The Little Friend

“I expect she will, when she hears about it. I’ll tell you what Emma Caradine said. ‘He’s just trying to make himself a big profit.’ ”

“Certainly he is. You’d think he’d be ashamed of himself. Especially with Eugenie and Liza and Susie Lee and the rest of them living on Social Security—”

“Now if it was ten dollars. Ten dollars I could understand.”

“And Roy Dial supposedly such a big deacon and all. Sixty dollars?

” said Adelaide. She got up and went over to the telephone table for pencil and notebook and began to figure. “Goodness, I’m going to have to get the atlas out for this,” she said. “How many ladies on the bus?”

“Twenty-five, I think, now that Mrs. Taylor’s dropped out and poor old Mrs. Newman McLemore fell and broke her hip—Hello, sweet Harriet!” said Tat, swooping to kiss her. “Did your grandmother tell you? Our church circle is going on a trip. ‘Historic Gardens of the Carolinas.’ I’m awfully excited.”

“I don’t know that I care to go now that we’ve got to be paying all this exorbitant fee to Roy Dial.”

“He ought to be ashamed. That’s all there is to it. With that big new house out in Oak Lawn and all those brand-new cars and Winnebagos and boats and things—”

“I want to ask a question,” said Harriet in despair. “It’s important. About when Robin died.”

Addie and Tat stopped talking at once. Adelaide turned from the road atlas. Their unexpected composure was so jarring that Harriet felt a surge of fright.

“You were in the house when it happened,” she said, in the uncomfortable silence, the words tumbling out a little too fast. “Didn’t you hear anything?”

The two old ladies glanced at each other, a small beat of thoughtfulness during which some unspoken communication seemed to pass between them. Then Tatty took a deep breath and said: “No. Nobody heard a thing. And do you know what I think?” she said, as Harriet tried to interrupt with another question. “I don’t think this is a very good subject for you to go around casually bringing up with people.”

“But I—”

“You haven’t bothered your mother or your grandmother with any of this, have you?”

Adelaide said, stiffly: “I don’t think this is a very good topic of conversation either. In fact,” she said, over Harriet’s rising objections, “I think it might be a good time for you to run along home, Harriet.”

————

Hely, half-blinded by sun, sat sweating on a brush-tangled creek bank, watching the red and white bobber of his cane pole flicker on the murky water. He had let his night crawlers go because he thought it might cheer him up to dump them onto the ground in a big creepy knot, to watch them squirming off or digging holes in the ground or whatever. But they did not realize that they were free of the pail, and, after disentangling themselves, wove around placidly at his feet. It was depressing. He plucked one off his sneaker, looked at its mummy-segmented underside and then flung it into the water.

There were plenty of girls at school prettier than Harriet, and nicer. But none of them were as smart, or as brave. Sadly, he thought of her many gifts. She could forge handwriting—teacher handwriting—and compose adult-sounding excuse notes like a pro; she could make bombs from vinegar and baking soda, mimic voices over the telephone. She loved to shoot fireworks—unlike a lot of girls, who wouldn’t go near a string of firecrackers. She had got sent home in second grade for tricking a boy into eating a spoonful of cayenne pepper; and two years ago she had started a panic by saying that the spooky old lunchroom in the school basement was a portal to Hell. If you turned off the light, Satan’s face appeared on the wall. A gang of girls trooped downstairs, giggling, switched the lights out—and burst forth completely off their heads and screaming with terror. Kids started playing sick, asking to go home for lunch, anything to keep from going down in the basement. After several days of mounting unease, Mrs. Miley called the children together and—along with tough old Mrs. Kennedy, the sixth-grade teacher—marched them all down to the empty lunchroom (girls and boys, crowding in behind them) and switched off the light. “See?” she said scornfully. “Now don’t you all feel silly?”

At the back, in a thin, rather hopeless-sounding voice which was somehow more authoritative than the teacher’s bluster, Harriet said: “He’s there. I see him.”

“See!” cried a little boy’s voice. “See?”

Gasps: then a howling stampede. For sure enough, once your eyes got used to the dark, an eerie greenish glow (even Mrs. Kennedy blinked in confusion) shimmered in the upper-left corner of the room, and if you looked long enough, it was like an evil face with slanted eyes and a handkerchief tied over the mouth.