The Little Friend

Then another. And another. The laughter—frightening to hear—rang from the little wooden bridge above the creek. Hely, bewildered, held his hand up against the sun and saw two white men, indistinct. The larger of the two (and he was much larger) was simply a massive shadow, slumped in hilarity, and Hely had only a confused impression of his hands dangling over the rail: big dirty hands, with big silver rings. The smaller silhouette (cowboy hat, long hair) was using both hands to aim a glinting silver pistol down at the water. He fired again and an old man upstream jumped back as the bullet kicked up a white spray of water near the end of his fishing line.

On the bridge, the big guy threw back his lion’s mane of hair, and crowed hoarsely; Hely saw the bushy outline of a beard.

The black kids had dropped their poles and were scrambling up the bank, and the old black woman on the opposite bank limped light and fast after them, holding her skirts up with one hand, an arm outstretched, crying.

“Get a move on, grammaw.”

The gun sang out again, echoes ricocheting off the bluffs, chunks of rock and dirt falling into the water. Now the guy was just shooting every which way. Hely stood petrified. A bullet whistled past and struck up a puff of dust next to a log where one of the black men lay hidden. Hely dropped his pole and turned to bolt—sliding, nearly falling—and ran as fast as he could for the underbrush.

He dived into a patch of blackberry bushes, and cried out as the brambles scratched his bare legs. As another shot rang out, he wondered if the rednecks could see from that distance that he was white, and if they could, whether they’d care.

————

Harriet, poring over her notebook, heard a loud wail through the open window and then Allison screaming, from the front yard: “Harriet! Harriet! Come quick!”

Harriet jumped up—kicking the notebook under her bed—and ran downstairs and out the front door. Allison stood on the sidewalk crying with her hair in her face. Harriet was halfway down the front walk before she realized the concrete was too hot for her bare feet, and—leaning to one side, off-balance—she hopped on one foot back to the porch.

“Come on! Hurry!”

“I have to get some shoes.”

“What’s going on?” Ida Rhew yelled from the kitchen window. “Why yall carrying on out there?”

Harriet thumped up the stairs and slapped down them again in her sandals. Before she could ask what was wrong, Allison, sobbing, dashed forward and seized Harriet’s arm and dragged her down the street. “Come on. Hurry, hurry.”

Harriet, stumbling along (the sandals were hard to run in) scuffed behind Allison as fast as she could and then Allison stopped, still weeping, and flung her free arm out at something squawking and fluttering in the middle of the street.

It was a moment or two before Harriet realized what she was looking at: a blackbird, one wing stuck in a puddle of tar. The free wing flapped frantically: Harriet, horrified, saw right down the creature’s throat as it screamed, down to the blue roots of its pointed tongue.

“Do something!” cried Allison.

Harriet didn’t know what to do. She started toward the bird, then pulled back in alarm as the bird shrieked piercingly and battered its lopsided wing at her approach.

Mrs. Fountain had shuffled out on her side porch. “Yall leave that thing alone,” she called, in a thin, peevish voice, a dim form behind the screen. “It’s nasty.”

Harriet—her heart striking fast against her ribs—grabbed at the bird, flinching, as if making feints at a hot coal; she was scared to touch it, and when its wingtip brushed her wrist, she snatched her hand back in spite of herself.

Allison screamed: “Can you get it loose?”

“I don’t know,” said Harriet, trying to sound calm. She circled around to the back of the bird, thinking it might quiet down if it couldn’t see her, but it only screamed and struggled with renewed ferocity. Broken quills bristled through the mess and—Harriet saw, with a sick feeling—glossy red coils that looked like red toothpaste.

Trembling with agitation, she knelt on the hot asphalt. “Stop it,” she whispered as she eased both hands towards it, “hush, don’t be afraid …,” but it was scared to death, flapping and floundering, its fierce black eye glinting bright with fear. She slipped her hands underneath it, supporting its stuck wing as best as she could and—wincing against the wing beating violent in her face—lifted up. There was a hellish screech and Harriet, opening her eyes, saw that she’d ripped the stuck wing off the bird’s shoulder. There it lay in the tar, grotesquely elongated, a bone glistening blue out the torn end.

“You’d better put it down,” she heard Mrs. Fountain call. “That thing’s going to bite you.”

The wing was completely gone, Harriet realized, stunned, as the bird fought and struggled in her tarry hands. There was only a pumping, oozing red spot where the wing had been.

“Put that thing down,” called Mrs. Fountain. “You’re going to get rabies. They have to give you the shots in your stomach.”