The Little Friend

Harriet craned her neck to see around him. Through the dense shrubbery (privet, holly) she had no view at all of the street.

“Tell you what.” Chester exhaled sharply through his nostrils. “You’re lucky I’s working over here today. Mrs. Mulver-hill, she not at her choir practice, she call the police on you for busting through here. Last week, she make me turn the hose on some poor old dog wunder up in the yard.”

He smoked his cigarette. Harriet’s heart still pounded in her ears.

“What you doing, anyway,” said Chester, “tearing around in people’s bushes? I ought to tell yo’ grandmother.”

“What’d they say to you?”

“Say? They aint say nothing. One of him got his car parked out on the street there. The other one stick his head through the hedge there and peep in, like he the electrician looking for a meter.” Chester parted invisible branches and imitated the gesture, complete with weird eyeroll. “Got on a coverall like Mississippi Power and Light.”

Overhead, a branch popped; it was only a squirrel, but Harriet started violently.

“You aint gone tell me why you run from those men?”

“I—I was …”

“What?”

“I was playing,” said Harriet weakly.

“You ought not to get yourself so worked up.” Through a haze of smoke, Chester observed her shrewdly. “What you lookin at so fearful, over thataway? You want me to walk you over to your house?”

“No,” said Harriet, but as she said it Chester laughed and she realized that her head was nodding yes

.

Chester put a hand on her shoulder. “You all mixed up,” he said; but despite his cheerful tone he had a worried look. “Tell you what. I’s going home by your house. Give me a minute to wash off under the hydrant and I’ll walk you on down.”

————

“Black trucks,” said Farish abruptly, when they turned onto the highway towards home. He was all hopped-up, breathing with loud asthmatic rasps. “I never seen so many black trucks in my life.”

Danny made an ambiguous noise and passed a hand over his face. His muscles trembled and he was still shaky. What would they have done to the girl if they’d caught her?

“Dammit,” he said, “somebody could’ve called the cops on us back there.” He had—as he had so often nowadays—the sense of coming to his senses in the midst of some preposterous high-wire stunt in a dream. Were they out of their minds? Chasing a kid like that, in a residential neighborhood in broad daylight? Kidnapping carried a death penalty in Mississippi.

“This is nuts,” he said aloud.

But Farish was pointing excitedly out the window, his big heavy rings (pinky ring shaped like a dice) flashing outlandishly in the afternoon sun. “There,” he said, “and there.”

“What,” said Danny, “what?” Cars everywhere; light pouring off cottonfields so intense, it was like light on water.

“Black trucks.”

“Where?” The speed of the moving automobile made him feel like he was forgetting something or had left something important behind.

“There, there, there.”

“That truck’s green.”

“No it’s not—there!

” Farish cried triumphantly. “See, there goes another one!”

Danny—heart hammering, pressure rising in his head—felt like saying so fucking what but—for fear of setting Farish off—refrained. Crashing over fences, through tidy town yards with barbecue grills: ridiculous. The craziness of it made him feel faint. This was the part of the story where you were supposed to snap to your senses and straighten up: stop cold, turn the car around, change your life forever, the part that Danny never quite believed.

“Look there.” Farish slapped the dashboard, so loudly Danny nearly jumped out of his skin. “I know you seen that one. Them trucks are mobilizing. Getting ready to go.”

Light everywhere: too much light. Sunspots, molecules. The car had become a foreign idea. “I have to pull over,” Danny said.

“What?” said Farish.

“I can’t drive.” He could feel his voice getting high and hysterical; cars swooshed by, colored energy streaks, crowded dreams.

In the parking lot of the White Kitchen, he sat with his forehead on the wheel and took deep breaths while Farish explained, pounding his fist into his palm, that it wasn’t the meth itself that wore you down, but not eating. That was how he—Farish—kept from getting strung out. He ate regular meals, whether he wanted them or not. “But you, you’re just like Gum,” he said, prodding Danny’s bicep with his forefinger. “You forget to eat. That’s why you’re thin as a bone.”

Danny stared at the dashboard. Monoxide vapors and nausea. It was not pleasant to think of himself as being like Gum in any way, and yet with his burnt skin and hollow cheeks and sharp, thin, wasted build, he was the only one of all the grandsons who really looked much like her. It had never occurred to him before.

“Here,” said Farish, hoisting his hip, feeling busily for his wallet: happy to be of service, happy to instruct. “I know just what you need. A fountain Coke and a hot ham sandwich. That’ll fix you right up.”