The Little Friend полностью

Stooped with the rock’s weight, Harriet ran back into the driveway of the frame house. There were two trucks, she saw, down at the end of the driveway. One was from Mississippi—Alexandria County—but the other had Kentucky plates, and as heavy as the rock was, Harriet stopped where she was and took a moment to fix the numbers in her mind. Nobody had thought to remember any license-plate numbers back when Robin was murdered.

Quickly, she ducked behind the first truck—the Kentucky one. Then she took the chunk of concrete (which, she now noticed, was not just any old chunk of concrete but a lawn ornament in the shape of a curled-up kitten) and knocked it against the headlight.

Pop went the lights as they broke—easily, with an explosion like a flashbulb; pop pop. Then she ran back and broke out all the lights on the Ratliff truck, the headlights and the tail-lights too. Though she felt like smashing them with all her strength, she held herself back; she was afraid of rousing the neighbors, and a good hard rap—like cracking the shell of an egg—was all it took to shatter them, so that big triangles of glass fell out upon the gravel.

From the tail-lights, she gathered up the biggest and most pointed shards and wedged them into the treads of the back tires, as firmly as she could without cutting her hands. Then she circled to the front of the truck and did the same. Heart pounding, she took two or three deep breaths. Then, with both hands, and with all the strength she could muster, she stood and lifted the concrete kitten as high as she could and hurled it through the windshield.

It broke with a bright splash. A shower of glass pebbles pattered to the dashboard. Across the street, a porch light snapped on, followed by the light next door, but the moonlit driveway—sparkling with broken glass—was deserted now, for Harriet was already halfway up the stairs.

“What was that?”

Silence. All at once—to Hely’s horror—a hundred and fifty watts of white electricity poured down on him from the overhead bulb. Aghast, blinded by the dazzle, he cringed against the sleazy panel board and almost before he could blink (there had been an awful lot of snakes on the carpet) somebody cursed and the room went black again.

A bulky form stepped through the door and into the dark room. Lightly, for its size, it slipped past Hely and toward the front windows.

Hely froze: the blood drained in a rapid whoosh from his head clear down to his ankles but just as the room was starting to swing back and forth a disturbance broke out in the front room. Agitated talk, not quite audible. A chair scraped back. “No, don’t,” someone said, clearly.

Fierce whispers. In the dark, only a few feet away, Farish Ratliff stood listening in the shadows—motionless, his chin high and his stumpy legs parted, like a bear poised to attack.

In the next room, the door squeaked open. “Farsh?” said one of the men. Then, to Hely’s surprise, he heard a child’s voice: whiny, breathless, indistinct.

Horribly near, Farish snapped: “Who’s that?”

Commotion. Farish—only steps from Hely—drew a long, exasperated breath then wheeled and thundered back into the lighted room as if he meant to choke someone.

One of the men cleared his throat and said: “Farish, look here—”

“Downstars … Come see …” The new voice—the child—was countrified and whiny; a little too whiny, Hely realized, with an incredulous surge of hope.

“Farsh, she says the truck—”

“He done broke your windows out,” piped the acid, tiny voice. “If you hurry—”

There was a general scramble, cut short by a bellow loud enough to bring down the walls.

“—if you hurry, you can catch him,” said Harriet; the accent had slipped, the voice—high, pedantic—recognizably hers, but nobody seemed to notice over the ecstasy of stuttering and curses. Feet thundered down the back stairs.

“Goddamn it!” shrieked someone, from outside.

From below floated an extraordinary ruckus of curses and shouts. Hely, cautiously, edged to the door. For several moments he stood and listened, so intently that he took no notice in the weak light of a small rattlesnake, coiled to strike, only ten or twelve inches from his foot.

“Harriet?” he whispered, at last—or tried to whisper, for he had almost completely lost his voice. For the first time, he realized how horribly thirsty he was. From downstairs, in the driveway, came confused shouts, a fist pounding on metal—hollow, repetitive, like the galvanized washtub that rendered the thunder sound effects in the middle-school plays and dance recitals.