The Little Friend

On the counter in the kitchen stood a tin of saltine crackers which had been purchased before Ida’s departure and Libby’s death. Harriet curled up in Ida’s chair and ate a few of them. The chair still smelled like Ida, if she closed her eyes and breathed deep, but it was an elusive scent that vanished if she tried too hard to capture it. Today was the the first day that she hadn’t waked up crying—or wanting to cry—since the morning she left for Camp de Selby but though her eyes were dry and her head was clear she felt restless; the entire house lay still, as if waiting for something to happen.

Harriet ate the rest of her crackers, dusted her hands, and then—climbing on a chair—stood on tiptoe to examine the pistols on the top shelf of the gun cabinet. From among the exotic gambler’s pistols (the pearl-handled Derringers, the rakish dueling sets) she chose the biggest and ugliest pistol of the lot—a double-action Colt revolver, which was most like the pistols she had seen policemen use on television.

She hopped down, closed the cabinet and—placing the gun carefully on the carpet, with both hands (it was heavier than it looked)—ran to the bookcase in the dining room for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Guns

. See: Firearms.

She carried the F volume into the living room and used the revolver to prop it open as she sat, cross-legged on the carpet, puzzling over the diagram and text. The technical vocabulary baffled her; after half an hour or so she went back to the shelf for the dictionary but that wasn’t much help, either.

Again and again, she returned to the diagram, leaning over it on all fours. Trigger guard. Swing-out cylinder … but which way did it swing? The gun in the picture didn’t match the gun she had in front of her: crane latch, cylinder crane assembly, ejector rod.…

Suddenly something clicked; the cylinder swung out: empty. The first bullets she tried wouldn’t go in the holes, and neither would the second ones, but mixed in the same box were some different ones that seemed to slide in all right.

Scarcely had she time to begin loading the revolver when she heard the front door open, her mother stepping inside. Quickly, in one broad movement, she pushed everything under Ida’s armchair—guns, bullets, encyclopedia and all—and then stood up.

“Did you bring me some pancakes?” she called.

No answer. Harriet waited, tensely, staring at the carpet (for breakfast, she’d certainly come and gone in a hurry) and listening to her mother’s footfalls skimming up the steps—and was surprised to hear a hiccupy gasp, like her mother was choking or crying.

Harriet—brow wrinkled, hands on hips—stood where she was, listening. When she heard nothing, she went over cautiously and peeked into the hallway, just in time to hear the door of her mother’s room open, then shut.

Ages seemed to pass. Harriet eyed the corner of the encyclopedia, the outline of which protruded ever so slightly beneath the skirt of Ida’s armchair. Presently—as the hall clock ticked on, and still nothing stirred—she stooped and tugged the encyclopedia out from its hiding place and—lying on her stomach, chin propped in her hands—she read the “Firearms” article from beginning to end again.

One by one, the minutes threaded by. Harriet stretched out flat on the floor and lifted the tweed skirt of the chair and peered at the dark shape of the gun, at the pasteboard box of bullets lying quietly alongside it—and, heartened by the silence, she reached under the chair and slid them out. So absorbed was she that she did not hear her mother coming down the stairs until suddenly she said from the hallway, very close: “Sweetie?”

Harriet jumped. Some of the bullets had rolled out of the box. Harriet grabbed them up—fumbling—and stuck them by the handful into her pockets.

“Where are you?”

Harriet had barely enough time to scrape everything under the chair again, and stand up, before her mother appeared in the doorway. Her powder had worn off; her nose was red, her eyes moist; with some surprise, Harriet saw that she was carrying Robin’s little blackbird costume—how black it looked, how small, dangling limp and bedraggled from its padded satin hanger like Peter Pan’s shadow that he’d tried to stick on with soap.

Her mother seemed about to say something; but she had stopped herself, and was looking at Harriet curiously. “What are you doing?” she said.

In apprehension, Harriet stared at the tiny costume. “Why—” she said and, unable to finish, she nodded at it.

Harriet’s mother glanced at the costume, startled, almost as if she’d forgotten she was holding it. “Oh,” she said, and dabbed at the corner of her eye with a tissue. “Tom French asked Edie if his child could borrow it. The first ball game is with a team called the Ravens or something and Tom’s wife thought it would be cute if one of the children dressed up like a bird and ran out with the cheerleaders.”