by Neil Gaiman
“What you doing now?” asked Mrs. Higgler.
“Changing shirt,” said Fat Charlie. “Shirt in car. Yes. Back soon.”
He raised his chin high, and strode down the corridor and out of the front door.
“What kind of language was that he was talkin?” asked little Mrs. Dunwiddy, behind his back, loudly.
“That’s not something you see every day,” said Mrs. Bustamonte, although, this being Florida’s Treasure Coast, if there was something you did see every day, it was topless men, although not usually with muddy suit trousers on.
Fat Charlie changed his shirt by the car, and went back into the house. The four ladies were in the kitchen, industriously packing away into Tupperware containers what looked like it had until recently been a large spread of food.
Mrs. Higgler was older than Mrs. Bustamonte, and both of them were older than Miss Noles, and none of them was older than Mrs. Dunwiddy. Mrs. Dunwiddy was old, and she looked it. There were geological ages that were probably younger than Mrs. Dunwiddy.
As a boy, Fat Charlie had imagined Mrs. Dunwiddy in Equatorial Africa, peering disapprovingly though her thick spectacles at the newly erect hominids. “Keep out of my front yard,” she would tell a recently evolved and rather nervous specimen of Homo habilis, “or I going to belt you around your ear hole, I can tell you.” Mrs. Dunwiddy smelled of violet water and beneath the violets she smelled of very old woman indeed. She was a tiny old lady who could outglare a thunderstorm, and Fat Charlie, who had, over two decades ago, followed a lost tennis ball into her yard, and then broken one of her lawn ornaments, was still quite terrified of her.
Right now, Mrs. Dunwiddy was eating lumps of curry goat with her fingers from a small Tupperware bowl. “Pity to waste it,” she said, and dropped the bits of goat bone into a china saucer.
“Time for you to eat, Fat Charlie?” asked Miss Noles.
“I’m fine,” said Fat Charlie. “Honest.”
Four pairs of eyes stared at him reproachfully through four pairs of spectacles. “No good starvin‘ yourself in your grief,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy, licking her fingertips, and picking out another brown fatty lump of goat.
“I’m not. I’m just not hungry. That’s all.”
“Misery going to shrivel you away to pure skin and bones,” said Miss Noles, with gloomy relish.
“I don’t think it will.”
“I putting a plate together for you at the table over there,” said Mrs. Higgler. “You go and sit down now. I don’t want to hear another word out of you. There’s more of everything, so don’t you worry about that.”
Fat Charlie sat down where she pointed, and within seconds there was placed in front of him a plate piled high with stew peas and rice, and sweet potato pudding, jerk pork, curry goat, curry chicken, fried plantains, and a pickled cow foot. Fat Charlie could feel the heartburn beginning, and he had not even put anything in his mouth yet.
“Where’s everyone else?” he said.
“Your daddy’s drinking buddies, they gone off drinking. They going to have a memorial fishing trip off a bridge, in his memory.” Mrs. Higgler poured the remaining coffee out of her bucket-sized traveling mug into the sink and replaced it with the steaming contents of a freshly brewed jug of coffee.
Mrs. Dunwiddy licked her fingers clean with a small purple tongue, and she shuffled over to where Fat Charlie was sitting, his food as yet untouched. When he was a little boy he had truly believed that Mrs. Dunwiddy was a witch. Not a nice witch, more the kind kids had to push into ovens to escape from. This was the first time he’d seen her in more than twenty years, and he was still having to quell an inner urge to yelp and hide under the table.
“I seen plenty people die,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy. “In my time. Get old enough, you will see it your own self too. Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time.” She paused. “Still. I never thought it would happen to your daddy.” And she shook her head.
“What was he like?” asked Fat Charlie. “When he was young?”
Mrs. Dunwiddy looked at him through her thick, thick spectacles, and her lips pursed, and she shook her head. “Before my time,” was all she said. “Eat your cow foot.”
Fat Charlie sighed, and he began to eat.
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON, AND THEY WERE ALONE IN THE HOUSE.
“Where you going to sleep tonight?” asked Mrs. Higgler.
“I thought I’d get a motel room,” said Fat Charlie.
“When you got a perfectly good bedroom here? And a perfectly good house down the road. You haven’t even looked at it yet. You ask me, your father would have wanted you to stay there.”
“I’d rather be on my own. And I don’t think I feel right about sleeping at my dad’s place.”
“Well, it’s not my money I’m throwin‘ away,” said Mrs. Higgler. “You’re goin’ to have to decide what you’re goin‘ to do with your father’s house anyway. And all his things.”
“I don’t care,” said Fat Charlie. “We could have a garage sale. Put them on eBay. Haul them to the dump.”
“Now, what kind of an attitude is that?” She rummaged in a kitchen drawer and pulled out a front door key with a large paper label attached to it. “He give me a spare key when he move,” she said. “In case he lose his, or lock it inside, or something. He used to say, he could forget his head if it wasn’t attached to his neck. When he sell the house next door, he tell me, don’t you worry, Callyanne, I won’t go far; he’d live in that house as long as I remember, but now he decide it’s too big and he need to move house…” and still talking she walked him down to the curb and drove them down several streets in her maroon station wagon, until they reached a one-story wooden house.
She unlocked the front door and they went inside.
The smell was familiar: faintly sweet, as if chocolate chip cookies had been baked there the last time the kitchen was used, but that had been a long time ago. It was too hot in there. Mrs. Higgler led them into the little sitting room, and she turned on a window-fitted air-conditioning unit. It rattled and shook, and smelled like a wet sheepdog, and moved the warm air around.
There were stacks of books piled around a decrepit sofa Fat Charlie remembered from his childhood, and there were photographs in frames: one, in black-and-white, of Fat Charlie’s mother when she was young, with her hair up on top of her head all black and shiny, wearing a sparkly dress; beside it, a photo of Fat Charlie himself, aged perhaps five or six years old, standing beside a mirrored door, so it looked at first glance as if two little Fat Charlies, side by side, were staring seriously out of the photograph at you.
Fat Charlie picked up the top book in the pile. It was a book on Italian architecture.
“Was he interested in architecture?”
“Passionate about it. Yes.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Mrs. Higgler shrugged and sipped her coffee.
Fat Charlie opened the book and saw his father’s name neatly written on the first page. He closed the book.
“I never knew him,” said Fat Charlie. “Not really.”
“He was never an easy man to know,” said Mrs. Higgler. “I knew him for what, nearly sixty years? And I didn’t know him.”
“You must have known him when he was a boy.”
Mrs. Higgler hesitated. She seemed to be remembering. Then she said, very quietly, “I knew him when I was a girl.”
Fat Charlie felt that he should be changing the subject, so he pointed to the photo of his mother. “He’s got Mum’s picture there,” he said.
Mrs Higgler took a slurp of her coffee. “Them take it on a boat,” she said. “Back before you was born. One of those boats that you had dinner on, and they would sail out three miles, out of territorial waters, and then there was gamblin‘. Then they come back. I don’t know if they still run those boats. Your mother say it was the first time she ever eat steak.”
Fat Charlie tried to imagine what his parents had been like before he was born.
“He always was a good-looking man,” mused Mrs. Higgler, as if she were reading his mind. “All the way to the end. He had a smile that could make a girl squeeze her toes. And he was always such a very fine dresser. All the ladies loved him.”
Fat Charlie knew the answer before he asked the question. “Did you…?”
“What kind of a question is that to be asking a respectable widow-woman?” She sipped her coffee. Fat Charlie waited for the answer. She said, “I kissed him. Long, long time ago, before he ever met your mother. He was a fine, fine kisser. I hoped that he’d call, take me dancing again, instead he vanish. He was gone for what, a year? Two years? And by the time he come back, I was married to Mr. Higgler, and he’s bringing back your mother. Is out on the islands he meet her.”
“Were you upset?”
“I was a married woman.” Another sip of coffee. “And you couldn’t hate him. Couldn’t even be properly angry with him. And the way he look at her—damn, if he did ever look at me like that I could have died happy. You know, at their wedding, is me was your mother’s matron of honor?”
“I didn’t know.”
The air-conditioning unit was starting to bellow out cold air. It still smelled like a wet sheepdog.
He asked, “Do you think they were happy?”
“In the beginning.” She hefted her huge thermal mug, seemed about to take a sip of coffee and then changed her mind. “In the beginning. But not even she could keep his attention for very long. He had so much to do. He was very busy, your father.”
Fat Charlie tried to work out if Mrs. Higgler was joking or not. He couldn’t tell. She didn’t smile, though.
“So much to do? Like what? Fish off bridges? Play dominoes on the porch? Await the inevitable invention of karaoke? He wasn’t busy. I don’t think he ever did a day’s work in all the time I knew him.”
“You shouldn’t say that about your father!”
“Well, it’s true. He was crap. A rotten husband and a rotten father.”
“Of course he was!” said Mrs Higgler, fiercely, “But you can’t judge him like you would judge a man. You got to remember, Fat Charlie, that your father was a god.”
“A god among men?”
“No. Just a god.” She said it without any kind of emphasis, as flatly and as normally as she might have said “he was diabetic” or simply “he was black.”
Fat Charlie wanted to make a joke of it, but there was that look in Mrs. Higgler’s eyes, and suddenly he couldn’t think of anything funny to say. So he said, softly, “He wasn’t a god. Gods are special. Mythical. They do miracles and things.”
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Higgler. “We wouldn’t have told you while he was alive, but now he is gone, there can’t be any harm in it.”
“He was not a god. He was my dad.”
“You can be both,” she said. “It happens.”
It was like arguing with a crazy person, thought Fat Charlie. He realized that he should just shut up, but his mouth kept going. Right now his mouth was saying, “Look. If my dad was a god, he would have had godlike powers.”
“He did. Never did a lot with them, mind you. But he was old. Anyway, how do you think he got away with not working? Whenever he needed money, he’d play the lottery, or go down to Hallendale and bet on the dogs or the horses. Never win enough to attract attention. Just enough to get by.”
Fat Charlie had never won anything in his whole life. Nothing whatsoever. In the various office sweepstakes he had taken part in, he was only able to rely on his horse never making it out of the starting gate, or his team being relegated to some hitherto unheard-of division somewhere in the elephants’ graveyard of organized sport. It rankled.
“If my dad was a god—something which I do not for one moment concede in any way, I should add—then why aren’t I a god too? I mean, you’re saying I’m the son of a god, aren’t you?”
“Obviously.”
“Well then, why can’t I bet on winning horses or do magic or miracles or things?”
She sniffed. “Your brother got all that god stuff.”
Fat Charlie found that he was smiling. He breathed out. It was a joke after all, then.
“Ah. You know, Mrs. Higgler, I don’t actually have a brother.”
“Of course you do. That’s you and him, in the photograph.”
Although he knew what was in it, Fat Charlie glanced over at the photograph. She was mad all right. Absolutely barking. “Mrs. Higgler,” he said, as gently as possible. “That’s me. Just me when I was a kid. It’s a mirrored door. I’m standing next to it. It’s me, and my reflection.”
“It is you, and it is also your brother.”
“I never had a brother.”
“Sure you did. I don’t miss him. You were always the good one, you know. He was a handful when he was here.” And before Fat Charlie could say anything else she added, “He went away, when you are just a little boy.”
Fat Charlie leaned over. He put his big hand on Mrs. Higgler’s bony hand, the one that wasn’t holding the coffee mug. “It’s not true,” he said.
“Louella Dunwiddy made him go,” she said. “He was scared of her. But he still came back, from time to time. He could be charming when he wanted to be.” She finished her coffee.
“I always wanted a brother,” said Fat Charlie. “Somebody to play with.”
Mrs. Higgler got up. “This place isn’t going to clean itself up,” she said. “I’ve got garbage bags in the car. I figure we’ll need a lot of garbage bags.”
“Yes,” said Fat Charlie.
He stayed in a motel that night. In the morning, he and Mrs. Higgler met, back at his father’s house, and they put garbage into big black garbage bags. They assembled bags of objects to be donated to Goodwill. They also filled a box with things Fat Charlie wanted to hold on to for sentimental reasons, mostly photographs from his childhood and before he was born.
There was an old trunk, like a small pirate’s treasure chest, filled with documents and old papers. Fat Charlie sat on the floor going through them. Mrs. Higgler came in from the bedroom with another black garbage bag filled with moth-eaten clothes.
“It’s your brother give him that trunk,” said Mrs. Higgler, out of the blue. It was the first time she had mentioned any of her fantasies of the previous night.
“I wish I did have a brother,” said Fat Charlie, and he did not realize he had said it aloud until Mrs. Higgler said, “I already told you. You do have a brother.”
“So,” he said. “Where would I find this mythical brother of mine?” Later, he would wonder why he had asked her this. Was he humoring her? Teasing her? Was it just that he had to say something to fill the void? Whatever the reason, he said it. And she was chewing her lower lip, and nodding.
“You got to know. It’s your heritage. It’s your bloodline.” She walked over to him and crooked her finger. Fat Charlie bent down. The old woman’s lips brushed his ear as she whispered, “…need him…tell a…”
“What?”
“I say,” she said, in her normal voice, “if you need him, just tell a spider. He’ll come running.”
“Tell a spider?”
“That’s what I said. You think I just talkin‘ for my health? Exercisin’ my lungs? You never hear of talkin‘ to the bees? When I was a girl in Saint Andrews, before my folks came here, you would go tell the bees all your good news. Well, this is just like that. Talk to spider. It was how I used to send messages to your father, when he would vanish off.”
“…right.”
“Don’t you say ‘right’ like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a crazy old lady who don’t know the price of fish. You think I don’t know which way is up?”
“Um. I’m quite sure you do. Honestly.”
Mrs. Higgler was not mollified. She was far from gruntled. She picked up her coffee mug from the table and cradled it, disapprovingly. Fat Charlie had done it now, and Mrs. Higgler was determined to make sure that he knew it.
“I don’t got to do this, you know,” she said. “I don’t got to help you. I’m only doing it because your father, he was special, and because your mother, she was a fine woman. I’m telling you big things. I’m telling you important things. You should listen to me. You should believe me.”
“I do believe you,” said Fat Charlie, as convincingly as he could.
“Now you’re just humoring an old woman.”
“No,” he lied. “I’m not. Honestly I’m not.” His words rang with honesty, sincerity and truth. He was thousands of miles from home, in his late father’s house, with a crazy old woman on the verge of an apoplectic seizure. He would have told her that the moon was just some kind of unusual tropical fruit if it would have calmed her down, and meant it, as best he could.
She sniffed.
“That’s the trouble with you young people,” she said. “You think because you ain’t been here long, you know everything. In my life I already forget more than you ever know. You don’t know nothin‘ about your father, you don’t know nothin’ about your family. I tell you your father is a god, you don’t even ask me what god I talking about.”
Fat Charlie tried to remember the names of some gods. “Zeus?” he suggested.
Mrs. Higgler made a noise like a kettle suppressing the urge to boil. Fat Charlie was fairly sure that Zeus had been the wrong answer. “Cupid?”
She made another noise, which began as a sputter and ended in a giggle. “I can just picture your dad wearing nothin‘ but one of them fluffy diapers, with a big bow and arrow.” She giggled some more. Then she swallowed some coffee.
“Back when he was a god,” she told him. “Back then, they called him Anansi.”
NOW, PROBABLY YOU KNOW SOME ANANSI STORIES. PROBABLY there’s no one in the whole wide world doesn’t know some Anansi stories.
Anansi was a spider, when the world was young, and all the stories were being told for the first time. He used to get himself into trouble, and he used to get himself out of trouble. The story of the Tar-Baby, the one they tell about Bre’r Rabbit? That was Anansi’s story first. Some people thinks he was a rabbit. But that’s their mistake. He wasn’t a rabbit. He was a spider.
