Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  It didn’t feel right.

  “Mr. Jeffers,” Rudy said. “A couple of times, when Mr. Hammond and Dusty had to close the place up, they let us leave our stuff in here. And if it’s gonna be open again in few days…?”

  “Fine with me,” Eric said. “But I ain’t gonna be responsible for nothin’ that happens to it while we’re gone.”

  When they’d explained things to Myron and pulled the gates down over the theater front, in the pickup an hour later, driving along the coast to the Harbor, Shit said, “Lucius and Micky asked me to leave the back door in the alley unlocked, so they could get in and out. Dusty used to do that, when they had to close up for a while. They said they’d look out for the place, and wouldn’t even use it when the plumbers were workin’ there. That okay with you?”

  Surprised, Eric glanced at Shit. “Are we gonna lose our job over this?”

  “Nope,” Shit said. “’Cause Jay would have to fire us, and he wants them boys to have a roof over their head as much as you and me do. Nobody’s even gonna know—except them. They’ll only go in real late at night, or real early in the morning. They won’t even go into the theater part. They’ll just sit around in the hall—”

  “—and drink?”

  “Probably,” Shit said. “It’ll be okay, though.”

  Eric sighed. “Maybe it’ll be better havin’ somebody in the place in case anything really goes wrong.”

  “What the fuck you think Kyle wants to talk to us about?”

  “I don’t know.” Eric shrugged. “You ready to see ’im again?”

  “Sure,” Shit said. “Why not?”

  *

  They parked the pickup in the Gilead Dock parking lot. Three dozen people had gathered near the water, which would have been a crowd in May or June—much less September.

  “Damn…” Shit whispered. “Is all them people goin’ out to see Kyle?”

  “Maybe,” Eric said.

  Most of them were women, too, many younger, but a few of them older than Shit and Eric. Some they knew by sight—a few went back to their years of garbage running.

  Behind them someone said, “Hey, Shit. Hi, Eric.”

  Eric turned.

  A thickset woman wore a brocaded turquoise poncho, with dim yellow birds and diamond shapes around the edge. The black hair that surrounded her brown, oval face hung in a thick braid over one shoulder. One heavy earring was silver and turquoise—a skull with more blue-green stones inset in the eyes, nose, and mouth.

  “Tank…!” It was the first time Eric had seen her in anything but an orange canvas jumpsuit or one of blue denim. “How you doin’?” And never any jewelry before.

  “I’m good,” Tank said. “Hey, I found the snake for you.”

  “Huh?”

  “Last time I saw you outside the shop, you asked me if we still had the template for that snake we put on Jay MacAmon. I told you I’d take a look for it. Well, a couple of days back I was diggin’ in one of the drawers where we store some old flash—and there it was, at the bottom. In six pieces. The way Cassandra originally designed it, see, it was supposed to start on the back of his right hand, wrap around his arm a couple of times, then run across behind his shoulders, below his neck, and make a knot. Then it was gonna wind down the other arm with the tail around his wrist. Then we’d’ve fit in all the other pictures around it. But Jay decided he didn’t want nothin’ on his back or his chest. So we just left the knot out. Now it just stops under some storm clouds we put on one of his shoulders and takes up again, out from under some more on the other. It still looks good.”

  Surprised, Shit said, “You gonna break down and get yourself some pictures on your arms?”

  “I was thinkin’ about it,” Eric said; “I ain’t sure yet. But maybe I’ll let you do the part across my back too.”

  “If you want it all,” Tank said, with the patience of someone in a profession in which client indecision was rampant, “we got it all.”

  “How’s Cassandra?”

  “She’s workin’ at the store today—so I’m the one who gets to go to the fancy meetin’ out on the island.”

  At a familiar motor, they all looked out over the water where the Gilead’s flat prow dozed toppling froth toward the dock.

  At the prow, Ed (in two throws), and in the stern, Mex (with one) lassoed the cleats. Standing up, Ed called, “Come on. Come on, get back now. Stand back.”

  The sky was overcast. Fog twisted and untwisted beside the boat. Fixed to the wheel shelter’s edge, a white spotlight put a bright triangle down the wall and over part of the deck. The motor stilled. Froth fell back into the black-green sea, spreading, dispersing.

  In his thermal vest, Jay stepped from under the wheel shelter, and ambled over along the rail, so that for two, three, five seconds the light fell directly on him. These days, his hair was half gray. But the wedge of illumination made the colors on his arms flare and even pulse with blues, purples, reds and violets Eric had forgotten.

  Yeah, he thought, I would like my arms to look like his. Don’t know why I didn’t do it years ago.

  Then people started getting on the boat. Three of the younger women just wore open jackets with no shirts under them. Half a dozen younger black guys—and a few women—Eric recognized had come in from Dump Produce. Half of the men were among the newer residents in the Dump itself. (For half a dozen years, Dump Farm Produce had become a favored summer job for the women at a sorority over at the university in Valdosta, rumored to get more than its share of dykes.)

  “Come on, now. Take your damned shirt off,” Shit whispered. “I wanna watch everybody droolin’ over you, when you walk around showin’ your muscles.”

  “Aw, come on,” Eric whispered back. “It’s chilly.”

  “You want me to grab it and pull it off you?”

  “Okay, okay…” Grinning, embarrassed, Eric unbuttoned his shirt. A moment later, he tied the sleeves around his waist.

  “You know,” Shit grumbled at him, “we gonna be old men before you know it? While we still got it, we better flaunt it.” When Eric looked up, Shit’s shirt was gone, too.

  A few times, they went over and asked Jay what all this was about. He told them, “You gotta wait till we get out to Gilead. Kyle’s gonna be there.”

  Which was interesting enough to think about.

  Once Eric saw Shit wander over to ask Mex something. The mute signed: “You wait for another hour—you’ll find out.”

  “Hey, Tank,” Eric asked, when he found himself standing beside her.

  She turned, and he thought she looked surprised that he’d dropped his shirt.

  “Did Jay call you about goin’ out to meet with Kyle?”

  “Yep.”

  Then, he said, trying not to sound embarrassed, “Shit said I had to take my shirt off.”

  “Good.” She nodded. “That snake’ll look nice on you. It looks damned good on Jay. And he’s got all that body hair—on you, folks are gonna be able to see it!”

  And when the island was moving—it seemed—toward them, Eric asked Ed, “Hey, you know why they want us all to come out here—I mean, besides meetin’ Kyle?”

  With a rope in his hand, Ed said, “Look. I’m just the straight guy. Them faggots don’t tell me nothin’.” Smiling, he shook his head and continued up the deck between the women. “Nothin’ personal, I mean,” he said loudly back over his shoulder, “But this is all about you funny fellas—and funny gals.”

  Moments later, Shit was back with him, frowning across the water at the island’s approaching shore. “Hey—what’d they do?”

  The last time Eric had been there, trees and shrubs had come all the way up to the dock and the boathouse, on both sides. Now, the growth had been cleared about ten yards to the left of the boathouse and maybe fifteen next to the dock’s far side. As well, the path of roots and rocks that had led up and away into the trees and forest growth had been replaced by wooden steps, up the slope. They had a wooden rail, too, and perhaps eight feet of
cleared earth either side.

  It didn’t seem a huge undertaking.

  Still, Eric wondered who had done it and how, in the three months, since he’d last been to Gilead.

  Tank stepped up beside them to the scow’s edge. “Well, all that sure wasn’t here the last time I seen it.”

  Mex and Ed roped the cleats, then Jay stepped out of the wheel shelter, to call, “Just go on up the stairs. Right on to the top. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Shoes scuffled and thumped on the board steps. Eric kept one hand on the rail. It seemed to Eric, as they climbed, he’d come to a different island.

  Climbing beside him, Shit asked, “What they built this thing for?”

  Eric had thought they might be going out to the Kyle mansion.

  At the top, however, a clearing was now strewn with rock and low bushes, striped here and there with tractor tire prints, though no vehicles were visible. Clumps of ferns remained, along with various tree stumps. A few big trees had been spared.

  Someone had put up a yellow and green striped tent, as in a fair pavilion.

  When the breeze pushed back one of the flaps, inside they could see white benches. Eric turned around: though only fifteen or eighteen yards wide, the clearing went into the distance, pine trees either side.

  “I don’t think I ever even seen this part of the island before,”

  Shit said. “It was too grown up. Why they done cut all this down?”

  Near the pavilion, four framing walls stood around pale floorboards. All of one wall and half of another were covered with board. Someone was building a…building. Beside it were three big rolls of Tyvek Insulating pad—though no one was at work on it.

  “Yall wanna go into the tent there and grab a seat on one of them benches?” Jay called out, reaching the top of the stairs behind them. “Reba Taylor’s got some coffee for yall and some sweet rolls.”

  Eric caught the striped canvas and pushed it back again to follow some women into the tent space. With grass and gravel visible under the back edges, just behind him, Shit said, “You know, when I was a kid, I used to love that man suckin’ on my dick, and I could look at all them pictures on his arms, while he did it. Sometimes, there, he’d lemme hold on to his shoulder and hump on his muscles, like a dog on your leg—and I’d come all over ’em and rub myself on them things. He’d tell me rubbin’ my jizz around on ’em with my dick made the colors brighter. And for a couple of years, I actually believed him. But I’m damned if it don’t look like he ain’t managed to trick me into comin’ to another motherfuckin’ town meetin’!”

  “Well, your daddy would’ve been pleased.” Eric grinned.

  “Yeah—I guess so. Hey, I’m glad you finally gonna get some pictures on you. Them things is fuckin’ sexy.”

  “And I’m glad you like the idea. I may even get me a set of them tit rings, like your daddy had.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Shit said. “I’m gonna be able to hump your arm like Uncle Tom used to do on my leg—or I used to do with Jay when I was a kid, Hell, I’m just a fuckin’ old dog anyway.”

  “You always sayin’ I’m the one who talks bullshit—” Eric leaned his shoulder into Shit’s—“but you know damned well that ain’t nothin’ but a load of crap.”

  “Well, I may try it, anyway.”

  “And if you do, I guess I ain’t gonna try an’ stop you. Hey, when are you gonna break down and get you some, Shit?”

  Shit shrugged his shoulders together and kept them that way. “Like I told you before, maybe a couple years after Hell done froze over.”

  “Oh.” Eric laughed. “So I guess nothin’ done really changed.”

  “Right,” Shit said. “Do it ever?”

  “Hey—” Eric glanced at his partner—“if you want, you can go on outside and walk around and go explorin’. I’ll stay here and tell you anything that’s important.”

  “Naw,” Shit said. “I come this far. Besides, I wanna sit down and drink my coffee.”

  Again, the canvas rose and dropped behind him; another woman caught it up and pushed it back again, to come in after them. (Following Shit and Eric’s lead, some of the women had dropped their own shirts. Somehow, Eric realized, that made him feel more comfortable.) One table stood to the side, covered with white paper. Four coffee urns sat on it with two trays piled with muffins and sweet rolls and pastries. Stacks of cups stood between aluminum and black carafes for milk.

  Eric followed Shit to the table, watched him load up his Styrofoam container of black coffee with sugar; Eric filled his own with milk.

  They found a spot on the benches.

  Sitting beside Eric, Shit moved his foot on top of Eric’s work shoe.

  Toward the tent’s front was another table. It held some equipment. Two women and a man were plugging in jacks and setting dials. Behind it stood a big screen on a stand. Adjusting it, another woman turned, noticed the people sitting down on the benches, and smiled. “We won’t be usin’ this, don’t worry. It’s just a backup.”

  Some of the people sitting laughed.

  A firm and familiar voice said, “Looks like you got some people there. Yall about ready?”

  Eric tried to tell who had spoken, but couldn’t.

  Someone at the table answered, “Just a minute or so, sir.”

  Seconds later, someone at the table asked, “Ready, Mr. Kyle?”

  The voice said, “Been ready for twenty minutes.”

  At the table, a woman with more tattoos than Jay adjusted a knob on the equipment. “All right.”

  And a shadow—life size—before the table solidified: a tall gray-haired black man in a dark suit sat on a stool. “Hello. Thank yall for coming here this afternoon.” Neither he nor the stool on which he sat had been there seconds before. “As you probably know, my name is Robert Kyle. Sitting here and looking around at those of you who have agreed to come see me today—” (The large screen behind him, Eric saw now, reflected a tent full of people on benches—and the table to one side with its urns. On the screen, he could see Jay sitting on the back corner of the table, one leg up, one on the floor. Eric glanced behind him. In the back of the tent, yes, Jay had come in to sit on the table corner. Surely that was what Kyle was seeing.) “—there on Gilead Island, where I was born and grew up, and spent so much of my childhood and young manhood. It makes me remember another meeting that we had, years ago—almost forty now, on the mainland in Diamond Harbor, when I first talked about starting a community for the benefit of black gay men, like myself. Jay, you were at that meeting, too—though I don’t think you were twenty years old yet. I was nineteen. It was a different world—it was a different century. Here in Philadelphia, where I’m talking to you from, I’ve been thinking how to address the issues that I want to speak about today. A lot has changed in that time. Georgia made gay marriages legal twelve years ago, and the governor is a partnered black gay woman—my old friend, Marianne Hendricks—who is not married to her life partner, and while even fifteen years ago that would have seemed pretty odd to most people, however much we may have wanted it, today it’s just a part of all our lives so that many of you probably hardly think about it now—though it would have been headline news back then.”

  Shit leaned toward Eric to whisper, “Is Governor Henricks gay? I didn’t know that. Maybe I shoulda voted. But then, she didn’t need mine, anyway…”

  “The forces that were pressing on us to create a safe haven for black gay men, such as the Dump, while they have not vanished by any means, are not so cataclysmic as they once were. Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina are generally thought of as one of the most gay-friendly areas of the country. That’s one reason—and, sadly, only one—that I have let myself cut down on the money I have been spending on the Dump. As a lot of you know, the Dump has lost almost a third of its residents in the last six years. So I have decided to let it become general public housing, within some fairly rigorous income restrictions. Yes, Jay—?”

  On the screen, Eric could see that,
from his seat on the table corner in the back, Jay had his hand up.

  “What you gonna do with Turpens—and the Opera? Not to mention Dump Produce?”

  “All three of them are much too productive to shut down. Of the three of them, the Opera House brings in the least money—and is still the most famous and widely known.” Kyle chuckled on his seat. (Eric thought: I used to see this man at Dump town meetings. I saw him the night of Dynamite’s burial. And now, here he is again. But each time he looks like a different black man.) “Next to the Dump itself, it’s our major gay tourist attraction. No, I want them to go on just like they’ve been going on. As much advancement as gay men and women have made in this country, we still haven’t shaken off the notion of ‘gay pollution’ yet—so I’m pretty sure that when we open up rentals in the Dump, we’ll get a fair number of gay folks—men and women both, we hope—who’ll want to live there. What the Robert Kyle Foundation is planning to do, however, is to set up another subsidized, gay male community in Oklahoma, where I also have some land—right now it’s called the Fields—to which anyone currently living in the Dump may move at the Foundation’s expense. Meanwhile, I am opening up a third of the land at this end of Gilead Island for development into a township, in which gay women—lesbians—will have first rights of purchase and can apply for subsidies. The settlement here will try very hard to maintain itself as a safe and protective space for women here on the coast…” Some nine hands shot up.

  The next fifty minutes was heated discussion, even with a few raised voices, about the preservation of the island’s ecology and wild areas, to its Indian history, and how areas to be built up would be decided on. By the twelfth time—pretty mildly, Eric thought—Kyle said, “Now these are all things that will have to be legislated by the women who choose to live here. I can only lay out the most general outline,” Shit leaned over to Eric and whispered:

  “Come on, let’s go. We ain’t gonna be livin’ here, anyway.”