The Little Friend

Farish turned in his seat to look out the back window. “Damn it, I told you to look for that kid. You’re telling me this is the first time you’ve seen her?”

“Yes,” said Danny sharply. He was shaken by how suddenly the girl had jumped into view, at the uncomfortable tail end of his sight, just like she’d done at the water tower (though he couldn’t tell Farish about the water tower; he wasn’t supposed to be at the water tower). And now, on this roundabout circuit, going nowhere (vary your route, said Farish, vary your travel times, keep checking your mirrors) he’d turned the corner and seen—who but the girl? standing on a porch.

All kinds of echoes. Breathing shining stirring. A thousand mirrors glinted out of the treetops. Who was the old lady? As the car slowed, she’d met Danny’s gaze, had met it dead on for a confused and curious flash, and her eyes were exactly the same as the girl’s.… For a heartbeat, everything had dropped away.

“Go,” Farish had said, slapping the dash; and then, when they were around the corner, Danny had to pull the car over because he felt way too high, because something weird was going on, some whacking multi-level speed telepathy (escalators going up and up, disco balls revolving on every floor); they both sensed it, they didn’t even have to say a word and Danny could hardly even look at Farish because he knew they were both remembering the same exact damn freaky thing that had happened about six o’clock that morning: how (after being up all night) Farish had walked into the living room in undershorts, with a carton of milk, and at the same time a bearded cartoon character in undershorts holding a carton of milk had strode out across the television set. Farish stopped; the character stopped.

Are you seeing this? said Farish.

Yes, said Danny. He was sweating. His eyes met Farish’s for an instant. When they looked back at the television, the picture had changed to something else.

Together they sat in the hot car, their hearts pounding almost audibly.

“Did you notice,” said Farish, suddenly, “how every single truck we seen on the way here was black?”

“What?”

“They’re moving something. Damn if I know what.”

Danny said nothing. Part of him knew it was bullshit, Farish’s paranoid talk, but another part knew that it meant something. Three times the previous night, an hour apart exactly, the phone had rung; and someone had hung up without talking. Then there was the spent rifle shell Farish had found on the windowsill of the laboratory. What was that about?

And now this: the girl again, the girl. The lush, sprinkled lawn of the Presbyterian church glowed blue-green in the shadows of the ornamental spruce: curvy brick walks, clipped boxwoods, everything as neat and twinkly as a toy train set.

“What I can’t figure out is who the hell she is,” said Farish, scrabbling in his pocket for the crank. “You shouldn’t have let her get away.”

“It was Eugene let her go, not me.” Danny gnawed on the inside of his mouth. No, it wasn’t his imagination: the girl had vanished off the face of the earth in the weeks after Gum’s accident, when he’d driven the town looking for her. But now: think of her, mention her and there she was, glowing at a distance with that black Chinese haircut and those spiteful eyes.

They each had a toot, which steadied them somewhat.

“Somebody,” said Danny, and inhaled, “somebody has put that kid out to spy on us.” High as he was, he was sorry the instant he’d said it.

Farish’s brow darkened. “Say what? If somebody,” he growled, scouring his wet nostrils with the back of his hand, “if somebody put that little dab out to spy on me, I’ll rip her wide open.”

“She knows something,” said Danny. Why? Because she’d looked at him from the window of a hearse. Because she’d invaded his dreams. Because she was haunting him, hunting him, messing with his head

.

“Well, I’d sure like to know what she was doing up at Eugene’s. If that little bitch busted out my tail-lights …”

His melodramatic manner made Danny suspicious. “If she busted the tail-lights,” he said, carefully avoiding Farish’s eye, “why you reckon she knocked on the door and told us about it?”

Farish shrugged. He was picking at a crusty patch on his pants leg, had all at once got very preoccupied with it, and Danny—suddenly—was convinced that he knew more about the girl (and about all of it) than he was saying.

No, it didn’t make sense, but all the same there was something to it. Dogs barked in the distance.

“Somebody,” said Farish, suddenly—shifting his weight—“some body clumb up there and turned them snakes aloose at Eugene’s. The windows is painted shut except for that one in the bathroom. Nobody could have got through that but a kid.”