Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Trying not to loose Shit’s pistoning cock in his butt, Eric strained—and Dynamite pushed forward, so that for five, ten, twenty seconds Eric sucked Dynamite’s forward inches while the back of Shit’s fist beat his mouth.

  Then Dynamite laughed and pulled away.

  Shit grunted and let go. “Go on, then—jerk yourself off.” Gripping Eric’s shoulder, his mouth just behind Eric’s ear, he said, “You know he gets off watchin’ you and me make it—don’t you, y’ol’ pig fucker?”

  Beneath Shit’s pulsing weight, Eric managed to ask, “What you doin’ back here…?”

  “Same thing I was doin down at Big Man’s. Naw, see, I got home and come on inside and I seen you two at it. So I tossed my jeans into the corner and told him in Mex’s sign language to get up off you so I could get in here and do what had to be done—the way you two were goin’ at it, you’d’a been there all day! Besides, you know me—whenever I get home from fuckin’ someone else, I’m always horny!” Shit laughed and pumped harder.

  “Uh…” Eric grunted. “Yeah—!”

  Shit’s arms wrapped under Eric’s chest. He rubbed his face hard on Eric’s neck. Perspiration wet the flesh between Shit’s chest and Eric’s back. Shit held Eric with his arms and knees and pumped with twice Dynamite’s speed.

  The pool splashed and frothed and crashed against the insides of Eric’s back and belly, trying to break what contained it.

  Shit rasped, “We gonna do it now, yeah…yeah, we gonna do it…fuck…fuck…fuck…fuck…fuck…!” Springs squeaked and clashed.

  For moments Eric was sure his testicles were spinning in his scrotum, the friction heating them toward eruption. “I’m comin’…”

  Shit said, “I know y’are…!”

  And all the seas of the world whirlpooled over Eric’s back. Shit still hugged and pumped, stirring a pleasure that spilled through Eric’s knees and arms.

  Eric blinked to see, a foot from his face, Dynamite’s fist close over his cock’s head. Knobby and heavy, the fist quivered. Then, between each joint and juncture, milky slip rolled out, over veins and joint hair. Dynamite whispered, “Oh, shit…!” and pushed forward again, his groin nearing Eric’s face.

  At the same time, Shit whispered, “Fuck…!”

  Breathing deeply, Dynamite said, “Come on, son. Aw, Jesus, that was amazing’.” His flexing fingers pulled away from his cock, semen gleaming all over its veined thickness.

  Everything between Eric’s chest and knees turned to light, growing and glowing—till, of a sudden, it collapsed between tingling flanks and thighs. Eric felt his own cock spurt all over the pillow under his hips.

  Dynamite sat up, shifted his position, then his face was down with Eric’s, his fist turning and drooling between them. “Come on, son. Help your old man clean this up nasty mess.” Dynamite licked one knuckle, then another.

  Shit’s face hung three inches above Dynamite’s and Eric’s. “There’s a big glob on the back of his thumb. You eat that off, Eric. And you got all that runnin’ over your wrist—get that, Dynamite.”

  And they did.

  Shit’s speed increased to something beyond the parameters of velocity itself. Supporting himself on one forearm, he reached between them, and with blunt nubs dozed semen first into his father’s mouth, then into Eric’s. He let out all his air, went in, and did not retreat. His head collapsed between them.

  Dynamite laughed. “Hey, don’t pass out, Shit…!”

  Shit managed to whisper, “If I do, it ain’t gonna kill me…”

  Deep in Eric’s gut, he felt Shit spasm, again and again. For a moment, Shit’s forearm hurt Eric’s neck. Next to Eric’s ear, Shit made great gasps like ripping cloth.

  While Shit’s breaths grew quieter and slower, Dynamite moved around so he was stretched out beside them. He put his arm over both of them. “What you wanna do now?”

  Eric said, “I think he’s asleep.”

  “Oh,” Dynamite said, and, as if that gave him permission, yawned, then rubbed Eric and Shit’s backs. “Okay…”

  Suddenly Shit seemed to wake, reached down, and yanked the pillow from under Eric and balled it up again his cheek, turning his head—eyes still closed—back and forth.

  Eric looked around, found another, and said, “Why don’t you use this one here—it ain’t got cum all over it.” He pulled it nearer.

  Eyes still closed, holding Eric with one arm and the pillow with the other, Shit grunted like a grumpy four-year-old. “Naw, naw—I want the wet one! I always sleep on the wet one. You know that.” Then, more gently, he said, “Hey, you can put your head up here on this one with me, if you want.” He stuck his tongue out to lick the pillow, without opening his eyes. “That’s nice. That’s how I do it.”

  Eric shook his head—but both Dynamite and Shit’s eyes were closed. “You sure smell like you was messin’ around with Big Man.”

  Eric put his head down and closed his own. And took his own very deep breath.

  “Yeah, well that little guy can get up quite a stink when his pee hose pulls loose a couple of times—and it did. Hey. When we wake up,” Shit said, sleepily, suddenly, “I’m gonna suck the rest of the cum and stuff off my dad’s dick so he can’t go around complainin’ I don’t never suck him no more. But I’m tired, now.”

  * * *

  [34] “WHAT— ” BARBARA PUSHED through her kitchen door with its tall glass windows— “in the world are you doing here and…what are you doing?”

  On the stove, his mother’s large kettle let loose steam from under the lid, first on one side, then on the other. In one hand, from the bag, Eric pulled out two ears with their lined husks and tow tassels, their ends touched with brown, then looked up.

  “Um…” Stepping in, Barbara pulled the door closed. “What are you boiling?”

  “Nothin’, yet,” Eric still wore his work shoes and workpants, but he had changed into a clean orange shirt. “I was just gettin’ the water hot—for the corn. I thought I’d come over this evening and make you and Ron some dinner.”

  “Oh…” She frowned. “Well, that’s very nice of you. Actually, though, Ron’s gone up to a computer convention in Atlanta. He won’t be back till tomorrow evening—”

  “Yeah.” Eric grinned. “I saw Serena this morning at the Lighthouse, and she told me he’d be gone tonight and you’d be on your own. So I thought this was a good time to come over and fix you somethin’.”

  Barbara laughed. “Not very subtle, are you?”

  “Oh, come on, Barb. Ron doesn’t like me, and I don’t exactly love him launchin’ into me every time I’m around for more than five minutes, about how I’m wastin’ my life and how I don’t have nothin’ and ain’t never gonna have nothin’ and nobody’ll wanna know me—like we didn’t have no friends at all, over in the Dump.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t dislike you, sweetheart. He just doesn’t understand you. That’s all.” She came further across the white and yellow floor. “What are you making?”

  “Well,” Eric said, “it’s a recipe Horm told me over at the Produce Farm on the first day I went out there with Dynamite and Shit. Every year since, soon as the sweet corn comes in, he tells me again. He told it to me this morning, too; I guess he tells everybody. So, I thought, hell, this time, why don’t I go make some for Ron and Barb? If it tastes halfway decent, in a few days I’ll make some up for Shit and Dynamite.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see—and don’t worry about Ron. I knew he wasn’t gonna be here. But I’m makin’ enough so there’ll be some left for you and him tomorrow—probably for the next day, too.”

  “What’re your men folk eatin’ tonight, while you’re over here treating me like the Queen of Sheba?”

  “Well, it only took me three years, but I got Shit to where he ain’t scared of takin’ some microwave dishes out the refrigerator, loosenin’ the tops, stickin’ ’em in that thing, and pressin’ some buttons. Since it rings when it’s ready, he don’t have to read nothin’.
As long as they can eat it right out the bowls and don’t have to turn it out on no plates, he’ll do. So I divided it up for ’em. They got some chicken stew I left.”

  “You brought some of your stew over here a few months ago—it was tasty, too.” Barb frowned. Behind her, on the door panes, long-stemmed flowers were etched into the glass. “So this is a recipe you been sitting on for…how many years, now? Eric Jeffers, that’s so like something your daddy would do. I remember once out of a clear blue sky, Mike decided to make a sweet potato pie, crust and all—and I didn’t even know he could turn on the stove. He used up every dish and bowl in the house to do it. But it came out looking fine and tasted good.”

  “I guess as far as cookin’, then, I got the best of both sides.”

  “I guess you did.” Barb looked over the table, spread edge to edge with vegetables. Overhead copper rimmed blades on the ivory-colored ceiling fan turned just quickly enough to blur. “Now…what exactly is it?” Back in the trailer, the fan had always seemed to cover the entire kitchen ceiling. But the Hemmings kitchen was more than twice as big. Barbara moved around the wooden table.

  “Horm said to boil up some fresh corn, cut it off the cob, then cook it with some bacon and some cut up vegetables—garlic, onions, peppers, celery, mushrooms, jalapeños, fresh thyme, and oregano. And some zucchini. He said it’d be real good.”

  “I imagine it will be.” Barbara took a large breath. “Can I make one…two…three…four suggestions? Then I’ll go pour myself a drink, come back, sit in the corner, and leave you alone until you say it’s ready.”

  “Sure.” Eric turned from the table and went to a counter drawer to take out of knife. “Go on.”

  “First, mince your garlic and brown it four or five minutes in some butter. Don’t let it burn. Then put it aside and mix it in when you’re putting everything together toward the end. That’s one.”

  “Okay—how much garlic should I use, anyway?”

  “Two cloves for you, two cloves for me—and two for Ron. Second, slice those beautiful big white mushrooms you got there and sauté them in some olive oil—I have a bottle in the cabinet—then put them aside, too. They go in at the end. Too much stirring, and you’ll break ’em all to pieces. They’ll taste fine. But they won’t look very good. Three, I have a vegetable chopper up on the shelf. It’s not electric. You have to turn it by hand. But it’ll still cut up your onions, peppers, and celery in one-tenth the time you could do it with a knife. I’d cook all of them about ten to fifteen minutes before I mixed them in with the corn—then let it all go another ten minutes. And four, don’t forget to salt your corn water. You’ll probably need to cool your ears before you go cutting. You can do that with cold water in the sink. Oh, and after you cut the kernels off, run the back of your knife up and down the cob to get out the seed roots. That’s the sweetest part.”

  Eric said, “I knew about the mushrooms. But thanks for telling me about the chopper.”

  That evening, when, at the kitchen table, Eric dug the big aluminum spoon into the crock bowl of corn, red and green peppers, zucchini, onions, and brown bits of bacon, the handle clinked against the bowl’s rim. He blinked at Barbara.

  “Well,” Barbara said, while Eric starting grinning. “It smells good. This would make a very nice side dish. But it’s a great meal all by itself.”

  As they ate, Eric asked, “How much do you think I need for the three of us over at the Dump? Just with three ears for the two of us, I didn’t realize it was gonna be this much.”

  “I think,” Barbara said, “the whole purpose of this is for some kind of extender, when you’ve got a few ears of corn left over.” She took another fork full. (Barb hadn’t touched her second drink: Eric wondered if he’d discovered something useful for curbing his mother’s drinking.) “Still, for a main dish, if this is all you’re having, I’d say two ears apiece. For each person use one red pepper and one green one, one or two jalapeños, an onion, and three or four sticks of celery—and that’s going to be a big kettle of food! And three slices of bacon per person. Your grandma used to do something like this when I was a little girl—of course she would have died before she put garlic in it.”

  “When I first started cookin’ for ’em,” Eric said, digging in, “Shit and Dynamite both did some frownin’ at the garlic—but I was in the habit ’cause Mike used to like it in everything, when I cooked for him.”

  “Yes. I remember.” Barbara smiled.

  “I like it, too—and I was cookin’. Now, they just call ’em my ‘Aye-talian’ dishes, even if it’s beef stew.” He laughed with her.

  From somewhere outside, a woman called: “Hello-oooo—anybody home? Anybody want some blueberry-peach pie? I even brought the Cool Whip—”

  “Serena—?” Barbara sat up and looked over her shoulder.

  Serena pushed through the door from the garage that was always open, a shopping bag hanging from one brown forearm, with a large red Hemmings Mall logo slanting around on three sides of the brown paper, and a green checked scarf around her head. She held a glass pie plate, through which, here and there, Eric could see the crust directly against the glass, a map of the generous amount of shortening used to make it. “Oh, now don’t great minds run in a track, like they say? I figured your chief admirer, here, next to Ron, had taken you out to wine you and dine you at Shells—or maybe Chili’s—and I’d just stick all this in the refrigerator and leave it for you. But since you’re here—”

  “Honey,” Barbara said, “you wanna taste something good? Get yourself a plate and have some of this—you know where they are. Eric came over and made dinner. Then we’ll all have some of your dessert. There’s more than enough. And Eric can listen to two old ladies gossip for a bit. Look. You have to sit down and tell me about Ruth’s daughter. Is that girl in the family way or not—?”

  Serena looked at Eric with widening eyes. “You mean you cooked dinner for your mama?” She set the pie plate down on the green matt. Its lattice covering had been gilded with an egg white glaze that had gone gold in Serena’s oven no more than twenty minutes ago. “I should have been so lucky as to have a son or a daughter who would come over and cook for me. What you got here—Lord, that smells good!”

  Now Serena closed a cabinet door and, with a plate in hand, came back to the table, while Eric got up to get her some silverware.

  *

  Three evenings later, at the Dump, Eric asked Shit, “You wanna help me clear out this mess in the sink?”

  “Nope,” Shit said. “But I will. Come on. What we gotta do?”

  “Well, you can start by moving all that stuff off the counter, so there’ll be room to cut up those onions and peppers.”

  “Cuttin’ all them things up—” Shit frowned—“ain’t that gonna take a long time, like maybe forever?”

  “See that shoppin’ bag?” With the orange Hemmings Mall logo, it was the one Sarena had brought over to his mother’s, which she’d left him so he’d have something in which to carry stuff back here. “That’s got Barb’s vegetable chopper in it. She let me borrow it. I gotta get one of those for us.”

  An hour-fifty minutes later, when they were sitting at the table eating—from plates—Dynamite said, “Damn, that’s good! When I was a kid—” Dynamite and Shit both held their forks in their fists—“all I ever wanted was meat.” A lot of the stuff had been stored under the table. Eric had his shoes on a carton that hadn’t been there earlier. “But now, it seems like all I ever get a real cravin’ for today is vegetables. I tell you, Eric—this Aye-talian corn and peppers hits the spot.”

  “You like them mushrooms?” Shit asked.

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “I do.”

  “They ain’t bad,” Dynamite said.

  “I mean—” Shit shoveled in another mouthful—“I’m gonna eat ’em, ’cause they’re food. And it’s good. But to me, they don’t taste like nothin’.”

  Dynamite grinned across the table at Eric. “You know, every time we sit down to eat, you gotta
say somethin’ about Eric’s cookin’. It ain’t like you’re the one doin’ it.”

  Under the table, Shit’s big, bare feet joined Eric’s work shoes on the carton, and he began to rub and grip and wiggle them on Eric’s lower leg. “Hey, I didn’t say I didn’t like ’em, did I? And I’m eatin’ ’em.”

  Eric said, “That’s okay. I know what Shit means.”

  Shit said, “I like anybody what’ll put good food in my mouth. And Eric’s gonna let me put somethin’ back in his that’s gonna feel real good after dinner, ain’t you?”

  Eric grinned. “Didn’t you do that when we got home?”

  “Well, we’ll just do it again. See, I got ’im thinkin’ about suckin’ on my big, nasty Georgia dick. You can tell, ’cause it embarrasses that boy. He looks cute, grinnin’ like that. But that just makes me wanna get it in there even more.” On Eric’s ankles, Shit’s feet rubbed harder.

  “Gettin’ your dick sucked,” Dynamite said, “is what you’re always thinkin’ about! Me, though, I’m curious.” He looked from Shit to Eric. “What’s goin’ through your mind?”

  Eric took a fork full of his own. This batch was better than the one he had made and left half of in his mother’s refrigerator for Ron’s return. “Actually?” He swallowed. “What am I thinkin’ about right now?”

  Dynamite nodded. “Um-hm.” Besides the washed-out bib straps, across his chest’s chestnut hair, one ring flared like white gold in the low sun coming through the kitchen window in the five-o’clock blue. In shadow, the other was dark as iron.

  “Actually,” Eric said, “I was wonderin’ just how many people there were who were like me.”

  “You mean,” Shit said, still eating doggedly—“how many of ’em like mushrooms? And Aye-talian stuff? Which, by the way, I think is fuckin’ good!”

  “No…!” Eric was surprised. “Not that! I was actually wonderin’ how many people…you know, like to drink piss. And, maybe, suck a dick as soon as it comes out their ass.”