Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  “Oh, wow…Look at that! Oh, fuck—look…!”

  From the corner of his eye, Eric saw Shit reach forward with one hand. Shit took hold of his chin, to position Eric’s jaw. Then he slid one, then two fingers into Eric’s flooded mouth, before taking them out, to suck them, then dropped his hand. “Oh, Jesus…!”

  From the steps, Whiteboy said, “That turns Shit on. See how he’s really jerkin’ off, there?” (But because his head was up, it was outside Eric’s line of sight.) “Naw, Tom. Stay on back here! With me.”

  Up on the porch, Bull glanced at Dynamite. “Look at that. Shit there’s gonna blow a load all over your piss-guzzler’s knee, pig fucker!”

  “Hey!” Shit’s fist sped up—at least Eric glimpsed the motion in his shoulder and upper arm increase. “Is it…all right if I…do that?” Eric could hear Shit was breathing hard.

  “Go on…” Dynamite said, almost with wonder.

  Bull said, “You can do anything to ’im you want, far as I’m concerned—if it’s okay with your dad.” Again Bull looked down at Eric.

  “That feel good, boy?”

  Eric nodded without spilling anything. Warm urine ran down his neck, his chest, his shoulder, electrically exciting. He swallowed again, again. Looking up at Dynamite, he hoped to see him smile. But the garbage man’s unshaven face held the frown of a man taking a math test.

  “Hey, Dynamite—” Bull laughed—“you piss in this boy’s mouth, now.”

  Dynamite took his dick in his hand. (Had he solved the equation…?) He put his other hand on Bull’s shoulder. “Goddam, boy—” which went down to Eric (and again made Eric’s shoulder’s tingle)—“I hope you’re really ready.”

  From the porch, Dynamite’s stream joined Bull’s. (It was a wider stream than Bull’s…) For three seconds the cave of Eric’s mouth overflowed, to run like warm fingers rubbing the left of his jaw, his neck, his back—until Eric began to swallow twice as fast. Every third swallow, he managed another breath.

  Above him, Bull’s stream lightened. “Aw, see, now—” He chuckled—“I can’t keep up with you.”

  Shit crouched further. “Oh, look—look at Eric drink that piss! Oh, fuck—!” Shit’s fist sped to invisibility. “Wow!” Semen hit Eric’s thigh, a hotter temperature as it struck, a thicker consistency as it rolled.

  Bull’s stream ran out. “Hey, next time, Shit, maybe I’ll do some more beatin’ on your black ass—” Bull shook his cock.

  Eric glimpsed Shit give Bull a sour look, then turn away toward Eric, with his usual post-orgasmic smile.

  Dynamite’s stream ran thicker, wider, harder.

  “Hey, that sure looks good!” Now Dynamite…laughed.

  It went on a long time. Somewhere in it, Bull tromped down the steps. “Hey, Whiteboy—give ’em back their damned dog. Come on. We still got work to do.”

  “Un-huh,” Whiteboy said. “Yeah, I’m with you, Bull—” Someone tromped down in the leaves; then a pause…

  “Come on!” Probably the leash jerked. “Get on over here, now—you stupid scumbag.”

  “Un-huh…un-huh! Yeah, Bull—” with a tone Eric now heard as contentment.

  When—at last—Dynamite’s wide stream weakened, thinned, dripped, then halted, Shit had gone halfway up the stairs. Tom was on the porch again, head between the newels, now looking down, now looking out among the trees.

  Eric swallowed and coughed. And gasped—and coughed again. “Oh, wow—!” He blinked at Dynamite, who stood watching him, bony hips and hairy legs below the T-shirt’s raggedy hem.

  Eric rubbed his face—and took a step back—then another, forward. He really didn’t know what to do.

  Dynamite said, “Come on up here, son.”

  Eric started up the steps, holding the rail, the paint rough and dry beneath his bare feet.

  Dynamite reached down, caught Eric’s arm and, as he tugged him up on the top step, moved with him back from the edge—

  His arms went around Eric, who hardened in response.

  Eric hugged Dynamite tightly back.

  Dynamite flexed his hips against Eric. “How you feelin’, now? Is that what you been wantin’?”

  Because he was breathing so hard, Eric nodded. “Yeah…” Saying it, he still got chills.

  Dynamite’s voice was rough and low and—was it?—slightly confused. “How come Jay had to send Bull up here? Why didn’t you ask me? It makes me feel like a dumb fuck I couldn’t figure it out.” (Eric felt the soft cloth of Dynamite’s T-shirt wrinkled up under his arm.) “Besides, ain’t I been givin’ you a squirt now and then? If you want some more, all you got to do is say so.”

  Eric said, “I…I was scared. I was afraid…that you wouldn’t do it. You was givin’ me just enough to…make me kinda crazy.”

  “Aw, come on.” Shit stepped forward on the porch. “You know how Jay is. He thinks sending that nigger to piss on a cocksucker outside your front door on a Sunday mornin’ is funny.” He chuckled. “Actually, ’cause it’s Eric, it is kinda hysterical.” (Tom’s wet nose butted Eric’s calf; the dog began to lick his leg.) “Besides—you’re the one always sayin’ Eric ain’t growed up with us down here. He got to learn how we do things—”

  “Yeah, I know.” Dynamite’s face moved against Eric’s neck.

  Eric was aware of the bone frame within the plates of muscle. Dynamite’s penis slid around to lift, warm, hard, and low on Eric’s belly.

  Eric held onto Dynamite. In return Dynamite held Eric. Once, when Eric moved his left hand, he felt a spot of wet cloth. “I’m still drippin’, where you guys wet me down,” he said, into Dynamite’s shoulder. “I think I got you wet, some.”

  “I pitched it—most of it,” Dynamite said. “Catchin’ a little ain’t gonna kill me.” He licked Eric’s ear.

  “Hey,” Shit said. “Hey—look here.”

  Eric pulled back and looked over.

  So did Dynamite. “What’s a matter?”

  “See?” Shit moved work-grayed fingers away from his cock, out over his thighs. His broad member jutted from his tan tuft, one color with his skin, to curve down toward the front. “You two huggin’ up on each other like that done gimme a boner.” He grinned over missing teeth.

  Dynamite reached toward Shit and took his erect penis in his fist. “Come on here, and hug with us.”

  On his wide feet, Shit stepped up closer; Eric took his arm down to pull in Shit’s shoulders, with his collar bone, his sun-darkened chest with its small, sparse curls as tight as those on Mike’s…Eric said, “You gimme a hard-on, too…”

  Shit hooked an arm around each one of their necks. Dynamite’s nuzzled down between the boys’ faces, while Shit’s dick wedged between them. “You guys both got hard-ons,” Shit said. “Course, I always give this pig fucker one, don’t I? Given’ you fellas fuckin’ boners is my job in this fuckin’ family.”

  Still nuzzling, Dynamite nodded.

  Dynamite lifted his unshaven face and kissed his son. Shit closed his eyes. Eric could see Shit’s jaw working and imagined Shit’s vigorous tongue inside with Dynamite’s, rolling and wrestling within.

  Finally, Dynamite said, “Let’s go into the bedroom.”

  Shit pulled loose, opened the screen door and stepped in, walked through the kitchen. As sunlight dragged across his shoulder, Shit said, “You know—” he followed Eric and Dynamite inside—“your web down there got all splattered up with pee—the drops is all gold now. I saw it when I looked over the rail. It’s pretty. It didn’t tear or nothing.”

  Dynamite smiled at Shit and sat on the bed.

  Eric put his hands on Dynamite’s T-shirt shoulders, one frayed, one torn, and pushed him back. “Lemme get on top of you and hump your big cracker dick!”

  Dynamite slid down. “I still don’t understand how you don’t have no trouble askin’ for that—and you can’t ask me to piss in your fuckin’ mouth? I like doin’ that, Eric.”

  “Jesus,” Eric said, “I don’t know. You…do? Hey, I’m gonna get
better at this stuff. You just gotta gimme a little time.”

  Dynamite raised his chin. “Where’s Bull…?”

  “Him and Whiteboy run off.” Laughing, Shit bounced on the mattress on his belly. “This is their workin’ day, in the Dump.”

  “Probably had more messages to deliver.” Dynamite said. “Well, at least I ain’t the only one. Getting them messages can be a little hard on a fellow sometimes.”

  “Yeah—if he thinks he a fuckin’ stud like you what can do anything.” Shit turned over. “Aw, hell—he probably got to go up and let Whiteboy show ol’ Brick a better way of suckin’ off that damned mule of his or a better way to brace hisself when he takes it up his ass. Or bring some nigger up on the bluff some better crab-lice medicine.” He rolled back the other way, laughing. “Damn, Eric! Whenever Jay ain’t around, we been pissin’ in Mex’s mouth all our lives, ain’t we? Pissin’ on a guy is fun. So’s watching a crazy nigger like Bull walk into your house, take Eric outside, and piss in his face. How you want me to help you shoot?”

  Eric said, “You already shot, Shit.” His thigh was still wet. “You don’t have to do nothin’, if you don’t wanna—”

  Shit said, “Hey—I can always make both you fellas cum. I wanna help you. That’s how I have fun.”

  Which is when Dynamite pulled Eric down on the rumpled sheet—half off the mattress by now. Under him, Dynamite took a big breath. “You know, I understand some of it. I do. A lot of times, you can’t ask for what you need. Sometimes you can ask for what you want. But if you was comfortable askin’ for it, you wouldn’t need it. It’s different with different people. And you gotta wait around till somebody decides to give that one to you. That’s the only way you gonna get it.”

  “There he goes,” Shit said. “My dad, Mr. Know It All.” Suddenly, Shit vaulted upright beside them, feet deep in the mattress. “Hey!” Squatting, he got his hand in the small of Eric’s back and started rubbing. “I remember the first time Dynamite said that to me, back when I was ten, twelve years old.”

  “And I remember,” Dynamite said, “the first time Kyle said that to me. That’s where I learned it. Somebody had told him that, off in Europe, I guess it was. And he told it to me, when he come back and we was hangin’ out together.”

  “Damn,” Shit said, still rubbing. “Kyle said that to you? When?”

  “Like you said, about twelve—no, wait. It couldn’t have been then ’cause that’s how old we were when he had his Christmas party out on Gilead, and we was already doin’ it then. So we must have been ten or eleven. He wanted to go to bed with me so bad, and there he is, this scrawny black boy, scared to death to ask me. So one day, I just said to him, hey, let’s go in the old boathouse and lie down so we can fuck each other. I mean, I knew all about that shit from my cousins. And I realized that’s why he was so nervous. But, see, he didn’t have no cousins like I did, I guess. And when we did it, he acted like he was so happy he was about to cry. Then he said, ‘Some things you just want so much, you can’t even ask for them. You can only be given ’em.’” Underneath Eric, Dynamite adjusted himself. “Later, he wrote that into the what-and-why he made for the Dump. You know, what he called his ‘mission statement.’ See, Eric, if you learn to ask for what you want in the right way, you got a lot better chance somebody’s just gonna up and give you what you need—only I didn’t learn that part till eight, nine years afterward.”

  “Damn!” Shit said, still rubbin’. “Now I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, that was Robert Kyle,” Dynamite said, “the Third.”

  “He really wanted you that much…?” Shit leaned into Eric’s back, as he flexed his butt. Eric thought, he really is pushing me toward a goddamn orgasm…which he already knew would make Dynamite shoot within the next three minutes.

  “That’s right, son, take a ride on my fuckin’ cracker dick. Go on, now, hump that hard old thing…”

  “I’m already humpin’ it,” Eric said.

  “Good,” Dynamite said. “Hey, I’ll piss in your mouth anytime you squat down and look like you’re waitin’ on it. Shit will, too—”

  “Sure,” Shit said. “That ain’t hard! Hell, Dynamite used to be Mex’s steady, before I was born. And I pissed in Mex’s mouth all the time when I was a kid—he’d pretend he didn’t like it. Then he’d laugh at me, and bet I wouldn’t do it again. So I would.”

  Still excited, Shit lay down with them and began to rub against Dynamite along with Eric.

  That morning, Shit, Eric, and Dynamite all came within the same six seconds—Shit for the second time.

  “Where’s Tom?” Dynamite asked, pushing himself upright. “I thought he’d wanna couple of licks of this.”

  “Naw,” Shit said. “He run outta here after Black Bull and Whiteboy left.”

  Eric said, “Oh,” and stopped looking around the bed.

  “Damn.” Shit peeled himself away from Dynamite. “That was a surprise. I don’t think we should try doin’ that too many times, though.” Lazily, Eric and Dynamite were eating it off each other’s hand.

  “Why?” Dynamite asked, and sucked his own wide thumb—then sucked Eric’s.

  “’Cause I don’t think we could ever do it again if we aimed for it.”

  Dynamite said, “Lemme run you back over to your ma’s…” He stood up from the bed.

  “I thought you said you wanted me to hang out with you guys today…?”

  “I do,” Dynamite said. “But if you don’t spend some time with her, she ain’t gonna be so happy about you comin’ over here so much.”

  “Oh,” Eric said. “Yeah…What’d Bull mean about beatin’ your ass?”

  Shit humphed. “Nothin’.” So Eric decided not to push it.

  Dynamite picked up his jeans—not overalls, today—and ran a leg into them, ran the other in, and with one hand shoveled balls and penis inside—

  “He’s just doin’ that to turn you on again,” Shit said from his side of the bed, his head propped on his hand.

  “It’s that or walk around all day with ’em hangin’ out my fly.” Dynamite zipped himself up. Without putting his socks on, he pushed one big foot, then the other, into his work shoes.

  Eric—and Shit—grinned.

  “You go see her, maybe go in with her to work. It ain’t a garbage day—you can come on back, afterward.” Dynamite nodded. “Besides, as good a suck as you are, every once in a while I like to be shut of you.” He looked at his son. “Sometimes I wish the fuck I could be shut of you both.”

  Shit grinned—then so did Dynamite, while Eric began to hunt his clothes from the clutter.

  Outside, when they were getting ready to get into the pickup, Eric stepped among the ferns, looking briefly for the great web. But he couldn’t find it. Maybe Tom had decided to run through it.

  Or licked it.

  Or something…

  * * *

  [21] BEFORE SIX, AMONG the pines on the slope below Barbara’s, Dynamite’s pickup slowed. When Eric got out, the first thing he decided to do was change his underwear. Minutes later, in the bathroom of Barbara’s trailer, bare toes over the edge of a broken away vinyl square, so that he could feel the plank floor beneath his toes, arm and hip pushing against the cartons stacked by the shower’s plastic wall, he looked at the dark-and-light green razor handle in his hand—then at his reflection in the mirror over the sink.

  He turned to the side so he could see his sideburn’s platinum feathering his jaw, across his chin, over his upper lip. He pushed three fingers against his suntanned cheek and watched his reflection do the same.

  As raucous here as at the Dump, broken music from the birds neared the bathroom window—he glanced at the pale orange blinds—and drifted away. Eric imagined them outside, nearing and retreating.

  How long would it take him to grow a beard like Shit’s? Of course it would never be like Shit’s irregular tan tufts. But if I want a beard, I have to stop shaving.

  That’s all.

  So I will.
br />   Eric put the razor on the back of the sink, where, thinned by use, a bar of soap had dried to the enamel. He shouldered into the narrow hall. Large amounts of Febreze and Glade had never quite covered the musk of the cats who, for all practical purposes, had been the house’s tenants before Barbara. Eric passed the porch—built out from the half wall removed from the trailer’s back, with his bed in it—and into the kitchen area.

  Out the kitchen, Barbara was just getting back. From Ron’s, of course. Couldn’t she hook up with some other nigger? Erik wondered. But then, she no longer complained at all about Dynamite and Shit and the garbage man job. If Ron was what she wanted…

  Fortunately, the trailer had two bathrooms, one right off her bedroom.

  At the table, under the fan, with its clutch of four glass light shades (one of which was broken), she sat down on an aluminum tube chair she’d told him had come with the place. The plastic seat and back were the same orange as the bathroom blinds.

  She wore white Bermuda shorts and a blue sleeveless blouse. On the green Formica by her forearm was a mug of black coffee. With one hand she held a yogurt container with rounded corners to the table and, with the other, peeled back the plasticized foil. “Hello, sweetheart.” She smiled up at him. “You want some? There’re a few more pear and a couple of peach in the refrigerator. And at least one raspberry. Go get one—or a couple, if you want. Just leave me two in there for later.” She licked the yogurt that adhered to the foil’s underside.

  “Naw,” he said. “That’s okay. You got a clean uniform today? I washed one in the laundry I did day before yesterday, but they’re still out back drying.”

  “I got one hanging in the closet, down in the kitchen in the back at the Coffee and Egg. Hey, get yourself a cup of coffee, if you want.” She put the foil on the table. It had rolled into a cylinder.

  “Jesus, Barb.” Eric flopped down in one of the chairs at the table. “Your coffee is like motor oil.” Often she’d make a twelve-cup pot and reheat it four or five times over three days. “How do you drink that?”

  She laughed again, picked up a spoon, and began mixing the yogurt. The foil on the table rocked and black coffee swayed in its mug, as yogurt-covered cubes of fruit rose around her spoon’s turning handle. “I come from a family of strong coffee drinkers.”