…and it’s always the same, always Walter lost in those hours or minutes or days before Spyder comes down from the brilliant, burning hills to take him home, to lead him back to the World. And always that sudden sense of aloneness, severed cord, broken chain, knowing that Robin and Byron are free, that they’ve slipped away, escaped, and he’s still cowering in the sulfur rubble on the edge of the pit. He wants to be happy, to cheer, because they’re gone, like Dorothy to the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion, they got away, they got away; Preacher Man, the Dragon, knows at once, and He roars so loud the world rumbles and the pit rips wider, devours more of this place that is no place at all. The powderglass ground beneath his feet tilts and is turning, accelerating counterclockwise spiral down and down and the pit yawns and belches, grinds its granite teeth.
And the Dragon fills up the roiling floor-joist sky, spreads His scrawny hard sermon arms wide, his dragon wings, and the book is a blazing red sun bleeding out his voice. Ugly black things cling to His hands and face, biting things and Walter is on hands and bloody knees now, clambering for any hold, crawling as the earth shivers and goes powdery. And he remembers his wings, his beautiful charcoal wings, mockingbird boy, and that’s why Preacher Man hates him, isn’t it, and he tries to stand, spreads them wide, but the raining fire has scorched them raw, ragged feather scorch, and the Dragon laughs and laughs and laughs.
“Come back with me,” Spyder says, her hands around his wrists, but Preacher Man looming over her shoulder. “It’s gonna be all right now, Walter,” but the world turns, water down a drain, down that mouth, and the earth tremoring so he can’t even stand up.
“Help,” he says, every time, and every time she smiles, soft and secret Spyder smile, nods and puts her arms around him so that Preacher Man howls and claws the sagging sky belly until it bleeds; the sour rain sticks to them like pine sap, turning the powdered ground to tar. “He won’t let me leave, Spyder. He knows what I’ve seen, what I know…”
And she turns and stares up and into His face, like there’s nothing to fear in those eyes, nothing that can pick her apart, strew her flesh to the winds and singe the bones, and she says, “He’s not part of this,” and “You can’t have him.” And the tattoos on her arms writhe electric blue loaded-gun threat, and now Preacher Man, who is also the Dragon, is not laughing. Now He takes a step backwards, puts the pit between them, His protector, and His face is a rictus of rage and pain, and He is fury.
“Lila,” He says, “what you’ve done to me, you’ll burn in Hell forever.” Voice of thunder and mountains splitting to spill molten bile. “What you’ve done to me, you’ll burn until the end of Time.”
And the blue fire flows from her, crackling static cage that He won’t touch, and she’s pulling Walter from the muck, hauling him across the shattered plains, days and days across the foothills with the Dragon howling her damnation, her sentence, but Spyder doesn’t look at Him again, ignores His promises. Drags Walter over the pus-seething caleche and stones that shriek like dying rabbits, stands between him and the rubbing-alcohol wind that whips up dust phantoms and throws burning tumbleweeds.
“Close your eyes, Walter,” she says again and again, and at the end he does, because the long-legged things are so close, and he knows the climb’s too steep, that he’s too tired and she’s too exhausted, and the jaws of the skitterers drip the shearing sound of harvest…
…and he jerked awake, hard like hitting a wall, and the fat dude sitting across from him was staring. Walter wiped cold, oily sweat from his face, and the fat dude whispered, “Hey, buddy, if you need a fix, and you sure as hell look like you need a fix…” Walter shook his head, stumbled to his feet, and the basement hell was still more real than the predawn fluorescent glare of the bus station. He made it to the men’s restroom, to a sink before he puked, sprayed half-digested McDonald’s and coffee, heaved again and again until his insides cramped and ached, but his head was starting to clear and at least there was no one else in there to see.
He ran cold water in the next sink over, cold water in clean porcelain and splashed his face. Shivered and the roll of his stomach, braced himself, but it passed and he splashed more of the gurgling water across his face. Looked up into the mirror and the long, bristling legs were draped limply over the door and sides of the stall just behind him. Every detail clear in the hateful light, and something was dripping onto the filthy tile underneath. The air smelled like cleanser and vomit and rot. Walter whirled around, so fast and him still dizzy so he almost fell, but there was nothing there. Four silver stalls and no one and nothing in any of them.
“Christ!” he screamed, slammed the doors open one after the other, commodes and toilet-paper dispensers and bus-station shitter graffiti.
And the door opened and the fat man was staring at the sinkful of barfed-up cheeseburger and fries, shaking his head, “It’s good shit, man, and you are hurtin’. I ain’t no goddamn DEA man,” but Walter pushed past him and out the door, across the terminal to the Greyhound counter where the clerk glanced up at him from his receipts and claim slips. “Are you all right, Mister?” he said, reaching for the phone. “I can call you a doctor, if you need a doctor.”
Walter shook his head, trying to see through tears, the schedule behind the man’s head, and he dug his ticket out of his jacket pocket, laid it on the counter. “No,” he said. “I just want to exchange this. Can I do that? Can I exchange this ticket for one to Birmingham?”
“It’s cool with me, man,” the clerk said and took the old ticket to Chicago away.
4.
And the white-haired old woman who had always lived just across a kudzu patch, downhill and next door to Spyder, next door to Lila and her parents, to Spyder’s grandparents before that: the old woman who’d lived there nearly sixty years, in the rambling big house her husband built in 1934, before he went away to Europe to be killed by the Nazis and buried in France: the old woman who’d spent her life alone, because she could never refill that empty place in her heart or soul, alone and watching the world fall apart around her: who had always kept her eyes open.
She woke up in the hospital-quiet hour before sunrise, same time she’d awakened every morning for decades, never mind the pills, the medication they gave her to keep her calm and make her sleep. She woke and the moment of disorientation stretched, fog in her head after the dream, and this was not her bedroom, not her things around her. The strange ceiling and tubes leading from her arm and nose up to IV bottles and bags, wires to the glow of the machine that told her that her heart hadn’t stopped, not yet, that made soft green peaks and valleys of her old pulse. In seventy-seven years, how many times does a heart beat? and she remembered where she was and remembered the squeezing pain in her chest and sighed, closed her papery-thin eyelids for a moment. But it was all still there when she opened them again, the hospital room and her memories.
“For the love of Pete, what were you doing in the backyard that time of night?” her niece had asked, middle-aged woman who tried to look younger. “What were you doing out in the cold in your gown and slippers with that old shotgun in the first place?” Had asked her that question again and again, and always the old woman told her that she’d heard the possums or raccoons in her garbage again, or maybe it was dogs, she’d said. Shameful, people letting their dogs run loose and getting into the trash, strewing it all over, and it’s shameful, and her niece kept making that puppy-sad face which meant she was thinking about nursing homes again.
Why were you out there? and for an answer she stared at the dark curtains, the dark places in the corners of the hospital room. Knew she wouldn’t tell the truth, not about the shadows at her bedroom window or the sounds that had come out of the phone when she’d tried to call the police.
“It’s a wonder you’re not dead,” her niece had said and Yes, she’d answered, you get this old and it’s always a wonder you’re not dead.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
She’d
been dreaming about sitting with Trisha Baxter after her husband had died, sitting in the warm May sunshine outside Trisha’s house, drinking Coca-Cola and talking about nothing in particular, just feeling the bubbles on her tongue, the sun on her face, watching Lila playing in the dirt with a toy-soldier army.
And when Trisha had gone in to check something on the stove, the old woman noticed the web sparkling in the sun, beads of dew like honeysuckle nectar on every strand, and the huge yellow and black garden spider hanging headdown in the center. Wrapping something in silk, spinning the little insect body around and around, hiding it away and only bumps and ridges so she knew it was a grasshopper in there; when she’d turned around again, Lila was watching her, watching her watch the spider, and there’d been blood in the shape of a cross on her forehead.
And Lila had smiled and held one finger to her little-girl lips.
The old woman licked her dry lips and thought about buzzing for the nurse to bring her a paper cup of ice water.
“I don’t want you keeping that old shotgun in the house anymore,” her niece had said, and she hadn’t argued, because she knew she wouldn’t be going back to Cullom Street, because the eyes that had watched her from the kudzu had only laughed at the gun, anyway, laughed at her, bony old woman. Laughed harder when she’d tried to aim at the winterbare tangle of vines, her shaking hands and their eyes she could only see because they were blacker than the dark, because they were places where there was nothing else.
The old woman closed her eyes, listened to her tired heart, and waited for the sun to rise.
5.
Niki and Spyder went home by themselves, Niki driving and Spyder talking for a while and then dozing off. Spyder had put on a Doors tape, had seemed in better spirits than on the trip up, as if the mess back at Dante’s had cheered her up. It had left Niki confused, embarrassed and feeling useless again, eager to get out of the way before things got any worse. Claude had gone home with some friends he’d met at the club, said he’d get a ride back to Birmingham later, and Niki hadn’t seen Daria again after they’d left the stage, had only talked to Theo. Theo like a human teakettle, so pissed she gritted her teeth and spoke through clenched jaws. Niki knew that Keith had taken off, and Theo said it was all his fault, because he was a junky, that Daria had finally kicked him out of the band and it was about goddamn time.
Niki blinked, nodded, too sleepy, reminding herself to get off at the next exit for coffee, lousy convenience-store coffee, but maybe it would keep her awake until they got home. Jim Morrison singing “Riders on the Storm,” and that song always gave her the creeps so she reached over and popped the tape out of the deck. Looked back at the road, the broken yellow-line tease, and she rubbed her eyes. Spyder stirred in her sleep, dream mumbled, and Niki thought about waking her up, making her talk.
Let her sleep. God, she hardly ever just falls asleep without the pills, and Niki’s eyelids fluttered, snapped open and fluttered halfmast again.
And something was in the road, then, something big and dark that seemed to be moving slowly ahead of them, just inches ahead of the Celica’s headlights; something too big to be real, but she snapped awake, full awake in a second and swearing, cut the steering wheel sharp to miss it, and the tires crunched breakdown lane gravel as the car rushed past and over the spot where the thing would have been, if it had been anything but her exhausted eyes, anything but her weary, sleep-hungry mind.
Spyder opened her eyes and squinted at the road in front of them.
“What happened?” and Niki shook her head, “Nothing,” she said. “I was half asleep and thought I saw an animal in the road…”
“What kind of animal?” Spyder asked and pushed the Doors tape back in.
“It was just my imagination,” Niki said, but she was sweating and there were chillbumps under her clothes; suddenly even Jim Morrison’s ghostly rumble seemed better than being awake alone with the cold Alabama night all around her.
“Stay awake for me,” she said. “Talk to me, okay?” and Spyder nodded, sure, reached over and gently kneaded the knotted muscles at the base of Niki’s neck with her strong fingers.
“It might have been a deer,” she said, and Niki said, “Yeah, maybe so,” and kept her eyes open for exit signs.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Mules That Angels Ride
1.
W ham, wham, wham, and Niki woke up from a soft dream of the French Quarter and a girl telling her fortune with an oversized, dog-eared pack of tarot cards, pretty girl in goth whiteface and eyeliner. And this card, she’d said, this card, well, you know this card. Woke up, groggy, and she rubbed her eyes, realized she was cold and the bedspread was gone, and Spyder was gone, nothing left but the sheets.
Wham. Wham.
The rusty old alarm clock on the floor said a quarter past three, and she closed her eyes again. Sunday afternoon; it had been sometime after dawn when she’d finally dozed off, after the long drive back from Atlanta and then sex, good sex even though she’d really been too sleepy.
Wham.
“Spyder?” she called, but no one answered her. “Is that you, Spyder? Christ, what the hell are you doing in there? Hanging pictures?”
She wanted to go back to sleep, wanted the girl in black lace and fishnets on her slender arms to finish the reading, turn over all her cards, wanted to feel the warm Gulf breeze instead of the clinging cold of the bedroom. Wanted the bedspread back and Spyder with it, Spyder warm around her, warm as any tropical evening.
“Spyder?”
Wham. Wham.
“Shit,” and Niki ran her fingers through her hair, shaggy mop she’d been thinking of cutting off short again, kept meaning to ask Spyder if she cared or not. She kicked the sheets away and slipped out of bed, bare feet on the cold floorboards and she looked around for her socks, none to be seen so she just tiptoed, instead. Out of the bedroom and it was even colder in the foyer, tiptoed across to the living room but still no Spyder. The television was on, the sound turned down all the way, silent MTV nonsense, gangsta rap pantomime; she had to pee.
And there was the missing bedspread, a huge white crocheted thing stretched trampoline tight and hanging in the air in the next room, the old dining room full of Spyder’s books; she stopped and rubbed at her eyes again. She could see where two corners had been nailed directly to the wall, big nails driven into the peeling wallpaper and a third corner stretched over to a crooked shelf and held in place with stacks of World Book encyclopedias. The fourth was out of sight, around the corner, wham, wham, and she knew if she stepped out into the middle of the living room she’d see Spyder in there, hammering it to the other wall. But she didn’t, too curious; Niki knew that whatever Spyder was doing, she’d probably stop the second Niki asked.
“Oh,” Spyder would say, “nothing,” so Niki kept her mouth shut and watched.
An instant later and Spyder stepped into view, wearing nothing but the Alien Sex Fiend T-shirt she’d put on after they’d made love, the shirt she slept in a lot but never washed so it always smelled like sweat and patchouli. Spyder was holding a bowling ball, a black bowling ball with red swirls in it, so it sort of looked like she was holding a strange little gas planet, ebony and crimson Neptune; she held it out over the center of the bedspread, set it carefully in the middle. The whole thing sagged with the weight of the bowling ball, sagged in the center until it was only about a foot off the floor, but it didn’t pull loose from the walls; Spyder ducked underneath, then came out the other side and she stacked more encyclopedias to hold up the corner that wasn’t nailed. She didn’t notice Niki, standing alone in the TV glare.
Spyder disappeared, toolbox sounds, and when Niki could see her again, she had a fat black marker in her left hand, a yardstick in her right; she leaned over the bedspread, measured distance, colored careful dots, measured, black on the white cotton here and there, beginning near the edge and working her way in, toward the sucking weight of the bowling ball. Thirty, forty, forty-three dots, and she set th
e yardstick and the marker on the floor, then, gone again and this time she came back with a blue plastic butter tub of ball bearings, different sizes, like steel marbles. She dug around, selected one, as if only that one would do, and placed it on the first black mark she’d drawn. The ball bearing made its own small depression in the bedspread before it started to roll downhill; Niki heard the distinct clack of steel against epoxy as it hit the bowling ball, loud sound in the still, quiet house.
Spyder selected another ball bearing and placed it on the next mark, clack, and she repeated the action over and over, clack, clack, clack, but never twice from the same mark, choosing each bearing and taking care to be sure it started its brief journey toward the center from the next mark in. Sometimes she paused between ball bearings, paused and stared at the bedspread, out the window and then back. Once or twice she stopped long enough to measure the shrinking space between the floor and the bowling ball with her yardstick. Spyder chewed at her bottom lip, something urgent in her blue eyes.
Niki’s legs were getting tired, and she wanted to sit down, too afraid of interrupting to even move. Her kneecaps were starting to ache. She wanted to say, “What the hell are you doing, Spyder?” What anyone else would have said right at the start, but then she wouldn’t have seen even this much, and never mind if it didn’t make any sense, that didn’t mean it wasn’t important. And if Spyder wouldn’t tell her what was going on, all she could do was ignore her stiffening legs, be patient, watch, figure it all out for herself. Like a puzzle, like a child’s dot-to-dot. Draw the lines and there’s the picture, Mickey Mouse or a bouquet of flowers or whatever had driven Spyder crazy.
There weren’t many bearings left in the tub; and Spyder had to lean way over to set them on the marks now, hardly any time after she let go before the clack of metal against hard plastic. The bedspread was almost touching the floor, and Niki could see where the weave was beginning to ravel from all that weight. Spyder worked like she was running out of time, just one or two bearings left to go; Niki had to piss so bad she was afraid she was gonna have to show herself soon or wet the floor.
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