Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  “Now, there…” Shit said. “That’s a’ interestin’ question.”

  On the side of the table where nobody sat, a tool box stood next to a kid’s pail full of nails and pieces of pipe, beside some wood Shit had pushed to the side when they’d sat down to eat. As usual in the house, Shit wore no shirt. Eric still had on his work clothes, though his shirt was unbuttoned.

  “And maybe like to fuck as much as they like to get fucked?” Dynamite said. “Don’t forget that.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “All that stuff. But I guess that’s more normal, isn’t it?”

  “There ain’t no normal,” Shit said. “That’s what he always told me.” With his scruffy beard, Shit pointed his chin toward Dynamite. “There’s just comfortable and uncomfortable. And I like to be comfortable with pretty much everything.”

  Dynamite put his fork down, thumbed a piece of red pepper off his lower lip up into his mouth, took Eric’s cell from his bib pocket—something had finally given out on Dynamite’s, so Eric had let him have his—flipped it open, and pressed buttons with a forefinger that seemed three times too thick for just one. “Hello…? Is Dr. Greene in? Oh, this is you, sir…This is Dynamite Haskell. I was here with my boys, and one of ’em had a question…No, sir. It ain’t medical—least not really. Naw, there ain’t nothin’ wrong with ’im. It’s about sex.” Dynamite listened a few seconds more, then said: “Okay.” And extended the cell to Eric

  —who said, “Huh?” and, “Hey, I don’t need to ask him right now.”

  “Go on,” Dynamite said. “He’ll talk to you. That’s what the Foundation pays ’im for.”

  Shit’s feet stopped rubbing. A grin crossed his face.

  Dynamite pushed the cell at Eric, who took it mostly to keep it from falling onto his plate. He held it up, looked at it, bewildered, then put it to his ear. “Hey, sir…? I don’t have to ask you about nothin’ right here. I mean…if you’re eatin’ dinner or something—”

  The voice came over the earpiece: “Hey, Shit. How’re you doin’? You wanna tell me what’s on your mind? What you and your daddy are talkin’ about, there?”

  “Naw…” Eric said. “I mean, this ain’t Shit. This is Eric.”

  “Eric Jeffers?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, well—now, this is the first time I must have talked to you like this. Shit used to phone me up with questions all the time back when he was thirteen or fourteen. But I haven’t heard from him in a while. I guess I must’ve answered all of his. Probably if there was somethin’ you wanted to know, you should ask him. But if it’s something I know anything about, I’ll tell you—or I’ll look it up and get back to you.”

  Across the table, Shit took one more mouthful, watching. “Dr. Greene knows everything about gay guys. All about any medical things we got. That’s his specialty. And anybody in the Dump can call him, any time, and ask him. That’s what the Kyle Foundation hired him for, see?”

  “Well,” Eric said. “I was just wondering, I mean…Um…I…well, sometimes I like to drink…urine. Piss. A lot of it. And…I was just wondering…”

  After a moment, the voice said, “…if it would hurt you? No—at least not if your kidneys are okay. You can put away pretty much all the piss you want. Lot’s of guys do. The main thing to remember is: Don’t try to save it. At least not if you intend to drink it later. After a couple of hours it starts to change into ammonia. That gets lethal pretty quick and can make you sick, if not kill you. But you can pretty well smell that. If it’s even close to makin’ your eyes water, throw it out. But long as you and your partner—or partners—are in good health, and you’re getting it fresh out a dick—or a pussy—it’s not gonna hurt any of you.”

  “That’s how I always drink it—out their dicks, I mean.”

  “Well, Dynamite knows what he’d doin’. And after all this time, Shit ought to. Have you been to The Slide?”

  “Yeah, Shit took me over there a couple of times. But we went in the afternoon.” Eric looked around the table. Dynamite was eating. Shit was grinning. “We don’t go out too late—’cause we gotta get up and get to work early.”

  “Well, The Slide doesn’t really get active till nine, ten o’clock. Or later—That’s a really good place for drinkin’ lots of piss. ’Cause everybody who goes there’s pretty obligin’. That’s what it’s set up for. And most of it ain’t too strong—just beer piss.”

  “Ain’t none of us here really bar-type drinkers. And I got about as much as I want right here at home.”

  “Well, if you went on the right Saturday night, you might see some guys put away some downright heroic amounts.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that—under the bar in the back. Till it comes shootin’ out their butts. But, well…a year or so back Bull came over and—”

  “Yeah, I know. I told ’im he might drop around to remind you folks there that you have a few special needs—that’s after Jay called to tell him a little bit about you,” Dr. Greene said, “and asked him pretty much the same. Now, look, you’re gettin’ enough from Shit and Dynamite?”

  Eric looked across the table, where Dynamite and Shit were both smiling. “Yeah. Yes, sir. I am.”

  Dynamite gave a small nod, as if he could hear Dr. Greene’s end of the conversation.

  “Good. You make sure you drink lots of water, too. That’s always a good idea. And get yourself a box of baking soda—to brush your teeth with and rinse your mouth out. That’s to keep the acid down so you don’t end up loosin’ your teeth.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Eric said. “I will. Sure—”

  “Go on,” Shit said from around the table’s corner. “Ask him your question. You ain’t asked him nothin’ yet.”

  Eric took in another long breath. “Um…I was gonna ask you, see, how many there were—guys like that, I mean.”

  “Like you?” Eric could here him smiling. “Well, I don’t have percentage figures on that to hand. In the Dump proper, there Fallow Jones, and his partner, Earl. I guess you already know about Jay MacAmon and Mex out on Gilead. I know yall’re friends with them. Johnny Einman is pretty much into that—though he doesn’t have a steady. But he’s over to the Slide pretty regular, these days. And he has a regular thing with the Markum boy. You met him, yet? Of course, neither one of them live in the Dump. Still, that might be fun for you fellas. Then there’s Sam Quasha and Abe. And I don’t know whether I’m supposed to count Brick and that donkey of his—now that’s a relationship that sometimes worries me, ’cause Brick is only five-and-a-half feet tall, and a four-footed animal can tear you up, if you let it get too deep inside you, much less him drainin’ it dry like he tells me he does pretty much every other day. But he says he’s been doin’ it for years, so if there was any real worryin’ to do, it should’ve come ten or twelve years ago when they got here. There’s maybe another half dozen I could think of. So what’s that, now? About twenty percent? And it’s one of those things that changes. You do it a lot for a year or three—then somehow you get out of the habit and forget about it—then, five years later, you pick it up again.”

  The names were all known to Eric, though half of them he did not have faces for—but simply knew they were residents among the seventy-five dwellings making up the Dump.

  “As long as you got someone you can count on to keep you from getting dehydrated, in all this heat, you should be okay.” Dr. Green chuckled. “That’s how Sam and Abe always put it to me, when I talk to them about it.”

  “Oh, yeah…” Eric said.

  “Good.”

  “Um—Shit and Dynamite are both…pretty obligin’. I mean, since…Bull come by.”

  “Well, lucky you, son! You don’t mind if I mention you to some of the fellows around here I told you about—they’d probably like to know you. And then you’ll have somebody you can talk to who knows about that stuff first hand.”

  “Oh, yeah, I…guess that’s okay.”

  “I mean, Bull told me he was gonna come over and deliver his message fro
m Jay. So I assume that worked out okay…?”

  “Yeah, it…it did.”

  “Good. Well, if you got any more questions, you give me a call. From five to seven is when I take calls. For medical problems, either make an appointment, or just walk in. I’m rarely that busy. Just drop into the office, from eight in the morning on.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure…”

  “And have a good evening. I’ve got another call, now.”

  The line clicked.

  Eric took the phone from his ear and looked at it; that was the longest conversation he’d had on a cell since the day he’d bought it and talked to Mike about dropping school. “That’s kind of strange stuff to be talkin’ about at dinner.” Frowning, Eric put down the phone. “But I guess that’s better than not talkin’ about it at all.”

  Shit said, “I bet he told you about Sam and Abe and Einman—and Brick, drinkin’ his damn donkey’s piss whenever he can catch him spillin’ it. I seen ’im do it out on the road a couple of times. He don’t care who sees ’im, either. There wasn’t nobody out but us when I caught ’im at it, squattin’ down under that donkey’s belly, holdin’ its dick in his hand and hosin’ it into his mouth. I took my dick out and jerked off while I watched him. When we finished, he got up and come over; we grinned at each other, and that ol’ nigger bent down and fingered my cum up off my foot and ate it. Then we nodded—and went on. I mean it…was kind of friendly.”

  “He…did?” Eric asked.

  Dynamite said, “You know that ‘ol’ nigger’ ain’t no older than I am.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean.” Then Shit said, “Now, I would’ve asked Dr. Greene about us.”

  “What you mean?”

  The weight that had been resting, motionless, on Eric’s shins under the table suddenly vanished. Shit scraped his chair back and stood. Upright, he stuffed a last fork-full in his mouth. Then the fork clattered down on the table. Shit stepped around the table toward where Eric was still sitting. “You know…How many guys was like you and me. How many did what we like to do.”

  He leaned against Eric’s shoulder, then pulled back to take his hand and cup it under his nose, and with a forefinger closed off a nostril and honked into his hand. Then with his thumb, he closed off the other hand and honked again. On his brown palm, among the dark lines of dirt that webbed the hard, heavy flesh, were three pieces of dried mucus. The biggest was green, and looked like cracked jade, irregular and faceted. On the ball of his thumb lay two smaller pieces, also irregular, one half green, half yellow, dry and flaky. The other was as delicate as a fragment of dried yellow leaf. “Go on—which ones you want? I’ll eat whichever one you leave.”

  Eric looked up at Shit, then down at the excretion. Suddenly he dropped his head, and got two of them in his mouth. They were chewy. And salty.

  “God damn!” Shit whispered. And raised his hand to mouth the remaining one. “Mother fucker—now look at that! Go on—look! See how you got me?” He pulled open the top button to his pants. The cloth fell loose, and Shit’s cock pushed out. “Hard as a goddam rock, that’s what I mean. Come on, nigger. Gimme a big kiss, and lemme feed you the one I’m chewin’ on. You wouldn’t have to suck it more’n three times before I filled up your goddam mouth with cum. I thought that’s what you was gonna ask the doctor about. How many was there like us?”

  Eric hugged Shit’s hips and rubbed his face against Shit’s groin. Shit bent over him and hugged his head.

  Leaning backward in his chair, Dynamite rocked on his back chair legs. “Are we finished eatin’ dinner yet?”

  Shit said, “I don’t know. Maybe.” Then he said: “I know this ain’t nobody’s idea of the best dinner table conversation in the world. But about two weeks ago, after I talked to Bull and Dr. Greene, I went in right behind you when you’d left a big hunk floatin’ in the commode, and I reached in and broke me off a piece. And the same day, later, I pulled a piece of Eric’s out there, too—and I ate ’em down. Both of ’em. It was sort of like magic, I was tryin’ to do, so you two wouldn’t ever go away and leave me. I mean, I wanted to get bounded up with the two of you sons-of-bitches. Now, I could say, I’d been worried and wanted to ask Dr. Greene whether that would hurt me any—but the fact is, I know it won’t. ’Cause I seen Tom eat enough of his own, not to mention him goin’ in and chowin’ down on what any of us leaves in the shitter. And it ain’t never killed him.”

  “Now that,” Dynamite said, thoughtfully, “don’t sound like Dr. Greene or Bull. That sounds like you!”

  “Well, the truth is I done asked ’em both after I done it, not before. So there wasn’t nothin’ nobody could about it.” Shit leaned back.

  “You know, it ain’t just his name,” Dynamite said. “This boy been crap-crazy since he was a little thing. When he was in Pampers, he used to love to play with his own. And if you happened to leave some in the commode, soon as he could toddle around, all he wanted to do is get in there and fuck with it. It mean he was a damn mess.”

  Shit laughed. “Well, my dick comes outta your ass today, and if it’s got a few of them brown stripes runnin’ up and down it, lookin’ at ’em can get me up for a second round—even if it’s soft; which it ain’t usually.”

  Dynamite put his fork on his empty plate. “You actually done eat a piece of your daddy’s crap, boy? I mean last week?”

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “It felt…kinda spiritual, actually. I hope it works.”

  Dynamite snorted. “You probably don’t remember it ’cause I don’t think you was more than two, two-and-a-half. But Jay and Mex stopped over here and I was tellin’ ’em about it—and Mex said, well, let ’im go and do whatever the fuck he wants to do with it. Maybe that’ll get it out ’is system. And, who knows, you might learn something about your boy. Then he went in to the back to drop a friend. When he come out in the kitchen, I told him I didn’t hear ’im flush. And he said no, he hadn’t closed the bathroom door after himself, neither. But by then, you were gone into the back—and somehow we got to talkin’ and kind of forgot about you. And maybe twenty minutes later, you come out the bedroom, grinnin’—and covered in shit. I mean, from your ears to your toes. I couldn’t tell you how much had gone into your mouth—but you also looked as happy as I think I’d ever seen you! Jay looked up first and saw you, and begun laughin’. Then Mex started in after him. And when I realized what it was, I didn’t know if I was mad or thought it was as funny as they did. But I told Mex, right, ‘This was your idea, you crazy spic! You get ’im outside and hose ’im off! You can clean ’im up!’ So Mex got up, took you by the hand, and went out in front of the house with you and uncoiled the green hose we used to have out there and washed you down. For all I know, he licked you clean. I wouldn’t put it past him—and right then I didn’t even wanna know about it! It only took about fifteen minutes. I made him clean up the bathroom, too. And I remember, years later, when you picked your name, I thought about all that stuff. And a dozen years after that, here it is, all comin’ home to roost.” Dynamite snorted. “Well, that ain’t gonna be my problem.” He lowered his brows at Eric. “It’s yours, now, son.”

  Frowning, Eric looked up over Shit’s all but bald chest, with its few tight curls, to his irregular beard.

  “Damn,” Dynamite said. “If anybody’s interested, I got to take a wicked piss! Anyone who wants to watch or take part, come on in with me.”

  * * *

  [35] COMING UP THE road, through sun speckles jumping around beneath the blowing pines, Shit was ginning like someone with news.

  Eric was coming down from Mama Grace’s. The Dump’s back road smelled of dust, sun, and pine resin. This side section of the Dump, around the edge of the bluff, for two weeks had been like a new and once hidden world—but somehow, with Eric’s fifth and sixth visit, it had become as familiar as the main road running between Bull and Dynamite’s cabins, down past Chef Ron’s and into Dump Corners.

  Shit slowed down and said, “Hey—you know anything about a three-wire switch???
?

  “What you mean?” Eric asked.

  “I mean do you know how to fix one if it gets broke.”

  “I don’t know—you don’t mean one of those things where you got a switch at the top of the stairs and another at the bottom and you can turn a light on and off from either one, do you?”

  “Yeah—that kind.”

  “Sure. But I ain’t done it in a while.”

  “How you learn?”

  “We had a shop course in the ninth grade—I learned about dimmer switches and all that kind of stuff. And we had one of them that didn’t work in the back stairs. So my dad and I together went and fixed it for Mr. Condotti—he was our landlord, back in Atlanta.”

  “I was askin’,” Shit said, “’cause Fred Hurter said that Hoke just decided last week that he was gonna go off to Chicago. Some guy invited him up there to stay with him. So he’s gonna go and see if he likes it.”

  Hoke was a local Dump fellow, in his late thirties, who did most of the handy work in the community. He was on salary from the Chamber of Commerce.

  “Fred said if we wanted to do some of that, when we weren’t working on the garbage routes, we could try our hand at it and, if it worked out, we could make a little extra.”

  “Sure,” Eric said. “Why not? And I can put a washer on a leaky faucet.”

  “Come on—let’s go over and see Fred.”

  “All right.”

  Shit turned, and they started back under the branches, heavy with needles in the warm October.

  Up the slope, was a cabin built back into the hillside—it belonged to Sam and Abe, two of the men that Dr. Greene had mentioned to Eric on the phone. As they walked past, up the slope the door opened and Abe came out on the porch. (Two pickups—one brown, one green—were parked beside the porch’s end.) A tall, gaunt black man, in his early forties, he was light enough to have freckles pretty much all over. You could see the spots, brown and reddish, all over his face on his chest and shoulders from here. He wore a set of loose jeans—no shirt—and a tweed cap. Walking to the rail, he looked out, then over, saw them, and waved.