The Little Friend

Sharply he turned into the freight yards. Farish clutched the dashboard and looked at him with something like astonishment. “What you doing?”

“This is where you told me to go,” Danny said, trying to keep his tone as neutral as possible.

“I did?”

Danny felt he should say something, but he didn’t know what to say. Had Farish mentioned the tower? All of a sudden he wasn’t sure.

“You said you was going to check up on me,” he said, tentatively—just tossing it out there, just to see what might happen.

Farish shrugged, and—to Danny’s surprise—settled back in his seat again and looked out the window. Driving around tended to put him in a good mood. Danny could still hear Farish’s low whistle, the first time he’d pulled up in the Trans Am. How he loved to ride, just climb in the car and go! In those first few months they’d joy-rode it up to Indiana, just the two of them, another time all the way to West Texas—no reason, nothing to see in those places, just clear weather and the highway signs flashing overhead, punching around on the FM band looking for a song.

“Tell you what. Let’s go get us some breakfast,” Farish said.

Danny’s intentions wavered. He was hungry. Then he remembered his plan. It was settled, it was fixed, it was the only way out. Black wings, waving him around the corner, into a future he couldn’t see.

He didn’t turn; he kept driving. Trees crowded close around the car. They were so far off the paved road that it wasn’t even a road any more, just potholes in rutted gravel.

“Just trying to find a place to turn around,” he said, realizing how stupid it sounded even as he said it.

Then he stopped the car. It was a good long walk from the tower (the road was bad and the weeds were high, he didn’t care to drive any farther and risk getting stuck). The dogs started barking like crazy, jumping all over the place and trying to push their way into the front seat. Danny turned, as if to get out of the car. “Here we are,” he said nonsensically. Quickly, he pulled the little pistol out of his boot and pointed it at Farish.

But Farish didn’t see. He had turned sideways in the seat, swinging his large stomach around towards the door. “Git down from there,” he was saying to the bitch named Van Zant, “down, I said down.” He raised his hand; the dog shrank.

“Try it with me? Try that rebellient shit with me?”

He had not so much as glanced at Danny, or the gun. To get his attention, Danny had to clear his throat.

Farish raised a dirty red hand. “Hold your horses,” he said, without looking, “hang on, I got to discipline this dog. I am sick of you” (whack, on the head) “you sorry bitch, don’t you pull this uppity shit on me.” He and the dog glared at each other. Her ears were pinned against her skull; her yellow eyes glowed steadily.

“Go on. Do it. I’ll whack you so hard—no, wait,” he said, raising an arm and half-turning to Danny, with the bad eye towards him. “I got to teach this bitch a lesson.” It was as cold and blue as an oyster, that bad eye. “Go on,” he said to the dog. “Try it. It’ll be the last time you ever—”

Danny pulled back the hammer and shot Farish in the head. It was just like that, just that fast: crack

. Farish’s head snapped forward and his mouth fell open. With a gesture that was strangely easy, he reached for the dashboard to brace himself—and then turned towards Danny, his good eye half-shut, but his blind one wide open. A bubble of spit, mixed with blood, came blopping out of his mouth; he looked like a fish, like a hooked mud-cat, blop blop.

Danny shot him again, in the neck this time, and—in the silence that rang and dissolved about him in tinny circles—got out of the car and slammed the door. It was done now; no going back. Blood had sprayed across the front of his shirt; he touched his cheek, and looked at the rusty smear on his fingertips. Farish had collapsed forward with his arms on the dash; his neck was a mess but his mouth, full of blood, was still moving. Sable, the smaller of the two dogs, had his paws over the back of the passenger seat and—rear legs pedalling—was working to clamber over it and on top of his master’s head. The other dog—the motherfucker, the bitch named Van Zant—had scrambled over from the back seat. With her nose down, she circled twice, reversed direction, and then plunked her rear end down in the driver’s seat, her black ears pricked up like a devil’s. For a moment, she glared at Danny with her wolfish eyes, and then began to bark: short, sharp barks, clear and carrying.

The alarm was as plain as if she was shouting “Fire! Fire!” Danny stepped backwards. A multitude of birds had flown up, like shrapnel, at the small crack of the gun. Now they were settling again, in the trees, on the ground. Blood was everywhere inside his car: blood on the windshield, on the dashboard, on the passenger window.

I should have had breakfast, he thought hysterically. When did I eat?