Anyhow, I was down there in the basement when I blew a breaker with all my radio gear going, so I went into the little power shed and snapped on the light and seen a pack of Kool Filter Kings layin’ in there that I had forgotten all about. I didn’t want to smoke a cigarette. Didn’t need to. But you know, human nature is strange, so I fired up. I didn’t inhale. Face it, it’s scary the first time after you’ve been off. When you’re standing there on an artificial leg thinking about the ambiguity of life. Tomes have been written, I know. I’m just standing there when I spotted a skinny-ass spider hanging in its web. There was dust on the cobwebs. I blew smoke on it and the spider didn’t move. Looked like a shell. Dead, I figure. It’s the middle of winter. I mashed out the cigarette, snapped the breaker, and went back to the radio. Three nights later, I really get this craving for a cigarette. I had forgotten the spider, and I went back into the power shed and smoked a Kool all the way down to the filter. It was the greatest goddamn cigarette I ever smoked in my whole fuckin’ life! The one I had two nights later was almost as good. I torched up, took a big drag, and blew it all out, and the spider in the web moved like greased lightning. Jesus fuck! I seen a little red hourglass on its belly and Christ—Jesus fuck! Yow! Whew, man. But what the hell, it’s just a fucking spider, black widow or no. Still it gave me a thrill and I could identify with this little motherfucker. Your black widow is your outlaw.

After I run through that pack of Kools I find that I’m still going into the room to check on the spider. It was always in the same spot. What is it eating? I wonder. It’s the middle of winter. There isn’t another bug in sight. That night in bed I am so worried the spider is going to starve that I get up, strap on my leg, take a little ball of hamburger out of the refrigerator, hobble down to the basement like old man Moses, and squeeze the hamburger around a web tentacle and give the string a little twing, like it was a guitar. The spider don’t move. Starved to death. I was too late. One day too late, like with my atomic clock transmissions and everything, I’m late. Chop-a-leg and all that shit. Always a day late and a fucking dollar short.