The Little Friend

“Naw,” said Odum. The greedy thought planted in his ear by Catfish was beginning to work its way across his sunburnt face, as visible as a cloud moving across empty sky.

“Diddy,” said a small, acid voice from the doorway.

It was Lasharon Odum. Her scrawny hip was thrown to the side in what was, to Hely, a disgustingly adult-looking posture. Across it was straddled a baby just as dirty as she was, their mouths encircled with orange rings from Popsicles, or Fanta.

“Well look a here,” said Catfish stagily.

“Diddy, you said come get you when the big hand was on the three.”

“A hundred bucks,” said Farish, in the silence that followed. “Take it or leave it.”

Odum twisted the chalk on his cue and hitched up a pair of imaginary shirtsleeves. Then he said, abruptly, without looking at his daughter: “Diddy’s not ready to go yet, sugar. Here’s yall a dime apiece. Run look at the funny books.”

“Diddy, you said remind you—”

“I said run along. Your break,” he said to Farish.

“I racked.”

“I know it,” said Odum, flicking his hand. “Go on, I’m giving it to you.”

Farish slumped forward, his weight on the table. He looked down the cue with his good eye—straight at Hely—and his gaze was as cold as if he was looking down the barrel of a gun.

Crack. The balls spun apart. Odum walked to the opposite side and studied the table for several moments. Then he popped his neck quickly, by swinging it to the side, and leaned down to make his shot.

Catfish slipped in amongst the men who’d drifted from the pinball machines and the adjoining tables to watch. Inconspicuously, he whispered something to the man in the yellow shirt just as Odum made a showy leap-shot which sank not one, but two striped balls.

Whoops and cheers. Catfish drifted back to Danny’s side, in the confused conversation from the spectators. “Odum can hold the table all day,” he whispered, “as long as they stick to eight ball.”

“Farish can run it just as good when he gets going.”

Odum rolled in another combination—a delicate shot, where the cue ball hit a solid ball that tipped another one into a pocket. More cheers.

“Who’s in?” Danny said. “Them two by the pinball?”

“Not interested,” said Catfish, glancing casually over his shoulder and above Hely’s head as he reached in the watch pocket of his leather vest and palmed a small metal object about the size and shape of a golf tee. In the instant before his beringed fingers closed over it, Hely saw that it was a bronze figurine of a naked lady with high-heeled shoes and a big Afro hairdo.

“Why not? Who are they?”

“Just a couple good Christian boys,” said Catfish, as Odum sank an easy ball into a side pocket. Stealthily, with his hand half in, half out of his jacket pocket, he unscrewed the lady’s head from her body and flicked it into the jacket pocket with his thumb. “Them other group”—he rolled his eyes at the man in the yellow sport shirt and his fat friends—“is passing through from Texas.” Catfish glanced around casually and then, turning as if to sneeze, he raised the vial and took a quick, covert sniff. “Work a shrimping boat,” he said, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his smoking jacket, his gaze passing blankly across the comic-book rack and over the top of Hely’s head as he palmed the vial to Danny.

Danny sniffed, loudly, and pinched his nostrils shut. Water welled in his eyes. “God almighty,” he said.

Odum smacked in another ball. Amidst the hoots of the men from the shrimping boat Farish glared down at the table, the pool cue balanced horizontally along the back of his neck and his elbows slung over either side, paws dangling.

Catfish stepped backward with a loose, comical little dance movement. He seemed exhilarated all of a sudden. “Mistah Farish,” he said gaily, across the room—his tone mimicking that of a popular black comedian on television—“has apprised himself of the situation.”

Hely was excited and so confused that his head felt as though it might pop. The significance of the vial had escaped him, but Catfish’s bad language and suspicious manner had not; and though Hely was not sure exactly what was going on he knew it was gambling, and that it was against the law. Just as it was against the law to shoot guns off a bridge, even if nobody got killed. His ears burned; they always got red when he was excited—he hoped nobody noticed. Casually, he replaced the comic he was looking at and took a new one from the rack—Secrets of Sinister House. A skeleton seated in a witness chair flung out a fleshless arm at the spectators as a ghostly attorney boomed: “And now, my witness—who was the VICTIM—will point out …

“THE MAN WHO KILLED HIM!!!”

“Come on, kick it!” shouted Odum unexpectedly, as the eight ball zinged across the baize, ricocheted, and clunked into the corner pocket opposite.

In the pandemonium that followed, Odum removed a small bottle of whiskey from his back pocket and had a long thirsty pull from it. “Let’s see that hundred dollars, Ratliff.”