“A god among men?”
“No. Just a god.” She said it without any kind of emphasis, as flatly and as normally as she might have said “he was diabetic” or simply “he was black.”
Fat Charlie wanted to make a joke of it, but there was that look in Mrs. Higgler’s eyes, and suddenly he couldn’t think of anything funny to say. So he said, softly, “He wasn’t a god. Gods are special. Mythical. They do miracles and things.”
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Higgler. “We wouldn’t have told you while he was alive, but now he is gone, there can’t be any harm in it.”
“He was not a god. He was my dad.”
“You can be both,” she said. “It happens.”
It was like arguing with a crazy person, thought Fat Charlie. He realized that he should just shut up, but his mouth kept going. Right now his mouth was saying, “Look. If my dad was a god, he would have had godlike powers.”
“He did. Never did a lot with them, mind you. But he was old. Anyway, how do you think he got away with not working? Whenever he needed money, he’d play the lottery, or go down to Hallendale and bet on the dogs or the horses. Never win enough to attract attention. Just enough to get by.”
Fat Charlie had never won anything in his whole life. Nothing whatsoever. In the various office sweepstakes he had taken part in, he was only able to rely on his horse never making it out of the starting gate, or his team being relegated to some hitherto unheard-of division somewhere in the elephants’ graveyard of organized sport. It rankled.
“If my dad was a god—something which I do not for one moment concede in any way, I should add—then why aren’t I a god too? I mean, you’re saying I’m the son of a god, aren’t you?”
“Obviously.”
“Well then, why can’t I bet on winning horses or do magic or miracles or things?”
She sniffed. “Your brother got all that god stuff.”
Fat Charlie found that he was smiling. He breathed out. It was a joke after all, then.
“Ah. You know, Mrs. Higgler, I don’t actually have a brother.”
“Of course you do. That’s you and him, in the photograph.”
Although he knew what was in it, Fat Charlie glanced over at the photograph. She was mad all right. Absolutely barking. “Mrs. Higgler,” he said, as gently as possible. “That’s me. Just me when I was a kid. It’s a mirrored door. I’m standing next to it. It’s me, and my reflection.”
“It is you, and it is also your brother.”
“I never had a brother.”
“Sure you did. I don’t miss him. You were always the good one, you know. He was a handful when he was here.” And before Fat Charlie could say anything else she added, “He went away, when you are just a little boy.”
Fat Charlie leaned over. He put his big hand on Mrs. Higgler’s bony hand, the one that wasn’t holding the coffee mug. “It’s not true,” he said.
“Louella Dunwiddy made him go,” she said. “He was scared of her. But he still came back, from time to time. He could be charming when he wanted to be.” She finished her coffee.
“I always wanted a brother,” said Fat Charlie. “Somebody to play with.”
Mrs. Higgler got up. “This place isn’t going to clean itself up,” she said. “I’ve got garbage bags in the car. I figure we’ll need a lot of garbage bags.”
“Yes,” said Fat Charlie.
He stayed in a motel that night. In the morning, he and Mrs. Higgler met, back at his father’s house, and they put garbage into big black garbage bags. They assembled bags of objects to be donated to Goodwill. They also filled a box with things Fat Charlie wanted to hold on to for sentimental reasons, mostly photographs from his childhood and before he was born.
There was an old trunk, like a small pirate’s treasure chest, filled with documents and old papers. Fat Charlie sat on the floor going through them. Mrs. Higgler came in from the bedroom with another black garbage bag filled with moth-eaten clothes.
“It’s your brother give him that trunk,” said Mrs. Higgler, out of the blue. It was the first time she had mentioned any of her fantasies of the previous night.
“I wish I did have a brother,” said Fat Charlie, and he did not realize he had said it aloud until Mrs. Higgler said, “I already told you. You do have a brother.”
“So,” he said. “Where would I find this mythical brother of mine?” Later, he would wonder why he had asked her this. Was he humoring her? Teasing her? Was it just that he had to say something to fill the void? Whatever the reason, he said it. And she was chewing her lower lip, and nodding.
“You got to know. It’s your heritage. It’s your bloodline.” She walked over to him and crooked her finger. Fat Charlie bent down. The old woman’s lips brushed his ear as she whispered, “…need him…tell a…”
“What?”
“I say,” she said, in her normal voice, “if you need him, just tell a spider. He’ll come running.”
“Tell a spider?”
“That’s what I said. You think I just talkin’ for my health? Exercisin’ my lungs? You never hear of talkin’ to the bees? When I was a girl in Saint Andrews, before my folks came here, you would go tell the bees all your good news. Well, this is just like that. Talk to spider. It was how I used to send messages to your father, when he would vanish off.”
“…right.”
“Don’t you say ‘right’ like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a crazy old lady who don’t know the price of fish. You think I don’t know which way is up?”
“Um. I’m quite sure you do. Honestly.”
Mrs. Higgler was not mollified. She was far from gruntled. She picked up her coffee mug from the table and cradled it, disapprovingly. Fat Charlie had done it now, and Mrs. Higgler was determined to make sure that he knew it.
“I don’t got to do this, you know,” she said. “I don’t got to help you. I’m only doing it because your father, he was special, and because your mother, she was a fine woman. I’m telling you big things. I’m telling you important things. You should listen to me. You should believe me.”
“I do believe you,” said Fat Charlie, as convincingly as he could.
“Now you’re just humoring an old woman.”
“No,” he lied. “I’m not. Honestly I’m not.” His words rang with honesty, sincerity and truth. He was thousands of miles from home, in his late father’s house, with a crazy old woman on the verge of an apoplectic seizure. He would have told her that the moon was just some kind of unusual tropical fruit if it would have calmed her down, and meant it, as best he could.
She sniffed.
“That’s the trouble with you young people,” she said. “You think because you ain’t been here long, you know everything. In my life I already forget more than you ever know. You don’t know nothin’ about your father, you don’t know nothin’ about your family. I tell you your father is a god, you don’t even ask me what god I talking about.”