Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  *

  At the Kyle place, pecan cookies and a peach upside-down cake stood on the sideboard. There was a coffee urn—but no full meal. Still, it was nice. “You know,” Eric said to Jay, “I was wonderin’ if Robert Kyle was gonna show up—I mean, him and Dynamite was so close and everything…there for a while.”

  Jay smiled.

  And Mex signed, No, I don’t think he like to come out here no more. Dynamite would understand that.

  “What you mean?” Eric asked. They stood before the dark fireplace.

  “See,” Jay said, “this used to be a pretty grand house. Once it was really beautiful. And it’s where Kyle was born and grew up.” He looked around, at the warped floor, the sagging furniture, the chairs with the leather broken away at the corners and the stuffing, gray and yellow, pushing through. “Now it’s a wreck. Kyle don’t mind us stayin’ here—but comin’ out here himself makes ’im feel…pretty…poorly, I guess.”

  “Oh…” Eric looked around. He had been surprised that as few people had turned up as they did. But then, Jay and Mex were older than the last time there’d been a funeral here. It would have probably been a lot harder for them. “Oh, yeah. Maybe it would…I can see that.”

  *

  When the scow reached the mainland, in his baggy gray suit Ron was waiting to pick Barbara up. Barbara stopped, nevertheless, to give Eric, then Morgan, a hug. While she embraced him, dirt that remained on Shit’s hands from the cemetery made smudges on the shoulders of her white dress,

  “Thank you—for lettin’ us be there with you, and lettin’ us help you some with the digging.” Joe Markum stood by the door of his car. “I’m glad we could do that for you.”

  “You gonna feel better. It’s gonna be okay.” Big Man reached away from his crutch to tug at Shit’s wrist. “It will. Believe me.” Shit looked down at him, as though surprised—again—he was still there.

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “Yeah. Thanks. For lettin’ me hug on you some.”

  “Aw, that weren’t nothin’,” Big Man said. “Glad to do it.”

  “We’ll see you soon,” Eric said.

  Big Man looked pleased with both of them.

  Shit said, “Probably we’ll catch you at the Opera—before we come down for Christmas—for the Space Program celebration I mean.”

  Eric wondered if Mama Grace was going to say anything to him about the book. But the former seminarian only smiled at him, above the loose knot of his scarf, then gave Barb a friendly hug and said how nice it had been to meet her finally. It ended with how fond he had always been of Eric—and Morgan, both. They were very helpful boys. “I guess I should say ‘young men.’ Sometimes I forget how long I’ve known them.”

  “Yes,” Barbara said. “They are.”

  A bit dusty, Ron’s red Camry sat outside the Lighthouse as Barbara climbed in.

  Then, in Dynamite’s pickup, Eric drove Shit to the Dump.

  Eric had relaxed some—though Shit was not really more talkative than before.

  Unthinking, Eric still expected the cabin’s familiar clutter. When they stepped in, the bareness surprised him. He’d forgotten they’d cleaned out so much of the bedroom.

  The big bed had its head to one wall. Shit’s smaller bed stood by the other (still unslept in). A couple of boxes, and, between them, its half dozen exercise rods, like spiring antennae (one badly bent—by Hannibal a few years back when he’d come by and Eric had let him fool around with it, then left him with it and gone outside…), free of surrounding junk, the giant mantis of Eric’s Bowflex held the room’s center, waiting for someone to decide whether to keep it or throw it out…

  That night, Eric wandered out the door to the deck, clear for the first time since he’d been there, where Shit was sitting, looking in the direction of Bull’s cabin.

  Black Bull’s truck stood beside it.

  The sky was deep, deep blue.

  Shit said, “It was nice of Bull to come to the funeral.”

  Though his flat tone made Shit’s comment seem oddly empty, Eric said, “Yeah. It was…”

  Shit added, “An’ Whiteboy.”

  Though Eric had not been expecting any particular turnout from the Dump, now he wondered whether its lack—no Mr. Potts, no Llewelyn and Fred, no Chef Ron—had meant anything. But then, all the guys they’d worked with on the old garbage run had come out, except Randal, who was on duty—and who had called the day before, with his apologies.

  Headlights from someone’s van pulled into Bull’s yard to sweep over the junk on Bull’s porch before turning off. At the sides of the curtains and the shades, orange light flickered behind and around the lowered shades in the two front windows.

  “They got a fire goin’ in there,” Shit said moodily, “tonight.”

  “Guess so,” Eric said. “It ain’t really cold enough for one, though.”

  Then, six or seven minutes later, Shit got up, walked across the deck, and started down the steps.

  “Where you goin’…?” Eric called.

  “I dunno,” Shit answered in that vague voice that was one with his irresolvable mourning. He walked straight, though, toward Bull’s cabin. Only at the front door, did Eric see him turn aside and start around it.

  Eric frowned.

  Within moments—not minutes—the sky went from darkest blue to black. Eric looked up. It had become night, and a starless one.

  Eric was exhausted. Getting up from the bench at the edge of the porch deck, freed of junk for the first time in so long, Eric moved to the chair. The seat was still warm from Shit.

  How long, he wondered, should he wait?

  A sensation of loss startled him, pushing him toward tears. Shit’s so alone. And I can’t help him none. Sitting on the deck, that night he thought some melancholy things, starting with all he’d kept from Barbara, which made it impossible for her to be his confidante. She knows I sleep with Shit. She thinks its okay. Probably she suspects I’d fooled around with his “uncle,” but left that for us to deal with.

  Eric felt powerless, small, and on the verge of being crazy, because he was thirty-eight and for more than a dozen years he’d been partnered with someone, now forty, who was probably psychotic, anyway, and who—till three days ago—had been fucking his own father for more three decades—

  But, then, they both had.

  And that father had died.

  Suppose Shit had died and left Eric with Dynamite?

  However it went, Shit and me’ll probably both end up in the blackest cell in the lightless basement of some asylum. Well, as long as I’m with Shit, he thought bravely, I don’t give a fuck. Yeah, that’s brave, he thought. Brave and stupid. What reason, it occurred to him, would anyone have for keeping us together? They’d want us as far apart as possible, in different buildings, different hospitals, different states—

  Which is when Eric woke.

  (In his dream, some man, who looked like the Hemmings mortician, had been driving him in a pitch black armored car to a different state…)

  Half a dozen lights in half a dozen houses, mostly to the right, had gone out.

  (Before he’d been shut into the car, he’d been in a black cell in the basement of an asylum, and that had been…he shivered.)

  He’d never had a dream like that before—one that went on and on, without any light. In the front room of Black Bull’s, orange light flickered beside Bull’s lowered shades.

  Had he drifted off for twenty minutes…? For two hours…?

  How late was it?

  Eric stood, went to the cabin’s side door, and looked in. He didn’t have to turn on the light—though he did anyway—to make sure Shit wasn’t in bed. He pulled in a long breath, turned the light out again, and walked back onto the deck, moving across the uneven boards. He got the rail in his hand and stepped down.

  It was chilly—and, in the dark, he walked over ferns and grass.

  (He thought suddenly, even hysterically, who will point out, now, those jeweled webs across morning…?)
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  Night was a cool hollow with an uneven floor.

  Walking over the road’s dust, he stepped onto the grass before Bull’s porch. When he stepped onto the boards, at first he thought to go around the side to see what was in the back, the way Shit had done. But the light edging the shades was too dim to see anything.

  Finally, in front of the door, Eric knocked. First, he did it quietly, thinking: If they’re asleep, I don’t want to disturb them…Perhaps Shit had continued walking across Bull’s yard, then for the cliffs, to wander down to the beach…But, then, maybe he hadn’t—

  And I want to find out what’s happened to him.

  Eric knocked harder, standing upright.

  After seconds, he was about to knock again, when the latch turned over.

  The door pulled back.

  Someone stood there, firelight behind—a big black man? Was it Bull…? The man was naked. Warm air from the fire surged out the door, against Eric’s knees, his face, his hands…

  Eric strained to make out the alien features and suddenly realized…

  A grill crossed the mouth. Other grills covered the ears. Lenses before the eyes were black circles. The head was encased in full leather.

  From the flicker behind him, Eric could see the man’s shoulders, flanks, arms, and—Eric looked down—lower legs ran with perspiration. Down black, blocky calves that practically filled them, sweat rolled under the tops of his boots.

  Beside him, naked and barefoot, Whiteboy crouched.

  “Whatchu wan’?” It was Bull’s rough, outsized voice.

  Eric looked up at the silhouetted head—

  Eric said, “I’m sorry, Bull—if you’re busy…?”

  Bull dropped his head to the side. “What the fuck you want?” Then he gave the leash in his hand a yank. “Heel, you motherfuckin piece o’ crap! Heel!”

  On the ground, on all fours, Whiteboy sagged to the side. One end bunched in Bull’s fist, the leash was attached to Whiteboy’s collar. Grinning up at Eric, Whiteboy moved, like a spider monkey, nearer Bull’s heavy leg.

  “Is Shit over here? I wanna know if he’s…okay. That’s…” Eric swallowed—“all.”

  “So you wanna know how your partner is—how your motherfuckin’ brother is holdin’ up in my goddamn cellar room? How your fuckin’ piece of nigger shit scumbag partner is trying to keep it together, mewlin’ an’ pukin’ and peein’ all over hisself, an sayin’ ‘I’m sorry, Bull! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I’ll be good! I swear it—’ just like he was this—” again he tugged the leash—“worthless piece dried-up dog puke—this lace-curtains piece of Mick garbage nobody ever even bothered to teach how to skin back his own fuckin’ dick to keep it clean.” On clean again Bull yanked the leash.

  Eric looked down as Whiteboy sagged against Bull’s leg. Whiteboy dropped his buttocks to the floor, looking back and forth between them with the manic grin Eric remembered from the Gilead cemetery. One hand back between his legs, slowly Whiteboy pulled at his cock—not large, but oddly shaped. As it slipped from the knuckles, Eric saw a bulge toward the back and a bend to one side. Off the end, three-quarters of an inch of skin made a scrawny spigot.

  “So you want me to tell you how the little fucker’s doin’, huh? What, you think I’m some motherfuckin’ magic Negro, what knows all the answers to your dumb shit-ass white boy questions?”

  “Huh…?” Emerging from the simple surprise of the two of them, joined by the leash, Eric had all-but-decided that Bull—if not Bull and Whiteboy both—were stoned. “What you mean? What kind of…magic…?”

  Eric thought it was going to be a drug.

  Bull chuckled. “Da’s a wise ol’ Uncle Tom you think you can come up to, who knows everything you wanna find out in the wide world, the whole of it, who’s ready to sit down wid ya’, and spew you out all the good advice you can drink down your ignorant white boy gullet. Yeah, you wanna spend de night drinkin’ down my fuckin’ nigger puke. Well, too bad for you, boy, unh-unh—that ain’t Bull. No, sir. That ain’t your motherfuckin’ Bull tonight. Not for you or ya’ damn nigger twin brother.” He lowered his masked face toward Eric’s.

  Eric swallowed. It was all he could do not to step back.

  Pulling himself up again, Bull seemed taller than he’d been. “WHY DE FUCK IS YOU STANDIN’ IN FRONT OF ME LIKE DAT FOR? DROP yo’ fuckin’ nuts down to de groun’, dere! Go on! Get down, or I’m gonna KNOCK you down, nigger! An’ make my motherfuckin Whiteboy scumbag gnaw yo’ motherfuckin’ balls off while I’m knockin’ ya! Go on, I said! Get on yo’ motherfuckin’ knees, when you talk to me! YOU HEAH WHAT AH’M SAYIN’ TO YA’? I GOT A MESSAGE FOR BOTH OF YOU!”

  Chills cascaded the backs of Eric’s shoulders, as he dropped. Bull wasn’t completely naked, Eric saw, as his knees and knuckles hit the porch boards, and the bloom of pain stung under all four. Besides the mask and boots, Bull wore a black jock. Possibly from the firelight within, reflected off his own face, Eric saw its cup proper was linked chain. Bull’s thighs, calves, and arms glistened with black sweat, droplets still or moving, turned orange and—some on the side—scarlet. The cup was not mail, but—now that Eric’s face was in front of it—vertical chain lengths held together with horizontal links.

  Scrotal flesh pushed some of the chains apart, like black bark, raddled and folded. At one place, smoother, part of his heavily curved penis, pushed between. “AND YOU GOT TO HEAR IT, TOO!”

  Eric looked up.

  In the same way that, before, Bull seemed to have grown taller, now he seemed taller still. Bull thundered. “YALL THINK, JUS’ ’CAUSE YALL IS WHITE, YOU CAN STAN’ UP TO A NIGGER POWERFUL AS ME? YOU THINK DAT, DON’T YOU? NAW, NAW—YOU GET DOWN ON YO’ MOTHERFUCKIN’ KNEES. DA’S HOW YOU WHITE SCUMBAGS GOT TO ACT AROUND ME—” Again, he gave Whiteboy’s chain a yank. “Yall white scumsuckers ain’t nothin’ but left over nigger turds what nobody wants, anyway, till they done dried up and ain’t got no color at all!”

  Eric’s head was on the same level as Whiteboy’s, who, still grinning, pulled at himself. The skin on his shoulders, his calves, his forearms, his neck—thin and unevenly pale—held the faintest web of underlying wrinkles, as though he might have been fifty or more years older…

  “That nigger talk to me like that all the time—” Whiteboy whispered. “It make me feel real good. Real nice—so I can get all relaxed. And all safe with him, ’cause that nigger is so powerful. He won’ let nothin’ hurt this po’ piece of white shit.” Whiteboy nodded in Eric’s face. His hair tickled Eric’s forehead. “’Cause that’s what I am. Did Dynamite ever talk to you like that?”

  “Huh…?” Eric asked, bewildered. “Naw—naw, he didn’t…”

  “’Afore you come down here, once when Shit was off explorin’ around, Dynamite come over and Bull here made him talk to me like that for thirty, forty minutes ’for he turned ol’ Dynamite loose and they’d fucked me good. Both of ’em. Together. Man, that was almost good as Bull doin’ it by hisself. You know Danny Turpens? He comes around here and plays with us, sometimes. But ’cause he’s a drunk, he pees all over everythin’…”

  Bull roared, “PUT YO’ HAN’ ON DE FLOOR!”

  Flinching, squinting, on his knees, Eric looked up.

  “Put you han’ ON THE FLOOR when I tell you!”

  Eric looked down at Whiteboy for some explanation. There was only the manic smile. Eric put his hand in front of the hand Whiteboy was leaning on, over the cabin’s threshold.

  “Not THAT one, you ignorant scumstain! The OTHER one!”

  Eric jerked his hand back and put the other on the far side of Bull’s boot.

  “He gonna step on yo’ hand now. You gonna lift him up in the night on yo’ own hand, and he gonna take off from it and fly around the whole motherfuckin’ world! He gonna fly around and see the chinks in China and the niggers in Africa—and the Eskimos! All them Eskimos and all them penguins…Buck naked like he is, the ice ain’t gonna hurt him, and he gonna walk through the volcanoes’ fire and tha
t fire ain’t gonna hurt him one bit, either, ’cause he gonna drink that white hot lava, right down, runnin’ over his fingers like the coolest water. You know, it’s gonna burn his skin all black—blacker’n Bull already is, like it always do. That’s how that nigger stay so motherfuckin’ black, ’cause he goes into them roarin’ volcanoes with all that heat and fire and lava and it chars up his skin. Like fuckin’ coal. Like fuckin’ oil. But it don’t hurt him none. Black Bull ain’t like us poor, stupid piece-o’-shit ignorant white boys. This nigger is the most powerful animal in the world. That’s what Danny says. But you know that—’cause you live right across the road. See, this nigger is too—” Whiteboy whispered as if the word itself held immense magic—“powerful for nothin’ to hurt ’im—”

  Above Bull thundered, “PALM UP. You don’t know nothin’, you ignorant rat turd! You ain’t worth a drop of bloody pus out a busted pimple up this heah monkey’s syphilitic ass.” He jerked the leash again. Again, Whiteboy swayed.

  Eric reversed his hand, so that, across the threshold, his knuckles were on the gritty carpet and his palm was up. Bull’s leather boot rose from the floor and came down, the first third of it, on his upturned fingers.

  Eric had been thinking nothing was really frightening in what Bull was saying, save what the transgression suggested might happen minutes ahead—or had already happened in another room. But it had put Eric in some strained place, so that his heart pounded and—despite his mind—his body responded with all the physicality of fear—

  Bull’s boot pressed Eric’s palm—and for two, three, four seconds Eric was terrified something awful had fixed itself to the boot’s soles.

  Whatever it was, lived and wriggled and gripped him with warm flesh, moving over Eric’s hand, over his skin. Eric tried to pull back, but Bull leaned into him, heavily enough to pin his hand. His knuckles stung—

  Then he remembered Bull’s boots had no soles.

  Bull’s toes were flexing. Callused flesh gripped Eric’s hand. Bull’s leathery toes—his whole foot—moved, pulsed. Did it breathe? Above him, Bull intoned: “The bottoms of my boots are ALIVE! They step over all of white mankind, while I walk through the stars, straddle the clouds, cram the moon in my mouth—”