Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  They went into the hall and, outside the cafeteria, said good-bye to Ron—who was staying with her.

  They came back in six days—not a full week. They both were astonished at how much thinner she’d gotten even in that time. After they spent an hour with her together, they both sat for a while in the wooden chair on the deck and talked quietly about how it was really happening, that neither one of them had quite realized before that, yes, she was really dying.

  Finally, Eric said, “I’m goin’ back in and sit with her for a while.”

  “Okay,” Shit said. “I’ll be in the cafeteria—with Ron. That’s gonna be my good deed for the day. That man better be glad I live with you—and you done set a good example to me for bein’ nice to people.”

  There were no deathbed revelations, not that Eric had hoped for any—except perhaps the last name of his real father. But, with Barb’s white hair frizzed against the pillow, behind half a dozen hanging drip tubes, while a blue monitor showing heartbeat and other vital signs chirped in the corner, Barbara smiled and shook her head. “Sweetheart, I never knew it. Really. I didn’t. I wished I had—for your sake. I was with him in that little beach shack in Atlantic City for two weeks. Then he was gone—and six weeks later, when I was back with grandma in Hugantown, I realized I was gonna have you. I’ve told you before. Cash was a sweet guy…in his way. But I don’t think you missed out on much by not knowing him. I sure don’t feel like I did.”

  Again, Eric didn’t argue that that wasn’t the point.

  Once, when Ron stepped out from among the pale orange walls— there were more tubes than the week before—from the chair where he was sitting Eric said, “You know, Barb, I learned a lot from you.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “What’d you ever learn from me?”

  “No, I’m serious.” He uncrossed his leg and leaned forward. “You’re the one who taught me how to go on and live my own life, go after what I wanted, and the hell with what other people said or thought.”

  “You didn’t get that from Dynamite?” She shook her head. “I heard people in town sayin’ some pretty awful things about that man—some of them even thought they had to say ’em to me, too—”

  “But you didn’t pay ’em no mind, did you?”

  “Well, I knew you were as happy as a…well, a pig in shit, living over there in all that mess.” She chuckled. “God only knows why. But since you were, that was fine with me. I knew if they were doing anything to hurt you, you wouldn’t stand for it. And that you would have had sense enough to get out of it. You’re a very good person, Eric. And I could tell you were happy. I’m very proud of you.”

  “Well, maybe it was both of you, then. But I know the kinds of things people used to say about you and Ron—’cause he was black. And because of Mike, too—back in Hugantown. I mean, if I did miss any of the nasty gossip, Grandma would always sit me down and tell me about it. And I knew what some people thought about Dynamite.” For a moment Barb looked uncomfortable. “I don’t see how, down here, you could have avoided it. I just hope I didn’t make things too hard on you. But more than once, I thought, I damned if he doesn’t have two of us to deal with now—’cause me and Dynamite were both gossip magnets.”

  “I kind of wondered,” and realized he was about to let the conversation swerve into what he’d really wanted to ask her, now that Ron was out of the room, “since you’d already met Ron and were…well, friendly with him, why’d you want me down here with you, anyway? Why did you make Mike bring me here, since you were already with him—with Ron, I mean?”

  Barb smiled. “Well, I knew you loved your dad. But you’d told me you were gay—remember, sweetheart? I figured…” She took a few breaths. “—you’d have…an easier time, with me.” From the expression on her face, he realized she was working to remember. “’Cause you were getting older…You know, I met Ron…I mean, more than just to say hello—really met him, the first time, the day after I called up and told you and Mike I wanted you to come and stay for a while. Can you believe that for timing?” (Actually, she’d told Eric that as often as Mike, had he been alive, might have told one of his tales. Was he hoping the answer might finally be different…?) “I thought about changing my mind—I’ve told you that. But I’m glad I didn’t.” Her eyes closed and stayed closed eight, nine, ten seconds. They opened. “After all, if you hadn’t come, you wouldn’t have ever met…” Again, her eyes closed. She made a sound: “Shhhh…”

  She had fallen asleep.

  In her throat, Barb made a “. . .tttt…” (Shhhttt, she’d said; Eric smiled) before her breath went on.

  Sometimes, in sleep, her exhaling seemed to go on nearly a minute.

  There’d be a second’s inhale—or only half a second’s—before the air started out again.

  Sometimes Eric thought she was emptying herself. Five times as much always seemed to go out as get in.

  Had she started to say “Shit”?

  Barb had always called him “Morgan.”

  Eric sat. His hands felt as if he looked down at them, he’d see them glitter with sparks against his denim thighs. His feet tingled in his work shoes.

  Standing up, Eric stepped from around the chair and left the room, turning down the hall to the cafeteria.

  The hall walls were pale green.

  Just then, in his frayed jeans and bare feet, Shit came out and turned toward him. He grinned at Eric. “How she doin’?”

  “Real tired. Did Ron come in there with you?” Eric sighed. “She’s asleep again.”

  “Naw.” Shit turned to walk with Eric back through the glass doors of the dining area. “Well, that’s what they told you to expect.” Then he said. “This is kind of hard on you, ain’t it?”

  “Naw. It really isn’t. At least I don’t think so. Yet.”

  “Well,” Shit said. “It’d be fuckin’ hard on me, I know.”

  “Hey.” Eric smiled. “She called you by your right name, just now.”

  “Huh?” Shit asked. “What you mean?”

  “Before she drifted off. We’d been talkin’ about what would’a happened if I’d never come down to Diamond Harbor, and how I wouldn’t have met you and Dynamite. And she called you ‘Shit’.” He shook his head, grinning at the floor’s black and yellow tiles. “It must be the only time I remember her doin’ that.”

  “Really?” Shit put his own head to the side. “Aww, well, that’s nice. With her, though, I’d just about gotten used to Morgan. But I’m glad she did it.”

  “I mean—” already Eric was feeling guilty about what he realized was probably a lie—“she only said it once.”

  “Well,” Shit said, “it was still nice. I understand—there’s some people that sorta thing just makes ’em uncomfortable. But remember when they had that little piece about the new people movin’ to Gilead in the paper last spring, and how I’d lived here all my life? They called me ‘Shit Haskell’ in the paper and nobody said nothin’. You read it out to me.”

  “Yeah.” That had surprised even Eric.

  The next morning, while the boys were sleeping and Ron was in the room with her, Barbara died.

  Since they tended to get up before five, after he’d sat with her body for about twenty minutes, Ron came into their room to tell them. They went in—or rather Eric did, and Shit waited in the hall. The night aids came while they were in with her.

  Some hours later they said good-bye to Ron, and he turned to shamble off across the parking lot to his Tata. Then Eric and Shit drove back from the Hostel to the Harbor. They left the pickup in the Harbor lot.

  That afternoon, at the Gilead dock, they waited for Ed Miller’s boat, under the light in its white enameled cone. Though not yet turned on, it made a perch for gulls, who stood on it, stepped around on the yard-long rod, glanced down, or flew off.

  At four that afternoon, pushing an overturning hedge of froth and foam, Gilead II hove in, half again the size of Jay’s old scow. (Eric never saw it without remembering the retired motoriz
ed barge.) With the other passengers, Shit and Eric wandered on across the parking lot.

  While Eric waved to busy Ed, Shit said, “You know, your mama was the nicest white woman I ever knowed. She said a lot of funny things. But she was still the only woman who really liked me ’cause I was a nigger, ’stead of always being half scared.”

  “Yeah, well,” Eric said, “you know, she liked her black men.”

  They rode across the water at the rail, quiet, together. Looking out on small waves, Eric remembered the chili in the refrigerator for dinner—he’d made it three days ago, from Mex’s old recipe. At the recollection, he grinned. When Jay and Mex were still alive…the morning and its evening he’d learned to make it returned to him for seconds, at the rail of Ed’s boat, Shit’s elbow was against Eric’s forearm, a coin-sized warmth in the afternoon cool. Shit set his bare foot over the front of Eric’s work shoe. They looked at the sea.

  (That previous morning, starting out for the Hostel, they’d had one of their non-arguments: It’s cold, Shit. It’s forty-five degrees. Put some shoes on.

  (Nope.

  (Okay. Look. I don’t care. They’re your feet.

  (Then don’t say nothin’. Nobody there said nothin’ the last time about me comin’ in like that.

  (Years ago, Eric had given up arguing there had to be something sexual in Shit’s always liking to stand in that position, when they were next to each other at the bar or on the boat or looking at a sunset or sunrise over the water. But Shit said, no, it just made him comfortable. Uncle Tom always use’ta sit down by me and put his front foot on mine, the same way, and while Eric wondered if that was leftover from some visit Shit had paid to Jay and Mex, for Shit that seemed all the explanation needed for the habit.)

  Out at the Gilead cabin, back from the Wellness Hostel, Eric took the chili from the refrigerator (the last time they’d put any “special contributions” in it was long before Dynamite’s death) and heated it on the stove.

  Once they’d eaten, they walked out on Gilead Bluff, Shit still barefoot, Eric in his work shoes, both men, this time, shirtless.

  The way people can, who’ve known each other very long and very well, without saying that’s what he was doing, Shit returned to the conversation begun earlier that day on the far side of the waters. “You know, at first, she made me feel funny that way. But kinda like with you, I got to likin’ it.” (For moments it seemed as if they’d been talking of Barbara and her death a long, long time ago.) “Course—sure—I coulda done without Ron there…”

  Looking across the lead-colored water at the clouded-over mainland, Eric pushed his own work-thickened hands into his jeans’ pockets. “Me too…”

  Next day Eric went back across and picked up the truck from the lot and drove to Runcible.

  His copy of Spinoza was beside him on the seat.

  He left it there, when he went in.

  In the house where his mother had lived, Ron stood uncomfortably in the pale green living room on the dark green rug, while Eric asked him about a funeral. Eric said he hoped it wouldn’t be expensive. But he didn’t mind splitting the cost…

  In his khaki slacks and jacket, heavy Ron walked to the aluminum legged desk, lifted a mottled black canister, and brought it over. “Her ashes, boy. She told me she didn’t want no funeral. She don’t got no people, at least around here, except you and me. I know neither of us is too much into funerals. So here you go.” Holding it with both hands, he pushed it toward Eric. “You can do what you want with ’em.”

  Confused, Eric stood there. “Huh…? Why you go and do that for?” Hearing himself speak, he realized he was angry. “Why’d you go and…you know, cremate her?”

  “That’s what she wanted. They have the place right behind the Hostel.”

  “I know. But she didn’t tell me,” Eric said. “You didn’t tell me, either.”

  “Well, she told me. She said she wanted to be burned up as soon as she went, once they got her eye things off—her corneas—like she wanted, in case somebody needed ’em. Your mama was a generous woman. That’s probably where you get it from.” He gave a small snort that could have been disapproval. “You can have the ashes, do what you want with ’em. I don’t want ’em around. They make me feel funny. I told her I’d give ’em to you. She said fine—she wanted you to have ’em. You know you gonna get a little money, too—from what your grandma left her. She would never touch that. She said that was yours.”

  “Oh…” Eric said.

  “It ain’t much—only about a quarter-of-a-million dollars.” Ron shook his head. “You know, I can remember, before the second devaluation, when a million dollars was some kind of money. Today, a hundred dollars’ll buy about what a ten would when I was a kid. A quarter of a million—hell, you can’t get a decent used car for that—you can’t get a good car anymore, anyway, with all these damned gasless engines. You guys got a checkin’ account? I’ll send it out to you.” He stood there, shaking his head. “Well, I guess you just decided to throw your whole life away, didn’t you? Just couldn’t do it, could you? Didn’t have the backbone, I guess. That’s such a shame—’cause you coulda done so much. Coulda made somethin’ outta your life. Coulda had people lookin’ up to you, knowin’ who you were. Your mama always thought you could.”

  It was a pretty frequently repeated litany of Ron’s, but this time it caught Eric off guard.

  “Not that I did so much with my own. But at least I tried, son—I had me a business. I had me a nice house—liked to live a nice life and do nice things for your mama. She was the kinda woman you wanted to do nice things for. And now…” He breathed in. “I’m gonna go spend six months, maybe a few years, with my daughter in Valdosta. That’s where my other family is. We’ll see how that’s works out. We never got along that well but maybe now, ’cause we’re both older…You know, the very same week, four years back, that your mama first came down with her cancer, that’s when Shells closed down. It sure wasn’t what it used to be, back when it first opened—even then. But it was still a nice place. We’d still go over there, maybe once a month, once every couple of months. But when that place shut—I don’t even like to drive by it anymore—I never felt like this was the same kinda place again, with real potential and a sense of itself no more. All that artsy-fartsy stuff out on the island, that ain’t nothin’ with real backbone to it. It’s just a place where a bunch of pretentious losers throw away their lives. That’s all. Well, at least you was never pretentious about it. You was just a loser, right?” He grinned at Eric.

  “Ron,” Eric said, “does sayin’ stuff like that about me make you feel better about you?”

  “No,” Ron said, giving an expression of consideration, giving his head a shake. “Naw, but it makes me feel good to know I don’t have to be a hypocrite and act phony with folks and can say what’s right and true to them to their face.”

  “Well,” Eric said, “if it does make you feel good, you go ahead and say it. Hey, you was gonna gimme that. Right?”

  “Oh. Yeah…sure. Here.”

  Eric took the container. Once the canister was in his fingers, he realized it was some kind of plastic, supposed to look like stone. “I just wished you’d told me, Ron.” He took a breath. “Before you went and burned her up. So as people could…you know. Say good-bye.”

  “I’m sorry.” Reaching up with a brown finger, Ron rubbed behind a fleshy ear. “I should have, maybe. Hey, I don’t mind payin’ for it if you do everything else. But it was like I didn’t figure it was really gonna happen. I mean, not so soon—not this mornin’. But that’s how it is.”

  It had been yesterday morning, actually. Or even the day before. For Eric it seemed so long; for Ron it was still present. Eric thought over how the slim black programmer he’d met years before had become a fat black man, usually short of breath, his self-importance, his oddly-fitting suits rarely pressed, which made them look even more like tents than they would have. Barbara had put on weight herself…before the cancer had leeched it aw
ay.

  Eric took another breath. “I’m gonna bury this in the graveyard, out on the island. It’s pretty there. She liked Gilead.” He looked around. And took another breath. “Um…you wanna come?”

  “Nope,” Ron said. Then he said, “Yeah, it is pretty out there. That’s good—that’s the thing to do. She really liked you boys. Both’a yall. She’d like visitin’ out there with you.”

  “I hope things work out with your daughter.” Eric had only vaguely known of Ron’s former family.

  “Well…” Ron sounded faintly lost. “That’s nice of you to say it.”

  Driving back to the Harbor in the pickup, the canister beside him, standing on the book with its torn cover, it struck Eric, probably Ron’s comment about Barb liking them was his way of saying Ron didn’t, really—like him or Shit. Eric grunted. I should have brought him a pot of chili. After all, Ron was alone now. Eric grunted again, smiling: Maybe Shit and me could’a spiced it up special for him before I brought it. Or maybe taken it around and let all the niggers in the Dump add their contributions, the ones he could still ask for something like that. Naw, it would’ve been wasted on that nigger.

  Back at the five-room Gilead cabin, Shit said, “So—he just went and had her burnt up and didn’t say fuckin’ ‘boo’ to you? Well, that’s fuckin’ Ronny Bodin, all the goddam way. I hope now your mama’s gone, you don’t intend to bother with that nigger no more. If he wants to pretend ain’t nobody else in the world besides him, leave him alone and let him.”

  Uncomfortably, Eric said, “I’m gonna take these out to the graveyard.”

  Shit reared back in the kitchen chair, the front two legs off the floor, arms crossed over his bare chest. Dark beams crossed the white, low ceiling. “You gonna scatter her or you gonna plant ’er?”

  Eric was surprised that Shit was even aware of the difference. In that canister, now on the table corner, was Barbara—he realized—not just something that had belonged to her. “I’m gonna make a hole and put ’em down in there—near Jay.” His mama and Jay had been pretty good friends back during the years she’d waitressed at the Coffee & Egg (not that he’d ever told her what went on at Jay’s house on the island, when every so often he’d visited for a day or two). “I’ll get a shovel—ain’t nobody gonna be out there now to see, anyway. You don’t have to come.”