Ken Douglas - Gecko

“ I don’t wanna play anymore. I wanna go home.”

“ You been bugging us to play and we finally let you and now ya wanna quit,” his brother said.

“ I didn’t wanna get tied up,” he wailed.

“ What did the little shit think was gonna happen?” John Morgan said. He was the only kid on the block that swore. “He’s too little to capture anybody by himself and too slow to get away, ’course he was gonna get caught first thing. Happened to me too when I was a kid, but I didn’t whine about it when I got caught.” John Morgan, at twelve, was the oldest kid in the game and it took three kids to capture and hold him. Even with the no hitting rule, there were no two he couldn’t get away from.

“ Where did Beanie go?” Ricky asked. Beanie was Donny Greenwood, called Beanie because he was Jewish and had to wear a yarmulke to temple on Saturdays. “He’s supposed to be guarding us.”

“ Out looking for Rex probably,” John said. Rex Russell was the last cowboy in play.

“ I bet Rex has got ’em all captured,” Ricky said. Only on a rare occasion did a game come down to the guard. Guards weren’t supposed to leave their posts, but they always did.

“ Naw, if he did, he’d come let us go.”

“ Not Rex,” Little Bobby said, sniffling, “he’d go home and leave us here till dark.”

“ He’s right,” John said, “that son of a bitch would leave us here till dark. We’ll burn red as beets.”

“ My mom’s gonna be pissed off,” Ricky said. That was the first time Jim heard Ricky swear.

“ We gotta get outta here,” Little Bobby said, looking at his brother.

“ Okay, okay,” Jerry said, “can anybody get loose?”

“ I think I can,” Jim said.

They all turned their eyes on Jim. If anybody could slip out of the ropes, he could. He was the skinniest and most agile. They watched as he twisted and turned, grunted and groaned, but after fifteen minutes of sweating and struggling he was no closer to loosening his bonds than when he had started.

“ I can’t get loose.” He was breathing hard.

“ You’re turning red, Jimmy,” Little Bobby said. Jim had fair skin and sunburned easily. He should have kept his shirt on. Rolling around in the grass made him itch like crazy and now he was starting to feel the burn. He tried again to squeeze his hands through the rope, but still he couldn’t.

“ I’m gonna get into the shade.” He rolled across the yard to the shade offered by the garage. Once out of the sun he relaxed and caught his breath. He still itched, but at least he wouldn’t burn anymore.

“ Jimmy, maybe if you sit up by the corner of the garage, you can cut through your ropes,” Jerry said.

Jim scooted over to the corner of the stucco garage and sat up with his back next to where two walls met and he started rubbing his hands up and down in an attempt to fray the ropes.

“ Black widow,” Little Bobby screamed.

Jim stopped his rubbing, his companions were silent. “Where?” he asked, quietly.

“ By your leg.”

Jim looked down and saw it. Big, black, marble shaped and it was crawling up onto his leg.

“ Don’t move,” Jerry said, a tremor in his voice.

“ Yeah, stay real still and maybe it’ll go away,” Ricky said.

“ I’d roll over and squash it,” John said.

“ No, don’t do that, you might piss it off and it’ll bite,” Ricky said, getting used to swearing.

“ Not if it’s fucking squashed,” John swore.

Jim froze, hoping his Levi’s were too thick for it to bite through, but not sure. He felt the sweat rolling of his sunburned back as it climbed up and sat on his knee. His comrades were mute, holding their breath, eyes glued to the spider.

It sat there for several minutes, holding the boys spellbound. They were quiet, keen and aware. The only sounds, their shallow breathing and the breeze rustling through the tall tree in the corner of the yard. Jim was paralyzed.

The spider began to move back the way it had come.

“ When it gets on the grass, roll away from it,” Jerry said.

“ Yeah, get away from it,” Ricky echoed. “That’s what I’d do.”

“ Roll over and squash it. Smash it dead,” John offered.

As if hearing John, the spider stopped and climbed back up on the knee, sat for a second, like it was surveying the situation, then started a trek up Jim’s pant leg.

“ Do something!” Little Bobby squealed, his tears forgotten.

The spider stopped and sat atop Jim’s groin.

“ It’s on his dick,” John Morgan said. “Better do something quick.”

Jim’s bladder gave way.

“ He pissed himself,” John Morgan said and Jim knew, scared as he was, he would never live it down.

The hot urine welling up around the spider startled it and it scooted away from the source of the wet in a sideways movement coming to rest above Jim’s bare belly button.

“ That’s bad,” Little Bobby said.

“ Shoulda rolled over and squashed it,” John said.

Jim remained paralyzed, with his back against the garage and once again the boys turned silent, waiting with bated breath and wide eyes. The spider remained rock still, rising and falling with Jim’s quivering breath.

“ Help!” Little Bobby belted out, his cry piercing the silence like a white hot knife.

“ Help! Help!” Ricky and Jerry chimed in.

“ Help!” John Morgan’s loud voice added to the cadence.

“ What’s going on?” David’s mother screamed, coming out the back door.

“ Black widow, on Jimmy!” John Morgan said.

Cynthia Askew started toward Jimmy just as he felt a pinching sensation in his abdomen. David’s mother swatted the spider off his belly, then squashed it with her foot. Jim passed out. Three days later he came home from the hospital. He spent the next five years overcoming his fear of spiders.

He told Roma the whole story, omitting only the part about wetting his pants.

“ You and your sister are the only people alive that know about that,” he said, after he finished the telling. “It’s always been my deepest secret.”

“ Why?”

“ I was paralyzed with fear, no one likes to admit that.”

“ What about the boys?” she asked.

“ Except for David, who was killed yesterday, the cowboys have been dead forever. Jerry and his brother, Little Bobby, were killed in high school when the car Jerry was driving was hit by a drunk driver. John Morgan stepped on a land mine just outside Saigon. Ricky Stewart died of leukemia on his fourteenth birthday. David’s mother has been dead for years. I told Julia one night when we were swapping secrets, I don’t know why I told you, because you asked, I guess, or maybe because I’ve always loved you.”

“ But you overcame your fear of spiders. You should be proud of that.”

“ I just wanted to forget about that horrible afternoon, being afraid every time I saw a spider was no way to forget. Once I got used to not being afraid of them, I started to like them. Now I go out of my way to help them. I’d never kill one. Not now.”

“ I’ve always loved you too,” she said.

All of a sudden he was extremely aware of Roma’s bared breasts. “I’ve never been with anyone but Julia,” he said.

“ I suspected as much,” she said.

“ How did you know?”

“ I don’t know. I guess a woman just knows these things, but I’ll confess I don’t understand why. Were you afraid of girls?”

“ No. I was a good Catholic boy. I was a virgin at eighteen when I went into the service, still a virgin when I was sent to Vietnam, where God knows I had plenty of opportunity, but I couldn’t bring myself to go a prostitute, so I remained a virgin till I was captured. Not many girls in a POW camp. I was twenty-three when I got home and pretty fucked up. By the time I got it together, I was halfway through my thirties, too old and too embarrassed to start dating, so I just put it out of my mind and concentrated on making money. Then I met you and fell in love, but you went away with me still celibate.”