Dawson McHenry was a simple man. He had three pairs of blue jeans, three shirts (one brown, one grey, and a red one for special occasions) and two pairs of shoes; one for work, one for leisure. He got his hair cut the same way for the last 13 years by Gus, his fathers barber, and he drove the same 1978 Ford F-250 his father had given him on his 18th birthday. And just like his father, he'd taken good care of it.
His days passed like the prairie wind, and before he'd known it, he was a man. The bounties of life no longer laid before him. Only a long gravely road with an old rotting wood fence on one side of him and never ending farm land on the other. He was nearing 40 and he only knew of one way to go. The way he'd always gone. Forward.
The old truck kicked up dry dirt and gravel as it bumbled down the old country road. The sun shined through the green tree line canopy, illuminating the dirt road in a goldish green glow. Dawson reached out the open window of the truck and sifted the warming spring air through his fingers while he though about spiders.
Todd Horn had been bitten by a brown recluse five nights ago and a lot of people in town were talking about it. And from what he heard, it had been a mess straight from the get go. Todd was a bull headed man. To him, with enough elbow grease and willpower, even the gravest of injuries could be endured, maybe even healed. Like a click in the motor that magically disappears when you stop listening for it. But, as it turns out, spider venom does not magically disappear when introduced to the blood of a man. It simply kills everything around it.
Todd's wife found out about the bite three nights ago when he fell face first into a freshly ladled bowl of goulash. Only after pulling him out and laying him out on the living room couch did she discover Todd's grease rag and duct tape patchwork on his right arm. When she pulled it away she found a puss packed mass of purpled flesh that still seeped a thick white liquid that she could only describe as 'sickly lookin' through sobs as she talked to Doctor Howard over the phone.
Even in a fevered haze he had fought off the doctor. Todd just needed to get back to work and everything else would sort itself out. Doc Howard disagreed and offered him an ultimatum: a quick trip to the emergency room now or amputation later. Even that took a few reiterations to get through Todd's skull, but most the people in town think it was his wife's threats to leave him as she couldn't stomach the thought of hanging off the stumped arm of her husband down main street. She wouldn't stomach it. He went to the hospital in Clear Springs the next day where they scooped out a handful of Todd's arm and wrapped it so well you could only just barely make out the indentation in his forearm. He went back to work the day after despite Doc Howard's orders of bed rest. No one expected any less.
But Dawson didn't think about Todd, at least not right now. He thought hard and deeply about spiders. To his surprise he'd never thought to think much of them before. He stomped and smashed them for his mother on occasion and when he was a boy he and the neighborhood kids would catch them in a paper cups and set fire to their legs with lighters and matches and watched them squirm till they didn't. But he'd never really thought about them. He wiggled his fingers in the wind and watched as his fingers dashed along the horizons hilltops like long, thin legs.
He thought about the fangs first, dripping with venom and death, but then he found himself thinking more about the mind of a spider. Why did they bite? Territorial reasons and self defense seemed like good enough reasons on the surface, but most of the bites Dawson had heard about happened when people were sleeping and unless you're sleeping on a bale of hay or in an old attic, the self defense argument seemed less and less likely.
He watched as farm houses passed by and faded in the rear view mirror. He reached into his jean jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette, and as he pushed in the cigarette lighter by the truck stereo he chewed on the filter and thought while he waited for the click. Could spiders feel injustice? Could a spider feel wronged? Dawson thought on this with a mild chuckle, but as the funniness of the whole thing faded in the rear view mirror the question still stood in front of him.
When he heard the click he brought the heated coil to the cigarette and breathed in deep. And as he released the smoke out the window he felt himself lip the words: "Vengeance".
It makes sense, he though without thinking. Sitting in corners and crannies watching in still silence. Waiting for prey, sure, but even the simplest of men can pick up pieces of another mans life if he's left sitting long enough. And with that many eyes there's not much that one can hide from it's gaze. And the more you learn about a man's life, Dawson thought, the easier it is to find a reason to hate him.