by Ed Kurtz
“You better be. If that little killer gets its venom in you, I sure as hell don’t want anyone coming round asking any questions.”
“No one will,” Leon assured him.
Sam lifted the terrarium from the metal shelf in the storeroom and gingerly deposited it into a brown cardboard box.
“Crickets and mealworms are fine,” he instructed Leon. “The occasional baby mouse would be a nice indulgence. This one can annihilate a baby mouse—it’s kind of a treat to see.”
He folded the box flaps over one another and sealed it up.
“The substratum is all local, right from wherever the dude snatched him,” Sam went on. “So you might want to take the spider out and freeze the soil overnight. You know, to kill off any hitchhikers.”
“Gotcha,” Leon said.
“He’s all ready to go. All that’s left is the payment.”
Sam grinned. It reminded Leon of Trey’s leering, jeering face. Everyone’s a huckster, he thought. His father said so all the time. Leon figured he was right.
He withdrew a tattered leather wallet from his jacket pocket and counted out seventy-five in cash—three twenties, a ten and a five. These he handed over to Sam, who counted them again. Leon screwed up his mouth and let his eyes wander over the dim, dusty storeroom. He felt as though he was participating in a drug deal.
As if reading his mind, Sam said, “Mum, now. I mean it. I could do time for this shit, Leon.”
Leon wrapped his thin, pale arms around the box and lifted it up.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
3
Harold Weissmann sat back in his threadbare recliner and stared at the television screen between his two bare feet. On the screen a pair of colored comedians shucked and jived to Harold’s general bemusement. He snatched the clicker from the cluttered side table—knocking over an empty can of Schlitz in the process—and changed the channel to the weather. Snowstorms in the northern states, though he didn’t give a damn. Down south it was humid as hell, and he didn’t need any phony teevee weatherman to tell him that. Whenever Harold wanted to know what the weather was like, he was free to open a window and check for himself. It astounded him the things people got paid good money to do. Anymore, the more ridiculous and unnecessary the job, the better the pay seemed to be. What a damn world.
He changed the channel again, this time to an old movie with Myrna Loy and Warner Baxter in it, and shifted his focus from the television to his feet. They were gnarled and starkly white and thoroughly networked with webs of blue veins, just like everywhere else on his aging, moribund body. But it was his jagged, yellow toenails that induced Harold to groan and frown. They urgently needed trimming, and he could not perform the task himself—it hurt too much to bend over that far. So it was Leon’s job, only Leon was not home.
Harold turned his head to the left and searched the wall until his eyes lit upon the clock. It was 6:34.
“Damn that boy,” he groused.
He reached through the spent cans and empty cigarette packs and well-thumbed sports magazines on the side table until he found an unopened can of beer. He’d brought four of them from the kitchen when he sat down to cut down on trips back and forth. His hips and knees were killing him and he wanted to avoid getting up as much as possible. He cracked open the can and turned it up to his lips. The beer’s temperature was hovering between cool and lukewarm—closer to lukewarm—but it felt and tasted good trickling down the back of his throat. He gave a prolonged, satisfied sigh and glanced back at the clock.
6:36.
Myrna Loy was throwing a fit on the television, and Warner Baxter was doing his best to calm her down. Harold had no idea what was going on. He thought Baxter looked a little fruity with that wispy little moustache of his. He changed the channel yet again, now landing on a cooking program. Some fat broad with enormous hair was whipping up a batch of mashed potatoes to compliment whatever was already in the studio’s oven. Harold’s stomach grumbled in response. He furrowed his brow and made a tight fist with his left hand.
“For Christ’s sake, Leon.”
Suppertime was half past six. Suppertime had been half past six for as long as Harold could remember. Nearly ten minutes late and Leon wasn’t even home yet. The irresponsible ingrate hadn’t called, either. Harold sipped at the beer and grew angrier thinking about it.
Finally, at seven to seven by the clock on the wall, Harold heard scraping steps on the cracked cement walkway and a key crunch into the lock. He finished off the can, slammed it onto the side table, and immediately grabbed another. Leon came into the house with a cumbersome cardboard box in his hands and his keychain dangling from one finger. He shut the door with his rump and said, “Hi, dad.”
“Don’t hi dad me, you stupid bastard. What’ve you got there? What’s in that box?”
“It’s nothing, dad. I’m really sorry I’m late—just let me get settled and I’ll get supper ready in a jiffy.”
“Supper’s already half an hour late, damnit. I’m like to starve to death, and in my own home.”
“I know,” Leon said. “I’m sorry.”
He traipsed over the assorted refuse on the floorboards—newspapers, stacks of moldy old paperbacks, Chinese food cartons, Chet Atkins and Jim Reeves records—and carried the box into the kitchen.
“You didn’t tell me what’s in that box,” Harold called after him.
“It’s nothing, pop. What do you want—spaghetti or fish sticks?”
“It’s another goddamned bug, isn’t it?”
“It’s a specimen for the garage, yes. Are fish sticks okay? It’s the quickest to make…”
“Jesus Christ,” Harold moaned. “My only son who can’t get a woman and plays with damn bugs. You ever wonder how come you’re a virgin, Leon?”
“Cut it out, dad. Supper’ll be ready in ten.”
“It’s on account of you’re a man-child. Damn near forty years old and you act like a little boy half the time. A woman don’t want a boy, Leon. A woman wants a man. But I guess that’s just asking too damn much of you.”
Leon twisted the knob on the toaster oven to 350 and dumped the frozen fish sticks on the pan.
“I’ll be in the garage for a few minutes,” he called to his father. “Sit tight and I’ll bring your supper to you.”
“Sure,” Harold said. “Go play with your pests in the dirt.”
“Okay, pop,” Leon said.
* * *
The fluorescent lamps that hung from the ceiling flickered on with a loud hum. Leon set the box on the worktable, opened it and took the terrarium out. The spider was hunched up in a knot of dead vegetation, of which there was plenty littering the surface of the soil. Leon gave it a look over and decided it would not do. Pablo was going to need a larger space and fresher strata in which to hunt and hide.
On one of the many shelves that lined the walls of the garage were several heavy plastic bags filled with soil. The garage smelled musky with the scent of it, an odor Leon enjoyed tremendously. On humid nights he could close his eyes and imagine being in a dense forest just by the smell in there. He did this often.
He grabbed one of the bags and transported it to the worktable. He went back for a clean, vacant terrarium. It was very much like the one Pablo presently occupied, but twice as big. Leon then scooped the damp, dark dirt into the fresh terrarium until there was a stratum of about four inches. He patted it down with the flat of his hand and smiled at the result. It was already shaping up to be an ideal space for Pablo to live in, and there was ample room on the great wall of arthropods—a vast assembly of metal shelves that ran the entire length of the garage’s west wall, stacked floor to ceiling with Leon’s many specimens.
Inside the house, the toaster oven chimed loudly, signaling that the fish sticks were ready. Leon wiped his dirty hands on a rag and bent over toward Pablo.
“This will just have to wait until after supper,” he told the spider. “Can’t keep dad waiting.”
&n
bsp; * * *
“No tartar sauce,” Harold mumbled, his mouth full of masticated fish by-product.
“I thought we had some,” Leon replied, keeping his eyes on the blue glow of the television screen. A documentary was on, something about an unsolved triple murder in a small Missouri town.
“We don’t.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Harold’s fork dropped onto his plate, clanging loudly and startling Leon. Somebody’s mother cried on the show.
“You know what John Wayne said about being sorry, boy?”
“I know what Captain Brittles said in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, if that’s what you mean.”
“Same thing, smart-ass. He said apologizing is a sign of weakness. You remember that?”
“Yeah, dad. I remember.”
“Well, what do you say about that?”
“I guess I’m just weak.”
“No shit,” Harold said.
Neither of them said anything for several minutes after that. Harold picked his fork back up and stabbed a fish stick with it. Now there was a cop in uniform on the screen, his face bloated and red. He was talking about the suspect they had to let go, some vagrant who wound up implicated in another murder a thousand miles away the next year.
“Dry,” Harold muttered.
“You want me to change it?”
“Not the show, Leon—this lousy supper.”
“I know, pop.”
“Yeah, sure,” Harold said. “You’re sorry.”
Leon swallowed and clamped his teeth together.
“Instead of being so goddamned sorry all the time,” Harold added, “you might try doing something right for a change.”
Leon nearly said he was sorry again—force of habit—but caught himself and remained quiet. He found the remote and changed the channel to a Randolph Scott western.
“There’s another one,” Harold said, gesturing to Scott with his fork. “Real men. Thing of the past. Now every man under sixty is a faggot like you.”
“Yeah,” Leon said.
Randolph Scott struck a Mexican bandito in the face with a coil of rope, knocking him to the ground. Harold chortled as he lit an L&M. Leon finished his supper in total silence.
4
Pablo had his back four legs planted in the dry soil and his upper four angled up on the plastic side of the terrarium. His pedipalps were moving up and down in alternating jerks and his spinnerets followed suit. Leon touched the other side of the transparent wall with the tip of his index finger and smiled.
“Bet you’re hungry,” he said. “Let’s get you into your new home, first.”
He retrieved a pair of metal tongs and used them to gently lift the crumbly, dead foliage from the dirt’s surface, careful to avoid snagging Pablo. Once the stratum was cleared, Leon set a small plastic cup on its side inside the terrarium and gave Pablo a bump with the tongs. The spider twitched and scampered into the cup. Leon quickly turned it over and pressed the lid down on top. This he moved from the smaller terrarium to the larger one, in which he opened the cup again and quickly withdrew his hand. The spider remained in the cup, its legs folded up close to its body, for half a minute before beginning to probe the edge with its forelegs. Gradually it lifted itself out of the cup and commenced its exploration of the new environment.
“There you go,” Leon whispered. “That’s a boy.”
He left the top of the terrarium off long enough to gather a handful of crickets from his supply in a large plastic tub not unlike the ones in Sam’s shop. They skittered and leapt and crept among numerous egg crates in the tub, crawling over one another to escape the giant hand descending from the heavens to capture them. Leon managed to grab six or seven of them in his hand, which he carried back to the fresh terrarium and dumped inside. Pablo seized one instantly and sank his fangs deep into the spasming insect. Satisfied, Leon affixed the lid onto the terrarium, which snapped into place. He then returned his attention to the smaller one, which now contained only the native soil some intrepid soul had illegally smuggled out of the rainforest and into the States. Sam had recommended he freeze the soil, but since he had no intention of using it, Leon decided to simply dump it in the garbage. He did this, and went back to the worktable for the tangled, brittle detritus he’d tonged out.
It was then that Leon first saw the ant.
At first glance it appeared to be a perfectly ordinary ant, apart from the fact that it was quite obviously dead. Even that was in no way peculiar—Leon presumed that the poacher would have merely scooped up a sampling from the ground at his feet, and that was more than likely to contain a few organisms, both living and dead. This one happened to be dead, all twisted up in a knot of crunchy yellow creeper grass, and judging by the wholeness of the corpse Leon figured it must have been dead before it ever ended up in the terrarium—otherwise Pablo would certainly have eradicated it.
Leon searched for his tweezers, found them and set to carefully extracting the ant from the tangle. He noted first that it was a fairly common carpenter ant. His second observation was that the ant looked as though it had a long, green horn protruding from the center of its head. Leon sucked in a quick breath and stepped back.
“…the hell is this…?”
On the south wall of the garage, among Leon’s many tools and supplies, was a bottom-of-the-line electric microscope under an opaque plastic cover. He grabbed it and brought it to the worktable. With utmost caution, he rolled the ant carcass onto a slide and placed the slide on the stage. He switched on the 110 volt illuminator and peered into the eyepiece lens.
He was both startled and amazed by what he saw.
At the crown of the insect’s head was an almost microscopic ring of knobby green flora, from which a shock of greenish-white strands sprung. The strands were fine and woven together so tightly as to look like a horn to the naked eye. In even increments from the base of the “horn” to its curved end, bumpy green buds sprouted like mile markers along the way. Leon wondered if it was some kind of fungus. Whatever it was, it had gotten into the ant’s head, from which it grew and erupted through the hard exoskeleton, ostensibly killing the host.
Nature’s a mean old bitch, ain’t she?
Leon took up the tweezers and prodded the protuberance. Through the magnifying lens he could see miniscule spores, dozens of them, break away from the growth and drop down on the slide. He poked at it again, and again the fungal outthrust spat spores all around the dead ant. It was at once appalling and thoroughly fascinating.
Finally, curiosity got the best of Leon. He clamped the tweezers down on the tip of the strands and used a clean Q-tip to hold the ant in place as he gave the growth a yank. It came free with ease, splitting the insect’s head in two and pulling a gelatinous white string of innards out with it. These, Leon concluded, were what was left of the ant’s organs—completely transformed into whatever kind of pap the parasitic fungus needed it to be.
“Jesus,” Leon said low.
He switched off the illuminator and rose up to his full height. The garage swam in the stark, harsh light of the overhead lamps. All of the specimens were still in their terrariums, the only noticeable noise emanating from the cricket tubs. Leon listened to the crickets and wondered if he would ever feed Pablo a mouse. But mostly he wondered what to do with the eviscerated remains of the Brazilian carpenter ant and the peculiar flora that killed it. He did not make a habit of holding on to dead specimens, but this was different. This was special.
Leon went into the kitchen and rummaged through the pantry until he found a box of plastic sandwich bags. He pulled one out, took it back to the garage, and tenderly placed the ant and its otherworldly assassin in the bag. He sealed the bag and set it on the worktable, and he took the spore-dusted slide into the house.
“Leon!” his father shouted from the living room.
“Just a second, dad.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m almost done.”
Leon turned
the knob for hot water in the kitchen sink, and when it was warm enough he let the water run over the slide and he scrubbed the surface with his thumb.
“I asked you what are you doing.”
“Nothing, dad—I’ll be there in one second. I’ll bring you another beer.”
“You giving one of them vermin a bath in there?”
“I’m just washing up…”
“Shit,” Harold grunted. “Jerking off, more like.”
“God-DAMNIT, dad!” Leon shouted.
Simultaneously, he pressed too hard on the slide and the glass broke between forefinger and thumb, driving a thin shard deep into his flesh. Leon cried out in pain and dropped the rest of the broken glass into the stainless steel sink. Dark red blood welled up at the site of the wound and trickled out in fat, glossy droplets.
“You watch your tone, Leon, hear me?”
Leon pressed his lips together until they lost their color and switched the faucet’s stream from hot to cold. He quickly thrust the gushing digit into his mouth and sucked on it until the sour, metallic taste of his own blood washed down his throat. He then jabbed the finger under the water, and as the blood washed down the drain he grasped the end of the shard and pulled it out. Instantly the opening poured twice as much blood and twice as fast, made all the easier by the cleansing tap water. Leon groaned pitifully. It stung like hell.
“You don’t talk to your daddy that way,” Harold kept on.
The shards and splinters in the sink basin quivered in the running water, clinking against the steel and against one another. Leon ignored them for the time being, considerably more concerned with the gushing cut in his finger. He gave the kitchen a cursory scan in search of paper towels or clean napkins, but all he could find among the mountain of dirty glasses and dirtier dishes was a putrid washrag, black with filth. In lieu of that, he wrapped his seeping index finger in the end of his shirt and rushed for the bathroom. He had to pass through the dim, cluttered living room along the way, where Harold stared after him and grimaced.
