Tarantula Shoes

by Tom Birdseye

  But before I’d gotten five feet, Bobbie Jo’s dad opened the front door, coffee cup in hand, and said, “Well now! Look who’s here!”

  “None other than Ryan O’Keefe,” Bobbie Jo said as she came out onto the porch behind him. “What are you up to?”

  I felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong, even though I hadn’t, but couldn’t think of a thing to say. “Uh … well … ummmm,” I mumbled like my mouth was stuck in neutral.

  Bobbie Jo smiled, and those green eyes flashed. Which made me feel all the more confused and flustered, until I finally just blurted out the truth. “I’m looking for a job so I can buy a pair of Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers for junior high.”

  Bobbie Jo laughed—a big, in-your-face kind of laugh. “Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers?” she said.

  I went straight from confused and flustered to really mad. I was just about to say, “Yeah! So what, mudbrain?”

  But her dad put an end to that. “Come to think of it,” he said, “I need some work done in the garden. There are bushes that have to be dug out, rocks moved, an old fence torn down. I haven’t got the time right now. Too much going on at work. And Bobbie Jo is helping inside unpacking boxes. There’s lots of weeding I’d like to get done, too. I could pay you fifteen … no, it’s a big job … I could pay you twenty dollars if you do it all. You got a strong back, Ryan?”

  I jumped forward. “Yes, sir! And I can start right away!” Twenty dollars would put me over the top!

  Bobbie Jo snickered, but I decided to ignore her, pretend I didn’t hear her insults, didn’t know she was there. Even when she followed her dad and me back to the garage and stood too close as he explained everything that needed to be done.

  I kept ignoring her all the rest of the day Thursday, then all day Friday, too. Whenever she came around, I just kept to the job, making sure she saw that I was a hard worker and how much I knew about doing things right.

  It was almost dark on Friday evening when I finally finished. My hands were blistered, and my arms and back ached, but Mr. Webster paid me—a crisp, green twenty-dollar bill—and I had enough money, even a few cents extra … sixty-one! First thing in the morning, I’d be counting it out in front of Mrs. Marcosa, and those Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers would me mine, all mine!

  That night I could hardly get to sleep. I lay in bed, looking out the window. Lightning bugs, so different from anything we had in Arizona, flashed yellow on the other side of the glass. When I finally did doze off, I dreamed that I showed up on the first day of school not only without a pair of Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers on but without anything else on, either.

  What a nightmare! All the kids laughed, especially Bobbie Jo, as I tried to hide in a garbage can.

  I woke up in a cold sweat Saturday morning and jumped out of bed. I scarfed down a bagel and cream cheese. Then I wrote Mom and Dad a note saying I’d had breakfast and was out for a bike ride. I flew down the Sycamore Street hill and rode hard toward Four-Star Sports, even though it was still a full hour before they opened.

  But even though I was the first one in the door at 8:30, my size-seven Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers were already gone. “Sold that pair just before closing yesterday,” Mrs. Marcosa said. “I couldn’t hold them. I told you before: no layaways on sale items.”

  “But … but …,” I stuttered.

  “We’ll have a new shipment in by Monday,” Mrs. Marcosa said. “There will be several pairs of size seven, I’m sure. They won’t be on sale, though. The price will be back up to one twenty-four ninety-nine plus tax.” She checked a little chart she had taped to the cash register. “That’ll be one thirty-two forty-nine altogether.”

  $132.49. The figures hit me like a fist in the stomach. Even with the $20 Mr. Webster had paid me, I only had $106.60.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Marcosa said, and I could tell she really meant it, “but you were too late. That’s a fact.”

  A fact. You can’t explain or argue or beg away a fact. And the fact was that all of a sudden instead of having sixty-one cents extra, I was $25.89 short. And school started in just three days—on Tuesday. Where could I get $25.89 in that amount of time? How?

  I had no idea.

  The Sycamore Street hill seemed steeper, the air hotter and more humid, and Macinburg, Kentucky, even farther from Arizona than ever before as I rode home.

  I tried to cheer myself up by shooting a few baskets. I still couldn’t hit, though. Of course not—no Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers.

  I gave up and went into the garage, only to find the twins happily drawing on the box we’d moved the refrigerator in.

  “It’s going to be our spaceship,” Justin said.

  Ellie nodded. “Yeah, so we can go to the moon and meet Quando! He called us on the radio again and said he doesn’t want to come to Earth. There’s too much pollution and stuff like that here. So we’re going to meet him on the moon instead!”

  “Sleepy Bear and Hippo are going, too,” Justin added. He put his crayon down and inspected the spaceship. “Where should we put the flashlight, Ryan? We need to put one on, like a car headlight.”

  “You always have good ideas,” Ellie said to me. “You always help us.”

  “Well, not today,” I said. “I’m sick of all this spaceman stuff. Don’t you guys ever think about anything else?”

  I went into the house. Mom was unpacking boxes, Dad messing with a door that wouldn’t shut right. Dad whistled while he worked. Mom hummed along. It was disgusting. How could everybody be happy in a dumpy house so far from home?

  “I’ll start painting your room next week,” Mom said. “I got the paint already. It’s that desert color you wanted.” She smiled, as if a light brown bedroom was all I needed. “It’s a beautiful day out today, isn’t it? How was your bike ride?”

  I wanted to shout at her and Dad, “IT WAS AWFUL! THEY SOLD MY SHOES! TAKE ME BACK TO ARIZONA!” But I poured myself a glass of lemonade, then went to the front porch steps to sit and think.

  As soon as I got settled, though, Gordon walked up with Colonel. “Howdy-ho,” he said, and grinned. “Notice anything different?”

  I looked down. On Gordon’s feet were a brand-new pair of Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers.

  “Junior high insurance,” he said. “I decided it was worth it and broke into my savings account while the sale was still on.”

  I stood up, then quickly moved down the front steps for a closer look at Gordon’s new shoes. “What size are they?” I asked.

  Gordon grinned as big as I’d ever seen him grin. “Seven!” he said. “Haw! Perfecto fit!”

  CHAPTER 9

  The Wonderful Shade of a New Dollar Bill

  “But…but …,” I stuttered, “that’s the same size I wear! I was looking at them when we were at Four-Star Sports. Remember?”

  Gordon’s eyes went wide with surprise. “No. I didn’t notice. We wear the same size? Really?” He looked down at his feet, then at mine. “I’ve got small feet, I reckon. Or you must have pretty big ones for somebody so short.”

  Right then I came within an inch of slugging Gordon for calling me short, not to mention for having my shoes. But he saw the look in my eyes and quickly added, “Long feet means you’re going to get a lot bigger soon. You’ll end up taller than me, I can tell—probably six foot six, maybe even taller.”

  Dad had said the same thing many times. “You’re like a puppy. You’ll grow into those feet, then look out!” It always made me feel better. I nodded at Gordon. “Yeah, I will be tall.”

  Gordon grinned, obviously relieved. He leaned down and petted Colonel. “You’ll make a great basketball player someday, Ryan. You’ll be as good as Telly!”

  A little smile crept onto my face at the added compliment. It was true. I would be a great ballplayer someday: as good as Telly—even better.

  The little smile vanished, though, as I looked again at my shoes on Gordon’s feet. I had the sudden urge to knock him down and take what was rightfully mine. But instead I said, “Gotta go,” and walked back into the house re
al quick before I changed my mind.

  Gordon and Colonel followed me, though. “Feel like I’m floating in the air with these Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers on,” Gordon said as we walked across the living room. “Haw! I guess that’s worth all that money, huh?”

  I didn’t answer, just kept on toward my bedroom. Maybe Mom would spot Colonel and shoo him and his owner out, too.

  No such luck. No parents in sight. Gordon and Colonel followed me past the stairs and down the little hall.

  “Hey! Pepto-Bismol walls!” Gordon exclaimed when he stepped into my pink bedroom.

  “Glad you like them,” I muttered as sarcastically as I could.

  Gordon laughed. “Haw! Can you sleep, or does all this pink keep you awake at night?”

  I sat down on my bed and glared at him.

  Colonel started nosing around. Just like his dog, Gordon started nosing, too, checking out the few things I’d taken the time to put out on my dresser, my shelves, the bedside table.

  Gordon stopped short when he came to Fang’s terrarium on a little table by the window. He craned his neck, keeping his distance, peering in. “I’ll bet there are tarantulas and rattlesnakes everywhere in Arizona, huh?” he said. He spotted Fang under his rock. “Poisonous things.”

  How dumb. He really thought that was what Arizona was like.

  Being a desert lover, I wanted to set Gordon straight right then and there. He’d been watching too many movies. The Sonoran desert wasn’t just sand and rocks. There were lots and lots of great plants: palo verde trees with lime-green bark, mesquite trees, and all kinds of cactuses—or cacti, like Dad wanted me to say when talking about more than one.

  I liked the saguaro cacti best of all. They’re big and tall. The biggest in the world, near Gila Bend, is 57 feet, 11¾ inches tall! Some of them have arms that look like they’re waving at you, and all of them have little ridges with spines. But the skin between the spines is green and smooth to the touch. And when the wind blows, the spines make a neat noise, a soft whistle.

  I had caught Fang near a saguaro. He wasn’t a deadly monster. He was all I had left of the desert, my favorite place in the whole wide world. How did I explain that to Gordon? How did I tell him what it was really like?

  I decided not to. Gordon was wearing my shoes. He didn’t deserve to know.

  Gordon leaned a little closer to Fang’s terrarium and asked, “What do you feed it?”

  Good grief! There I was thinking about how much Fang meant to me, and I’d been so busy trying to earn money to buy a pair of Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers, I’d forgotten to feed him. Sure, tarantulas can go days without food, but Fang was due … overdue.

  I jumped up and ran into the backyard. Gordon and Colonel followed, Gordon saying, “Hey! Where’re you going?”

  I ignored him and began to rustle around in the bushes until I saw a cricket jump. Colonel lunged for it, but I nabbed it first (I’m a good cricket catcher). Colonel barked. I cupped the cricket in two hands and rushed back inside. Gordon and Colonel trailed behind me. “You’re going to feed your spider one of those?” Gordon asked as I lifted the screen off Fang’s terrarium.

  “Yep,” I said, and dropped the cricket in.

  In a flash, Fang rushed at the cricket and grabbed it. Gordon jumped back. Colonel let out a soft whine. “Whoa!” Gordon said with a nervous smile. “He was a hungry critter, huh?”

  “Sucks the blood right out of them,” I said, hoping to make him squirm.

  Gordon moved closer as my spider sunk his fangs into the cricket, finishing it off. “Wow!” he said. “People would pay money to see that.”

  Colonel put his front paws up on the table and looked into Fang’s terrarium, as if he smelled money, too.

  I shook my head. Money, money, money. Show Gordon a desert animal doing what it does naturally, and all he sees is a cash register filling up with—

  “Hey, wait a minute!” I said to myself. I watched Gordon lean even closer to the terrarium. “Wow!” he kept saying. “Just like a real-life horror movie.”

  A smile crept onto my face. People love horror movies. And they pay money to see them. I still needed twenty-five dollars and eighty-nine cents to get a pair of Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers at the regular price. Mrs. Marcosa said she’d have some more size sevens in by Monday. It was still early on Saturday. That meant I had almost three days.…

  I looked again at Gordon, whose eyes were glued to the action in the terrarium as if it were a miniature movie screen. He was watching my wonderful spider, Fang, who to me was beginning to look sort of green—not sickly green, but the wonderful green shade of a brand-new dollar bill.

  CHAPTER 10

  Think Business

  Although Gordon didn’t say anything else about having bought the last pair of size-seven Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers, I got the feeling he felt a little bad about it after all. When I told him my idea of making money by charging kids to see Fang, he said, “You bet!” He helped me set up a card table in front of the house, under the big oak tree. He lettered a sign that read, SEE THE TARANTULA! ONLY 25 CENTS! and taped it to the front of the table. He even held the door for me as I carried out Fang’s terrarium.

  “Thanks,” I said. Now that I had a way to get those Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers, I wasn’t so mad anymore. It would be fun to show off Fang and make money at the same time.

  “This could be even better than Ernie’s Eatery!” Gordon exclaimed. He raced over to his house and came back with a couple of folding chairs. “We’ll just sit here,” he said, setting them up in the shade behind the card table, “and before you can say knick-knack-paddy-whack, that good old money will come rolling home!”

  I smiled. He was right. I’d probably have the $25.89 before closing time at Four-Star Sports. Just wait.

  Wait is exactly what we did, and wait, and wait, and wait. Three hours went by—three hot, humid August hours in which Colonel finally gave up and wandered home—and no one even gave us a second look.

  Except the twins. They rode up on their bicycles, Sleepy Bear and Hippo stuffed in the handlebar baskets, singing another stupid song Bobbie Jo had taught them, this one about pigs. “Two of ’em small, and two so tall, they danced all night at the pig town ball …”

  I said, “You guys need to leave. You’re interfering with business.”

  Justin looked up and down the vacant sidewalk. “I don’t see any business.”

  Ellie got off her bike and walked over to Fang. “Me, neither.”

  Gordon rolled his eyes. “I have to put up with this kind of stuff at home,” he said. “J. T. comes into my room and bugs me all the time.”

  I nodded at Gordon, then said to the twins, “Get lost. You’re in the way.”

  Ellie said, “We just came to tell you that Quando sent us a new message on the radio. He’s getting closer to the moon.”

  Gordon let out a sharp laugh.

  I made my voice sound tough. “What do I have to do, call NASA to prove no space alien is going to meet you on the moon?”

  “What’s NASA?” Justin wanted to know.

  Ellie put her hands on her hips. “Bobbie Jo believes us.”

  I said, “That figures.”

  Justin and Ellie both went over to Fang’s terrarium and peered inside.

  “Come on, you guys,” I said, growing more frustrated. “We’re trying to make some money.”

  They ignored me and kept looking at Fang.

  Just then, a car turned the corner and pulled over toward the curb. “Our first customer!” I said.

  But as the car came to a stop, I could see that it was Bobbie Jo and her mom. Bobbie Jo rolled down the passenger’s side window and leaned out. “We just stopped to see what you guys were up to,” she said, her green eyes sparkling. As I watched her read Gordon’s sign, I found myself thinking that she was pretty in a different way from movie stars or models on TV. She was pretty in a way that I couldn’t describe but that, I had to admit, I liked … a lot. Her eyes and smile were only part of it. There was somethin
g about the way she tucked her hair behind her ear, how she tilted her head a little to one side when she was thinking, and how—

  “Some people will do anything to make money, huh?” Bobbie Jo said.

  I couldn’t believe it. Here I had been thinking about how pretty Bobbie Jo was, and then this! I felt myself getting red in the face—first from feeling mushy over a girl, then from anger. I wanted to say something back to Bobbie Jo, to show her I could be just as much a smart-mouth as she was. But I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  The twins had no such problem, though. “Bobbie Jo!” Justin yelled as if he hadn’t seen her for three hundred years. Ellie, too. “Bobbie Jo!” They ran over to the car and told her the latest news from Quando. She listened as if every word was much too important to miss. She patted each of the twins on the head, then smiled as they got on their bikes and rode happily off, singing, “Two of ’em small, and two so tall, they danced all night at the pig town ball …”

  Bobbie Jo looked back at Fang, the sign, and me. “Bye-bye!” she said, as friendly as could be, then rolled up her window. But I could see her shaking her head as her mom drove away.

  It wasn’t until Bobbie Jo was out of sight that I thought to call after her, “Bye-bye to you, too, Miss Know-It-All.”

  Gordon added, “Yeah! Miss Know-Nothing-At-All.”

  I nodded. “Miss Know-ABSOLUTELY-Nothing-At-All.”

  We both grinned and were so busy giving each other high-fives that we hardly noticed the boy who rode up on his bike and went over to look at Fang.

  “A real customer this time!” Gordon said.

  I jumped out of my folding chair and walked to where the kid was peering down into Fang’s terrarium. He looked to be about a third-grader, definitely old enough to have a quarter in his pocket.

  “Want to see the tarantula?” I asked.

  “Already have,” the kid said. “He’s just sitting there. Big deal.” Then he jumped on his bike and rode off.