I was cleaning a spider web off the mailbox last week when its angry builder popped out of a crack and glared at me with all eight eyes. Spiders usually win staring contests with me, but not this time… not after what happened this summer.
I fought a bigger, better one than you, I warned the creature telepathically. He kept staring as I recalled the great encounter.
My son Casey and I were in a tall, thin hotel built on the edge of a great lake in Guatemala. It is made mostly of rock chipped into blocks on site and mortared into place. It rises with its back to a volcanic hill surrounded by banana trees and coffee plants and forest growth.
Toothless Lucas
Of course such a setting has giant bugs, but I wasn’t thinking of that when I left Casey in the room taking a nap while I wandered along the edge of the lake, whistling happily. Met a guy named Lucas, chiseling away at a rock. Happy guy – smiled at me with two missing top front teeth when I hollered “Hola” at him. After about an hour, I returned and softly opened the room door, not wanting to disturb Casey.
The covers were pulled up to his eyes, but his eyes weren’t shut.
“D-d-dad, look over there. It’s the biggest f*cking spider I ever saw.”
He pointed his whole left arm toward the wall at the foot of my bed. There, like the Picture of Dorian Gray, hung a nightmare.
My Psycho Switch
I have written of how my dog’s psycho switch is thrown by a squirrel. Spiders throw mine. Even the tiniest. They’ve done it many times. The worst time, up until this moment, was in Orange County when I was a young boy and Orange County still had orange groves. I had chased a jack rabbit deep into a grove and came face to face with a giant hairy blob in the middle of a web strung between two trees. He was big enough to count each eye. I screamed.
In the hotel room, I gulped. Can’t show cowardice in front of the kid. Breathe deep. Man up.
It wasn’t hairy and fat like the grove beast; in fact, it was hardly 3-dimensional at all with its long, lean legs spread out as far as I could stretch my fingers and an elongated black-brown body flattened against the wall almost like a shadow. Breathe deep. Don’t squeak when you talk.
“Ah, yes. Very big.”
“Big!? It’s a freaking monster! I’m so scared I am afraid to move.
Me, too. But I am your dad and have to deal. I wanted to run but instead reached down and slipped off my shoe – the heavy artillery – and advanced as my heart rate accelerated. I grasped the weapon around the heel and mentally practiced a ninja-slap move.
The spider was wider than my number 12 hiking shoe, so I stood off to the side at arm’s length plus the length of the shoe to a point on the sole where I calculated the beast’s life would end.
HAH!” I slapped, he moved, I missed.
Hah!” Missed again. He’s quicker than a blink.
“Hah! Hah! Hah!” Missed. Missed. Missed.
He’s gone. Jumped to the floor. Ran under my bed. Not out of mind but out of sight.
Walking It Off
“Come on, Casey, let’s go for a walk.”
Lucas grinned at us as we walked across the veranda he was sweeping. After exchanging “Holas,” I led Casey through the bananas and coffee to the little village nearby. We got lost for hours and almost forgot what was waiting for us when we opened the room door.
No sign of it. Not on the walls, the ceiling, under the beds. Yay. Casey headed to the bathroom and closed the bright blue door behind him.
“HOLY SHIT!” he screamed. The door flew open and he tumbled out, pulling up his pants. “It’s on the door.” He fled.
Off came my shoe. The spider looked even bigger against the powder blue. I slapped and the spider dodged. It leaped down and escaped under the door. It sprinted across the floor – which was the same color as the spider – and under Casey’s bed.
Good, I thought.
“Gone,” I assured Casey without telling him where it had gone.
The Dance
He didn’t seem to notice that night as I danced around on my tip toes to avoid stepping on something I wouldn’t be able to see even if it were there as my imagination assured me it was.
“Hola,” I told Lucas the next morning when Casey and I emerged into the sun. It had been a long night for me. He looked up from the weeds he was hacking and hola’d back with a smile.
After breakfast, Casey returned to the room and came boiling out.
“It’s back!”
“Como?” asked Lucas.
“Arana,” I said, trying to appear casual.
“Pequena o grande?” Tiny or big.
How Big?
“MUY GRANDE!” Casey interjected, holding his arms out like he was describing an elephant head.
“And fast – muy rapido,” I said.
“Ahh,” said Lucas, chuckling. “Con permisso?”
He entered the room and spied the spider spread out upon the blue.
When he laughed, exposing the two-tooth gap, I thought the spider might leap into it – but Lucas whipped out his handkerchief and snapped it like he was flicking away dust. The spider dodged that one but not the next and fell twitching to the floor, where I watched him take his last breaths.
I assume spiders have lungs to take any breath let alone final ones, but I know nothing about their cold biology. If I delved beyond the fangs and many eyes perhaps I could finally start unlearning the irrational fear and the snap judgment that arise when I see, not another creature trying to make a living, but an evil killer intent upon sucking my life. Intent is the operative word. The law defines intent as an act of deliberative judgment. Intent is used to decide whether you should get the death penalty for plotting a murder or merely jail time for lashing out in a psycho moment. In the great cosmic court of law, I deserved the needle for conspiracy to kill; but did the spider deserve the shoe simply for existing? He twitched in his death throes on the floor, then wrapped those legs around him like a shroud as he expired.
The Cinco
Lucas plucked the corpse between his thumb and forefinger and held it up – not much bigger than a coffee bean.
“Adios,” he said, tossing it into the trash.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a crumpled $5 bill.
“Servicio.” Tip.
“No, no, no,” he insisted, eyeing the bill.
“Cinco por un arana,” I said. Five for one spider. A lot of money for a handyman in Guatemala.
“Cinco por uno,” I repeated.
Lucas grinned and took the money. And for the remaining three days of my stay, his greeting to me changed from “Hola!” to “Cinco por uno?” He said it with a laugh from the banana grove, on the veranda, from where he chipped blocks, on the steps to the upstairs restaurant; and he even yelled it across the lake when I was kayaking. At one point, as we passed each other on the stairs, I joked in Spanish, “Hey, Lucas, I hope you don’t start putting spiders in my room. I don’t have much money in my pocket.” He warned me to visit the bank before returning to my room.
All Alone
On my last morning, I sat alone on the restaurant’s open veranda, gazing at volcanos. A soft-voiced server dressed in the richly embroidered clothes of her Mayan village came with a cup of coffee. She looked around as she placed it before me.
“Tu eres solito?” You are alone?
“Si, just me.”
She held out her hand as I took the first sip and another. I put the cup down and looked at her quizzically.
“Cinco por uno,” she said with a straight face. I actually was reaching into my pocket when she broke into titters and spun away.
The mists of reverie cleared and I found myself back in the present, standing before the mailbox. I was alone again. The spider had vanished back into its crack, taking with him my fear. A half-eaten katydid hung in the bit of web I had not yet swept away. I apologized telepathically for having disturbed its meal and especially for having killed so many of its brethren over the years because of how they looked. As atonement, I told the spider, I am leaving you the rest of your meal.
Uno por cinco. Many cincos.