Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  While Eric tried to get his breath back, Whiteboy grabbed his other wrist. “Hey—can I pee in his hand? Come on, feel my cock and my nuts while I pee in your hand.”

  Again, Bull laughed. “YOU HAVE NO WINGS LEFT TO FLY. WHEN YOU SPLATTED OUT LIKE A ROTTEN FRUIT FROM A GARBAGE TRUCK RATTLIN’ DOWN DA ROAD, DEY SAW HOW WHITE AND SICKLY AND PUNY YOU WERE! DEY PULLED YOUR WINGS OFF YOUR SHOULDERS THE SAME TIME DEY RIPPED THE SKIN OFF YOUR MEASELY WHITEBOY PECKER, AND FLUNG IT TO THE DUNG BEETLES AND THE SLUGS TO EAT—BUT THERE ARE STILL NIGGERS DAT CAN FLY.” The pressure on his hand lightened —and Eric did not pull his fingers away. “You white boys can piss on the scumbag all you want. I don’t give a fuck…”

  Then Bull…growled!

  Whiteboy pulled Eric’s other hand back under him, and the spigot off his dangling cock brushed Eric’s palm.

  It was wet.

  With one hand, Whiteboy held Eric’s arm and, with the other, pressed Eric’s hand to his groin. Whiteboy’s pubic hair was silkier than Eric’s. Eric looked over, to realize Whiteboy’s grin was inches from his face. “You guys used to had a real nice dog, didn’t ya’? You remember? That ol’ black sonofabitch—Uncle Tom?” (In the doorway, Bull stood like a statue of black iron.) “You would go outta here on the garbage run, and he’d come right on over to see us—I used to suck that motherfuckin’ dog’s dick all the time. Me and Danny. We’d get ’im in the house—Bull loved to watch us suck off that big motherfucker. Dog used to love it, too. Or I’d get down like this and he’d climb on around me and Bull used to help ’im fuck my ass—you know, when a dog fucks on another dog, sometimes they get hung up in each other. You seen that, right?” (Crouching in the doorway, suddenly Eric found himself convinced that the iron was heating. And heating more. And more…) “That’s ’cause there’s a knot back there that gets stuck. But that’s why it’s better if he fucks a white boy like me…or some nigger like you—” inside the living room’s door sill warm liquid ran over Eric’s knuckles, dripped from them to the rug—“’cause you know how he got that big knot what swells up in the middle of his dick and don’t let him get loose from another dog unless he shoots. But I can get anything up my fuckin’ hole—or out of it. ’Cause Bull done been trainin’ me for years—he stick anything up my ass. Bottles and tool handles. Even his fuckin’ fist—and he don’t use nothin’ but nigger spit and nigger shit. And you seen the hands on that black bastard, ain’t ya? So it don’t matter whether that hound can come or not. He can still pull loose. In another dog, there’s a bone there that keeps that thing from comin’ out. That’s why they get all hung up. I liked to kiss on Uncle Tom, too. And he really liked to kiss on me—you ever see that old dog eat his own shit? And after he’d do that, I’d kiss on him—Bull just loved to watch us doin’ that nasty stuff. He’d kick us around, and laugh—and laugh. Hey, open your mouth.”

  Again Eric was bewildered. “Huh…?”

  “Come on, open your mouth!”

  Even as he started to protest, the upper end of the leash hit Eric’s cheek.

  And from above: “OPEN YOUR FUCKIN’ MOUTH, SCUMBAG. DO WHAT HE SAY, YOU HEAH ME…?”

  Opening his mouth, Eric pulled back.

  But he took Whiteboy with him, who, still gripping Eric’s forearm, chuckled and let out more urine. “This is how that ol’ shit-eatin’ hound’d do me when I’d take a break from suckin’ on his big red pecker, when it was sticking out his skin, and I had it shucked back over his knot.” Whiteboy pushed his face around Eric’s. His tongue began flicking in and out of Eric’s mouth, licking the insides of his cheek and his tongue. Eric had forgotten how rancid Whiteboy’s breath was. But on one layer, he recognized in the odor, because, when Uncle Tom had been alive, feeding the old dog had fallen to Eric: the smell of canned dog food. As though in mind-reading explanation, Whiteboy confirmed: “Das what Bull make me eat today—dog food…He don’t even gimme a dish. He throw it down on the fuckin’ floor!”

  “Hey, Bull—” someone called from back in the room. There was the sound of a very big, very heavy door closing, like metal, perhaps even a vault door—“what you up to out there?”

  Above him, Bull turned back: “Hey, Kyle—come on over and see what I got here.”

  Whiteboy pulled his mouth away, long enough to whisper, “That’s Mr. Kyle—he’s a real big nigger ’round here. He owns Turpens and all that property out on Gilead, where we was this mornin’. He’s a real good friend of Bull’s—like Dynamite and Jay…”

  Eric looked up again. A tall man had stepped up behind Bull’s shoulder. He wore a leather jacket, a white shirt beneath it. And—Eric saw, looking down—leather pants.

  Bull said, “Dis heah’s de other one I told you about. I tol’ the first one he could come over any time he wanted. So I figured this one’d be over, too, pretty soon.”

  The black man looked maybe a little older than Jay, with rough, short hair.

  Kyle chuckled. “You gonna take this one in the back, too?”

  “Naw, I don’t think he needs nothin’ like that—DO YOU, YOU FUCKIN’ SCUMBAG?”

  Eric flinched again at Bull’s volume.

  Mr. Kyle actually drew back. “Damn, Bull—you’re gonna scare the shit out of me, too, there.” He chuckled. “Too bad that Turpens kid isn’t here tonight.”

  But Whiteboy had leaned closer. “See,” he was whispering, “we got five big ol’ washtubs in the cellar with chains all around the edge and down inside—and people come here, and they pay Bull to chain ’em up in those things, sometimes a few hours, sometimes all day, and sometimes even a few days—and me sometimes for a week. But that’s when we don’t got any payin’ customers—and Bull puts me in one, ’cause it makes me feel good, and I can show the others along with me that it ain’t gonna kill ’em, and how to sit and sleep in those things, and we got to do our business in there, and piss in that tub, and he throws our food in there, and we got to fish it out and eat it. And he’ll come by, and shit in ya’ hand, or throw his shit right at you, right in your fuckin’ face—then piss in there all over you, too.”(Eric could not even see the mouth moving behind the leather mask.) “Then, afterwards, he’ll take you out in the back, and hose you off, and tell you to get the fuck out of there. But sometimes, if he thinks I need some more, he’ll chain me back up in my tub. When he takes me in the Opera, I gotta go around, and when somebody starts talkin’ to me, I gotta tell ’em all the stuff that nigger can do, ’cause he’s so powerful. You know, when I’d be chained up in there, sometimes I could look out the bars on the front of the cellar window from under the porch, and I’d see you guys comin’ out your cabin. You and Shit is brothers or cousins or something—ain’t you? You know how I can tell? Every since he was a kid, I’d seen Shit comin’ out, and he wouldn’t think nobody’d be watchin’ him, and he’d be pickin' in his nose and eatin’ his damned snot off his fingers, and I’d be chained up in my tub full of piss and Bull’s turds floatin’ in that thing and I’d think, wow, that’s so astonishin’! Then, when you come, I’d be there and seen you come out and do it, too! I realized you guys had to be brothers or cousins or somethin’. Ain’t that right? When y’all come out together, sometimes, I seen y’all laughin’ together and twice now I seen y’all be eatin’ each other’s—that’s fuckin’ amazin’! I mean, that’s pretty powerful, too. Hey—” Here, with a gesture of his head, Whiteboy indicated Bull above them—“he gonna piss in yo’ face now. You better open yo’ fuckin’ mouth—”

  Eric looked up to hear Bull’s laughter again. Bull was fingering the chains that made up his jockstrap cup. “Your heard ’im, you white scumbag, OPEN your mouth!” Bull fingered aside some of the chains and released himself from between. Salt liquid fell first against Eric’s cheek, then moved the inch over into his mouth.

  Eric shook—he’d expected the piss to be scalding. This is crazy, he thought. I’ve got to get this together…

  Right hand pinned under Bull’s foot, and Whiteboy still gripping his left arm, Eric had no le
verage with either. Whiteboy’s hips hunched and hunched over his hand like a dog’s, while Eric’s knuckles continued to drip.

  Above, Mr. Kyle said, “You know, I wasn’t ready for Wendell Haskell to be dead. When we were kids, I loved that sweet, crazy, ganglin’ cracker more than I loved bein’ alive. There was nothin’ you could keep in a barn that was safe from that boy—includin’ the farmhands. Especially if they were black. And the fact that he didn’t mind throwin’ a bit of that my way, ’cause I was too, was fine by me.” Above, Kyle shook his head. “I came back from school in Denmark, all fired up about making the Dump for black gay men—and Jay MacAmon had to sit me down and explain the real reason I was doin’ it was because I was crazy about a nigger-lovin’ white one.” He took a long breath. “That’s irony for you. You know I really wanted to go out there this mornin’. But I couldn’t do it. I used to tell Jay, if Wendell had wanted a million dollars, I would have written out the check and signed it over to him like that! Which shows you what love—or infatuation, if you want to call it that—will do. But all he ever wanted was a decent job, and to have a fair number of black men around who liked to fuck, and be left alone to live his own life.” Mr. Kyle sighed. “And now he doesn’t even need that anymore.”

  From within his mask, Bull said, “Well, that’s why these boys need it, as much as any of these other niggers do.”

  “Yes,” Kyle sighed again. “I guess so…”

  “You want me to take this one in back with the other…?”

  “Naw.” Mr. Kyle drifted a step into the fire-lit room.

  The masked head turned enough to say, “Then shut the fuck up, nigger! You can’t have no niggers if you don’t have white folks. Just like you can’t have white folks if you don’t have niggers. Then it’s just talk—”

  From the black fist, moving among the jock chains, urine flooded Eric’s face, splattered up his nose. Eric swallowed, then opened his mouth again. (Thank God, he thought, Bull had taught him—and Dynamite had trained him—how to do this. Otherwise this nigger’d drown me!) Still, he was coughing when Bull’s water finally ran out.

  “Bull…?” Eric managed to get out. “Mr. Kyle…? Look—I just…please, I wanna know if Shit’s all right. Come on—that’s all.”

  Bull shook his cock. Droplets splattered Eric—and probably Whiteboy.

  The jockstrap chains clinked on one another, slipping back into place. “Look, you little turd! We’ll send ’im back when he’s ready. Don’t expect him before.” Bull moved his boot—his foot—from Eric’s hand. From under the man’s warm sole, cold filled Eric’s curling fingers. “Want me to take you ’round to the side and hose you off? Or you just wan’ me to send you the fuck home? So you can sleep in all this shit…”

  “I wanna…I wanna go home. But I wanna make sure…you, know, about Shit—”

  “Well, you don’t always get what you want. See? Da’s what you white boys gotta learn.” Above, Bull yanked the leash again.

  Eric’s arm pulled sideways too, as Whiteboy staggered on his knees.

  “Hey, you idiot motherfucker, stop humpin’ the fella’s hand like that. CUT IT OUT! What you think, you some kinda damn dog?”

  “Yeah,” Whiteboy was still grinnin’. “I’m your motherfuckin’ dog, ain’t I, Bull? Like Tom—like Dog-Dog. Like Buddy? Naw—I ain’t a dog. You said I was a fuckin’ dog turd. Ain’t I a motherfuckin’ dog turd, what you stepped in, once, and can’t get rid of me, no how…Couldn’t get me from between your toes?” But he’d released Eric. “Even though you had your fuckin’ boots on. Even when you made me lick ’em for you. That’s what you said I was, didn’t you—?”

  “SHUT DA FUCK UP, SCUMBAG! YOU DA MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN DA WHOLE WIDE MOTHERFUCKIN’ WORLD AND AT DA SAME TIME YOU AIN’T SHIT. YOU ARE DA WONDER OF DA ABILITY TO PERCEIVE WONDER. AT DA SAME TIME YOU ARE CAPABLE OF EVERY ERROR HUMAN KIND EVER MADE IN ITS BLIND STAGGER AFTER TRUTH. YOU ARE UNIQUE AND IRREPLACABLE—AND THERE IS NINE BILLION MORE OF US, EXACTLY THE SAME!”

  Eric pulled his wet hand over the sill from the dirty rug to the dirty porch boards. His wrist was sore.

  Above, Bull looked back at Kyle, shook his masked head, and said, “I swear! These motherfuckin’ white sonsofbitches can run a nigger crazy…”

  Kyle laughed. “That’s the truth. Why don’t they want something simple, like a good S&M session? That’s something people could understand.” He started to close the door. “But, no, Wendell wanted to fuck with his own kid—”

  “Like his daddy done with him,” Bull said. “Like mine done with me.”

  Whiteboy scurried backward. “Yeah, so did mine…”

  Kyle looked down at the bony creature on Bull’s leash. “So that means—what? I’m the only person around here who had a normal upbringing?” He chuckled.

  Eric still squatted, breathing hard.

  Bull raised his hand, unlatched the mouth grill, drew it aside. His head went back, then forward, and through the half opened doorway—from the hawking sound, Eric knew—he spat.

  Saliva hit the corner of Eric’s mouth, and because he was breathing hard, some of it went in. Automatically he swallowed. Some of it ran down the side of Eric’s chin.

  “Now get the fuck outta heah!” Stepping back into the sweltering room, Bull closed the door. The heat ceased to pour out. Coolness touched at his face, his arms, his neck. Eric heard the lock close.

  Behind the door Bull said: “LICK DAT PISS UP FROM THE GODDAM FLOOR, WHITEBOY! Dis is my motherfuckin’ living room where you be peein’ all over on that scumbag—”

  Eric wiped his face on the back of his wrist. Kneeling among the loud crickets, he went on breathing hard for almost a minute. He thought about circling the house, to see if he could get in from another entrance. Finally, he stood, unsteadily. He started along the porch, but there was a lot of junk on it and it was dark. After he had hit his shin on something, then bumped into two other things he couldn’t identify, he turned, stepped off, and walked back across the road to Dynamite’s.

  He sucked two of his fingers on his right hand—Whiteboy’s urine was strong. He breathed deeply. Why couldn’t it have been some antiquated beer drunk from the old Slide, he thought.

  But they’d torn The Slide down.

  Jesus, he thought. I feel like a kid…

  I feel, somehow, like I was…just born.

  In the cabin bathroom, Eric dropped his clothes, got into the shower—but stayed in it not three minutes. Naked, he walked outside, stood on the deck awhile, in the cool summer darkness, sat in Dynamite’s old chair awhile longer, drying in the night. Then he went in and lay on the big bed. On the slope beyond the porch, night hummed, buzzed, and chittered.

  * * *

  [64] THE MATTRESS MOVED. Eric woke. And Shit stretched out on his stomach, his arm falling on Eric’s back.

  Eric started to roll over, so Shit could get his head in place.

  But the arm stiffened. “Naw—stay there.”

  “You okay.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Eric turned over on his side anyway and put his own arm around Shit’s back. Shit turned to face him and grabbed him and pressed his face in Eric’s neck and held him so hard Eric couldn’t breathe. Shit quivered.

  Pressing as firmly as he could, Eric moved his hand up, then down Shit’s back. When he reached Shit’s buttocks, Shit gasped, “Owwww…!” and relaxed his own grip.

  “Jesus.” Eric pulled his hand away. “What did they do?”

  He felt Shit shrug. “You know…”

  Outside, cicadas chattered.

  “Did he get you in his…torture room?”

  “Un-huh.”

  “Did they fuck you?”

  “That’s what I thought he was gonna do…” He twisted a little. “Naw. They didn’t.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He whipped my black ass till I thought I was gonna pass out.” Shit’s face move
d from Eric’s neck.

  “Oh,” Eric said. “Did you…did you want him to do it?”

  “Naw. When he first come out and grabbed hold of me in his yard, there, I told him to get the fuck off me…but you know Bull. He had Mr. Kyle there, helpin’, too. They grabbed me and wrestled me in there, chained me up, and did it anyway.”

  “Why didn’t you yell…?”

  “I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. ’Sides, if you heard me yellin’, you’d of come runnin’ or something. I didn’t wanna get you all involved. I wanted—” Shit pushed himself up on one arm, in the dark—“Bull to do somethin’. That’s why I went over there. I just didn’t know what it was. I thought maybe he’d make me suck his dick again. But I guess he only does that to kids. After they kept beatin’ my butt, till it was all red and probably bleedin’—I wouldn’t even look at it, when he tried to show it to me in a mirror—he made Whiteboy piss on my ass. You know, the salt in that is wicked. They might as well’a rubbed some damned jalapeños on it.”

  “Oh, Jesus—”

  Shit lifted Eric’s wrist and rubbed his face under Eric’s arm. “God, man. That’s good. It’s good bein’ back here—I mean, I wasn’t that far away. But—did Bull ever take you into his dungeon—I mean, where he does his work?”

  “No,” Eric said.

  “He showed it to me once, years ago. But Dynamite didn’t like me goin’ into that place. It’s pretty fierce. He got two human heads in there—two white guys. He said he cut ’em off ’em hisself. He keeps ’em stuck on sticks, either side the door. One’s a real old guy, with thin, stringy hair, and his teeth is all out. The other ain’t that old. A guy maybe fifty, fifty-five. Like the same age as Dynamite was—but lookin’ at ’im, while I was chained to that table, after about an hour, I couldn’t help thinkin’, how it looked like it was my dad—and I started thinkin’, maybe him and Whiteboy had went back to Gilead and dug him up—and Shad, too—and cut the heads off ’em and brought ’em back and stuck ’em on them poles inside the dungeon door, ’cause he figured out I was gonna be comin’ over there—they don’t got no eyes in ’em. But them holes can look at you and it feels like they lookin’ through you, even more so then a rotted out eyeball would. The skin’s all dried out—he says he cured ’em in salt and stuff. Here and there, the skin done tore on the bone under it. I tell you, them things must’ve smelled pretty rough, back when the brains was rottin’ out—”