The Little Friend

At this, Farish reared back in the doorway. “Oh, something’s got into him, all right!” he screamed. “She sees it, too! Oh, you think you can fool me—” Farish laughed, a high unnatural laugh—“but you can’t even fool your own grandmother!”

Gum gazed long at Farish, then Danny, eyelids half-closed and permanently sleepy-looking from the cobra venom. Then she reached out her hand and caught the meat of Danny’s upper arm and twisted it between thumb and forefinger—hard, but in a sneaky, gentle way, so that her face and her little, bright eyes remained calm.

“Oh, Farish,” she said, “you ort not be so hard on him,” but there was something in her voice which suggested that Farish had good reason to be hard on Danny, hard on him indeed.

“Hah!” shouted Farish. “They did it,” he said, as if to hidden cameras at the tree line. “They got to him. My own brother.”

“What are you talking about?” said Danny, in the intense vibrating silence that followed, and was shocked by how weak and dishonest his voice sounded.

In his confusion, he stepped back as slowly, slowly, Gum crept up the steps of Danny’s trailer, up to where Farish stood, glaring daggers and breathing fast through the nose: foul, hot little huffs. Danny had to turn his head, he couldn’t even look at her because he could see only too painfully how her slowness infuriated Farish, drove him nuts, was driving him psychotic and bug-eyed even as he stood there: tapping that foot like dammit, how the hell could she be so freaking poky? Everybody saw it (everybody but Farish) how even being in the same room with her (scratch … scratch …) made him tremble with impatience, drove him apeshit, violent, bonkers—but of course Farish never got mad at Gum, only took his frustration out on everybody else.

When finally she got to the top step, Farish was scarlet in the face, shaking all over like a machine about to blow. Gently, gently, she cringed up to Farish and patted him on the sleeve.

“Is it really that important?” she asked, in a kindly tone that somehow suggested yes, it was very important indeed.

“Hell yes!” roared Farish. “I won’t be spied on! I won’t be stoled from! I won’t be lied to—no, no,” he said, jerking his head in response to her light little papery claw upon his arm.

“Oh, my. Gum’s so sorry yall boys can’t get along.” But it was Danny she was looking at as she said it.

“Don’t feel sorry for me!” screamed Farish. Dramatically, he stepped in front of Gum, as if Danny might rush in and kill them both. “He’s the one you need to feel sorry for!”

“I don’t feel sorry for either one of ye.” She’d edged past Farish and was creeping into the open door of Danny’s trailer.

“Gum, please,” Danny said hopelessly, stepping up as far as he dared, craning to watch the pink of her faded house-dress as it vanished into the dim. “Gum, please don’t go in there.”

“Good night,” he heard her say, faintly. “Let me make up this bed.…”

“Don’t you be worrying over that!” cried Farish, glaring at Danny as if it was all his fault.

Danny darted past Farish and into the trailer. “Gum, don’t,” he said in anguish, “please.” Nothing was more certain to launch Farish into an ass-kicking rage than Gum taking it into her head to “clean up” after Danny or Gene, not that either one of them wanted her to. One day years ago (and Danny would never forget it, never) he had walked in to find her methodically spraying his pillow and bedclothes with Raid insecticide.…

“Lord, these curtains is filthy,” said Gum, shuffling into Danny’s bedroom.

A long shadow slanted in from the threshold. “I’m the one thatas talking to you,” said Farish in a low, frightening voice. “You get your ass out here and listen.” Abruptly he snatched Danny by the back of the shirt and slung him back down the stairs, down into the packed dust and litter of the yard (broken lawn chairs, empty cans of beer and soda pop and WD-40 and a whole battlefield of screws and transistors and cogs and dismantled gears) and—before Danny could rise to his feet—he jumped down and kicked him viciously in the ribs.

“So where do you go to when you go driving off by yourself?” he screamed. “Huh? Huh?”

Danny’s heart sank. Had he talked in his sleep?

“You said you went to mail Gum’s bills. But you aint mailed them. There they sat on the seat of the car for two days after you come back from wherever, mud splashed on your tires a foot deep, you aint got that driving down Main Street to the post office, did you?”

Again he kicked Danny. Danny rolled over on his side in a ball, clutching his knees.

“Is Catfish in on this with you?”

Danny shook his head. He tasted blood in his mouth.

“Because I will. I’ll kill that nigger. I’m on kill the both of you.” Farish opened the passenger door of the Trans Am and slung Danny in by the scruff of his neck.

“You drive,” he shouted.