Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Eric wondered if he was expected to go over, squat down, and suck Jay off. He was feeling a little queasy.

  Mex had rolled over, though, and, on his knees, smiled at Eric. “You do that good, puppy.” Mex moved his hands down. “Real good. Thank you.” Mex turned to the stove, crawled across the kitchen, then stopped to sign back, “You take a good piss.”

  In sign language, Eric dropped his fingers from his mouth in a quick, You’re welcome.

  Eric watched Jay rub Mex’s head, in that way that always felt so friendly, whenever you were sucking the big boatman—when they were alone on the scow and Jay was at the wheel or sometimes out here at the house. How many times, now in Turpens, sometimes with Shit, sometimes alone, something joining in, sometimes not, or down in the boat house, even out here, had Eric seen Jay and his partner have sex?

  Only it hadn’t been in their own kitchen, before, nor had it involved…well, what was supposed to be dinner.

  “There…” Grunting, Jay wiped the back of his wrist on his beard. (Occasionally, before he came, like Shit, he drooled a little. Again, it was probably because of his teeth.) Reaching down, he helped stocky Mex to his feet. “Don’t swallow that stuff, you cocksuckin’ spic. That’s my supper contribution.” One hand on Jay’s hip, then the other on Jay’s upper arm, Mex rose. “Go on, Mex,” Jay said. “Spit my fuckin’ load right into that pot. I tell you, boy, if chili ain’t really nasty, it ain’t fit to eat.”

  Mex leaned over the green-enameled stove and made a hawking sound. His broad shoulders pushed forward.

  Kind of quietly, Eric said, “I don’t think I’m gonna want any of…”

  As Mex’s head pulled back, steam rose by his cheek.

  Jay rubbed the back of Mex’s neck. “See, now.” Both of them turned from the green stove. Mex grinned. Jay hugged the naked Mexican into his hairy flank. Reaching around to thumb something off Mex’s chin, he stuck it in his own mouth, “that’s gonna be some real good chili. We all made our contribution—the three of us. From our own goddam nuts. Now it’ll taste like chili’s supposed to taste.”

  In the dowel-backed chair, Eric sat by the table, feeling strange. “You’re…really gonna eat that?” He didn’t think they’d heard him. Because it wasn’t any of the things he was used to taking in—snot, shit, urine, or cum from a dick or hand, its contact with Jay’s foot had, somehow, turned it into…well, ordinary dirt.

  Without looking at him, Jay said, “Yup. You are, too, if you want dinner.”

  “What about Shad? And Hugh?”

  Jay grinned. “We ain’t gonna tell the mean-ass fuck about the secret ingredients. But that’s his dinner, too.” Four rooms on the other side of house were reserved for wheelchair bound Shad, apparently content not to be included in his nephew’s socializing. “His loss. And what Hugh don’t know won’t hurt him.”

  Grinning, Mex signed, “Hugh knows. He don’t mind.”

  Sometimes at the house, sometimes at the Harbor, Eric would see Hugh or Jay—and, occasionally, Mex—rolling Shad in his chair one place or another. Eric always said ‘Hello, sir,’ as Jay had instructed. Sometimes Shad would nod his acknowledgment, sometimes not. “Probably that stuff’s what’s keepin’ the bastard alive. ’Cause he’s a straight sonofabitch, you gotta sneak it to ’im, the way you get a dog to take its pill—stuck in a piece of meat.”

  In the solid kitchen chair, Eric tried to cut himself loose from his sense of violation. It was Jay and Mex joking around—amiable craziness. It’s what he came over here for, wasn’t it? They weren’t doing it to make him feel this way…

  Only when Mex got up and, with the ladle, filled big soup plates with chili over rice, then put one in front of Jay—Jay had hung his Turpens cap over the ketchup bottle at the oilcloth’s edge and taken the long-sleeved denim from the chair back and pushed his arms into it—did Mex put a plate at his own place. He slid another in front of Eric, who picked up his spoon, but only held it.

  Jay hadn’t buttoned his shirt. He and Mex were already digging in. The stuff smelled good…

  Eric said, “I don’t think I’m that hungry…right now.”

  Jay raised an eyebrow. “Suit yourself. That’s the thing about chili. You can always eat it later.”

  Chewing a big mouthful, Mex put his spoon down, glanced inquisitively at Eric, then signed above his bowl toward Jay, “What’s wrong with him? He don’t feel good?” He turned to Eric. “You don’t feel good, my friend? Your stomach don’t be good?”

  “Naw. I’m okay.”

  Jay dug up another spoonful and gulped it in. “Man, this is some good chili, Mex. Some of your best. Hey—ain’t nothin’ wrong with Eric.” He gave a nod over the table. With a half-knowing smile, he chewed beans and meat and rice. “We just been playin’ with the puppy a little rough. That’s all. He needs a while to settle hisself.”

  Eric looked out on the night, along the opposite wall. Now the windows were black.

  Mex put his spoon down and, with his big hands that seemed so clumsy but, Eric knew, could be wonderfully firm, wonderfully gentle, formed the words in the air: “We not do nothing to him.” (With the washed out denim tight over upper and lower arms and his forested chest between the unbuttoned fabric’s edges, the serpent’s head on his right hand thrust from under the cuff, Jay looked like…well, someone else.) Mex was still naked. (The night before, when he’d first come, it had been Eric who’d ended up bare-assed by the time they ate. That had been fun, sitting naked at the table, watching how the two men kept glancing at him, between their jokes, ribald and easy through the evening…) “We didn’t do nothing to him we didn’t do with Whiteboy and Dog Turd and Shit and Nigger Joe when they was even younger. All them puppies was real good boys. He’s crazy, maybe?”

  “He ain’t crazy,” Jay said. “He’s just different from ’em, Mex. For one thing, he wasn’t raised to it, like most of them. For another, until he come here, his daddy was a straight guy—like yours, like mine.”

  Eric said, “Hey—I really like bein’ your…puppy, Jay—and yours, too, Mex. It’s fun, with you two—I mean it. Last night, in bed, we had a great time. Really, I like—”

  “Course you do,” Jay said. “But nobody ever taught you how. You been havin’ to learn it all by yourself. And sometimes you hit a stretch you don’t know nothin’ about, and it gets you a little confused. That’s all. You got to learn how to act with other people—and you got to learn how to think and feel about yourself. Well, it takes time.”

  “Yeah, my daddy, he was straight,” Mex signed again. “But I used to dream about the stuff we do, here—now. All the time, when I was a kid. I dream it. I pray for it to God, when I think there was a God. All the time. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. That’s why I love it so much, now. It’s my dream—and real.”

  “Yeah.” Jay lifted his can, to drink his Coors. “Sure—you used to dream about it, Mex.” Where the oilcloth didn’t cover the wood, the Coors can clicked the table corner. “But if, back then, you’d really stumbled onto any of it, you woulda turned around and skedaddled like a spooked rabbit, so fast you wouldn’t even knowed what direction you—”

  To which Mex cut him off with a dismissive downward wave, then upward extended middle finger: “Yo, fuck you…!”

  Eric said, “I said I liked bein’ your fellas’ puppy. Hey, I do! Really. It…makes me feel…good. Most of the time…real good. Like you really like me. It’s like some of the most…fun I ever had.”

  “We like you, too. And we know you do,” Jay said. “That’s one of the reasons we do it. Not the only one—but it’s one.”

  Eric picked up his spoon again, touched the tip to the chili, then moved it from over the plate, gripping the handle. “Hey, Jay? Mex? It ain’t the cum. I swallowed more jizz outta both you guys since I got here yesterday mornin’ than you put in the pot. Back home I finger the dirt out from between Dynamite’s toes a couple of times a week, when he don’t get no shower. Shit’s, too. It’s like one of my jobs.
And, yeah, a lot of times it makes me hard. We all laugh about it. Shit even rubbed me off once, with his foot—and broke Dynamite up, laughin’. It ain’t the spit, either. Both of you had your tongues down my damned throat last night, so you know it can’t be that. I love to tongue-fuck. You seen how it makes me shoot, last night. And most of the jizz in here is mine anyway. And I eat my own stuff all the time—you seen me do it.”

  “Like your daddy.” Jay nodded. “Dynamite. It’s a real turn on, too…”

  Putting down his spoon, Mex asked, “What is it?” He looked seriously curious.

  “It’s…” Eric made a face, then looked at Mex. “It’s the…his feet.”

  Mex asked, “What you mean, his feet?”

  Eric grimaced again.

  Mex said, “You tell us, before, his feet make you get a big hard-on.” Mex made “big” a big two-handed gesture.

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “I know. Dynamite’s do, too. Yeah, and I…like the smell. Shit’s don’t smell much at all, really, ’cause he goes barefoot all the time—like you, Mex. But, see, likin’ to smell ’em and clean ’em and hold ’em and sniff ’em ain’t the same thing as…suckin’ on ’em. Or fingerin’ cum from out between your toes—and puttin’ it in…food. That’s all it is.” Eric shrugged—and took a breath. He put his own spoon on the oilcloth.

  Mex turned in his chair and looked intently at Eric.

  Mex raised one hand—

  Jay interrupted, “Hey, puppy dog, nothin’s wrong with my feet—you know it, too. Like you said, they’re like Dynamite’s. That’s good ol’ ’Mur’c’n workin’ man two-week-old sock-and-toe foot funk. That’s all. Hey—that stuff turns everybody on, puppy—niggers and Polacks and bohunks and Greeks and spics and Ay-talian wops and even little bastard Nazi scumsucker puppies like you what don’t know what the fuck they are.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said, still uncomfortable. “I know, but—’

  Again Mex began to sign, “What you sayin’? What you sayin’, my friend? Jay’s feet is wonderful. They stink—yeah—they stink and they stink and they stink and that’s how they make me shoot all over myself. Every night, I go to bed, with them up in my face. I love to suck them—suck them every night. I suck his toes, I lick his asshole, I love to eat his shit and drink his piss. You seen me do it, the time Shit brought you over here and you just watched us. Your brother jerked you off, while we did it. You loved it, you said. It really got you off. I suck Jay’s toes, I suck out his ass, I suck his fingers, I suck his dick, but most of all I suck his toes, because they stink so wonderful, my friend.”

  Eric said, “Uh…yeah.”

  Jay said, “You ever had a stoned toe-sucker, like Mex here, give you a real foot bath? It’s right up there with havin’ a nigger head-scratch your nuts. Man, there ain’t nothin’ more relaxin’ than a tongue-bath on your toes—once you get over the tickle. You see if you can get Shit or Dynamite to do that for you, when you get home. See if one of them’ll do that to you. Or, hell, Mex here’ll do it, if I tell him to. I got to tell him, though, ’cause there’s a couple of things he likes to be faithful about. But part of our agreement is he’ll do anything I tell him to…” Jay scowled wickedly. “Long as it’s nasty. Thing is, I don’t know if your feet is powerful enough for Mex. Course you wear them basketball sneakers. A puppy dog can work up a pretty good stink in those things, if he don’t change his socks too often. You know, Mex is kind of a romantic about that stuff.” Jay reached over and rubbed Mex’s head.

  Mex looked up, grinning.

  Eric picked up his spoon—and pushed it into his chili. “Jesus, with everything I had in my mouth—” he still felt embarrassed—“some cum off your damned foot, Jay, ain’t gonna kill me.” He dug in the beans and tomatoes, and lifted it to his mouth. “I’m just actin’ like a fuckin’ fool. Hey. I’m sorry.” Probably, he thought, it was because he was so hungry.

  He put the full spoon in his mouth…

  Christ, it was good!

  Jay took another spoonful from his own plate.

  Mex’s grin had gotten…huge!

  Eric swallowed. “I don’t think you can taste it at all. The cum, I mean. It’s just…” He took another spoonful. “It’s just the idea…that’s all. The heats gonna kill anything, anyway—even if it ain’t all mine. It’s just your fantasy—” Eric stopped and sat back. “Aw, shit…!” He put his spoon down again and looked up at the two men.

  Jay, then Mex, frowned.

  “I got a…hard-on.” Bewildered, Eric looked back and forth between them. (Jay took another swallow from his beer.) “I thought I was gonna maybe…I mean, I was afraid I was gonna throw up or something—if I ate it. But I got a hard-on…instead!”

  “You got a hard-on?” Jay demanded, mocking Eric’s bewilderment. “You got a fuckin’ hard-on—? Come on, lemme feel it.” He put down the can, reached around under the oilcloth’s edge, and dropped his hand between Eric’s legs. He began to massage Eric’s groin…more gently than Eric had anticipated from the energy behind the motion. “Well, damned if he don’t, Mex. He’s a freaky little puppy, now, ain’t he? Getting’ a hard-on from your chili, there. Move around here, Mex, and finger the puppy’s asshole like he was likin’ so much last night. Maybe he’ll let you lick it out for him, again.”

  Eric began to laugh. Mex’s chair legs scraped around on the floor as he slid closer. “Hey,” Eric said. “You knew that was gonna happen, didn’t you, Jay? As soon as I started actually eatin’ it. You knew it would do that to me, huh?”

  “No.” Thoughtfully, Jay picked up his spoon again and fell back to eating his own, without taking his other hand from Eric’s lap. “Actually, this is the first time I seen anybody get that excited…over chili—Mex’s or anybody else’s.”

  “Come on,” Eric said. “What? It’s the hormones, right? From the…the semen or somethin’? Hey, that feels nice.” With one hand, he took Jay’s wrist to hold the hand against him. With his other, he ate some more.

  “Naw,” Jay said. “I don’t think so. We had a few people sit out on Mex’s chili before—a couple of guys we brought back from Turpens we thought would like it—only once they seen what went into it…they kinda acted like you, there. So that wasn’t really no surprise…”

  “It surprise me it be you,” Mex signed.

  “But if you got a hard-on, whatever made it pop up, believe me, puppy, that’s in your own head. You can be damned sure about that.”

  Mex put his rough hand up to his face and snorted from his nose into his palm and passed his hand to Eric.

  “See,” Jay said. “That’s a peace offerin’.”

  Then—once Eric had shot again, in Mex’s and Jay’s hands together—they finished dinner, then turned in early.

  Eric began the night with his cock wedged into the crevice of Mex’s buttocks, his arm around Mex’s chest. “Just reach down with some spit and stick it in his spic ass anytime you want. He don’t mind,” Jay said. “He’s one of those guys you can fuck ’im in his sleep, and he don’t hardly notice. You ever done one of them before?”

  “Un-huh,” Eric said. “Under the highway, in Atlanta. Least I seen some old guy doin’ it there—”

  Both boatmen gave out grunts—Mex’s longer than Jay’s.

  “Yeah, I forgot. The big city slicker here seen and done ever’thing.” Jay said it with amused acceptance.

  Mex signed something but, because he was facing away, Eric couldn’t see. “What did he say?” Eric asked.

  From the other side, Jay said, “He said you done everythin’ before, except get a hard-on over a bowl of chili,” then reached over on the table beside the bed and turned out the lamp.

  In the dark, Eric drifted off, remembering what had happened that morning, the sunlight, the strong coffee. Eric gave Mex a squeeze. The mute Mexican reached up and patted Eric’s hand.

  The bed was more comfortable than Dynamite’s.

  Mex and Jay had to be up before sunrise to make the first trip back to the mainland. r />
  Eric slept through the night.

  Back at Dynamite’s, when Eric had told Shit about the secret ingredients, and made up a pot, of course Shit insisted they both “contribute”—and not tell Dynamite. When they were eating, sitting around the kitchen table in the Dump, holding his bowl practically under his chin and shoveling it in, Dynamite said, “Damn, this is pretty good chili, son. It tastes like Mex’s. But what you put in this stuff, anyway? Whatever it is, it’s givin’ me a hard-on.”

  “Hey, that’s funny,” Shit said. “Me, too…” Then both Shit and Dynamite started laughing.

  Eric said, “Hey—Jay or Mex musta told you. That ain’t fair. You knew. They told you about me. Or Shit told you…what we did. You knew—one of ’em went and told you what happened…”

  “I don’t know nothin’,” Dynamite insisted. “But somethin’s makin’ my dick hard.”

  “Mine, too,” Shit said.

  “Hey,” Dynamite said to his son, “everything gives you a hard-on, nigger!”

  “Yeah—you too!”

  “Hey—that ain’t me,” Dynamite said. “At least, not no more, son. That’s you!”

  They all started laughing again, till Shit actually fell down from his chair and started rolling around between the junk over the cabin floor.

  Sometimes Shit had to overdo things like that.

  It was still pretty funny.

  * * *

  [38] WHEN SHIT TURNED twenty-four (Eric was still twenty-one for another six weeks), a free dental clinic took over an abandoned building in Runcible, around the dusty corner from the HIV clinic with the two horse-headed hitching posts (and a hole still in the pavement for a third). While the sunlight made ghosts in the dust of the plate glass window, Eric got all four wisdom teeth pulled, then badgered Shit into getting an upper plate and a partial lower. “Why don’t you make my damned dad get one, ’stead of me? You like kissin’ on him better ’cause he got more gum than me. When you’re lickin’ around in his suck hole, you think about that half-toothless motherfucker suckin’ your dick and that’s what makes you shoot—”