There was a blue star hanging on a thread, in the dark blue night sky.
But, when he reached out to catch it, the star moved farther away, just out of
his grasp. He remembered a story from his childhood about Grandmother Spider,
endlessly weaving the world into existence.
In his childhood there had been an abundance of spider webs, dew filled
and glimmering in the thin morning light, when he followed his father to the
barn.
"Hard workers, those spiders," his father often said. His
childhood self too filled with the glory of the moment to answer anything but, "Uh-huh."
They worked the land as brothers, though he himself was only eight when
he was considered old enough to first tag along.
The dew filled spider webs. The smell of new cut hay. Him. His father.
The sweat. The trust.
He was an old man now, lying in his bed trying to wake up, his own two
children fretting around, making him dizzy. It was Christmas Eve and his
daughter insisted that they have Christmas dinner as usual, only this year served
with him still in his bed. The bed he seldom left these days. His daughter
wasn't a very good cook. Not as his wife had been. But he endured small pieces
of every dish, including a thin slice of pudding at the end. His son ate as
well, sitting awkwardly on a wooden chair close to the bed in his expensive
clothes, dinner plate in lap, restlessly forcing himself not to reach for the
cellphone in his pocket.
Finally, it was over; plates cleared away, kisses on his forehead, his
daughter lingering until he closed his eyes, pretending to sleep.
There it was again: the blue star, mystically sending out light sparks
over the deeper blue sky. Different in coloring than the bright, white stars
covering the velvet sky had been when they smoked fish in a barrel at the
backside of the house; first his father and him, then him and his son.
He had never moved. His wife simply moved in with him, and adapted
easily to being a farmer’s wife, in a down to earth way. She was a good woman,
as they say. Never complained, steadily working by his side year after year.
Only when cancer ate her from the inside and out did he, for the first time,
see weakness. He could not stand the sight, nor her moans, or her spasms. So,
he overdosed morphine and made her drink strong toxic, herbal remedies he mixed
together in a pot on the wooden stove. When the nurse came around that day, she
pretended not to understand what had happened.
"Now she won't have to suffer," she simply said, locking his
eyes in her summer sky ones a short moment, and then went about practical
business. As if death was just another everyday chore. Perhaps it was.
He never moved. He never sold off the land either, just let piece after
piece fall into wildness, ignoring his sons complaints, until the only thing he
could plant was the tomatoes by the stone wall; shaking paper skin hands
patting the soil, picking yellow leaves off the stems, caressing the healthy,
hairy green leaves.
The blue star gleamed. A giant spider leg took a soundless step over the
sky. He himself stepped right into the dew-wet grass and the scent of new cut
hay flowed over him in a wave.
Michael and I saw him once, on one of my very first walks since I landed
in the Blue Mountains. We walked up Berry Road and I saw a shadowy figure standing
in the middle of the road. Everything was so new to me then: the moist, the
thick vines circling up tree trunks, the lookout for snakes on the dusty road.
I was a bit jumpy I will honestly admit. So, I took a sharp breath when I saw
the shadow man, but said nothing to Michael.
Michael stopped soon thereafter, by a small creek, water falling down on
a rock, making splashing, playful sounds. Michael cocked his head to the side,
as if listening to the water and started to tell me of a man who had lived
close to where we were. A farmer, who didn't want to leave his home, who stayed
where he felt safe. The man simply moved farther into the land. Learned the
language of spider webs. And listened to the song of the blue star.
