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if you tell her you are naked and checking for huge man-eating spiders. I pulled a new pair of overalls out of my dresser and I was buttoning them up just as Momma opened the door.
    “Gabriel King, what on earth were you doing running through the trailer in your underwear? What happened to your overalls and shirt?”
    I shrugged. Truth was, I couldn’t quite recall.
    “Were you out in the woods with—”
    Just like that, Frita appeared at the front door. She was carrying my overalls and trying hard not to laugh. Momma opened the front door and Frita walked in carrying the jar with the spider. She tried to hand the jar to me, but I wouldn’t take it. Momma shook her head.
    “I don’t want to know,” she said. “I just don’t want to know.”
    That was a good call on Momma’s part. She went back to the living room and once she was gone, I gave Frita a hard look.
    “You better not tell another living soul…,” I started, but Frita wasn’t laughing.
    “I won’t tell,” she said. “I wouldn’t even tell Terrance if he tortured me. You just got a little bit spooked is all.” She handed me back my shirt and overalls, and I glanced at the spider.
    “Did you get it after it fell off me?” I asked.
    Frita paused for a long time. “Uh-huh,” she said at last.
    “Think we should kill it?”
    Frita grabbed the jar and held it tight against her chest.
    “We can’t kill it,” she said. “You’ve got to make friends with it. That’s how you’ll stop being scared of spiders.”
    Frita patted the jar like a puppy.
    “You got to name him,” she said. “Once you name him, you’ll feel like he’s yours and then you won’t be scared of him anymore.”
    This was the worst plan I’d ever heard.
    “Frita,” I said, “I don’t think this is such a…”
    Frita handed me the jar and smiled the way her daddy smiled from the pulpit.
    “Trust me,” she said. “You just got to have faith.”

Chapter 9
WATERGATE AND PEANUT FARMERS
    F RITA SAID FAITH WAS BELIEVING IN WHAT YOU COULD NOT SEE, AND pressing on until you could see it. Well, I wasn’t going to be pressing nowhere with any spider. In fact, I wasn’t going to so much as look at that spider again no matter what Frita had planned. I wasn’t going to name him, make him my pet, or anything. And I sure as heck wasn’t going to overcome any more fears. I was sure of it. At least, I was sure of it until Jimmy Carter got in the way.
    He came up on account of my having to take a bath before dinner because I smelled like swamp muck. My taking a bath meant Pop turned on the news soon as he got home because I wasn’t ready for dinner yet. Most days, Pop and the news didn’t mix because soon as he turned on the TV, he got all riled up. Sometimes it was the cost of gasoline that got under his skin, or them talking about what had happened in Vietnam, but most of the time it was the election.
    When I got out of my bath, I could hear Walter Cronkite, the anchorman, reading the news, and by the time I put on my pajamas and climbed onto the couch, Pop was scowling something fierce.
    “What’s happening, Pop?” I asked, curling up next to him. Pop was still in his work clothes, so he smelled like peanuts and fertilizer.
    “Darn election,” he said. “Jimmy Carter’s not doing so good. Gerald Ford moved ahead in the polls. You’d think people would want a change after everything we’ve been through.”
    I shrugged.
    “Maybe they want things to stay the same,” I said, but Pop gave me a look.
    “Things can’t stay the same forever,” he told me. “Sometimes you’ve got to fight to make sure things
do
change.”
    Momma hollered from the kitchen. “Allen!” she said to Pop. “Don’t get started. Gabe doesn’t want to hear about politics.”
    But Momma was wrong. I did want to hear about politics.
    “How come you don’t like Gerald Ford?” I asked. “Because he’s not from Georgia?”
    “No,” Pop said. He got up and turned off the TV. “You