time.”
Daisy said, “Great. You got your feather back. Now, can we please talk about Grahame Coats?”
“It’s not only a feather. It’s the feather I swapped for my brother.”
“So swap it back, and let’s get on with things. We’ve got to do something.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” said Fat Charlie. Then he stopped, and thought about what he had said and what she had said. He looked at Daisy admiringly. “God, you’re smart,” he said.
“I try,” she said. “What did I say?”
They didn’t have four old ladies, but they had Mrs. Higgler, Benjamin, and Daisy. Dinner was almost finished, so Clarissa, the maitre d’, seemed perfectly happy to come and join them. They didn’t have earths of four different colors, but there was white sand from the beach behind the hotel and black dirt from the flower bed in front of it, red mud at the side of the hotel, multicolored sand in test tubes in the gift shop. The candles they borrowed from the poolside bar were small and white, not tall and black. Mrs. Higgler assured them that she could find all the herbs they actually needed on the island, but Fat Charlie had Clarissa borrow a pouch of bouquet garni from the kitchen.
“I think it’s all a matter of confidence,” Fat Charlie explained. “The most important thing isn’t the details. It’s the magical atmosphere.”
The magical atmosphere in this case was not enhanced by Benjamin Higgler’s tendency to look around the table and burst into explosive giggles nor by Daisy’s continually pointing out that the whole procedure was extremely silly.
Mrs. Higgler sprinkled the bouquet garni into a bowl of leftover white wine.
Mrs. Higgler began to hum. She raised her hands in encouragement, and the others began to hum along with her, like drunken bees. Fat Charlie waited for something to happen.
Nothing did.
“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 an 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
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
Fat Charlie thought about this. Then he said, “But why didn’t you
“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?”
There was a high-pitched yelp of something that might have been laughter from the old man, then he sucked on his cheroot. The smoke drifted from his lips like a ghostly speech balloon. “Your mother had something to say about that,” he said. Then he said, “We don’t have long, Charlie. You want to spend the time we got left fighting?”
Fat Charlie shook his head. “Guess not.”
They had reached the end of the bridge. “Now,” said his father. “When you see your brother. I want you to give him something from me.”
“What?”
His father reached up a hand, pulled Fat Charlie’s head down. Then he kissed him, gently, on the forehead. “That,” he said.
Fat Charlie straightened up. His father was looking up at him with an expression that, if he had seen it in anyone else’s face, he would have thought of as pride. “Let me see the feather,” said his father.
Fat Charlie reached into his pocket. The feather was there, looking even more crumpled and dilapidated than it looked before.
His father made a “tch” noise and held the feather up to the light. “This is a beautiful feather,” said his father. “You don’t want it to get all manky. She won’t take it back if it’s messed up.” Mr. Nancy ran his hand over the feather, and it was perfect. He frowned at it. “Now, you’ll just get it messed up again.” He breathed on his fingernails, polished them against his jacket. Then he seemed to have arrived at a decision. He removed his fedora and slipped the feather into the hatband. “Here. You could do with a natty hat anyway.” He put the hat onto Fat Charlie’s head. “It suits you,” he said.
Fat Charlie sighed. “Dad. I don’t wear hats. It’ll look stupid. I’ll look a complete tit. Why do you always try to embarrass me?”
In the fading light, the old man looked at his son. “You think I’d lie to you? Son, all you need to wear a hat is attitude. And you got that. You think I’d tell you you looked good if you didn’t? You look real sharp. You don’t believe me?”
Fat Charlie said, “Not really.”
