Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  When you asked Jay something that might embarrass another man, Jay would get this smile that, in the bright afternoon, you couldn’t but half see behind the curl and fall of his beard’s brass, bronze, and gold—a smile that said something like Wouldn’t you like to know…Then he’d go on and tell you anyway, no matter what it was: “With our teeth, mostly—my side ones, I mean. Naw, I ain’t quite as limber at it as I was when I was your age. But I manage.” When the wind was from the front, the Gilead’s blunt prow rose and smacked the water, so that they could feel it bumping. “Mex’ll do ’em for me, sometimes, if I’m too lazy. But you gotta be pretty close with a cocksucker before you can let ’im bite ’em for you. You ever bite Shit’s?”

  “Naw. But Dynamite let me bite off a couple of pieces for him a few times.”

  “Well—” Jay squinted out the sea-streaked window above the wheel’s spokes—“there you go.”

  “But you really bite ’em?”

  “That’s about the only way to get ’em right. Sometimes I pick ’em, with a needle—or a knife point.” He patted his pocket where he kept the red-sided Swiss Army knife with its near-dozen blades, including the file, the spring locked scissors, and even a magnifying glass, which several times he’d shown Eric. “When we was kids, me and Dynamite used to have contests to see who could get them things back further. Dynamite always won. I did ’em good, but when they’d bleed too much, I’d stop. He’d attack them suckers, though, like he didn’t care. A few times I seen him take a whole nail off his finger, so there weren’t nothin’ left but a big old bloody wound. Shit’s the same way. Me and Mex is bad, but not so bad as them.”

  “Yeah.” Eric rubbed one sneaker on top of the other, because his upper itched. “I know.”

  “It probably turns you on, don’t it?”

  Eric said, “It didn’t used to. But since I been workin’ with ’em—and we been fuckin’ around—everything about ’em, just about, that’s different from ordinary guys, can make me shoot my load, if I think about it right. I mean tongue fuckin’ with them two ’fore they’re even out of bed and got a chance to spit in the toilet—”

  “Hey.” Jay looked to both sides, then glanced down at Eric. “You wanna hear ’bout somethin’ nasty?”

  “Yeah.” Eric grinned. “Sure—”

  “Like I had to ask.” Jay moved the wheel. “Back when Dynamite and me was real close jerk-off buddies, we both discovered, kinda by accident, that we liked it if, when one of us was suckin’ the other one off, the other one would stick a finger up the asshole of the guy he was suckin’.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “Dynamite still likes it when I do that.”

  “And I don’t…no more. I think that’s sumpin’ to do with my balls blowin’ up. But I used to. Or maybe I just grew out of it. If somebody do that to me today, I can’t even get off. But the thing here I was sayin’ about bitin’ on our nails, Dynamite and me would go on real serious about how it was better that we bit ’em down, so we wouldn’t tear up each other’s assholes, stickin’ our fingers up there. Now, I know that was an excuse. We woulda bitten ’em all to hell, anyway. I mean, ’cause we still do. But you should have heard us goin’ on, back then, to each other.” Jay chuckled. “You know, I’m the guy what started callin’ him ‘Dynamite.’” he nodded toward the horizon. “Bet you never knowed that. He ever tell you why?”

  “No,” Eric said. “Why?”

  “Well—” against the summer evening Gilead’s dark coast was a quarter of a mile off—“he wouldn’t. But in the winter, when Kyle would go away to school in Europe and fuck all them fancy white guys and crazy Africans he was into over there in Denmark, and nobody at all was really left in the Harbor, sometimes we’d go into the old boat house and lay back on them dock mats they used to pile in there and beat off together. See, when I’d shoot, my jizz’d jump up four, five feet in the air. And don’t you know, it would fall right back down…guess where.”

  “I dunno,” Eric said. “Where?”

  “Right on my goddam face—every time! I mean, I’d try to aim it somewhere else, so that it would land on Wendell, maybe—that’s Dynamite’s real name, you know: Wendell Haskell—” various bits of mail at the Dump cabin from the Credit Union and the Chamber of Commerce had already told Eric that—“but in the last few seconds, when I’d be really gettin’ into it, ready to pop my peter, it would always swing back to the same angle, I mean to a tenth of a degree. I swear—! There was no way I could help it—there it would go, right on up, and down—splat, on my cheek or my chin. Well, he thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Then, when he’d shoot, you know what would happen?”

  “What?”

  “He’d hit the boathouse ceiling—and a couple of seconds later, it’d gather itself together and some of it would drop off…and the first time, you know where it dropped?”

  “Where…?”

  “Right in my face again! I thought that boy was gonna have hisself an apoplexy, laughin’ hisself to death. He was rollin’ around the floor and still pantin’ from comin’ so hard, and clutchin’ hisself, I thought he was gonna fall over the edge, into the water and drown. He’d break up, like Shit do today sometimes, when he pulls a joke on you. Really, it was one of them things that if you paid us to do it, we couldn’t’a’ made it happen. But, anyway, that’s why I started callin’ him Dynamite. ’Cause he always hit the boat house roof—even if it didn’t catch me comin’ down. I told him one day he was gonna blast that ceiling right off the place, shootin’ like that. Pretty soon, it’s what everybody was callin’ him, though half of ’em didn’t know why…Maybe some of them figured it out. And he sort of preferred it to Wendell. I would have, too.

  “You know, Kyle brought a lot of interestin’ people back with ’im in the summer to the Harbor. And most of ’em wanted to suck your dick, at least—which was nice. So we was always friends with ’em. Them Africans was real funny—I mean they ain’t like ’Mur’c’n niggers at all. They talk real funny, of course—and they got to be the politest people, this side of goddam chinks! He still works with some of ’em, too—the same ones he met overseas, when he was a kid. Anyway—I was tellin’ you…

  “Dynamite shot a whole lotta mess up on that boathouse ceiling. You could see it for the next ten, fifteen years. Whenever I’d go in, it would be on the edge of the beam or the boards just to the side, in the back, above where they put the mats, till Shit was maybe ten, eleven years old. Once Dynamite told me the little bastard had started beatin’ off hisself—we used to call him Li’l Shit, till he told us we had to cut it down to ‘Shit’ or cut it out. I took the puppy in there and showed it to him—said that was his daddy’s, only I wouldn’t tell him what it was. I wonder if he figured it out. ’Cause it had been there so long, I thought it was gonna be there forever—even after we hadn’t gone in there for a few years. I mean, just to jack off.

  “Only that was when the boathouse roof started leakin’, real bad.

  “When it was rainin’ hard, you could go in there and think you was still standin’ out on the dock, so much water was coming down inside. One day, I was in there and I looked up: all that stuff had finally washed away. Between the warps and the mildew, you couldn’t see nothin’ no more. That’s when Kyle had the Chamber of Commerce close it up, tore it down, and built the new one—that’s the one there now—back when Kyle gimme the job runnin’ the scow. In fact, that was about the first thing Kyle did when he took over: had ’em replace the old boathouse. God knows we needed it, but I was kinda sorry to see the old one go.”

  “I used to shoot mine on the wall in my bathroom, back in Atlanta,” Eric said. “Shit and Dynamite just do theirs all over the bed sheet.”

  “Yeah, that was always Dynamite’s style.”

  “But I seen him hit the ceilin’ out in the Dump. Shit can, too. I’m more like you, though: I can do it from one side of the big bed to the other—”

  “Yeah, we know you can. Damn—” Jay grunted—“it ain’t fair??
?that a man his age can still shoot that far. Four, five feet? Today, I’m lucky if mine goes ten inches.” At the wheel he shook his head. “Two big ol’ Georgia boys, me with busted-out front teeth and always smellin’ like old piss, and him real quiet and just as friendly and sweet, who’d do anything to help you out—a daddy at nineteen—and as goodhearted as anybody you’d hope to meet, and all we wanted was get off by ourselves and beat our meat together and stick our fingers up each others assholes and suck each other’s dick. After all this time, he’s still my best friend—even if him and his own nigger bastard been fuckin’ each other like jack rabbits since Shit was a kid.”

  “I don’t think Dynamite fucks Shit too much,” Eric said. “Mostly it’s the other way around. Both of them fuck me—Shit does it more. Like he does with his dad. I suck ’em both off, a lot—and then both love watchin’ the other one get head. Dynamite can always pull a load outa Shit, just by pissin’ in my mouth and lettin’ him watch.”

  “Yeah? Well, that sounds…friendly.” Jay grinned sideways. “Me and Mex got them boys trained for you, before you even done come down here.” The half-hidden smile again. “I’m surprised Dynamite didn’t end up with Mex instead of me—though they did their fuckin’ around, too. I guess we all have. The Harbor’s a little town.” Jay dropped one hand to the crotch of his jeans, to rub. Maybe his enlarged ball was itching him. “What is it he says? ‘Boys and dogs, boys and dogs—jerk ’em off, and they’ll be your friends for life.’ That was always Dynamite’s philosophy. He ever told you that?” (Eric shook his head, no.) “Well, then that’s somethin’ you don’t know. But he pretty much used to live by it. He got that from his dad. Old Haskell was pretty easy goin’, and I was kind of fond of him, too. You know, one of Kyle’s friends told me they got the same sayin’ in some African village—the same village it takes to raise a child. Can you imagine that? Anyway, old Haskell was a damned sight better than Shad. I’m glad he did as much raisin’ of me as he did. My mom was kind of a waste—Shad was her step brother, and she was just scared of ’im.”

  “I kind of like my own mom,” Eric said.

  “I like ’er, too. She’s a good lady.” Beard above the instruments, Jay looked through the front window. “You’re lucky you got her. It’s too bad Ol’ Haskell’s life didn’t go on any longer than it did. He used to joke with both of us, tellin’ us that all the damned jizz we used to spill in his hand there kept it soft for his wife—Dynamite’s step mom. He was the first person who jerked us off together. And she was a hard-workin’ woman who at least put up with us. These things are cultural, puppy. I’m talkin’ tradition here. Dynamite’s dad dropped dead of a heart attack when me and Dynamite was both about the age you was when you first come here—so we was pretty much on our own, both of us. My mama lives in Ohio now with another husband, whom I do not get along with. He’s Shad all over again, ’cept’n he’s runty. One is enough, I figure. I used to tell people that once me and Dynamite plugged our dicks into each other, we didn’t take ’em out for a few years. But that’s was just in the winter. In the summer, the truth was more like we both plugged ’em into Kyle.”

  Eric’s own genitals had begun gathering his body’s blood. “You want me to suck you off, ’fore we leave the boat?”

  “Actually,” Jay said, “what I want you to do is go back to the other side of the shelter in the stern, where Mex is sittin’ cross-legged on the deck, splicin’ them hawsers. And I want you to squat down and put your arm around ’im and give ’im a big old hug, then kiss on ’im and put your tongue as far down his throat as you can and wiggle it around there for at least a damned minute and let him play with your pecker in your jeans and you can rub on his—by that time, we gonna be in the dock, but don’t worry. I’ll get us tied up by myself. Then, when we’re walkin’ back to the house, I want you to hold his hand and grin at him a little. Once we get to the ridge, where the pine trees close over the road, I wanna see you pull his pants off him and lay him out on his back in the dust there—take a look, ’fore you do it and make sure they ain’t no pebbles or no sharp rocks—and hook his knees with your elbows and pull his legs up, he can go almost double: I know ’cause I got him pretty limber over the years, and let him wrap his legs around your back and you sink all seven inches of your white boy dick as deep up his wetback asshole as you can—he always keeps hisself greased up, ’cause he never knows when me or some nigger around here is gonna want to rip us off a piece—then you fuck him till he shoots right between yall, and rub your belly all around in it.

  “Then you can come up his ass.”

  Eric laughed—

  “Now this is important, Eric. Mex likes you a lot. He thinks you’re the best thing to hit this coast since Martha learned to slice bread. We both like you. But you can’t spend all your time fuckin’ around with me— Mex and me, we share. I told you that. So you got to share, too, when you live like we do. And you can start by fuckin’ him. Right now, Mex thinks you’re pretty wonderful. But if he starts gettin’ unhappy about you, ’cause he ain’t gettin’ any and I’m gettin’ it all, you ain’t gonna be able to come see neither of us. I’d let you take a hammer to my nuts ’fore I’d do anything to make that man unhappy. He’s done too much for me. He’s the reason I’m alive today—besides the fact that I love ’im so much, if I think about it, I can’t hardly breathe.”

  “Yeah, I feel that way about Shit…and Dynamite.” Then Eric blurted, “I like Mex—I mean, sexually. I jerk off thinking about stuff with him more than I…do with you.” Which was true. “But sometimes you’re easier to get stuff started with.”

  “Yeah?” Jay pulled the wheel around sharply, looked out at the nearing island shore, changing its angle with the scow. “Well, you just work a little harder, startin’ on Mex, then. That’s what it’s about.”

  “I’m…embarrassed a little, ’cause the stuff he does that really turns me on is so…fuckin’ dirty. Like his tongue…”

  “What about it?”

  “You know how they cut off one side of it, and sliced it loose off the muscle at the bottom of his mouth, and messed up his voice box with the knife, when he was a kid…”

  “Yeah…You say that turns you off?”

  “No—no, it turns me on! If we’re tongue wrestlin’ together for more than a few seconds, I’m gonna shoot. I won’t be able to hold my…you know, orgasm back, long enough to fuck him.”

  “Well, now, I’m not surprised. That’s what turns everybody on about that nasty spic. That and his big feet. And, yeah, he’s got a nice thick dick. But you’re gonna have to exert a little self-control, take that embarrassment, and…put it away. Otherwise you’re gonna embarrass yourself out of some fun with both of us. If you do what I say, you think that spic’s gonna be anything but shit-faced happy? Now, get on back there, puppy, and do what you gotta do. Ol’ Jay’s serious now.”

  “Yeah.” Eric ducked from under the opened back wheel shelter. “Okay.” He sprinted around the passenger shelter in the scow’s mid-deck.

  Though that’s how it started out, it didn’t exactly follow Jay’s plan.

  Once they reached the island boathouse—by then it was three-quarters dark—Mex insisted on pausing to help Jay secure the boat—the only reason Eric didn’t shoot his load in his jeans. As they were leaving, Eric was going to take Mex’s hand, but there was still something that Jay had to do inside. Finally, Jay flipped off the fluorescent lights along the boathouse ceiling, and they stepped out on the big square dock.

  In the ten minutes they’d been inside, the sky had gone pitchy—blacker than a school blackboard sponged free of chalk dust. The lights went out across the dock boards. Eric looked up.

  And thousands of stars, handful after handful, prickled the black.

  It’s not that Eric hadn’t seen the opening into the greater universe hanging over the sea—called night—when he wandered the mainland beaches, on the odd boat at night, or even on former trips to the island. But tonight it seemed vaster, clearer, bigger
by an order of immensity. One after the other, two meteors etched white scratches across the part of the sky he stared at. “Jesus…” Eric whispered.

  They walked across the dock. A hard hand grasped Eric’s—for two steps, he thought it was Mex. But—he glanced to see the tall shadow blocking stars beside him—it was Jay. As they reached the dock’s corner, the breeze stilled and Eric noted the sent of old urine. At the bench there, Jay released him to turn and sit. Eric sat, too—Mex was sitting on Jay’s other side. “Jesus—” Eric repeated, leaning on his knees, looking up again—“this is fuckin’ beautiful…”

  Between them, Jay was leaning back, arms out along the rail behind them. Again, the breeze ceased. Eric laughed. “I guess somebody uses this here corner to take a regular piss in.” He’d recognized the odor—like under the Atlanta causeway.

  “Yeah,” Jay said, pensively. “A couple of rains’ll get rid of it, though.”

  As Eric stared at the night’s immensity, Jay said, “Hey, puppy—Mex’s is trying to get your attention.”

  “Huh?” Eric looked down.

  Mex was leaning forward, looking around Jay. In starlight, he had one hand between Jay’s legs. With the other hand, he was signing. But it was too dark, with Jay between them, to see exactly what.

  “What’s he saying?” Eric asked.

  “He’s telling you to put your hand on my big Georgia balls. What you think he’s sayin’?”

  “Oh…” Surprised, Eric reached over and felt the fork of Jay’s jeans. Mex’s hand moved enough to let Eric’s settle, then settled over Eric’s. At the same time, Eric realized the warm—no, the hot denim was…drenched!

  “Hey…”

  He could feel Jay, hard, under the soaked cloth.

  “When I’m hard, like now,” Jay said, “I do it like a dog—in spurts. That’s how I like it. Now how many years you got to be friends with a guy before he’ll let you know that about him?”