Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Mex’s eyes were still closed. The pockmarked face settled into a smile. Grinning down, with only his mouth, suddenly he blinked black eyes as bright as Jay’s amber irises.

  Jay stood beside his partner, bending over; Eric saw Jay had stuck his arm down and his hand under Mex’s butt. “You see,” Jay said to Eric’s questioning look, “I gotta stick three fingers up this spic’s asshole so he can come—or you’d been suckin’ his dick all fuckin’ day.” He pulled his hand free and, standing, raised it to push his fingers against Mex’s mouth, who took them in and began to tongue them. With his funny half-smile, Jay pulled his hand loose and lowered himself into a chair. “You see, Mex came with us last night. But he didn’t shoot this mornin’. You gotta keep track of that sort of thing if you’re gonna roll around in bed with a lotta people what ain’t in your own immediate family. You got your truck-stop manners down pretty good, puppy. Only now you got to work on bein’ polite with your general over-all everyday orgy carryings-on—it’s just as important. Trust me.”

  “Okay, now.” In the air, Mex’s big hands signed: “Let up on the boy. He pulled out my load. He’s a good puppy—you don’t gotta be on his case all the time.”

  “You know as well as me,” Jay said. “It’s the same with boys and dogs. A well trained puppy is a happy puppy.”

  “Besides.” In his own chair, Mex still grinned. “I don’t got to come so much no more. I had a lot of fun. It’s not important.”

  “Mex,” Jay said, “is tryin’ to be polite to you, there.” Jay turned to Mex. “What you mean you don’t need to come no more? You come when I say cum, you shit eatin’ wetback bastard! Otherwise, I’m gonna stand up here and piss in your fuckin’ mouth, make you roll around in it on the floor, and the two of you gonna lick it up! I’ll make you fight over it, with a good tongue wrasslin’ match. See—” Jay sat back, and pointed over to Mex with a wide thumb, not even looking—“he already got another hard-on.”

  Which, now, smiling sheepishly, Mex pulled one hand over to cover.

  Eric had one, too.

  “But what we’re gonna do now—all three of us—is sit at the table and have us a cup of coffee and not say much and look out the window at the sun on the ocean there. It’s a real pretty mornin’. You got to sit and look out at the mornin’ a fair amount, if you wanna live a goddam civilized life.”

  Eric sat back, then put one hand up on the table, to lever himself from his knees. Already three mugs sat on the oilcloth. So did the carafe—on a green tile trivet, like a fragment of sea.

  “Sit down, there, puppy. Will you two—” Jay looked back and forth between them—“stop pullin’ on your dicks a minute? All we gonna do is look out the window and be quiet and enjoy some coffee—and the sun.”

  Backing up, Eric looked behind to determine where his own chair was—then sat on it.

  “You got a hard-on,” Eric said, nodding at Jay.

  “I don’t care. We done fucked away half the mornin’ in bed already. It’s gotta be at least six thirty. So—” Jay repeated—“we gonna sit here now and have some damned coffee. And look out to sea.” Which is what they did.

  What they’d done the rest of the day, Eric could not have reconstructed. Had they gone out exploring the all-but-empty island, stopping to talk to the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Holota, who, a half-mile away, were sitting out on their side deck, their backs to the road, also watching the water? Had they stayed in, played pinochle, or Chinese checkers? Had they relieved Hugh and taken grumpily silent Shad in his wheelchair for a roll outside? Had they fooled around in one of the grottos or just taken a nap together at the house—“’Cause,” as Jay explained, “we done so much relaxin’ already, we gotta take another fuckin’ nap to get over it.”

  What Eric did remember was, late that afternoon, how he’d stood at the orange counter with Mex.

  Along with the walk-in pantry at the end, the kitchen was the length of the entire house. Beams rose over the wooden walls, crossed the ceiling. The room’s far end, where the freezer was and a couple of ancient stoves Jay said no longer worked, had become a storage area. Junk filled more than half the space. You could think that part was Dynamite’s kitchen in the Dump. But this end was clear, with pots beside their red tops, hung from wall hooks beside different sized skillets over the dishwasher next to the modern electric burner a dozen feet down the counter from the stainless steel sink.

  At the counter Mex cut up onions and green and red peppers, big and little ones, pale and dark ones, and, in a large clay bowl crushed tomatoes and tomatillos, with the bottom of a water glass. Following instructions, Eric scraped the spatula back and forth across the skillet, frying up chopped beef and ground veal and cut up sausages (already cooked in another pan), while, from his seat at the table, Jay explained how you had to have extra cumin to make chili with store bought chili powder have any taste at all. “And that stuff picks up mites faster than a big rig driver can pick up crabs from a twenty dollar hooker workin’ Turpens back lot.” Sometimes Mex leaned on Eric’s shoulder, or now and again slid his hand down Eric’s back and stuck a finger under the back of his jeans to trowel between Eric’s buttocks and even push his fingertip into Eric’s ass, a quarter of an inch, an inch. “Mex, what you doin’?” Eric grinned at him.

  Mex took his hand out to sign: “You liked it last night. You don’t like it today?”

  Then Mex would go on to explain how at least he hadn’t used the hand he’d held the hot peppers with when he’d cut them. “A friend of mine he do that to me, one time. He think it’s funny—fucking asshole!” Eric asked Mex to slow down and repeat it for him. From the kitchen table where he was sitting, watching, his long sleeved denim shirt lopsided over the back of the big, solid chair, with his big solid arms, their colors hazed in gold, Jay started to translate.

  “No—I’ll figure it out,” Eric said. “Jay, I’ll get it by myself. Don’t tell me. Once more, Mex…”

  “If I did that, your hole would hurt bad. It really stings. But I’m your friend. I don’t make jokes like that with my friends.” Then Mex took his hand away and sucked his finger that, moments back, had been, to the second knuckle, in Eric’s butt.

  Eric said, “I guess I’m pretty clean back there.”

  “No you ain’t.” Mex grinned. “But you smell good. And taste good, too.”

  Jay sat at the table chuckling. “The first time Mex was makin’ that stuff, he had me cuttin’ up them little green jalapeños—and like a damned fool I took a break and nipped into the john to piss, run my finger around under my skin to wipe the cheese out, and sucked that stuff off it, skinned it back to piss and shook it dry, and while I’m comin’ out, my mouth and the head of my dick start feelin’ like they’re getting’ roasted over red hot coals. I told Mex right there, cuttin’ up them peppers is fuckin’ spic work. The third time I accidentally done that, I decided a white man’s too fuckin’ stupid to slice them things up. A white feller’s gonna forget, reach down, scratch himself—and burn his damned dick off, every time.”

  Again, Eric grinned at him—and shook his head. Mex could be almost as bad about excrement as Uncle Tom. (These days old Tom ate his own shit, every third time he crapped.) In his black denim jacket, no shirt or pants, and bare feet, the thick, bowlegged Mex was nearly as solid as bare-chested Jay, who sat, shirtless, with great arms like a hemp-paled Christmas trees, a muscular haystack with his full beard and his Turpens cap still on, grinning at Mex.

  Yellow hair blurred the inks, knuckles to shoulders.

  There were still no pictures on Jay’s chest or back. But, in fur, his gray-red nipples were the size of acorns, enlarged (he’d explained) from three successive sets of tit rings, each of which he’d had to take out: the first ones, he’d told Eric, at Shad’s insistence, to shut the old bastard up; he’d taken out the second pair for a cat scan over at the Runcible Memorial (which, of course, had turned up nothing), and the last for that emergency appendectomy four years ago—“Just about a year before you co
me here—” that had left its gouge on his right flank. “They always keep them electric heart-starter paddle things ready with any operation, no matter how damned simple—in case. They told me, if they used them when I had my rings in, they’d burn my tits off me. They don’t even want you to have in no earring.” With each, he’d waited too long to put them back in. The holes had closed—in less than two weeks. So, each time he’d had them re-pierced and new ones inserted. “And each time my damn titties would grow up twice as large as they was—well, it gives Mex somethin’ to nurse on at night, when he gets tired of my toes. You was doin’ pretty good on them things, yourself, puppy.”

  (Again Eric grinned.)

  Sometime in the next week, Jay and Dynamite were planning to visit Tank and Cassandra’s in Runcible—Jay for a fourth set and Dynamite for a thicker gauge. “Your daddy won’t get no tattoos. But he’ll go have a number fourteen needle jabbed through his damned titties.” Jay shrugged. “Well—that’s your new daddy and my goddam best friend. I hope your old one—your real dad was a nigger, right?—had more sense. Your mama must really like them black guys.” He was referring to Ron.

  Eric said, “She does.”

  “Right now, your dad looks like your brother. Your real dad I mean.” (Eric had once tried to untangle the complexities of his parentage, and Jay had responded: I don’t care if he’s a nigger. He raised you, didn’t he? Then he’s your fuckin’ dad—like Dynamite’s your dad now. And Eric had felt a wonderful relief, near to nepotistic love. ’Cause he’s raisin’ you now. That’s how it works down here. You can count yourself lucky, ’cause you was raised by black and white—like Kyle.)

  “Naw,” Eric said. “He probably looked more like…Dog Turd. My dad’s real dark. He never had no collar. But he wore a brown leather wrist brace.”

  “Well, see,” Jay said, “he probably didn’t know it, but the nigger was getting’ you ready for us.”

  With a hairy hand, Jay massaged his forearm, over scorpions, starfish, seahorses, pressing down hairs like gold wires, which, when the cracked, soiled, and callused palm passed on, rose again.

  Then Mex explained, “Now, you have to jerk off and put it in the chili pot—”

  “What? What did you say…? Jay, what did he say, just now?”

  So Mex repeated it.

  “Aw, come on, Mex.” Eric said, “You’re kiddin’, aren’t you?”

  “He ain’t kiddin’.” Jay’s broad hand flattened on the yellow oilcloth beside the glimmering metallic yellow and green of his Coors can. “That’s more important than the goddam chili powder and the cumin! If you don’t add some flavor to that stuff, it don’t taste like nothin’!”

  “You gotta be jokin’,” Eric said.

  “Am I jokin’ when I let you suck my dick? Go on, puppy, take your meat out and start tenderizin’ it.” Despite laughing and kidding, Eric realized they meant it. “Don’t worry—” nodding seriously, Jay turned on his chair. Rearing back, he unzipped his own fly—“we gonna help you out…At least give you some encouragement. Come on. Let’s see how long it takes.”

  So, beneath the single line of florescent bulbs along the ceiling, Eric stood in the middle of the floor, opened his pants, and let them fall midway down his thighs.

  “Turn around, so Mex can see your butt cheeks clenchin’ up. That’s what he likes.” With one heavy arm out, its images deep in fur, Jay gestured in a circle with a blunt forefinger. “Me, now—I wanna see you shoot.” When Eric was nearing orgasm and making little gasps, Jay said, “Go on, catch it, there. Catch it—catch it in your other hand, puppy dog. Don’t waste that stuff…”

  Finally, Eric stood with the puddle in his palm, breathing hard. “Now…now what do…you want…want me to do…to do with it?”

  “Pour it in the pot with the beans,” Jay said. “And the meat. And the tomatoes.”

  “No. Come on, you don’t really—”

  “You ate enough of that stuff in your life before, you know it ain’t gonna kill you.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Go on,” Mex signed. “Put it in.”

  So, shaking his head over the stove, Eric shook off his hand above tomatoes, meat, and beans. “You guys are crazy.” Like smaller and larger meteors, semen droplets hit the wavering red, leaving momentary craters—and were gone. Eric turned back, licking the rest from his palm and the ham of his thumb—to show he was a good sport.

  “Yeah,” Jay said, nodding deeply. “Cum crazy, maybe…But you are, too, scumsucker.”

  Now Mex was on his knees in front of Jay, pulling at the laces of one of Jay’s high-topped shoes.

  “There we go.” Jay reached down to rub Mex’s head. “Now we’re on our way to some real chili. You gotta have some wetback jizz in with what us white boys put in. Otherwise it ain’t authentic.”

  “What’s he doin’?” Eric asked.

  “Pullin’ off my shoe.”

  And, a minute later, when the half-collapsed work shoe slid from Jay’s foot, a smell came out that Eric realized was, all over again, giving him an erection. Eric said, “Damn, Jay—that’s some real foot stink. I can smell it over here.”

  “I know it is. Dynamite and me both always had powerful feet. But if it gives you a hard-on, it’s doin’ its job.”

  Eric rubbed between his legs. “Kinda, I guess…”

  A minute later, Mex had tossed Jay’s socks, knotted together, across the floor tiles and had Jay’s big toes in his mouth, sucking at them, prodding between with his tongue. Mex’s jacket was off on the floor—all he’d been wearing. Seconds later, Mex was on his side, holding Jay’s bare foot.

  Jay rolled Mex onto his back. The Mexican’s cock flopped up against the gut hair, his wide cock head, dark pink as bologna, pushing from its brown hood. Two lapping cheese rings circled it. The foreskin had shoved out one, retreated, then shoved out another.

  Eric said, “Can I suck Mex off…?” Because of his cheese and his thick foreskin, sucking Mex’s barrel cock was really fun.

  “No, you may not.” Jay put a broad foot—paler than the rest of him—on Mex’s groin. Blushing in spots from the pressure of his shoe, the foot looked too big even for a man that large. Jay rubbed and rolled Mex’s cock back and forth, while Mex’s brown hips hunched and lifted on the vinyl flooring. Mex held onto the foot’s cracked edge with one hand, and Jay’s frayed denim pants leg with the other. “Hey,” Jay said, “I think this fuckin’ spic is about to shoot, too. Ain’t you, you shit eatin’ scumbag? Hey, help him out and call this fuckin’ low down cocksucker some nasty names with me. It ain’t like the fucker’s deaf, you know. You wanna take a piss in his face, puppy dog? Come here, we can both do it.” Most of his weight on his remaining shoe, Jay stood. “’Cause this is his second time today, we gotta be a little creative. He ain’t like your brother back in the Dump what can come any time he wants all day long.” On a wall shelf a ceramic skeleton embraced a pot, the skull-face leering around the neck. Beside it stood a carefully painted figure of a black motorcyclist in black leather, mounted on a miniature Harley.

  Pushing his cock down with all his fingers, where it jutted from his jeans, Jay aimed. “Come on. Mex here is gonna give us a good load.”

  Eric stepped over, unsure if any urine was in him.

  “Open wide, you dumb-ass spic,” Jay said. “We both gonna show you how much we like you, now.”

  Mex opened his mouth and waggled his tongue back and forth.

  And Eric was hard again.

  “Drink this,” Jay said, and let loose.

  Eric took a big breath, and after six or seven seconds, began to drip. The drip became a dribble—then a stream.

  “Right in his fuckin’ mouth—yeah, just like you doin’. Get the floor wet, and you gonna clean it up, puppy dog. With your tongue, too,” Jay said. “That’s right. Just like he was squattin’ under the bar at The Slide and you was standing with me at the counter, havin’ a pop and too lazy to go out back and do it in the outdoor john. Look at him swal
low that puppy piss—as well as this big ol’ dog’s. Hey, I just felt him go off.” Jay laughed. “All under my toes—see it there? I tell you, you treat this spic right and you can make him shoot a big load every time—almost as much as you, puppy.”

  With one hand on the table, Jay lifted his broad foot from a shiny splat, irregular and off center, over Mex’s belly, with, below it, the wide triangle of curly black.

  While Mex lay on his back, breathing hard, Jay turned his cracked sole up against his calf, reached down and dozed his forefinger over it, to scrape up a rill of mucus. Then he scooped the same finger’s tip into the trough behind his toes. “Might as well get it all.” Jay dropped his foot and walked—still in one shoe—to the stove, then flung his hand down over the kettle. Steam whipped from the edge. “There…!” Now he scraped his finger on the pot’s edge. “You know, this is how religions start—with that communion stuff and all.”

  Eric wondered if it burned. Jay’s fingers were so tough and callused, though, probably it didn’t.

  “But we don’t need to take it that far.” In front of the oven’s green enamel door, Jay turned. “All right—which one of yall cocksuckers wanna bust my nut, now?” His cock still thrust in its downward curve from his jeans. “I done had all day to recuperate.” Pushing from his fly, his larger testicle was fully visible along with half the smaller. Tall and thick as Jay was, his cock was not more than six-and-a-half inches, hard—an inch shorter than Eric’s, soft. But Jay always brought so much attitude to his carryings on, by the time you were doing stuff with him, mostly you weren’t paying attention to such things.