The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
“But Edie said that old lady didn’t die in the fire. Edie said she had a heart attack.”
“Edie say?”
You didn’t want to challenge Ida when she used that tone. Harriet looked at her fingernails.
“Didn’t die in the fire. Hah!” Ida wadded the wet cloth and slapped it down on the counter. “She die of the smoke, didn’t she? And of all the shoving and hollering and people fighting to get out? She old, Miss Coffey. She so tender-hearted, she not able to eat deer meat or take a fish off the hook. And here ride up these horrible old trash, chunking fire through the window—”
“Did the church burn all the way down?”
“It was burnt good enough.”
“Edie said—”
“Was Edie there?”
Her voice was terrible. Harriet dared not say a word. Ida glared at her for several long moments and then hiked the hem of her skirt and rolled down her stocking, which was thick and fleshy-tan, rolled above her knees, many shades paler than Ida’s rich, dark skin. Now, above the opaque roll of nylon, appeared a six-inch patch of seared flesh: pink like an uncooked wiener, shiny and repulsively smooth in some spots, puckered and pitted in others, shocking in both color and texture against the pleasing Brazil-nut brown of Ida’s knee.
“Reckon Edie aint think that’s a burn good enough?”
Harriet was speechless.
“Alls I know is, it felt good and hot to me.”
“Does it hurt?”
“It sho did hurt.”
“What about now?”
“No. Sometime it itch me, though. Come on, now,” she said to the stocking as she began to roll it back up. “Don’t give me no trouble. Sometimes these hoseries like to kill me.”
“Is that a third-degree burn?”
“Third, fourth, and fifth.” Ida laughed again, this time rather unpleasantly. “Alls I know, it hurt so bad I can’t sleep for six weeks. But maybe Edie think that fire aint hot enough unless both legs burnt right off. And I reckon the law think the same thing, because they never going to punish the ones that did it.”
“They have to.”
“Who say?”
“The law does. That’s why it’s the law.”
“It’s one law for the weak, and another for the strong.”
With more confidence than she felt, Harriet said: “No, there’s not. It’s the same law for everybody.”
“Then why them mens still walking free?”
“I think you ought to tell Edie about this,” said Harriet, after a confused pause. “If you don’t, I will.”
“Edie?” Ida Rhew’s mouth twitched, strangely, with something close to amusement; she was about to speak but then changed her mind.
What? Harriet thought, chilled to the heart. Does Edie know?
Her shock and sickness at the notion was perfectly visible, like a window shade had snapped up from over her face. Ida’s expression softened—it’s true, thought Harriet, in disbelief, she’s told Edie already, Edie knows.
But Ida Rhew, quite suddenly, had busied herself with the stove again. “And how come you think I need to be bother Miss Edie with this mess, Harriet?” she said, with her back turned, and in a bantering and rather too hearty voice. “She an old lady. What you think she going to do? Stamp on they feet?” She chuckled; and though the chuckle was warm and unquestionably heartfelt, it did not reassure Harriet. “Beat them crost the head with that black pocketbook?”
“She should call the police.” Was it conceivable that Edie had been told of this, and not called the police? “Whoever did that to you should be in jail.”
“Jail?” To Harriet’s surprise, Ida roared with laughter. “Bless your heart. They likes to be in jail. Air conditioning in the summertime and free peas and cornbread. And plenty time to idle round and visit with they sorry friends.”
“The Ratliffs did this? You’re sure?”
Ida rolled her eyes. “Bragging about it around the town.”
Harriet felt about to cry. How could they be walking free? “And threw the bricks too?”
“Yes, ma’am. Grown men. Young’uns too. And that one call himself a preacher—he not actually doing the chunking, he just hollering and shaking his Bible and stirring the others up.”
“There’s a Ratliff boy about Robin’s age,” said Harriet, watching Ida carefully. “Pemberton told me about him.”
Ida said nothing. She wrung out the dishrag, and then went to the drainer to put away the clean dishes.
“He would be about twenty now.” Old enough, thought Harriet, to be one of the men shooting off the creek bridge.
Ida, with a sigh, heaved the heavy cast-iron frying pan out of the drainer, and stooped to put it in the cabinet. The kitchen was by far the cleanest room in the house; Ida had carved out a little fortress of order here, free from the dusty newspapers piled throughout the rest of the house. Harriet’s mother did not allow the newspapers to be thrown away—this a rule so ancient and inviolable that even Harriet did not question it—but by some unspoken treaty between them, she kept them out of the kitchen, which was Ida’s realm.
“His name is Danny,” said Harriet. “Danny Ratliff. This person Robin’s age.”
Ida glanced over her shoulder. “What for you studying Ratliff so big all of a sudden?”
“Do you remember him? Danny Ratliff?”
“Lord, yes.” Ida grimaced as she stretched up on tiptoe to put away a cereal bowl. “I remember him just like yesterday.”
Harriet took care to keep her face composed. “He came to the house? When Robin was alive?”
“Yes sir. Nasty little loud-mouth. Couldn’t run him off for nothing. Hitting at the porch with baseball bats and creeping around here in the yard after dark, and one time he taken Robin’s bicycle. I tell your poor mama, I tell her and I tell her, but she aint done a thing. Underprivilege, she say. Underprivilege, my foot.”
She opened the drawer and—noisily, with lots of clatter—began to replace the clean spoons. “Nobody pay a bit of attention to what I say. I tell your mother, I tell her and tell her that little Ratliff is nasty. Trying to fight Robin. Always cussing and setting off firecrackers and chunking something or other. Someday somebody going to get hurt. I sees it plain enough even if nobody else do. Who watch Robin every day? Who always looking right here out the window at him—” she pointed, at the window above the sink, at the late-afternoon sky and all the full-leafed greenness of the summer yard—“while he playing right out there with his soldiers or his kitty cat?” Sadly, she shook her head, and shut the silverware drawer. “Your brother, he a good little fellow. Buzz around underfoot like a little old june bug, and he sure do sass me every now and then, but he always sorry for it. He never pout and go on like you do. Sometimes he run up and thow his arms around me, like so. ‘I’s lonesome, Ida!’ I told him not to play with that trash, I told him and told him, but he’s lonesome, and your mother say she don’t see nothing the matter with it, and sometime he do it anyway.”
“Danny Ratliff fought Robin? In the yard here?”
“Yes, sir. Cussed and stole, too.” Ida took off her apron, and hung it on a peg. “And I chase him out of the yard not ten minutes before your mama find poor little Robin hung off that tree limb out there.”
————
“I’m telling you, the police don’t do anything to people like him,” said Harriet; and she started in again about the church, and Ida’s leg, and the old lady who had burned to death, but Hely was tired of hearing about all this. What excited him was a dangerous criminal on the loose, and the notion of being a hero. Though he was grateful to have evaded church camp, the summer so far had been just a little too quiet. Apprehending a killer promised to be more fun than acting in pageants, or running away from home, or any of the other activities he’d hoped to do with Harriet over the summer.
They were in the toolshed in Harriet’s back yard, where the two of them had retreated to have private conversations ever since kindergarten. The air was sti
Harriet had already told Hely everything that she had to tell, but she was so agitated after her conversation with Ida that she kept fidgeting and pacing and repeating herself. “She knew it was Danny Ratliff. She knew. She said herself it was him and I hadn’t even told her what your brother said. Pem said he bragged about other stuff, too, bad things—”
“Why don’t we pour sugar in his gas tank? That’ll totally destroy the engine of a car.”
She gave him a disgusted look, which offended him slightly; he had thought this an excellent idea.
“Or let’s write a letter to the police and don’t sign our names.”
“What good will that do?”
“If we tell my daddy, I bet he’ll call them.”
Harriet snorted. She didn’t share Hely’s high opinion of his father, who was a principal at the high school.
“Let’s hear your big idea then,” Hely said sarcastically.
Harriet bit her lower lip. “I want to kill him,” she said.
The sternness and remove of her expression struck a thrill at Hely’s heart. “Can I help?” he said immediately.
“No.”
“You can’t kill him by yourself!”
“Why not?”
He was taken aback by her look. For a moment he couldn’t think of a good reason. “Because he’s big,” he said at last. “He’ll kick your ass.”
“Yes, but I bet I’m smarter than him.”
“Let me help. How are you going to do it, anyway?” he said, nudging her with the toe of his sneaker. “Have you got a gun?”
“My dad does.”
“Those big old shotguns? You couldn’t even pick one of them things up.”
“I can too.”
“Maybe so, but—Look, don’t get mad,” he said, as her brow darkened. “I can’t even shoot a gun that big and I weigh ninety pounds. That shotgun would knock me down, maybe even put my eye out. If you put your eye right up to the sight, the kick will knock your eyeball right out of the socket.”
“Where did you learn all this?” said Harriet, after an attentive pause.
“In Boy Scouts.” He hadn’t really learned it in the Boy Scouts; he didn’t know exactly how he knew it, though he was pretty sure it was true.
“I wouldn’t have quit going to Brownies if they’d taught us stuff like that.”
“Well, they teach you a lot of crap in the Boy Scouts too. Traffic safety and stuff.”
“What if we used a pistol?”
“A pistol would be better,” said Hely, glancing coolly away to conceal his pleasure.
“Do you know how to shoot one?”
“Oh yeah.” Hely had never had his hands on a gun in his life—his father didn’t hunt, and didn’t allow his boys to hunt—but he did have a BB gun. He was about to volunteer that his mother kept a little black pistol in her bedside table when Harriet said: “Is it hard?”
“To shoot? Not for me, it isn’t,” said Hely. “Don’t worry, I’ll shoot him for you.”
“No, I want to do it myself.”
“Okay, so, I’ll teach you,” said Hely. “I’ll coach you. We start today.”
“Where?”
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t be shooting off guns in the back yard.”
“That’s right, sweet pea, you certainly can’t,” said a merry-voiced shadow which loomed suddenly in the door of the toolshed.
Hely and Harriet—badly startled—glanced up into the white pop of a Polaroid flashbulb.
“Mother!” screamed Hely, throwing his arms over his face and stumbling backwards over a can of gasoline.
The camera spat out the picture with a click and a whir.
“Don’t be mad, yall, I couldn’t help it,” said Hely’s mother, in a bemused voice which made it plain she didn’t give a hoot if they were mad or not. “Ida Rhew told me she thought you two were out here. Peanut—” (“Peanut” was what Hely’s mother always called him; it was a nickname he despised) “did you forget that today is Daddy’s birthday? I want both you boys to be at home when he gets back from playing golf so we can surprise him.”
“Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
“Oh, come on. I just went out and bought a bunch of film, and yall just looked so cute. I hope it comes out.…” She examined the photograph, and blew on it through pursed, pink-frosted lips. Though Hely’s mother was the same age as Harriet’s, she dressed and acted much younger. She wore blue eye shadow and had a dark, freckly tan, from parading around Hely’s back yard in a bikini (“like a teenybopper!” said Edie), and her hair was cut the same way that a lot of high-school girls wore it.
“Stop it,” whined Hely. He was embarrassed by his mother. Kids at school teased him about her skirts being too short.
Hely’s mother laughed. “I know you don’t like white cake, Hely, but it is your father’s birthday. Guess what, though?” Hely’s mother always spoke to Hely in this bright, insulting, babyish tone, like he was in kindergarten. “They had some chocolate cupcakes at the bakery, how about that? Come on, now. You need to take a bath and put on some clean clothes.… Harriet, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, sweet pea, but Ida Rhew asked me to tell you to come in for supper.”
“Can’t Harriet eat with us?”
“Not today, Peanut,” she said breezily, with a wink at Harriet. “Harriet understands, don’t you, sweetie?”
Harriet—offended by her forward manner—gazed back at her stolidly. She didn’t see any reason to be more polite to Hely’s mother than Hely was himself.
“I’m sure she understands, don’t you, Harriet? We’ll have her over next time we cook hamburgers in the yard. Besides, if Harriet came, I’m afraid we wouldn’t have a cupcake for her.”
“One cupcake?” shrieked Hely. “You only bought me one cupcake?”
“Peanut, don’t be greedy like that.”
“One isn’t enough!”
“One cupcake is plenty for a bad boy like you.… Oh, look here. This is hilarious.”
She leaned down to show them the Polaroid—still pale, but clear enough now to make out. “Wonder if it’s going to come out any better?” she said. “You two look like a couple of little Martians.”
And it was true: they did. Both Hely and Harriet’s eyes glowed round and red, like the eyes of little nocturnal creatures caught unexpectedly in car headlights; and their faces, dazed with shock, were tinted a sickly green from the flash.
CHAPTER
3
——
The Pool Hall
Sometimes, before Ida went home for the evening, she set out something nice for supper: casserole, fried chicken, sometimes even a pudding or cobbler. But tonight on the counter were only some leftovers that she wanted to get rid of: ancient ham slices, pale and slimy from sitting around wrapped in plastic; also some cold mashed potatoes.
Harriet was furious. She opened the pantry and stared in at the too-tidy shelves, lined with dim jars of flour and sugar, dried peas and cornmeal, macaroni and rice. Harriet’s mother rarely
Cobwebs of lassitude drifted over her. She snapped off a stick of spaghetti and sucked on it. The floury taste was familiar—like paste—and triggered an unexpected splutter of pictures from nursery school … green tile floors, wooden blocks painted to look like bricks, windows too high to see out of.…
Lost in thought, still chewing on the splinter of dried spaghetti—her brow knotted cumbrously in a way that brought out her resemblance to Edie and Judge Cleve—Harriet dragged a chair to the refrigerator, maneuvering carefully to avoid setting off a landslide of newspapers. Gloomily, she climbed up and stood in it as she shifted through the crunching packages in the freezer compartment. But there was nothing good in the freezer, either: only a carton of the disgusting peppermint-stick ice cream that her mother loved (many days, especially in the summertime, she ate nothing else) buried in an avalanche of foil-wrapped lumps. The concept of Convenience Foods was foreign and preposterous to Ida Rhew, who did the grocery shopping. TV dinners she thought unwholesome (though sometimes she bought them if they went on sale); between-meal snacks she dismissed as a fad derived from television. (“Snock? What you want with a snock if you eat your dinner?”)
“Tell on her,” Hely whispered when Harriet—glumly—joined him again on the back porch. “She has to do what your mother says.”
“Yeah, I know.” Hely’s mother had fired Roberta when Hely told on her for whipping him with a hairbrush; she had fired Ruby because she wouldn’t let Hely watch Bewitched.
“Do it. Do it.” Hely bumped her foot with the toe of his sneaker.
“Later.” But she said it only to save face. Harriet and Allison never complained about Ida and more than once—even when Harriet was angry at Ida, over some injustice—she’d lied and taken the blame herself rather than get Ida in trouble. The simple fact was that things worked differently at Harriet’s house than at Hely’s. Hely—as had Pemberton before him—prided himself on being so difficult that their mother was unable to hold on to any housekeeper over a year or two; he and Pem had gone through nearly a dozen. What did Hely care if it was Roberta, or Ramona, or Shirley or Ruby or Essie Lee who was watching TV when he got home from school? But Ida stood at the firm center of Harriet’s universe: beloved, grumbling, irreplaceable, with her large kind hands and her great moist prominent eyes, her smile which was like the first smile that Harriet had ever seen in the world. It tormented Harriet to see how lightly her mother treated Ida sometimes, as if Ida was only passing through their lives and not fundamentally connected with them. Harriet’s mother sometimes got hysterical, and paced around the kitchen crying, and said things she didn’t mean (though she was always sorry later), and the possibility of Ida being fired (or, more likely, getting mad and quitting, for Ida groused continually about how little Harriet’s mother paid her) was so frightening that Harriet could not allow herself to think of it.