Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

The preacher squinted at her. “You’re a bold little piece,” he said. “Bold as brass.”

Harriet felt weak and giddy. He doesn’t know , she told herself fiercely, he doesn’t know ….There was a call button for the nurse on the side of her bed, and though she wanted very badly to turn her head and look at it, she forced herself to keep still.

He was watching her closely. Beyond, the whiteness of the room swept away into airy distances, an emptiness just as sickening in its way as the close darkness of the water tank.

“Lookahere,” he said, leaning even closer. “What you so scared of? Ain't nobody laid a finger on you.”

Rigidly, Harriet looked up in his face and did not flinch.

“Maybe you done something to be scared of, then? I want to know what you was up to, sneaking around my house. And if you don’t tell me, I’m on find out.”

Suddenly a cheerful voice said from the doorway: “ Knock knock ! “

Hastily, the preacher straightened and turned around. There, waving from the doorway, stood Roy Dial with some Sunday-school booklets and a box of candy.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” said Mr. Dial, striding in unafraid. He was in casual dress instead of the suit and tie that he wore to Sunday school: all sporty in his deck shoes and khakis, a whiff about him of Florida and Sea World. “Why Eugene . What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Dial!” The preacher sprang to offer his hand.

His tone had changed—charged with a new kind of energy—and even in her illness and fright, Harriet noted this. He’s afraid , she thought.

“Ah—yes.” Mr. Dial looked at Eugene. “Wasn’t a Ratliff admitted yesterday? In the newspaper …”

“Yes sir! My brother Farsh. He …” Eugene made a visible effort to slow down. “Well, he’s been shot, sir.”

Shot ? thought Harriet, dazed.

“Shot in the neck, sir. They found him last night. He—”

“Well, my goodness!” cried Mr. Dial gaily, rearing back with a drollery which told how little he cared to hear about Eugene’s family. “Goodness gracious! I sure do hate that! I’ll be sure and stop in and see him as soon as he feels a little better! I—”

Without giving Eugene the chance to explain that Farish wasn’t going to get better, Mr. Dial threw up his hands as if to say: what do you do ? and set down the box of candy on the night-stand. “I’m afraid this isn’t for you, Harriet,” he said, in dolphinly profile, leaning in cozily to peer at her with his left eye. “I was just running out before work to visit with dear Agnes Upchurch” (Miss Upchurch was a rickety old Baptist invalid, a banker’s widow, high on Mr. Dial’s list of prospects for the Building Fund) “and who should I bump into downstairs but your grandmother! Why my goodness! I said. Miss Edith! I—”

The preacher, Harriet noticed, was edging towards the door. Mr. Dial saw her looking at him, and turned.

“And how do you know this fine young lady?”

The preacher—arrested in his retreat—made the best of it. “Yes, sir,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand and stepping back to Mr. Dial’s side as if that was what he had meant to do all along, “well, sir, I was here when they brung her in last night. Too weak to walk. She was a mighty sick little girl and that’s the truth.” This he said with a conclusive air, as if further explanation could not possibly be necessary.

“And so you were just—” Mr. Dial looked as if he could hardly bring himself to say it—“ visiting ? With Harriet here?”

Eugene cleared his throat and looked away. “There’s my brother, sir,” he said, “and while I’m out here, I might as well try to visit and bring some comfort to others. It’s a joy to get out amongst the little ones and pour out that precious seed.”

Mr. Dial looked at Harriet, as if to say: has this man been bothering you ?

“It don’t take nothing but a set of knees and a Bible. You know,” said Eugene, nodding at the television set, “that there’s the greatest detriment to a child’s salvation you can have in the house. The Sin Box, is what I call it.”

“Mr. Dial,” said Harriet suddenly—and her voice sounded thin and faraway—“where’s my grandmother?”

“Downstairs, I think,” said Mr. Dial, fixing her with his chilly porpoise eye. “On the telephone. What’s the matter?”

“I don’t feel good,” said Harriet, truthfully.

The preacher, she noticed, was easing out of the room. When he saw Harriet watching him, he gave her a look before he slid away.

“What’s the matter?” said Mr. Dial, bending down over her, overwhelming her with his sharp, fruity aftershave. “Do you want some water? Do you want some breakfast? Are you sick to your stomach?”

“I—I—” Harriet struggled to sit up. What she wanted she couldn’t ask for, not in so many words. She was afraid of being left alone, but she could not think exactly how to tell Mr. Dial this without telling him what she was afraid of, and why.

Just at that instant, the telephone at her bedside rang.

“Here, let me get that,” said Mr. Dial, snatching up the receiver and passing it to her.

“Mama?” said Harriet, faintly.

“Congratulations! A brilliant coup!”

It was Hely. His voice—though exuberant—was tinny and remote. From the hiss on the line, Harriet knew he was calling from the Saints phone in his bedroom.

“Harriet? Hah! Man, you destroyed him! You nailed him!”

“I—” Harriet’s brain wasn’t working at top speed and she couldn’t think quick enough what to say. Despite the connection, his hoots and yelps were so loud on the other end that Harriet feared Mr. Dial could hear him.

“Way to go!” In his excitement he dropped the phone, with an enormous clatter; his voice rushed back at her, breathy, deafening. “It was in the paper—”

“What?”

“I knew it was you. What are you doing in the hospital? What happened? Are you hurt? Are you shot?”

Harriet cleared her throat in a special way they had, which meant she wasn’t free to talk.

“Oh, right ,” said Hely, after a somber pause. “Sorry.”

Mr. Dial, taking his candy, mouthed at her: I have to run .

“No, don’t,” said Harriet, in sudden panic, but Mr. Dial kept right on backing out the door.

See you later ! he mouthed, with bright gesticulations. I got to go sell me some cars !

“Just answer yes or no, then,” Hely was saying. “Are you in trouble?”

Fearfully, Harriet gazed at the empty doorway. Mr. Dial was far from the kindest or most understanding of adults, but at least he was competent: all rectitude and pickiness, sweet moral outrage itself. Nobody would dare to hurt her if he was around.

“Are they going to arrest you? Is a policeman on guard?”

“Hely, can you do something for me?” she said.

“Sure,” he said, serious suddenly, alert as a terrier.

Harriet—an eye on the door—said: “Promise.” Though she was half-whispering, her voice carried farther than she wanted it to in the frosty silence, all Formica and slickness.

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“Promise me first.”

“Harriet, come on, just tell me!”

“At the water tower.” Harriet took a deep breath; there was no way to say it without coming right out and saying it. “There’s a gun lying on the ground. I need you to go—”

“A gun ?”

“—to get it and throw it away,” she said hopelessly. Why even bother keeping her voice down? Who knew who was listening, on his end or even hers? She’d just watched a nurse walk past the door; now here came another, glancing in curiously as she passed.