Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  “Like drillin’ for oil,” Dynamite said. “Ain’t it?”

  At which point Eric reached the space between the little toe and the toe over. There was almost as much dirt between those two as in the wedge beside the big one. The broad nails were bitten or picked back from the quick as badly as on Dynamite’s hands.

  “Feels good, you runnin’ your finger down between them suckers,” Dynamite said. “Go on, do it some more. Then do Shit’s.”

  Shit poked at Eric’s shin with his own toe. While his feet were pretty soiled, they weren’t as bad as his dad’s.

  While he was fingering between Shit’s toes, Dynamite left his foot on Eric’s knee. “How you doin’ with the smell? You wanna kiss ’em, or sniff ’em, or hug on ’em, that’s all right with us. Suck ’em if you want. I promise.” (Probably because he went barefoot half the time, between Shit’s there wasn’t actual mud.) Dynamite chuckled. “We won’t tell.”

  “We ain’t got nobody to tell,” Shit said. “’Cept maybe Black Bull…and Whiteboy.”

  “We’ll let ’em find out on their own,” Dynamite said. He reached up and took Shit’s shoulder.

  “Naw.” Eric looked up and grinned. “That’s all right. That…looks a little better.”

  “Yeah,” Dynamite said. “That feels better, too. That could be part of your job every afternoon—if you wanted to take it on.”

  “I mean,” Shit added, “that’s some garbage we don’t need.” Shit pushed the wide ball of the foot Eric had finished with into Eric’s crotch. “I’m tryin’ to feel if you done come in your pants, yet. One friend of mine over at the Opera shoots a load in his jeans every time he gets to playin’ with them things.”

  “Hell,” Dynamite said. “Who does? I’ll have to go look ’im up.”

  “Fuck it,” Shit said. “I don’t remember his name.” He pushed his foot harder into Eric’s lap, scrunching his toes through Eric’s pants. “Hey, he’s got a hard-on, at least.” Shit reached down, grabbed Eric’s arm, and tugged him up. Dynamite’s foot slipped free; his heel hit the rug. Some of the dirt jarred loose from Dynamite wide foot.

  “Come on around here and get ya’ jeans off,” Shit said, while Dynamite swung up his feet and this time lay down on his back.

  Eric pulled loose from Shit and walked around to the other side of the bed to look down again at the twenty-five inches of stiffened bedding. Shaking his head, he said: “That’s fuckin’ impressive. It’s bigger than the one I used to keep on my wall in the john.”

  “Yeah, I figured you might like that.” Shit went on, swinging himself around onto the side of the mattress. “You get proud of that thing. And we do it a lot. Hey—most of it’s just jerkin’ off, me in the mornin’ and in the afternoon sometimes, and my dad—” with his chin, he indicated Dynamite—“at night.”

  Dynamite bounced over two or three times, to turn his naked butt toward them. And Shit pulled Eric forward on top of him. They stretched out beside Shit’s father.

  Twenty minutes later, naked Eric whispered into naked Shit’s neck, “You make me real happy; I wish I could make everybody else feel the same way.” The pillow’s ticking stuck from the ends of the mismatched cases, which probably weren’t the right sizes.

  Shit said, “You don’t gotta whisper. He can sleep through anything.” Besides bigger, the bed was more comfortable than either Eric’s, out on Barbara’s trailer porch, or his army cot in the Atlanta garage. “He don’t care—you can play with him now, if you want. See…?” Shit reached over his father’s faintly freckled hip to lift Dynamite, as, furrowing the hair on his chest with one hand, Dynamite rolled to face them.

  Eyes still closed, with one hand Dynamite reached, sleepily, to catch one or the other boy in a hug and muttered: “Yall sure make a racket when you shoot. Hey! Come on, Tom! Stop lickin’ my damned nuts! You sonofabitch! You can’t do that now! We got company! Get outta this goddam bed—!”

  “No—Don’t stop, just ’cause he say so!” Sitting up cross-legged on the bed, Shit laughed at his father. “Besides, that ain’t Tom.”

  Reaching down, Dynamite opened his eyes. “Oh…! That’s you?” Looking down over himself, his other hand came to grip Eric’s head.

  “He do that good, don’t he?” Shit said. “He was doin’ it to me, too. That’s how he got me off…See? He can take it all in.”

  “Goddamn!” Dynamite began to move his hips. “You suck like a nigger, son.”

  Shit said, “Like a good nigger, too.” He squinted at Dynamite. “So you got two niggers, now, you ol’ pig fucker—that’s what I call my dad ’cause he’s white. Hey, pig fucker, and one of your niggers is a white boy, too!”

  *

  As Eric was getting ready to go, he said, “Hey—why don’t you lemme wash your dishes before I leave?”

  Standing in the archway to the bedroom, Shit asked, “What you wanna do that for?” He had not put on any clothing.

  “So you’ll have a clean sink.” Eric and Dynamite had both put on theirs, though Eric’s shirt was still unbuttoned. “That looks like about a week’s worth.”

  “More like two,” Shit said.

  Dynamite smiled, the way you might at someone you’d just learned was a little simple. “I ain’t gonna say ‘no’ if you got your heart set on it.”

  “That’ll take you all afternoon,” Shit speculated. “Usually we just wash what we need—”

  “Fifteen minutes…?” Eric suggested. “You got a bottle of detergent in the corner there—and soap pads. And some sponges—” He turned on the water, which broke warmly over his wrist and chattered amicably over dishes, cups, and plates. He rubbed the soapy sponge on the inside of the sink and a peppery discoloration wiped free—as the water became too hot and he had to turn on some cold and squeezed an orange tear of detergent onto a sponge he was holding. Then he went into the sink with both hands. There were only two plates, two bowls, and two mugs, but the white enamel sink bottom, with black chips here and there, was covered with what looked every knife, fork, and spoon from three different and complete services for twelve. “I ain’t dryin’,” Eric said. “I’m just settin’ ’em in the drain rack. If those pots are still here tomorrow, maybe I might do some more.” Across one corner of the rack lay an upside down lid for a Dutch oven, open on the stove. The lid had something red stuck inside it, one circle in it charred black.

  “I won’t hold you to it. But you’re gonna shame Shit into cleanin’ up this place. The sink and stuff are supposed to be his job.”

  “No he ain’t,” Shit said. “I like watchin’ ’im do it.” He grinned at Eric. Eric grinned back. For the next ten minutes, while Eric worked through handfuls of soapy spoons and forks—now and again, water splattered his stomach, his jeans, his chest—and filled the silverware holder with clattering utensils. Falling water mumbled and argued and made jokes on the far side of comprehension.

  He ended, flinging three fingers full of dirty-dish gunk, scraped off the drain guard, into the garbage. “Okay, come on.”

  *

  It was maybe five-fifty when Eric got down from Dynamite’s pickup and climbed the slope to Barb’s. Barbara was sitting in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee—and a drink on the table beside her. “Hey, sweetheart—how was your first day?”

  “It was…really great!”

  “You know, it’s funny,” she said, pensively.

  Eric pulled out a chair and sat down across the table.

  “This afternoon—” outside a breeze’s rush rose and fell among the pines—“when all the guys came into the Lighthouse Egg & Bacon, there, for coffee, and I was standing by the counter, watching…this whole bunch of working men, crowding there in the booth, laughing and joking and I realized you were there in the middle of them…my own boy. I felt like it happened a little fast for me. It wasn’t supposed to be practically the day after you got here. I don’t know. Maybe that’s something you can’t ever be ready for—not the first time. But I’m glad it happened—”

 
“I didn’t leave any money for my coffee—”

  “I would have gone into the back and cried, if you had. No, that was fine. I should have given everybody free coffee this afternoon, to celebrate. But I didn’t think of that until later. Still it was…strange. I was very proud—in a whole new way. But it means—well—I don’t have a little boy any more. And that’s…good. That’s a good thing. You know, they come in there all the time. They’re nice young men. They joke and laugh and have a good time. Sometimes they make some rough jokes—but that’s how working men are. Basically they’re polite. They enjoy themselves. I know they work hard, too. But they’re still good boys, and you don’t ever hear about any of them getting in trouble.”

  “Probably that’s because half of us are gay—” Leaning forward on the chair back, Eric pushed his chest against crossed forearms.

  “Now I don’t know anything about that,” Barbara said, quickly. “But…” Again she slowed and took a sip from her cup. Ice had pretty much melted in her glass; only bits floated on the top. “I liked it, seeing them, and seeing you, in the middle of them. You looked like you were really happy.” She looked up, where Eric was smiling. “I don’t mean you were ever a mopey child—or an unhappy one. But I don’t have a lot of memories of you really…happy. It was nice—it was wonderful to see, Eric. Today. It took me a few minutes to figure that out. But I did. I really liked seeing you there like that.”

  “And I like it that you liked it.” Eric sat up. “Um…You got any thoughts about what to do for dinner?”

  Barbara frowned. “Actually, I haven’t. You know, your mother’s not a big evening eater. I snack pretty much all day long, down at Clem’s. But there’s still some chicken left in the refrigerator, if you want to slice some onions, put some lettuce and tomato on if and have another chicken sandwich—”

  “Sure.” Eric stood up. “That’s fine. Yeah. But I’m gonna grab a shower first.”

  * * *

  [11] ON ERIC’S THIRD day at work, after a two-hour stopover in the Dump (the second day the pots had not been touched; but nobody mentioned them, including Eric. The third day they had all been cleaned and stacked on a shelf above the sink; and Eric wondered if he was a good influence—or a nuisance), again at five-thirty Dynamite drove him home.

  When Eric came in and the truck was growling off outside, Barb said something to him he didn’t hear. Still, he called out, “Yeah,” and turned into the hall. The night before, she had taken the newspaper of dill from the refrigerator and left it on the counter, because she said the smell reminded her of her mother’s house in Hugantown. Eric had missed it that morning, so it had remained out. A year ago, in Atlanta, when making tomato salad, he’d learned that fresh herbs lost their scent quickly. Bill Bottom, actually, had suggested Ziplock bags to him, but Barbara had none in the house.

  The porch smelled of pine and creosote. Eric sat on the bed, lay down, and—

  “Honey, wake up! I told you, Ron is coming by. He’s taking us out to dinner—and you haven’t even showered. And, yes, you do smell—this time. Come on, sweetheart!”

  “Jesus…” Eric said. “I’m sorry. I forgot.” In truth he had no memory of it. “Couldn’t I just sleep—and meet him some other time?” Logily he sat up—

  “No!” Barb’s hair was wrapped in a blue towel. “Come on—jump in the shower, honey! I already turned the water on for you.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” He stood—and was actually dizzy.

  “Why did you go to sleep in your clothes anyway?”

  “’Cause I was tired—”

  “Honey, don’t be grumpy. I told you last night, Ron wants to take us over to Hemmings. For dinner. He’s looking forward to meeting you.”

  “But it’s my third day of work. I don’t wanna be late on my fourth.”

  Barbara looked wounded—

  “Okay. Really—” Eric said, “I’m sorry. I’m goin’ in the shower—right now. Sorry, Barb. Really.” He shook his head to clear it.

  In the rain of warm water, heating his neck, the backs of his arms, he began to feel better—though not by much. Then the hot water went cold. “Arggghh—!”

  “You okay?” Barb called from the living room.

  At least it woke him. Again on the yellow mat, toweling at himself, he called through the inch open bathroom door. “Can I wear jeans?”

  “If they’re clean, sweetheart.”

  Back on his porch, he was tempted not to put on any underwear. (Like Shit, if not, half the time, Dynamite…) He put on clean socks; then, sitting on his bed, he leaned down to tug down the Velcro fastenings on his runners. Eric found a brown short-sleeve shirt, still folded up, shook it out, and put it on. As he came into the hall, starting for the kitchen, a drop of water ran down the back of his neck—

  Only he realized his mother and someone else were sitting in the living room when he walked by.

  “Oh, hey—!” Eric stepped back.

  “Hi, sweetheart. This is Ron—my friend, I told you about…?”

  Eric smiled. “Hello.” (Yeah, he was black…) He stepped in on the woven black and orange rug.

  Barbara was sitting on the couch in a pale blue dress with a white jacket, something glittery up its edges. On the table beside her, she had a glass and had already offered Ron one, which he held in front of him in both hands.

  A tall, solid man, the color of a dark tobacco leaf, Ron sat forward in the easy chair, his knees wide. Forty or so, he was more good-looking than not, with full, rounded features. “Hello! I was just sayin’ to your mama—” He wore brown slacks, brown loafers, and a tan short-sleeve shirt, its color nearly that of Eric’s—“I’m takin’ you guys to a nice place tonight—I mean, it’s really somethin’!” He nodded. “Everybody says it’s as good as anything you could find up in the city. Understand, there ain’t a lot of choice down here. But this place just opened up about two months ago—in Hemmings. They got a great cook—his name is Ron, too. Like mine. Now what you think about that? By the way, I’m Ron Bodin.” He grinned over at Barb. “I don’t know what Ronny-the-cook’s last name is.”

  Since the man was smiling, Eric smiled back.

  Ron sipped his drink. “So this is the young fellow who Clem was sayin’ wants to get out of that funk and junk and stink and find a good job at a nice place with some air conditioning, and work with some nice people, where you don’t have to get up at four in the goddam mornin’.” Looking serious, he nodded at Eric. “Right?”

  “I’m okay…”

  “Aw, come on! You want nice things, don’t you? To have a nice house? Nice clothes? Be friends with nice people? Go to nice places—well, that’s a little hard to do if you’re a…refuse maintenance engineer.” He gave a loud laugh; then looked around again, as if for approval. “And in case you ain’t sure, that’s a fuckin’ shit shoveler!”

  Barbara said, “Oh, Ron…that isn’t nice.”

  “He knows what I mean! And especially in the Dump.”

  Though he didn’t say it, what jumped to Eric’s mind was: I work with two real nice guys…I fuck with ’em, too.

  But Barb looked serious and waited.

  Eric asked: “Is that what Barb said—my mom?”

  Ron ducked his head. “She didn’t have to say it!” His voice seemed bigger—more enthusiastic about everything it turned to—than Ron was, himself. “You’re a regular normal guy, ain’t you? You don’t wanna have to be no garbage man.”

  “Ron’s been talking to Clem,” Barb explained.

  “Oh,” Eric said. “Well…No—I like what I’m doin’…now: workin’ outdoors.”

  Barbara said, “We probably should get going, honey. We’ve been waiting for you for ten minutes. Ron made a reservation—we don’t want to be late.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry!” Eric felt certain he hadn’t been awake ten minutes. He couldn’t have been in the shower more than three. “Okay. Sure.”

  “Hey, it’s great to meet you, son!” Standing up bruskly, Ron held out his right
hand. Eric stepped forward to shake. Barb stood slowly.

  Through the kitchen, they went outside, where Ron’s four-door Lexus sat on the slope—Ron stopped to look at it, happily.

  So they did too—though Ron said nothing (Eric wondered how many months old it was)—with streaks of early evening reflected on its blue hood. Finally, Ron said, “You wanna hold the door for your mama?” Then he went around to the driver’s side.

  When Barb was in the front, next to Ron, Eric got in the back. He’d thought the shower had woken him. On the gray upholstery, enveloped in the motor’s hum, however, as they turned onto a still larger road, while Ron and Barb chatted and chuckled in the front, after minutes in the rear, Eric leaned back in the failing day, and closed his eyes.

  And was somewhere between an intense memory and a vivid dream of riding through the night in Dynamite’s pickup, with Shit beside him, holding Eric’s hand in his work-roughened fingers—

  —and woke, alone, slumped on blue plush. For a moment, staring at the window’s blank blue, he couldn’t tell if they were moving or not. Then, through the glass, black trees flicked by.

  Eric sat up.

  In the front, Ron and Barbara were talking too low to hear. On the highway, more trees were silhouetted against the evening. He could have been asleep two minutes or two hours.

  They drove through a collection of small houses. Turning in the front seat, Barbara said, “This is Hemmings, honey.” Holding back one side of her hair, his mother’s comb glittered. She did look nice, Eric thought. But why did they have to be going out this evening?

  Soon, they turned in at a driveway, by a two-story house with lights shining up from the lawn over the building’s white facade. Ron announced, “And this is Shells,” which was apparently the restaurant—the first Eric had heard its name clearly enough to repeat.

  Hanging beside the front steps was a sign not very different—Eric thought—from the one on the road that had said Turpens Truck Stop. It read, SHELLS, and below that, “Established 2007.” It was 2007, which seemed odd, unless it was the owners’ way of announcing they intended to be around awhile. As he got out on the gravel beside the grass, Eric frowned at the sky, overcast and gray. “What time is it?” he said in his mother’s direction.