Tarantula Shoes

by Tom Birdseye

  I rode around the neighborhood, waving to everybody I saw: Aaron, who said he was headed home to practice his tuba; Telly, who was mowing his lawn. Circling back around to the top of the hill, I saw that Bobbie Jo was sweeping her front walk.

  “Hi, y’all!” I called out to her, trying on a southern accent for size. It felt good. As a matter of fact, everything felt good. The sky was blue, the air full of flowery smells, and all the trees and grass a beautiful green. I pointed down. “Nice shoes, huh?”

  Bobbie Jo leaned on her broom handle and looked at my Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers. “Genuine marvels,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t mean it.

  I didn’t care, though. What did she know? She was from Mississippi. She’d never make it here in good ol’ Kentucky. Not like me, anyway. Not only was I cool; I was really cool. Look out, junior high school, here I come!

  Back at home, I dropped my bike on the front lawn. I took the old shoes out of the shopping bag. “Out with the old!” I said, and tossed them in the air. “Now in with the new!” I shouted, and ran straight to the basketball hoop.

  Just as I thought it would, my first shot swished. Then my second. I was hot! I dribbled around the driveway, faked and drove for the basket. A hook over my head … zzzzzip again!

  I could see it all. First I’d make the junior high team, then high school and the state tournament, just like Dad. Then on to the University of Kentucky, then the pros. Sure, I could do it!

  I backed up and faced the basket again, imagining it was the NBA championship game. Five seconds remained on the clock. The crowd was on its feet, roaring as I brought the ball down the court. I drove for the basket, weaving, dribbling between my legs, then leaping into the air. A fake pass. I turned in midair. Around my back and over my head, higher than Hoop Richardson on the TV ad. Higher and higher still! SLAM DUNK, just like my shoes!

  Really, I just laid it up. But it was a good shot, banked off the backboard as sweet as you please. I ran around and around under the basket with my arms raised. Ryan O’Keefe, NBA All-Star!

  “Hi, Ryan.”

  I stopped. It was Justin. He and Ellie were standing beside the garage looking at me. He held up a small plastic toy spaceship. “I got this at the doctor’s office,” he said. “The nurse gave it to me because I was brave and only cried a little bit.”

  “A lot,” Ellie said. “He cried a lot.”

  Justin ducked his head, but then raised it again and said, “Maybe we can make this little spaceship come to life and carry us to the moon to meet Quando. What do you think, Ryan?”

  “Hmmmm,” I said. “I think I’d stick with the refrigerator box rocket you’ve been building. Mount it on your bikes. That way you could get up more speed for takeoff.”

  “Good idea!” Ellie said.

  Justin nodded. “Thanks, Ryan. You’re acting like you again.”

  They both ran over and gave me a hug. Ellie said, “We like it when you’re you!”

  I pointed down. “See?” I said. “See my new shoes? They’re Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers!”

  Justin leaned close. “Wow! They look like the best shoes ever made!”

  Ellie squatted down and touched them with one finger. “They’re nice, Ryan, really, really nice.” Then they both ran off singing, “We’re going to the moon! We’re going to the moon!” as Mom called from the kitchen window, “I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  “Okay,” I said. I took one more shot, which swished—of course—and then I went inside.

  Mom was unpacking what looked like the last of the kitchen boxes. “Your father and I just realized that tonight is the anniversary of our first date,” she said, putting the blue coffee cups in a row on the counter. “Fourteen years ago he asked me out for dinner.”

  It was hard to imagine—them going out on a date before I was even born. It was also hard to imagine them not knowing each other, then getting to know each other, falling in love and all that junk. It was hard to imagine, but I could tell by Mom’s smile that it meant a lot to her.

  “Cool,” I said.

  She smiled even bigger. “We’d like to take a break from all this unpacking and work on the house and celebrate over dinner, just the two of us. I know this is short notice, but could you look after Justin and Ellie while we’re gone?” She went over to the refrigerator and took out a package of hot dogs. “I’ll fix you something to eat,” she said, holding them up. “Your favorite.”

  “Yum,” I said, suddenly very hungry. “Sure, I’ll baby-sit. No problem.”

  Mom gave me a hug. “Thank you! You’re such a wonderful son!”

  I grinned, amazed at how much difference a new pair of shoes—the right shoes—could make. I felt just as wonderful as Mom said.

  Until about halfway through dinner. Justin and Ellie were going on and on about meeting Quando on the moon and how they were going to mount the spaceship box on their bicycles, just like I’d suggested. I was nodding when suddenly I remembered Fang. I’d been so excited about finally having enough money to buy my Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers, I’d clean forgotten about my good old spider. After all he’d done for me, I’d gone rushing off to Four-Star Sports and left him outside in the tent, all alone. “Oh no!” I said, jumping up from the table.

  Justin and Ellie stopped short and looked at me. “We can’t tie the spaceship box onto our bikes with shoestrings?” Ellie asked.

  Justin put his hot dog down on his plate. “Then how would we do it, Ryan? We meet Quando on the moon tonight.”

  Without answering, I rushed past the twins, through the living room, and out the front door. “Fang?” I called toward the show tent. How could I have been so selfish? Without him, I would never have gotten my shoes. “Fang?”

  I hurried down the front porch steps, across the yard, and into the tent. “Hey, ol’ buddy, sorry I forgot about—”

  But then I saw. Although Fang’s terrarium was still on the card table, inside it there was no Fang.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Voice of a Thief

  I ran over to the terrarium. “Fang?” I lifted the rock and scraped in the sand. “Fang?”

  Fang was gone. I looked all around. “Fang! FANG!”

  Nothing. He was nowhere in sight. Someone had stolen him. Someone had come into the tent and taken my wonderful spider when I was downtown buying my Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers. Or when I was shooting baskets around back. Or in the house eating dinner with the twins.

  But who? Who would do such a lowdown thing to me? I slammed my fist down on the card table. Gordon! It had to be Gordon! He’d been jealous of all the money I’d been making from the very beginning. And he’d threatened to get even somehow. It had to be him. He was the thief! Gordon!

  I whirled and almost ran smack into the twins, who were standing in the tent doorway.

  Ellie said, “We decided to tie the box onto our bicycles with yarn from Mom’s knitting basket instead of shoestrings.”

  Justin’s eyes were wide with excitement. “Then we’re going to take off from the big hill! What do you think of that?”

  “Not now,” I said. I was so angry at Gordon, I could hardly see straight.

  “What’s wrong, Ryan?” Ellie said.

  “NOT NOW!” I yelled, then bulled my way past, pushing them out of the way. I had to hurry to catch Gordon the spider thief red-handed. And after I did, I was going to show him just how tough Arizona boys could be!

  Although I was mad enough to go tearing right in the front of Gordon’s house without knocking (the way he always did at our house), I was smart enough not to. Gordon had told me that he sometimes snuck out his bedroom window by climbing onto the back porch roof, then down the maple tree. I sprinted around the side of the house, then quickly but quietly climbed up the tree and eased myself over the gutter and onto the roof. I tiptoed across to Gordon’s window, which was partway open. The light was on, and I could hear a voice inside. It was the voice of a thief—Gordon’s voice.

  I peered over the windowsill to see Gordon standing
in front of a mirror. “Hi, my name is Gordon,” he was saying. “What’s yours?” He frowned. “No, not cool enough for junior high girls.” He turned a bit to the side and put his hands in his pockets, then slouched and stuck his lower lip out a bit. “Hey, babe, what’s happening?” he said, bobbing his head up and down like it was on a spring.

  If I hadn’t been so angry at Gordon, I would have burst out laughing right then. I had no idea that he practiced conversations in front of the mirror. How goofy!

  Well, okay, so I practice what I’m going to say sometimes before I say it, too. And yeah, sure, I’ve stood in front of the mirror before, checking out how I looked. But I didn’t look goofy like Gordon … did I?

  “Yeah, cool,” Gordon said, nodding at himself. He moved over to his closet and started rummaging around in a pile of clothes on the floor.

  I quickly forgot about whether or not I might actually look goofy in front of the mirror as my anger came flooding back. I pulled myself up so I could see better. Gordon was facing away from me, but I was sure he was covering something up with a T-shirt and a pair of underwear. It looked like a large jar.

  Fang! Gordon had swiped my spider and put him in a jar. The thief! The rotten, low-down thief!

  I stood up and grabbed the screen, ready to push it up and throw myself into Gordon’s room like I’d seen cops do on TV. But there was a low growl, and suddenly Colonel was in my face. Teeth bared, Gordon’s dog hit the screen from inside, putting a big dent in it with his nose. I fell back in surprise and, with a wild scream—“Yeooooooooooow!”—rolled off the porch roof.

  CHAPTER 17

  Get Him!

  Crashing through limb after tree limb toward Gordon’s backyard, I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see myself hit the ground. When I finally landed, it was with a great thud, and I was sure that I’d probably broken something. How could I fall that far and not at least crack a few bones?

  Still, I didn’t hurt. The only thing I noticed different about my body was that my nose was full of the smell of flowers.

  That was when it hit me. Funeral flowers! I’d gone and killed myself. Yikes! How awful!

  But then I thought that if I really was dead, and this was my funeral, then everyone would be sitting around feeling sorry, talking about what a great kid I’d been. “Poor Ryan,” they’d all say. “He was one in a million … a billion … a trillion!”

  I decided that I liked the idea that everybody would say wonderful things about me. Maybe being dead wasn’t going to be so bad. I opened my eyes to see what it looked like, expecting lots of pretty lights, maybe an angel or two.

  But what I saw instead of lights or angels was Colonel charging out of Gordon’s back door, followed by Gordon, who was yelling something about a burglar trying to sneak into his bedroom window but who fell off the porch roof into the flowerbed.

  Burglar? Ha! What a nitwit Gordon was! It had been me on the roof, and this was my funeral, because now I was dead.

  Or was I? A quick glance and I could see all of me in one piece, not hurt, lying in the middle of a flowerbed as if it were siesta time. I was okay! It was a miracle! Hitting all those tree limbs on the way down had broken my fall. And I’d landed on soft earth instead of the brick patio just a foot away. I’d fallen off a porch roof and lived to tell about it! I was alive!

  Although maybe not for long. Colonel was bearing down on me like an angry grizzly bear. Gordon was now pointing at me and yelling, “There he is! Get the burglar, Dad! Get him!” And Gordon’s dad was running toward me with a baseball bat in his hand.

  A baseball bat?

  “It’s me!” I yelled, jumping up and waving my arms. “It’s Ryan!”

  Colonel stopped short, his little doggy toenails scraping on the patio bricks like fingernails on a chalkboard. Gordon tripped over Colonel and went down like a sack of potatoes. Gordon’s dad stumbled over both of them. As he lurched forward, the baseball bat flew out of his hand and went flying past me within an inch of my ear.

  “DON’T KILL ME!” I screamed. “I ALMOST DIED ONCE ALREADY!”

  I didn’t like the look in Gordon’s dad’s eyes as he struggled to get up off the patio. I offered him a hand and tried to make myself smile. “Hi,” I said. “I just came by to … uh …”

  “To what?” Gordon said, glaring up at me. He was holding his left knee, which I could see was bleeding a little, and it was plain that he was angrier than his dad would ever be.

  Which made me angry. In an instant, I forgot all about falling, funerals, miracles, and excuses, and came back to accusations. “I’m here to get my spider,” I yelled at Gordon. “Because you stole it, thief!”

  Gordon spent a split second looking completely dumbfounded, then jumped to his feet. “I didn’t steal your stupid spider! Is this the way people in Arizona treat their friends? By accusing them of being crooks? I’m not a crook!” He got right up in my face. “You’re the crook, Ryan, taking all my business advice and then not sharing any of the profits. You probably hid Fang somewhere so you could collect insurance, or get lots of publicity and then make even more money on your dumb little shows!”

  “My shows aren’t dumb!” I shot back. “And if you’re not the thief, then what did I see you hiding in your closet? Huh? Huh?”

  Gordon rolled his eyes. “That was my penny jar, air brain. I’ve got three thousand five hundred and seventy-three pennies in it. I’ve been collecting them since I was three years old.” He put his hands on his hips and snarled, “So there!”

  Gordon’s dad, I noticed, had recovered enough from my falling out of the sky into his flowerbed to be listening carefully. “Wait a minute,” he said to Gordon. “I thought I told you to deposit those pennies in your bank account so they could be earning interest.”

  Gordon shuffled his feet around, suddenly looking sheepish. “Well …,” he said, glancing at his dad, “I like to count them at night. It helps me get to sleep.”

  His father frowned. “Get to sleep? Knowing your money is earning interest while it sits safely in the bank should make you rest better, not running your fingers through a jar of coins!”

  “But I like the feeling!” Gordon said.

  “Having invested wisely is all the good feeling anyone needs,” Gordon’s father insisted.

  And so it went, father and son arguing over the best way to use a jarful of pennies.

  Which left me standing there—alive—and free to consider another question: If Gordon didn’t steal Fang, then who did? Who? Who? In my mind, I went over it again and again until, just as suddenly as I had thought of Gordon, I knew the answer.

  “Gotta go!” I said, and raced past Gordon and his dad before they had a chance to protest. Down their driveway I sprinted, then up Sycamore Street as fast as my Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers would carry me. Running, running, to catch a thief.

  CHAPTER 18

  Fangnapping

  Despite how sure I was that it was Telly who had stolen Fang—so he could get Aaron back for pushing him over in the tent—the sight of Telly’s big stone house on Mildred Street brought me to a quick stop. I stood on the sidewalk in front of it, panting like a poodle from my run, and couldn’t help wondering how somebody like me, a short sixth-grader, was going to get my spider back from a very tall seventh-grader who might very well be the best basketball player in junior high.

  Just then a side door opened and Telly stepped out. He turned down the driveway in my direction. I ducked behind a tree and watched as he walked toward Aaron’s house. He was carrying a plastic tub like we used at home to hold leftovers.

  Fang! Telly had Fang in there and was going to scare Aaron with him. I was right! He was the thief!

  Staying close to the bushes, I followed Telly as he turned the corner. Even though Aaron lived several houses down, I could hear him practicing his tuba. Oompah, oompah, blat, pffth. No wonder his parents made him play in the garage. The tuba sounded like a sick elephant.

  Telly ducked low and began to walk slowly on tipto
es when he got to Aaron’s driveway. I slipped behind a hedge and crept alongside. Through the open door of Aaron’s garage, I could see a big blue car parked on one side. Aaron was sitting on the other side, near the back wall on a riding lawn mower. His eyes were closed in concentration as his cheeks puffed in and out like balloons. Oompah, oompah, blat, pffth. Whew! A sick elephant with a megaphone.

  Telly crept closer, until he was right at the garage door opening. He raised the plastic container up over his head. He was going to throw Fang on Aaron!

  “NO!” I yelled.

  Telly jumped straight into the air. The plastic tub went flying.

  “FANG!” I screamed.

  I plunged through the hedge, throwing myself under the container to catch it. I hit the concrete driveway and rolled onto my back. I looked up to see the plastic tub slowly turn over in midair. What dumped out of it was not Fang. What hit me right in the face was at least a gallon of ice-cold water.

  Telly looked at me, lying there soaking wet on the concrete, then over at Aaron. Startled by the commotion, Aaron had toppled backward off the riding lawn mower and lay pinned to the garage floor with his head stuck in his tuba. Although muffled, you could hear him yelling, “Get this thing off of me!”

  The corners of Telly’s mouth began to twitch. He turned back to me. “I was going to dump all that water down Aaron’s tuba,” he said, a smile working its way quickly across his lips. “But it looks just as good all over you!” He began to laugh. “And I love where Aaron ended up. I couldn’t have planned it better. A double joke! I actually pulled off a double! This is funny, very funny!”

  Not as far as I was concerned. I got up off the driveway, glaring, and said, “Did you steal my spider?”