The Web

Lou walked around the side of his house with his hands in his pockets. He might have been whistling were it not for the cigarette in his mouth. He stopped. There in front of him was a spider web. A big web, made by an unseen spider, stretching from the house to an adjacent tree. He peered closely at the strands connecting the broad netting to the trunk of the spruce tree, then slowly across the five foot span to the aluminum siding. He stood back, smoke rising slowly in a thin twirl around the side of his prominent nose. "Man," he said to himself, "that is one big web."

A Burmese cat prowled silently through the limp green grass, its tail lashing like a slow fur whip. The lawnmower stood by silently, abandoned midmow, a trail of yellow dead grass meandering out of its maw. Lou walked back across the halfhearted flagstone patio, past the brown picnic table with a pickle and a rib under it and through the cigarette-strewn ivy to the other site of the house. The central air unit hummed Kenmore green in the overcast midafternoon. Lou squinted at the space between the garage and Mr. Spickelmeier's fence. A latice of silk, spotted with mummified flies and yellowjackets and one silk pouch of eggs, shimmered in the slow breeze. A puff of smoke drifted imperviously through the web, which was at least four feet wide.