“I don’t think so. I’d remember.”
She nodded, and said nothing as she drove.
She parked the car, and they got out.
It was chilly in the Florida dawn. The Garden of Rest looked like something from a movie: there was a low ground mist which threw everything into soft focus. Mrs. Higgler opened the small gate, and they walked through the cemetery.
Where there had been only fresh earth filling his father’s grave, now there was turf, and at the head of the grave was a metal plaque with a metal vase built into it, and in the vase a single yellow silk rose.
“Lord have mercy on the sinner in this grave,” said Mrs Higgler, with feeling. “Amen, amen, amen.”
They had an audience: the two red-headed cranes which Fat Charlie had observed on his previous visit strutted toward them, heads bobbing, like two aristocratic prison visitors.
“Shoo!” said Mrs. Higgler. The birds started at her, incuriously, and did not leave.
One of them ducked its head down into the grass, came up again with a lizard struggling in its beak. A gulp and a shake, and the lizard was a bulge in the bird’s neck.
The dawn chorus was beginning: grackles and orioles and mockingbirds were singing in the day in the wilderness beyond the Garden of Rest. “It’ll be good to be home again,” said Fat Charlie. “With any luck she’ll have made him leave by the time I get there. Then everything will be all right. I can sort everything out with Rosie.” A mood of gentle optimism welled up within him. It was going to be a good day.
IN THE OLD STORIES, ANANSI LIVES JUST LIKE YOU DO OR I DO, in his house. He is greedy, of course, and lustful, and tricky, and full of lies. And he is good-hearted, and lucky, and sometimes even honest. Sometimes he is good, sometimes he is bad. He is never evil. Mostly, you are on Anansi’s side. This is because Anansi owns all the stories. Mawu gave him the stories, back in the dawn days, took them from Tiger and gave them to Anansi, and he spins the web of them so beautifully.
In the stories, Anansi is a spider, but he is also a man. It is not hard to keep two things in your head at the same time. Even a child could do it.
Anansi’s stories are told by grandmothers and by aunts in the West Coast of Africa and across the Caribbean, and all over the world. The stories have made it into books for children: big old smiling Anansi playing his merry tricks upon the world. Trouble is, grandmothers and aunts and writers of books for children tend to leave things out. There are stories that aren’t appropriate for little children anymore.
This is a story you won’t find in the nursery tales. I call it,
* * *
ANANSI and BIRD
Anansi did not like Bird, because when Bird was hungry she ate many things, and one of the things that Bird ate was spiders, and Bird, she was always hungry.
They used to be friends, but they were friends no longer.
One day Anansi was walking, and he saw a hole in the ground, and that gave him an idea. He puts wood in the bottom of the hole, and he makes a fire, and he puts a cookpot in the hole and drops in roots and herbs. Then he starts running around the pot, running and dancing and calling and shouting, going, I feel good. I feel soooo good. Oh boy, all my aches and pains be gone and I never felt so good in my whole damn life!
Bird hears the commotion. Bird flies down from the skies to see what all the fuss is about. She goes, What you singing about? Why you carrying on like a madman, Anansi?
Anansi sings, I had a pain in my neck, but now it’s gone. I had a pain in my belly, but not any longer. I had creaks in my joints, but now I’m supple as a young palm tree, I’m smooth as Snake the morning after he sheds his skin. I’m powerful happy, and now I shall be perfect, for I know the secret, and nobody else does.
What secret? asks Bird.
My secret, says Anansi. Everyone going to give me their favorite things, their most precious things, just to learn my secret. Whoo! Whee! I do feel good!
Bird hops a little closer, and she puts her head on one side. Then she asks, Can I learn your secret?
Anansi looks at Bird with suspicion on his face, and he moves to stand in front of the pot in the hole, bubbling away.
I don’t think so, Anansi says. May not be enough to go around. Don’t bother yourself about it.
Bird says, Now Anansi, I know we haven’t always been friends. But I’ll tell you what. You share your secret with me, and I promise you no bird will never eat no spider ever again. We’ll be friends until the end of time.
Anansi scratches his chin, and he shakes his head. It’s a mighty big secret, he says, making people young and spry and lusty and free from all pain.
Bird, she preens. Bird she says, Oh, Anansi, I’m sure you know that I have always found you a particularly handsome figure of a man. Why don’t we lie by the side of the road for a little while, and I’m sure I can make you forget all your reservations about telling me your secret.
So they lie by the side of the road, and they get to canoodling and laughing and getting all silly, and once Anansi has had what he wants Bird says, Now Anansi, what about your secret?
Anansi says, Well, I wasn’t going to tell anyone. But I’ll tell you. It’s an herbal bath, in this hole in the ground. Watch, I’ll drop in these leaves and these roots. Now, anyone who goes into the bath they going to live forever, feeling no pain. I had the bath, and now I’m frisky as a young goat. But I don’t think I should let anyone else use the bath.
Bird, she looks down at the bubbling water, and quick as anything she slips down into the pot.
It’s awful hot, Anansi, she says.
It’s got to be hot for the herbs to do their good things, says Anansi. Then he takes the lid of the pot and he covers the pot with it. It’s a heavy lid, and Anansi, he puts a rock on top of it, to weigh it down more.
Bam! Bem! Bom! comes the knocking from inside the cookpot.
If I let you out now, calls Anansi, all the good work of the bubbling bath will be undone. You just relax in there and feel yourself getting healthier.
But maybe Bird did not hear him or believe him, because the knocking and the pushing kept on coming from inside the pot for a while longer. And then it stopped.
That evening Anansi and his family had the most delicious Bird soup, with boiled Bird. They did not go hungry again for many days.
Since that time, birds eat spiders every chance they get, and spiders and birds aren’t never going to be friends.
* * *
There’s another version of the story where they talk Anansi into the cookpot, too. The stories are all Anansi’s, but he doesn’t always come out ahead.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
IN WHICH A
POT
OF COFFEE
COMES IN
PARTICULARLY
USEFUL
IF ANYTHING WAS MAKING SPIDER GO AWAY, SPIDER DIDN’T know about it. On the contrary, Spider was having an excellent time being Fat Charlie. He was having such a good time being Fat Charlie he began to wonder why he hadn’t been Fat Charlie before. It was more fun than a barrelful of monkeys.*
The bit of being Fat Charlie that Spider liked best was Rosie.
Until now Spider had regarded women as more or less interchangeable. You didn’t give them a real name, or an address that would work for longer than a week, of course, or anything more than a disposable cell-phone number. Women were fun, and decorative, and terrific accessories, but there would always be more of them; like bowls of goulash coming along a conveyor belt, when you were done with one, you simply picked up the next, and spooned in your sour cream.