Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Three steps closer through the long grass, and Eric saw it was a comic. As grass gave way to gravel before the porch steps, he saw the comic Dynamite read was one Eric had bought and left at the cabin—the gay, dirty ones Fred Hurter sold down in the store down at Dump Corners.

  Dynamite looked up and cocked his head to the left. “Hey, there, son.Good to see you. When you gonna bring us some more of that potato salad, like you brought last month? That stuff was good.”

  “I’ll make you some over here.” Eric climbed up the porch. “You got a big pot in there somewhere? That’s all I really need, to boil up the potatoes.”

  “I might hold you to that.” Dynamite looked back down at the folded back pages. “Shit’s inside—he got somebody in there with him. Just so it don’t surprise you or nothin’.”

  “Oh,” Eric said. He was surprised. Would it be Mike inside…?

  “You can go on in,” Dynamite said. “You ain’t gonna bother ’em.”

  From the porch, Eric went into the kitchen, walked to the bedroom door, and stepped in. Across the front wall lay a wedge of late afternoon sun. On the bed, under the green sheet, two figures slept on their stomachs—the sheet down around the waist of the lighter—Shit—and up near the shoulders of the dark brown one.

  Eric hadn’t realized they were in bed. He’d assumed Dynamite had meant in the kitchen, talking—

  Eric frowned and whispered, “Um…oh,” and felt confused. Then the darker one put an arm out, over Shit’s shoulder. And Eric felt more…confused.

  On the pillow, Shit turned his head, blinking his green eyes. “Oh…” Then, as if remembering something, he pushed up on one arm. “Oh, man, you’re here!”

  “Um…” Eric said, surprised how fast his heart was beating. “Oh…hey, I’ll get out…” Turning, he saw that Dynamite had come in and now stood in the doorway, legs apart, a forearm high on either jamb.

  The dark fellow rolled over, frowned at Eric, then at Shit. “Who’s he?”

  “Oh, man…” Shit repeated.

  Eric looked back at the bed, where, first Shit, then the other guy were pushing themselves to sit.

  Behind Eric, Dynamite said, grinning amiably, “Shit, what the fuck is the matter with you?”

  Shit said, “Huh…?”

  Dynamite said, “Come on. You remember how I done, that time you come home a day early and walked in on me with that big Spanish feller’s dick up my goddam asshole? Don’t you?”

  “Huh…?” Shit repeated. “Oh, wow. Yeah. I’m sorry—”

  Eric wasn’t sure if that was to him or to the other man in bed—who looked maybe ten years older than Shit.

  The man frowned again, pulled his feet up, and hung his arms over the tents in the blanket his knees made. With a cautiously inquisitive intonation, the man asked, “Hey, is my bein’ here a little awkward? You said your uncle wouldn’t mind—”

  Behind him, Eric heard Dynamite shift position in the doorway. “Go on, Shit,” he said with repressed impatience. “You know what to do. Unless that ain’t the way you feel about Eric—”

  “Of course that’s the way I feel!” He actually sounded angry. “I’m just wakin’ up. That’s all.”

  “Then you better hurry up and let him know,” Dynamite said. “Or he gonna walk outa here and go home.”

  “Uh, yeah…Uh, Eric, this is Bull…Bubba? Bob—?”

  —who drew a breath. “Bones. Bones Lubba—I told you my name down at the store. Course, I ain’t too sure what yours is, neither…Morton?”

  “Morgan,” Dynamite said from the doorway behind them.

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “Bones. Eric here is my main squeeze. My number one man. Here—” Shit took the sheet and swung it off the both of them— “let ’im see your dick. Hey—Would you mind if Eric climbed on it, so he could fool around with you, too?”

  Bones—who was a pretty good-looking man, Eric thought, and cut (like Eric)—shrugged. “I dunno. I guess…if he wants.” He took a breath. Then he smiled and shrugged again. “Sure. Come on in. That’d be fine.”

  Shit said, “Yeah, come on—that’d be fun. Bones is a nice feller—you’ll like ’im. He does a lot of the stuff you like.”

  “Naw,” Eric said. “Naw, that’s okay. I don’t think so. Not now…” Again he glanced back.

  Dynamite had moved to lean on one of the jambs, filling the doorway, so that Eric could not leave—though he wanted to, desperately.

  “Oh,” Shit said. “Well, in that case…” He swung his legs out of the bed, stood up, naked beside it. “I’m sorry—but I guess I’m gonna have to ask you to go, then, Bones. See, my number one guy done come back…I didn’t know what time he was gonna be here. That’s all. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Bones looked a little surprised. “No. Sure. Sure, that’s fine. Besides, I wanted to be outta here by three or three-thirty, anyway. And it’s what—” He glanced at the three-footed clock on the table by the bed. “Damn—it’s already five-to-four.” He added, a little lamely, looking at Eric. “We wasn’t even doin’ nothin’. We was just sleepin’.”

  “We was fuckin’, when we first got in,” Shit explained. “Bones got a good asshole, too. You gonna have to try him, someday.” Smiling, Shit stepped up to Eric and put his arms around him. Shit’s body projected warmth like an electric coil. His odor was at once fiercely familiar and strange. Eric tried to pull away, but Shit just pulled him back. He gave Eric a big, long hug, pressing his face into Eric’s neck. “Hey, I’m glad you come here—we was wonderin’ what happened to you.”

  Bones was getting up out the far side of the bed, bending down to pull up the jeans he’d left there, working a foot into a shoe, picking up a plaid shirt and pulling it on. “Oh…Well, hey. Yeah, okay, I understand.” Glancing at Eric, he seemed uncertain whether he should say anything more.

  Arms still around Eric, Shit said without looking at Bones, “Hey, it was fun. But, like I said, Eric here’s my number one. Maybe we’ll run into each other some other time. Okay?” He glanced back at his recent bed partner. “Maybe we can do a thing, then, the three of us—or all four. But when Eric’s in the mood. I don’t like to do nothin’ if he don’t wanna.”

  “Oh,” Bones repeated. “Yeah,” Again he glanced at Eric. “I’ll see you around.” He buttoned one and then a second shirt button. Leaving the rest open, he started around the foot of the bed. “Hey, did I have my…oh, no. That’s in the car.”

  “It was nice to meet you,” Shit said.

  “Yeah…” Eric remembered to say.

  Dynamite stepped aside in the doorway as Bones edged out. “So long, fellas.”

  Moments later, the car motor revved outside.

  From what moved back and forth between their touching bodies, naked and clothed, Eric found his discomfort dissipating.

  “Damn, Shit,” Dynamite said. “That sure took you long enough to get started on. You got to do that right away. If your main guy comes in here, like Eric done when you’re grabbin’ some other motherfucker’s tale, you can’t loll around lookin’ stupid and sayin’ ‘Duh…’ You want Eric to stay, don’t you? You gotta handle that the right way from the get-go. You don’t get a lot of chances to fuck that up.”

  Shit’s hands moved over Eric’s shirt, over the butt of Eric’s jeans, the back of his neck and head. “Yeah. Yeah, but, well…I was half asleep. That’s all—so I wasn’t thinkin’. Hey, I’m sorry, Eric. But you surprised me a little, that’s all. I’m glad you’re here. God, you feel so good.”

  “I told you before,” Dynamite said, “if you gonna fuck around, you got to be ready to be surprised like that—and remember what to do!”

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “Sure…” Smiling now, he looked at Eric. “You okay now?”

  Looking back and forth between grinning Dynamite and—yeah— grinning Shit, Eric said, unsteadily, “I guess…yeah. I think so.”

  “We could fool around some—you keep your clothes on and I’ll make love to you all nekid. We done it the ot
her way around. Now we could do it this way.” Shit’s hand slid down Eric’s stomach and under his pants. “You want Dynamite to strip down and add a little more skin to it all, to make it familiar and…friendly?”

  Beside them, Eric saw Dynamite raise an eyebrow. “Um…do you think, son, you would feel completely abandoned and rejected,” Dynamite said, “if I sat this one out and went outside and finished readin’ your story book?” He raised the comic, rolled up in his big hand: the third issue of Porky, which had finally come into Hurter’s at Dump Corners. “’Cause I’m almost halfway through it, and it’s pretty good.”

  “Sure,” Eric said. “That’s okay.”

  Now Dynamite stepped aside for him.

  “Hey, don’t worry,” Shit called. “I ain’t gonna forget you’re number one. Ever. You—and whatever you want—come first. You and him is the only ones who’s really important. Really. I ain’t gonna forget that.” He grinned at his father. “For one thing, he wouldn’t let me. For another, you are! I hope you know that, now. The rest is just somthin’ to do. Come on back here and get another hug—or I’m gonna come after you.”

  *

  Three weeks later, when Eric was over at Barbara’s for dinner for the first time in three days (frozen dinners, which Mike would put up with for as many as two and three days in a row, were a wipeout with Barb: the first time he tried them in the microwave, it was an evening of six or seven stiff drinks and no food for her at all—which wasn’t good for anyone. Today, four green and orange boxes had become a block of bubbled ice in the back of the freezer), Barbara asked her son, “Honey, are you growing a beard?”

  “Yeah…” Eric shrugged. “I guess so.” With his thumbs, he pushed loose the top from the plastic icebox dish: a dull click. “You want some tomato salad? It’s got dill in it—and onions and cucumbers. And celery.”

  “That would be nice. I’d love some.” She frowned at him. “You’re gonna look like Jay MacAmon, there—if you keep it up.”

  “That would be good. But I don’t think my beard’s gonna be full enough. Jay’s has got some curl in it. You know, on the census, his family always put white. But he says he thinks he’s got to be part black. He says everybody down here is. Not just Shit—even Dynamite.”

  Barbara laughed, then frowned. “Jay’s a sweetheart. But that’s a little too much of the grizzly he-man look for me. Sometimes I wonder where you get these ideas—no, that’s not what I mean. I know where you get them. I just wonder what you’re thinking when you try to follow them through. Still,” and she shook her head, “it’s your face.”

  * * *

  [26] THE PICKUP STOPPED beside Eric, who backed a step into roadside brush. Above the hood and over the cab, branches broke up the sun.

  Bare shoulder out the driver’s window, forearm along the shadowed door, Dynamite wore no shirt under his bibs today, either. “Your mom’s okay with you spendin’ a couple of more days with us, ain’t she?”

  “Her and Ron gone to visit his daughter in Valdosta,” Eric said. “They gonna be away till Tuesday. Whyn’t you take me over to the Opera today?”

  “I could,” Dynamite said, thoughtfully. “One reason is you still ain’t—quite—eighteen, though.” He moved his tongue around under his bristly cheek. “That’s where Shit is now—maybe that’s his birthday present to himself.” It was the second week of May. “I was thinkin’ of goin’ over there, later.” He chuckled. “If I didn’t run into you.”

  “Come on,” Eric said. “I’ll be eighteen in six weeks—”

  “Then you don’t have to wait all that long,” Dynamite said.

  “Aw,” Eric said, “that’s forever!”

  Eric edged forward, cut in front of the truck, and loped to the other side. He pulled open the door—the handle was loose, and you had to hold it right to get in on the first try—and climbed in. “I could be part of Shit’s birthday present.” In the last months, a spring had come loose under the seat that made a lopsided hump Eric had grown used to sitting on.

  “Well…” Dynamite leaned forward. “Hammond’d probably like it if you turned up, I mean a few weeks early…” The truck bounced a couple of times. Then leaf light slid up the windshield’s dust, and over its lapped semi-circles smeared by the wipers. “The more young stuff’s runnin’ around in the theater, the better they do. I figure takin’ you over there’s part of my civic duty.”

  Eric said, “You took Shit there the first time when he was fifteen. Both of you told me guys under eighteen are always hangin’ around in there—you said Hammond’s okay with it, if they behave themselves.”

  “I took Shit there ’cause it was easier to keep an eye on ’im if he was in the same place I was. And, yeah, I thought it was better for kids to be lookin’ at pitchurs of people fuckin’ each other than it was to have ’em watchin’ pitchurs about people killin’ each other. Everybody says that—but not a lot actually have to do it. I mean, too, all he’d done was fuck with other guys around the Dump—so I thought at least he ought to see some men and women with each other, even if it was just in the dirty pitchur show. Lotta good that did.” Dynamite snorted. “He likes to watch pretty much anybody fuckin’ anybody. But doin’ it he’s still more comfortable with guys, he says.” Dynamite turned onto a larger road, and shrugged. “Which goes to show you.”

  “How come he’s already over there? I mean, why didn’t he go with you…?”

  “Part of his present. One of the guys in his ‘fan club’—Larry, I think it was—called up yesterday and told ’im they was all comin’ in this morning after work. He wanted to go over there and meet them and say hello.”

  Shit had bragged to Eric about his ‘fan club’: half a dozen workers on the graveyard shift at the twenty-four hour canning factory north of Hemmings. When they got off at two-thirty A.M., now and then they’d all drive over to Runcible for the Opera; Shit had been messing with them, well…since before he was eighteen. Shit had even spent the occasional weekend at a couple of their houses. But, he’d told Eric, he preferred tricking with them in the theater. Besides (he said), three of ’em was neat freaks, and he was always afraid he was going to break something.

  “I run ’im over to the theater about three o’clock this mornin’,” Dynamite explained. (The Opera ran twenty-four/seven.) “Then I went back to the Dump—figured I’d catch a couple of hours sleep and go over again at a decent time. Only here you is, messin’ things up.” He grinned at Eric, to let him know that was a joke—mostly.

  “If you took me in there,” Eric said, “even if Barb found out, I don’t think it would bother her.”

  Dynamite chuckled, “I could always tell her I was tryin’ to turn you straight—’cause they play the straight movies.”

  Eric laughed. “Ron would like that.”

  “But Ron done lived down here long enough to know what goes on in the Opera House—no matter how straight the movies is.” Dynamite chuckled again. “I don’t think he’d believe it.”

  “I already told Barb me and Shit was messin’ around. About every two weeks, she asks me, you know, in that special voice, how the two of us is doin’, me and Shit. I tell her we’re doin’ fine.”

  “Are you?” Dynamite’s brows pulled together.

  Eric nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Good.” Dynamite turned onto a bigger road, this one paved. “She ever say anything about Shit and me—or me and you?”

  Eric said, “I don’t think she knows.”

  “She’s the only person in Diamond Harbor what don’t, then.” Dynamite leaned down and looked up (to see under the glare) at some sign or other. “Or at least suspects.” He sat back and speeded up some.

  “I mean, probably she’s heard,” Eric said. “But she don’t believe it, ’cause she likes you.”

  “Well,” Dynamite said. “I guess that’s somethin’.”

  “Look—you said you was goin’ to the Opera. Come on. Get me in there. Today. I’ll take responsibility for it. If Barb finds out, I’ll say I got
Shit to sneak me in. It’ll all be on me—not you. In six weeks, I could go in anyway.”

  “The responsibility’s mine, no matter what you say.” Then, after silent seconds, Dynamite said, “But it’s true. That’s how I would’ve raised you if you’d been mine to raise. It’s important. You gotta learn how to handle that stuff.”

  “You took me and Shit to Turpens,” Eric pressed him, “half a dozen times in the last three or four months—”

  “Hey, two of them times you went with Jay and Mex. Shit and me just run into you there and gave you a lift back home ’cause they wanted to go on to Hemmings—”

  “The point is,” Eric said, “I never got in no trouble for goin’ there.”

  “Turpens?” Dynamite asked. “You go to Turpens? Hell, I never been in that place. I wouldn’t think you’d been in there, either. I heard all sorts of nasty stories about what goes on in there. Naw, I wouldn’t go in there. And neither would you—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Eric said. “I know—I ain’t ever been there either…I guess.”

  “But the real point is,” Dynamite said, “Turpens has a fuckin’ public john, and anyone can walk in and use it. Nobody’s got to be sneakin’ you in the back way, like at the Opera.” Indeed, the Opera’s seven-dollar admission was a hardship on many of its patrons, and Hammond and Dusty, who ran it, Eric knew, had a sliding scale—the only thing to call it—with many of their patrons, depending on their sexual generosity. They were pretty autocratic about it, actually, which kept arguments down.

  “Come on,” Eric said. “I’m askin’ you, outright. Get me in there. I wanna fuck around with Shit…and you, too. And see what’s goin’ on—”

  “Nigger,” Dynamite said, “shut the fuck up. Let’s just see what happens, okay?” He looked over at Eric, perfectly seriously. Taking one hand from the top of the wheel, he dropped it on Eric’s leg and pushed it over into his crotch. “Callin’ you a nigger—that still give you a hard-on, son?”

  “Un-huh.” Eric nodded.

  “Good,” Dynamite said.