Frank could not remember when he first held a spider. He remembers being so small that the spiders would sometimes fill his hand. He liked how light they were. He would close his eyes and just focus on his hand, their tiny claws digging imperceptibly into his skin so he could turn his hand upside down – even quickly – and they wouldn’t budge. He would flip his hand over and over again seeing if maybe he could make it wobble. And if it did, he didn’t see it. Spiders were strong, like him. He wondered if big spiders were ever afraid of little spiders, or vice versa. Frank had never felt smaller than anyone else. He liked being strong, and he liked the feeling of using his strength. Frank identified with spiders in more ways than one.
He was thinking about all of this when he returned, his bicep tense as he gripped the handle of the door at Manor Mill and stared at the poster, looked up and noticed a cobweb above him with the speck of a spider inside. He whispered, slightly. “I remember you.” His anger bubbled up.
When he was younger, a teacher, Ms. Octossa, showed him his first tarantula. She was ecstatic to find a student who loved spiders as much as she did. She, too, had been ostracized by the community and would come by Manor Mill. “And just hang around,” the miller used to complain.
She liked Frank because he never spoke. He just stared at her, and the tarantula, who she called Max. His deep black eyes, like the spider’s, would flitter back and forth, listening and watching intently. Frank was gentle, even though he always brought this ax, which, for reasons she still wonders about, never bothered her. It was like his safety bracelet, of sorts. She’d seen him chop wood and she chastised herself for imagining his hulking arms wrapped around her. He was still so young!
Which is why it broke her heart, and his, when walking in one day she saw Frank holding her favorite spider in one hand, the beaten ax in the other.
“Frank!” She exclaimed.
He turned, shocked.
“What are you doing?!”
And in that moment, they both knew what had happened. Frank, ever so gentle despite his massive fingers and arms, had been surprised. But in his surprise, he squeezed the spider too hard. Frank and she both reached the same horrific conclusion at the same time, and the heaviness fell upon them. Full of embarrassment, confusion and regret he ran out. He could hear Ms. Octassa curse him violently and begin to weep at the black mound of legs and tiny sack of fur he left on the floor.
Meanwhile, Ms. Dessa, the daughter of Ms. Octossa, was a teenager at the time and skipped school as much as she could, always on the edge of getting expelled. Her mom didn’t care, which made skipping less fun, but she did it anyway because school was a bore. She had a small round face and dark eyes and long hair that always got tangled. She’d watch Frank from the other side of the river as he sulked around moving hay bales. He was a mountain of a man and he never seemed to stop working. She wondered what he thought about while he lifted and dropped heavy things.
Her mother had shared with her the story of the tarantula and that “she should have known better” and that “Frank can’t be trusted with anything!” Max, the tarantula, was over ten years old and her mother was heartbroken. She just watched her mother sob, trying to cry with her. In truth, though, she didn’t care that much. Max was just a spider. She stayed with her mom in the kitchen that night over warmed gingerbread they had bought at Monkton Station and told her it would be okay. When her mom poured her second glass of whiskey, Dessa returned to her snakes.
Frank enjoyed spending time with his snakes in the basement where a human skeleton had never been cleared out.
It was the snake that finally connected Dessa and Frank K. Mason, Strongman. She was watching him heave two large sacks from the shed when he heard him yell and saw him hop away quickly, as he dropped the sacks with a thump. He backed up and stared at where he had just pulled things out, panting. She watched him for a bit longer, waiting for him to move, and he stood there as if trapped.
After some time, she realized that maybe Frank was trapped, in his head at least – he seemed frozen there, his feet pinned to the earth. She drew herself out of the bushes, crossed the river on the fallen black walnut that spanned the banks and approached him.
Though Frank recognized her, he was surprised when she walked toward the shed nodding at him politely. He only thought of her as Ms. Octassa’s daughter, and he didn’t know her name. She was petite and seemed to scamper around like a chipmunk.
As she approached the shed, he tensed up. “No!” he exclaimed though his feet were planted on the ground firmly and not about to move. This was the only word she had ever heard him say. She liked his gritty voice.
She ignored him, this hulking man, the branches swaying above in the October breeze, and saw a small rat snake curled up, awoken. Dessa reached down and grabbed it, let it wrap around her arm and approached Frank.
She intuitively took her time and, as the afternoon passed, Dessa showed Frank how to hold the snake and not to be afraid. It didn’t take long, and he couldn’t get enough of it. By the next day, long after Dessa had departed and told him he could let the snake go anytime, he had almost forgotten to eat, he was so fixated. He’d let it slither around his arm and glide up to his face, hissing ever so lightly and hanging stiffly in the air, tasting the breeze. At times he thought he could hear its thoughts.
It was that first introduction to snakes that Frank was now thinking about as he stomped around the mill grounds, furious at what he’d seen. The signs: “Pigman’s bed!” “This way to see how a grown man sewed a mask!” It was embarrassing and insulting and somehow a massive betrayal of everything he thought was right.
As he charged over to the woods, he picked up a branch and snapped it in half.
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