Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

Allison laughed aloud. “Look!” she said, rising up on her knees—for the bird had suddenly perked up, cocking its glossy fine head intelligently to the side. “He hears you!”

“Do it again!” said Harriet. Ida wouldn’t do bird-calls for them just any old time; you had to catch her in the right mood.

“Yes, Ida, please!”

But Ida only laughed and shook her head. “Y'all remember, don’t you,” she said, “the old story how he got his red wing?”

“No,” said Harriet and Allison, at once, though they did. Now that they were older, Ida told stories less and less, and that was too bad because Ida’s stories were wild and strange and often very frightening: stories about drowned children, and ghosts in the woods, and the buzzard’s hunting party; about gold-toothed raccoons that bit babies in their cradles, and bewitched saucers of milk that turned to blood in the night….

“Well, once upon a time, in the long-ago,” said Ida, “there was a ugly little hunchback man so mad at everything he decide to burn up the whole world. So he taken a torch in his hand, just as mad as he could be, and walked down to the big river where all the animals lived. Because back in the old days, there wasn’t a whole lot of little second-class rivers and creeks like you have now. There was only the one.”

Over on Mrs. Fountain’s chimney, the bird battered his wings—quick, businesslike—and flew away.

“Oh, look. There he goes. Ain't want to hear my story.” With a heavy sigh, Ida glanced at the clock, and—to Harriet’s dismay—stretched and stood up. “And it’s time for me to be getting home.”

“Tell us anyway!”

“Tomorrow I’ll tell you.”

“Ida, don’t go!” cried Harriet as Ida Rhew broke the small, contented silence that followed by heaving a sigh and moving towards the door, slowly, as if her legs hurt her: poor Ida. “Please?”

“Oh, I’ll be back tomorrow,” said Ida, wryly, without turning around, hoisting her brown paper grocery bag underneath her arm, trudging heavily away. “Never you worry.”

“Listen, Danny,” said Farish, “Reese is leaving, so we’re going to have to go on down to the square and listen to Eugene’s—” abstractedly, he waved his hand in the air. “You know. That church bullshit.”

“Why?” said Danny, pushing back his chair, “why we got to do that?”

“The boy is leaving tomorrow. Early tomorrow, knowing him.”

“Well, come on, we’ll just run down to the Mission and put the stuff in his truck right now.”

“We can’t. He’s went off somewhere.”

“Damn.” Danny sat and thought for a moment. “Where you planning on hiding it? The engine?”

“I know places that the FBI could tear that truck apart and never find it.”

“How long’s it going to take you? … I said, how long’s it going to take you ,” Danny repeated, when he saw a hostile light spark up suddenly in Farish’s eyes. “To hide the stuff.” Farish was slightly deaf in one ear, from the gunshot; and when he was drugged up and paranoid, sometimes he misunderstood things in a really twisted way, thought you’d told him to go fuck himself when really you’d asked him to shut the door or pass the salt.

“How long you say?” Farish held up five fingers.

“So, all right now. Here’s what we do. Why don’t we skip the preaching and go on over there to the Mission afterwards? I’ll keep em busy upstairs while you go out and put the package in the truck, wherever, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Tell you what bothers me,” said Farish abruptly. He sat down at the table beside Danny and began to clean his fingernails with a pocketknife. “It was a car over there at Gene’s just now. He called me about it.”

“Car? What kind of a car?”

“Unmarked. Parked out front.” Farish heaved a bilious sigh. “Took off when they saw Gene looking out the window at em.”

“It’s probably nothing.”

“What?” Farish reared back, and blinked. “Don’t be whispering at me, now. I can’t stand it when you whisper.”

“I said it’s nothing .” Danny looked at his brother intently, then shook his head. “What would anybody want with Eugene?”

“It’s not Eugene they want,” said Farish, darkly. “It’s me. I’m telling you, there’s government agencies got a file on me this thick.”

“Farish.” You didn’t want to get Farish started on the Federal Government, not when he was cranked up like this. He’d rant all night and into the next day.

“Look here,” he said, “if you’d just go on and pay that tax—”

Farish shot a quick, angry glance at him.

“There was a letter come just the other day. If you don’t pay your taxes, Farish, they’re going to come after you.”

“This isn’t about any tax,” said Farish. “The government’s been surveilling my ass for twenty years.”

Harriet’s mother pushed open the door to the kitchen, where Harriet—head in hands—sat slumped at the table. Hoping to be asked what was wrong, she slumped down even further; but her mother did not notice her and went directly to the freezer, where she dug out the striped gallon bucket of peppermint ice cream.

Harriet watched her as she reached up on tiptoe to get a wine glass from the top shelf, and then, laboriously, scooped a few spoonfuls of ice cream into it. The nightgown she had on was very old, with filmy ice-blue skirts and ribbons at the throat. When Harriet was small, she had been captivated by it because it looked like the Blue Fairy’s gown in her book of Pinocchio . Now, it just looked old: wilted, gone gray at the seams.

Harriet’s mother, turning to put the ice cream back in the freezer, saw Harriet slouching at the table. “What’s the matter?” she said, as the freezer door barked shut.

“To start with,” said Harriet, loudly, “I’m starving.”

Harriet’s mother wrinkled her brow—vaguely, pleasantly—and then (no, don’t let her say it, thought Harriet) asked the very question that Harriet had known she would ask. “Why don’t you have some of this ice cream?”

“ I…hate… that … kind…of…ice…cream .” How many times had she said it?

“Hmm?”

“Mother, I hate peppermint ice cream .” She felt desperate all of a sudden; didn’t anybody ever listen to her? “I can’t stand it! I’ve never liked it! Nobody’s ever liked it but you!”

She was gratified to see her mother’s hurt expression. “I’m sorry … I just thought we all enjoyed a little something light and cool to eat … now that it’s so hot at night….”

“ I don’t.”

“Well, get Ida to fix you something….” “Ida’s gone!” “Didn’t she leave you anything?”

“No!” Nothing Harriet wanted, anyway: only tuna fish.

“Well, what would you like, then? It’s so hot—you don’t want anything heavy,” she said doubtfully.

“Yes I do! ” At Hely’s house, no matter how hot it was, they sat down and ate a real supper every night, big, hot, greasy suppers that left the kitchen sweltering: roast beef, lasagne, fried shrimp.

But her mother wasn’t listening. “Maybe some toast,” she said brightly, as she replaced the ice cream carton in the freezer.

“Toast? ”

“Why, what’s wrong with that?”

“People don’t have toast for dinner! Why can’t we eat like regular people?” At school, in health class, when Harriet’s teacher had asked the children to record their diets for two weeks, Harriet had been shocked to see how bad her own diet looked when it was written down on paper, particularly on the nights that Ida didn’t cook: Popsicles, black olives, toast and butter. So she’d torn up the real list, and dutifully copied from a cookbook her mother had received as a wedding present ( A Thousand Ways to Please Your Family ) a prim series of balanced menus: chicken piccata, summer squash gratin, garden salad, apple compote.