The Little Friend

So when Mrs. Miley returned, Harriet told on Greg and Hely, too, and for good measure she added that Greg had called her a whore. In the past, Greg had indeed called Harriet a whore (once he had even called her some mysterious name that sounded like “whore-hupper”) but on this particular occasion he hadn’t called her anything worse than Gross. Hely was made to memorize fifty extra vocabulary words, but Greg got the vocabulary words and nine licks with the paddle (one for each letter in the words “Damn” and “Whore”) from tough old yellow-toothed Mrs. Kennedy, who was as big as a man, and did all the paddling at the elementary school.

The main reason Hely was mad at Harriet for so long over this was because it took him three weeks to memorize the vocabulary words sufficiently to pass a written test. Harriet had reconciled herself stolidly and without much pain to life without Hely, which was life the way it always was, only lonelier; but two days after the test, there he was at Harriet’s back door asking her to ride bikes. Generally, after quarrels, it was Hely who struck up relations again, whether he was the one at fault or not—because he had the shorter memory, and because he was the first to panic when he found himself with an hour on his hands and no one to play with.

Harriet shook the umbrella, left it on the back porch, and went through the kitchen to the hall. Ida Rhew stepped out of the living room and in front of her before she could go up the stairs to her room.

“Listen here!” she said. “You and me aint finished with that lunch bucket. I know it was you gone and poke holes in that thing.”

Harriet shook her head. Though she felt compelled to stick by her previous denial, she did not have the energy for a more vigorous lie.

“Reckon you want me to think somebody broke in the house and done it?”

“It’s Allison’s lunchbox.”

“You know yo’ sister aint poke holes in that thing,” Ida called up the stairs after her. “You aint fool me for one second.”

————

We’re gonna turn it on …

We’re gonna bring you the power …

Hely, blankly, sat crosslegged on the floor in front of the television with a half-eaten bowl of Giggle Pops in his lap and his Rock’em Sock’em Robots—one robot unsprung, elbow dangling—shoved to the side. Beside them, face down, lay a GI Joe who’d been serving as referee.

The Electric Company was an educational program but at least it wasn’t as dumb as Mister Rogers. He ate another listless spoonful of the Giggle Pops—they were soggy now, and the dye had turned the milk green, but the mini marshmallows were still like aquarium gravel. His mother, a few minutes before, had run downstairs and popped her head into the family room to ask if he felt like helping her make some cookies; and he was angry when he remembered how little his scornful refusal had troubled her. Okay

, she’d replied, in all good cheer, suit yourself.

No: he would not give her the satisfaction of appearing interested. Cooking was for girls. If his mother really loved him, she would drive him to the bowling alley.

He ate another spoonful of the Giggle Pops. All the sugar had soaked off them and they didn’t taste so good any more.

————

At Harriet’s, the day dragged on. Nobody seemed to notice that Hely hadn’t been around—except, oddly, Harriet’s mother, who could not be expected with absolute certainty to notice if a hurricane rose up and tore the roof off the house. “Where’s little Price?” she called out to Harriet from the sun-porch that afternoon. She called Hely little Price because Price was his mother’s maiden name.

“Don’t know,” said Harriet curtly, and went upstairs. But soon she was bored—drifting fretfully between bed and window seat, watching the rain slash against the windowpanes—and soon she wandered downstairs again.

After loitering aimlessly for some time, and being chased from the kitchen, she finally sat down in a neglected spot on the hall floor where the boards were particularly smooth, to play a game of jacks. As she played, she counted out loud in a dull singsong which alternated numbingly with the thump of the ball, and with Ida’s monotonous song in the kitchen:

Daniel saw that stone, hewn out the mountain

Daniel saw that stone, hewn out the mountain

Daniel saw that stone, hewn out the mountain …