Anansi Boys

For the first time it registered with Fat Charlie that it had been dark night when he had sat down at the table with Daisy and the Higglers, but that while the sun was low wherever he was now, it had not set.

His father folded up the chair, and gave Fat Charlie the chair and the bucket to carry. They began to walk along the bridge. “You know,” said Mr. Nancy, “I always thought that if you ever came to talk to me, I’d tell you all manner of things. But you seem to be doing pretty good on your own. So what brings you here?”

“I’m not sure. I was trying to find the Bird Woman. I want to give her back her feather.”

“You shouldn’t have been messin’ about with people like that,” said his father, blithely. “No good ever comes from it. She’s a mess of resentments, that one. But she’s a coward.”

“It was Spider—” said Fat Charlie.

“Your own fault. Letting that old busybody send half of you away.”

“I was only a kid. Why didn’t you do anything?”

Anansi pushed the hat back on his head. “Ol’ Dunwiddy couldn’t do anything to you you didn’t let her do,” he said. “You’re my son, after all.”

Fat Charlie thought about this. Then he said, “But why didn’t you tell me?”

“You’re doing okay. You’re figurin’ it all out by yourself. You figured out the songs, didn’t you?”

Fat Charlie felt clumsier and fatter and even more of a disappointment to his father, but he didn’t simply say “No.” Instead he said, “What do you think?”

“I think you’re gettin’ there. The important thing about songs is that they’re just like stories. They don’t mean a damn unless there’s people listenin’ to them.”

They were approaching the end of the bridge. Fat Charlie knew, without being told, that this was the last chance they’d ever have to talk. There were so many things he needed to find out, so many things he wanted to know. He said, “Dad. When I was a kid. Why did you humiliate me?”

The old man’s brow creased. “Humiliate you? I loved you.”

“You got me to go to school dressed as President Taft. You call that love?”

There was a high-pitched yelp of something that might have been laughter from the old man, then he sucked on his cheroot. The smoke drifted from his lips like a ghostly speech balloon. “Your mother had something to say about that,” he said. Then he said, “We don’t have long, Charlie. You want to spend the time we got left fighting?”

Fat Charlie shook his head. “Guess not.”

They had reached the end of the bridge. “Now,” said his father. “When you see your brother. I want you to give him something from me.”

“What?”

His father reached up a hand, pulled Fat Charlie’s head down. Then he kissed him, gently, on the forehead. “That,” he said.

Fat Charlie straightened up. His father was looking up at him with an expression that, if he had seen it in anyone else’s face, he would have thought of as pride. “Let me see the feather,” said his father.

Fat Charlie reached into his pocket. The feather was there, looking even more crumpled and dilapidated than it looked before.

His father made a “tch” noise and held the feather up to the light. “This is a beautiful feather,” said his father. “You don’t want it to get all manky. She won’t take it back if it’s messed up.” Mr. Nancy ran his hand over the feather, and it was perfect. He frowned at it. “Now, you’ll just get it messed up again.” He breathed on his fingernails, polished them against his jacket. Then he seemed to have arrived at a decision. He removed his fedora and slipped the feather into the hatband. “Here. You could do with a natty hat anyway.” He put the hat onto Fat Charlie’s head. “It suits you,” he said.

Fat Charlie sighed. “Dad. I don’t wear hats. It’ll look stupid. I’ll look a complete tit. Why do you always try to embarrass me?”

In the fading light, the old man looked at his son. “You think I’d lie to you? Son, all you need to wear a hat is attitude. And you got that. You think I’d tell you you looked good if you didn’t? You look real sharp. You don’t believe me?”

Fat Charlie said, “Not really.”

“Look,” said his father. He pointed over the side of the bridge. The water beneath them was still and smooth as a mirror, and the man looking up at him from the water looked real sharp in his new green hat.

Fat Charlie looked up to tell his father that maybe he had been wrong, but the old man was gone.

He stepped off the bridge into the dusk.

“RIGHT. I WANT TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE HE IS. WHERE DID he go? What have you done to him?”

“I didn’t do anything. Lord, child,” said Mrs. Higgler. “This never happened the last time.”

“It looked like he was beamed up to the mothership,” said Benjamin. “Cool. Real-life special effects.”

“I want you to bring him back,” said Daisy, fiercely. “I want him back now.”

“I don’t even know where he is,” said Mrs. Higgler. “And I didn’t send him there. He do that himself.”

“Anyway,” said Clarissa. “What if he’s off doing what he’s doing and we make him come back? We could ruin it all.”

“Exactly,” said Benjamin. “Like beaming the landing party back, halfway through their mission.”