Nahoonkara by Peter Grandbois

Author:Peter Grandbois [Grandbois, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780983934684
Publisher: Etruscan Press

TWO

SPIDERS AND SHADOWS

Wallace | Wisconsin

Silky black and about a half an inch in diameter. It sits tucked behind the topmost log on the woodpile behind the house.

“Kill it,” Father says. “Smash it with the log.”

With the curiosity of a scientist or a criminologist, I tilt my head to peer beneath the spider, but I can’t make out a thing. I take a twig and knock it to the ground. Before it rights itself, I spy the red hourglass.

“Step on it,” Father says. “Believe me, it won’t think twice about biting you.”

The spider stills itself, as if it hopes to become invisible by not moving. I stare at it for a long moment. When I look close, I see the eight eyes staring back at me.

We don’t read Plato’s Republic in school. My father brought it home from the library, and we read it together each night. He explains the parts I don’t understand. My favorite part is the cave, the fact that we are all prisoners doomed to watch the shadows play on the wall and think it’s reality.

It dawns on me then that if I’m the prisoner and the spider the shadow, what does the spider see when it looks at me? Am I shadow and substance both? If so, then what determines me? I take the lemonade glass Mother set out for us and drink it down in one gulp, then carefully pull back the log and set the glass over the spider.

“What in the hell are you doing?” Father says, but it’s only force of habit. He knows how my mind works.

I scrape the glass along the ground, until the spider is at the edge, its feet tucked up making a protective ball. I slide a leaf under the glass and in one quick action tilt it up. I carry it deep into the woods and let it loose. It wastes no time making for the cool shade of scrub oak. A jay perches on the lowest branch of an oak, watching us.

On the way back I wonder if spiders have directional sense like birds or other animals. If they can find their way home. I picture the hand of my father or mother, or even my own, reaching into the woodpile one evening getting fuel for the stove. I see the spider waiting in the darkness, watching. And I wonder what I might do if I encountered it there again. Plato says that justice is the result of a well-ordered soul. I say it is by our actions that we order it.

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