Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

“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 ain’t 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 straight 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.”