Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Eric nodded, turning the paper over. On the back, in big letters Dynamite had written:

  SHIT & DYNAMITE

  Show Up Gilead Boat Dock,

  GARBAGE

  4:45A.M. Sun.—Thurs.

  So that’s all it was.

  Well, that’s all Dynamite had said.

  Refolding it, Eric pushed it back in his pocket past Al’s pliant clam. “I think I’m gonna…try and get a job while I’m here. So I can give Barb a hand.” Had he actually said Yes to Dynamite? Or had he only stood there grinning? He’d said Hey—Thank you! enthusiastically a few times. But either way he was going to find the Gilead boat dock.

  “Now that’s an idea,” Mike said. “I’m glad to hear you talkin’ that way.”

  At a turn, the orange Turpens cap slid forward off the dashboard’s surface. Eric grabbed for it, missed—

  But caught it with his forearm against his right knee. He smiled at Mike.

  “You’re probably gonna miss your football buddies.” Looking out the windshield, driving, his father had not seen Eric’s save. “Weren’t there any guys on the team you really liked?”

  “Maybe. I dunno.” Taking the cap in his hands, Eric shrugged. “I wasn’t really friends with none of ’em too much.” (Maybe, besides running his boat with Mex, the bearded Jay worked at Turpens…?) “One guy, Hoagy—I wanted to get to know a little better.” He glanced at his dad. “He was a black kid.”

  “Oh,” Mike said. “I don’t think I met him. Didn’t some Spanish kid on the team—Scotty?—phone you a few times last term?”

  Eric shrugged again. “That was for homework or somethin’. We wasn’t really that close.”

  “Oh. Well, after you get to Barb’s, see if you can hunt up some regular fellas to hang out with—guys who drink beer, shoot hoops, and talk about women. Know what I mean?”

  “Jesus…” Eric looked back out the window. “That sounds like fun! Can I maybe hang out with some who do a little more than talk?”

  Mike said nothing. But he smiled. In the car the cool air stabilized.

  When they passed the green-and-white sign, “DIAMOND HARBOR, EXIT 3 MILES,” the Turpens cap—orange visor pointed left—was on Eric’s head.

  Eric asked, “Dad, you remember that movie we saw a couple of years ago, when we were comin’ back from Texas—in the mall we stopped at—just outside Atlanta?”

  “Huh?”

  “You know—where the gorilla and the dinosaurs were all fightin’ over that girl—?”

  “Yeah. That was a good one.”

  “I think it would be easier to fall in love with all the dinosaurs and things than…than with the gorilla. They were cool—even those giant bugs and stuff.” Eric blinked at his father. “I liked them the best.” He pushed back in the seat to sit up. “Anyway, that’s what I think.”

  As he drove by the ocean, Mike’s look grew puzzled. He frowned at his stepson.

  * * *

  [4] OFF THE HIGHWAY, Mike got turned around twice.

  “You got your cell. You could call Barb—”

  Mike took one hand off the wheel to touch the sagging pocket of his T-shirt where his cell phone hung. “I don’t wanna give her the satisfaction of thinkin’ the dumb-ass nigger she was stupid enough to marry once is a bigger fool than I actually am. Come on—we’ll find it.”

  “You know,” Eric said, “I wish I could say things like that, sometimes.”

  Mike raised an eyebrow. Then he chuckled and glanced at Eric. “You could—nobody’s really gonna care. Least ways nobody who knows I brought you up.” Then he added. “Course sometimes you gotta think twice about who you say it around.” He shrugged. “It’s just a kind of cussin’, I guess.”

  And thirty-five minutes later they were on 31 East, where Barb had said they should be.

  Mike muttered, “It’s at the end of Front Street…” He looked under the sunshade.

  “This is Front Street.” Eric sat forward on the gray upholstery. “We just passed Front Street Drugs & Hardware.”

  “But it’s closed up—”

  “It’s still Front Street,” Eric insisted. “Hey, there it is!”

  “This is the end…?” Mike slowed. “It ain’t a whole block.”

  By the docks, blue siding framed a plate glass window with café curtains pushed back and blinds. On the pane, a gold and black decal of a lighthouse was fixed beside black letters—

  LIGHTHOUSE

  COFFEE,

  EGG

  & BACON

  —to suggest an aquarium’s interior, the window’s floor, visible under the half-lowered slats, was covered with coral, green, and blue pebbles—though it was without fish, ceramic anchors, even a menu. Above, rust reddened the seams between the awning’s pink and green panels.

  Mike said, “I’m pullin’ around with those cars near the water.” The tires crunched into a small gravel lot, where three old pickups, two fairly new cars, and five old ones parked. Beyond, was the sea. “Yeah, that’s your mama’s Honda. She’s still drivin’ that thing—?”At the top of some steps of triple-width white cinderblocks stood a screen door. On one side ran a pipe railing, bright yellow. A plank ramp sloped from the other. It didn’t look too steady.

  Eric opened the car and again realized the discrepancy between the heat-drenched sunlight and the green tinted car window, which—with the air conditioning—had made the outside look ten degrees cooler than it was. As he stepped to the gravel and stood, he heard the ga-lunk of the door on Mike’s side, opening.

  Then the screen banged back on the wall and a woman in a blue waitress smock and no makeup came down one step, hesitating—as if she might rush back in.

  Till age twenty-seven, Barbara had been stunningly attractive, if a little less sure of herself than she might have been. At thirty-four, from the self-assurance of having men so often want her, she was becoming both matronly and handsome. The woman on the steps—his mother, Eric realized after a breath, with surprise—was both excited and happy.

  Eric called, “Hey, Barb…!” Behind him he pushed the car door closed. From the slam, he realized he had pushed it harder than he’d meant: some of the excitement was his. Over the Chevy’s roof, Mike stood up.

  “Oh, my God…” Barbara’s smock had a white collar. Inside it, a gold chain crossed low on her throat. “Oh, my…oh, my God…you’ve gotten so…big! I mean, you’re…” In wonder, she shook her head. Her blond hair was pinned up. “Your arms are…they’re as big as your dad’s!”

  Eric walked toward his mother, thinking with the first step, her skin’s a little looser beside her eyes, at her wrists: She’s older…And, at his second: She’s heavier. He said, “You look so…” and surprised himself—“wonderful…!” Which was not what he’d started to say—but she did.

  “It’s so good to see you!” Barbara turned her smile on her ex-husband: “And it’s good to see you, Mike. It really is. It’s good to see you…both! Come in.” In blue flats, Barb stepped down a step. “Come in. Have a cup of coffee.”

  Mike said, “You want me to run Eric’s stuff up to wherever it is you’re—?”

  Barb came down the last step—

  —and Barbara and Eric hugged.

  It was sudden—and surprised Eric.

  “Oh, honey…it’s so good—so good to see you!” By Eric’s ear she sounded happy, and he was surprised to remember the deepening in her voice that signaled it. He hadn’t thought of it in the year-and-a-half since he’d last seen her in Florida. Eric didn’t particularly recognize her scent, but Barb had always liked different perfumes; and there wasn’t a lot of it. Eric felt awkward and pleased and…happy, too.

  Behind them, Mike laughed.

  When Eric stepped back, so did Barb. “I wasn’t expecting you to have…well, grown so. What were you doing this morning? Working on the car?”

  Eric realized that must be some automotive odor held over from the men at Turpens—which, he realized now, even he could smell. He smiled, trying not to
look proud. Barb looked at Mike and repeated: “How did he get so…?” But she kept an arm around Eric.

  Mike was smiling, too.

  She guided Eric up the steps and through the screen door. “Come in, you two. Meet Clem—and see where I work.”

  As they came in the side door, a country and western song Eric thought had been running through the back of his mind grew loud enough to recognize was coming from a booth CD player. The wood walled room had no air conditioning, but the tan blades of two ceiling fans turned above.

  It was a little cooler.

  In the room several men and a few women sat, most in booths along the side under the old faux-deco CD selectors, and three others at tables. Standing at the side counter, a heavy woman with orange hair, in another waitress smock, put down a coffee carafe on a tray covered with a checkered cloth, already stained with a spill.

  “Clem—this is my son, Eric. I told you about him. This is Clem—Mrs. Englert. She runs the place. She’s my boss.”

  “Clem Englert. Just call me Clem. Everybody here does.”

  Half the people in the room twisted in their seats.

  “Clem, this is Eric’s dad—Mike.”

  And Eric recognized the two fellows in the side booth: the tall unshaven one, who’d written where to show up for work on Bill’s paper, and the light-skinned black kid across from him, with torn-off sleeves—in this light slightly darker than Eric but with kinky tan hair, the fuzz of a beard, and green eyes, near hazel, like the tall one’s. Still bare, his feet were apart on the floor planks. It took seconds to recognize it was really them: Dynamite and Shit!

  At the truck stop john their names had been…well, eccentricities.

  In the seaside café they were absurdities.

  Eric stopped breathing. He stopped thinking. His vision momentarily fogged—but he didn’t stop walking. He blinked and looked away—only to realize then they had not looked at him any more than Ted had, back at the truck stop’s Parts & Notions.

  His arm stiffened, but Eric made himself relax it around his mother’s back, hoping she would think it shyness before these strangers.

  Last April, during spring vacation, the Sunday after the Saturday cocksucking marathon below the Atlanta highway, something had happened to Eric for the first time:

  In the direction away from the overhead highway, two blocks beyond Mr. Condotti’s, where Montoya crossed Rosemont, was Entin’s Coffee Shop and Hamburgers, the Lamp Store and the Tobacco and Newspaper shop, the package store, and Ford’s Little Five Points Market. Mike and Eric had been strolling down to Ford’s to pick up salad makings—they’d done the staple shopping two days earlier—and were half a block away, when Eric recognized, standing before the iron gate over the package store window, the homeless black man, whom Eric had blown and who had blown Eric and all the other homeless guys the previous afternoon behind the Verizon sign. As Eric and Mike walked up, Eric’s throat dried, his heart started to pound—and Eric thought: He’s looking for me!

  Eric did not glance at his dad, who was talking about last night’s game: The worst thing the Braves ever done was get rid of Ramirez. I mean, that was crazy! The worst thing they ever done! They gonna see. I’m not kiddin’—

  Eric’s forehead had begun to sweat. Drops ran under the back of his T-shirt. His legs began to shake. We don’t need to go to Ford’s now. Let’s go home. I’ll get salad stuff later—but he couldn’t speak.

  Though Eric had been engaging in public sex all over Atlanta, it was the first time that he’d run into an adult with whom he’d had a sexual encounter when a parent was present. He opened his mouth and breathed, because breathing only through his nose seemed, now, suffocating. Suppose the guy said, “Hey, man, your son was suckin’ my dick yesterday—and I was suckin’ his, too! They’re writin’ an article about it for one of them gay papers!” just to fuck with Eric. “Your boy’s a faggot. Not only that, he hangs out with me and I’m one, too. Someone was takin’ pictures of us on my cell phone, while we were doin’ it. Lemme show ’em to you. I got ’em right here—”

  They got closer. Eric thought: Am I going to fall down on the sidewalk—? He felt as if he might.

  The man turned and looked at them both—then extended his hand.

  It was all Eric could do to keep from knocking it aside. On one dark finger the man’s gold wedding band was as incongruous now as it had been the day before. His wife had found out and demanded he tell Mike…

  Mike halted, dug into his pocket, pulled out some change, and funneled three quarters, a nickel, and some pennies (for seconds Eric was sure they were going to shake hands: this had to be some set up arranged weeks ago…) from his own black fingers into the man’s brown palm. There you go, brother. You catch the Braves last night?

  Naw. From under the broken bill of his crushed tweed cap, the man glanced at Eric.

  And that was all.

  If Eric could have torn loose what moneys were in his own pockets and pushed them on the fellow, dropping to his knees to beg his silence, he would have—but what he did was grunt, Uh…

  Mike frowned over at Eric. What’d you say?

  Eric tried to whisper, Nothin’, but, it was only a mouth movement. Because Mike went on walking, Eric walked too—and did not fall.

  Then, somehow, the man was behind them.

  They were in Ford’s before Eric realized Mike’s had been an absurd question. The guy was homeless! Had Mike thought he’d caught the game in some bar on TV—?

  In Ford’s they ambled by slopes of oranges and peaches piled as high as their heads, by tables of strawberries and raspberries in clear punnets, by two square yards of misted blue berries across a table, under plastic lids. They brought three cucumbers and four pounds of tomatoes—Mike put them in Eric’s green basket with metal handles—three lemons, a head of romaine, a head of iceberg (they had celery and onions at home), some green and red peppers, and a bunch of radishes. (Paper or plastic? the Korean loader—she was a year ahead of Eric at the high school—asked, and Eric said, Paper, because he was conscientious.) Hugging the bag, Eric carried it out from the aisle, through the aluminum doors, and past the corner with Mike a step behind—the panhandler was now across the street, hand out over there. (As though, Eric realized, standing that close to the package store betrayed his goal too blatantly—which is when Eric realized the man had his own concerns, his own agenda…) Eric tried not to look and glanced anyway. Then he glanced again.

  Mike was back on the absurdity of Jake’s ideas on how to fix the Braves.

  Minutes later, they turned down the driveway beside Condotti’s. Having been rehearsing it for three blocks, Eric said, but at half the volume he’d intended, I gotta go to the bathroom. You wanna take this up to the kitchen?

  Sure, Mike said, as Eric handed him the grocery sack. Where Eric had been clutching it, the paper was sweated through and rubbed into little rolls, around a hole as big as the ham of Eric’s thumb. Mike frowned at it, then at Eric. You feelin’ okay?

  Yeah, I’m fine. He turned and hurried into the garage, not actually running—still afraid he might stumble.

  In his garage room Eric sat on his bed and for three minutes, mouth wide, only breathed, feet and fingers numb.

  And nothing had happened.

  Ten minutes later, he was still sitting, still thinking: had the man been as uncomfortable seeing Eric as Eric had been seeing him? Whether it was Hareem in East Texas, or Mr. Doubrey after some maintenance storage room session when the rest of the team had gone home, wasn’t it all about Don’t’ say nothin’, now, and If your parents find out, you’ll be really sorry. And I don’t mean just from me! It had never occurred to Eric before that anyone who could spill the beans might not. He began to review the men he remembered. (God, there were a lot of them!) Maybe the knife wielding German, yeah…But the other homeless guys? Hey, I’ve just been fuckin’ your boy…Wouldn’t they get in as much or more trouble than Eric, if anyone found out? Sure, Mike would be furious. But whatever
camaraderie and laughter was confined around the mattress behind the Verizon sign or in some men’s room encounter, downtown in the park, they could end up in jail! They had as many or more reasons to keep the secret as Eric. Finally, sitting up, Eric thought: You have to make sure you don’t, through your own fear, give things away. Sitting on his bed in the garage, it had taken Eric minutes to figure this out.

  Despite Eric’s having done a lot of growing up in the four months since, despite Eric’s exhortation in Atlanta that morning to Bill Bottom about the life he wanted, despite Eric’s exercises to make himself attractive to just these men, even with his considerable actions and experiences toward effecting it, and despite where his own not-particularly unusual sexual desires and emotional needs regularly carried him in a world of licentious adults who desired him back, Eric was still a sixteen-year-old with the fears, repressions, and sensitivities that made such freedoms seem of worth.

  Inside the Lighthouse door, with Barb beside him, Mike behind—and Shit and Dynamite in the booth at his vision’s edge—Eric thought (not looking at them), okay, they’re not going to do anything…now.

  But how had they gotten here so quickly? Had that back road been a shortcut?

  From in front of the counter, Clem released the carafe, turned, and said with surprise: “Good to meet you. Hello.” And then: “His father…?”

  “Hey, there, Clem. Good to meet you, too.” Mike smiled. “I brung Eric down to stay awhile with Barb.” Eric knew the plan was for him to live with Barbara six months or a year, but he also knew Mike was ready for it to go up in domestic chaos inside a month, if not a week.

  “Well,” Clem said, “I know she offered you a cup of coffee. The least we can do. Sit down. Enjoy it. You come down from the city?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mike said. “But the truth is, Barb, I need to get back up there as soon as I can. There’s somebody expecting me.”

  “Oh,” Barbara said, with a slightly raised head and knowing look. “Sure. Of course. But my shift here isn’t over for another hour-and-a-half. I was hoping you could wait around till then. Oh, I suppose, you could unload Eric’s stuff. I can take it up to the house when I get off—”