The Tides of Lust

  SAMBO’S TALE:

  Hey, take a rest, girl. Come on sit out here on the steps with me a while. What are you gonna do, crawl back in there after them? It’ll wait for you. Lean against me for a while, if you can sit up.

  Now you know who Proctor really should have got up here? My two boys. I work down on the boats, and I trained ’em what to do with the meat between their legs. A pair of rape artists. You take these waterfront bitches on your boat a few months, and wouldn’t you know they’re gonna drop some little bastard after a while. I got left with two, about twenty years back. One of them I’m pretty sure is mine. But I had this blonde bitch swellin’ up and eatin’ my food for a while, sure as shit she’s gonna pop out with a little chocolate baby. Come out blond-headed and blue-eyed as you are! Never will know who his pappy was. I kept him though. That’s Dove. Nig is the other one, but they grew up on my boat. I guess that’s brothers. Bitches run off ’fore the boys got up a whole year.

  Wild little pair of motherfuckers.

  When they was about old as you I found their mamas. The black one was workin’ for a woman up on Colson Hill. The white one, she just takin’ to hangin’ around the docks again. Her ol’ man had just Kicked her off one of the snapper boats down the other end of the Horseshoe. We all got together on my boat, with a lot of liquor. The old ladies are goin’ on about What fine boys Nig and Dove turned out. [Sambo narrows his lids over ivory colored balls.] Back then, lemme see, Nig was about this big—[Sambo measures out a length from the tip of his middle finger to the middle of his palm]—Dove was maybe a half an inch longer, though Nig caught up. First I sicked that little black boy on the white bitch, while I sit in the corner with my cock up Dove’s ass. And the black bitch was down between our knees, just a suckin’ his red pecker. When Nig got up to go get a drink, I caught hold of his black ass, he come staggering by. ’Fore I had it half in, Dove’s mama had her blonde head wrapped around that chocolate bar. Soon as I let Dove go he had that black bitch on the floor just tearin’ up some pussy. “Hey, there,” I kept whispering in Nig’s ear, “how you like watchin’ your brother givin’ it to your mama, hey, boy?” Black bastard squirmed so hard he got my load three times. Later, me and Dove took turns workin’ on Dove’s mama while she moaned and kicked her legs around his ears. And Nig was eatin’ out his mama’s old black pussy like Hershey chocolate. After a while I went over to help Nig, and left Dove’s pink ass fallin’ on his mama’s box like a bouncy ball. Nig and I hauled that black bitch all over the cabin and the deck: me in one end and the boy in the other. Or [He snaps his fingers.] the other way around.

  After I’d kicked the bitches off the boat, and we’d gone to sleep, I remember I was havin’ this real fine dream, and sort of reachin’ down to scratch it, only there was Dove. He’d got my pants open and was just a workin’ away on the old pecker. Nig was all curled up naked against my back and didn’t even wake up. Dove had wrapped his legs around one of mine and rubbin’ off like a pink-assed puppy. I said, “Hey, what the hell are you . . .” Then I just lay back, and stuck my finger in his ear while he did it. A couple of seconds after I come his little butt locked and then he brought his hand from between his legs, all strong and sticky; lickin’ his fingers.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He looked up at me, his tongue workin’ down between his knuckles.

  “Come on up here.” I pulled him up so he leaned on my chest, still lickin’. “What’s the matter with you, boy?”

  He looked surprised. “Weren’t it good?”

  “Sure it was good,” I said. “But your daddy know when he wakes up and finds you suckin’ away on his pecker that something’s wrong. I ain’t that drunk.”

  He finished, then he just put his head down and began to cry.

  “Hey, boy . . .” I put my arms around him, while he made a couple of hiccuping tries to stop. Then finally he just let it come, all that crying. He began to pee, too, all over my belly. I just rubbed his back. I stuck my finger in his ass, ’cause he liked that. Kids brung up like Nig and Dove can’t never hold their water when they’re young. I just let him cry and pee himself out. Took about the same time. His dick was hard when he finished, too. “You feel better now?”

  He nodded; and he was rubbin’ himself off. Finally he began to whisper, “Fuck me, papa . . . oh, stick it up my ass, daddy! Go on, fuck me . . .” I reamed him with my fingers a little more. Then I rolled him over and slid in without even no spit.

  We got goin’ so hard Nig woke up long enough to get over and push his peter into his brother’s mouth. Dove took it from him; I worked his little pink bottom hard.

  Nig went to sleep again after one shot. But Dove kept me going till the sun was coming in long and red through the portal. Finally I wrapped around him, with the boat rockin’; and licked the sweat out of his ear; “You gonna tell me now what you was cryin’ for?”

  He just wriggled. I waited for him to tell me. But there was that shift in his breathing, you know? Gone to sleep. I just put my head down, a half-hard still eight inches in him. And went to sleep.

  Proud of them little bastards. They’re good boys. Glad I stuck their mammies. Glad I kept ’em when they fell out. You feelin’ better now? Yeah, you look better. Your backside okay? come on, we go see what Proctor wants us for.

  Gimme your hand, girl.

  FIVE

  THE STONES OF ST. MARK

  I leave you free to choose whatever lie you think worthiest to be the truth.

  —My Faust, Paul Valéry

  Nig and Dove?

  Big handed, heavy footed boys, twenty now. Hard shoulders; one blue-eyed, one brown. One with yellow hair, long and dirty; one with black, rough and tight as iron shavings. One bit his nails and smiled a lot. The other didn’t and laughed. Both: workman’s greens. Behind the crotch of one hung ten veined inches, nearly thick as a beer can, red and wet under the wrinkled hood. The other had so much—coal colored—it made the red look small.

  Barefoot on the dusty dark, they wandered near the waterfront.

  Nig stopped his brother with an elbow, nodded toward a doorway. Dove frowned; they exchanged looks, went over.

  Dove: “Hey, you all right?”

  Robby lifted his head and blinked away the last of a dream about . . . and blinked again.

  Nig: “What you doin’ there?”

  Robby looked between them: big bones, scrawny bellies. He shook his head and grinned. “Guess I went to sleep while I was sittin’ down.” He got his feet under him, looked about the dark street.

  The boys were grinning.

  “Say,” he went on, “you guys know where to get some pussy? I been here a whole day, but I ain’t hardly seen none.”

  “Shit.” The black boy grinned more broadly. “You gotta beat it off with a stick in this town.”

  “If you can’t get none right away,” the white boy said, “there’s a dozen little nigger boys runnin’ around the boats who’ll suck your dick for a nickel.”

  “I don’t got no nickel,” Robby said. “Besides, I don’t go for that shit.”

  The black was still grinning. “All the pussy running around this town, I don’t have to spend no more ’n’ twenty-five cents ever’ year or so. I get it two, three, four times a day.”

  Robby shook his head again. “I guess I just don’t have that nigger luck.”

  “Look,” the white one told him, “you better not sleep in the doorway. You gonna have a run in with a man named Bull. You won’t see him comin’. Everybody knows him so he don’t wear a uniform.”

  “Big bald-headed mother.”

  “You don’t see him, but then he got his gun in your neck, and there you’re all locked up.”

  “You go under the docks,” the black one said. “That’s where you can get some sleep.” He put his hands in his pockets. “Say, what’s your name, if you’re gonna be hangin’ around for a few days?”

  “Robby,” Robby said, and stuck up his hand.

  “I’m Dove.” They shook.
“This is Nig.”

  Nig took his hands out of his pockets, shook. Then he squatted by the door, black toes splayed in his pool of shadow.

  “You fellows work the boats?”

  Nig nodded and Dove said, “Sometimes.”

  “I guess there ain’t too much more to do in this town.” Robby hugged his knees. His eyes roamed the street. “Sometimes finish was something else. I mean, I’d like to get some work that just wasn’t the easiest thing to find right off. I’d maybe even like to go to school. I know guys who go to school and they got good jobs. What I think I’d really like would be something where I could move around. That would be better than school, you know?”

  Nig scratched the faded part of his pants groin, bagged with the weight inside. “We got ourselves a good job, Dove and me. Make more money than on the boats.”

  “What you do?”

  Dove squatted and threw back his hair. “Rape artists.”

  Robby frowned. “What the hell is that?”

  “What the hell it sound like?” Nig said.

  “We work together,” Dove said. “I take the black pussy. Nig takes all the white comin’ by. You a good enough stud, you can pick up on it.”

  “Who pays?” Robby asked.

  “Sometimes women; mostly men. People up on Colson Hill give us a lot of work.”

  Nig, still scratching, drawled, “We put in a lot of practice time.”

  Robby shook his head once more. “Naw. It just doesn’t sound right. I stuck my share of pussy. I like action, sure. But there ain’t no need to go after it with a lead pipe. There’s enough to go around so you don’t have to fight it down.”

  Dove: “You ain’t found none around here, yet.”

  Nig: “I like it any way I can get it.”

  Dove: “It’s a good job.”

  “Well,” Robby said. “It just ain’t for me.”

  Dove stood up. Nig, laughing soft and warm, rubbed Dove’s left foot with his knuckles: “But it sort of made you harden up a little, huh?” Now he Stood too.

  Dove: “Hope you get some the way you’re lookin’ it.”

  They were walking down the street.

  Nig: “And get under the dock before Bull catches you out here.”

  Robby, calling after: “Yeah, okay.”

  He rested his arms across his knees, watching the two walk away. Rape artists. He frowned, and reached down to arrange himself. When he looked up they were beyond the street light.

  —A CARTOON: UPA—

  One had ten.

  One had more.

  “Man, I got to get into some white pussy tonight.” He leaned on Dove’s shoulder; scratched. “You gotta give me some white pussy tonight or you ain’t shit.”

  “Fuck off, nigger. You sound like that fool back there. What you gonna find on the street this hour. Don’t you think about anything else?”

  “Naw. What you thinkin’?”

  “Your big black dick up some tight white cunt.” And Nig cracked up, prancing.

  “Hey,” Dove said, “how’d you like the one we got this afternoon.”

  “Which one?”

  “The first one.”

  “Oh, man! How old you think she was?”

  “I dunno. Thirteen. She had some big titties. For thirteen. Could throw that ass around.”

  Nig came back and put his arm on Dove’s shoulder. “Watchin’ her suck on your peter while I was givin’ it to her, it got me so hot I think it made me come the third time. But that little nigger bitch sure knew how to give a couple of guys a good time, huh?” He rubbed Dove’s back. “We don’t get no more pussy, an’ you gonna get fucked again.” He squeezed Dove’s left cheek. “Dove, I think you like my dick in your hole. I think you was thinkin’ about my black dick up your tight white ass hole.”

  Dove scratched his shoulder. “Maybe.”

  Where Nig’s muscles were tight, Dove’s were generous, heavy on arms and calves. “Never said I didn’t.”

  “But you go after pussy, and you like it . . .”

  “You done put my pecker in enough of it.”

  “All them hot ass little nigger bitches.”

  Dove grins.

  “Boy, why’n’t you go for white pussy? I think that’s about the only thing really wrong with you.”

  “Why don’t you go for black?”

  “How many of them black babies you seen dance at the end of my stick this week? Twelve, fourteen?”

  “A fuckin’ cage of monkeys!” Dove gnawed the wreck of his thumb knuckle. “But you don’t go after it the same. Anyway, white pussy’s only good for one thing.”

  Nig leered and scratched deep in his pocket. “What?”

  “Some coon like you with a prick longer’n mine.”

  “Aw, man—”

  “Yeah . . .” Dove lifted his crotch.

  The bottom of Nig’s pocket was torn. “You sure go after it once I spilled my nuts in it.” He squeezed his cock; warmth bloomed at his belly’s base. “Eatin’ up that pussy.”

  “You know what I’m eatin’, nigger.”

  Disparagingly: “Yeah . . .” And then, “I don’t see why you don’t just go down on me.”

  Dove shook his head. “Ain’t the same.”

  “Aw, come on—”

  “Naw. Look, you black son of a bitch: You wouldn’t hardly be able to get it up with them nigger bitches if you didn’t have my pink pecker to look at, givin’ it in their faces, stickin’ it in their ass. You sure sucked on it enough when you was a kid—”

  “That was—”

  “And you’re too dumb to get white pussy for yourself. You ain’t never objected to me goin’ in afterward when you finished with it to lick out your leavin’s.” Dove stuck his hand in Nig’s pocket, squeezed.

  “Ahhhhhh—!” Nig closed his eyes, worked his fingers further in Dove’s buttocks. “. . . gonna fuck you, boy. Yeah, now.”

  Dove opened his buckle, pushed his pants down his thighs.

  Nig popped a fly button.

  Dove spat on his fingers. “Hey, watch out.” He took the cock and rubbed it.

  “Come on, Dove! Lemme put it . . . in, yeah. Yeah, like that. I’ll go . . . easy—”

  “Ahhh—” and

  “Yeah! Fuck yo’—ass, white—boy. Oh—yeah, like—a soft—sweet, slop—y puss—”

  “Fuck me, Nig. Yeah . . .”

  “Ohhh—” and

  “Ohhhhh—” and

  “Ohh—” and

  “Ohhhh, yeah! Fuck it, you bastard! Yeah, you black motherfucker! Ohh, right in there.” Dove rubbed the heels of his hands on the hand gripping his chest. “Lick my neck. Bite it—oh, yeah! Fuck me—fuck me—fuck me—nigger—shit. Oh—yeah!” Dove’s legs tightented in the loop of his pants.

  Nig’s breath rasped, halted, rasped again. He let his tongue laze, and his lips lie, on Dove’s back. When the rhythm dangled him over the coming chasm he hissed. Dove threw back his head. “Yeah, fuck me, Dove,” Nig lipped without voice on Dove’s ear, tasting salt and things more bitter. “Yeah, you like that pig sticker! Don’t you; yes you, like it, baby!

  “Fuck me, yeah and, fuck me. Twitch your pretty, ass. Swing your sweet white ass on my pecker, brother!”

  Dove squeezed his cock head. Jerked.

  Nig shot. Dove felt the last thrust lock; the locked loins shook. Tongue and a torrent of air.

  Dove came all over his hand.

  Nig hung from Dove’s back.

  Dove lifted his hands: glistening grey strands, drooping. He caught one on his tongue.

  Nig pulled out.

  Dove almost drew blood from the two fingers in his mouth.

  Nig squatted in the doorway. He rubbed Dove’s foot. Once put his head against Dove’s thigh.

  Dove leaned back on the jamb and licked his hand more. Then he dropped it. Later he felt lips close over his forefingers: lip and tongue, moving on the flesh between, the hard heel, the rough palm. Still later, after he had closed his pants he still stood, stroki
ng the sweaty neck, the crisp hair on Nig’s bony, long head.

  —THE END—

  The girl said, “Oh . . .” with no voice at all.

  Proctor watched embarrassment beat behind her face like a hot bird whose wings brushed her cheeks, pulled away, then beat again. He said, “Now try to get hold of yourself.”

  “But I . . . I didn’t know . . .” She looked down, and her thin fingers pulled to the table’s edge. She crushed her shoulders together under the red blouse. When she saw the middle button still undone, her fingers flew to fasten it.

  Proctor put his bare feet wide in the sawdust, pushed the forelegs of his chair up. “What’s your name?”

  “. . . Peggy-Ann,” she breathed. Her face reddened again. The name trembled in her mouth like a confession.

  “Who told you about what goes on here at the Hall of Mirrors?” Laughter above them.

  A crash. A woman screamed.

  Another scream ended in laughter.

  Her eyes veered wild among the empty tables, slid across the deserted bar, and passed over the window curtains.

  He thought: she expects the sound itself to break ceiling or walls, take form, and attack her.

  Niger lifted his head by the foot of the steps and watched her, panting.

  Her eyes caught the dog’s. She closed her mouth and tried to push back into the chair.

  “Who told you?” Proctor repeated. But gently. His hand strayed in the white hair of his stomach to scratch under his buckle.

  Her eyes came to his, and after silent seconds, faltered into blinking. She began to shake her head.

  “Catherine?”

  Her head stopped.

  “I thought so. Doesn’t matter.” He stretched out his hands and laid them on the table. “She’s tired of our lives now. Certainly by now she’s gone on to . . . well, I’m sure her doings would seem bizarre even to us. Still, I notice she has no compunction about steering you back into the tangles of what she, no doubt, considers a swamp.” He noticed that when he touched the table Peggy-Ann’s fingers retreated into her lap, meshed in a pale knot. “I’m also sure she didn’t misrepresent us. Can you tell me why you thought you would enjoy it here?”