Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Then the boatman raised his tattooed arm and put it around Eric’s shoulder—a third arm around him. “’Scuse me, Shit. But this boy’s gonna suck my dick now. You can have ’im soon as I’m finished.” Taking a deep breath, Shit released Eric, stepping back, looking a little confused.

  Disoriented, Eric looked left and right, still holding Shit’s cock.

  “Hey, Jay,” Shit said. “I’m sorry. Sure.” The boatman—Jay?—had actually called him ‘Shit.’ Till then, Eric had assumed it was a repeated miss-hearing, perhaps, of “Shim.”

  (In Florida, the security guard for Barb’s trailer park had been called “Shim” and his mom had had a neighbor, Mr. Shippey, who Shim had always called “Ol’ Ship”…)

  “Now you—” which was Jay talking to Eric—“can hold onto his dick all you want, long as you’re suckin’ on mine.”

  Eric laughed. And the colorful, multi-headed arm lowered him to a squat.

  Eric looked up at the boatman with his yellow beard and bare upper gum, grinning down. Above the boatman’s jutting cock and bloated testicle, practically the size of a baseball really—the normal one a nodule at its side—from the john’s uneven ceiling, the metal fixture around three incandescent bulbs suggested a glass globe had once softened their unfrosted glare.

  Eric went forward, knees on the concrete.

  With his callused hands, the boatman slid his wide hooded cockhead, with its full veins, its downward curve, into Eric’s mouth. It was salty—and thick enough so that, when in, it filled Eric’s mouth. Eric took it deep, then backed up and, tongue thrust under the meaty hood, troweled beneath the glans—God, there was a lot in there, faintly bitter, salted, mostly dry—till his tongue pushed the frenum, which stretched against it. The big-armed boatman gave a pleased grunt.

  Maybe the Mexican’s tongue hadn’t gotten to it that morning…

  It felt good to get the guy’s cock in his mouth.

  Still gripping the other kid’s dick—Shit’s—in his hand (Was he three years older than Eric? Was he four?), Eric could feel Shit moving—an inch one way, half an inch the other—to position himself more conveniently. Eric came off Jay long enough to look up again. “You pack that stuff in there with a spoon?”

  “Hell…” the big boatman drawled, “I thought you said you liked it.”

  Shit chuckled—and stepped nearer: Eric’s arm bent.

  “I do.” Releasing Shit’s cock, which bobbed up an inch, to hit Eric’s ear—the head was wet—Eric brought that hand over to cup the boatman’s immense testicle with the smaller, while four fingers of his other hand leaned like tent poles on a bit of cement. Again Eric swallowed dick, till the boatman’s zipper cut at his lip.

  Other guys laughed, watching, grinning. Eric grinned too—and in the dark space had a flash of spring clarity, the afternoon sun a-slant beneath the Atlanta highway—as Jay rubbed his head, the way the hillbillies sometimes had.

  Eric thought: Damn…!

  Someone said, “My kinda cocksucker, Jay,” though Eric wasn’t sure if the speaker was black or white.

  Sucking again, Eric got to a rhythm, he could tell—from the way Jay pushed forward, his hand firm on Eric’s head, the overhead grin—the boatman liked. For moments Eric wondered if he should not butt his chin into the enlarged scrotum. But after a few times—and he liked the feel of its hair against his lower face—Eric forgot it; or, rather, just enjoyed it; which the boatman seemed easy with.

  Here is what, later, Eric thought: When you’re sucking a good dick, you can get so involved with what’s going on in your mouth—the way something as big as, or bigger than you, another tongue and of a different firmness, is sharing the space, the stretch of your cheeks, the way the palate sends one with that kind of curve down your throat—it is different from the ones that curve up, not that I’d send someone away because of it—and the rightness it transfers to you, each thrust; of the way the thicker part toward the back—at least with a cock like this—has all the hair and also most of the salt, like someone who’s been working. Scott says he doesn’t like hair on a dick. But Scott’s fuckin’ nuts—! I don’t think Scott like guys! He’d be happier suckin’ off chix-with-dix. (Imagine two nuts that big, in a real loose bag. I’m gonna jerk off over that…) You can live inside your own mouth, and all the world’s in there with you. I guess you’re aware of what’s going on in the world, though it’s not a third as important as what moves over your tongue, big tube with the little tube beneath, expanding in you, the quarter inch you keep between your teeth and his meat—

  Behind Eric, hinges squeaked.

  Everyone in the space moved—

  At least a little—and Eric knew it and moved, too.

  The boatman’s hands firmed on either side of Eric’s head, not to halt him but to slow him, so that the motion of Eric’s mouth kept on: a way to let his cocksucker know (Eric thought right there) that whoever had entered was okay.

  Or, maybe, Jay doesn’t give a fuck…?

  What would it be like to be that big…?

  Could you learn such strength through knowledge alone…?

  At the urinal, the black guy said, “Hey, there, fella. You come for a taste o’ dis?” and—Eric could just see the man around Jay’s hip, when he pulled back—turning from the urinal enough so that Eric saw what the shaved-headed black man in his safety vest held.

  Jesus…! Eric thought—and got chills.

  Who is that? Frack’s brother…?

  The newcomer moved into sight. Eric thought (though he couldn’t be sure) it’s the white guy Eric had followed into the place, who’d earlier gone into the front john, now here in the back. The man said: “Damn, Al, I hope you gonna shove that up my fuckin’ hole. I thought you wasn’t here—”

  Eric reached up and got hold of Shit’s dick again.

  Laughing, bald Al said, “Soon as I get my motherfuckin’ raincoat on.” Digging in his pants, while, hooded in its crepe cuff, a foot-plus of charred hatchet handle, webbed in black cable and all that only half-hard, swung in front of him. Al pulled loose a square packet. Raising his hands (as though he might be nearsighted), he tore through brown plastic to pull loose an ivory condom that fell, unfolding, from his fingers. He shook it out.

  “Goddamn, nigger!” one of the other black drivers said. “Dat ain’t no raincoat! Al—da’s a goddam umbrella cover—family size!”

  “Yeah—well, I need me de big ones.” (Someone else chuckled—probably the white guy Jay had called Dynamite.) With two thumbs in the latex collar, Al stretched it a couple of times. “Ted got such a sweet ass, I wait aroun’ for this honkey motherfucker sometimes.”

  The white guy in the yellow shirt already had his slacks unbuttoned. His belt dangled open, and, held in one hand, his pants drooped down one leg. He grinned around the room.

  Al grinned back. “Come on, you honkey fuck hole!” Al pulled the condom on. Stretching latex wrinkled first on one side, then pulled out smooth. “Back up on dis, Ted, and le’s see you do what both the ol’ ladies I’m livin’ with is too scared to, ’cept in the damned dark.”

  His own stubby cock still in his fist, the black driver said, “Well, you can’t fuckin’ blame ’em. I’d be scared of dat thing too.”

  Leaning over, gripping the urinal’s rolled edge, Ted moved toward Al’s end, slacks slipping further down his legs.

  “You ain’t too scared to suck it.” Al chuckled again. “At least de first seven or eight inches.” While more guys laughed, he set cockhead in place, and, in his orange vest, embraced white Ted from behind. Unreadable in this ceiling light, black tattoos swarmed like bugs over Al’s black arms. As Eric kneeled up, again Jay’s scrotum pushed into his chin. In his pants, Eric’s cock head dragged across a wet spot.

  Sympathetic electricity made Eric’s back tingle. (No, Al’s was not as big as Frack’s; still, it was in the same foot-plus ballpark.) He released the kid’s cock he held—Shit’s hand, covering Eric’s, gave an acknowledging squeeze—and, while his oth
er hand held the bearded boatman’s hip, Eric slipped his fingers free and put them on the floor.

  And something warm and rough covered them—Shit had moved his foot on top of Eric’s hand. Eric rotated it beneath (the weight lightened in response), gripped the naked foot, and squeezed. Hard toes grasped the edge of Eric’s palm. The foot seemed too wide for any shoe.

  Eric pulled his hand loose—because, crouching low, he couldn’t really get the base of Jay’s cock in his mouth.

  “You don’t use no fuckin’ spit?” asked a wondering driver.

  Thrusting, retreating, thrusting, Al said, “He don’t need no…fuckin’ spit—he keep a…fuckin’ tin o’ lard…up there, anyway…Or sumpin’ greazy—least when…he come lookin’ for me, he do…Spit?” Al’s voice had dropped almost an octave with disdain. “I’d spit in his goddam ear—or tear ’im de fuck open!”

  “Ted, you musta been practicin’ to take dat nigger,” someone said.

  “Come on, Al…!” Ted whispered. His arms and shoulders rocked above the urinal’s rim he gripped, the pink gone from his knuckles to the skin between. “Shut up, and fuck my white ass, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah! I remember what you like, motherfucker.” Al was speeding up; his rhythm inflected his speech. “That’s right—y’always wanna leave here…with your damn proof…o’ purchase, doncha?…Okay. Here you go—” Al dropped his face onto Ted’s neck, who put his head back and grunted:

  “Oh, shit…yeah!”

  The black man, Eric realized, had bitten him!

  Helped on by Al and Ted (Eric suspected but was not sure), the boatman’s big hands tightened: he shot in Eric’s mouth.

  Eric pressed his face into the rough denim, taking the cock as deep as he could get it—which was pretty fuckin’ deep. God, it felt good, even if he couldn’t see the two at the piss trough. For moments it was as if the orchitis was a pillow beneath Eric’s jaw.

  With one hand and the other, the boatman rubbed the back of Eric’s head; and—slowly—pulled out.

  The black driver with his fat cock had come forward to wait on Eric’s other side from Shit. As the boatman’s cock fell free to rest beside the enlarged testicle, Eric turned, expecting to see Al and the guy he was humping at the urinal. Instead he saw the cock in the driver’s brown fist—and took it in his mouth, turning on his knees to face him.

  “Sweet Jesus—” the driver breathed in sharply—“this boy got a’ educated mouth.” Though he was uncut and thick, he was…well, free of cheese and perspiration. And he only put one hand—too lightly for Eric—on Eric’s shoulder.

  Still, Eric was enjoying his enthusiasm. The driver came in under a minute. Eric took him deep and held him there, while he listened to the breathing above.

  Finally, Eric slid off and grinned up. “You got an educated dick.”

  “I do?” The driver looked down, heavy brown face surprised. “Well, thank you, son. That’s nice to hear. Real nice.” His cock was softening. “Hey, Jay—he say I got a’ educated dick. How you like that?”

  As Eric kneeled back, the hood slipped forward.

  “Well, I’m glad sumpin’ about you’s educated,” Jay returned. “Somebody told me they seen you at Johnston’s speakin’ rally at the Interdenominational over at Hemmings. Don’t tell me you gonna vote for a dumb white man like that? And vicious, besides. Nope!” Jay’s forearm raised, his hand opened. “Nope. Nope! No politics in the damned john. I don’t believe in it. And I ain’t gonna start now.”

  The driver laughed, putting himself away.

  A hand grasped Eric’s other shoulder, slid under his arm, and pulled Eric up. He looked over and smiling at him was the tall unshaven white guy—Dynamite, yeah, that’s right—in his overalls and work shoes. The bib hid most of the garbage truck. “Hey, there—we don’t want your knees gettin’ sore.”

  “Uh…thanks,” Eric said.

  Dynamite smiled: half his teeth were gone—and Eric thought, this forty-odd-year-old cracker, smiling at me, with his hazel eyes and brown hair—a head taller than both Eric and Shit—could have been cousin or brother to any hillbilly he’d ever had under the highway. Both Shit and the big boatman and the taller of the black drivers (in Eric’s estimation) were better looking. Still, for pure raw sex appeal only the Mexican sitting on the shitter rivaled him.

  With his thumb, Dynamite pointed over at Jay, lingering now by the Mexican’s stall. “Jay MacAmon over there says you might be around awhile—you interested in a job?”

  (So colorful before, across the john, the boatman’s biceps—thick as tire tubes—were now wrapped in shadow.)

  “Huh?” Eric blinked. “Jay…? Eh…yeah—maybe. What kind?”

  “Over in Diamond Harbor. Haulin’ garbage with me and Shit.” The thumb went toward the light-skinned black kid, Shit. The very wide thumb (like Shit’s) did not have a lot of nail left—nor, indeed, did any of his fingers.

  (Why couldn’t I have hair like Shit’s…? Puffy hair—) To protect himself from the feeling of confusion, Eric was about to add, Well, I dunno…

  —when, against the wall, watching the whole room and, clearly and equally, watching Dynamite talk to Eric, Shit raised an equally big and knuckly hand to his face, dug a broad forefinger into a broader nostril, pushed, twisted, pulled the finger free, and put it in his mouth, while he watched.

  Chills engulfed Eric, not just on his back, but from foot soles—as if he no longer stood on the floor but rather atop six inches of raging electricity—to scalp. Suddenly everything sexual about the encounter so far, he realized, had been some version or another of the ordinary. Every sexual evaluation he had formed or forgotten over the six or seven minutes—really, it couldn’t have been longer—since he’d entered the john revised itself into something extraordinary. If Eric had had any hair there to speak of, it would have danced on his scalp.

  A collar of over-thick fingers, Shit’s other fist hung on his dick, which, with the cuffed head protruding an inch, still looked hard. A droplet glimmered on the bottom of his foreskin.

  (Eric thought about going over, squatting, licking it off…)

  The urinal’s timer turned over. (Since last time, it felt like five minutes—certainly no more than six.) Again water flushed the steel. (Fluffles, flaps, flops, floshes…)

  With their unreadable black markings, Al’s arms gripped Ted’s yellow shirt. In his jeans, with his belt end swinging, Al’s thrusting buttocks clocked the world.

  Somewhere inside himself, Eric found the words, “Yeah. Sure, I…” obliterating his wariness. He hadn’t intended to say them. But he had.

  “You got somethin’ I can write on?” Dynamite took three inches of pencil from his pocket, while Eric thrust his hand into his own pocket (I can’t feel anything…! Glittering chills armored him…) and managed to get out the paper Bottom had given him that morning. He handed it to Dynamite.

  “If you gonna be around a few months and serious about workin’, show up at the Gilead dock come Wednesday mornin’—four-thirty, four-fifty. We get started by five.” On the paper’s back, with heavy, soiled fingers, Dynamite scribbled, then, keeping the pencil, returned the paper to Eric.

  “Thank you—hey, thanks!” Eric found his voice. “Yeah—hey! Thank you! Sure.” Taking back the paper, without looking at it, he returned it to his pocket. As if he were encased in electric armor, Eric reached between Dynamite’s legs.

  If Dynamite had knocked his hand away, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “Now what, son…?” Dynamite smiled. The skin on his neck and arms was sun-roughened and redder than Shit’s. “You want some more of this Georgia cracker dick?” He pushed the pencil into a pocket on his bibs, moved…toward Eric, who still fingered the work-softened denim to grip the man’s cock. Dynamite reached for his own chest, looked down, and unsnapped one strap, then the second.

  As his pants dropped again, Dynamite’s hands came out and took Eric by the shoulders. He bent his face down and opened his mouth.

  Then,
his hands like slabs supporting Eric’s back, the back of Eric’s head, Dynamite’s tongue went in, thickening and thinning against Eric’s. It tasted…God, good! The smell was like Jay’s, with a different automotive overlay.

  (Regular instead of diesel…?)

  Shit had moved up, too, breathing hard, waiting his turn, finger still in his mouth.

  Though he was no longer picking.

  Through the long kiss, Eric thought: My goddam tongue is glittering—and finally dropped to his knees for Dynamite’s cock—thick, big, uncut—that pushed against his upper lip, then went into his mouth.

  In small, upward movements, surely timed to Dynamite’s heart, it hardened.

  It had salt and—Eric got his tongue under the skin and into the circular pocket around the head—cheese. This guy was so good—not, Eric thought, that Scott would agree. But Scott wasn’t sucking the redneck sonofabitch. His mouth filled with that cock that was—again Eric took it to the root—bigger than Jay’s, if not so thick as the black driver’s, while, with another heartbeat, it expanded to the size of Shit’s.

  Fingers like bars, rough as rust, Dynamite held Eric’s head, his cheeks. Denim bound Dynamite’s thighs. Eric reached between them, under the long scrotum and moved his hand up warm buttocks, firm, flat, furry, to feel more testicles behind the garbage man, swinging into the back of his hand. Eric’s fingers stubbed the firm stock moving there.

  Shit had moved forward and was again fucking the guy!

  Once Eric kneeled on a bib-denim strap across the tiles, as Dynamite tried to step with his big shoe and staggered. . . “Damn, boy—what you doin’? Tryin’ to pull me over?”

  “I’m tryin’ to see,” Shit rasped, softly, roughly, on Dynamite’s back. “I wanna watch your fuckin’ cock goin’ in and out this white scumbag’s mother-fuckin’ suck hole!” Yeah, he had to be black…

  Eric gripped one of Dynamite’s hands—as big as Shit’s—as he moved to the side.

  “Hey, yeah…” Shit drawled from above in an uprush of pleasure. “I got it now. Good. I can see it. Okay!”

  Eric heard shoes on the concrete behind him, then felt something press his back—a hand slid under his jeans.