The Little Friend

Danny clung to the ladder, breathing hard. The ordeal of drowning the kid had made him forget, temporarily, about the drugs, but now the reality of his situation had sunk in on him again, and he wanted to claw his face, to wail aloud. How the fuck was he going to get out of town with a blood-spattered car and no money? He’d been counting on the crystal meth, on moving that, in bars or on streetcorners if he had to. He had maybe forty dollars on him (had considered that driving over; couldn’t very well pay the man at the Texaco with methamphetamine) and there was also that Best Friend of Farish’s, that bill-stuffed wallet Farish always kept in his hip pocket. Farish liked to pull it out sometimes, and flash it around, at the poker table or at the pool hall, but how much money was actually in it, Danny didn’t know. If he was lucky—really lucky—maybe as much as a thousand dollars.

So there was Farish’s jewelry (the Iron Cross wasn’t worth anything, but the rings were) and the wallet. Danny passed a hand over his face. The money in the wallet would keep him going for a month or two. But after that—

Maybe he could get a fake ID. Or maybe he could get a job where he wouldn’t need one, doing migrant work, picking oranges or tobacco. But it was a poor reward, a poor future, next to the jackpot he’d expected.

And when they found the body, they’d be looking for him. The gun lay in the weeds, wiped clean, Mafia style. The smart thing to do would be to dump it in the river, but now that the drugs were gone, the gun was one of his only remaining assets. The more he thought about his choices the fewer and shittier they seemed.

He looked at the shape sloshing in the water. Why had she destroyed his drugs? Why?

He was superstitious about the kid; she was a shadow and a jinx but now that she was dead he feared that maybe she’d been his good-luck charm, too. For all he knew he’d made a huge mistake—the mistake of his life—by killing her, but so help me, he said, to her form in the water, and couldn’t finish the sentence. From that first moment outside the pool hall he’d been caught up with her somehow, in something that he didn’t understand; and the mystery of it still pressed in on him. If he’d had her on dry ground he would have knocked it out of her, but it was too late for that now.

He fished one of the packets of speed out of the nasty water. It was stuck together and melted, but maybe—if cooked down—shootable. Fishing around, he came up with half a dozen more or less waterlogged bags. He’d never shot drugs, but why not start.

One last look, and he started up the ladder. The rungs—rusted nearly through—shrieked and buckled under his weight; he could feel movement in the thing, it was wobbling under him a whole lot more than he liked, and he was grateful to emerge at last from the close dankness into the brightness and heat. On shaky legs, he climbed to his feet. He was sore all over, a muscular soreness, as if he’d been beaten—which, come to think of it, he had been. A storm was rolling in over the river. To the east, the sky was sunny and blue; to the west, gunmetal black with thunderclouds rolling and surging in over the river. Shady spots sailed over the low roofs of the town.

Danny stretched, rubbed the small of his back. He was sodden, dripping; long strands of green slime clung to his arms but in spite of everything, his spirits had lifted absurdly, just to be out of the dark and damp. The air was humid, but there was a little breeze and he could breathe again. He stepped across the roof to the edge of the tank—and his knees went watery with relief when off in the distance he saw the car, undisturbed, a single set of tracks winding through the tall weeds behind it.

Gladly, without thinking, he started to the ladder—but he was a little off balance and before he knew what was happening, crack

, his foot was through a rotten plank. Suddenly the world pitched sideways: diagonal slash of gray boards, blue sky. For a wild moment—arms windmilling—he flailed to recover his balance, but there was an answering crack and he fell through the boards to the waist.

————

Harriet—floating face downward—was seized with a spasm of shuddering. She’d been trying, stealthily, to ease her head to the side so she could draw another little breath through her nose, but with no luck. Her lungs could stand no more; they bucked uncontrollably, heaving for air, and if not air then water, and just as her mouth opened of its own accord, she broke the surface with a shudder and inhaled, deep deep deep.

The relief was so great it nearly sank her. Clumsily, with one hand, she braced herself against the slimy wall and gasped, and gasped, and gasped: air delicious, air pure and profound, air pouring through her body like song. She didn’t know where Danny Ratliff was; she didn’t know if he was watching and she didn’t care; breathing was all that mattered any more, and if this was the last breath of her life, so be it.