Anansi Boys

The audience clapped, and Fat Charlie smiled and he sang, and as he sang he knew, without any shadow of a doubt, that everything was going to be all right. They were going to be just fine, him and Spider and Daisy and Rosie, too, wherever she was, they’d be okay. He knew what he was going to do: it was foolish and unlikely and the act of an idiot, but it would work. And as the last notes of the song faded away, he said, “There’s a young lady at the table I was sitting at. Her name’s Daisy Day. She’s from England too. Daisy, can you wave at everyone?”

Daisy gave him a sick look, but she raised a hand from the table, and she waved.

“There’s something I wanted to say to Daisy. She doesn’t know I’m going to say this.” If this doesn’t work, whispered a voice at the back of his head, she’s dead. You know that? “But let’s hope she says yes. Daisy? Will you marry me?”

The room was quiet. Fat Charlie stared at Daisy, willing her to understand, to play along.

Daisy nodded.

The diners applauded. This was a floor show. The singer, the maitre d’, and several of the waitresses descended on the table, hauled Daisy to her feet, and pulled her over to the middle of the floor. They pulled her over to Fat Charlie, and, as the band played “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” he put his arm around her.

“You got a ring for her?” asked the singer.

He put his hand into his pocket. “Here,” he said to Daisy. “This is for you.” He put his arms around her and kissed her. If anyone is going to get shot, he thought, it will be now. Then the kiss was over, and people were shaking his hand and hugging him—one man, in town, he said, for the music festival, insisted on giving Fat Charlie his card—and now Daisy was holding the lime he had given her with a very strange expression on her face; and when he looked back to the table they had been sitting at, Grahame Coats was gone.

Chapter Thirteen

which proves to be unlucky for some

The birds were excited, now. They were cawing and crying and chattering in the treetops. It’s coming, thought Spider, and he cursed. He was spent and done. There was nothing left in him. Nothing but fatigue, nothing but exhaustion.

He thought about lying on the ground and being devoured. Overall, he decided, it was a lousy way to go. He wasn’t even certain that he’d be able to regrow a liver, while he was pretty sure that whatever was stalking him had no plans to stop at just the liver anyway.

He began to wrench at the stake. He counted to three, and then, as best as he could and as much as he could, jerked both of his arms toward him so they’d tense the rope and pull the stake, then he counted to three and did it again.

It had about as much effect as if he was to try to pull a mountain across a road. One two three—tug. And again. And again.

He wondered if the beast would come soon.

One two three—tug. One two three—tug.

Somewhere, someone was singing, he could hear it. And the song made Spider smile. He found himself wishing that he still had a tongue: he’d stick it out at the tiger when it finally made its appearance. The thought gave him strength.

On two three—tug.

And the stake gave and shifted in his hands.

One more pull and the stake came out of the ground, slick as a sword sliding out of a stone.

He pulled the ropes toward him, and held the stake in his hands. It was about three feet long. One end had been sharpened to go into the ground. He pushed it out of the loops of rope with numb hands. Ropes dangled uselessly from his wrists. He hefted the stake in his right hand. It would do. And he knew then that he was being watched: that it had been watching him for some time now, like a cat watching a mousehole.

It came to him in silence, or nearly, insinuating its way toward him like a shadow moving across the day. The only movement that caught the eye was its tail, which swished impatiently. Otherwise, it might have been a statue, or a mound of sand that looked, due to a trick of the light, like a monstrous beast, for its coat was a sandy color, its unblinking eyes the green of the midwinter sea. Its face was the wide, cruel face of a panther. In the islands they called any big cat Tiger, and this was every big cat there had ever been—bigger, meaner, more dangerous.

Spider’s ankles were still hobbled, and he could barely walk. Pins and needles pricked his hands and his feet. He hopped from one foot to another and tried to look as if he was doing it on purpose, some kind of dance of intimidation, and not because standing hurt him.

He wanted to crouch and untie his ankles, but he did not dare take his eyes off the beast.

The stake was heavy and thick but was too short to be a spear, too clumsy and large to be anything else. Spider held it by the narrower end, where it had been sharpened, and he looked away, out to sea, intentionally not looking at the place the animal was, relying on his peripheral vision for information.