Tarantula Shoes

by Tom Birdseye

  It was very quiet for a second—a second in which the twins popped wide-eyed out of the little closet. Mom silently mouthed the words “Oh my,” and I had a sudden, awful surge in my stomach.

  But before I could rush through the nearest door, hoping it was the upstairs bathroom, Dad burst into a big laugh and said, “Hey, just like in a horror movie!” He reached over and slapped me on the back like he’d told a really good one.

  I threw up on his shoe.

  CHAPTER 3

  This Had Better Be Good

  The next morning I woke up with Justin and Ellie staring me in the face. They held up their favorite stuffed animals so I could see. “Sleepy Bear and Hippo want Sugar Krinkles for breakfast,” Ellie said.

  I looked out the window of my pink bedroom. It was barely light outside. “It’s too early to be up,” I moaned. “I’m tired.”

  No wonder. Talk about a lousy night’s sleep. Although the house had central air-conditioning, it didn’t work. Dad had opened the windows after I barfed all over his shoe, but the hot, sticky air that came in from outside was no relief. I’d lain awake on sweat-soaked sheets, worrying about Kentucky and getting picked on at junior high school. “Leave me alone,” I said to the twins. “Go back to bed.”

  Justin pushed his stuffed animal closer to my face. “But Hippo is hungry.”

  I covered my head with my pillow. “Go away!”

  They didn’t. Ellie yelled into the pillow, “Sleepy Bear and Hippo have got to eat now so they can help us get ready for the spaceman!”

  The spaceman? I lifted my pillow far enough to see if the twins were grinning at their stupid early-morning joke.

  They weren’t.

  “Yup,” Justin said. “We found an old radio in that little closet upstairs. It came on all by itself this morning, and a spaceman started saying, ‘Calling Planet Earth! Calling Planet Earth!’ He’s coming to visit us, Ryan, and we’ve got to get ready.”

  I started to say, “You guys are dumber than a fence post,” but I didn’t. Sometimes I amaze myself and am polite, even when I don’t have to be. Besides, I knew from experience that insulting the twins wouldn’t get them out of my life so I could get back to sleep. Maybe if I used a little logic, though ….

  “Radios don’t come on by themselves,” I explained. “Spacemen don’t call up and say they are dropping by for a visit, either.”

  These simple facts didn’t seem to matter to Justin and Ellie, though. They were always imagining unreal stuff. When they were three, they spent a whole month claiming that toe fairies were living in their shoes, tickling them, making them laugh.

  “The spaceman in the radio told us his name is Quando,” Justin said. “He’s from some planet called …”

  “Neltoid,” Ellie offered.

  Justin nodded. “Yeah, Nel … Neltoid, and he’s coming to see us. He said to pat our heads and rub our bellies at the same time if we could hear his message.”

  Justin and Ellie patted their heads and rubbed their bellies.

  “Quando is coming to see us soon,” Ellie said. “We’ve got to get ready.”

  “But first we need to feed Sleepy Bear and Hippo breakfast,” Justin reminded me. “Sugar Krinkles, not that healthy grain stuff.”

  I moaned, louder this time, and pulled my pillow over my head. Ellie lifted it back up. “Please, Ryan. Mom and Dad are still asleep.”

  Justin laughed. “Honk shoe! Honk shoe! That’s what Dad says when he sleeps.”

  I let out a big sigh. “Dad’s snoring, so you pick on me.”

  They both smiled and gave me a hug. “You’re our brother!”

  “Don’t remind me,” I growled as I staggered out of bed.

  The kitchen looked like the rest of the house—piles of boxes everywhere. Mom and Dad had dumped stuff all over the place so they could get the U-Haul truck in on time and not be charged an extra day of rental.

  It took me a while, but I finally found a box of Sugar Krinkles. No milk, though. No bowls. No silverware. No table to eat at, either.

  The twins sat down on the kitchen floor and ate Sugar Krinkles right out of the box, chattering on and on about the radio, the spaceman coming to visit, and how maybe when they started kindergarten they could take Quando in for show and tell.

  “How do you know you’ll even like kindergarten?” I asked.

  Justin looked at me as if I had no sense and said, “Because.”

  I shook my head. Stupid little kids. They’d find out soon enough how hard life in Kentucky would be. “Think what you want,” I said, “but promise to be quiet while you’re doing it, and don’t wake me up this early again for the rest of your lives, okay?”

  They both nodded, and Ellie said, “Sleepy Bear and Hippo promise, too.”

  “Good,” I said, and headed back toward my bedroom.

  But it was too late. As I crossed the living room, the front door swung open and there was Gordon. “Well, look-a-here!” he said with his big grin and lopsided eyebrows. “The dead have done come to life!”

  I tried to act like I didn’t hear him, but he came on in anyway—his dog, too.

  “I was going to let Colonel here wake you up,” Gordon said. “You know, howl outside your window. I’ll bet I could rent him as an alarm clock. I’d get rich quick! Haw!” He patted Colonel on the head. “You want to ride bikes downtown? We said we’d go if you leave that spider of yours here, remember?” He looked around the room. “You don’t let that thing out, do you?”

  “I don’t feel like going for a bike ride,” I said, continuing on toward my bedroom. If Gordon could walk into my house and start blabbing away without even so much as saying “Good morning,” then I could forget the polite stuff, too.

  Gordon didn’t seem to notice my attitude, though. “You’ve got to see Ernie’s Eatery, Ryan,” he said cheerfully. “It’s a new fast-food restaurant downtown. Fast food is the business of the future, you know. I used to think I’d be an undertaker when I grew up—my Uncle Warren is one and he’s rich—but now I’ve changed my mind. Undertaking is a dying business, if you know what I mean. Get it? A dying business. Haw!”

  I turned back and looked at Gordon. “You wanted to be an undertaker?” Just how weird can a person get?

  Gordon nodded. “But I like fast food better now. That’s where the money is—fast food. Even Colonel here knows that.”

  Gordon reached down to pat Colonel on the head just as Justin and Ellie appeared from the kitchen, still eating dry Sugar Krinkles out of the box. “Hi,” Ellie said. “A spaceman is coming to visit us. His name is Quando. We’ve got to get ready.”

  Gordon shook his head as the twins ran past me and up the stairs toward their room. “Two of them, huh?” he said. “Man, I feel sorry for you. I’ve got one brother, J. T., and he drives me nuts. He never stops moving, even when he eats, like those two of yours! He runs laps around the table, and Mom pokes food in his mouth as he goes by. Never stops! My parents think he’s cute as a button, though. I think he’s just trouble.” He grinned. “But there you are with two. Oooeee! Double trouble. I’ll bet your parents think they’re cute, too, huh?”

  It was the first time Gordon had said anything that I agreed with. I nodded. “Yeah. One time the twins stuck their heads in the toilet and flushed it so they could feel that red curly hair going round and round in the water. I thought it was gross, but Mom and Dad laughed.”

  Gordon frowned. “Nothing funny about a swirly. They get to junior high and they won’t want their heads in the toilet.”

  My stomach went squirmy. So that’s what a swirly was. Yuck!

  “We shouldn’t talk about swirlies, though,” Gordon said. “Bad luck. Might get one. Let’s get back to Ernie’s. You’ve got to see Ernie’s Eatery, Ryan. You look hungry. Let’s go get some food.”

  The thought of sitting down to a plateful of who-knows-what with Gordon at a restaurant called Ernie’s Eatery was about as appealing to me as a swirly on the first day of junior high. “Uh … you go on
,” I said. “I need to baby-sit Justin and Ellie.” I was scrounging, trying to come up with any excuse handy so I could go back to bed. “My parents are still asleep.”

  “Not anymore,” came a cheerful voice from the top of the stairs. It was Dad. He came down, introduced himself to Gordon, saying how nice it was for me to have made a friend so fast. Before I knew it, he was putting three dollars into my hand, saying, “Go out for breakfast, Ryan. It’s your first day in good ol’ Macinburg. Celebrate!”

  “Now you’re talking!” Gordon said with his big grin. “Let’s hit the feed bag!”

  Hit the feed bag? Whatever happened to regular English? I did better with the kids in Arizona who spoke Spanish than with this strange Kentucky stuff.

  Dad laughed as if Gordon was the wittiest kid in the world. “Yeah. You guys go hit the feed bag together.”

  I let out a big sigh. Between Gordon and my dad, it looked as if it might take less energy just to give in. “Okay,” I said. But inside I was thinking, This had better be good.

  CHAPTER 4

  Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers

  Although it felt good to be riding my bike after a week in the car, doing it in Macinburg, Kentucky all but ruined the experience. Sure, the morning was bright and sunny and not nearly as hot as the day before. And there were flowers everywhere, and songbirds whooping it up in the trees—even mourning doves, just like in Arizona. And Gordon kept pointing things out—that this kid our age lived here, that a cool older kid named Telly Lewis lived there, and that Aaron Dexter’s house was only a little bit farther down the road. And he said that Kentucky was a great state to live in if you like basketball. “People here go crazy over it!” And to top it all off, there was the hill just down Sycamore Street from our house. It was the best I’d ever gone down, with a great curve to go flying around at the bottom, then a bridge over a creek.

  But it still wasn’t Arizona. All the way to Ernie’s Eatery, I couldn’t stop thinking about the desert, prickly pear cactus in bloom, lizards on adobe walls, rocks to climb on, dirt not covered with grass.

  Gordon didn’t pick up on my mood, though. He just kept on grinning, riding along with his wiry hair standing up on end, talking about how I was going to love it here in “good ol’ Macinburg.” When we finally stopped in front of Ernie’s Eatery, he acted especially proud. “Pretty nice, huh!” He beamed, pointing to what looked like nothing more than a freeway truck stop that had taken the wrong exit: parking lot, sidewalks all leading to glass double doors, lots of big windows, and a goofy neon sign with a chef tipping his puffy white hat and the words EAT HEARTY AT ERNIE’S EATERY! flashing below.

  “They’ll make a ton of money on sausage burgers, egg biscuits, grits, and coffee and stuff,” Gordon said as if the idea were his. “I’m going to open up a restaurant just like it someday.”

  Why not run a funeral home and a restaurant at the same time? I started to say. You could call it Gordon’s Mortuary, Home of the Mummy Burger. But Gordon had already parked his bike and was walking through the front door of Ernie’s as if he owned the place.

  Gordon ordered the $2.49 breakfast special: a sausage burger with cheese, grits, fries, and juice. I just got a Coke, thinking my stomach wasn’t ready for anything gritty yet, or greasy. We sat down. Gordon munched away on his sausage burger, going on and on about how much money a restaurant like this could make—“No waitresses! Low overhead!”—when two boys walked in.

  “Hey, Telly! Hey, Aaron!” Gordon called out.

  As the boys walked over, Gordon whispered, “Remember? Telly Lewis and Aaron Dexter. We rode past their houses on the way here. They’re both seventh-graders. Cool guys. Telly is a great basketball player, as good as any eighth-grader. He’ll play for UK, I’ll bet. Maybe even then on to the pros!”

  That got my interest in a hurry. A great basketball player, huh? Good enough for the University of Kentucky, then the pros? Telly looked tall—very tall—even for a seventh-grader. Aaron did, too. I sat up as straight as I could, wondering just how great a basketball player Telly really was.

  Right away Telly said, “Hey, check out my new shoes. Slam Dunk”—he flopped his hand over an imaginary rim like he was dunking the ball—“Sky Jumpers.”

  Gordon and I looked down at Telly’s Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers. I’d seen them advertised on TV: the great All-Star pro Hoop Richardson sailing through the air with a pair on, acting like he didn’t believe in gravity. He’d turned in midair and slam-dunked the ball behind his head without breaking a sweat. Sixty seconds of watching that kind of magic and you were ready to run right out and buy a pair. Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers. Surely they were the secret to Hoop’s success.

  “Got my pair just yesterday at Four-Star Sports,” Telly said. He turned his new shoes this way and that, pointing out the great features that made you jump higher, run faster, shoot better, and look good while you were doing it.

  “All the basketball guys are going to be wearing them like this,” he said. He had them laced up halfway, with the tongue hanging out, and had bunched his white socks down around his ankles. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  I found myself nodding. Very cool was more like it.

  Gordon, I noticed, was nodding, too. “How much are they?” he asked.

  I took a big swig of Coke. Good question.

  “One twenty-four ninety-nine,” Aaron offered.

  At the sound of the price of a pair of Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers, Gordon sucked in a french fry whole. I choked on the Coke still in my mouth, tried not to spit it all over Ernie’s Eatery, and succeeded in blowing it out my nose instead.

  Gordon didn’t seem to notice that a good portion of the Coke spray went on his arm. “Are we talking DOLLARS?” he shouted at Aaron. “One hundred twenty-four DOLLARS?”

  Aaron rolled his eyes. “No, ostrich feathers, dummy. Of course we’re talking dollars. I’m going to get a pair today.”

  Coke bubbles were all over me, down my shirt, on my pants, and in my nose, tingling.

  Telly laughed. “Who’s your new friend, Gordon? Got some weird disease? Or does he think he’s an elephant?”

  Gordon recovered enough from the shock of hearing the price of a pair of Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers to notice the Coke on his arm.

  “Yuck!” he said.

  I grabbed a handful of paper napkins from the dispenser on the table. “I was just surprised at the price of those shoes,” I mumbled. I could feel my face getting red.

  Telly shook his head at Gordon and me. “Not cool. Definitely not cool.” He leaned down and brushed a bit of Coke off his new Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers. “You guys are in for it. It’s a whole different world in junior high, you know.”

  Sitting in Ernie’s Eatery, covered with Coke bubbles from nose to toe, I found myself nodding. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve already gotten that idea.”

  Gordon and I biked slowly away from Ernie’s after Telly and Aaron left. Gordon led the way, pedaling along the downtown Macinburg sidewalks. I followed, remembering when Patrick and I—the Desert Rats—used to ride out toward the canyon.

  Gordon and I had gone just a few blocks when he braked hard, skidding to a stop.

  With my brain in Arizona, I almost ran the rest of me into him. “Hey, watch it!” I said. “What did you do that for?”

  Gordon pointed. “Look!”

  I looked. We were in front of a store. Four-Star Sports, the sign said. And there in the center of the window display, sitting on top of a plastic pedestal for everyone to see, was a pair of Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers.

  “Cool,” I said.

  Gordon nodded. “Really cool!” We got off our bikes and moved closer, pressing our noses to the glass.

  “But one hundred twenty-four dollars and ninety-nine cents,” Gordon said in a near whisper. “Plus tax. That’s a lot of money.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off those Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers. I imagined how they would look on me. I’d wear them just like Telly, laced halfway up, socks pushed down around my ankles. I’d look so cool, no one
would even think about giving me a swirly on the first day of junior high. So cool I wouldn’t get picked on at all. So cool I’d play basketball with the seventh- and eighth-graders and make the team. With those shoes on my feet, I’d be so cool I’d end up playing for the University of Kentucky, showing everybody what an Arizona boy can do. Then I’d be off to the pros to play with Hoop Richardson, just like Telly was going to do. And all for only $124.99 plus tax. What a deal!

  I almost laughed aloud, then stepped back from the Four-Star Sports window. A deal? What was I thinking about? I was lucky if I had $20 in my little plastic pig bank at home. Maybe $124.99 was nothing to Telly or Aaron—their families must be loaded—or maybe even for Gordon. (The way he talked about getting rich, he probably had hundreds of dollars saved up already.) But for me, $124.99 was the same as a million.

  Still, according to Telly, all the basketball players would be wearing Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers. And from the look on Gordon’s face, pressed even flatter now against the Four-Star Sports window, I could tell that he was seriously considering parting with some of his beloved money and buying a pair, too.

  So it would be just me—short Ryan, the new kid in town—who would show up at junior high looking so totally uncool, so totally unbasketball, that I’d get a swirly before the first bell rang.

  I stared at the Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers in the Four-Star Sports window, thinking that maybe $124.99 wasn’t such a high price after all. Maybe it really was a deal. And maybe Mom and Dad could be convinced—if I explained everything a little better this time—to see it my way, too.

  Maybe …

  CHAPTER 5

  Pleeeeease!

  “One hundred twenty-four dollars and ninety-nine cents?” Dad said that night at dinner, a slice of pizza halfway to his mouth. “For SHOES?”

  It was our first meal at the dining room table, which we had set up only minutes before. I looked across at him. “Special shoes,” I offered.