The Little Friend

by Donna Tartt

  The drive through Alexandria was short, and contained no more novelty or diversion than the Pledge of Allegiance. Down the east side of Alexandria and hooking in again at the south, the Houma River coiled around two-thirds of the town. Houma meant red, in the Choctaw language, but the river was yellow: fat, sluggish, with the sheen of ochre oil paint squeezed from the tube. One crossed it from the south, on a two-lane iron bridge dating from FDR’s administration, into what visitors called the historic district. A wide, flat, inhospitable avenue—painfully still in the strong sun—gave into the town square with its disconsolate statue of the Confederate soldier slouching against his propped rifle. Once he had been shaded by oak trees, but these had all been sawn down a year or two before to make way for a confused but enthusiastic aggregate of commemorative civic structures: clock tower, gazebos, lamp-posts, bandstand, bristling over the tiny and now shadeless plot like toys jumbled together in an unseemly crowd.

  On Main Street, up to First Baptist Church, the houses were mostly big and old. To the east, past Margin and High Street, were the train tracks, the abandoned cotton gin and the warehouses where Hely and Harriet played. Beyond—towards Levee Street, and the river—was desolation: junkyards, salvage lots, tin-roofed shacks with sagging porches and chickens scratching in the mud.

  At its grimmest point—by the Alexandria Hotel—Main Street turned into Highway 5. The Interstate had passed Alexandria by; and now the highway suffered the same dereliction as the shops on the square: defunct grocery stores and car lots, baking in a poisonous gray heat haze; the Checkerboard Feed Store and the old Southland gas station, boarded up now (its faded sign: a saucy black kitten with white bib and stockings, batting with its paw at a cotton boll). A north turn, onto County Line Road, took them by Oak Lawn Estates and under an abandoned overpass, into cow pastures and cotton fields and tiny, dusty little sharecropper farms, laboriously cut from dry red-clay barrens. Harriet and Hely’s school—Alexandria Academy—was out here, a fifteen-minute drive from town: a low building of cinder block and corrugated metal which sprawled in the middle of a dusty field like an airplane hangar. Ten miles north, past the academy, the pines took over from the pastures entirely and pressed against either side of the road in a dark, high, claustrophobic wall which bore down relentlessly almost to the Tennessee border.

  Instead of heading out into the country, however, they stopped at the red light by Jumbo’s, where the rearing circus elephant held aloft in his sun-bleached trunk a neon ball advertising:

  CONES

  SHAKES

  BURGERS

  and—past the town cemetery, rising high upon its hill like a stage backdrop (black iron fences, graceful-throated stone angels guarding the marble gateposts to north, south, east, and west)—they circled around through town again.

  When Harriet was younger, the east end of Natchez Street had been all white. Now both blacks and whites lived here, harmoniously for the most part. The black families were young and prosperous, with children; most of the whites—like Allison’s piano teacher, and Libby’s friend Mrs. Newman McLemore—were old, widowed ladies without family.

  “Hey, Pem, slow down in front of the Mormon house here,” said Hely.

  Pem blinked at him. “What’s the matter?” he said, but he slowed down, anyway.

  Curtis was gone, and so was Mr. Dial’s car. A pickup was parked in the driveway but Harriet could see that it wasn’t the same truck. The gate was down, and the bed was empty except for a metal tool chest.

  “They’re in that?” said Hely, breaking off short in the midst of his complaints about Essie Lee.

  “Man, what is that up there?” said Pemberton, stopping the car in the middle of the street. “Is that tin foil on the windows?”

  “Harriet, tell him what you saw. She said she saw—”

  “I don’t even want to know what goes on up there. Are they making dirty movies, or what? Man,” said Pemberton, throwing the car into park, peering upward with his hand shading his eyes, “what kind of a creep rolls tin foil over all their windows?”

  “Oh my gosh.” Hely flounced around in the seat and stared straight ahead.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “Pem, come on, let’s go.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Look,” said Harriet, after several moments of fascinated silence. A triangle of black had appeared in the center window, where the tinfoil was being peeled back from within by some anonymous but artful claw.

  ————

  As the car sped off, Eugene rolled the tin foil back over the window with trembling fingers. He was coming down with a migraine headache. Tears streamed from his eye; as he stepped from the window, in the darkness and confusion, he bumped into a crate of soda bottles, and the racket slashed in a brilliant zig-zag of pain down the left side of his face.

  Migraine headaches ran in the Ratliff family. It was said of Eugene’s grandfather—“Papaw” Ratliff, long deceased—that when suffering from what he called “a sick headache,” he had beaten out a cow’s eye with a two-by-four. And Eugene’s father, similarly afflicted, had slapped Danny so hard on some long-ago Christmas Eve that he flew head-first against the freezer and cracked a permanent tooth.

  This headache had descended with less warning than most. The snakes were enough to make anybody sick, not to mention the anxiety of Roy Dial rolling up unannounced; but neither cops, nor Dial, was likely to come snooping in a flashy old gunboat like the car that had stopped out front.

  He went into the other room, where it was cooler, and sat down at the card table with his head in his hands. He could still taste the ham sandwich he had for lunch. He had enjoyed it very little, and the bitter, aspirin overtaste in his mouth rendered the memory even more unpleasant.

  The headaches made him sensitive to noise. When he’d heard the engine idling in front, he’d gone immediately to the window, fully expecting to see the Clay County sheriff—or, at the very least, a cop car. But the incongruity of the convertible fretted at him. Now, against his better judgment, he dragged the telephone over to him and dialed Farish’s number—for, as much as he hated to call Farish, he was out of his depth in a matter like this. It was a light-colored car; between the glare and his aching head, he hadn’t been able to make out the exact model: maybe a Lincoln, maybe a Cadillac, maybe even a big Chrysler. And all he’d been able to see of its occupants was their race—white—though one of them had pointed up to the window clearly enough. What business had an old-fashioned parade car like that stopping right in front of the Mission? Farish had met a lot of gaudy characters in prison—characters worse to tangle with, in many instances, than the cops.

  As Eugene (eyes shut) held the receiver so it wouldn’t touch his face, and tried to explain what had just happened, Farish ate noisily and steadily, something that sounded like a bowl of cornflakes, crunch slop crunch slop. For a long time after he had finished speaking, there was no noise on the other end except Farish’s chews and gulps.

  Presently Eugene—clutching his left eye in the darkness—said: “Farsh?”

  “Well, you’re right about one thing. No cop, or repo man, isn’t going to drive a car stands out like that,” said Farish. “Maybe syndicate from down on the Gulf Coast. Brother Dolphus used do a little business down that way.”

  The bowl clicked against the receiver as Farish—from the sound of it—tipped his bowl up and drank down the leftover milk. Patiently, Eugene waited for him to resume the sentence, but Farish only smacked his lips, and sighed. Distant clatter of spoon on china.

  “What would a Gulf Coast syndicate want with me?” he finally asked.

  “Hell if I know. Something you aint being straight about?”

  “Straight is the gate, brother,” Eugene replied stiffly. “I’m just running this mission and loving my Christian walk.”

  “Well. Assuming that’s correct. Could be little Reese they come after. Who knows what kind of hot water he’s got himself into.”

  “Be str
aight with me, Farsh. You done got me into something and I know, I know,” he said, over Farish’s objections, “that it’s got to do with those narcotics. That’s why that boy is here from Kentucky. Don’t ask me how I know it, I just do. I wisht you’d just go on and tell me why you invited him down here to stay.”

  Farish laughed. “I didn’t invite him. Dolphus told me he was driving over to that homecoming—”

  “In East Tennessee.”

  “I know, I know, but he’d never been down thisaway before. I thought you and the boy might like to hook up, since you’re just getting started and the boy’s got a big congregation of his own, and swear to God that’s all I know about it.”

  Long silence on the line. Something in the way that Farish was breathing made Eugene feel the smirk on Farish’s face, as plainly as if he saw it.

  “But you’re right about one thing,” said Farish, tolerantly, “no telling what that Loyal is into. And I’ll apologize to you for that. Old Dolphus sho had his hand in every fire you care to mention.”

  “Loyal’s not the one behind this. This is something you and Danny and Dolphus have cooked up yourselves.”

  “You sound awful,” said Farish. “Say you got one of them headaches?”

  “I feel pretty low.”

  “Listen, if I was you, I’d go lay down. Are you and him preaching tonight?”

  “Why?” said Eugene suspiciously. After the close shave with Dial—it had been only luck that they’d moved the snakes down to the truck before he turned up—Loyal had apologized for all the trouble he’d caused (“I kindly didn’t understand the situation, you living here in town”) and volunteered to drive the snakes to an undisclosed location.

  “We’ll come to hear you,” Farish said expansively. “Me and Danny.”

  Eugene passed a hand over his eyes. “I don’t want you to.”

  “When is Loyal driving back home?”

  “Tomorrow. Look, I know you’re up to something, Farsh. I don’t want you to get this boy into trouble.”

  “What you so worrit about him for?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eugene, and he didn’t.

  “Well, then, we’ll see you tonight,” Farish said, and he hung up before Eugene could say a word.

  ————

  “What goes on up there, sweetie, I have no idea,” Pemberton was saying. “But I can tell you who rents the place—Danny and Curtis Ratliff’s big brother. He’s a preacher.”

  At this, Hely turned to stare at Harriet with amazement.

  “He’s a real nut,” said Pem. “Something wrong with his face. He stands out on the highway yelling and shaking his Bible at cars.”

  “Is that the guy who walked up and knocked on the window when Daddy was stopped at the intersection?” said Hely. “The one with the weird face?”

  “Maybe he’s not crazy, maybe it’s just an act,” Pem said. “Most of these hillbilly preachers that yell, and pass out, and jump up on their chairs and run up and down the aisles—they’re just showing off. It’s all a big fake, that holy-roller stuff.”

  “Harriet—Harriet, you know what?” Hely said, unbearably excited, twisting around in his seat. “I know who this guy is. He preaches on the square every Saturday. He’s got a little black box with a microphone leading to it, and—” He turned back to his brother. “Do you think he handles snakes? Harriet, tell him what you saw over there.”

  Harriet pinched him.

  “Hmn? Snakes? If he handles snakes,” said Pemberton, “he’s a bigger nut than I thought.”

  “Maybe they’re tame,” Hely said.

  “Idiot. You can’t tame a snake.”

  ————

  It had been a mistake telling Farish about the car. Eugene was sorry he’d ever said anything about it. Farish had called back half an hour later, just as Eugene had managed to doze off—and then again, ten minutes after that. “Have you seen any suspicious characters in uniform in the street outside your house? Like jogging suits, or janitor outfits?”

  “No.”

  “Anybody been tailing you?”

  “Look here, Farsh, I’m trying to get some rest.”

  “This is how you tell if you’ve got a tail on you. Run a red light or drive the wrong way down a one way street and see if the person follows. Or—Tell you what. Maybe I should just come on down there myself and take a look around.”

  It was only with the greatest difficulty that Eugene was able to dissuade Farish from coming down to the Mission for what he called “an inspection.” He settled down for a nap in the beanbag chair. Finally—just as he’d managed to slip into a dazed and fitful sleep—he became aware that Loyal was standing over him.

  “Loyle?” he said, floundering.

  “I’ve got some bad news,” said Loyal.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “There was a key broke off in the lock. I couldn’t get in.”

  Eugene sat quietly, trying to make some sense of this. He was still half asleep; in his dream, there’d been lost keys, car keys. He’d been stranded at an ugly bar with a loud jukebox somewhere out on a dirt road at night, with no way to get home.

  Loyal said: “I’d been told I could leave them snakes over at a hunting cabin in Webster County. But there was a key broke off in the lock and I couldn’t get in.”

  “Ah.” Eugene shook his head, to clear it, and looked around the room. “So that means …”

  “The snakes are downstairs in my truck.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Loyle, I’ll tell you the truth, I’ve had a migraine headache.”

  “I’ll bring em in. You don’t have to help. I can get em up here by myself.”

  Eugene rubbed his temples.

  “Listen, I’m in a tight spot. It’s cruel to leave em out there roasting in this heat.”

  “Right,” said Eugene listlessly. But he wasn’t worried about the snakes’ welfare; he was worried about leaving them out in the open to be discovered—by Mr. Dial, by the mysterious snooper in the convertible, who knew. And suddenly it came to him that there had been a snake too in his dream, a dangerous snake crawling loose among people somewhere.

  “Okay,” he said to Loyal with a sigh, “bring em in.”

  “I promise they’ll be out of here by tomorrow morning. This hasn’t worked out very well for you, I know,” said Loyal. His intense blue gaze was frankly sympathetic. “Having me here.”

  “It aint your fault.”

  Loyal ran a hand through his hair. “I want you to know I’ve enjoyt your fellowship. If the Lord don’t call you to handle—well, He has His reasons. Sometimes He don’t call me to handle either.”

  “I understand.” Eugene felt he should say something more, but he couldn’t marshal the right thoughts. And he was too ashamed to say what he felt: that his spirit was dry and empty, that he wasn’t naturally good, good in his mind and heart. That he was of a tainted blood, and a tainted lineage; that God looked down on him, and despised his gifts, as He had despised the gifts of Cain.

  “Someday I’ll get called,” he said, with a brightness he did not feel. “The Lord’s just not ready for me yet.”

  “There are other gifts of the Spirit,” said Loyal. “Prayer, preaching, prophecy, visions. Laying hands on the sick. Charity and works. Even amongst your own family—” he hesitated, discreetly. “There’s good to be done there.”

  Wearily, Eugene looked up into the kind, candid eyes of his visitor.

  “It aint about what you want,” said Loyal. “It’s about the perfect will of God.”

  ————

  Harriet came in through the back door to find the kitchen floor wet, and the counter-tops wiped—but no Ida. The house was silent: no radio, no fan, no footsteps, only the monotone hum of the Frigidaire. Behind her, something scratched: Harriet jumped, and turned just in time to see a small gray lizard scrabbling up the screen of the open window behind her.

  The smell of the pine cleaner that Ida used made her head ache
in the heat. In the dining room, the massive china cabinet from Tribulation squatted amongst the hectic stacks of newspaper. Two oblong carving platters, leaning upright against the top shelf, gave it a wild-eyed expression; low and tense on its bowed legs, it slanted out from the wall on one side ever so slightly, like a musty old sabreur poised to leap out over the stacks of newspaper. Harriet ran an affectionate hand over it as she edged past; and the old cabinet seemed to pull its shoulders back and flatten itself, obligingly, against the wall to let her by.

  She found Ida Rhew in the living room, sitting in her favorite chair, where she ate her lunch, or sewed buttons, or shelled peas while she watched the soap operas. The chair itself—plump, comforting, with worn tweed upholstery and lumpy stuffing—had come to resemble Ida in the way that a dog sometimes resembles its owner; and Harriet, when she couldn’t sleep at night, sometimes came downstairs and curled up in the chair with her cheek against the tweedy brown fabric, humming strange old sad songs to herself that nobody sang but Ida, songs from Harriet’s babyhood, songs as old and mysterious as time itself, about ghosts, and broken hearts, and loved ones dead and gone forever:

  Don’t you miss your mother sometimes, sometimes?

  Don’t you miss your mother sometimes, sometimes?

  The flowers are blooming for evermore,

  There the sun will never go down.

  At the foot of the chair, Allison lay on her stomach with her ankles crossed. She and Ida were looking out the window opposite. The sun was low and orange, and the television aerials bristled on Mrs. Fountain’s roof through a sizzle of afternoon glare.

  How she loved Ida! The force of it made her dizzy. With no thought whatever of her sister, Harriet skittered over and threw her arms passionately around Ida’s neck.

  Ida started. “Gracious,” she said, “where’d you come from?”

  Harriet closed her eyes and rested with her face in the moist warmth of Ida’s neck, which smelled like cloves, and tea, and woodsmoke, and something else bitter-sweet and feathery but quite definite that was to Harriet the very aroma of love.

  Ida reached around and disengaged Harriet’s arm. “You trying to strangle me?” she said. “Look there. We’s just watching that bird over on the roof.”