The Little Friend

His words were like a slap; as frightened as she was, the shock of them stopped her for a heartbeat and she blinked in astonishment at the inflamed eyes, blazing away at her, at the freckled, puffy old fist, raised as if to strike. “That’s right, you!” he cried. “Get away from here!”

Harriet ran. Though she’d heard the names of some of the people on this street (the Wrights, the Motleys, Mr. and Mrs. Price) she didn’t know them except by sight, not well enough to run up breathless and pound on their doors: why had she let herself be chased here, into unfamiliar territory? Think, think, she told herself. A few houses back—just before the old man shook his fist at her—she’d passed an El Camino with paint cans and plastic drop cloths in the bed; it would have been the perfect place to hide.…

She ducked behind a propane tank and—bent double, hands on knees—gulped for breath. Had she lost them? No: a renewed fracas of barking from the penned Airedale, down at the end of the block, who’d thrown himself against his fence when she ran past.

Blindly she turned and plunged on. She crashed through a gap in a privet hedge—and nearly fell flat across an astonished Chester, who was on his knees fooling with a soaker hose in a thickly mulched flower bed.

He threw up his arms as if at an explosion. “Watch out!” Chester did odd jobs for all sorts of people, but she didn’t know he worked over here. “What in thunder—”

“—Where can I hide?”

“Hide? This aint no place for you to play.” He swallowed, flung a muddy hand at her. “Go on. Scat.”

Harriet, panic-stricken, glanced around: glass hummingbird feeder, glassed-in porch, pristine picnic table. The opposite side of the yard was walled-in with a thicket of holly; in the back, a bank of rosebushes cut off her retreat.

“Scat I said. Look at this hole you done knocked in the hedge.”

A flagstone path lined with marigolds led to a persnickety dollhouse of a toolshed, painted to match the house: gingerbread trim, green door standing ajar. In desperation, Harriet dashed down the walk and ran inside (“Hey!” called Chester) and threw herself down between a stack of firewood and a fat roll of fiberglass insulation.

The air was thick and dusty. Harriet pinched her nose shut. In the dimness—chest heaving, scalp aprickle—she stared at an old frayed badminton birdie lying on the floor by the stacked logs, at a group of colorful metal cans that said Gasoline and Gear Oil and Prestone.

Voices: male. Harriet stiffened. Along time passed, during which it seemed that the cans that said Gasoline and Gear Oil and Prestone were the last three artifacts in the universe. What can they do to me? she thought wildly. In front of Chester? Though she strained to listen, the rasp of her breath deafened her. Just scream, she told herself, if they grab you scream and break free, scream and run.… For some reason, the car was what she feared most. Though she could not say why, she had a sense that if they got her in the car, it was all over.

She didn’t think Chester would let them take her. But there were two of them, and only one of Chester. And Chester’s word probably wouldn’t go very far against two white men.

Moments ticked by. What were they saying, what was taking so long? Intently, Harriet stared at a dried-up honeycomb underneath the work-bench. Then, suddenly, she sensed a form approaching.

The door creaked open. A triangle of washed-out light fell across the dirt floor. All the blood rushed from Harriet’s head, and for a moment she thought she was going to black out, but it was only Chester, only Chester saying: “Come on out, now.”

It was as if a glass barrier had shattered. Noises came washing back: birds twittering, a cricket chirping stridently on the floor behind an oil can.

“You in there?”

Harriet swallowed; her voice, when she spoke, was faint and scratchy. “Are they gone?”

“What’d you do to them men?” The light was behind him; she couldn’t see his face but it was Chester, all right: Chester’s sandpapery voice, his loose-jointed silhouette. “They act like you picked they pocket.”

“Are they gone?”

“Yes they gone,” said Chester impatiently. “Get on from out of there.”

Harriet stood up behind the roll of insulation and smeared her forehead with the back of her arm. She was peppered all over with grit and cobwebs were stuck to the side of her face.

“You aint knock anything over in there, did you?” said Chester, peering back into the recesses of the shed and then, down at her: “Aint you a sight.” He opened the door for her. “Why they get after you?”

Harriet—still breathless—shook her head.

“Men like that got no business running after some child,” said Chester, glancing over his shoulder as he reached in his breast pocket for a cigarette. “What’d you do? You threw a rock at they car?”