Slow Spider

I myself belong to the causes of eternal recurrence. ~ From 'Also Sprach Zarathustra'

The janitor of any school facility occupies only one of two places in a child's mind – one of
absent derision or one of intent interest. In the new hire's experience, it was the former that happened
with greater frequency. He accepted that with serenity enough, even some gratitude, and the crumbling
stone facade of the Portland grade school welcomed him with cool grace.
He smelled of sawdust and mud and that thick odor of industrial cleaner that marks every such
institution. His blond hair was just at the edge of too long for the job, straw blond and unkempt and
brushing the back of the navy jumpsuit. The tall-haired hens in the office watched him close over this,
waiting for a filthy ex-hippie to come bounding out of the quiet, polite man they'd hired. It wouldn't
happen, and in time even their eyes began to slide over him without more than a casual regard. They
didn't notice when he was there, and they forgot when he wasn't. The paychecks ended in a dead letter
drop, the address he'd given them legitimate enough for his purposes but he certainly didn't live there.
No one bothered to check.
The teachers regarded him as a mobile disturbance, flitting through rooms at intervals
throughout the day to tend the bins and the remnants of sick children and clean the windows. The
students were kept rigidly in line, and most of them spared him no glance during these rounds. The
janitor watched them instead. Most of them meant little to him and he made sure not to brush against
them or do anything to catch their notice. But he kept an eye on the pale little boy with heavy eyes in a
too-withdrawn face and the glasses that were more tape than steel. He never came to class with bruises
on his face, but sometimes he limped, or favored a leg, or dirt marked the trails of old tears on his face.
Not all these marks were from home, the janitor noted. Children have an eye for the weak one
in the pack, the primal smell of the alpha and the beta and the lesser. Most disregarded the boy. A few
preyed on him. More than once, the janitor watched the little boy try to keep to his corners and read
books – fables and fantasies with words bigger than his young mind had been trained for – only to be
advanced on, surrounded, and left in mud and grime. The child took it with stoic shoulders, but the
face looked wounded and lost. He, as ever, looked no one in the eye or reached for help.
No peace for this child, the janitor thought to himself when he saw these events occur. He
never interfered; it wasn't his place. Never reached out a hand to stop. Nor did the teachers, and he
spared a little private admonishment for them. For him, it was no hypocrisy. Just the circumstances of
his life.

~*~

The janitor was there for the worst of it, the end of one such private schoolyard battle. Four
larger boys, including one from a later grade had smelled tender meat and caught up to the blue-eyed
child on the way out from a day's learning. They surrounded him, four corners of an unbreakable
square, and shoved him back and forth among them. They chanted, wild cry - “Medicine ball!
Medicine ball!” and ignored the sobbed pleas for them to stop. A teacher moved across the doorway
and then disappeared back into the building. It wasn't ignorance of abuse, just the weary
acknowledgement of the feral pecking order of children. To stop this now would mean worse for the
victim later.
The janitor saw the final shove, the child pushed and left to fall against stone column and into a
thin puddle of rain-filled dirt. The glasses flew, bent nearly beyond recognition, and something landed
square in the morass with a wet thump. At this, the boy began to cry, a harsh, angry bray. The start of
bitter hate.
 This was more than the janitor could take, even as it was one of the things he was there to
observe, and he put down his old mop and rags and went to collect the glasses from where they lay.
The boy didn't look at him, fumbling instead at the mud.
At some point, the boy had replaced the tape-worn pair with a newer set of thin bronze. Now
the left side of the glasses had pulled up at an unnatural angle, normally a death knell for the clunky
spectacles of the era. A blessing that they weren't still heavy plastic. With a moment's thought and
some careful pinching, the janitor was able to coax them back into shape with only the barest hint of a
bend still visible. His work went unnoticed as the boy still hitched a heavy sob. Something had been
pulled out of the mire into his lap.
A book. Of course it was a book. A nearly ruined one now, but still. “Which one?” The
question, directed at a book rather than the circumstances, broke through the boy's private wall and
brought the dirty face up to regard him with something like startlement.
“S-s-saki.” A hiccup. A pale little hand pushed mud from the cover, revealing the blue and red
blocks that made up the title and author. A short story collection.
The janitor nodded and reached out, very carefully, with the glasses dangling from the tips of
his fingers. “Trade you.” With hesitation, the thin fingers darted out and plucked the bronze glasses
from him. No contact. The janitor relaxed a little and took the filthy book when it was pushed towards
him. “Read Sredni Vashtar? The one with the orphan boy and his little made-up god?”
A sniffle. “Not yet.” Another hiccup. “I just started. Tobermory.”
“That one was okay, but I think you'll really get a kick out of the one I mentioned.”
“Why?”
“Figure it out when you get there.”
The eyes dropped. “I'm not going to. It's ruined.” The thin chest heaved. The janitor knew it
as a sign the tears were going to return in a big and unstoppable way and put a hand up as if to try and
stop it.
“Hold on there. Nothing's irreversible.”
“Look at it!” The janitor fixed the boy with a look, quieting his outburst. Another little internal
tremor of sympathy. Probably saved up for this. Maybe set aside lunch money. Maybe stole from the
dad.
“I mean what I say, kid. It's not that bad. I can't make it perfect, make it like it was. Doesn't
work like that. There's always going to be some stains, it's gonna look pretty rough. But if you can
trust me over the weekend, I'll see what I can do. I can make it readable, at the very least. You'll get
your stories finished. Okay?” He tilted his head to catch the boy's look again. “We got a deal?”
“Okay, mister.” The boy didn't sound pleased, rather defeated.
“Yeah, I know. You'd rather have a do-over on the day.”
“I'd rather be dead.” It came out in a defenseless snarl. That startled the janitor, a colder sort of
self-loathing growing obvious. The boy swallowed, burying the outburst in a blank, dirty face, but the
words still hung there, heavy. “What's your name?”
The janitor paused for a moment before answering. It would make his presence in the boy's life
final, even if he never touched him. There was a doubt, but sympathy overrode it. “Call me Jake, kid.”
“I'm Ben.”
“Yep. I know.” That got him a look, but he didn't return it. Instead, he thumbed around the
book in his hand. It wasn't so bad as he'd thought at all. Just a filthy cover and edges. The inside was
still just fine. “I'll find you, kid. Just have a little faith.”

~*~

It took three hours of careful wiping and drying, and the book's white cover would forever be a
kind of blotchy tan with the little Modern Library logo nearly obliterated, but it was a pretty good job
for all that. Jacob had the patience for it, even the time, and he worked over each individual page with
the solemnity due to a dead man's lasting words. Now and again he imagined he could hear the dry
laugh of his old friend – or enemy, same difference – in the back of his mind. As he no doubt would,
should it be learned the effort Jacob spent on a tiny piece of child's solace, doomed to be easily
forgotten. He was supposed to be only watching.

~*~

He left the book on the boy's desk at the start of class on Monday. The act went unnoticed by
everyone else, but the blue eyes widened up at him, shocked and surprised. This time there was a faint
and fading bruise at the back of the jaw and Jacob did his best not to dwell on it. Didn't think he'd get
the book back. Poor, faithless little exile. You're always going to be like this, aren't you?
“Thank you,” Ben whispered, and that was a mild surprise. Jacob didn't think he'd take the risk
of getting attention, or of showing more gratitude than he had to. It wouldn't have hurt his feelings; by
now he understood the boy's position better than he'd intended to. Not for the first time, Jacob took a
second to permit a little regret at destiny's weaving.
“Welcome,” he mouthed back, and then he moved on to get the second trash bin out of the
room.

~*~

Days passed on, and the boy's sharp gaze caught him frequently at work in the halls between
classes. Absent derision, and intent scrutiny. He'll still forget, Jacob thought to himself and nodded
back with a mild expression each time. Once he looked up from meditative, studious sweeping, the
rustling bristle-brush falling still at his side to see Ben watching him from the far end of an empty hall.
“Need to get home, kid. Building's closed.”
“Why are you sweeping like that?” The boy shifted his weight from side to side. “Fancy
looking.”
Jacob straightened up, letting bones and muscles pop in his back. “Ever seen a Buddhist
monk?”
“No.” That perked his interest and the pale round face tilted to the side to watch him.
“Sweeping's something they do a lot of. Turning chaos into something safe while not disturbing
the universe. Tricky stuff. You lose yourself, like fresh water, and just go with it. No self, no dirt, no
chaos. It keeps you peaceful.” He looked down at dirty thumbs. “And humble, come to think.”
“It just looks like funny sweeping.”
“Sometimes, kid, you just gotta go with the flow and look a little deeper. Not everyone does
things for reasons on the surface.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get lost, kid. Principal's up
the next floor and she'll catch you in here and we'll both get it.” That part was not quite true, but it got
the boy moving.

~*~

Ben's appearance became more sporadic. He wasn't in danger, Jacob instinctually knew that.
Knew the lay of fate, even if he wasn't meddling directly. Something was happening, though. He
could see the weave well enough to know that. He had a suspicion about what.
All I have to do to change my mind is a little tap on the shoulder. Easy as that. Free will was
free will, but sometimes a little nudge helped things along. He couldn't quite bring himself to it. The
boy's destiny, whether he liked it or not, was his own at the core. The father's path was set. Jacob
knew where the roads could end, had accepted that when the child was born and took his place in fate's
possibilities.
It was a Thursday, fine and bright and colored with fall when Jacob saw Ben again. It was well
after the bell and the boy should be in class but instead there he sat, ragged shoes and a book clutched
tight on the top steps of the school. Jacob nodded to himself and drifted close, out of reach. He
marked his presence with a clank of the ragged mop he carried. “You're late for class.”
“Not going,” came a toneless reply. “Dad took me out.”
“Oh?” He leaned on the mop, looked down at the dark mop of hair.
“Guess I'm going to go somewhere else. He got a new job.” Monotone. Like a death sentence.
“It might not be so bad, kid. Maybe you'll make some friends there.”
Dead silence. The boy's fingers flexed against the book's cover. Finally the face turned up to
him. “I read that story.”
“Yeah? What did you think?”
“What happened to Conradin?”
“Well, he had a chance to make his own fate after that, I figure. He got what he wished for,
though maybe not in the way he expected.”
“Does that make magic real if you wish really, really hard?”
“I don't know if that was magic, Ben, what happened to his guardian.”
“I wish Sredni Vashtar would kill my dad. Even if it was just a polecat.” The last was muttered,
a little embarrassed.
“Don't wish for that. Dark wishes go down dark roads. Prophecies and wishes have a way of
fulfilling themselves.” Jacob kept his tone neutral.
“I gotta go, anyway.” The boy struggled to his feet and looked up at the man.
“Yes, you do.” Jacob kept his hands firmly clasped around the handle of the mop. “See you in
another life, kid.”
“Do we ever get another one?” There was a note of innocent hope in the boy's voice that could
break a softer heart. Jacob kept his own locked tight and gave him a wry smile instead of an answer.
The boy inspected the expression for a moment and nodded. The hope went away. “I didn't think so.
We're all trapped.” He shrugged. “Bye, Jake.”
He hesitated a moment and then looked after the boy as he reached the ground. He let the
whisper catch on drifting air, unheard. “I forgive you.” Ben paused for a moment, as if he'd heard
anyway, and then kept on going.
Jacob watched the thin shoulders disappear into the distance. Untouched. Alone. And I'm
sorry. But you and I have a job to do.
I'll see you in the shadow of the statue.
Jacob let the mop fall from his hand, and then he wandered away.

~Fin