The Shining Girls

Harper ^{20 NOVEMBER 1931}

It’s the first time he has been back to the Hooverville since he left, returning before he left. It is diminished by his experience. The people are meaner and lower. Gray skin sacks swung around by a numbed puppeteer.

He has to remind himself that no one is looking for him. Not yet. But he avoids his old haunts and takes a different route through the park, clinging to the water’s edge. He finds the woman’s shack easily. She is taking down the washing outside, her blind fingers feeling down the wire to pluck away the stained petticoat, the blanket infested with lice that resist being washed away in cold water. She deftly folds each garment and hands it to the boy standing beside her.

‘Mami. Someone. Someone is here.’

The woman turns her face towards him, full of trepidation. He guesses she has always been blind, oblivious to the need to arrange the muscles in guile. It makes the task at hand all the more tiresome. There is no game here. He has no interest in this dull woman who is already dead.

‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, for disturbing you this fine evening.’

‘I ain’t got no money,’ the woman says, ‘if you’ve come to rob me. You ain’t the first, you know.’

‘The opposite, ma’am. I have a favor to ask. No big thing, but I can pay you for it.’

‘How much?’

Harper laughs at the nakedness of her need. ‘Straight to haggling? You don’t even want to know what I want you to do.’

‘You’ll be wanting the same as the others. Don’t worry. I’ll send the boy to beg at the station. He won’t get in the way of your taste of cunny.’

He crushes the bills into her hand. She flinches. ‘A friend of mine will be passing by here in an hour or so. I need you to give him a message and this coat.’ He drapes it over her shoulders. ‘You need to wear it. That’s how he will know you. His name is Bartek. Will you remember that?’

‘Bartek,’ she repeats. ‘And what’s the message?’

‘That’ll be enough, I think. There’ll be a commotion. You’ll hear it. You only need to say his name. And don’t think of taking anything from the pockets. I know what’s in there, and I’ll come back to kill you.’

‘You needn’t say such things in front of the boy.’

‘He’ll be my witness,’ Harper says, pleased by the truth of it.