At this his wife and his sons began to cry hot tears.
In his weensy-weak voice, Anansi says, “On my deathbed, you have to promise me two things.”
“Anything, anything,” says his wife and his sons.
“First, you got to promise me you will bury me down under the big breadfruit tree.”
“The big breadfruit tree down by the pea patch, you mean?” asks his wife.
“Of course that’s the one I mean,” says Anansi. Then, in his weensy-weak voice, he says, “And you got to promise something else. Promise me that, as a memorial to me, you going to make a little fire at the foot of my grave. And, to show you ain’t forgotten me, you going to keep the little fire burning, and not ever let it go out.”
“We will! We will!” said Anansi’s wife and children, wailing and sobbing.
“And on that fire, as mark of your respect and your love, I want to see a lickle pot, filled with saltwater, to remind you all of the hot salt tears you shed over me as I lay dying.”
“We shall! We shall!” they wept, and Anansi, he closed his eyes, and he breathed no more.
Well, they carried Anansi down to the big breadfruit tree that grew beside the pea patch, and they buried him six feet down, and at the foot of the grave they built a little fire, and they put a pot beside it, filled with saltwater.
Anansi, he waits down there all the day but when night falls he climbs out of the grave, and he goes into the pea patch, where he picks him the fattest, sweetest, ripest peas. He gathers them up, and he boils them up in his pot, and he stuffs himself with them till his tummy swells and tightens like a drum.
Then, before dawn, he goes back under the ground, and he goes back to sleep. He sleeps as his wife and his sons find the peas gone; he sleeps through them seeing the pot empty of water and refilling it; he sleeps through their sorrow.
Each night Anansi comes out of his grave, dancing and delighting at the cleverness of him, and each night he fills the pot with peas, and he fills his tummy with peas, and he eats until he cannot eat another thing.
Days go by, and Anansi’s family gets thinner and thinner, for nothing ever ripens that isn’t picked in the night by Anansi, and they got nothing to eat.
Anansi’s wife, she looks down at the empty plates, and she says to her sons, “What would your father do?”
Her sons, they think and they think, and they remember every tale that Anansi ever told them. Then they go down to the tar pits, and they buy them sixpennyworth of tar, enough to fill four big buckets, and they take that tar back to the pea patch. And down in the middle of the pea patch, they make them a man out of tar: tar face, tar eyes, tar arms, tar fingers, and tar chest. It was a fine man, as black and as proud as Anansi himself.
That night, old Anansi, fat as he has ever been in his whole life, he scuttles up out of the ground, and, plump and happy, stomach swollen like a drum, he strolls over to the pea patch.
“Who you?” he says to the tar man.
The tar man, he don’t say one word.
“This is my place,” said Anansi to the tar man. “It’s my pea patch. You better get going, if you know what’s good for you.”
The tar man, he don’t say one word, he don’t move a muscle.
“I’m the strongest, mightiest, most powerful fellow there is or was or ever will be,” says Anansi to the tar man. “I’m fiercer than Lion, faster than Cheetah, stronger than Elephant, more terrible than Tiger.” He swelled up with pride at his power and strength and fierceness, and he forgot he was just a little spider. “Tremble,” says Anansi. “Tremble and run.”
The tar man, he didn’t tremble and he didn’t run. Tell the truth, he just stood there.
So Anansi hits him.
Anansi’s fist, it sticks solid.
“Let go of my hand,” he tells the tar man. “Let go my hand, or I’m going to hit you in the face.”
The tar man, he says not a word, and he doesn’t move the tiniest muscle, and Anansi hits him, bash, right in the face.
“Okay,” says Anansi, “a joke’s a joke. You can keep hold of my hands if you like, but I got four more hands, and two good legs, and you can’t hold them all, so you let me go and I’ll take it easy on you.”
The tar man, he doesn’t let go of Anansi’s hands, and he doesn’t say a word, so Anansi hits him with all his hands and then kicks him with his feet, one after another.
“Right,” says Anansi. “You let me go, or I bite you.” The tar fills his mouth, and covers his nose and his face.
So that’s how they find Anansi the next morning, when his wife and his sons come down to the pea patch by the old breadfruit tree: all stuck to the tar man, and dead as history.
They weren’t surprised to see him like that.
Those days, you used to find Anansi like that all the time.
CHAPTER
SIX
IN WHICH
FAT CHARLIE
FAILS TO
GET
HOME,
EVEN BY TAXI
DAISY WOKE UP TO THE ALARM. SHE STRETCHED IN HER BED like a kitten. She could hear the shower, which meant that her flatmate was already up. She put on a pink fuzzy dressing gown and went into the hall.
“You want porridge?” she called through the bathroom door.
“Not much. If you’re making it, I’ll eat it.”
“You certainly know how to make a girl feel wanted,” said Daisy, and she went into the kitchenette and put the porridge on to cook.
She went back into her bedroom, pulled on her work clothes, then looked at herself in the mirror. She made a face. She put her hair up into a tight bun at the back.
Her flatmate, Carol, a thin-faced white woman from Preston, stuck her head around the bedroom door. She was toweling her hair vigorously. “Bathroom’s all yours. What’s the word on the porridge?”
“Probably needs a stir.”
“So where were you the other night anyway? You said you were going off to Sybilla’s birthday drinks, and I know you never came back.”
“None of your beeswax, innit.” Daisy went into the kitchen and stirred the porridge. She added a pinch of salt and stirred it some more. She glopped the porridge into bowls and placed them on the counter.
“Carol? Porridge is getting cold.”
Carol came in, sat down, stared at the porridge. She was only half-dressed. “S’not a proper breakfast, is it? You ask me, a proper breakfast is fried eggs, sausages, black pudden, and grilled tomatoes.”
“You cook it,” said Daisy, “I’ll eat it.”
Carol sprinkled a dessert-spoonful of sugar on her porridge. She looked at it. Then she sprinkled another one on. “No, you bloody won’t. You say that you will. But you’ll start rabbiting on about cholesterol or what fried food is doing to your kidneys.” She tasted the porridge as if it might bite her back. Daisy passed her a cup of tea. “You and your kidneys. Actually, that might be nice for a change. You ever eaten kidneys, Daisy?”
“Once,” said Daisy. “If you ask me, you can get the same effect by grilling half a pound of liver, then weeing all over it.”
Carol sniffed. “That wasn’t called for,” she said.