“Fat Charlie,” said Mrs. Higgler. “You hum too.”
Fat Charlie swallowed. There’s nothing to be scared of, he told himself: he had sung in front of a roomful of people; he had proposed marriage in front of an audience to a woman he barely knew. Humming would be a doddle.
He found the note that Mrs. Higgler was humming, and he let it vibrate in his throat…
He held his feather. He concentrated and he hummed.
Benjamin stopped giggling. His eyes widened. There was a
n expression of alarm on his face, and Fat Charlie was going to stop humming to find out what was troubling him, but the hum was inside him now, and the candles were flickering…
“Look at him!” said Benjamin. “He’s—”
And Fat Charlie would have wondered what exactly he was, but it was too late to wonder.
Mists parted.
Fat Charlie was walking along a bridge, a long white footbridge across an expanse of gray water. A little way ahead of him, in the middle of the bridge, a man sat on a small wooden chair. The man was fishing. A green fedora hat covered his eyes. He appeared to be dozing, and he did not stir as Fat Charlie approached.
Fat Charlie recognized the man. He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“You know,” he said, “I knew you were faking it. I didn’t think you were really dead.”
The man in the chair did not move, but he smiled. “Shows how much you know,” said Anansi. “I’m dead as they come.” He stretched luxuriantly, pulled a little black cheroot from behind his ear, and lit it with a match. “Yup. I’m dead. Figure I’ll stay dead for a lickle while. If you don’t die now and again, people start takin‘ you for granted.”
Fat Charlie said “But.”
Anansi touched his finger to his lips for silence. He picked up his fishing rod and began to wind the reel. He pointed to a small net. Fat Charlie picked it up, and held it out as his father lowered a silver fish, long and wriggling, into it. Anansi took the hook from the fish’s mouth then dropped the fish into a white pail. “There,” he said. “That’s tonight’s dinner taken care of.”
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?”