Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  “Between his knees, you mean.” Eric turned over another meat patty.

  “I just know he was white, about seven and a half feet tall, and his cock was bigger than a goddam can of Foster’s beer—which they don’t make no more—and that ain’t countin’ three more inches of the cheesiest skin you ever sucked on like a spigot hangin’ off the end. And all you had to do was smile at ’im and he’d pee in your mouth, so when you look at our friend there flippin’ burgers today, remember he done spent a few years in paradise around that boy. More, Haystack didn’t care how close you wanted to get up and watch ’im do whatever he was doin’, suckin’ ’im, or fuckin’ ’im, or lettin’ him fuck you—he’d let me joggle on his nuts (with my hands or with my toes), or scratch his hairy back (he said that was almost better than sex)—so I got a kick out of him too with Eric. And all you had to do is snap your fingers and he’d shit right in your hand—if that was what you wanted. And there were times I did. It can’t mean nothin’ to you, I know, but every so often for the three years he was in Opera, you’d hear somebody gasp or grunt, ‘Oh, Jesus!’ or ‘Oh, my Lord!’ and you knew some newcomer had collided with Haystack’s meat for the first time—as dumb as a brick and as friendly as a puppy, too. Back then he was about your age, maybe twenty-five years old—or even twenty-six or twenty-seven. But if you didn’t know what you was getting’ into, the first time that boy grinned and pulled aside the eighteen inch rip in his jeans, you could have an apoplexy!”

  Eric took a great breath. “‘Peace and truth are the foundation of the world.’” He turned back to the grill. “Even when you’re arguin’ about big dicks.”

  At the table, Caleb looked up, smiling. “But that ain’t Spinoza. That was…carved on the stone lintel over a doorway in a merchant’s house Spinoza used to visit with his father, when he was a kid. At least I remember that. He’d see it every time he went there. Probably it had an effect on him. I remember that from some book or other I read.”

  “Oh,” Eric said. “Now I can’t remember if I knew that or not.” He spatulaed the last burgers onto a platter at the table, then stretched. “You know, not only am I a good cocksucker; I’m a good fuck, too. At least you always said I was.”

  Shit said, “I think the only reason Haystack stayed out of trouble was ’cause he was always too busy jerkin’ off. Like me. And he was a hit at the Opera ’cause he loved guys to play with ’im—just like a little kid. Especially if it involved his dick.”

  Eric said, “Back when he was still alive, our dad—Shit’s dad, anyway—used to say, ‘Show me a kid who beats off more than ten times a day, and I’ll show you somebody who’s too busy to get in trouble—long as the wrong people don’t catch him at it.’”

  “I guess I probably shoulda done more jerkin’ off, then—that way I wouldn’t have been such a hellion when I was a pipsqueak.” Caleb laughed. “I was in court three times before I was sixteen. I don’t know why I never ended up in jail.”

  “Hey,” Shit asked, “we got time to jerk off, once, before you finish them things up? I bet I could get this nigger here all excited, just talkin’ nasty to ’im. Like I used to do with you. That’d really tickle me. You know how it feels so nice, boy, before the sun gets up, when you slide down in the bed between us and start suckin’ on my dick—”

  “No,” Eric said. “You do not have time. Caleb could probably do it.” He nodded toward the young man. “But it would take you at least half an hour—if not forty minutes. And they’re done—now!”

  Once more Caleb laughed. “You ol’ guys are a hoot!”

  *

  Eventually, Caleb convinced Shit and Eric to go see the first of Jackson’s three Ring films at the Opera House. (Eric had never seen any of them; Shit didn’t remember ever having heard of them.) So they went. The showing ran over two days: the first was The Fellowship of the Ring, with the first half of The Two Towers. The second day they’d come back and start with the second half of The Two Towers and go on through The Return of the King. Eric told them, “If you never seen it, it probably helps if you know a little bit about it first. You see, some ancient magicians made these twelve rings, and one of them—”

  After a few minutes on the boat deck, standing at the rail, Shit asked, “If you never seen ’em, how come you know so much about ’em?”

  “’Cause everybody in two different schools I went to had seen ’em about three dozen times a piece. Besides, I read the books.”

  “You actually remember all that from a book you read all those years ago, from before you got here?” Shit wanted to know.

  “Three books,” Eric said, “actually.”

  “Well, damn…” Shit said. “That’s probably even harder, ain’t it? You know every time I decide this scumsuckin’ motherfucker is just full of bullshit with all his readin’ and crap, it turns out he actually knows somethin’.” Shit shook his head—and Caleb laughed.

  On the boat over, mostly they talked of showing Caleb their old quarters upstairs above the Opera House’s projection room.

  “The theater’s got an old lounge, downstairs, and a big old tile and mirrored rest room—they closed up the women’s room, but it was even grander—”

  “That makes me remember the first time I ever seen Haystack. I’d just come in there, about five or six in the mornin’, to mop the floors, and there he was, squattin’ on one of the commodes—seven and a half feet tall, almost three hundred and fifty pounds, his big, dirty bare feet practically wrapped around the circular seat on the top and hands on ’im like backhoe shovels over his knees. I told him, ‘Hey, son. You don’t need to squat on that thing. We keep ’em pretty clean around here.’

  “And the first thing he said to me was, ‘It ain’t the dirt. But if I sit right down, my pecker hangs about three or four inches into the water—and it’s cold.’ Then he puts one foot down on the tile, leans forward, and stands up and puts the other one down—and I damned near swallowed my tongue, ’cause I seen he wasn’t lyin’!” Shit shook his head. He looked around at sky, as if the ferry sailed through the pearl time. “I’d already noticed he was one of those guys who chewed on his toenails and his fingernails both, pretty much like I do and my daddy did, and I confess it made me kinda cotton to ’im.”

  “Me too, when I met him a little later.” Eric grinned. “Anyway, the place has got an orchestra and two balconies. They still called the back of the top balcony ‘Nigger Heaven,’ ’cause that’s where all the black people—like you two—had to sit, back when there was segregation. They had regular fold up wooden chairs, up there—not them real comfortable padded theater seats, either. I used to clean up in the upper part of the theater, and Shit used to keep the basement and the orchestra clean. Sometimes we’d switch off there. But he didn’t like workin’ in the upper part of the theater.”

  “Because of that ‘Nigger Heaven’ place?” Caleb asked. “That would’a made me uncomfortable, too, I think.”

  “Naw,” Shit said. “It wasn’t that. I just don’t like high places.” He frowned at the approaching shore. “Sometimes I wonder what happened to Haystack…”

  “But you said you lived up there—”

  “Yeah, but that was in an apartment. With walls and everything—closed in. You got to it with a stairwell, with walls on both sides. It wasn’t open—so you could run down the aisle and dive over the rail. That’s the kinda place I like to stay away from—”

  “Unless—” Eric laughed—“somethin’ really interestin’ was goin’ on up there. Like the Breakfast Club.”

  Shit gave him a sour look.

  “That Nigger Heaven thing used to bother me.” Eric changed his position. “Well, not bother me. ’Cause it wasn’t workin’ no more—I mean the way it used to, historically. Though a lotta time there was more black guys up there than downstairs.”

  “See,” Shit said, “that’s where they went when they got tired of the white guys down from Atlanta who wanted to suck on some black meat. The white guys who didn’t wanna be
bothered, never figured out that they could escape a lotta bother just by goin’ up there. They just got grumpy. They wasn’t too bright—like I done told you: Haystack. But we had guys comin’ in, especially at the end when they started writin’ newspaper articles about the place, drivin’ five and six hours in a day just to hang out there—”

  “But sometimes—when we first started—” Eric changed his position against the rail again—“I would stand up there and look around at it—Nigger Heaven—and try to imagine slaves comin’ there with their masters and goin’ upstairs to watch while their masters sat downstairs in the comfortable seats—or, later, just regular black folk who wanted to hear the opera or see the show or the movie…I mean, before they had the fuck films goin’ in that place.” Gulls swooped above the boat. Behind them water rushed away. “Finally, though, I’d go and clean it up, mop the cum off the floor—sometimes, if it was a nice big puddle, I’d wonder which one of them black sonofabitches left it. And wonder if I could get to ’im next time, ’fore he finished up. I mean, it wasn’t like they didn’t wanna be bothered at all. They just didn’t wanna be bothered a lot. Besides, most of ’em knew me and what I could do. Probably that made it easier—on us both.”

  The three of them grinned.

  “After thirteen years,” Eric said, “you get used to almost anything—I guess.”

  When they climbed from the bus in front of the Runcible theater, the first Eric saw was that the marquee had been torn away. Above the steel fire doors that had replaced the glass and molded ones, sawed-off stubs from the beams once holding it up thrust from the crumbling façade.

  “You sure this is the right building…?” Shit wanted to know.

  Before the theater, laughing and chatting about other films in the series, the audience milled. The ticket booth was gone, but you could see a rusted discoloration where it had stood on the broken pavement.

  More than a dozen young men had come with transparent pastel crotch panels—the first time Eric had seen anyone wear them other than on the beach. “Damn,” Shit whispered, “they’re all so small.”

  “I think,” Eric said, “that’s the fashion. Only guys who don’t really got no meat at all wear ’em. It’s kind of a…I don’t know: a rebellion. Like ‘Fuck you! This is what I got! Live with it!’”

  Shit frowned. “Well, I guess I ain’t got no choice…”

  Caleb chuckled.

  Shit rubbed the back of his neck. “You remember when ladies first started goin’ around everywhere with no tops on?” A group of seven or eight topless teenage girls were all laughing together near the wall, where Eric recognized a piece of scrolled stonework. Most of it had been taken down.

  “Sure.” Eric nodded. “That took me a little while to get used to.”

  Caleb looked up at the broken second-floor windows, backed with blue plastic. “I don’t. That’s been all my life.”

  Suddenly Eric frowned. “Hold on a minute…?”

  “Where you goin’?” Shit asked.

  “No place…” He started up the block through the crowded.

  At the corner, yes, was where Cave et Aude had once stood. And right where that lot now collected chicken-wire, broken brick, plaster lumps, glass, and rubble, that’s where the clinic had been where he’d had his wisdom teeth out. Him and Shit both—and Dynamite…

  He looked down at the corner pavement. Two posts—two hitching posts. Yes, they’d been there when he’d gotten there and, as far as he remembered, when they’d left.

  Nothing stood there now.

  Then, as he looked down the sidewalk pavement, he saw three circles filled with cement. Eric began to smile. Okay, they weren’t standing any longer. But certainly that’s where they’d stood…? Yes, and there’d been two, with horse heads, tarnished black, and a space for a third.

  Eric turned and started back down the street, among the gathered folks, till he saw Shit and Caleb. Caleb was the one who asked, “What were you lookin’ for?”

  Eric shook his head. “Nothin’.”

  “You try and figure it out,” Shit said, “you’ll be here all day. And don’t ask him to explain, neither. That way we’ll never get inside and see the damned movie…”

  The crowd had begun to push through the opened-back doors, into bare lobby, and on into the theater space—

  Every third or fifth chair was broken or missing and the floor was scattered with filth and old plaster. Someone had cleaned out half the orchestra, though. Every working seat was taken.

  Shit was so upset at the theater’s state—“Now, this place was okay for a hundred years! Can you imagine if we done let it get like this? Jesus Christ! But…what? Only twenty, thirty years more, and it’s like…this?”—Eric was sure he wouldn’t be paying much attention to the movie. “Hell, that ain’t no time at all!”

  At least, Eric thought, he’d found a trace of something familiar…

  The audience was mostly young people, under fifty or outright kids, who, once the film started, loved it, applauding, laughing, cheering all through. For the beginning of the film, somehow they’d gotten hold of an ancient filmed announcement, which showed a quivering line across the screen, and to the sound of, first, a crying baby, then laughter, then talking, came the announcement in a northern accent: “Don’t spoil the movie by creating your own soundtrack!” Here and there, people who remembered when cell phones didn’t simply buzz in your ear but sounded out of whatever pocket the clumsy contraptions hung in, laughed.

  In the first intermission, Shit had gone down to the restroom and when he came up, Eric realized he was stonily silent—though likely Caleb didn’t notice.

  Once, after the second intermission, when the second film started, Caleb leaned over and whispered to Shit, “Gollum’s hands look kinda like yours, Mr. Haskell. I mean that old blue fella bites his nails almost as bad as you do.”

  On Shit’s other side, Eric leaned over to add, “So does Frodo,” wondering if Shit was picking up on the way Frodo and Gollum were supposed to be two sides of one character, as Gollum himself was a divided soul.

  Looking up at the screen, Shit said, “Aw, neither of them boys knows nothin’ about how to get them things right. Me or my daddy, either one of us, coulda showed them a thing or two about real nail bitin’,” which was true. He humphed. “Haystack coulda, too.”

  But at least, Eric reflected, Shit seemed to have gotten himself back together after whatever had happened downstairs.

  Again, Caleb whispered, “Your hands—and your feet—are almost as big as his. Only you’re a lot better lookin’ than he is.”

  “I should hope so,” Shit said, Then, wonderingly he added, “This movie sure goes on a long time about ever’thing, don’t it? Some of the music’s nice, though.”

  Returning to Gilead that night on the ferry, when Caleb had gone to look at something at the front of the boat and Shit and Eric were alone for a couple of minutes, Eric asked him what had happened down in the john, but he wouldn’t talk about it. Back on Gilead, Shit refused to go the next day. He said it was just that he couldn’t take seeing the theater in that condition again—it was that, not the movie. Pretty uncomfortable about it himself, Eric stayed home with him. “I did like them fireworks,” Shit confessed, “there in the beginning, in the first part, I mean. But after that, it was just a lot of people runnin’ around and bangin’ on everybody with swords. I got tired of that pretty fast. What was that ‘pipeweed’ stuff, anyway? Marijuana?” They hadn’t even tried to get upstairs.

  Caleb went the next day, though.

  When he got back, he said he’d had fun. Really, it was a' interesting old building, he said. This time, after it was over, he’d made an effort to get upstairs—and was sorry they wouldn’t let you into any of the upper balconies anymore, which apparently were no longer safe. At least that’s what sign had said.

  Sitting in the doorstep, half in and half out of the sun, Shit didn’t say anything.

  *

  Not quite a year late
r, hours after Caleb had left the island on Ed’s boat to start his trip to Tallahassee and back to graduate school, to which he’d finally applied and been accepted, Shit and Eric looked down from Gilead Bluff over the Settlement’s houses—half of them built in the last six years. Shit had his arm around Eric’s shoulder. “Damn—I feel like we had us our own kid, here.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. He glanced at Shit. Something that Eric had thought about saying a number of times over the last three years, but never had—mostly because he always had assumed Shit was thinking the same thing. “He was kinda different from Gus, there—wasn’t he?”

  But, this time, the expected moment of telepathy did not occur. “Gus?” Shit frowned. “What do you mean? Who’s Gus?”

  “You don’t remember Gus—who stayed with us a little while, back in thirty-three?”

  “Thirty-three—that’s a long time ago.”

  “It ain’t that long, Shit—twenty-five years.”

  “Man, I always thought you was good at math. That was thirty-five years ago—”

  “Well, that’s what I meant.”

  “And we had somebody livin’ with us?”

  “Yeah, back on the mainland—when we had the apartment, right above the projection room in the theater?”

  “I don’t remember no Gus.” Shit’s frown deepened.

  “Okay,” Eric said, and let his own expression become a (frustrated) smile. “Like I said, it wasn’t quite the same thing. Besides, it was only for a couple of weeks—not a couple of years. We met her out here, on the island. It was right when the Three Bombs come. We took her back with us ’cause she was all upset about it. She got you off somewhere, and ’cause she was cryin’ and everything about it, you got to fuckin’ on her, and she said that made her feel better. So you wanted to take her home with us, when they said we could open up the Opera House again. You don’t remember that?”

  “Where’d this Gus sleep?”

  “Right in the bed with us—so we could all fuck. Which I thought, at least for a while, you was enjoyin’. She seemed to be. And she didn’t mind me putting my seven inches in, at least as long as we were all together. You really don’t remember that?”