Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Eric’s response was not directly sexual. But chills rolled down behind his shoulders, his back. He looked at Shit, then Dynamite. “I still got that paper you gave me back at the truck stop.”

  “Good,” Dynamite said. “Hope you use it. Shit’d like that. So would I. It’d be nice to have a big strong feller like you givin’ us a hand. And it’s money—not a lot. But it’s better than nothin’. For the first three months, you get minimum. Not national minimum, either. Kyle Chamber of Commerce minimum: nine-fifty an hour. You keep it up for three months, and if it works out you’ll be on permanent salary. Then you’ll get the same as what Shit gets.”

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “How much money am I makin’ now?”

  “Twenty-seven. That’s assistant wages—but you stay on and you get cost-of-livin’ raises every eighteen months.”

  “Hey,” Eric said. “That’s not bad.”

  Looking intently, Shit dug a middle finger in an equatorially wide nostril, twisted it out, glanced at it, then sucked it. “They take your taxes out and send ’em in for you, and you don’t have to worry about none of that.” Again, Shit grinned—sheepishly at his thumb knuckles. “You know, half of what I’m talking here is bullshit.” Again looking at Eric, Shit lifted his butt a few inches—and farted, loudly. (Eric laughed. So did Dynamite.) “But the other half ain’t.”

  At the brief smell, again Eric got an erection.

  “Well, he won’t have to worry about that for a while—three months, anyway.” Dynamite said. “He may not like workin’ with us.”

  “Oh.” Shit sounded disappointed. “Yeah. But I hope you do. Hey.” He glanced at Eric. “I pick out my boogers an’ eat them suckers. You do it, too. Huh?”

  Eric blinked, surprised—not at somebody doing it so much as talking about it. He swallowed.

  “I wouldn’t do it at the Lighthouse, though, where your mama works,” Shit went on, “or nothin’ like that.”

  “That’s what I mean about rubbin’ folks noses in it.” Dynamite hauled on the wheel, while a sunlit patch moved over his thigh’s greyed and stained denim.

  “Oh,” Eric said. He thought: I can’t say it. Then, with that hysteria again, he thought: I can’t not say it. “Yeah…Hey, I want…I always wanted a friend. I mean one who I…could do that with.” Something had propelled him beyond a limit where logic no longer obtained.

  Dynamite drove as if he wasn’t listening—which, actually, imagining Mike, Eric found as hard to believe as he found the other.

  Shit looked over, blinking his green eyes. “You do? Would you gimme some of yours? I’d suck your dick some more, like we was doin’ in the john. I was gonna do it some more back then. But I didn’t get a chance. You can eat mine, too, any time you wanna.”

  “Fact is,” Dynamite added, “Shit talks about it, but he don’t do a whole lot of dick suckin’, either. He got to gee himself up for it.”

  “I suck dick, if it’s somebody I like. You know that. I sucked on yours enough. I don’t like gettin’ teased about it afterward, that’s all—like them fuckin’ niggers in the Dump is always doin’.”

  Still lookin’ ahead, Dynamite got a sly smile. “That must mean you don’t like me no more—’cause you ain’t sucked mine in a while.”

  “Sure, I like it,” Shit said. “But you jus’ like gettin’ fucked so much. And I love fuckin’ you. So we don’t hardly get to the suckin’ thing these days. That’s the only reason.” He looked at Eric. “But, yeah, for a hungry asshole like his, this pig fucker loves to get his dick sucked on, too. He fucks hisself with beer bottles, sometimes—you’ll see ’im. I think he’s happiest, though, when he’s the baloney in a goddam suckin’ and fuckin’ sandwich—like we was doin’ in the—”

  “Come on, Shit,” Dynamite said. “You don’t gotta go into all our business with ever’body you meet. Let him find out sumpin’ for hisself—” He glanced over at Eric. “It don’t gotta be no beer bottle. You can use a couple of goddam fingers. That’s good enough to get me off. You do anything with this boy, and he gotta tell everybody in the goddam Dump about it.”

  “Well, it’s true.” Shit’s grin got bigger. “If you like suckin’ or fuckin’, though, we can make you real happy. And me, I’ll fuck you any time you want. And you suck real good, there.”

  “Come on.” But Dynamite was smiling. “You’ll get this boy all excited again—and we done had our fun today.” Without looking from the road, he laughed. “You two was already tradin’ snot and cum, back at Turpens. Didn’t that calm you down?”

  “Oh,” Eric said. “Yeah, I guess, well…a little.”

  Shit put his hand on Eric’s tank top shoulder—and squeezed. (Again, Eric was surprised. It didn’t feel like a calm-down squeeze.)

  “Fuckin’ kids!” Still chuckling, Dynamite shook his head. “What calms a regular person down, just gets ’em hotter. Well, come on. We need to get this feller back to the Lighthouse.” Out the windshield, the sky burned gold behind lapped branches of darker and darker green.

  “You’re Dynamite’s…nephew?” Barb had called Morgan his nephew.

  Dynamite still looked out the windshield, as he drove. “Can you keep a secret, son?”

  Eric nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “He ain’t.” Dynamite chuckled. “Not really.”

  Eric looked back at Shit, who was grinning again. As they pulled around a turn, sun through the window moved over Dynamite’s fists, high on the wheel. Shining behind Shit’s beard, it made the tan momentarily look as blond as the boatman’s from the afternoon.

  “Oh,” Eric said, confused. Then he said, “I ain’t gonna tell my mom you give me that piece of paper about the job back at Turpens. I’m gonna say you told me I could work for you tonight, when we were drivin’ back from the house—here.”

  “Usually I don’t countenance kids lyin’ to their parents.” At the wheel Dynamite seemed to ponder. “But I don’t think that one’ll do no real harm.” Now he grimaced. “I mean, Turpens Truck Stop…? You ever go to that place, Shit?”

  Beside him, Shit said, “I been by it—maybe gone in there once or twice to use the bathroom, but I don’t never really go in there.”

  “Me neither,” Dynamite said. “I heard ’bout all sorts of nasty stuff goin’ on in the men’s rooms in that place—people wanna suck your pecker, stick their dick up your damned asshole—man, that’s gotta hurt!”

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “Hurts so good I bet you can hardly stand it.”

  Eric flinched—and looked down.

  Again Shit had dropped a hand between Eric’s legs—and was rubbing.

  Recovering from the surprise, Eric grinned; and, he realized, was not afraid of anything right now.

  With only one hand, Shit got Eric’s zipper down—once Eric reached down to help—and went in with heavy fingers to grip Eric’s penis, again grown hard. Eric looked at him, to see him smiling toward the windshield.

  Eric said, “I really like holdin’ onto yours. I mean, ’cause it’s so big. It makes mine feel like it’s bigger. What you get outta holdin’ onto mine, though?”

  “I dunno.” Shit shrugged. “’Cause it’s a dick, I guess. Maybe it makes mine feel even bigger than it is.”

  “Oh…!” Eric was surprised.

  With his other thumb, Shit pointed at Dynamite. “That’s what he used to tell me, back before mine got big like his. He used to hold it—we used to hold onto each other’s, I mean. You know, when we’d be in bed, goin’ to sleep together. Or just drivin’ around—like this.”

  Eric repeated, “Oh.”

  Then, shaking his head, Shit said, “God, Eric, you look so good suckin’ dick—’cause you so strong!”

  “Come on,” Dynamite said. “I told you. Don’t get this boy all worked up, now.” The pickup shook on the pinewood’s red-dirt road. With his darkly stubbled face full of gold light, Dynamite seemed to remember something. “Hey, you still got that load Al slipped you in that fuckin’ scumbag of his?”

  “Huh?
” Eric saw the garbage man’s knee flex. “Yeah.”

  Dynamite slowed the truck—

  Shit asked, eagerly: “Was you gonna do anything with it?”

  —to stop below over-arching trees.

  Shadows ceased moving on their laps and chests and arms.

  Eric glanced at Shit, who was grinning. “I dunno.”

  “You could drink it down—rub it all over yourself. Use it to jerk off with. That’s what Mex would’ve done with it, if Al done give it to him.”

  “Oh…”

  Dynamite said: “If you don’t got no ideas, though, you could give it to me.” At the wheel, he shrugged. “I kinda like wearin’ that nigger’s rubbers, once he comes in ’em. Me and Shit only got eight-and-a-half—each. So neither one of us got no problem slippin’ that elephant’s raincoat on. You can slide it on me right now, it you want. That means I’ll owe you—I’ll have to do somethin’ nice for you, the next time we fuck.”

  Eric said, “Okay…”

  The evening’s silence came through the halted pickup’s windows.

  Shit said, “Dynamite’s crazier than I am. He likes watchin’ people do nasty stuff—”

  “And you don’t?” Dynamite gave Shit a dry look. The truck stood by the immobile trees. “When I shoot in it, later, you know you gonna be wearin’ it next, soon as I finish. Go on—get it out.” He grinned at Eric. “If you still have it.” Holding the wheel with one hand, Dynamite put his arm back across the back seat. “Go on—take my dick out. Untie Al’s rubber—then slip it on me. Rub it around a little. When you’re finished, put my dick away again.”

  “Okay.” Eric went digging in his pocket. (Beside him, Shit chuckled. Again he was rubbing Eric’s shoulder.) Eric found the quarter-full rubber, wrinkled but intact.

  “Dr. Greene told me—” Dynamite swung his knees apart under the wheel—“that Al always comes so much ’cause he don’t got good control of his bladder muscles. I mean, if you ever seen him come, it looks like snot shootin’ out of a sneeze in November, but Dr. Greene says what comes out is a third cum, and the other two thirds is really piss. That’s why there’s so much. But, hell, that just makes it nastier.”

  Glancing at grinning Shit, Eric lay the thing, like a big slug, over Dynamite’s frayed and oil-spotted leg and began to work the button at the top of Dynamite’s fly. Then he tugged down the zipper. “You done this before…?” Reaching in (he’d already forgotten the man wore no underwear), he grasped the warm rope of Dynamite’s cock—half hard—to pull it free.

  “’Bout any time he gets a chance,” Shit said.

  “Aw, hell,” Dynamite said. “Maybe three times in the last year. That ain’t so much—”

  Again Eric picked up the rubber.

  “Like I said—” Shit turned to watch—“any time he can.”

  Opening Al’s knot was harder than he’d thought. But Eric did it—Dynamite had pretty much gone down by then. But Eric lifted the cock and slid it into the loose and liquid filled tube.

  “Go on, and rub that good stuff all around on it. Yeah, that feels nice.” (Eric massaged, while Dynamite’s cock hardened into the now familiar down-curved tower.) “How that look to you, Shit?”

  Shit’s hand on Eric’s bare shoulder had stilled. He’d pushed his fingers under the tank top strap and was leaning over to see. “Looks good,” Shit said, an inch away from Eric’s ear.

  “See, now—” Dynamite grinned at Eric—“Next time we fuck around, —I heard Jay say you like that dick cheese—so I think we’re gonna keep ’em skinned forward for you till we see you again. Ain’t we, Shit?” He looked back at Eric. “What you say to that?”

  Eagerly Shit nodded beside Eric’s cheek. Eric could tell by the way the beard moved against his face.

  Eric said, “Wow…You don’t mind doin’…stuff like that?”

  “Hell, no…!” Shit said. “His middle name is ‘nasty’.” Then his inverted triangular face—the same shape as Dynamite’s only the nose was three times as broad—came forward, and grinned as Eric looked over. “Dynamite Nasty Haskell. And both of mines is, too—first and last.”

  Beside Eric, Shit chuckled and squeezed his shoulder again.

  “Go on, now,” Dynamite said. “Put it away. So we can get goin’. I think I’ll wear this thing for a while.” He gave a grimace. “Thanks, son. That feels nice.”

  When Eric closed the zipper over it, Dynamite’s cock made an odd looking tent in his lap. A bigger and a smaller spot darkened the denim where it had leaked from the rubber’s collar. “Ain’t people gonna think you got somethin’ in there?” Eric asked.

  “Naw,” Dynamite said. “They’re just gonna think I dripped a little, puttin’ it away. I hope when we see you again, we can get some work done, too. I mean, you guys got to remember, we got some goddam garbage to haul—as well as all this fuckin’ around. It ain’t just about bein’ nasty—though, yeah—” and he half-frowned, half-grinned at Eric—“that’s a lot of it, too, I guess.” Dynamite sat up and started the truck.

  Shit’s hand had dropped to Eric’s groin, to rub. “Eric got a hard-on, too—like me.”

  “Yeah, well you always got a hard-on, nigger.” (Eric felt his own cock stiffen more.) “Come on.” Dynamite pulled around onto the roadside. “Don’t worry. I’m gonna let you get your dick in this thing, once I shoot in it later. Leave the boy alone, now—so there’s somethin’ to do for next time. He gonna be here awhile.”

  *

  When they walked into the Coffee & Egg, Barbara was taking a customer’s order. Eric glanced down and to the side—you could see Dynamite’s cock pushing denim forward. And the spots…

  But they were half dry by now. And what would anyone say…?

  Shit slid into a booth against the wall. Eric sat beside him on the outside. Across the table, as Dynamite sat, he pushed his rolled sleeves further up his hard arms, then folded his big hands on the tables planks. The neck of his T-shirt hung below the brown hair between his work shirt’s open collar and above the denim bib.

  On his shoe, again Eric felt Shit’s foot.

  Looking serious and unshaven, Dynamite said, “Don’t let that thing Shit does there on the floor bother you. He do that with ever’body he likes—Mex, Mama Grace, Jay. Even me: he’s got his other toes propped up on my shoe right now, under the damned table. It just means he’s comfortable.”

  “Oh,” Eric said. And smiled.

  Shit leaned against Eric. “That’s how our dog do—Uncle Tom. Back in the Dump. So I do it, too.”

  Dynamite looked up, as Barbara came over, two cups in one hand, one in the other. “Got his stuff all squared away, Mrs. Jeffers—right out there on your porch like you wanted. That’s gonna be nice.”

  “Thank you, so much. Mike got off okay?” She set the cups down. “Anyone want a piece of pie? Morgan? Mr. Haskell? We got peach, cherry, and pecan.” Barb’s smile grew richer when she looked at her son. “Eric? Really, that was awfully nice of you, Mr. Haskell.” She nodded. And asked again: “Morgan?”

  “Glad to do it, ma’am,” Dynamite said. “Really glad to. Naw, the coffee’s more than enough.” He poured milk from the aluminum creamer, then passed it to Shit, who poured in maybe three times as much. Neither of them picked up the glass sugar container with the metal top. (So Eric didn’t either.) “Your husband—the boy’s dad, there—is on his way.”

  “Really,” she repeated. “I can’t thank you enough,” dropping her own hand to Eric’s shoulder. (Its softness felt odd, after Shit’s rough grip.) “Sometimes I make him uncomfortable, I think—I mean Mike.” She sighed—in the kitchen a bell rang. “I wish I didn’t. There’s Darrell’s bearclaw.” She stepped back. “He likes it heated—” and turned toward the counter with its window into the back.

  “Hey.” Once more Shit leaned over toward Eric, his foot’s weight heavier, his whisper quieter: “I’m a bastard. What about you?”

  “Huh?” Eric said. “Oh, uh…well.” He dropped his own voice. “Yeah. I
guess so. I mean, no, Barb—my mother—and my real dad wasn’t—you know—married.” He added, “She married Mike.” Eric glanced across at Dynamite, but Shit was not trying to keep anything from him. So Eric didn’t either. “They’re divorced now.” Though he’d told Mr. Doubrey in gym, he never said that to anyone else in school—not even Scott.

  Shit was still leaning across the booth table.

  Eric had forgotten his smell—kind of like leather and vinegar. Driving back, he’d thought it was the truck cab—but now it brought back Turpens’ john. (The gasoline was Dynamite.) Well, whatever it was, he liked it.

  “I figured you might be one, ’cause your dad there is one real fuckin’ black nigger. I never knew her, but my mama was a nigger, too—weren’t she?” Shit said sotto voce to Dynamite across the table.

  “Your mama was a real nice colored lady,” Dynamite said quietly. “I told you enough times.”

  “Yeah.” Again Shit turned to Eric. “But I don’t think she was quite as colored as your dad.”

  “Maybe,” Dynamite said. “Not that it makes no never-mind.”

  Shit’s foot grew even heavier on Eric’s, as he leaned toward Dynamite and whispered: “Hey—how’s Al’s rubber feel on your dick?”

  Softly, Dynamite whispered back, “Nasty as hell. Some of it’s drippin’ down my balls.”

  “Don’t let it all run out,” Shit said. “I wanna get my dick in that nigger’s mess, too.” He grinned at Eric. “Next time he gives you one, you can wear it around. It’s fun. It keeps you harder than a damned cockring. We like to wear each other’s. Maybe you and me could trade off one of these sometimes.”

  Over the next hour and a half, the conversation started, stopped, started again, with stretches where they only sat and sipped sugarless, milky coffee.

  “You live near Barb—my mom?” Eric asked

  “Naw,” Shit told him. “We live about another mile-and-a-quarter southeast—in the Dump.”

  A few times both boys got to laughing and Dynamite leaned back and grinned. Eric tried to find out what there was to do in Diamond Harbor, only to realize soon, there wasn’t much—or, anyway, not much Shit and Dynamite were going to talk about in a place where Eric’s mother worked. Dynamite sat forward and again said under his breath, “You can wear each other’s used scumbags. That’s more fun than cow tippin’.”