The Little Friend

by Donna Tartt

  “I seen interrogations,” said Farish, “and I seen people doped. Carelessness. It’ll get us all killed. Sleep waves are magnetic,” he said, tapping his forehead with two fingers, “get it? Get it? They can erase your whole mentality. You’re opening yourself to electromagnetic capacity that’ll fuck up and destroy your whole loyalty system just like that.”

  He is wack out of his mind, thought Danny. Farish, breathing fast through the nostrils, ran a hand through his hair—and then winced, and shook it spread-fingered away from his body as if he’d touched something slimy, or nasty.

  “Don’t get smart with me!” he roared, when he caught Danny looking at him.

  Danny dropped his eyes—and saw Curtis, his chin on a level with the threshold, peeping in the open door of the trailer. He had orange around his mouth, like he’d been playing with their grandmother’s lipstick, and a secretive, amused expression on his face.

  Glad for the distraction, Danny smiled at him. “Hey, Alligator,” he said, but before he could ask about the orange on his mouth Farish spun and flung out an arm—like an orchestra conductor, some hysterical bearded Russian—and shrieked: “Get out get out get out!”

  In an instant, Curtis was gone: bump bump bump down the trailer’s metal steps. Danny inched up and started to creep out of bed, but Farish spun back around and stabbed a finger at him.

  “Did I say get up? Did I?” His face was flushed almost purple. “Let me explain something.”

  Danny sat, agreeably.

  “We are operating at a military awareness. Copy? Copy?”

  “Copy,” said Danny, as soon he realized that was what he was supposed to say.

  “All right now. Here’s your four levels—” Farish counted them out on his fingers—“within the system. Code Green. Code Yellow. Code Orange. Code Red. Now.” Farish held up a trembling forefinger. “You might be able to guess Code Green from your experience in driving a motor vehicle.”

  “Go?” said Danny, after a long, strange, sleepy pause.

  “Affirmative. Affirmative. All Systems Go. In Code Green you are relaxed and unalert and there is no threat from the environment. Now listen up,” said Farish, between gritted teeth. “There is no Code Green. Code Green does not exist.”

  Danny stared at a tangle of orange and black extension cords on the floor.

  “Code Green is not an option and here’s why. I’m only going to say it once.” He was pacing—with Farish, never a good sign. “If you are attacked on a level of Code Green, your ass will be destroyed.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw Curtis’s plump little paw reach out and place a package of Sweet Tarts upon the sill of the open window, by his bed. Silently, Danny scooted over and retrieved the gift. Curtis’s fingers waggled happily, in acknowledgment, and then dropped stealthily from view.

  “We are currently operating at Code Orange,” said Farish. “In Code Orange the danger is clear and present and your attention is focused on it at all times. Repeat: all times.”

  Danny slipped the packet of Sweet Tarts under his pillow. “Take it easy, man,” he said, “you’re working yourself up.” He’d meant it to come out sounding.… well, easy, but somehow it didn’t, and Farish wheeled around. His face was clotted and quivering with rage, bruised and engorged and empurpled with it.

  “Tell you what,” he said, unexpectedly. “You and me’s going to take a little ride. I can read your mind, numbnuts!” he screamed, thumping the side of his head as Danny stared at him, aghast. “Don’t think you can pull your shit on me!”

  Danny closed his eyes for a moment, then re-opened them. He had to take a piss like a racehorse. “Look, man,” he said pleadingly, as Farish gnawed his lip and glowered down at the floor, “just calm down a second. Easy,” he said, palms up, as Farish glanced up—a little too quick for comfort, eyes a little too jitterbugged and unfocused.

  Before he knew what was happening, Farish had jerked him up by the collar and punched him in the mouth. “Look at you,” he hissed, jerking him up again by the shirtfront. “I know you inside out. Motherfucker.”

  “Farish—” In a daze of pain, Danny felt his jaw, worked it back and forth. This was the point you never wanted it to come to. Farish outweighed Danny by at least a hundred pounds.

  Farish slung him back on the bed. “Get your shoes on. You’re driving.”

  “Fine,” said Danny, fingering his jaw, “where?” and if it came out sounding flip (it did) part of the reason was because Danny always drove, everywhere they went.

  “Don’t you get smart with me.” Ringing backhand slap across the face. “If one ounce of that product is missing—no, set down, did I say to get up?”

  Danny sat, without a word, and tugged his motorcycle boots onto his bare, sticky feet.

  “That’s right. Just keep looking right where you’re looking.”

  The screen door of Gum’s trailer whined, and a moment later Danny heard her scraping along the gravel in her house shoes.

  “Farish?” she called, in her thin, dry voice. “All right? Farish?” Typical, thought Danny, just about typical that he was the one she’d be so worried about.

  “Up,” said Farish. He grabbed Danny by the elbow and marched him towards the door and shoved him out.

  Danny—flung headlong down the steps—landed face-down in the dirt. As he rose and dusted himself off, Gum stood expressionless: all bone and leathery skin, like a lizard in her thin housedress. Slowly, slowly, she turned her head. To Farish, she said: “What’s got into him?”

  At this, Farish reared back in the doorway. “Oh, something’s got into him, all right!” he screamed. “She sees it, too! Oh, you think you can fool me—” Farish laughed, a high unnatural laugh—“but you can’t even fool your own grandmother!”

  Gum gazed long at Farish, then Danny, eyelids half-closed and permanently sleepy-looking from the cobra venom. Then she reached out her hand and caught the meat of Danny’s upper arm and twisted it between thumb and forefinger—hard, but in a sneaky, gentle way, so that her face and her little, bright eyes remained calm.

  “Oh, Farish,” she said, “you ort not be so hard on him,” but there was something in her voice which suggested that Farish had good reason to be hard on Danny, hard on him indeed.

  “Hah!” shouted Farish. “They did it,” he said, as if to hidden cameras at the tree line. “They got to him. My own brother.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Danny, in the intense vibrating silence that followed, and was shocked by how weak and dishonest his voice sounded.

  In his confusion, he stepped back as slowly, slowly, Gum crept up the steps of Danny’s trailer, up to where Farish stood, glaring daggers and breathing fast through the nose: foul, hot little huffs. Danny had to turn his head, he couldn’t even look at her because he could see only too painfully how her slowness infuriated Farish, drove him nuts, was driving him psychotic and bug-eyed even as he stood there: tapping that foot like dammit, how the hell could she be so freaking poky? Everybody saw it (everybody but Farish) how even being in the same room with her (scratch … scratch …) made him tremble with impatience, drove him apeshit, violent, bonkers—but of course Farish never got mad at Gum, only took his frustration out on everybody else.

  When finally she got to the top step, Farish was scarlet in the face, shaking all over like a machine about to blow. Gently, gently, she cringed up to Farish and patted him on the sleeve.

  “Is it really that important?” she asked, in a kindly tone that somehow suggested yes, it was very important indeed.

  “Hell yes!” roared Farish. “I won’t be spied on! I won’t be stoled from! I won’t be lied to—no, no,” he said, jerking his head in response to her light little papery claw upon his arm.

  “Oh, my. Gum’s so sorry yall boys can’t get along.” But it was Danny she was looking at as she said it.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me!” screamed Farish. Dramatically, he stepped in front of Gum, as if Danny might rush in and kill them
both. “He’s the one you need to feel sorry for!”

  “I don’t feel sorry for either one of ye.” She’d edged past Farish and was creeping into the open door of Danny’s trailer.

  “Gum, please,” Danny said hopelessly, stepping up as far as he dared, craning to watch the pink of her faded house-dress as it vanished into the dim. “Gum, please don’t go in there.”

  “Good night,” he heard her say, faintly. “Let me make up this bed.…”

  “Don’t you be worrying over that!” cried Farish, glaring at Danny as if it was all his fault.

  Danny darted past Farish and into the trailer. “Gum, don’t,” he said in anguish, “please.” Nothing was more certain to launch Farish into an ass-kicking rage than Gum taking it into her head to “clean up” after Danny or Gene, not that either one of them wanted her to. One day years ago (and Danny would never forget it, never) he had walked in to find her methodically spraying his pillow and bedclothes with Raid insecticide.…

  “Lord, these curtains is filthy,” said Gum, shuffling into Danny’s bedroom.

  A long shadow slanted in from the threshold. “I’m the one thatas talking to you,” said Farish in a low, frightening voice. “You get your ass out here and listen.” Abruptly he snatched Danny by the back of the shirt and slung him back down the stairs, down into the packed dust and litter of the yard (broken lawn chairs, empty cans of beer and soda pop and WD-40 and a whole battlefield of screws and transistors and cogs and dismantled gears) and—before Danny could rise to his feet—he jumped down and kicked him viciously in the ribs.

  “So where do you go to when you go driving off by yourself?” he screamed. “Huh? Huh?”

  Danny’s heart sank. Had he talked in his sleep?

  “You said you went to mail Gum’s bills. But you aint mailed them. There they sat on the seat of the car for two days after you come back from wherever, mud splashed on your tires a foot deep, you aint got that driving down Main Street to the post office, did you?”

  Again he kicked Danny. Danny rolled over on his side in a ball, clutching his knees.

  “Is Catfish in on this with you?”

  Danny shook his head. He tasted blood in his mouth.

  “Because I will. I’ll kill that nigger. I’m on kill the both of you.” Farish opened the passenger door of the Trans Am and slung Danny in by the scruff of his neck.

  “You drive,” he shouted.

  Danny—wondering how he was supposed to drive from the wrong side of the car—reached up to feel his bloody nose. Thank God, I’m not wired, he thought, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth, split lip and all, thank God I’m not wired or I’d lose my mind.…

  “Go?” said Curtis brightly, toddling up to the open window; with his smeary orange lips, he made a vroom vroom noise. Then, stricken, he noticed the blood on Danny’s face.

  “No, sugar,” said Danny, “you’re not going anywhere,” but all at once, Curtis’s face slackened, and—gasping for breath—he turned and scurried off just as Farish opened the door on the driver’s side: click. A whistle. “In,” he said; and before Danny realized what was happening Farish’s two German shepherds leapt into the back seat. The one named Van Zant panted noisily into his ear; its breath was hot, and smelled like rotten meat.

  Danny’s stomach contracted. This was a bad sign. The dogs were trained to attack. On one occasion, the bitch had dug out of her pen and bit Curtis on the leg through his blue jeans so bad he had to get stitched-up at the hospital.

  “Farish, please,” he said, as Farish popped the seat back in place and sat down behind the wheel.

  “Shut your mouth.” Farish stared straight ahead, his eyes queerly dead. “The dogs are coming.”

  Danny made a big show of feeling around in his pocket. “If I’m on drive, I need to get my wallet.” Actually, what he needed was a weapon of some sort, if only a knife.

  The interior of the car was blazing hot. Danny swallowed. “Farish?” he said. “If I’m on drive, I need my license. I’ll just go inside now and get it.”

  Farish leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes and stayed like that for a moment—very still, eyelids fluttering, as if trying to fight off an impending heart attack. Then, very suddenly, he started up and roared, in full throat: “Eugene!”

  “Hey,” said Danny, over the piercing barks from the back seat, “no need in calling him out here, let me get it myself, okay?”

  He reached for the door handle. “Ho, I seen that!” shouted Farish.

  “Farish—”

  “I seen that, too!” Farish’s hand had shot to the top of his boot. Has he got a knife in there? thought Danny. Great.

  Half breathless from the heat, throbbing all over with pain, he sat still for a moment, thinking. How best to proceed, so Farish wouldn’t jump on him again?

  “I can’t drive from this side,” he said at last. “I’ll go in and get my wallet, and then we can trade places.”

  Attentively, Danny watched his brother. But Farish’s thoughts had strayed elsewhere for the moment. He had turned around to face the back seat, and was allowing the German shepherds to lick him all over the face.

  “These dogs,” he said, threateningly, lifting his chin over their frantic attentions, “these dogs mean more to me than any human being ever born. I care more about these two dogs here than any human life that was ever lived.”

  Danny waited. Farish kissed and fondled the dogs, murmuring to them in indistinct baby-talk. After a moment or two (the UPS coveralls were ugly enough, but one thing Danny could say for them: they made it hard if not impossible for Farish to conceal a gun on his person) he eased the door open and got out of the Trans Am and started across the yard.

  The door of Gum’s trailer squeaked open with a rubbery, refrigerator sound. Eugene poked his head out. “Tell him I don’t care to be spoke to in that tone.”

  From the car, the horn blared, throwing the shepherd dogs into a fresh fit of barking. Eugene pulled his glasses low on his nose and peered over Danny’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t let those animals ride in the car if I was you,” he said.

  Farish threw back his head and bellowed: “Get back out here! Now!”

  Eugene took a deep breath, rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. Scarcely moving his lips, he said: “If he don’t end up in Whitfield again he’s gone kill somebody. He come in there this morning and like to set me on fire.”

  “What?”

  “You was asleep,” said Eugene, looking apprehensively over Danny’s shoulder at the Trans Am; whatever was going on with Farish and the car, it was making him plenty nervous. “He taken his lighter out and said he’d burn the rest of my face off. Don’t get in the car with him. Not with them dogs. Aint no telling what he’ll do.”

  From the car, Farish shouted: “Don’t make me come after you!”

  “Listen,” said Danny, casting a nervous glance back at the Trans Am, “will you look after Curtis? Promise me?”

  “What for? Where you going?” said Eugene, and looked up at him sharply. Then he turned his head.

  “No,” he said, blinking, “no, don’t tell me, don’t say another word—”

  “I’m going to count three,” screamed Farish.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise and swear to God.”

  “One.”

  “Don’t listen to Gum,” said Danny, over another blare from the car horn. “She aint going to do a thing but discourage you.”

  “Two!”

  Danny put a hand on Eugene’s shoulder. Looking quickly over at the Trans Am (the only motion he could see was the dogs, tails thumping against the window glass), he said: “Do me a favor. Stand here a minute and don’t let him in.” Quickly he slipped inside the trailer and, from its place on the shelf behind the television, grabbed Gum’s little .22 pistol, pulled up his pants leg and stuck it muzzle-first in the top of his boot. Gum liked to keep it loaded, and he prayed that it still was; no time to fool with bullets.

  Outside, heavy f
ast footsteps. He heard Eugene say, in a high frightened voice: “Don’t you raise your hand to me.”

  Danny straightened his pants leg, opened the door. He was about to blurt his excuse (“my wallet”) when Farish snatched him up by the collar. “Don’t try to run from me, son.”

  He hauled Danny down the steps. Halfway to the car Curtis scuttled over and tried to throw his arms around Danny’s waist. He was crying—or, rather, he was coughing and choking for breath, the way he did when he was upset. Danny, stumbling along behind Farish, managed to reach back and pat him on the head.

  “Get back, baby,” he called after Curtis. “Be good.…” Eugene was watching anxiously from the door of the trailer; poor Curtis was crying now, crying to beat the band. Danny noticed that his wrist was smeared with orange lipstick, where Curtis had pressed his mouth.

  The color was garish, shocking; for a fraction of a second, it stopped Danny cold. I’m too tired to do this, he thought, too tired. Then, the next thing he knew, Farish had opened the driver’s side door of the Trans Am and slung him inside. “Drive,” he said.

  ————

  The top of the water tank was more rickety than Harriet remembered: furred gray boards, with nails popped loose in some places and, in others, dark gaps where the wood had shrunk and split. Peppering it all were plump white fishhooks and squiggles of bird dropping.

  Harriet, from the ladder, examined it at eye level. Then she stepped up, cautiously, and began to climb toward the middle—and something tore loose in her chest as a plank screeched and sank sharply under her foot, like a pressed piano key.

  Carefully, carefully, she took a giant step backward. The plank sprang up with a shriek. Stiff, heart pounding, she crept to the margin of the tank, by the railing, where the boards were more stable—why was the air so strange and thin, up high? Altitude sickness, pilots and mountain climbers suffered from it, and whatever those words actually meant, they described how she felt, a queasiness in her stomach and sparkles at the corners of her eyes. Tin roofs glittered in the hazy distance. On the other side lay the dense green woods where she and Hely had played so often, fighting their all-day wars, bombing each other with clods of red mud: a jungle, lush and singing, a palmy little Vietnam to parachute into.