Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

Adjusting a spray of gladiolus, Mrs. Chaffin sniffed, and cocked her head shrewdly to one side. “ Well . I answered the telephone, and took the order myself,” she said—stepping back to observe her handiwork—“and she sure didn’t sound like a secretary to me .”

Hely did not go home, but merely turned the corner and circled around to the side gate of Edie’s yard, where he found Harriet sitting in Edie’s back yard glider swing. Without pre-amble he marched up and said: “Hey, when’d you get home?”

He had expected his presence to cheer her immediately, and when it didn’t he was annoyed. “Did you get my letter?” he said.

“I got it,” said Harriet. She had eaten herself half-sick on candied almonds from the buffet, and their taste lingered disagreeably in her mouth. “You shouldn’t have sent it.”

Hely sat down in the swing beside her. “I was freaked out. I—”

With a curt nod, Harriet indicated Edie’s porch, twenty feet away, where four or five adults with punch cups stood behind the dim screen, chatting.

Hely took a deep breath. In a quieter voice, he said: “It’s been scary here. He drives all over town . Real slow. Like he’s looking for us. I’ve been in the car with my mother, and there he is, parked by the underpass like he’s staking it out.”

The two of them, though they were sitting side by side, were looking straight ahead, at the grown-ups on the porch, and not at each other. Harriet said: “You didn’t go back up there to get the wagon, did you?”

“No!” said Hely, shocked. “Do you think I’m nuts? For a while, he was there every day. Lately he’s been going down to the freight yards, by the railroad tracks.”

“Why?”

“How should I know? A couple of days ago I got bored and went down to the warehouse, to hit some tennis balls. Then I heard a car, and it’s lucky I hid, because it was him . I’ve never been so scared. He parked his car and he sat for a while. Then he got up and walked around. Maybe he followed me, I don’t know.”

Harriet rubbed her eyes and said: “I saw him driving that way a little while ago. Today.”

“Towards the train tracks?”

“Maybe. I wondered where he was going.”

“I’m just glad he didn’t see me,” said Hely. “When he got out of his car I nearly had a heart attack. I was hiding in the bushes for about an hour.”

“We should go over on a Special Op and see what he’s doing down there.”

She had thought the phrase special op would be irresistible to Hely, and she was surprised by how firmly and swiftly he said: “ Not me . I’m not going down there again. You don’t understand—”

His voice had risen sharply. A grown-up on the porch turned a bland face in their direction. Harriet nudged him in the ribs.

He looked at her, aggrieved. “But you don’t understand,” he said, in a quieter voice. “You had to see it. He would have killed me if he saw me, you could tell by the way he was looking around.” Hely imitated the expression: face distorted, eyes roving wildly over the ground.

“Looking for what?”

“I don’t know. I mean it, I’m not messing with him any more, Harriet, and you’d better not, either. If him or any of his brothers figure out it’s us that threw that snake, we’re dead. Didn’t you read that thing from the newspaper I sent you?”

“I didn’t get the chance.”

“Well, it was his grandma,” said Hely austerely. “She nearly died.”

Edie’s garden gate creaked open. Suddenly Harriet leaped up. “Odean!” she cried. But the little black lady—in straw hat, and belted cotton dress—cut her eyes at Harriet without turning her head and did not reply. Her lips were compressed, her face rigid. Slowly, she shuffled to the back porch and up the stairs, and rapped on the door.

“Miz Edith here?” she said, hand to brow, peering through the screen.

After a moment’s hesitation Harriet—stunned, cheeks burning from the snub—sat back down in the swing. Though Odean was old and grumpy, and Harriet’s relationship with her had never been very good, no one had been closer to Libby; the two of them were like an old married couple—not only in their disagreements (mostly about Libby’s cat, which Odean despised) but also in their stoic, companionable affection for one another—and Harriet’s heart had risen violently at the very sight of her.

She had not thought of Odean since the accident. Odean had been with Libby since they were both young women, out at Tribulation. Where would she go now, what would she do? Odean was a rickety old lady, in poor health; and (as Edie often complained) not much use around the house any more.

Confusion on the screen porch. “There,” said somebody inside, moving to make room, and Tat stepped sideways to the front. “Odean!” she said. “You know me, don’t you? Edith’s sister?”

“Why ain’t nobody told me about Miss Libby?”

“Oh, dear … Oh my. Odean.” Glance backwards, at the porch: perplexed, ashamed. “I’m so sorry. Why don’t you come inside?”

“Mae Helen, who works for Ms. McLemore, done come and told me. Nobody come and got me. And y'all already put her into the ground.”

“Oh, Odean! We didn’t think you had a telephone….”

In the silence that followed, a chickadee whistled: four clear, bouncy, sociable notes.

“Y'alls could have come and got me.” Odean’s voice cracked. Her coppery face was immobile. “At my house. I lives out at Pine Hill, you know it. Y'alls could have gone to that trouble….”

“Odean…. Oh, my,” said Tat, helplessly. She took a deep breath; she looked about. “Please, won’t you come in and sit down a minute?”

“Nome,” said Odean, stiffly. “I thank you.”

“Odean, I’m so sorry. We didn’t think …”

Odean dashed away a tear. “I work for Miss Lib fifty-five years and nobody ain’t even told me she’s in the hospital.”

Tat closed her eyes for an instant. “Odean.” There was a dreadful silence. “Oh, this is horrible. How can you forgive us?”

“This whole week I’m thinking y'all's up in Sorth Carolina and I’s suppose to come back to work on Monday. And here she is, laying in the ground.”

“Please .” Tat laid a hand on Odean’s arm. “Wait here while I run get Edith. Will you wait here, just a moment?”

She flustered inside. Conversation—not very clear—resumed on the porch. Odean, expressionless, turned and stared into the middle distance. Someone—a man—said, in a stage whisper: “I believe she wants a little money.”

Blood rose hot to Harriet’s face. Odean—dull-faced, unblinking—stood where she was, without moving. Amongst all the large white people in their Sunday finery, she looked very small and drab: a lone wren in a flock of starlings. Hely had got up and was standing behind the swing observing the scene with frank interest.

Harriet didn’t know what to do. She felt as if she should go over and stand with Odean—it was what Libby would want her to do—but Odean didn’t seem very friendly or welcoming; in fact, there was something forbidding in her manner that frightened Harriet. Suddenly, quite without warning, there was movement on the porch and Allison burst through the door into Odean’s arms, so that the old lady—wild-eyed at the abrupt onslaught—had to catch the porch rail to keep from falling over backwards.

Allison sobbed, with an intensity frightening even to Harriet. Odean stared over Allison’s shoulder without returning or appearing to welcome the hug.

Edie came through, and out onto the steps. “Allison, get back in the house,” she said; and—grabbing Allison’s shoulder, turning her around: “Now!”