Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Outside, half the cicadas went silent.

  Eric said, “You don’t think he did go there and—” That much quiet felt heavy.

  Five, six, seven seconds later, the other half quieted.

  Probably it was past midnight.

  The silence rang, like the highest dog whistle you could imagine.

  “Naw,” Shit said. “Naw, he couldn’t. I mean, them heads’ve been in that place since the first time he took me in there, when I was twelve or thirteen, and Dynamite told me I had to keep out of there.” (With the insect noise gone, Eric realized how loud the bedsprings’ movements were.) “They was there, then. When I was a kid, I thought they was funny. But, then, I wasn’t all chained up on a damned torture rack, either. It was just somethin’ that got in my mind, when the things was lookin’ at me out them eyeholes—and I couldn’t get loose.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine—”

  “But I swear—now, not the one with the stringy, white hair, but the other one—the longer I lay there and the more they whipped me, the more he got to lookin’ like Dynamite…” Suddenly, putting his face down, he searched for Eric’s mouth with his own. After a long, long kiss, he pulled away. “What you doin’? Drinkin’ your own piss now? That’s what you taste like. You still upset about Dynamite?”

  “Naw,” Eric said. “That ain’t mine.” He sucked his teeth. “It’s Bull’s—or Whiteboy’s. I went over there, knockin’ on his door, lookin’ for ya’. But you know how he does.”

  “Oh,” Shit said. “That must’ve been you, when all three of ’em went upstairs. I thought it was one of Bull’s payin’ jobs, what he was gonna put on hold ’cause I was there.” They lay quietly, till Eric began to drift off. Then Shit said, “My daddy used to love to piss in your mouth, huh?”

  “Uh-huh.” Eric blinked himself awake.

  “And I used to love to watch ’im do it. And kiss on you after you done it. That stuff always got me off. You used to love to drink it, too.”

  A strong urine flavor was in Eric’s mouth. He wondered if death and his neighbor could banish the perversion. “Yeah, I did.” Banish it at least awhile…

  Shit said, “When he took me outside to clean me off and was hosin’ me down, Bull told me I got to piss in your mouth now.”

  “He did?” Now Eric raised his head. Turning, he pulled a pillow under it.

  “He said since I ain’t gonna feel like doin’ too much fuckin’ for the next couple of days, I gotta give you every drop, don’t matter where we are—here or at the Opera.”

  “You comin’ back there?”

  “Yeah, tomorrow. We’ll both go over, finish up there, then come back here. We gonna have to do the garbage run by ourselves now.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “It’s gonna be funny doin’ that without your dad, though.” But he was relieved to hear Shit finally mention work.

  “You know how to talk to people and ask ’em how they want us to do their garbage, and remember all that shit—like Dynamite did. Can’t you?”

  “Sure,” Eric said.

  Shit snorted—and Eric felt him relax. “Bull said if we was in the damned street and I had to go, I got to whip it out and do it right there. I asked him could we at least find a doorway or an alley or somethin’. He said that was okay. But if you ain’t around, I got to hold it the rest of the day till you show up.”

  “I’ll try not to get too far off from you then.” Eric was more confused than enlightened. “Why does he want you to do that?”

  “He says it’ll make you happy. If I do something that’ll make you happy for three whole days, I’ll feel better.”

  “That’s…interesting,” Eric said. “It probably would. Make me happy, I mean. You wanna try it?”

  “Yeah, sure. I gotta do something for somebody else. I can’t spend the whole rest of my life mopin’ and feelin’ sorry for myself. But Bull said you gotta drink it whether you want to or not, though. He says you’re gonna try to get out of it a few times, ’cause you think it’ll be easier on me. So I gotta make you drink it. No matter what. Even if we gotta get in a tussle over it.”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll take it all. You wanna tussle me, you tussle me.”

  “He said that’s what’ll make you happy.”

  Eric frowned. “Oh…well. Maybe.”

  For seconds both were silent. Then, wanting to move the conversation to anything that wasn’t Whiteboy and Bull, Eric said, “You’re really fond of the little guy, ain’t you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Big Man, I mean. You were really touched when he come up with his dad to the funeral this mornin’.”

  “Oh.” Shit reached up and rubbed his nose, which ended in some picking and sucking, three times in one nostril, once in the other (while Eric felt himself harden). Shit settled to gnawing. Between and around that, he said, “Naw. It wasn’t that. It’s was funny, though—like, as soon as I saw him, the first thing I thought was how much the little bastard loves his own daddy—you know how he always talkin’ about Mr. Markum? How big and strong he is? And all the stuff he gets for Big Man? And I thought, unless they both die together in some fool car wreck, one of them’s gotta go before the other, and if it’s Joe Markum, that’s gonna kill Big Man—or come close to it. And I realized someday he wasn’t gonna have his daddy.” Shit’s next breath had tears in it. “I couldn’t stop crying for that. I wanted to hug him and hold him, ’cause thinkin’ about him bein’ without his dad tore me up so much.”

  “Aw,” Eric said. He gave Shit a squeeze, even while part of him wanted to laugh. “Still, the way you was huggin’ on him and half humpin’ him, you looked like you was gonna screw the little sonofbitch right in the doorway, all over Joe Markum’s shoes.”

  “Well, you know—” and now there was a grin in with Shit’s words— “he feels so good when you hug him. He’s all hard and strong on the top—like you—only down at the bottom he’s all soft and squishy; and between the two of ’em, whenever I hold on to him, my dick goes right up.”

  “You hold onto a fuckin’ mush melon and your dick goes up,” Eric said.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Shit began biting at his fingers again. “But not for a little while, yet, I don’t think. At least I got it straight in my head now, that my daddy’s dyin’ ain’t my fault.”

  “Huh?” Eric pulled back. “What the fuck you mean…?”

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “I know that now.”

  “Why in the world would you think it was your fault?”

  “Don’t everybody, when their dad dies?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Well, I did. But I don’t now…not after that session with goddam Bull! Hey, lemme lift my hip here—and you get your face on down under there and put my dick in your mouth.”

  “Sure,” Eric said, moving down the mattress. His feet went off the end.

  “I’m gonna take a wicked piss—then I’m gonna fuck your face till I shoot like there’s no tomorrow. ’Cause right now I don’t believe there is. You can come any way you want, long as it don’t involve nothin’ with my asshole except lickin’ out the sucker. That’s about all it can take, right through here.”

  “Okay. But you sure you wanna be doin’ that, with your back all sore and beat up?”

  Shit rolled slightly to the side, grimacing. “Yeah, Bull said I probably wasn’t gonna feel like doin’ nothin’ for a couple of days. But you know me. I gotta get off now, or I don’t know what’s gonna happen—”

  On his back, Eric pushed his face under Shit’s groin, and Shit’s thick cock found his mouth and pushed in.

  “Oh, fuck yeah…” Shit began to rock back and forth. “That’s nice—hey, try not to grip my butt. Just the sides.”

  It was nice.

  “Nigger, I’m gonna piss like a goddam oil well goin’ off, ’fore I get around to shootin’.”

  And later, when Eric went in the bathroom to urinate, he stood in front of the commode—with its wooden ring, like he had back in the garage at
Condotti’s—and smiled at the rings from his falling water in the yellowing pool. I’m dumping Shit’s goddamn piss for him. Yeah, like I used to do for his daddy. Why, he wondered, does that always make me feel so fuckin’ important…?

  But it did.

  *

  The next morning, in the truck, with Shit driving, they returned to the Opera House, where Shit cussed Josh out till Eric told him to cut it out. “Come on, Shit! Josh did the best he could—”

  “Josh didn’t do nothin’!” Shit turned again to the heavy old black man, who, if he didn’t enjoy it as much as Whiteboy, at least looked as if was used to being yelled at.

  “I’m just lettin’ up on you,” Shit said, “’cause he told me to!” He thumbed toward Eric. Then, picking up pail and mop, he went down into the basement lounge and got to work like a crazy man.

  Josh said, “Mr. Jeffers, since you ain’t gonna be needin’ me no more, you think you could send me off with a hundred? Like severance pay or somethin’.”

  Myron started to say something, but Eric butted in. “You get a twenty, like before.”

  “That’ll be fine, sir,” Josh said.

  Shaking his head, Myron said, “Mr. Jeffers is a nice feller. That’s why you’re gettin’ anything.” He started for the stairway up to the balcony.

  Three minutes later, Shit came stomping back up the steps. “Come on. Get on over here. I was so mad at that damned alkey I almost forgot. I gotta piss like a motherfucker!”

  Two of the homeless fellows were lurking in the aisle, waiting to ask about something.

  Shit glanced at them. “I guess it ain’t gonna hurt them to watch.”

  At the beginning, Eric—and, probably, Shit, too—felt a little embarrassed. But when Eric finished, stood up, and wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist, while Shit pushed himself back in his jeans, Eric felt…well, as if he were six inches taller. He turned to the waiting men. “Okay…now what the fuck you fellas want?” while Shit squeezed Eric’s shoulder, then left for the downstairs lounge.

  *

  Later, in the top balcony Eric was walking by the projection room, when he stopped to wrinkle his nose. After a moment, he stepped over and tapped on the projection room door. “Myron! Hey, Myron…?”

  Myron opened it and looked out. “Mr. Jeffers? What is it?”

  “Myron, step out here a minute.”

  Myron came out, then closed the door so that the light did not fall over the chairs in the back.

  “You know Black Bull’s partner, Whiteboy?”

  “I wouldn’t say I knew him. I seen him—I know who he is.” Myron’s inflection ended with a kind of interrogation, as if to say, Why do you ask?

  “Has he been comin’ up here and hangin’ out a lot? I mean, in Nigger Heaven? Bull brings him to the Opera from time to time, I know, but I usually see them in the orchestra—that’s where they do their thing, when they do it.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him up here—or Black Bull, either. Why you askin’?”

  “Take a sniff.”

  Myron breathed in.

  “That smells just like Whiteboy,” Eric said. “Like really ol’ dried-up…waste.”

  Two hours later, going through the door to the back stairwell that was supposed to be kept locked, but which you could open by joggling the knob the right way, Eric discovered Haystack, Dr. Greene, and the Breakfast Club having an afternoon meeting with some new, nice looking Latino kid named Carlos, who, predictably for the Breakfast Club, was fairly sloshed and finding it all great fun.

  When he told Shit, Eric’s second surprise was that Shit had known about them. “Yeah, I told ’em they could do it up there—if they kept the door to the back stairwell closed. I go up there with ’em once in a while. They’re good boys—and that stuff gets me off.”

  “It does?”

  “Yeah.” Shit looked at the lobby’s marble floor, about as close as he could come to getting embarrassed with Eric. “Haystack ain’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but we get along.”

  “You go all the way up there—?”

  “Well,” Shit said, “when you got somethin’ that’ll get you off, it’s kind of surprisin’ what you’ll put up with that you wouldn’t be that interested in, ordinarily. Besides, it ain’t out on no balcony. It’s inside on a stair.”

  Eric said, “…Oh.”

  And Bull’s strategy for getting Shit back on track—it didn’t take years, months, or even weeks—and making Eric feel happy worked about as well you’d expect.

  It took ten days.

  * * *

  [65] SHORTLY, THE RUNCIBLE Chamber of Commerce put them permanently in charge of the Opera House—because Dusty announced he was retiring in six weeks. (Naw, Shit said. It was just a few days.

  (Oh, come on, Shit. It couldn’t a’ been a few days. The Chamber of Commerce took six weeks to do anything—it always did. You know that.

  (That time, they argued over it for a while.

  (Damn, Shit, Eric finally said. How’m I supposed to figure out when we actually took over the Opera. You never tell me the same thing twice.

  (Well, I know it was after my daddy died.

  (Now, was that before or after Mama Grace went and give me his Spinoza? You know, when we come back from The Slide…?

  (Shit frowned. Before…?

  (Well, that’s what I mean, Shit. I ain’t never gonna be able to get it straight, ’cause you got it different each time you go over it.

  (But it ain’t all that important, now, is it…?

  (Yeah, but I’d just like to get a handle on the history of it, see?)

  “Hey,” Dusty told them. “I’ll take you guys on a tour of the whole place—the basements and the back halls and everything—so nothin’ jumps out and surprises you.”

  Shit said, “I don’t need no damn tour. We been runnin’ this place, downstairs and upstairs, in the basements and the back stairs and the halls, for the last three years, and I been comin’ here since I was twelve.”

  And later, when Hammond, who walked with a limp in his apricot jumpsuit, took off with Eric, he opined: “Mr. Haskell’s just feelin’ a little contrary, ’cause he’s still upset over his daddy. That’s probably all it is.”

  As they made their way along one of the basement corridors, Eric asked, “What about these doors here?”

  “I don’t think nobody got the keys to these things no more,” Dusty said. “Somebody told me they were storage rooms for old scenery and shit back when this was a theater. In the bottom drawer of his desk up in the projection room, Myron’s got a ring with about two hundred and fifty keys on it that’s supposed to be for all the locks in the building—and for basement rooms in some of the buildings around here, too. But it would take all day—hell, all week—to go through ’em.”

  In the green wall, the door looked solid, immobile, and oaken.

  “The day you really wanna get in there, you probably gonna have to take up a damned ax.”

  As they wandered along the concrete corridor, with its drains in the middle of the floor, Dusty pointed up ahead. “That comes out right on the street.”

  The next day, Hammond announced they were retiring that week.

  *

  Since the maintenance job at the Opera House didn’t officially start for two more weeks, and they couldn’t yet take over the upper apartment and the Chamber of Commerce contract for them both was up on Friday, Eric talked over Randal’s new suggestion with Shit: work for two weeks out at the Bottom, since Al Havers was ready to retire himself.

  While rain runneled the windows and pocked the puddles on the deck, Eric could see through the open back door of the cabin and out onto the Dump’s dirt road (red mud now), Shit said, “I don’t like that place. I thought we was through with it.”

  Eric said, “I know you don’t. But I don’t mind goin’ over to the Bottom for a couple of weeks, until they can get somebody officially to take Al’s place.”

  “You know everything he know
s?” Shit stretched one forearm out on the table.

  Eric laughed. “Now, how many years we been goin’ over there once every two weeks to toss the damned garbage down the cliff? If I don’t know how to tell a driver to back up to the edge or shout out to hit the brakes before he goes off the cliff, I don’t know my own name. It’s a lot easier than doin’ the damned routes.”

  Shit said, “I don’t see why they don’t let us start in on the Opera House right away.”

  “Well, Myron wants a vacation, too. They want to use the time to dig out that sewer outside in the back, there. And that’s how long they said they needed somebody to take over for Al, since he’s gonna retire when he gets out the hospital. Hey, at least we’d have somethin’ comin’ in. And you can stay at the theater and take care of the orchestra and the downstairs john.”

  Friday morning at six, Eric drove out to the Bottom.

  Along the gate—the coiled razor wire had been gone from the top for years—he stopped the truck, hit the button on the dashboard, and listened to screaming birds. Outside, the lock clunked. Under the two camera posts, the entrance gate swung in. Eric drove the truck through and turned toward the shack, covered with fiberglass siding about three years ago.

  It still looked pretty scruffy.

  The stuff they’d started putting in the Bottom, maybe six years back, with the garbage to kill some of the smell had actually worked for a while. Then it began to add its own sickly stench, and the rotten odor came back with it. Shit always said he liked it better when it had smelled like really intense garbage. (And I didn’t like it back then.)