Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Fleetingly, Eric thought of Frack pulling wide his black buttocks. Get yo’ face on in dere, now…cock beside his scrotum pendulating side to side like a trunk.

  Grinning, Mex nodded.

  “Hey—and I can call ’im any fuckin’ names I want to, too—in front of anyone I want. Don’t I, you shit-eatin’, wetback fuck-face? But you—” Jay frowned at Eric—“say one bad word about ’im. Just one, I’m not kiddin’, less’n I say you can, and I’ll bust you in your fuckin’ head. You hear me? I call him names, see, to let him know he’s wanted—it makes ’im feel good. Let’s ’im know he’s got some real fuckin’ respect. ’Cause if you can’t let respect go sometimes, then it means you don’t have it to let go of in the first place. And I respect this cut-down cheesy motherfucker more than anyone in the goddam world—you understand me?”

  “Un…yeah.” Eric nodded. “…I think so—”

  “Good. So you respect ’im too. Look here—?” Again releasing Mex, Jay pulled out his denim shirt on one side and lifted it, to show a wedge of hair stuck flat over his lower belly above his broad belt—“That’s where Mex cum all over me before we got up to walk down to the boathouse this mornin’.” With one hand, he started unbuttoning the rest of it. “I ain’t gonna wash that off at all. I’m gonna wear it off. That’s what you call commitment. It’s a…gay pride thing.”

  “Mmm…” Eric swallowed. Again, he’d begun to feel something in the conversation had moved over an edge that made him uncomfortable. Again, he tried to pull it back. “But you mean Shit and his…uncle really…really fuck around together in a public john? That’s…so awesome! I mean, with his own father—”

  “Uncle,” Jay corrected.

  “Yeah—I meant uncle.”

  Jay raised his palm to Mex’s pitted face. “Hey. Try some of this.” With Jay’s forefinger closing one of Mex’s nostril, then his thumb against the other, Mex snorted into Jay’s hand.

  “See, he knows what to do. We learned that with Shit.” Jay grunted. “Here.” And the hard palm was against Eric’s mouth. Eric thrust out his tongue for the mucasoid and crusty slur. “That’s right, puppy. Me, Mex, and his uncle all done that for Shit, at least since he was a little feller; we don’t mind doin’ it for you, too. But you start blabberin’ to folks an’ we ain’t gonna give you no more.” Jay with his gap, Mex with his yellow-white teeth, both grinned at Eric. “It’s that salt thing, right? That’s good, ain’t it? That’s what Shit and the three other snot jockeys I knowed all done told me.” Suddenly the menace seemed gone. “Dynamite’ll give you his, once he gets to know you—and he’s sure you want it. Hey, you and Shit can trade that stuff back and forth all you like. I’ve tasted it, but I ain’t into scarfin’ it down like it was no major food group. But none of us don’t mind obligin’ you puppies.”

  Eric looked up from Jay’s hard hand. “Jesus. I got a hard-on…again.” Reaching down, he adjusted himself.

  “Me too.” Again the big man chuckled. “I don’t have to ask about Mex.” He took his other arm from around the shorter man’s shoulder. “Probably so does Shit right now, wherever he is…by osmosis or somethin’.” Jay wiped his palm on the thigh of his jeans. “You think you can handle two in your mouth at once, like Mex was doin’ with us in the john? Or Shit?”

  Eric nodded. “Sure.” Another skill he’d learned under the Atlanta highway.

  “Then you’ll have some real fun with Shit and Dynamite. They’ll throw you all the dick you can handle. Now, ain’t him or Shit gonna force nothin’ on you. That’s Dynamite’s gay pride thing. He gets that from bein’ a dad. But they like to share—like me and Mex. Hey, you’ll have some good fun with ’em.”

  Raising both hands, Mex signed something.

  Jay glanced down.

  Eric looked up at Jay.

  Jay said, “He wants to know what you did with Al’s fuckin’ rubber full of nigger piss. You know—his jizz.”

  “Huh?”

  “That load he slipped you in his damned rubber, back at Turpens.”

  “Um…Oh,” Eric said. “Last night. I gave it to Dynamite—”

  Mex exploded in grunting laughter, half of it sound and half of it just expelled breath. Pulling away from Jay, he stepped around the morning’s wet dock boards, bending and recovering. Every three or four seconds, his hands moved into articulation, till he began to laugh and shake his head again.

  Jay was grinning, too. “He says he knew that was gonna happen. He said he knew that fuckin’ cum hound was gonna get that thing from you, one way or the other. I guess he was right, huh? Nigger cum ain’t safe around that white boy. Dynamite been that way since he was younger than you.”

  Shaking their heads, both boatmen went over to untie the scow.

  Then, moving onto the deck, Jay lowered his head under the chipped blue rim of the wheel shelter.

  Eric watched from the dock as the motor began to froth at the stern.

  “Hey,” Eric called, “it was good to see you again.”

  One foot on the low rail, Mex leaned an elbow on a knee and waved his other hand.

  “It was nice to see you, too, li’l feller,” Jay called back, hands wide apart on the wheel. Open in the back and half the sides, the partial enclosure was not quite a wheelhouse.

  “If you’re around the Lighthouse, we’ll be back in about two, two-and-a-quarter hours. That’s about what it takes for a round trip run out there—” he nodded toward the horizon, where water and sky came together at the stone colored seam, like a scratch along a fifth of the horizon—“to Gilead and back.” Jay was bending down to check stuff beside the wheel. Though the motor was going, the scow had not started moving. “Maybe you can take a trip out there with us soon, and see the island. The fare’s three dollars—but seniors and Chamber of Commerce employees ride free. That’s policy.”

  “Hey,” Eric said. “That’s…really awesome!”

  A truck—a Nissan Cube painted brown—rolled by, turning up the drive beside the post office.

  Standing again, Jay waved and called, “Hey, Wally—!”

  From the truck window, a black man’s naked arm came out and returned the hail.

  Eric didn’t see what Jay did, but the scow pulled from the planks and pilings. “So now you know where the Gilead Boat dock is—like you wanted,” Jay called across the water, two thirds of his voice cut away by the motor and the roar and ruffle of froth. “Say so long to Mrs. Jeffers for us.”

  *

  When Eric walked into the Lighthouse Coffee, Egg & Bacon, the blades on the ceiling fans were turning, and the cup was gone from the table where he had sat that morning. Two more couples sat at other booths. Five singles sat at center tables.

  The wall clock said eight-ten.

  In her smock and with her fluffy orange hair, Clem stood at the counter. “Good mornin’, Eric. I just sent your mom out on an errand for me. She’ll be back in twenty minutes. How’d you like your first night in Diamond Harbor?”

  “Mornin’, Ms. Englert,” Eric said. “It was fine. The sea air is nice. It’s okay if I sit down…?”

  “I don’t even want you to ask next time.” Clem laughed. “Sure—you sit anywhere. Now, I call you Eric. You got to call me Clem. Go on, sit down now. I don’t think we ever get that busy, at least not this year.”

  So Eric sat at a table across from the booths, wondering if he should ask for another cup of coffee—he didn’t want one.

  He’d been sitting two minutes, when Clem finished whatever she was doing with the big juice cans on the back shelf, and came around toward him. “Sometimes I think figuring how many breakfasts I’m actually gonna cook will run me nuts. I’m ready for six, and twenty-four people show up, every one of them wantin’ sausage and eggs! I lay in for two dozen—and maybe the next morning I get three. And all they want is bacon and toast.” She stopped by the table and frowned. “The next day everybody wants poached and toast—and the day after that nobody wants nothin’ but a muffin! Tell me, honey—I was talkin??
? to your mama just a little while ago. Do you really wanna be a garbage man?”

  Eric looked up. “Huh? What you mean?”

  “I mean it seems a strange job for such a fine young follow to go into. It’s so dirty, smelly—I was wonderin’ why you’d even consider something like that. That’s what you really want to do?”

  Eric smiled, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. “I dunno. I guess so. Why…not?”

  “Well, it’s good honest work. I’m not sayin’ it isn’t. Still, it’s not the most respectable job you could have. And Morgan and his uncle ain’t the most respectable people in the Harbor. It seems to me—” Clem went through several expressions and settled on a smile that Eric wondered if it wasn’t for some all-purpose explanation—“you’d want a job where some nice young ladies might look at you and say, well, what a fine young fellow he is. He’d make a real good provider—you know: someone with prospects. A good person to start a family with. I was only wonderin’ why you’d wanna work with someone livin’ over with all those…strange people—in the Dump. ’Course, with your dad, you could be used to it already. I don’t know. Maybe it’s different in Atlanta. But down here, you kinda get known by who you work with. I don’t mean to say there’s somethin’ wrong with Dynamite—or Morgan for that matter, though I always thought he was a little odd—but there must be somethin’ you could do that would…well, look a little better.”

  Eric said, “People need to get their garbage collected, don’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Clem said. “But do you need to be the person who collects it?”

  “Is the Dump all that bad?” Eric asked. “Is that the place they throw all the garbage?”

  Clem laughed. “Naw—it used to be, maybe back in the forties and fifties. But see, it’s like a welfare neighborhood—social assistance or somethin’. All the Chamber of Commerce people—at least a lot of them live there, thanks to the Kyle Foundation.”

  “Jay and Mex don’t live there—do they?”

  “Jay MacAmon? You met him today—?”

  Eric actually started to say “Yesterday.” But he caught himself and nodded.

  “He got a place on the island—but it’s the same difference. Almost.” She seemed to sense his discomfort, though she was probably not sure of its cause. “I mean, how old are you?”

  Eric said, “I’m sixteen. I’m gonna be seventeen on Saturday.”

  “You are?” Clem looked surprised. “Now, see—I thought you were already nineteen, like Morgan…even twenty-one or so. You’re just sixteen? You looked like you were a bit…well, older.”

  “Naw,” Eric said. “I ain’t.” Since he’d been progressing with the Bowflex workouts, Eric had grown used to people giving him between two and five extra years.

  “So—maybe it don’t make much difference. I mean, if it’s just for a summer job…I was gonna say, you could even ask Barbara’s friend, Ron, to see if he could get you a spot over in Runcible—you know, where you’d wear a clean shirt, a nice tie? And work in an office, like he does—with air conditioning.” She nodded deeply. “Don’t knock that air conditioning, son. Believe me that makes a big difference. I’d get it in here, if I could…”

  *

  When Barbara came back, with a brown paper sack of Granny Smiths for the afternoon’s cobbler, Eric told her that he was going up to the house—“No, not in the car. Don’t worry. I’m gonna walk—or jog some of it. At home, I’m gonna put my bike together and maybe ride down here again. Or—I dunno—around.”

  “You could put your stuff away, out on the porch,” Barb said.

  “Or do a workout. Or…yeah, put some stuff away.” Though he wondered where he was supposed to put it.

  “At least,” Barb said, “move it out of the middle of the porch floor.” Then she frowned. “Going up there, you won’t get lost?”

  Eric gave her a look, then laughed.

  “All right,” she said. “But try to be there when I get home—would you? I don’t want to have to start worrying about you—not for the first few days, at least.”

  “Okay,” he said. “That’ll be my first job. Not to worry you.”

  * * *

  [8] ON FRONT STREET, Eric started jogging, took the turnoff he thought would take him up to Barb’s, got twenty yards along it and, beside a bank of quivering Queen Anne’s lace, realized, in the passing breeze, it wasn’t the right one: it was the road that had put Mike out on Front Street when they’d been briefly lost. So he went back—the one he wanted was the next double rutted path. He set himself a medium gait—but after ten minutes, had to stop.

  It was all uphill.

  Following car tracks over a meadow, he did fine. (Clem had said it was between two and three miles, and even though he’d walked more than half of it rather than run, soon he was at the pine-wood slope up to the house. It had taken maybe forty-five minutes.) Well, he thought, pushing into the kitchen, at least now he knew his way into town—and back.

  He didn’t put his bike together.

  Eric lay down on his porch bed, jerked off, slept about forty minutes, woke logily, and decided, “Naw, this ain’t no good,” got up, moved some of the boxes up to the wall with the screen, then thought, “That’s stupid. Suppose it rains,” and moved them back against the other wall that was the house. He put the front wheel on the bike but not the back one, which was marginally more difficult because of the chain, set it in the corner, then did the last set-up needed for the Bowflex—and (finally) another workout.

  It was hot, so he swabbed under his arms with yesterday’s balled up tank top, wet a towel in the sink and wiped himself down, then started a laundry pile in the porch corner.

  After that he felt better.

  *

  At five minutes after five when Barbara stepped in, she wrinkled her nose and said, “Honey, did you burn something on the stove?” and walked across to the small television at the back of the counter to flip it on.

  Eric sat in the chair by the table. “Burn what? No.”

  “’Cause I smell something.”

  “I cooked the chicken.”

  “How?” she asked, surprised and automatically.

  “I roasted it,” Eric said. “In the oven.”

  Barb looked surprised.

  Eric got up, went to the counter, where a tray was covered with a piece of wax paper. “I sliced up half of it—and made some tomato salad, too, like Grandma showed me, back in Hugantown. You remember. You always liked that. So did I.” He opened the refrigerator, and took out the bowl. “You got mayonnaise and mustard and stuff. We can make sandwiches—if you want. That’s what dad always liked, when I’d cook a chicken for him. Or we can have it plain, if you want.”

  “Um…” Then Barbara smiled. “It smells…good,” she admitted. “I thought it was burnt ’cause I wasn’t expecting it, I guess. That’s all.”

  Eric grinned back. “You’re forgiven.” He put the tray on the table, where he’d laid out silverware and napkins. “You said you wanted to eat a little earlier. That’s why I decided to try and have it ready when you got home.”

  Barb said, “You didn’t set the table.”

  “Come on. Sit down.” Eric said, “I was going to, when you walked in.”

  Barb came to the table and—almost cautiously—pulled out a chair. “What did you do all afternoon?” She moved away suddenly, went to the sink, and turned on the water—to wash her hands.

  “I took a nap,” Eric said, “actually. Then I did a workout, on the machine. You want some lemonade? I made a pitcher—it’s in the refrigerator. Do you have glasses? I couldn’t find ’em.”

  “Oh—I’ve only got those ugly plastic ones.”

  “Where?”

  “You didn’t see them? In the cabinet under the drawers—over there.”

  “That must be the one place I didn’t look.” Eric went to the refrigerator and took out the metal pitcher. Ice clinked against the sides as he brought it to the table. “You want to get them out???
?

  “Did you take a shower after your workout?”

  “Um,” Eric said, carefully. “No.”

  “You know you really have to start doing that.”

  “Why?” he asked. “I’ll take one tonight, don’t worry.”

  “Well, you’ll smell, honey.” She closed the tap on the back of the sink and turned around.

  Eric stood there, smiling. He held his hands apart and open, questioningly. “Do I smell?”

  She took in a deep breath that seemed more exasperation than an attempt to detect odor. “No…”

  “Well, then?”

  “But you might smell, sweetheart. And it would be a nice thing to do—especially when you’re going to cook.”

  “I washed my hands,” Eric said, not sure, actually, if he had or not.

  Barbara stepped around him and turned to the table.

  On the little TV screen under the upper cabinet, the Weather Channel showed a tornado’s funnel, leaning, blurring, sending up a froth of dust and debris as it plowed along some horizon, beyond a truck with a dish antenna in the back, cameras, and—standing in the bed and staring toward the storm—young folks with binoculars, ponchos, rainhats, and knapsacks.

  Barb hadn’t gotten the glasses, so he went to the cabinet door beneath the drawers she had pointed to, squatted, and opened it. He took out a large, blue plastic tumbler. “These…?” he asked, holding it up for her to see.

  “Yeah, I…guess so.” (He came up with two.) “I wish I had some nicer ones. You know your father—Mike, I mean—used to have a very strong body odor, when he worked hard. Or even exercised. I mean, it could sneak up on you and surprise you. A couple of times, I remember, I was actually shocked—”

  “But Dad didn’t do a workout this afternoon,” Eric said. “I did.” He remembered his father’s smell, acidic, and, yes, surprising in its intensity. When Eric had been seven and eight and they’d visited Uncle Omar in Texas, he’d loved the way Mike smelled when he got home from work at the filling station and would sit Eric on one knee and Harry on the other and read another chapter from Uncle Omar’s old Tarzan books, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, or Tarzan and the Golden Lion, and how Mike would kind of snicker under his breath, as though it were a joke, whenever he read out a passage where the white men got mad and called the natives block-headed niggers, as though its humor went over the boys’ heads: Now, I don’t wanna hear you fellas talkin’ like that, though Uncle Omar talked that way to and about everyone, including Ralphy and Hareem and Eric, not to mention Lurlene and Mike. Sometimes Eric felt everyone was in on it except himself…