Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Ten minutes later, outside, several walked past the Lighthouse Coffee & Egg. Half a dozen customers got up and went to the window to watch them go by. Eric had asked Shit, “Does that turn you on?”

  Shit had stayed at the table.

  “Your fuckin’ dick turns me on!” Shit’s foot—today, he was wearing work shoes, a pair Barbara had given him the year before last—pushed down on Eric’s, almost hard enough to make Eric cry out. (But he grinned.) “Naw,” Shit repeated. “It’s just like the movies at the Opera—that’s all.”

  A few times, apparently, Dynamite told them, when, sitting on the cabin steps, they were eating Eric’s shepherd’s pie, within the month he’d snuck out to the beach to look through the grass and see. “I guess I shouldn’t’a been sneakin’. But they’re nice to look at.” Both boys had teased their dad about turning straight.

  While gulls creaked above the Dump, Dynamite said to Shit, “Ain’t you glad I’m straight as I am—or your black ass wouldn’t be here, nigger!”

  Saturday, The Hemmings Herald, August 12, 2021, printed a photograph of six topless women (with two male friends) sitting on the beach, under a headline, “Yankee Ways Hit South Beach”—calling the South End after the famous Miami strip had been a running joke in Diamond Harbor for thirty years—and the subhead: “And Almost Knock Us Out of the Water!”

  The article detailed how a state trooper had started to ask them to leave, then changed his mind.

  * * *

  [51] THOSE WITH A penchant for history are often fascinated by the logic of “Wonder Decades”: the eighteen nineties, the nineteen twenties, the eighteen thirties…

  The first such decade which the twenty-first century presented the world was, of course, the thirties—if we can look ahead a moment.

  As commentators of any sophistication have realized, however, such decades are always something of an illusion. During their passage, often they are only recognized as wondrous by a few particularly vocal folk. Half their aura may, indeed, be the present excitement, which a few artists, a few cultural philosophers sense. Finally, they are incomprehensible if one does not pay serious attention to the decade before.

  In the eighteen-seventies, Walter Pater called their iconic figures, new and common, “diaphanous,” that is to say, transparent to the forces of history. But the other half is a hindsight that grows from an awareness of the greatness of the change, the break, the rupture with what came before—and with what is to come.

  Their spectacular moments speak of years of development and preparation, which only historians truly appreciate, while in later decades people look at these images and assume they represent sudden and marvelous—or catastrophic, it barely matters—transitions.

  Take an arbitrary image defining the nineteen-sixties: The photograph from the August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 187,000 blacks and 63,000 whites rode on more than two thousand busses into the nation’s capital. (The night before in Ghana, at age ninety-five, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois had died.) So many of us know that image of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, hand high, head up, greeting with his dream the heads stretching into the distance—thousands and thousands—around the mall pool’s reflecting rectangle, to the spire of the Washington Monument and beyond. What a spontaneous outpouring of revolutionary zeal!

  Certainly that is America’s nineteen sixties.

  But both students and working folk from the nineteen-seventies, eighties, nineties, and the century beyond—unless they have studied the matter—are probably unaware, however, that, during the fifties, and even the forties and thirties, hundreds and hundreds of marches on the capitol took place, when loads of citizens left by bus from New Jersey and Kentucky and Kansas and Maryland and West Virginia and Florida and Tennessee and Ohio and Pennsylvania and New England and New York to convene before the Capitol Building. Some, yes, were as small as thirty or forty marchers. Some had only a hundred or so. Others had a thousand, or three thousand, or five. At least one had more than sixty thousand. Not ten, not twenty-five, not forty, but hundreds of such marches—and the connections and networking and organization and planning that grew up to facilitate these fifties “freedom marches,” and before—for soon that is what they were called—made possible the great March of August ’63.

  It’s hard to imagine an American who has not seen the picture of the outpouring of afternoon amblers in New York City’s Columbus Circle on that uncharacteristically warm April 26, 2032, men and women, many holding hands, many laughing, almost everyone smiling, most wearing open jackets, so brightly colored, black folk and white, Asian and Latino, the women topless, the young men shirtless, middle aged, and older. (Could such a gathering have taken place had not iPhones and iPads given way to airPhones and airPads—a techno-social shift completed in the first third of the twenties, another change transforming the look of cities…wholly bypassing Shit, Eric, and Diamond Harbor?) That image represents the thirties for many. As recently as three years before, it would have been impossible to find a public street in a major city, a third of the people airBorn, save in a few Bohemian enclaves (and even there the feel would have been very different), with such a look.

  For many in the country—in the world—that picture is the American twenty-thirties.

  Neither Shit nor Eric saw that particular photograph until well into the forties, however—in a montage displayed in a retro-thirties-clothing store window on Gilead Island. And certainly neither one particularly noted it, when he did, though both had long ago grown accustomed to the cultural situation it pictured. Both were enough outside the culture’s mainstream that they were among the least aware of how ubiquitous that spectacularly joyous image had become.

  (Dreyfus, qui ca…?)

  In twenty years, it had been reproduced half again as many times as the picture of sailors and their girlfriends in Times Square on D-Day. Again, however, only an historian would realize that, all through the twenties—and, indeed, well before—as if in cultural preparation for that ebullient afternoon of sartorial freedom, hundreds of local newspapers around the country, not on page one, but on page three, and page five, and page twelve, had featured pictures such as we have cited from the Saturday, August 12, 2021 Hemmings Herald, which would ready the nation for the change that would be culturally acceptable ten years later.

  For all of Eric’s adolescent interest in history (and life had worn much of it away), that is not where history had taken him. Ten, fourteen, eighteen years after that picture, neither Eric nor Shit was particularly aware, at least at the time, that a wonder decade was occurring—and Shit would not have believed it had he been told.

  * * *

  [52] WHENEVER HE USED to see Miss Louise in town, regularly Eric said hello—to her and fifteen others. Then, somehow, she was dead (three days; four months;…)—and Ran’s Grocery stood where they’d bulldozed away her house. Then, six years on, Ran had given up the store and the place was another boarded-up wreck—though the road was paved now. It hadn’t been, that first night, how many years ago back in ’oh-seven.

  The fact is, Eric didn’t retain that much from his early days in Diamond Harbor, though he felt he remembered most of what had happened; still, it was simpler not to argue with Shit, especially if the argument had no consequences—and usually it didn’t. More times they ended up laughing than not.

  Odd, Eric thought, how time’s machinery moved moments out of initial wonder into the everyday to the blurred recall of the blurred—

  Walking on the beach, Eric would think through the details he’d preserved: What happens to a late-middle-aged man, shirtless, six-four, with pumped, tattooed arms, on a house deck in front of massed greenery, with his mute, stocky partner…?—no, was that Miss Louise? A woman, at a table, smoking and drinking coffee at four in the morning? (Naw, Shit said. I don’t remember who it was, but I don’t think it was her…) Or a crude father (almost as tall as Jay), out beside a garbage pickup before dawn, joking mo
re suggestively with his illegitimate son than Eric had ever imagined, in a way that had both terrified and thrilled?

  Or that same man easing more and more into calling you “son” and his son referring to you more and more as his “brother,” whom you slept with—both of them—daily?

  Dynamite’s blocky hand, dry and pumping one moment, the next webbed with a flush of mucus, from knuckle to knuckle, puddling over the crevices in his palm as his hand peeled gluily from his thick-veined cock. Cum pearled the hair on wrist and abdomen as he raised his palm to spill into his gap-toothed mouth, before he sucked these two, then those two fingers, licked the back, the front, the sides—(Yeah. I eat mine too. Like you. Always have; always will. But Shit don’t. That’s ’cause it ain’t snot, though Dr. Greene says it might as well be. Maybe you want some…? Dynamite had said on the third time he’d jerked off in the truck cab with the boys and offered his wet, knuckley hand for Eric to share, which today Eric remembered each time he did it, in bed or on the porch, as if it were the refrain of a country-and-western song) an almost daily happening, for a while, that mesmerized Shit and could always pull from him a second—or a third—orgasm, no matter how recent the one before. More than blow jobs or fucking or even nose pickings shared with Eric—a lazy, even a gentle perversion, after all—that was the habit Eric shared with Dynamite that bound Shit to Eric, as Eric was bound to Shit’s dad.

  One night, thunder’s grumble had risen over the hiss of rain, till it crackled apart.

  From the lamp on the night table, under the vellum shade, gold light came on to fall across the bed. Naked, Shit stood beside it, hard flanks glistening, hair and tufted beard droplet speckled. “Hey…! You gonna get up and come with me? It’s a good one!”

  “Wha’…?” Eric blinked and got his elbows under him. “What is…?”

  “Come on!” Shit reached out a hard, wet hand. “Bull let a bunch of people out his cellar to show ’em the storm. You wanna watch, too?”

  Naked on his back, Dynamite flung a forearm over his face and grunted. “Seen it…”

  “Come on, Eric!” Shit’s voice was rough and low, as if he didn’t want to wake his dad completely.

  Groggily, Eric sat. Reaching over, he ran a hand under Dynamite’s testicles, leaned down, and nuzzled the warm flesh moving over moving fingers. “Love you, you big-balled bastard.”

  Dynamite’s other hand dropped to rub Eric’s head.

  Pulling away, Eric slid over the semen-roughened stretch of sheet he and Shit slept on toward the bed’s edge.

  Half crouched, Shit whispered, “Come on…!”

  Eric stood up on the rug; Shit grinned at him. “I love it when you do like that, nuzzle on his nuts and stuff.” On Shit’s face frown and smile, wonder and certainty mixed. “You love that man, don’t you?”

  Eric chuckled. He bent, reached under the lampshade, and pulled the chain. The room filled with chatter of falling rain and rain-filtered moonlight and thunder. “You like watchin’ that?” Standing, Eric put a hand on Shit’s wet shoulder. “How come?”

  “It makes it easier to remember how much I love ’im.” They stepped through the doorway, with its tattered curtain, onto the wet deck. As they tromped down the sopping steps, for the first thirty seconds the rain—on Eric’s shoulders, nape, the backs of his hands, his butt—was cold. Then, as they pushed through slopping ferns, the peppering—as August rains did—became a neutral surround.

  The third time Eric stumbled on something and almost fell to one knee, Shit seized up his hand. “Hold onto me—you still half asleep!”

  “It’s two in the mornin’! What the fuck you expect?”

  They came from prickly brush onto the road that was two inches of mud; it swallowed Eric’s feet and held him by the ankles.

  Eric looked at the wild clouds wriggling down the night over the bluff.

  As they passed Bull’s porch, the front door stood wide. The flame and bronze and leather interior flickered, as if with firelight. Turning at the muddy road’s corner, they went toward the cliffs.

  The ten-foot doors to Bull’s basement dungeon were open, out and back. Thunder’s grumble, which had accompanied them, rose again, so that Eric had the impression of great doings in the darkness, though logic said their neighbor’s cellar dungeon was empty. He found it as hard to walk as it was sometimes in a dream— wondering for a moment if he was awake.

  “Hey—what you two doin’ out? I ain’t never seen you at one of these before?” It was Chef Ron. Beside him was Joe—in a leather body harness. Both wore baggy shorts. Both smiled in the intermittent moonlight—they, too, were holding hands.

  “Most of the time we’re workin’,” Shit said. “But tomorrow we got a day off. So this is probably Eric’s first one. You know, you gotta get a storm and Bull and the week’s calendar all comin’ together. And usually it don’t work that way—“

  Joe said, “The last time Bull done it, it was back in March—or maybe even February. That’s a little cold for me—”

  “What about your uncle?” Ron asked.

  Shit laughed. “He’s seen it before—he’s sleepin’.”

  Joe and Ron looked at each other and laughed. Joe said, “That’s what Ron wanted to do.” He sucked in the night. “Maybe we see you later…”

  They moved into shadow.

  “Hey,” Eric said. “Should we be wearin’ clothes or somethin’?”

  Shit said, “What the fuck for?” He tightened his grip on Eric’s upper arm. “Come on—this way.”

  The cliffs were not sudden—otherwise vertigo would have defeated Shit. Combed over with wooden steps and decks, rocks and sections of stone and stubby vegetation pushed through, and the wooden stairway angled across to take them down another level. And another. Here and there, on one level or another, benches stood in the rain, in intermittent moonlight.

  At the upper rail stood a donkey.

  “I guess Brick come out to watch the show,” Shit said.

  The animal munched in a scuffed leather feed bag. He swayed from side to side. Inches behind the seam along the canvas and leather sack, a wet eye glimmered. Eric’s hip brushed the dripping hide. The animal stepped about in the night grass.

  Starting down the first set of steps, Shit paused and nodded to the left. “Nigger over there don’t got no clothes on, either,” Shit said softly.

  Eric frowned. “Who is…?”

  The head was shaved and he was tall, angular, sitting on one of the benches. The man was doing something in his lap with his fist—and Eric recognized Al. “Jesus…!”

  Shit chuckled. “What’s that supposed to mean…?”

  Sitting naked on the bench, one ankle crossed over his leg, Al ran his fist absently up and down his towering member.

  “’Cause he looks twice as big as he do normally in the Turpens john or Nigger Heaven at the Opera…What’s he doin’ in the Dump?”

  “I guess he’s here for Brick.”

  “The old donkey’s owner? Brick really drink the donkey’s piss and let him fuck his ass—?”

  “They’re sort of friends—him and Al.”

  Eric said, “Well, I’m sort of Al’s friend…”

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “But you gotta do a little foreplay to accommodate each other. Brick don’t gotta do nothin’ but come around, pull open the rip in the back of his jeans—if he’s wearin’ any—and sit on it. That’s the kinda ass Brick got.”

  “I guess you fucked it a few times, so you’d know…”

  “Well…Yeah. I have.”

  “Al would like that—well, they can take care of each other. Man, that’s a fuckin’ scary dick—at least in this light!”

  “You had it in you on your first day here—”

  “I know. I know…” Eric hunched his shoulders. “Come on—let’s go. No. I don’t want Al to see me and get no ideas. He can wait for Brick. We can go on this way…”

  Half the sky was layered in cloud fragments, which broke up the moon’s light and flung
silver about the stairs, down to where the sand made the beach a ribbon around the ridged and rippling sea. Rain across the surface made it rough as silver sandpaper. Waves broke on a stand of rocks, rushing into shore.

  “Down there. Who’s that…?”

  “Bull. Those are all the folks he got with ’em.”

  “They look like they’re all tied together—”

  “They are. See, that’s Whiteboy. He got one end. So they don’t get away. Not that they’d wanna…” Perhaps fifteen were on the two lowest levels. More stood down on the sand. Bull strode back and forth, before them.

  “What’s he doin’?”

  “Preachin’s his crazy shit—about what a big black powerful nigger he is.”

  Night fissured on platinum cracks. Then thunder rolled up. Some down on the sand had flashlights. Circles of light slid over the beach, throwing shadows from tufts of sea grass.

  Above, cloud wedges broke away to let through the glitter of—through this sliver and that rent—stars.

  Shit said, “Let’s just sit and watch.” So, on the top step of the next level, they sat, feet splayed over the wet wood three steps below.

  “I can’t hear ’im—”

  “You ain’t missin’ nothin’,” Shit said. “He’s just a crazy nigger all full up with ’isself; and all them niggers—who about as crazy—kinda believe it, at least while the lightning’s flashin’ and the thunder’s comin’ on.” He chuckled beside Eric—and slid his foot on top of his partner’s. Wet grass that grew up through the backs of the steps tickled the rear of Eric’s calves. “I used to like to listen to it—but it’s just stupid shit. That’s all—”