Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

“ Oh no ye don’t.” His amphetamine breath struck hot and foul in Danny’s face. “I’m onto your ass.”

“Come on,” said Danny wearily, and turned his face away, “let me up.”

Farish reared back; and for an instant their dead father blazed up—arms crossed—out of Hell, and glared scornfully from behind Farish’s eyes.

“Shut your mouth,” he hissed, and shoved Danny back on the pillow, “don’t say a word, you listen to me . You report to me now.”

Danny lay in confusion, very still.

“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 house-dress. 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 ought 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.