The thing with the spider.

Illustration: Clancy Gibson, REACTOR ART+DESIGN

I probably didn’t belong on the ladder to begin with. But there I was, up in the peak of the roof with a whisk broom, whisking away at the accumulated years of sticky cottony spider nests, getting ready to paint. I was there because Annie is a responsible person and was not going to let another season go by without some long neglected maintenance. She had begun the scraping and painting of our old shack, had made a great deal of progress in fact, when I finally felt shamed into joining her. I always do the second story, up the high ladder stuff anyway so I decided I may as well get on with it. The extension ladder, when extended to its fullest reach, sets up a sine wave as you climb it. It must be what the top of a tall mast feels like. As the ladder swayed I waved merrily, hanging on for dear life. I’ve never been afraid of ladders. There was a time when I would have taken a fall in perfect stride and landed on my feet. If I did that today my feet would probably wind up in my armpits.

Annie didn’t want me to do it but there I was, unwilling to concede the morally superior position to Mother Morally Superior, up in the heights swatting at ancient webs and bringing forth the biggest spider shower you’ve ever seen swarming down upon me. I should mention I was wearing nothing but a pair of old grey shorts. Hundreds of spiders, resenting my whisk broom were crawling over me, shooting out webs, skedaddling by any means available. As busy as I was trying to swat them off my head and shoulders, I didn’t notice the one that bit me on the knee. Not until the next day. I’ll tell you this, though, I’ll never do that chore again in nothing but a pair of shorts. Would you go into a sword fight in nothing but a pair of shorts? No, nor should you invade the domain of spiders if you’re less than fully garbed. It’s just asking for it. Anyway, the next day I noticed this little reddish white swelling on my knee and taking it for a splinter left over from my dock accident three weeks ago… Did I mention the dock accident? The one where I ripped the skin off my shin from ankle to knee getting off the boat? Well, you need to know this. I merely stubbed my foot on a mooring line, or maybe the edge of the boat – I don’t know, I wasn’t looking, which was part of the problem. That caused me to miss the dock and my leg went down between the dock and the boat instead. Don’t ever do this if you can avoid it because your weight immediately transfers back to the boat and pushes the boat back from the edge of the dock. This places your body at the ideal angle to rasp your shin down the sharp edge of the old dock boards and with the full weight of your body and whatever momentum you’ll have gained behind it, you’ll bang your knee cap as well. It hurts, plenty. It’s funny how these things happen. One second you’re stepping from your boat, something you’ve had regular success with for twenty-odd years, the next you’re on your face checking to see if you can move. Everyone has drawn back in horror and the scream you heard was probably not your own. There are guests present so you try to lighten the mood with something witty: If my leg’s not broken, I’m fine. Then you turn over to observe all these gaping white patches of tendon and muscle sheath starting to ooze red around their edges. It’s okay, I’m just scraped, nothing seems broken. Their saucer-eyed stares break into a jabbering pool of auditory nonsense. The ringing in your head is louder than they are. Everyone wants to help at once. Annie seems to want to squeeze the wounds to see if they hurt. What follows is a sea of disinfectant, shouting, pulpy looking wipes and huge bandages. And really bad jokes: Ann, do you have a sharp pair of scissors, and a serrated knife? Ann rushes to oblige. She gets it when we ask for the hack saw from the shop. You know things are getting better when the jokes start getting worse. Anyway, that’s why I thought this thing in my knee was a splinter trying to get out and I gave it the usual splinter treatment with my fingernails. Didn’t find a splinter, so on we went with the day. By day’s end the knee was a tad tender and a tad redder. Next morning it was on fire. Didn’t stop me from going fishing or going to town or leaving the cabin wide open to the rain. But by that night I was beginning to wonder about this thing. Next morning there was no good news. I’d gone to bed with shuddering chills and woke up soaking wet. I mean wet, soaking dripping hot perspiring wet. But feeling better. The leg didn’t look so great; it was red all the way down to the ankle, swollen, and hot to the touch. But having gone through the chills and fever break I felt on the mend. Wasn’t. By days end the leg was obviously worse and I shrewdly resolved to keep an eye on this thing. Annie hovered dubiously. By the next day there was no longer any doubt. We packed off to the local emergency hospital. Us city folk rush to emergency when we need it and complain about the long wait once we get there. Out in cottage country the wait begins with the trip. It’s just under an hour if you hurry from the island to the hospital door. For others it’s longer than that and most people wait too long to leave. I waited about three days too long. I have since listened to friends relate stories of six weeks in a wheelchair from an infected cat bite. Our dock meister, Mike, cut himself on a bottle (I neglected to ask how) and he was all wrapped up with an IV pump strapped to his belt. In the hospital there was an old guy who’d been stung by “this little wee bee, just a wee little thing, who’d have thought such a little wee bee…?” I’ve learned to respect infection. They found my leg was chock full of cellulitis from knee to foot and it took four trips to the Peterborough Medical Center (and a significant chunk out of our holiday) to deal with it. I got the IV drips, the compression wraps and the near terminal boredom of having nothing to do for five days but sit around full of germs that were trying to spread, cell-by-cell, throughout my body. The moral? Well, to start with, don’t go half naked into a shower of spiders, wear clothes. And if you’re going to perform fingernail surgery on yourself wash your hands and disinfect the area. Better still, don’t do that. Finally, learn to recognize that skin is not supposed to be swollen red and hot to the touch. That’s nature’s way of telling you to get your butt to a doctor. And finally, watch your step, you’re getting old. I still say it was a great summer