Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Though Dynamite knew of it, it was not where he chose to be with them, unless he was looking for them because of some change Randal had decreed in the work schedule.

  A number of conversations occurred there over the first winter, which began when Eric gave voice to something he’s been pondering.

  Eric started the first one. “Shit, do you really like your name?”

  “Huh? Sure.” Stretched on his back, one arm up under his head, Shit said, “I picked it myself—back when I was maybe nine, ten. When I stopped goin’ to school, anyway—fuck, that school was really borin’. I didn’t like nobody there and nobody liked me. It was more fun, playin’ around the Dump—and workin’ with my dad. ’Cause I like to bite my nails and pick my nose and eat it, like you—and beat off. Him and some of the niggers who lived near us was the only ones who didn’t gimme grief about it—and him and Jay would even let me have some of theirs. I guess that’s when it turned into sex. ”

  “But why did you choose that one? Shit…didn’t people tease you?”

  “Yeah, some of ’em. But it was like a test. People who could call me Shit, I figured, were okay—course, most of them were niggers I was fuckin’ already. And the rest, I didn’t care. My dad—Dynamite—he liked it, too. Everybody used to call me a little shit, anyway. So that’s why I did it. I wanted a special name, like his—only real different. So I got me one.”

  Eric grunted. Down between Shit’s legs, he lay on his back, his head on the crotch of Shit’s old work pants—Dynamite’s, with three inches of cuff cut off.

  Shit asked, “You like it?” He reached down to rub Eric’s hair.

  “Yeah. I do. Sometimes I wish I had one too, like ‘Cocksucker,’ or something.”

  “You want me to start callin’ you that?”

  “You already do—you and Dynamite both, when I’m suckin’ your dicks and you’re about to come. Jay calls me ‘scumsucker’.”

  “I’ll call you that all the time, if you want. And I know you like us both to call you a nigger. If I do, you can bet all the niggers in the Dump’ll start callin’ you that—or maybe ‘Nig.’”

  “Naw,” Eric said. “That’s okay. I like it the way it is.”

  “Okay. But I always figured, the people who like me, like my name. That’s why I picked it.”

  “Dynamite don’t really treat you and me the same, does he?”

  “What you mean?”

  “Well—” Eric felt Shit rubbing his head—“he treats you more like you’re his…best friend, I guess. You both mostly call each other by your first names—the way I call Barb. You’re always jokin’ around together. A lot of the summer people don’t even know he’s your…uncle. Part of that’s ’cause you’re black. But part’s the way you two act together. Then, half the time he calls me ‘son’—and whenever we’re foolin’ around in the cabin just the three of us, he always calls himself my daddy.”

  “You mind that?”

  “No!” Eric looked back. “No, I like it! Like Jay and Mex callin’ me ‘puppy.’”

  “Me, too—him callin’ you that.”

  “Why?”

  “For one thing—” Shit sounded like he was yawning—“it makes ’im goddam easier to fuck!”

  “Huh?” Eric turned his head to look up, puzzled. “How you mean?”

  “See, I get off pretendin’—” Shit shifted a leg to rub a bare ankle up and back over the beltless waist of Eric’s jeans—“Dynamite’s this real sexy older fuck buddy of mine, who has a son—the nigger he fools around with, named Eric. That’s you, in case you ain’t fuckin’ figured that one out. It turns me the fuck on the way he talks to you.” Shit deepened his voice into a passable imitation of his father’s: “‘Hey, son, lay out here with me. If you get a hard-on, just climb on your daddy here and rub off on my belly. I’ll hug you and tongue fuck you till you shoot all over me. You want, just stick it in your daddy’s mouth and I’ll suck you off.’”

  Eric laughed. “I still can’t figure out how kissin’ on two guys what ain’t got half their teeth gets me so hot—”

  “Me neither,” Shit said. “But I guess it works. I figured that out about you the first time we was kissin’ on each other, back at Turpens—the way you was goin’ after them holes between ’em. Anyway, I can pretend like I’m his friend what he’ll let watch him, and even let me grab a piece off you both, whenever I want. Now—getting’ involved with a daddy and his own kid—ain’t that about the nastiest thing you can think of?”

  Under the back of his neck, Eric felt Shit hardening in his canvas work pants. “I guess so. Yeah, that’s pretty nasty…”

  “You’re fuckin’ right it is!” On ‘right’ Shit gave Eric’s head a push. “But see, now, if he came on that way to me, all the time—I couldn’t tell you exactly why—but it would make it a little more hard for me to shove my big black dick up his Georgia cracker asshole in the mornin’, and then let his nigger kid here—” he pushed Eric’s head again—“suck it clean for me, after I was finished. ‘Hey, son—’” once more Shit’s voice became his father’s—“‘my damned dick’s growed so much fuckin’ cheese last night, you think you could tongue that out for me and maybe swallow a couple of piss squirts besides? Oh, and when you done, give a suck to our friend, Shit, here.’”

  Eric laughed at the exactitude of the performance. “He says that stuff ’cause he knows I like it…But he likes it too.”

  “So do I.” Shit laughed. “It’s complicated, ain’t it? Or the way sometime we pretend you’re the nigger and I’m the white kid. That’s fun. It changes things. But see, I don’t want ’im sayin’ stuff like that to me—‘Come on, son. Fuck yo’ pappy’s ass—’”

  “Come on.” Eric laughed. “I never heard him say ‘pappy.’”

  “Well, when I was little, I knew some kids around here what did. Anyway, I was exaggeratin’. But I’d rather listen to him sayin’ it to you than to me. That’s what gets me off. And I’ll fuck anybody if he’s my friend—and he wants me, too. Dynamite said he learned that from Kyle.”

  “I like…watching you two the way you are,” though Eric wondered if liking something sexually and liking something because it made you feel warm and wanted were the same. Or the opposite? Or…? “I guess the only time he really treats us the same—” Eric stretched—“is when he snots into his hand and says, ‘You boys wants some lunch?’” at which Shit erupted into high laughter and a moment later they were tussling on the flanking beach grass—

  “Owww…Hey, cut it out…come on…”

  “You stop it…come on…Please, please…”

  “No, no…move off me. Come on…”

  “Lemme get on top. It’s too sandy down there…please, now.”

  “You get anywhere you want! Just lemme do it, come on…”

  —which, between them, became the rhythms of their non-penetrative frottage, while they held each other and eyes, noses, tongues and mouths received their lingual storm.

  The second one—perhaps ten week’s later—Shit began. “Hey, what do drinkin’ me and my daddy’s piss mean to you?” Shit lay on his back.

  “Huh?” Eric lay between his legs with the side of his face on the lap of Shit’s pants. “How you mean?”

  “I mean, I been pissin’ in guys mouths all my life—like Mex. When- ever I was off with Mex and Jay, they always told me, when I had to go, I should just go over, whip it out, and stick it in his face. And ’d I do it. Mex’d drink it down and Jay would laugh—he thought it was real funny—and they’d all laugh. Then, when I got older, and started fuckin’ with guys for real, I learned lots of guys really dug it—like some of the guys I used to sneak out and fuck at the Dump Produce farm. But I never really thought on it, serious like, before. I mean, I never got no messages about it before. You got any idea why so many people like that so much?”

  Eric frowned. He had one leg and one hand on Shit’s hard thigh. “I don’t really know—I mean, afterwards, I feel awful good. And before it, there’s hardly
nothin’ you can imagine wantin’ more. Maybe it it just reminds me how important you all are—you and Dynamite, I mean.”

  “Huh?” Shit moved his legs a little.

  “You guys are the fuckin’ garbage men, Shit. I mean, suppose lightening hit the mayor of the city. It wouldn’t make no major difference how things went. Ever’body would dotter on, doin’ more or less what they do anyway, till they got a new one. I can’t even remember who’s mayor! But suppose all the garbage men upped and disappeared—Randal and Tad and you and Aim and Dynamite and Al and me…you couldn’t even have no city here. Pretty soon people wouldn’t even be able to negotiate the place. The smell and the junk would take over everything, and everybody would have to move away! Inside of a couple of months, they’d have to close this whole place up and go look for a new spot. And in the mornin’, when you and Dynamite are about to get out of bed, you two roll over and plug into me and let it run, it feels so good ’cause I’m lettin’ you relax for another couple of minutes, and I can go dump it in the toilet for you—and we got something to laugh at and have a good time over. And it really makes me…feel like I’m doin’ a little somethin’ special that most people don’t probably have anybody to do for ’em.” Eric stretched in the fork of Shit’s legs. “Course, even me just sayin’ it, I guess, sounds a little silly. I don’t know, Shit—maybe it’s just sex. I mean, like suckin’ dick or getting’ fucked, or just rubbin’ on each other—that feelin’ that a dick is supposed to go in your mouth or up your ass. I mean, since Bull came by with his message, sometimes when we’re really into it, Dynamite’ll plug himself into my face and be holdin’ onto my ears an humpin’ in my mouth as hard as he can, and just start to run ’cause he can’t help it. That’s really exciting, at least for me. And when he does that, you get off on it, too—I seen you. I mean, drinkin’ piss is more of a ‘why not?’ kinda thing than a ‘why?’ thing. The fact is, anything that comes out of a dick is good. And I guess if you’re Jay or Mex, anything that comes out of your partner is good—I can sure understand that, even if I don’t take it as far as they do. Cheese is important. Cum is good. And piss is great. That’s…the way it is.”

  “Well, in your mouth or up your ass—anyplace warm and wet—that’s where my dick feels like it’s supposed to go.” Reaching down, Shit slid his fingers under Eric’s face. “And you ain’t supposed to let your dick get too far away from me, either. Yeah, I think I’m beginnin’ to see what you’re talkin’ about. Yeah, it’s beginnin’ to make a whole lot of sense. So why don’t you go in my pants and suck on my big, important dick. ’Cause I got a lot of important stuff up under that thing—I checked before I come out here. And I can give you a damned quart of somethin’ great. And if you wanna go on workin’ at it, I’ll give you somethin’ good as well. Then I’m gonna lie around and suck on your dick, and eat out your asshole and fuck you butt till you’re staggerin’ around like a bow-legged hooker out in the lot back o’ Turpens,” which, over the next two and a half hours, they did—one of the advantages of the grotto in autumn.

  Eric was still breathing hard when, finally, Shit pushed up on his hands. “Let’s go swimmin’!”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah! Come on!”

  Eric rolled to his side. (As he pulled his pants off one leg, sand stuck to the sweat on the bottom of Shit’s ropy forearm.) “You mean right here?”

  “Yeah!” Shit sat up and slipped his pants from his other, tossed them to the grass, and pushed himself forward. “Come on—you can swim, can’t you?” (This had been back in the early weeks…)

  “Yeah—some.” In Hugantown, at the civic center swimming pool, Eric had passed Red Cross Senior Lifesaving the summer he was fourteen—though he hadn’t been in the water more than a year, and only once, in Florida, in the sea. “Don’t we gotta have suits?”

  “What the fuck for?” Naked Shit started running forward, while Eric grinned at Shit’s ass—there was no sunburn line, like Dynamite had—and stood to run after.

  Under Eric’s feet, sand and water went from hot and dry to cool and wet. Then his feet were splattering water, between shells and ropes of weed. Water surged around his ankles—and fifteen feet ahead, the froth-laced sea was up to Shit’s knees. Then Shit dove—and struck out. Eric ran another dozen steps and drove his flailing body into the soft and cold that was the September sea. When he stood on the ooze and sand, he lifted his arms from the water for balance, opened his mouth to laugh, and a drop rolled into his lips, giving him a taste of salt.

  “Come on over here.”

  They swam together awhile, Eric tiring first. Somehow the water was up above their navels now. Standing before Eric, water diamonding his face, Shit put his hand on Eric’s chest and slid it down his belly to his crotch, to hold his penis below the surface.

  “What you doin’?” Eric asked.

  “Holdin’ your dick.”

  “You’re gonna gimme a hard-on again.”

  “Good…!” Under the water, Shit began to rub and massage him. Over Shit’s sun-browned shoulder was the wedge of Gilead Island, against the horizon, green and gray. “Oh, fuck, it’s gettin’ so goddam big! Oh, man, that feels good. Wow—that’s feels so good. Damn, it’s getting’ so big, too.” Shit moved closer, so that Eric could smell his breath through the ocean’s tang. “Hey, you think you could jump up in the air and spin all the way around and maybe bust me in the nose with your pecker?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean while it’s all hard like that. Go on. Jump real high and spin yourself.”

  “I don’t think I can get it as high as your shoulder—”

  “Well, go on try it! I’ll squat a little. ’Cause you’re in the water, I bet you can get up higher—”

  “Okay.” Eric laughed. “If you want me to.” He squatted in the sea, and felt himself slip from Shit’s grip. He went down until his head was under the surface, then pushed up as strongly as he could, felt himself clear the surface—the tug of the water, pulling his hard cock down, was just this side of painful—and flung his arms and shoulders around.

  His erect cock, free of the sea, only caught Shit’s shoulder, but at the height of his leap and spin—he could feel the water, mid-thigh—he was facing the shore.

  As, in the air, he hung in the instant, up on the roadway he saw three young women, looking at them from the shore road.

  Surprised as he was—he realized Shit had engineered his exposure.

  And he was naked and with an erection.

  Involuntarily he wheeled his arms—but kept turning, though the women had started laughing. He came down in the water, almost facing Shit again—who was laughing, too. “Hey, they was lookin’ at me—”

  “Yeah, they got a good eyeful of your fuckin’ pecker, didn’t they?”

  “Hey. Why’d you do—?” Then, laughing himself, he threw himself at Shit and the two were wrestling in the water. They tussled and pushed and tugged and grabbed. During the minutes of their horsing around, Eric thought, How wonderful if this was the rest of my life…

  When, panting, they halted, Eric looked back at the road.

  The young women—with their laughter—had walked off.

  “Them was summer people,” Shit said, taking big steps with widely swinging arms, in toward the beach, “what ain’t gone home yet.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “I’m gonna get you good for that.”

  Shit looked back grinning. “Good. I can’t wait, hardly. Gonna make me suck your dick again? Or are you gonna suck mine?”

  Back in the grotto, Eric slipped into his pants. Shit took his up and, swinging them in one hand and his shoes in the other, they walked back to the Dump, Eric in just his jeans, Shit naked. “’Cause it ain’t far enough that you got to put you clothes on anyway,” Shit explained. “At least this time of year.”

  *

  What occurred at the grotto that actually worried Eric, however—not about Shit, but about the ideas he had accepted from Shit that ran so counter to the world’
s wisdom—happened in Eric’s second Diamond Harbor summer, when briefly he’d forgotten the timing between deserted winter and the tourist months.

  One June Saturday, Eric was sitting on a log in the grotto, beating off, when he looked up—

  A child stood on a rock, maybe ten feet to the side and above, a fist pressed to a naked belly, the other hand up near the mouth. The dark hair was clipped short, so that you could see the skull through the remaining fuzz. The dark eyes were close together, and, as Eric looked, the child swallowed—then swallowed again. In sandals and metallic blue bathing briefs, he looked about eight.

  (Half a dozen tourist cabins sat up across the beach road. But through the mild winter, none had been occupied.)

  Eric slowed, smiled, stopped pumping. He said, “Hello…” After a long, long pause, he nodded down at himself. “You like that?”

  The child did not speak…or move.

  Eric tightened his fist, tugged at himself—three, five, seven times. “You know what I’m doin’? You’re curious, ain’t you?”

  The child remained frozen.

  Eric kept smiling. “You got a hard-on yourself, in there.” He nodded. “I can see it from here.” An innocent ridge slanted the blue briefs. “You wanna come over and look? I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  The child took two steps down the rock, then paused.

  Eric said, “You wanna touch it? You don’t have to. But it you wanna, nothin’s gonna happen. Believe me—I promise.”

  The child took another step, then, in a hoarse voice that may have been fear or a speech defect, said, “You gonna hurt me if I don’t?”

  It took perhaps three seconds for the question to register. When it did, Eric was startled. Yes, in his aroused state, that evident and immature curiosity had attracted him…sexually. But he was also sure his primary urge, more than sexual, had been…instructive. The question had brought home—startlingly—that the field into which he had been about to pursue his lesson, however benign he’d assumed it to be, was neither empty nor innocent. That was what he had no control over. Eric pushed himself back into his jeans and stood up. “Hey—” still smiling, he tugged his T-shirt down—“probably this is a game you shouldn’t be playin’. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Believe me, not me. But you can always learn about stuff like this later. I guess you can live without it now.” Stepping forward, he climbed over a fallen branch, then pushed toward the place between the rocks by which he usually left. Once he looked back where…well, where the child had been.