The Little Friend

“It’s not my problem whose it is. The Sanitation Department doesn’t want it out here before five.”

Eugene glanced at his wristwatch. Five minutes to five, you Baptist devil. “All right. Er, I surely will keep my eye on it.”

“Thanks! I’d really appreciate it if we could help each other out on this thing, Eugene. By the way—is Jimmy Dale Ratliff your cousin?”

After a wary pause, Eugene replied: “Second cousin.”

“I’m having trouble running down a phone number on him. Could you give it to me?”

“Jimmy Dale and them out there don’t have a phone.”

“If you see him, Eugene, will you please tell him to stop by the office? We need to have a little talk about the financing on his vehicle.”

In the silence that followed, Eugene reflected upon how Jesus had overthrown the tables of the moneychangers, and cast out them that sold and bought in the temple. Cattle and oxen had been their wares—the cars and trucks of Bible times.

“All right now?”

“I sure will do it, Mr. Dial!”

Eugene listened for Mr. Dial’s footsteps going down the stairs—slowly at first, pausing halfway before they resumed at a brisker pace. Then he crept to the window. Mr. Dial did not proceed directly to his own vehicle (a Chevy Impala with dealer’s plates) but lingered in the front yard for several minutes, out of Eugene’s line of vision—probably inspecting Loyal’s pick-up, also a Chevrolet; possibly only checking up on the poor Mormons, whom he was fond of but devilled mercilessly, baiting them with provocative passages from Scripture and interrogating them on their views of the Afterlife and so forth.

Only when the Chevy started up (with a rather lazy, reluctant sound, for so new a car) did Eugene return to his visitor, whom he found knelt down on one knee and praying intently, all atremble, thumb and forefinger pressed into his eye sockets in the manner of a Christian athlete before a football game.

Eugene was uncomfortable, reluctant either to disturb his guest or join him. Quietly, he went back to the front room and retrieved from his Little Igloo cooler a warm, sweaty wedge of hoop cheese—purchased only that morning, never far from his thoughts since he’d bought it—and cut himself a greedy chunk with his pocket knife. Without crackers, he gobbled it down, his shoulders hunched and his back to the open door of the room where his guest still knelt amongst the dynamite boxes, and wondered why it had never occurred to him to put curtains up in the Mission. Never before had it seemed necessary, since he was on the second story, and though his own yard was bare, trees in other yards occluded the view from neighboring windows. Still, a little extra privacy would be wise while the snakes were in his custody.

————

Ida Rhew poked her head through the door of Harriet’s room, her arms full of fresh towels. “You aint cutting pictures from that book, are you?” she said, eyeing a pair of scissors on the rug.

“No, maam,” said Harriet. Faintly, through the open window, drifted the whir of chainsaws: trees toppling, one by one. Expansion was all the Deacons thought about at the Baptist church: new rec rooms, new parking lot, a new youth center. Soon there would not be a tree left on the block.

“I better not catch you doing any such.”

“Yes, maam.”

“What them scissors out for, then?” Belligerently, she nodded at them. “You put them up,” she said. “This minute.”

Harriet, obediently, went to her bureau and put the scissors in the drawer and closed it. Ida sniffed, and trundled off. Harriet sat down on the foot of her bed, and waited; and as soon as Ida was out of earshot, she opened the drawer and got the scissors out again.

Harriet had seven yearbooks for Alexandria Academy, starting with first grade. Pemberton had graduated two years before. Page by page she turned through his senior yearbook, studying every photograph. There was Pemberton, all over the place: in group pictures of the tennis and golf teams; in plaid pants, slumped at a table in the study hall; in black tie, standing in front of a glittery backdrop swagged with white bunting, along with the rest of the Homecoming Court. His forehead was shiny and his face glowed a fierce, happy red; he looked drunk. Diane Leavitt—Lisa Leavitt’s big sister—had a gloved hand through his elbow, and though she was smiling she looked a little stunned that Angie Stanhope and not her had just been announced Homecoming Queen.