The Little Friend

Then, with a nervous glance over her shoulder (no cars, or sounds of cars, no noise but bird cries) she came forward to look up at the ladder. The bottom rung was higher than she remembered. A very tall man might not have to jump for it, but anybody else would. Two years ago, when she’d come with Dick, she’d stood on his shoulders and then—precariously—he’d climbed up on the banana seat of his bicycle to follow her.

Dandelions, tufts of dead grass poking through the gravel, crickets singing frantically; they seemed to know that it was the end of summer, that soon they would be dying, and the urgency of their song gave the morning air a fevered, unstable, shimmery feeling. Harriet examined the legs of the tank: metal H-girders, perforated every two feet or so with oblong holes, angling in towards the tank ever so slightly. Higher up, the substructure was supported by metal poles that crossed diagonally in a giant X. If she shimmied up high enough on a front leg (it was a long way up; Harriet was no good at estimating distances) she might possibly inch her way over to the ladder on one of the lower crossbars.

Gamely, she started up. Though the cut had healed, her left palm was still sore, forcing her to favor her right hand. The perforations were just large enough to give her the smallest possible openings in which to wedge her fingers and the tip of her sneakers.

Up she climbed, breathing hard. It was slow going. The girder was powdered with heavy rust that came off brick red on her hands. Though she was not afraid of heights—heights exhilarated her; she loved to climb—there was not much to hold on to and every inch was an effort.

Even if I fall, she told herself, it won’t kill me. Harriet had fallen (and jumped) from some very high places—the roof of the toolshed, the big limb of the pecan tree in Edie’s yard, the scaffolding in front of the Presbyterian church—and never broken a bone. All the same, she felt exposed to prying eyes so high up, and every sound from below, every crackle or bird-cry, made her want to look away from the rusted beam six inches in front of her nose. Close up, the beam, it was a world all to itself, the desert surface of a rusty red planet.…

Her hands were growing numb. Sometimes, on the playground—when playing tug of war, hanging from a rope or from the top bar of a jungle gym—Harriet was overcome by a strange impulse to relax her grip and let herself fall, and this was the impulse she now fought. Up she hauled herself, gritting her teeth, concentrating all her strength into her aching fingertips, and a rhyme from an old book, a baby book, shook loose and jingled through her mind:

Old Mr. Chang, I’ve oft heard it said,

You wear a basket upon your head,

You’ve two pairs of scissors to cut your meat,

And two pairs of chopsticks with which you eat …

With her last surge of willpower, she grabbed the lowest crossbar and pulled herself up. Old Mr. Chang! His picture in the storybook had scared her to death when she was little: with his pointed Chinese hat, and his threadlike mustache, and his long sly Mandarin eyes, but what had scared her most about him was the slender pair of scissors he held up, ever so delicately, and his long thin mocking smile.…

Harriet paused and took stock of her position. Next—this was the tricky part—she was going to have to swing her leg out into open space, to the crossbeam. She took a deep breath and hoisted herself into the emptiness.

A sideways view of the ground heaved up at her all cock-eyed, and for a heartbeat, Harriet was sure she was falling. The next instant she found herself astraddle the bar, clutching it like a sloth. She was very high up now, high enough to break her neck, and she closed her eyes and rested for a moment, her cheek against the rough iron.

Old Mr. Chang, I’ve oft heard it said,

You wear a basket upon your head,

You’ve two pairs of scissors to cut your meat …

Carefully, Harriet opened her eyes and—bracing herself on the girder—sat up. How high above the ground she was! Just like this she’d sat—astraddle a branch, muddy underpants and the ants stinging her legs—the time she’d climbed the tree and couldn’t get down. That was the summer after first grade. Off she had wandered—from Vacation Bible School, was that it? Up she had climbed, fearless, “like a dern squirrel!” exclaimed the old man who had happened to hear Harriet’s flat, embarrassed little voice calling for help from on high.