Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Then—

  Like a serpent of light, zig-zag lighting broke apart the sky to crack free half the universe. Light spread, and spread, and spread over the water and sand and rock and ocean, so that the mound of Gilead itself out at the horizon, which, moments before, he’d been unable to see, was stark and luminous. Eric could see trees on it, and—he was sure—their leaves!

  And rocks along its edge.

  He almost pushed himself erect, thinking, suddenly—I’ve seen how large the world is!

  Because he had never seen anything so huge before as the miles and miles that had been lit, and at the same moment, in the chasms between heartbeats, he knew the world was bigger even than that—

  When the thunder cracked, deafening him, it was as if he had been snatched up from the space he sat on and hurled into the sky.

  It wasn’t that he’d actually seen the world. But he’d seen the part of it he knew in enough light to suggest how large—or indeed, how little—a part of the world it was, so that, from it, he could seriously tell the size of the earth that held it…

  And—yes—moments later he was back, sitting on the steps, holding the post beside him, his thumb over the cross grain of an inch-by-inch wooden peg, cut flush with one of the beans, one of the hundreds helping hold the structure together. Eric heard his own voice: “Jesus Christ, what the fuck was…?”

  Shit whispered, “God damn…!”

  Eric began to laugh. “Wow…!” Because both sounded so tiny.

  “What was that…?”

  Shit reached to grip Eric’s leg.

  Thunder still faded—there were three, four, six after-flickers.

  “Anybody ever get hit by lightnin’ out here?” Deep in his chest Eric’s heart was a loud as the thunder. “It was like I could see how big everything in the…” and stopped, because his own voice still sounded so puny, so distant—

  “Not down here,” Shit said. He breathed heavily. “Maybe up on the bluff, sometimes. Even then, if it happened, I ain’t heard about it.”

  Rain gusted up the steps. Lightning flashed close enough so that thunder came with it—again Eric was startled back.

  Two stairways over, people came hurrying up. Like a flickering phantom Whiteboy moved, naked, among the dark men, older, younger, naked. Bull was close enough for Eric to hear: “Get on, now—get on up them steps, you damned fools! Get on, goddamit!”

  Silently, as if both had agreed it was time to go, Shit and Eric stood and stepped up. Moments later, they walked along one of the runways. Bull’s group had already disappeared over the cliff’s upper rim.

  —I’ve seen how large the world is!

  Something warm hit Eric’s cheek. He stopped and looked up.

  In the slant moonlight, from the rail above two black faces looked down. The upper one was Al’s. The lower was rough, broad nosed, hairy and pugged like a bulldog’s. Between the rails, Eric could see the broad belly, the wide apart knees. A head above him, black toes clutched the wooden edge. Under the stomach, his fist gripped his stubby cock and hung.

  “Damn, Brick,” Eric said. “Why you go spit on me…?”

  “Weren’t no spit.” Rick’s voice was sullen, deep, sure. “Al got ’is dick up my damn shit chute and pumped me till I come. What—I hit you? Di’n’ mean to. Couldn’t do it again if you paid me.”

  Shit laughed. “I bet it was that last big flash, nigger, that loosed your juice!”

  Brick chuckled.

  “Hey, I bet it was…”

  “Well,” Eric said, “watch out. Wish I’d been up there to get it all.”

  “Yeah,” Brick said. “Too bad you wasn’t.”

  At the next steps, Eric and Shit started up.

  Al and Brick lingered at the rail. As Shit and Eric reached the top step, Al, who was behind the naked squat carter stepped back.

  Eric saw Al fall free. (Like a piece of firewood, Eric thought…)

  “Damn…!” Shit said.

  Grunting, the little bow-legged fellow moved to the side. He pulled himself to stand fully upright, as Al stepped away. Brick grinned over at Shit and Eric, leaned forward, big hands on his knees, and—from his flat buttocks, streaked with rain and moonlight—Eric saw the black eruption jump about six inches out, then splat down on the planks behind his heels.

  “Jesus,” Shit said, “why you gonna crap all over the steps, Brick? People gotta walk here.”

  Brick still grinned at them. More shit came out his ass—and flopped on the runway. “Da’s jus’ natural. Da’s how Donkey do it. It gonna rain again ’fore mornin’. That’ll take most of it away.” He stood up, his full five feet—and without holding himself, began to urinate over the edge to the boards below, where Eric and Shit had been walking.

  Eric wiped his cheek.

  Brick turned and—still urinating; his stream swinging left and right—walked directly through the mess he’d left on the boards. “Gotta go get Donkey and see what he needs, now I got mine for the night.” He turned to call. “Hey, thanks—Al.”

  Al said nothing but wandered away.

  “See, he won’t speak to me, long as any of these Dump niggers are around—’cause he’s straight and I’m jus’ a donkey fuckin’ faggot. But he sure come over here, sniffin’ out my goddamn ass, ’cause it’s big and hot and wet, jus’ like he like it. If a man tell you he wan’ a tight asshole, that jus’ means he don’t got no meat of his own. That’s all. And that ain’t Al Haver’s problem. Un-un.” Again he laughed.

  “I’m sure that last one was what made him shoot,” Shit reiterated.

  Eric’s ears still rang. “And I thought the mud was bad ’cause of the rain.” Shaking his head, Eric started along. “Damn—” Then he began to chuckle. “Did Jay ever tell you why he started callin’ your daddy ‘Dynamite’?”

  “Sure, he did,” Shit said. Then he shook his head. “Damn—I thought maybe I was gonna get me a helpin’ of sloppy seconds off that bowlegged little nigger.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  When they reached the top, Donkey was gone.

  Back at Bull’s, two people with flashlights stood at the head of the open basement. Three ambled down the steps. Most wore leather of some sort or another—vests, harnesses, masks. Two sat on the top step. Most (Eric knew) would be strangers to the Dump. The rain began again, and some stood up and hurried down.

  It had been so great, so bright, so searing…

  *

  The source of the lightning had moved east, looking and sounding as if confined to a distant sky cave.

  Together they walked through wet, silver ferns, elbows high—till Shit grasped Eric’s hand again. “Storms like that always make me wanna fuck.”

  “For God’s sake, Shit—everything makes you wanna fuck!” Joined fists swung through wet fronds. They started up the cabin steps.

  “Yeah—but this time we’re gonna do it different. Usually I just jump ’im ’cause he’s all greased up from earlier.” (Shit was talking now about his father…) “And you’d get around in front of ’im and suck his dick till he shot that big ol’ cracker load right in your mouth. But this time, you’re gonna fuck ’is ass, and I’m gonna get around and suck his dick till you help ’im come in my mouth. Okay?”

  Eric said, “Sure.” Stepping up on the deck, behind Shit, still holding his hand. “But don’t you think it’d be a good idea to ask Dynamite if that’s okay with him?”

  “Why?” Shit glanced back. “What the fuck for? We got a day off tomorrow. And he says he likes it, when we surprise ’im with shit like that.”

  “Okay…” Eric’s tone said, This is your idea…He was still thinking, I’ve seen how big the world is…

  They stepped into the bedroom.

  Shit pulled Eric to the bed’s edge, released his hand, then vaulted. The mattress—and Dynamite—moved up and down. There was enough light to see that Dynamite lay on his side, back to them. Eric climbed on the rough sheet, and ahead of him, Shit got one leg over his father, and seemed to sq
uat on his hip. With one hand he got hold of Dynamite’s cock.

  “Damn, boy…!” Dynamite grunted. “You gonna pull my dick off.”

  “Naw, I ain’t,” Shit said. “You got a treat comin’. I’m gonna suck you off.”

  “Well, you know where it is, son.” Dynamite actually chuckled—

  —while Eric got himself behind the lanky garbage man. He pressed the side of his face against Dynamite’s hairy shoulder.

  A muffled Shit asked, “Where’s Eric…?”

  “Right behind me.”

  Eric felt (and heard the bed shift) Dynamite’s upper leg move. Then Shit’s hand came through, reached forward, and grasped Eric’s cock. From in front of Dynamite, he tugged Eric forward.

  Eric felt a rhythm start somewhere in Dynamite’s body. Shit was jerking off his father.

  “Damn,” Dynamite said, as he did frequently. “You got your grandaddy’s touch, Shit. It’s downright uncanny. If I closed my eyes, I could think it was my daddy, come into the back room and stickin’ his hand under the covers to beat my damned meat when I was a kid.”

  Now Eric grinned. “Did you like it when your dad did that?”

  Eric heard Dynamite grin. “Well, yeah, I was kind of fortunate, there. He’d do it to any boy who’d hang around with ’im. So I saw a lot of it. Besides, nobody ever told me I wasn’t supposed to like it. They didn’t start sayin’ that till ten or fifteen years later. So, yeah, I did. Come on, Shit. It’s funny how when you’re just jerkin’ it, it’s like suddenly my daddy is alive and well. Hey, Move Eric’s dick down ’bout an inch…”

  Shit positioned the head of Eric’s cock in Dynamite’s crevice. Eric slid forward into the lubricant already there. He pushed within Dynamite’s anal sphincter. The muscles slid around his cock shaft.

  “Uhhh…” Dynamite grunted.

  “That okay?” Eric asked.

  “Hell,” Dynamite said. “That’s real okay, son!” Shit’s hand withdrew, then came around Dynamite’s upper hip to reach over and grasp behind Eric’s upper buttock, pulling him forward.

  “Come on—pump that big o’ fucker up your daddy’s shit chute. Yeah, son. That feels pretty nice—that is to say, it feels like it’s damned well supposed to. I’ll tell you if we need more of that pig-fuckin’ lube.”

  From down around Dynamite’s belly, Shit asked, “How’s this feel…?”

  “Oh, son—Jesus, Shit, that’s fuckin amazin’!” Dynamite’s hips moved forward and back. His hands were down gripping the sides of Shit’s head—while Eric held his shoulder with one hand, his flank with the other. And pumped. Dynamite’s ass seemed to suck at his cock. “Come on, little boy. Suck daddy’s big ol’ cracker dick! Now that’s somethin’ my daddy did not do, at least not a whole lot. Oh, yeah! And you pump out that asshole, and help me get out my load, right in his mouth—like he wants it!”

  At one point, when Dynamite ground his hips forward, Eric said, “Hey, don’t choke ’im…!”

  Shit came off Dynamite’s cock long enough to say, “Hey, I’ll tell you, since we all gotta go sometimes, right now this don’t seem like a bad way to do it.”

  “Come on, Shit. Get it back in there. I’m about to unload!”

  Shit came all over Eric’s foot. Moving his toes in its familiar viscosity, Eric came up Dynamite’s ass, squeezed him, then rolled back, panting, one hand still under Dynamite’s shoulder.

  —I’ve seen how large the world is!

  Eric closed his eyes and may have slept or not—

  Someone—he was pretty sure it was Dynamite—was licking the cum off his foot. Before he could be sure, though, he was asleep.

  *

  One morning in ’24 or ’25, at five-forty, Eric stepped out on the porch of his mother’s Runcible house. Barbara stepped out behind him, and, as he turned, gave him a hug, urging him, as usual, to bring his partner, Morgan, around more often (“And Dynamite, too—we’ll have you all for dinner.” Eric hoped it wouldn’t happen—or at least wouldn’t happen till Ron was at some conference or other), apologizing for the uncomfortable couch he’d slept on.

  Bending, he hugged her back. “Hey, Barb—I slept fine. Really.”

  Today, Barbara was a thick and handsome woman. Smoothly her hair had gone from silver blond to silver white. She still wore it pinned up. As he released her and stepped away, Eric thought she looked flushed. A pink glow helmeted her head. Eric squinted, as her hand slid down the arm of his dark hoody—which, for some reason, looked…faintly brown. That’s when he realized that the pale pink nail polish his mother had worn as far back as he could remember was intended to look as if it were completely clear. Somehow everything had shifted to the red. Glancing up, he saw sky and clouds were both deep rose.

  Again, Eric kissed her cheek. “We’ll come see you—and Ron.” He turned and stepped down onto the flagstones taking him across the lawn to the sidewalk. As he loped toward the stop for the six A.M. shuttle back along the shore to Diamond Harbor to meet Shit, he looked over between the houses to see, on the other side of the parking lot among the cars and pickups, the beach and bottom third of the sky was the same red he’d seen during the Harbor sunrise on his first garbage run in Dynamite’s long-gone truck—a vivid scarlet—how many years ago now?

  It was only the second time he’d seen it that color.

  Salmons, lavenders, pinks, oranges, and all shades of coppers, grays, and golds were common—even ten morning minutes of emerald ocean, before the sea went silver-blue.

  But bright red beaches at dawn were—really—rare.

  * * *

  [53] ONE EVENING—IT was October—Eric took a walk down to Dump Corners, went into Hurter’s, with its skylights and the naked I-beams intersecting under the upper part of the ceiling, to the back wall to look at the comics.

  This particular afternoon, somebody was over in the corner, in front of the porn magazines, a heavyset fellow, in shorts and sneakers. Though Eric only saw him from the back, the keys on his left hip and his general build at first made Eric think of the trucker he’d met a decade (or more) ago in the Gay Friendly restroom, then again at Turpens, though he hadn’t seen him now for…well, years.

  Down through the girders, the ceiling’s sourceless light skewed all values and colors, but—Eric realized—the guy was doing something with one hand before himself that…made his shoulder shake! From his back, he looked like he had a magazine in one hand, one of the nude gay ones Fred kept up there. When it struck Eric what the man was doing, he began to grin. Yeah, so much for being straight.

  Suddenly, the guy stood up in his white T-shirt, breathing heavily.

  Eric frowned. This guy’s hair was dead black. Also, he was much too dark for the white trucker.

  Also—the last to hit Eric—he was ten years too young!

  The guy closed the magazine, put it back on the shelf, among the Technicolor array of naked men, and turned.

  Either Mexican or Indian, the young fellow was someone Eric didn’t know. One hand was still under the waist of his olive drab shorts, on the lap of which, off to the left, was a wet blotch, darker than the cloth around.

  Sharply, the kid pulled his hand from his under his waist and blinked.

  Wondering if he should say something, Eric smiled—

  But the Indian youngster dropped his head and started walking forward, and moments on was gone from the whole magazine area.

  Jesus! He hadn’t even taken his dick out to do it.

  Well, when I was that age, a fair number of times (Eric thought) I didn’t even get to.

  Eric went toward the corner, trying to spot which of the magazines the kid had been looking at. But the whole range of flesh and muscle, genitals veiled by swimsuits and boxers, gym pants or spandex, at least on the covers, for all its diversity—white, black, Asian, and Latino—had grown anonymous and swallowed their histories, even histories only a minute old.

  A memory—a desire of Eric’s—welled; and Eric decided on an experiment—

  T
he next day, when they finished hauling sacks and drove back from the Bottom—it had been a dumping day—it looked about to rain. “Now, this is a good day for a nap,” Dynamite said, frowning up at the all but featureless cloud.

  “You mind running me down to the Corners?” Eric asked. “I wanna see somethin’ in Hurter’s.”

  “Sure.” Dynamite shrugged. “You ain’t comin’ in and nappin’?”

  “I’ll be back in about an hour,” Eric said, “an hour-and-a-half.”

  “Okay.” Dynamite shrugged.

  “Can I go with you?” Shit asked, more bewildered than not, but also intrigued at the change in their usual pattern.

  “Come on,” Eric said.

  So Dynamite had continued on to the Dump’s center, dropped them off, then swung the truck around to drive home alone.

  Shit and Eric walked into the familiar hangar-like store. Eric made his way to the back, while Shit followed, stopping to look at the five and six year out of date electronic equipment. When he reached the back wall, Eric went to the general magazines instead of the porn, but—with the faintest tingling—stopped, pulled down his zipper, and pulled out his dick.

  He took a breath.

  Three or four other people stood around, but Eric was trying not to look at them.

  Shit stepped up beside him. “What you lookin’ at?”

  Eric shrugged. “Just stuff.”

  “Oh,” Shit said. “Like usual, huh?” He grinned at Eric—then his eyes dropped. He glanced up again with blank surprise.

  His voice was much lower. “What—you gonna jerk off? You know, this ain’t Turpens. In fact it ain’t a john at all—it’s a public store.”

  Eric put the magazine back. “I wasn’t actually gonna jerk it—just be ready, in case I wanted to eventually, ’cause somethin’ turned me on.”