Granny didn’t know anything about niggers. Mean niggers in Detroit with knives.
“Ain’t many folks these parts believes the way I do,” Granny said. “Except maybe Granpaw, and folks over to Kingdom. I know your Momma don’t. Your Momma used to have more respect for coloreds. Before she went off north she did.”
“Still there might be somebody,” I said. “I don’t like it dark Granny.”
Granny set the kerosene lamp on the floor by the bed. “They ain’t nothin’ under there now, look.” She made a motion for me to climb down and look under. She was right. There wasn’t anything under there except my tennis shoes and the dirty brown linoleum floor. A big wiry-legged spider crawled into the circle where the light was and stopped. “That’s just old Daddy Long Legs,” Granny said. “He won’t hurt you none.”
I heard what she said, but I didn’t believe her. I grabbed up one of my tennis shoes and slammed it on the spider.
“They Lord!” Granny breathed.
I lifted the shoe away and there the spider was, a wet circle now of crushed legs. One leg had detached and was crawling sideways across the linoleum. I slammed it with the shoe. “I hate spiders Granny.”
“That ain’t no reason to kill one! Get back in the bed!”
I put the shoe down and climbed back in.
“I got to kill thangs too, sometimes,” Granny said. “Pigs. Chickens. Cows. Even spiders sometimes. I don’t do it just to be doing it though.”
That you needed a reason to kill spiders had never occurred to me. I pulled the sheet up over my chin and stared back.
“It had been different it was poison,” Granny said. “I’d have killed it myself it was poison.”
She knew as much about spiders as she did about niggers, which was next to nothing at all. To me spiders were creepy and mean with big fangs that could suck blood. One time at the drive-in-picture-show I saw where a spider had grown so big it ate people alive and crashed through walls. You couldn’t kill it either, not even with a tank.
Again Granny raised the lamp. “You know, you look just like a baby raccoon I come up on wunst in the woodshed, it’s eyes all a shine. Like glass. Watching me like it thought I was crazy.” She let out a laugh. “You think I’m crazy don’t you?”
I didn’t know what to think. I liked how she talked though, like she was having the best old time. I liked it so much I almost forgot to cry. Her face sidled in along side the lamp frame. “Sure enough. You and that rascally little raccoon look just exactly alike!” She wagged her head, laughing. I laughed too. Then her eyes went over the floor by the bed. “I don’t reckon they’s a man small enough could fit under there, do you?”
“No Granny,” I said.
“Me and Granpaw will be right at the foot of them steps, you get scared.”
“Okay, Granny.”
Granny smiled. “All right then.” She went with the lamp to the ladder hole. The shadow of her shoulder soared up to the ceiling, stretched out over the beams like a wing. She started backwards down the ladder hole, facing me but looking down, frowning, holding the lamp to one side whilst she felt for the steps. When her chin got even with the floor she looked back at me. “Go to sleep now hon. Everything’s gonna be all right.” She went on down. The shadow of the wing slid off the beams and followed after her. The light flickered in the hole and went out.
I curled up in a ball like a rabbit, hunkering down in the featherbed, warm and listening to the crickets. I thought about Momma and Missy, about Victor, barreling down and up and over the hills of Kentucky, moving on into Tennessee and Chattanooga, going on the rest of the way, on down to Florida and that Gulf of Mexico without me. I thought about my real Daddy. I thought about the fire. My tears started again; so much so, I thought they’d never end. And that’s how I went to sleep.
My eyes wouldn’t open. Blades of white stabbed in through the lashes. I saw bright red and blue circles rising, silvery spider legs growing and fading — floating in a glare. There was syrupy stuff too, up in the corners, some of it dried off hard and grainy like scabs. I rubbed until the lashes sucked loose, until I could see the beams and the tin roof overhead — light shining through the little nail holes up there — Kentucky light.
The featherbed puffed up around me like hills. Still I was able to see the top of Granny’s dresser, the big round mirror leaning over the front, looking back at the room like a big glass eye. I could see my end of the attic in there, the window behind the bed. There was a window at the other end too, full of sunshine, tall like a man with a chest full of fire.
My dump truck, the one Daddy won bowling at Ford’s, sat on the dresser, shiny red with chrome bumpers and black rubber mud flaps. Granpaw’s cross was up there too, leaning against the mirror, blond wood with a black snake draped along its shoulders where Jesus was supposed to be.
Momma said Jesus could have called ten thousand angels to come and save him from the cross, but God said not to, which to me didn’t make any sense. To me, Jesus should have called them angels right away instead of letting Himself be killed like he did. He could have saved people for real then. That’s what I would have done.
“Why, Jesus had to die,” Momma said. “So people could believe on him and be saved. That’s how God planned it.”
“Do I have to believe in Jesus?” I asked.
“You got to come to the age of accountability first,” Momma said. “You got to get under conviction.”
Conviction sounded bad, like a bank robber or some bad man on Dragnet, sitting behind bars in a jail. I didn’t want to be under anything like that.
“You don’t have to worry none,” Momma said. “Jesus loves all the little children. Little children that don’t know no better’s already saved.”
I liked it that Jesus loved the little children, but I wasn’t sure if nine-years-old was still little. It didn’t matter anyhow, not if Jesus didn’t come when you wanted him to. Preachers at church said Jesus was coming soon. To me ‘soon’ meant right away like tomorrow or next week, not years and years. If ‘soon’ took that long, maybe a person would be better off without Jesus. At least you wouldn’t all the time have to be thinking about Him, wondering around if He was going to come or not.
Far off somewhere I heard a rooster crow. The sound zigzagged way up in the sky like a train whistle then gagged off all of a sudden like somebody had choked it. I heard things moving around downstairs. Voices. A chair being pulled across the floor.
Bacon smells drifted over from the ladder hole, making me think of home, of cartoons on TV where long fingers of smoke would come out from pots and pans on a stovetop. Where they would drift over to a tomcat or a man that was sleeping and start to curl in and out in front of his nose. That cat or that man would float up off the ground then, and the smoky fingers would just float him along by the nose till they got to where the food was. This morning they were doing the same thing to me.
“Orbie! Ah, Orbie!” It was Granny yelling up the ladder hole, her breath going in and out. “I got you some eggs down here! Ah, Orbie! You up yet?”
“I am Granny!”
“Come on then. Granpaw’s already eatin’ his.” She walked away, slipper bottoms smooching across the floor.