Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  “We’re normal,” Shit said, “ain’t we?”

  “Well, I suppose…” From the place where he’d briefly glanced at the ceiling, Mama dropped his eyes.

  Shit stopped, then looked back. “Um, this guy here—he’s Eric.”

  “Did I say I was pleased to meet you, Eric? I mean, I’ve heard about you, of course. And I think Ron—you know, he cooks out at Shells; he said he met you, once—even pointed you out to me once. But…well, it is a pleasure to meet you. It really is. I expected I would eventually get to say ‘hello.’ But…well—I didn’t expect I’d run into you…like this! And, actually—” He smiled. “Actually, Morgan, it was rather fun.” Suddenly he drew in a breath. “But you must get out of here—now! Really, both of you. Please. Go on. Get, get, get…” He made shooing motions with one hand, nails aglimmer with clear polish. Then, again, he seemed to relent. Lowering his shoulders, Mama let his face relax into a smile. “Perhaps something like this may…who knows—even happen again. When I’m not expecting someone.”

  “Okay,” Shit said. “We’re goin’…” As Shit started for the door, Mama Grace stepped aside. “But, Mama…?” Shit’s tone was pensive.

  “Yes?” So was Mama Grace’s.

  “Your name is Mr. Davis, right?”

  “Yes, Morgan. It is.”

  “But you like people to call you ‘Mama’.”

  “That’s right, Morgan. That’s been my nickname for a long time. I’m very comfortable with it.”

  “Well, sir—I mean, Mama, my name is Shit. That’s what my daddy calls me—like everybody calls him Dynamite. That’s what Eric calls me. That what everybody around the Dump calls me.”

  Mama Grace smiled. “Now, you must have told me that at least three times in the last four years—you’re very patient with me. I always say I’m going to do it. But then I forget. I will try to do that from now on, Shit. I apologize. You tell me that’s your name. So that’s what I intend to call you.”

  “Thank you, sir…ma’am…Mama, I mean.”

  “Good. Since we’re friends, I’m glad we’ve got that straightened out.”

  At the door, Shit turned and opened it.

  Behind them, Mama said, with sudden insistence, “Would you please put your cocks inside your pants, now?” of the sort you’d use to talk to a very small child. Eric smiled—then glanced at Shit to see that he’d stepped out on the porch, with Eric beside him, his cock still in his hand. Eric heard the door’s latch catch behind them.

  On the porch, Shit grinned. “Hey—see? What did I tell you?” He pulled at himself absently.

  “That you could just walk into anybody’s house around here and…fuck with ’em.” Eric was pushing his own cock back into his jeans—and wondering how fast he should do it. He wasn’t getting any hint from Shit.

  “You believe me now?”

  “Yeah.” Eric took his hand away and, exerting great effort, did not pull up his zipper. “I believe you.” Because Shit hadn’t. “Come on, let’s go.”

  As they started down the steps, Shit’s near hand fell on Eric’s shoulder. “Hey—you wanna suck me off?”

  “What—you gotta go again?”

  “Well, the last one wasn’t that good. ’Cause I was kinda rushed, you know?”

  “You…you were nervous?”

  Shit took a breath and looked around at clouds and high sea birds, rocking on the sky. “I wasn’t nervous. I was just rushed.” He leaned closer to Eric. “But we ain’t bein’ rushed out here.” Eric glanced down to see Shit pulling his fist free of his cock, still half hard, then wiping his palm on the thigh of his pants. He gripped himself again and pulled his fist off it once more. This time he raised his hand and sniffed his fingers. “Man, my dick really stinks after stickin’ it up that nigger bitch’s asshole—”

  —when a redish-brown Nissan Cube (…rose?) turned off the road, onto the offshoot that could take it only to Mama Grace’s door.

  Shit’s hand fell.

  Eric thrust both hands down to zip his fly—then glanced, to see that, yes, Shit was—finally—closing his pants.

  Nearing, the truck bumped side to side.

  They stepped to the shoulder. First through the windshield, then the side window, they could see the driver was a thin black fellow with glasses and a bald head. He glanced out at them then looked forward again. The truck thundered toward the house.

  Beside him, Shit raised a hand and waved. “Hey, Wally—she waitin’ for you. We got her good and primed, too!”

  Eric started walking. Shit pranced after him. As they turned onto the road, both fell to laughing.

  Eric found himself thinking it was both stupid and hysterical. They turned toward the Dump’s center. Though he knew in no way could Wally have heard Shit’s brag, what Eric believed was that three or four people might just let Shit walk in and fuck them, though because of the way Mama Grace had treated them, only the one—Mr. Davis—might tolerate it. If it was, Eric wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Ambling beside him, Shit said (as if reading Eric’s mind), “We coulda gone over and fucked around with Black Bull and Whiteboy, I mean if they wasn’t workin’—only thing is, whenever I do that, it always gets so fucked up and messy with them two.” Shit sucked his teeth, frowning at the grass-tufted ridge along running between double dust ruts. “Hey, I’ll mess with ’em. But I don’ mess with ’em a lot. It’s too complicated.”

  Forty yards later, tar and cinders covered the road.

  Eric let Shit catch up with him and put his hand on Shit’s shoulder. Shit was biting at his nails, and, a moment later, picking in his nose. Suddenly, he smiled at Eric. “You want some? Here.”

  When Shit pulled his finger from Eric’s mouth, they walked along the warm dust between autumn grasses either side the road. Shit leaned closer. “Well, whatever we do, I wanna do somethin’ nasty.”

  Eric grinned. “What else is new?”

  “Whatcha mean?”

  “Nevermind. I thought we did somethin’ nasty, Shit.” Eric’s statement was half a question.

  “Naw,” Shit said. “I mean real fuckin’ nasty.” His hand grew heavy with “real” and began to rub on “nasty.” “I think I’m gonna suck your fuckin’ dick!”

  “Well,” Eric said, “I don’t have a handkerchief, but maybe I can find somethin’ to wipe it off—”

  “What you gotta wipe it off for?”

  “’Cause it’s just been up somebody’s asshole, and I think you said it: It was an asshole full of shit.”

  “Aw, hell,” Shit said. “A little crap on that thing ain’t gonna hurt nobody.”

  Eric made a face. “How do you know?”

  Shit slid an arm around Eric’s neck. “When I was a little kid, Dynamite used to suck my dick—but that’s all he did. Sometimes he’d lick my butt out, but mainly he sucked me off. I used to love it, too. I couldn’t hardly get enough. I started comin’ in his mouth when I was nine, nine-and-a-half. By the time I was ten, ten-and-a-half, I got my first hair down there. And when I got to be twelve or thirteen, Dynamite decided I needed to learn how to fuck ass. So—” hooking Eric closer, Shit shrugged—“I started out on him. Well, when you ain’t done nothing but come in guys’ mouths—Mex’s, my dad’s, a couple of the summer folks who liked to oblige me—you got to learn how to come up an ass. I mean, I did it okay a few times; I was real proud of it, too. But sometimes, I couldn’t get myself to shoot, no matter what I did. So I’d pull out and beg my dad to bring me off in his mouth. I’d wanna come so bad I could cry. And he’d do it.” Shit gave a grimace. “He never wiped it off—and it didn’t kill him.”

  “But that was mostly his own, wasn’t it?”

  “His, Mex’s, and so many of the summer people’s, I don’t remember. Even Bull’s, a couple of times—before he got Whiteboy. When I was a little shit, Bull didn’t mind if I fucked his black ass. But afterward I’d have to nip across the road and let my daddy bring me off—and he didn’t wipe that nigger’s shit off my dick
any more than he wiped off his own.”

  Eric started laughing. “The idea that you had to learn how to fuck an asshole—”

  “How else you gonna do it? See—” once more Shit tugged him near—“I was an arrogant sonofabitch. I’d fuck these guys, and finally I’d pretend to shoot—”

  “You was fakin’ orgasms?”

  “—then I’d pull out and get back here to the Dump—sometimes when I got here I couldn’t hardly walk, my balls was so damned blue—and beg my dad to suck me till I came. He’d always stop what he was doin’ to do it, too…at least for a while. Finally, though, he made up his mind and broke me of that.”

  “How?” Frowning, Eric pulled away. While he’d not been watching, the road had joined with another that was paved.

  “He let me have his fuckin’ ass whenever I wanted it—let me do it real easy. Take as long as I wanted—go all slow and fuck that thing inside out, bend him over the kitchen table, or outside on the porch rail, in bed in the mornin’—that was my favorite, even then—or on the floor, anywhere. Pretty soon, I got me some control so I could splash up in his—or anybody else’s—damned shit shoot as easy as I could in his damned mouth. But he wasn’t a dick wiper with none of it.” He winked at Eric. “And you ain’t, either—”

  “Hey, that’s just with you and Dynamite.”

  “—so,” (Shit shrugged) “why do I have to be?”

  “I guess…well, you don’t. But—” Again, Eric pulled his head away. “Hey, Shit, are you kiddin’ me?”

  “Yep.” Shit grinned again. “I’m kiddin’. I’m only tellin’ you dirty stories about me and Dynamite to turn you on…” Again Shit brought his own head close to Eric’s. “Most of the time, if I couldn’t shoot, I’d just go somewhere and beat off. Still, that don’t mean them stories ain’t true—some of them—just ’cause they get your dick stiff.”

  “Hey.” Eric sucked his teeth. “Where you wanna—?”

  “There’s a men’s room behind the produce market.”

  Eric had never noticed. “There is?”

  “Un-huh. I did some guys there when I was a kid. But the supermarket guards was always runnin’ me out, ’cause I wasn’t eighteen. It’s supposed to be ‘gay friendly’ or somethin’. But they was never too friendly to me. Since I actually got to be eighteen, I don’t even think I even gone into that place to piss.”

  They were in sight of Dump Corners.

  Houses were closer together.

  Several one-story offices included a Dump Housing Office (stand-out aluminum letters ran along the red-brick wall), with a deck in front on which four large plants stood in polished gray-stone pots. Dump Social Services Offices—with its bronze wall plaque on the red brick—had its name decaled across its long picture window, with long blinds, three-quarters down, behind tinted glass. Shit dropped his arm, as he and Eric wandered closer. Beneath the blinds, Eric could see, inside, a row of free standing monitors.

  To the left and right of the Social Services Offices were shops. To left of the Housing Office were others.

  Why Dump Corners was plural, Eric didn’t know. It looked like a single corner to him. Twenty yards away, in front of the Army-Navy Surplus Outlet, was the Plexiglas bus stop shelter with an aluminum bench under the clear roof, where, twice a day the shuttle—two alternating, dark green SUVs—to Runcible, Hemmings, and the Hemmings Mall came through the Dump.

  Beside the Army-Navy Outlet was another broad glass window, backed with blinds: The Credit Union, with three touch-screen ATM windows in its blue and green vestibule. Two was the most people Eric ever saw using them at one time. (Shit always waited outside and let Dynamite do his withdrawals for him.) The only time Eric really had had to go inside was to talk to an officer when he’d set his PIN. He’d used the vestibule money machines three or four times before he’d noticed there was no withdrawal fee—for anyone, with any kind of card. It was like the ATMs in the Union at the University in Atlanta that, for a while, in order to save the two dollars, he and some of the other high school kids had gone to.

  Half a dozen people walked in the streets—all of them black, all of them male. Two, Eric was sure were gay: they looked the busiest. He watched someone turn into Fred Hurter’s Lumber, Steel, & Seed—a hardware, air conditioner, and auto-parts store, with a decent wall of comics and some porn magazines.

  They even sold gay comics—Class Comics—which Fred Hurter must have gotten as remainders; Eric had bought a couple back in Atlanta: nine bucks a piece, while Hurter’s sold them for two-fifty.

  Eric owned pretty much all the ones that turned him on—and wondered who in the world responded to the others.

  While Eric was wondering if they should go in, Shit hurried on for the Produce Outlet—really, a small supermarket—its grocery carts nested in a row out front. “Come on.” He looked back at Eric.

  Eric sprinted after.

  All the way behind the Produce Outlet—the paving gave out again—was a single-story red brick structure, with a sloping roof, in which Eric could see a skylight. The inset door was set back under a cement slab that said, MEN’S ROOM and under that it read “Gay Friendly.” (By now Eric had noticed how his predawn work schedule interfered with his learning the specifics of the local landscape. He’d never come here before.) As they walked toward it, they saw a young black man—tall, rather gawky, and round-shouldered—with glasses and a white fisherman’s sunhat whose brim covered the upper part of his face, walking toward the door.

  The young man’s green jeans were baggy and, like many of the summer peoples’, stopped at his knees. He wore what could have been a large football jersey that hung midway down his thighs.

  The red crepe paper flower was the size of a coffee saucer. It bobbed on a stem with several large leaves that looked like green plastic, rising from his hat brim. The fellow walked purposely toward the door and through—when he stepped into the shadow, the flower turned orange—perhaps six seconds before they reached it.

  Was that, Eric wondered, the hat?

  Eric stepped into the john’s vestibule after Shit. To the wall was fixed a plaque, darkened with patina, where Eric read:

  If Gay Activity Offends You, Please:

  Take Your Business into a Stall,

  Lock the Door—and

  Don’t Loiter.

  Eric laughed. “I never seen a sign like that in a john before.”

  Shit was already ahead of him inside. Since Shit didn’t read, Eric wondered if he even knew what it said.

  Shit waited and, when Eric stepped beside him to look around, took hold of Eric’s arm. “Come on, take your dick out your pants. I told you. I’m gonna suck it, right here.”

  “…maybe go into a stall or somethin’?” Eric realized he distrusted the invitation.

  “What the fuck for? Come on.”

  Or was at least made uncomfortable by it.

  Sun through the wired glass in the skylights lit a wall that ran down the room’s middle. The floor was oversized maroon brick. From where Eric stood, he could see that down either side the central wall of yellow tile stood a row of old fashioned, floor-to-shoulder white porcelain urinals. In one of the walls opposite, windows of opaque glass let in light from outside. On the wall’s other side, opposite the urinals, were a row of stalls with gray doors in gray frames, most closed—though a few stood open, an inch to three inches.

  The young man had gone down on the side with the windows, to the last urinal. He stood there, very close to it, gazing down. Once he looked up, but dropped his eyes again. His flower swung.

  At the wall’s front hung a framed sign, containing two messages, one on the left, one on the right:

  An arrow under each pointed to the left (the side with windows) and the right (the side with the stalls).

  Below, a smaller sign read:

  Please Confine All Masturbation to Completion

  To Commode Stalls.

  And below that:

  Remember,

  You wouldn’t wan
t to have to mop it up either!

  “Come on,” Shit said, “whip it out, motherfucker. I’m hungry for some goddamn nigger dick.” He stepped from sneaker to sneaker, as if the brick floor were hot as the sunny macadam outside and he stood on it, barefooted.

  “You sure you want mine, then?”

  “I know I want it hard,” Shit said. “And I know callin’ you that’s the best way to get it that way, you black sonofabitch.”

  Eric took a deep breath, wondering why something said specifically to get him hard got him hard, as though the intent itself was sexy. (The kid with the flower wasn’t looking.) He pulled his shoulders up and fingered for his zipper. A moment later, Shit grasped him in his hand, and led him by the cock down between the urinals and the windows.

  “Hey,” Eric said, softly, “don’t you think we ought to go around the other side?”

  Shit looked over at the kid, who was concertedly not looking at them. “We ain’t gonna bother him—besides, I wanna see what the fuck I’m suckin’.” He glanced at the wire-covered windows, their marbled glass backed with sunlight. “You got such a nice one! I like to see what I’m eatin’.” Shit dropped to a squat, put his head to the side—and, when the wet heat enveloped him, Eric grasped Shit’s head, which began to retreat and advance. A second later, Shit’s fist left Eric’s hardened cock to grip the hip of Eric’s jeans.

  Eric made a sound louder than he intended.

  So did Shit—who moved off it long enough to say, “Now that tastes like the fuckin’ cock from heaven.” Then, mouth wide, he caught it again and moved in. And went in so that his face ground Eric’s lap, as if he wanted to swallow not only Eric’s dick, but balls, bladder, and prostate.

  Eric whispered, “Aw, Jesus, Shit…!”

  Going down on one knee, Shit kept sucking.

  “…excuse me?”

  Eric was not paying attention.

  “…excuse me…? I’m sorry, but…”