The Little Friend

“Sir?” said Harriet.

“What symbol has this writer chosen to represent him- or herself?”

“An insect.”

“An insect??”

“It’s a butterfly,” said Annabel faintly, but Mr. Dial didn’t hear.

“What kind of an insect?” he demanded of Harriet.

“I’m not sure, but it looks like it’s got a stinger.”

Hely craned over to see. “Gross,” he cried, in apparently unfeigned horror, “what is

that?”

“Pass it up here,” said Mr. Dial sharply.

“Who would draw something like that?” Hely said, looking around the room in alarm.

“It’s a butterfly,” said Annabel, more audibly this time.

Mr. Dial got up to reach for the paper and then very suddenly—so suddenly that everyone jumped—Curtis Ratliff made an exhilarated gobbling noise. Pointing at something on the table, he began to bounce excitedly in his seat.

“Rat my,” he gobbled. “Rat my.”

Mr. Dial stopped short. This had always been his terror, that the generally docile Curtis would someday erupt into some kind of violence or fit.

Quickly, he abandoned the podium and hurried to the front row. “Is something wrong, Curtis?” he said, bending low, his confidential tone audible over the whole classroom. “Do you need to use the toilet?”

Curtis gobbled, face scarlet. Up and down he bounced in the squealing chair—which was too small for him—so energetically that Mr. Dial winced and stepped backwards.

Curtis stabbed at the air with his finger. “Rat my,” he crowed. Unexpectedly, he lunged from his chair—Mr. Dial stumbled backward, with a small, humiliating cry—and snatched a crumpled paper off the table.

Then, very gently, he smoothed it flat and handed it to Mr. Dial. He pointed at the paper; he pointed to himself. “My,” he said, beaming.

“Oh,” said Mr. Dial. From the back of the room, he heard whispers, an impudent little snort of merriment. “That’s right, Curtis. That’s your paper.” Mr. Dial had set it aside, intentionally, from those of the other children. Though Curtis always demanded pencil and paper—and cried when he was denied them—he could neither read nor write.

“My,” Curtis said. He indicated his chest with his thumb.

“Yes,” said Mr. Dial, carefully. “That’s your goal, Curtis. That’s exactly right.”

He laid the paper back on the table. Curtis snatched the paper up again and thrust it back at him, smiling expectantly.

“Yes, thank you, Curtis,” said Mr. Dial, and pointed to his empty chair. “Oh, Curtis? You can sit down now. I’m just going to—”

“Wee.”

“Curtis. If you don’t sit down, I can’t—”

“Wee my!” Curtis shrieked. To Mr. Dial’s horror, he began to jump up and down. “Wee my! Wee my! Wee my!”

Mr. Dial—flabbergasted—glanced down at the crumpled paper which lay in his hand. There was no writing on it at all, only scribbles a baby might make.

Curtis blinked at him sweetly, and took a lumbering step closer. For a mongoloid he had very long eyelashes. “Wee,” he said.

————

“I wonder what Curtis’s goal was?” said Harriet ruminatively as she and Hely walked home together. Her patent-leather shoes clacked on the sidewalk. It had rained in the night and pungent clumps of cut grass, crushed petals blown from shrubbery, littered the damp cement.

“I mean,” said Harriet, “do you think Curtis even has a goal?”

“My goal was for Curtis to kick Mr. Dial’s ass.”

They turned down George Street, where the pecans and sweetgums were in full, dark leaf, and the bees buzzed heavily in crape myrtle, Confederate jasmine, pink floribunda roses. The fusty, drunken perfume of magnolias was as drenching as the heat itself, and rich enough to make your head ache. Harriet said nothing. Along she clicked, head down, her hands behind her back, lost in thought.

Sociably, in an effort to revive the conversation, Hely threw back his head and let out his best dolphin whinny.

O, they call him Flipper, Flipper, he sang, in a smarmy voice. Faster than light-ning.…

Harriet let out a gratifying little snort. Because of his whickering laugh, and the porpoise-like bulge of his forehead, Flipper was their nickname for Mr. Dial.

“What’d you write?” Hely asked her. He’d taken off his Sunday suit jacket, which he hated, and was snapping it around in the air. “Was it you put down that black mark?”

“Yep.”