He lit a cigarette, taking the smoke up through his nose, and snapped the big Zippo lighter shut. “They’re dumb.”

“Whoever done this wasn’t dumb. To pull this off took some kind of balls and timing.”

“Or luck.”

“Whatever,” said Farish. His arms were crossed across his chest—military-looking in the brown coverall—and all of a sudden he was staring at the side of Danny’s face in a way that Danny didn’t like.

“You wouldn’t do anything to hurt Gum, would you?” he said.

Danny blinked. “No!” He was almost too shocked to speak. “Jesus!”

“She’s old.”

“I know it!” said Danny, tossing his long hair rather aggressively out of his face.

“I’m just trying to think who else knew that it was her, not you, driving the Trans Am that day.”

“Why?” said Danny after a short, stunned pause. The glare off the highway was shining up in his eyes and it increased his confusion. “What difference does it make? All she said was she didn’t like to climb up in the truck. I told you that. Ask her yourself.”

“Or me.”

“What?”

“Or me,” said Farish. He was breathing audibly, in moist little huffs. “You wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, would you?”

“No,” said Danny, after a long, tense pause, his voice as flat as he could make it. What he felt like saying but was afraid to was fuck you. He spent fully as much time on the drug business as Farish, running errands, working in the lab—hell, he had to drive him everywhere he went—and Farish paid him nothing like an equal share, in fact didn’t pay him shit, just tossed him a ten or a twenty from time to time. True: for a while, it had beat the hell out of having a regular job. Days squandered shooting pool or driving Farish around in the car, listening to music, staying up all night: fun and games, and all the drugs he could do. But watching the sun come up every morning was getting a little eerie and repetitive, and lately it had got downright scary. He was tired of the life, tired of getting high, and was Farish about to pay Danny what he actually owed him so that he could leave town and go someplace where people didn’t know him (you didn’t stand much of a chance in this town if your last name was Ratliff) and get a decent job for a change? No. Why should Farish pay Danny? He had a good deal going, with his unpaid slave.

Abruptly, Farish said: “Find that girl. That’s your number-one priority. I want you to find that girl and I want you to find out what all she knows about this. I don’t care if you have to wring her fucking neck.”

————

“She’s already seen Colonial Williamsburg, she doesn’t care if I see it or not,” said Adelaide, and turned pettishly to look out the back window.