The Illiterate Spider

The Illiterate Spider by BiUy C. Clark He was a black and yellow spider and he had spun one end of his web onto a corner of the chicken house roof and the other end onto a sunflower stalk nearby. It was July and the sunflower was in bloom and on my way to feed the chickens I had stopped to stare at the bloom of the sunflower and I saw the spider there. He was near the roof, up where the web whirled into a silver cone and disappeared under the eaves. I thought that inside the cone must be his home. And the great web that poured out to touch the sunflower was that portion of the world that the spider had spun off for himself. I hoped so since it was a portion of the world that I would have no trouble at all staying away from. The morning was early and the dew silvered the tiny strands of the web and the web danced in the wind as silent as the end of a yawn. And, looking up through the huge web. I could see the broader strands of white, broken and zigzagged and knitted across the web like lightning that had fallen to earth, netted and held timeless. "You are a pretty spider," I said, "but I am afraid of you." I heard a noise behind me, turned, and saw my brother Raphrael, thumbs hooked in his belt staring up at the spider with a frown on his face. "Uh, oh!" he said. And, hoping that Raphrael hadn't been there long enough to have heard me say to the spider that I was afraid of him I said: "What do you mean uh oh? It's just a spider." "Nope," Raphrael said. That's where you're wrong as usual. It's not just a spider ." "How come it ain't?" I asked, knowing that Raphrael was smarter than me since he was older and going to school and that was enough to make it so. But I also knew that Raphrael was bad to tease. "Because he's a writing spider", Raphrael said. "What's that mean?" I asked, swallowed, and tried to squint a quick look at the spider without Raphrael seeing. "First off it means that I'd be might careful if I was you," Raphrael said. "A writing spider is an omen spider. Evil as a witch. Why. if he hears someone's name he just writes it across his web and they shrivel up and die before the sun goes down. I'd be careful if I was you." I fingered the pan of corn I held in my hand and said: "Shucks. How do you know something like that?" "Lots of ways," Raphrael said. "I'm older than you for one thing." And Raphrael had swelled his chest out and was lookinng independent, chewing on a leaf of Life Everlasting Weed which Ma would have whipped him for doing if she knew it because Ma claimed that the weed was akin to tobacco and that made chewing it wrong. But Raphrael was always doing it and die times he got away with it sure did make him look all grown-upish and important and smart. "For another thing," he said, "Ma told me about that spider once. And, you know something else about the spider?" "What's that?" I asked, not sure that I wanted to know but too curious not to ask just like I was always doing on things of this sort. I mean like the times when the night was over the mountain and Raphrael would ask me if I would like to see a ghost and I'd say yes not really wanting to and he'd point one out to me and I'd always see it and then Raphrael would direaten to tell Ma on me for trying to sneak the cover from him so that I could hide up to nothing that a ghost could see and leave Raphrael exposed and naked on the bed. Raphrael squinted his eyes and looked toward the spider. He pointed. "See them big zigzag threads...