The spider struggled silently to construct its web between the rotting oak of the porch floor and the sagging cloth of the dusty hammock.  Albert Samson, chewing on a dry wheat stem, sat on his rickety plastic folding chair. Each day Albert Samson would sit on his porch on this chair from exactly twelve thirty in the afternoon to exactly three twenty-seven.  Albert had a natural predisposition towards afternoon sunlight, but his dermatologist told him that the sun was bad for his health.

“It will give you skin cancer,” said Doctor Blank.

“I don’t want skin cancer,” said Albert Samson.

“So don’t go in the sun,” said Doctor Blank.

“I like the sun,” Said Albert Samson.

“Do you like cancer?  Do you like chemotherapy?  Do you like death?  Stay out of the sun.”

“What if I sit in the sun for an hour a day?”

“Well, there’s no specific amount of time, you know, that determines whether or not you actually get the disease…”

“What about two hours?”

Dr. Blank’s tongue flailed about in his mouth as he ransacked his mind searching for a simple way to explain the unpredictability of cancer to Albert.

“What if I go in the sun for three hours?”

“Don’t go in the sun.”

Thus, Albert Samson only sat in the sun for two hours and fifty-seven minutes each day.

Albert Samson’s house had been infested with spiders for a while now.  He had always thought them a disgusting nuisance, but they usually kept to themselves so it was relatively easy for him to ignore them.  He was pretty sure that the majority of them hid in the attic, where he disliked going anyway.  Because of this, Albert Samson was easily able to live his life separately from the spiders.  Today, however, one of these spiders had crawled down from its attic haunt and invaded Albert Samson’s sacred space.  Rather than bat it away with the swift flick of his finger, though, Albert Samson did something that he hadn’t done in a long time.

He watched the spider.  It fiddled about trying to construct its web, secreting the silk as carefully as possible to build a network so intricate and so perfect that it could sit contented in its center for the rest of its life, growing fat on flies and sunlight and not worrying about the cancerous effects of ultraviolet radiation.

When Albert Samson sat on his porch he read sometimes.  Usually it was the newspaper, but sometimes he would bring out a play to read.  In the previous April he had read The Death of a Salesman, and the January before that he read A Doll’s House.  He never had the patience to read an entire book.  Three years ago he attempted to read Walden, but after reading the first five chapters he had to put it down.  He felt that novels, especially ones with literary merit, weighed him down.

When he wasn’t reading he would watch the landscape of the desert.  He would watch the lizards scuttle across the road.  He would watch the rattlesnakes slither towards the sun, which straddled the horizon line.  The rattlesnakes would always go towards that horizon, but Albert Samson never knew if they reached it or not.  They never came back to tell him.

He watched the spider.  The light easterly wind detached one of the web’s strands.  The spider, sensing a threat to the web, rushed to the spot of detachment and patched up the wound.  Albert Samson thought that the patch was not as pretty as the original strand had been, but it served its duty and kept the web aloft.  The spider returned to where it had been previously working.

It is Saturday, and Albert is invincible.  He is still lying in the endzone, clutching the football, soaking in the stadium lights and the babble of the exiting crowd, when his coach tells him that he is unstoppable, his parents tell him that he is their life’s pride, and his friends tell him that it is time to get drunk.  That night he conquers the castles of Ashley, Laura, and Evangeline, three fair maidens who are all thankful to have surrendered to the most heroic of the West Desert High Rattlesnakes. It happens the next Saturday too.  Each Saturday, he is presented with the charms of three lovely maidens.  This season, Albert is sitting contented upon his throne carved from pigskin.

One time he conquers the castle of a maiden who does not want to be conquered.  She surrenders begrudgingly.  He apologizes afterwards, handing her a box of chocolates and kissing her on the cheek.

He watched the spider.  A fly flew into its net.  For a moment the spider quit its work to tightly wrap the fly in a silk prison.  After the final strand was tied around the fly, the spider returned to the part of the web that it had been working on before the interruption.  When that section of the web was finished, the spider crawled back to the encapsulated fly and ate it.

Albert sits cross-legged against the tall oak in the middle of the field next to the university quad.  Delia lays out the red-checkered blanket and unloads the sandwiches that she has made.  Albert picks one up and engulfs it in so few bites that it is as if he has unhinged his jaw and swallowed the sandwich whole.

“You really weren’t that hungry, were you?” she asks with mock sarcasm, smiling at the way that Albert rubs his stomach with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, allowing the rays of the noontime sun fall onto his face.

“Nope,” Albert says, “But if there’s one deli whose cooking I can’t resist, it’s you.”  Albert still has his eyes closed.  Delia reaches over and runs her hand like the legs of a spider through his long, thick hair.  She kisses him lightly on the lips.  They lie together in silence for a few moments, absorbing one another.  They listen to chirps and rustles and breezes and heartbeats.  They listen to the erratic thumping of footsteps, and can no longer hear the heartbeats.

“Samson!” says a deep, rumbling voice. Albert and Delia open their eyes to see offensive tackle Ernie “Cruncher” Potter and tight end James Butcher looming above them, blocking out the sun.

“Let’s go man.  We’ve got practice in an hour and we’ve got to buzz our heads for the big game.”

Delia looks with concern at Albert, and at his long locks.

“Don’t cut your hair.  Plenty of people play football with long hair.”

Albert looks at the guys and back at her.  He says nothing at first, unsure of what words will leave his mouth.

“Don’t worry baby.  It’ll grow back soon.”  Albert kisses Delia on the lips again and walks off with Cruncher and Butcher.  Delia sits for a moment alone in the sunlight.  She slowly puts all of the picnic items in the basket and walks silently back to her dorm.

He watched the spider.  Albert is six.  His father shows him a football and tells him that he is going to be a West Desert rattlesnake.  Albert Samson is excited.

“Is Allan going to be a rattlesnake too? And Agnes? And Marie? And Davy?”

“Yes, yes, they’ll all be rattlesnakes too.  But they won’t be the type of rattlesnake that you will be.  You will be the most powerful rattlesnake in all of West Desert.  Your rattle will be heard above all others.  You will be more known than the rest.”

His dad throws the football at him.  It is as if Albert’s hands had been perfectly molded to hold the football, as if the football has always belonged in that space between his palm and his curled fingers. Albert feels that this first touch of the football has filled the empty spaces in his psyche, completing that which is naturally “Albert”.  He grips the ball, and feels its smoothness.  Albert throws the ball back to his father, and admires the upward motion of the spiral that he has thrown.

Albert Samson removed his hand from his bald head.  Yes, it was smooth, but he felt nothing.  The spider didn’t say anything.  It no longer remembered where the web had started.

Albert Samson had just turned fifty when he went to the West Desert Pet Shop and purchased Companie.  Companie was a grey mutt with mottled hair, and she walked with an obvious limp.  On top of this, she was blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and had lost nearly all of her sense of smell.  His main reason for purchasing Companie was her name; he thought it comforting to have Companie around.  The second reason was that Dave Daniels, the owner of the pet shop, had told Albert Samson that Companie was useless as a rattlesnake hunter.  Dave had disclosed this fact in an attempt to get Albert Samson to purchase one of the more expensive dogs, so it was not surprising that Dave was perplexed by Albert Samson’s decision.  When the two men were standing in aisle three picking from many different types of bags containing the same type of dog food, Albert Samson noticed the downturned corners of Dave’s lips and Dave’s loss of salesman’s enthusiasm.

“I don’t want dead rattlesnakes around my house,” Albert explained.

Albert hesitates.  He does not understand why football and Delia are mutually exclusive.  He races through potential futures: himself waking up in a mansion with the Vince Lombardi trophy next to him in his bed, himself waking up next to Delia in the house he grew up in,  himself waking up in a mansion next to both Delia and the Lombardi trophy.

He does not see the distinct pasts that have brought up the question: the way he missed her birthday party because Coach held an emergency team meeting, the way he arrived at her sorority’s formal with his sweaty and muddy cut-off shirt beneath his suit, the silent stares of her parents when he showed up at dinner thirty minutes late, rambled the entire time about his up-and-coming football career, and ordered the most expensive thing on the menu.

“I want you,” he says.  She smiles.  She enjoys him all night.  In the morning, he gets up and goes to practice.

He watched the spider.  Companie stumbled out onto the porch like a drunkard and limped over to Albert Samson.  Albert Samson made no motion towards the mutt as she staggered around on the porch, as Albert was too enveloped in the spider’s story to think about Companie.

Albert struts into her room grinning like a used car salesman, holding some flowers in his outstretched arm that he had plucked from the rose garden behind the dorm. Delia is lying on her side, her head propped up on an unorganized mountain of white satin pillows.

“You picked my flowers, you son of a bitch,” she says.

“What use are flowers if you can’t pick them?” he asks her sweetly.

“That’s always your damn philosophy.”

Only the humming of her refrigerator fills the room.  He has no idea what she means, but he stops smiling so that he can pretend that he understands perfectly.

She does not say a word.  She just stares and waits.  He can tell that his lack of a smile is transparent.

Albert sighs.  He knows that this is going to take a whole lot of effort on his part.

“Look babe…I know that you don’t like that I spend my days practicing and my nights hanging out with the guys.  I know you don’t like that I play a sport where I could hurt myself any day and never be the same again.  I know that you don’t like that I spend more of my time with football than I spend with you.”

She continues glaring at him.  Albert can faintly detect that she is trying hard to hide her hopeful playbook from his prying television cameras.  Regret begins to seep slowly into the forefront of his thoughts as his mouth begins to move, but he is unable to stop the motion.  Albert’s voice and his mind have lost their connection to one another.

“But football is where my life is heading.  Coach says that I’m going to be the face of the NFL some day.  Hell, you know that without football they’d kick me out of this school based on grades alone.  I don’t even have to get into the fact that I wouldn’t even be able to afford this school without my talent.  I can’t give it up.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” she says in monotone.

He watched the spider.  It was almost done with its web.  He thought that if spiders had human mouths instead of those pincers, whose technical name he had long forgotten, that the spider would be grinning with excitement.

Albert is pulled aside by Coach Comett after practice.  He can tell that Coach is eager to say something by the way that the usually stiff, disciplined, ex-marine is shifting from foot to foot.  Coach Comett’s poor attempt to maintain his usual behavior mannerisms makes him look like an elephant trying to hide in a picnic basket.

“You played excellently today Al.  That catch you had by the twenty yard line was exactly the kind of catch we need in order to win games.  You show up like that tomorrow and Northern University will be waving the white flag after your first touchdown.”

Albert nods through the small talk so that he can find out the more important news.  Coach Comett realizes that Albert knows that something is up, gives one more nod of approval, and begins to speak.

“Al, I’ve been notified that there will be some NFL scouts at the game tomorrow.  Rumor has it that they want you in the combine next year, and that after the game they’re going to try to persuade you to join the draft class.  Their coming to the game is just a matter of ceremony.  Just show ‘em the shit you always show and you’ll be gone in the first round before you know it.  Congratulations!”

Al’s smile stretches into a wild grin.  He had known that this would happen sooner or later, and feels content that it finally had.  When Comett finishes speaking, he stretches his arms to the side for a hug. Al ignores the gesture and reaches out his hand for a handshake.  Coach Comett awkwardly switches positions and grabs the strong hand. Albert pulls away and struts to the locker room.  With his peripheral vision, Albert sees Coach Comett look down at his hand, his smile faltering for just a moment.  For that moment he looks rejected, but before this look registers in Albert’s consciousness Albert is in the locker room, thinking only about his glorious future.

Albert Samson watched the spider.  It was inches away from completing its web.  Only a minute more and it would finally be able to bathe in the glory of its hard work and achievement.  Then Companie stumbled into the hammock that was the anchor for the spider web.  The hammock swung wildly with this sudden addition of weight, and the web was ripped to shreds.  The spider was thrown off, and Albert Samson did not see where it went.

The next three weeks are a blur to Albert.  He vaguely remembers meeting the NFL scout before the game, and telling him to “get into your bunker ‘cause Samson’s coming to blow you away.”  He remembers the stadium lights, the first touchdown, the second touchdown, the ball in the air, the diving catch…the hit he doesn’t even remember.  Waking up in a hospital bed with pain everywhere, but especially in his head, thigh, and shoulder.  The doctor telling him that he can’t ever play again.  The scout walking out of the stadium and into the oblivion of could-have-beens.  The financial aid office revoking his scholarship money.  The registrar telling him that he has one semester to pull up his grades or he is out.  The sinking feeling.  The sinking feeling.  The sinking feeling.

Thanking the Lord that he isn’t paralyzed.

Cursing the Lord that he is.

At three twenty-seven Albert Samson got up out of his chair. He knew that the spider, if it survived the fall, would not ever try to rebuild its web.

Albert Samson sits in the lecture hall, fiddling with his pencil and staring up at the ceiling with bleary, bloodshot eyes.  He has to pass this class to stay in school, work hard, graduate, and get a monotonous desk job that won’t pay a quarter of the salary he would have made in the NFL.  He stares back at Professor McCloud, but does not listen.  Who the fuck needs philosophy anyway?  Waste of fucking time.  Philosophy is bullshit.  He can bullshit his way through philosophy.  Then he will get a fucking A+ for his bullshit, and the registrar will let him stay in school, work hard, graduate, and get that desk job that won’t give him the immortality that NFL stars get.  Fuck that boring life.  Fuck the fact that his parents offered to pay the rest of the way through school.  Albert Samson doesn’t give a flying fuck.

“That Thoreau had to eventually give in and return from his trip to Walden seems to support the old adage that claims that no man is an island.  However, if you look at contemporary society, there is a lot of evidence that suggests most men are peninsulas.” says Professor McCloud with a glint in his eye, gesturing towards the audience of students.  Albert Samson thinks that Professor McCloud is pointing at him.  Albert Samson looks away.

Albert Samson watched the place where the spider had been the day before, hoping that his intuition was wrong and that he would find the web fully intact.  Deflated, he began to accept that nothing was there.

An unmarked van pulled up to Albert Samson’s house.  A young man with an oddly graying moustache got out of the van.  As he walked towards the porch, Albert Samson examined the young man.  He examined his work boots.  He examined his grass-stained jeans, his plaid logger’s sweater, and his hunting hat.  He examined the man’s skeletal appearance, and his mirror-like sunglasses.

Albert Samson stood up to greet the visitor.  Before reaching out his hand, Albert Samson brushed off his chair’s seat cushion, which was embroidered with the logo of the “West Desert High Rattlesnakes”.  The stitching had been slowly coming out over the past five decades, causing the image of what was once an intimidating, vicious, football-crunching snake to be barely discernable.

“I have heard that there is a pest problem in this house,” the man said.

Albert Samson vaguely remembered calling an exterminator, years ago, when the spiders first came to his attention.  He hadn’t thought that the exterminator would ever show.

Before Albert Samson could welcome the exterminator into the house, the exterminator was through the doorway.  Albert Samson didn’t even notice the exterminator pass by him on the porch.

Albert Samson walked up behind the exterminator, who was standing in the foyer staring at a black-and-white painting of the desert that hung on the wall.

“The spider infestation is mostly in the attic.  They don’t usually come down here.”

The exterminator nodded silently and continued to stare at the picture.

“The entrance to the attic is on the other side of the house,” said Albert Samson.

The exterminator nodded again.  After another moment examining the painting, he began to stroll down the hallway.  Midway down the hall, however, the exterminator veered off into the living room.  He began to examine Albert Samson’s couches, lifting each cushion into the air and peering into the spaces between them.

“The spiders are in the attic,” said Albert Samson, “not in the living room.”

Again, the exterminator nodded.  He put the seat cushions back into their proper places on the couch.  He then began to examine the living room’s fireplace.  After pulling his head out of the chimney, the exterminator walked out of the living room and into the kitchen without any show of emotion.  He opened all of Albert Samson’s kitchen drawers, scrutinized all of his rusted utensils, and then returned them to their drawers.  He opened the oven, stuck his head inside, and looked around.

Albert Samson wanted to shut the oven door on his head and turn up the heat.

“The spiders are in the attic.  They are not in the kitchen.”

The exterminator pulled his head out of the oven and nodded again.  The exterminator exited the kitchen.

For the next twenty minutes, the exterminator continued to walk slowly throughout the house, absorbing every detail of every room.  Albert Samson followed behind, impatiently waiting for the exterminator to do something besides treat his house as a museum.

Finally, they arrived at the door to Albert Samson’s bedroom.  Exasperated, Albert Samson grabbed the exterminator by the shoulder and spun him around.  The exterminator stopped moving.

“Sir,” said Albert Samson, “The spiders are—”

“Show me into your attic,” said the exterminator, cutting him off.  Albert Samson pointed at the ladder at the end of the hallway.  As the exterminator walked towards the attic, Albert Samson remained behind. The exterminator turned around and ruffled his mustache.

“Come with me.  I’ll need your help,” the exterminator said.

Albert Samson cringed.  He hadn’t been into the attic in many years.

“Please come with me,” the exterminator said again.

Albert Samson didn’t want to go, but he had a great difficulty saying no to the exterminator.  He obliged.

When they reached the attic, Albert Samson turned on the light.  He could hear a multitude of spiders scurry across the floor to escape the flood of luminosity, but his eyes only actually saw one of them.

As Albert Samson gazed around the attic, he tried not to look at all of the memorabilia from his football days: the high school jersey, the college helmet, his father’s football, and the newspaper clippings.  However, they were the first things that the exterminator placed his fingers on.

“You were some football player once, huh?” he asked, smacking his lips together.  Albert Samson noticed the cadaverous thinness of the lips of the exterminator.

“Yeah.” said Albert Samson, looking away.

“It seems you were a pretty damn good one.  These newspaper clippings show some incredible stats.  You scored forty-six touchdowns your freshman year.  That’s quite incredible.”

“Thanks.” Albert Samson said, barely audible.

“What happened?” pressed the exterminator.

“Injury.” Albert Samson was uncomfortable.

“You could have probably gone to the NFL with a record like this.”

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

The exterminator grinned, his gossamer lips extending an uncanny length and revealing a mangled set of gumless teeth.  He put down the newspaper clipping that he was gripping in his gnarled fingers and strutted with his chest in the air towards Albert Samson.  He moved so quickly that Albert Samson could have sworn that he was hovering.  They were touching chest to chest, and the exterminator was looking directly into Albert Samson’s eyes.  The exterminator was still wearing those reflective sunglasses, and as a result Albert Samson found himself staring into his own eyes as well.

“I know where the pest that plagues this house lies,” whispered the exterminator.  Albert Samson felt the exterminator’s cold breath as the wispy, invisible vapors wrapped themselves around Albert Samson’s head.

Albert Samson is finally done with his physical therapy.  After a year and a half, he finally feels well enough to function.  He struts with his chest in the air, waving adieu in his mind to the familiar sights of the hospital.  Goodbye ugly white walls.  Goodbye grumpy receptionist.  Goodbye maintenance closet with the busted doorknob.  As he waves goodbye to the list of recently admitted patients, he sees something that makes him feel disoriented, like a dancer pushed over in the middle of a pirouette by a mischievous child.  Albert Samson changes direction.  Hello maintenance closet…

When he walks in Delia is pretending to sleep, but as soon as she senses that he is about to touch her shoulder she bolts upright.  At first she says nothing.  She stares at him with exasperated, bloodshot eyes that remind Albert Samson of the cornerbacks in whose faces he used to gloat after breezing past them.

“I heard that you were hurt,” she says.  That is the only thing that she is going to say to start the conversation.  He looks into her eyes.  He has not seen them in a long time, since before his injury.  He regrets not speaking to her in all of this time.

“Yeah,” says Albert Samson, rubbing the back of his neck and looking past her at the whitewashed walls, “I have to talk to you about that.  Since I’m done with football now, I was -”

She interrupts him with a chuckle.

“You’ve missed your chance, but gave Derek Stephens his.” Delia coughs, rolls over, and falls back asleep.  Albert Samson, remembering the name, runs back into the hospital hallway and stops one of the nurses.

“Why was the girl in that room admitted to this hospital?”

The nurse answers him curtly and attempts to smile.

This retroviral reality is a crippling blow to Albert Samson, making his cheeks burn, his head smolder, and his heart freeze.  He wants to run back into her room immediately but his legs will not let him.  Albert Samson, stunned and slouching, staggers back to his car.

He followed the exterminator back down the ladder.

Albert Samson’s tests return negative.  Like a police dog following the scent of a criminal, the exterminator moved quickly and briskly through Albert Samson’s ramshackle house.  He did not stop to observe anything this time; rather, he simply drifted as if in a trance towards Albert Samson’s bedroom.  The exterminator pulled open the doorknob.  Albert Samson opens up the door to her hospital room.  Without faltering, the exterminator ripped the sheets off of Albert Samson’s empty bed.  Without faltering, with tears streaming down his cheeks, Albert Samson rips the curtain away to reveal her empty bed.

Albert Samson wails.  She is gone, and the exterminator stands above the bed pointing down.

“There’s your pest!” the exterminator exclaimed.  In the bed was a dead rattlesnake, its noisemaking tail severed from its body and nowhere to be found.  Albert Samson cries into her pillows, searching for her smell, for any hint of her still being alive.  Averting his eyes from the spectacle in his bed, Albert Samson turned to the window of his room and saw Companie running off like a cheetah through the monochromatic desert, her limp gone and her fur pristine.  As she disappeared on the horizon, Albert Samson looked back down gravely on the dead rattlesnake and began to breathe heavily.

He cries on her empty hospital bed, and the tectonic plates move, and he is no longer attached to any land mass.  Albert Samson’s tears stream down the bed, soak into the sheets, and surround him on all sides.  Albert Samson, now hyperventilating, stared at the rattlesnake, and stared into the reflective glasses of the exterminator.  Albert Samson rushes out of the hospital, feeling trampled by his guilt and suffocated by his isolation.  He feels a terrible pain in his heart.

“Let me remove this old, dead rattlesnake for you,” the exterminator cooed, putting his hand on Albert Samson’s shoulder.  Outside of the hospital, inside of his room, Albert Samson clutches at his chest and, curling up like a spider, falls at the bare, bony feet of the exterminator.