The Little Friend

Harriet stared at him. Did he know about the tower?

“How come you run from me in the hall back there?”

He didn’t know. Harriet was careful to sit very still. At school, nobody could beat her in the game where the kids tried to outstare each other. Dim bells clanged in her head. She wasn’t well; she longed to rub her eyes, start the morning over. Something about the position of her own face, as opposed to the preacher’s, didn’t make sense; it was as if he were a reflection she ought to be seeing from a different angle.

The preacher squinted at her. “You’re a bold little piece,” he said. “Bold as brass.”

Harriet felt weak and giddy. He doesn’t know, she told herself fiercely, he doesn’t know.… There was a call button for the nurse on the side of her bed, and though she wanted very badly to turn her head and look at it, she forced herself to keep still.

He was watching her closely. Beyond, the whiteness of the room swept away into airy distances, an emptiness just as sickening in its way as the close darkness of the water tank.

“Lookahere,” he said, leaning even closer. “What you so scared of? Aint nobody laid a finger on you.”

Rigidly, Harriet looked up in his face and did not flinch.

“Maybe you done something to be scared of, then? I want to know what you was up to, sneaking around my house. And if you don’t tell me, I’m on find out.”

Suddenly a cheerful voice said from the doorway: “Knock knock!”

Hastily, the preacher straightened and turned around. There, waving from the doorway, stood Roy Dial with some Sunday-school booklets and a box of candy.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” said Mr. Dial, striding in unafraid. He was in casual dress instead of the suit and tie that he wore to Sunday school: all sporty in his deck shoes and khakis, a whiff about him of Florida and Sea World. “Why Eugene

. What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Dial!” The preacher sprang to offer his hand.

His tone had changed—charged with a new kind of energy—and even in her illness and fright, Harriet noted this. He’s afraid, she thought.

“Ah—yes.” Mr. Dial looked at Eugene. “Wasn’t a Ratliff admitted yesterday? In the newspaper …”

“Yes sir! My brother Farsh. He …” Eugene made a visible effort to slow down. “Well, he’s been shot, sir.”

Shot? thought Harriet, dazed.

“Shot in the neck, sir. They found him last night. He—”

“Well, my goodness!” cried Mr. Dial gaily, rearing back with a drollery which told how little he cared to hear about Eugene’s family. “Goodness gracious! I sure do hate that! I’ll be sure and stop in and see him as soon as he feels a little better! I—”

Without giving Eugene the chance to explain that Farish wasn’t going to get better, Mr. Dial threw up his hands as if to say: what do you do? and set down the box of candy on the night-stand. “I’m afraid this isn’t for you, Harriet,” he said, in dolphinly profile, leaning in cozily to peer at her with his left eye. “I was just running out before work to visit with dear Agnes Upchurch” (Miss Upchurch was a rickety old Baptist invalid, a banker’s widow, high on Mr. Dial’s list of prospects for the Building Fund) “and who should I bump into downstairs but your grandmother! Why my goodness! I said. Miss Edith! I—”

The preacher, Harriet noticed, was edging towards the door. Mr. Dial saw her looking at him, and turned.

“And how do you know this fine young lady?”

The preacher—arrested in his retreat—made the best of it. “Yes, sir,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand and stepping back to Mr. Dial’s side as if that was what he had meant to do all along, “well, sir, I was here when they brung her in last night. Too weak to walk. She was a mighty sick little girl and that’s the truth.” This he said with a conclusive air, as if further explanation could not possibly be necessary.

“And so you were just—” Mr. Dial looked as if he could hardly bring himself to say it—“visiting? With Harriet here?”

Eugene cleared his throat and looked away. “There’s my brother, sir,” he said, “and while I’m out here, I might as well try to visit and bring some comfort to others. It’s a joy to get out amongst the little ones and pour out that precious seed.”

Mr. Dial looked at Harriet, as if to say: has this man been bothering you?

“It don’t take nothing but a set of knees and a Bible. You know,” said Eugene, nodding at the television set, “that there’s the greatest detriment to a child’s salvation you can have in the house. The Sin Box, is what I call it.”

“Mr. Dial,” said Harriet suddenly—and her voice sounded thin and faraway—“where’s my grandmother?”

“Downstairs, I think,” said Mr. Dial, fixing her with his chilly porpoise eye. “On the telephone. What’s the matter?”

“I don’t feel good,” said Harriet, truthfully.

The preacher, she noticed, was easing out of the room. When he saw Harriet watching him, he gave her a look before he slid away.