The Little Friend

“What’s the matter?” said Mr. Dial, bending down over her, overwhelming her with his sharp, fruity aftershave. “Do you want some water? Do you want some breakfast? Are you sick to your stomach?”

“I—I—” Harriet struggled to sit up. What she wanted she couldn’t ask for, not in so many words. She was afraid of being left alone, but she could not think exactly how to tell Mr. Dial this without telling him what she was afraid of, and why.

Just at that instant, the telephone at her bedside rang.

“Here, let me get that,” said Mr. Dial, snatching up the receiver and passing it to her.

“Mama?” said Harriet, faintly.

“Congratulations! A brilliant coup!”

It was Hely. His voice—though exuberant—was tinny and remote. From the hiss on the line, Harriet knew he was calling from the Saints phone in his bedroom.

“Harriet? Hah! Man, you destroyed him! You nailed him!”

“I—” Harriet’s brain wasn’t working at top speed and she couldn’t think quick enough what to say. Despite the connection, his hoots and yelps were so loud on the other end that Harriet feared Mr. Dial could hear him.

“Way to go!” In his excitement he dropped the phone, with an enormous clatter; his voice rushed back at her, breathy, deafening. “It was in the paper—”

“What?”

“I knew it was you. What are you doing in the hospital? What happened? Are you hurt? Are you shot?”

Harriet cleared her throat in a special way they had, which meant she wasn’t free to talk.

“Oh, right,” said Hely, after a somber pause. “Sorry.”

Mr. Dial, taking his candy, mouthed at her: I have to run.

“No, don’t,” said Harriet, in sudden panic, but Mr. Dial kept right on backing out the door.

See you later! he mouthed, with bright gesticulations. I got to go sell me some cars!

“Just answer yes or no, then,” Hely was saying. “Are you in trouble?”

Fearfully, Harriet gazed at the empty doorway. Mr. Dial was far from the kindest or most understanding of adults, but at least he was competent: all rectitude and pickiness, sweet moral outrage itself. Nobody would dare to hurt her if he was around.

“Are they going to arrest you? Is a policeman on guard?”

“Hely, can you do something for me?” she said.

“Sure,” he said, serious suddenly, alert as a terrier.

Harriet—an eye on the door—said: “Promise.” Though she was half-whispering, her voice carried farther than she wanted it to in the frosty silence, all Formica and slickness.

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“Promise me first.”

“Harriet, come on, just tell me!”

“At the water tower.” Harriet took a deep breath; there was no way to say it without coming right out and saying it. “There’s a gun lying on the ground. I need you to go—”

“A gun?”

“—to get it and throw it away,” she said hopelessly. Why even bother keeping her voice down? Who knew who was listening, on his end or even hers? She’d just watched a nurse walk past the door; now here came another, glancing in curiously as she passed.

“Jeez, Harriet!”

“Hely, I can’t go.” She felt like crying.

“But I’ve got band practice. And we have to stay late today.”

Band practice. Harriet’s heart sank. How was this ever going to work?

“Or,” Hely was saying, “or I could go now. If I hurry. Mom’s dropping me off in half an hour.”

Wanly, Harriet smiled at the nurse who put her head in at the door. What difference was it going to make, either way? Leave her father’s gun on the ground, for the police to find, or let Hely go get it? It would be all over the band hall by noon.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” Hely was saying. “Hide it in your yard?”

“No,” said Harriet, so sharply that the nurse raised her eyebrows. “Throw it—” jeez

, she thought, closing her eyes, just go ahead and say it—“Throw it in the …”

“The river?” Hely inquired, helpfully.

“Right,” said Harriet, shifting as the nurse (a big square woman, with stiff gray hair and large hands) reached over to plump her pillow.

“What if it won’t sink?”

It took a moment for this to register. Hely repeated the question as the nurse unhooked Harriet’s chart off the foot of the bed and departed, with a heavy side-swaying gait.

“It’s … metal,” said Harriet.

Hely, she realized with a shock, was talking to somebody on the other end.

Rapidly, he came back on. “All right! Gotta go!”

Click. Harriet sat with the dead phone to her ear, sat stunned until the dial tone came on and, fearfully (for she had never taken her eyes from the doorway, not for a moment), hung up the receiver and settled back on the pillows, looking about the room in apprehension.

————

The hours dragged, interminable, white on white. Harriet had nothing to read, and though her head ached terribly she was too afraid to go to sleep. Mr. Dial had left a Sunday-school booklet, called “Apron String Devotionals,” with a picture of a rosy baby in an old-fashioned sun bonnet pushing a flower cart, and at last, in desperation, she turned to this. It was designed for the mothers of young children, and it disgusted Harriet in a matter of moments.