From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive . . .
From Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
On the day I met Chiyo, I was feeling low, like I was never going to amount to much of anything. And I was getting too old to defeat such thoughts.
So, as the moon chased the sun out of Putnam County that summer evening, I went out on my balcony to listen to music and drift away from my troubles.
I flipped on the overhead light and put a libation down on a white table.
Once situated, I turned the light off. Then came a small voice I had never heard before.
“Would you mind leaving the light on?” the voice said. “It attracts bugs that I catch in my web and eat. I have to live, don’t I?”
Stretched between two Leyland cypress trees, I saw a glistening silver web with a large spider about 4 inches in diameter at its center. Based on the spider’s size and markings, I concluded that it was a Japanese Joru spider.
“Are you talking to me?” I asked.
“Well, you’re the only one sitting there,” the spider said. “No one else has control of the light.”
I had plenty of time to turn myself in at a mental health facility later, so I decided to immerse myself in this hallucination.
“I didn’t catch your name,” I said.
“Chiyo,” she said. “My name means ‘thousand generations’ in Japanese. But I already know your name. You are T. Michael Stone, the newspaper writer.”
“Spiders can read?” I said.
“Not really,” Chiyo said. “But wasps can, and one lives in a newspaper rack nearby. Once she reads all the stories, she tells the stories to the birds and the bees, who tell all of us.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just sang: “Let me tell you ‘bout the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees and the moon up above” — which I pointed at — “and a thing called love.”
Chiyo seemed delighted by my caterwauling and waved all eight of her legs at me.
“No one ever sang to me before,” Chiyo gushed. “Now I know we will be friends.”
“I never sang to a spider before, either,” I said. “Tell me all about yourself. Have you ever lured a fly into your web with flattery like in the ‘Spider and the Fly’ poem?”
“Never,” Chiyo said. “I’m an honest trapper.”
“So, you’re not a Democrat then,” I said.
“I’m an octocrat,” Chiyo said and giggled.
“You’re a clever girl,” I said. “I like you very much.”
“I would blush if I weren’t a spider,” Chiyo said.
“How did you learn to talk?” I asked.
“I’ve always known how to talk just like I’ve always known how to spin up a web,” Chiyo said. “How did you learn to talk?”
“From listening to other people, I guess,” I told her. “I can’t weave a web, though.”
“But you do not need a web,” she said.
“You have a box to live in, and soon you’ll have two Publix stores where you can buy all sorts of wonderful things to eat,” Chiyo said. “You don’t have to wait on flies and grasshoppers to blunder into your web.”
“What tastes better: fly blood or grasshopper blood?” I asked.
“They’re both quite horrible, but the worst taste of all is the brown marmorated stink bug,” Chiyo said. “Disgusting. I would hold my nose if I had one.”
“Are you married?” I asked like I would ask any female I had taken a liking to.
“Gosh, no,” Chiyo said. “I’m a spinster. Get it?”
“I think I’m in love,” I said. “You’re not only smart, but you have nice legs, too.”
“Stop it.”
“But you do,” I said. “And each one has seven sections – the coxa, the trochanter, the femur, the patella, the tibia, the metatarsus, and the tarsus,” she said.
“Sweet!” I said. “You’re silly,” Chiyo said. “You need to go to bed. But before you do, tell me what the ‘T’ in T. Michael stands for. Everyone is curious.”
Chiyo climbed to the top of her web and waited while I pondered.
“Tired,” I said. “T ‘stands for tired.”
To be continued . . .
Selah.
*The Birds and the Bees, written by Barry Stuart