Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

So they eased from the row and walked toward the back. Putting their empty cups into the cubical smelter standing on the table (which, in its clear hopper, had already stacked up a dozen new cups from the old melted plastic, with its faintly ammoniac tell-tale odor)—Jay nodded and smiled at them—and they pushed outside.

  Shit looked around the clearing, with the single building, half finished ten yards away from the tent. “So they gonna build houses and things all around here. Well, there used to be a few of ’em. But that was when I was a kid.”

  They walked over toward the head of the stairway.

  “Damn,” Shit said, halting. “That’s kinda high. It didn’t bother me comin’ up…”

  “You wanna try and go around through the woods?”

  “Naw. I might as well see what I can do. But if I grab your shoulder, steady me, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  Shit took a deep breath, gripped the rail. They started down toward the dock.

  * * *

  [68] HALF A DOZEN women and two more men from Dump Produce were already down in the boathouse, waiting to return to the Harbor. Eric and Shit hadn’t been the first to leave. Minutes later, Mex and Ed brought in the scow, with Mex at the wheel.

  “Damn,” Shit said for the third or fourth time, as they rode back across the harbor. “Them women sure can run on, can’t they?”

  Eric shrugged. “Well, it’s what I’d wanna know about if I was movin’ out there.”

  “Hey, how’d they do that thing where he just appeared like that, sittin’ on his stool?”

  Eric asked, “You ain’t seen that before?”

  “Naw,” Shit said. “Have you?”

  “Well…naw,” Eric said. “Not really. Seen it, I mean. But I read about it. It’s some kind of virtual projection. Big executives use it so they can meet with people in two or three cities at once—or with people who ain’t where they are.”

  “Oh,” Shit said. “It looked kinda weird. But I guess that’s Kyle. He’s a weird nigger.”

  At the Harbor dock, they walked across to the marina parking lot, got in their pickup and drove to Dump Corners. In his desk drawer, in his office at Hurter’s Seed, Lumber & Steel, Fred found the key to their old cabin and gave it to them, along with the loan of a sleeping bag that had a double air mattress and pump built in.

  For two nights, with the bag spread out on the floor, they stayed in the Dump, going into the Harbor for breakfast. Then they drove to Runcible.

  In the alley beside the theater, saw horses had been set up around a fresh patch of pavement. The back door was, yes, open.

  Inside the hall door, Shit tried the third switch: along the hall ceiling, the line of orange bulbs came on.

  The electricity was on again.

  If guys had hung out in the hall, they’d been pretty neat about it.

  Up in their apartment, they ate some cold chicken Eric had left in the refrigerator—it was a little dry—and went to bed.

  The next morning they hauled up the gates. Then Shit went down to turn on the boiler and Eric went over to the Runcible waterfront, where he found Mike and Lucius and Red and a dozen more, singly and in groups, and told them they could go back into the theater. Coming back himself, he ran into Doc Greene, who was returning with Al.

  “You get over to Pinewood?”

  “Naw,” Al said. “I hung out with the fellas last night at the docks. It wasn’t too bad.”

  It’s funny, Eric thought, pushing sixty, if not sixty-five, the towering black man—a little stooped—probably wasn’t doin’ so well, if he really had no place to stay (he had never been a resident of the Dump), no matter how big his dick was.

  At Cave et Aude, just down the street, Eric left them and went into the shop. Cassandra was at the front, on her chair, behind the counter. “Hey, Tank said you found Jay’s old snake. What’ll it cost me to start with that one?”

  When, two hours later, he came back, his bronzed arms glistening with lotion and the black outline, shiny under it, of the newly-inked flash standing out on his skin, even before the scales were colored in, on the broken tile flooring of the theater lobby Shit asked him, “How come you never got that done when my daddy was still alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Eric said. “I thought about it. But I don’t think he really would’ve liked ’em.”

  “Yeah, well…” Shit said. “It do make you look a little older.”

  Eric grinned. “He liked thinkin’ of me as a kid, I guess. And, hell, I kinda liked him thinkin’ of me that way.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “What you think of ’em?”

  “Aw, fuck,” Shit whispered, “I think that’s so fuckin’ sexy I could jump on you right here, bring you down in the corner, and do you right here on the floor! You gonna get your whole arms done, like Jay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good,” and over the three weeks it took to finish the full inking, when Eric would return from Tank and Cassandra’s shop with a new color filled in, Shit would say, “Hey, why you wanna do that to me? Can I lick it?”

  “Tomorrow,” Eric would say. “It’s gotta heal for twenty-four hours. You know that. You can pee on it, if you want. That’s sterile.”

  “I’m gonna do both.” Shit grinned as broadly as his dad. “That’s your way of makin’ sure I never leave you, huh? Damn, them things is sexy.”

  “Then why don’t you get some?”

  “Hey—not me.” Shit chuckled. “But I sure like to look at ’em—rub my dick on ’em. And nose around on ’em. I keep thinkin’ they should smell like somethin’.”

  * * *

  [69] IN THE APARTMENT above the Opera, Eric finished his first reading of the Ethica in which he went back and followed every reference to every other part, definition, demonstration, axiom, explanation, proposition, scholium, and corollary. There were thousands of them—well, not thousands. In the first section alone there were seventy-two, including one unfollowable one because, nestled in parentheses, it referred to something from Descartes and he didn’t have any Descartes to check against. He’d done that for brief sections before but never for the whole thing. Actually it could make short parts somewhat clearer. With all the flipping back and forth it forced on longer sections, going through the whole thing that way still tended to gray out on him—even parts he’d thought he was beginning to get a handle on. Well, he’d just have to go through it that way a few more times.

  Eric turned out the light, got up, walked into the other room, and, lifting the covers, slid in beside Shit, who rolled over to face him, hugged him, kissed him like a diver going after pearls with his tongue, then rolled onto his back, while Eric burrowed under his arm. “Hey, scoot down and park my dick in your armpit.”

  “What? ...okay.”

  The next day, they left the place to Myron and went for a drive.

  First they’d gone to the Dump and checked out the old cabin. Then they’d left the pickup there and wandered up Dump Bluff.

  Beyond the slope’s height, they sat on the grass, the ocean and Gilead behind them, while autumn took the edge from the heat and a breeze snapped the long blades side to side. Eric held his knees with both arms; Shit held his with one, his other hand wedged down between his legs, absently squeezing himself in a way he’d repeatedly said, “don’t mean nothin’,” but that Eric had long ago figured meant they were between ten and fifteen minutes away from sex.

  Eric had come out in his old jeans, sneakers, and work shoes.

  That morning, Shit had walked out of the old cabin naked.

  “Don’t you think you should give it another week till the last of the tourists get home before you start goin’ around like that?”

  “Nope. Besides, we ain’t goin’ into town. We won’t meet nobody, except maybe some Dump niggers I already fucked.”

  Eric wondered about that. Although that would have been fine ten years ago, today people actually lived in the Dump whom Eric didn’t know and hadn’t met—even some with children.

  Down acros
s the rough scrub, like patchwork below, spread the several fields of Dump Produce Farms. How near it was—how near everything was to everything else around here—could still surprise Eric. Few places they might want to go were more than a mile-and-a-half from the sea.

  They sat, shoulder against shoulder.

  “I thought you said you always wanted somebody to do crazy stuff like this with, anyway—walk around with no clothes on, sit down on the curb and beat off whenever we felt like it. Well, now you got the nigger and the town—at least the neighborhood—to do that stuff.”

  “I do want it.”

  Grinning, Shit turned to face him. “Then suck my dick, you fuckin’ nigger-lovin’ cocksucker!”

  Eric put his arm around Shit’s shoulder. “Someday you gotta tell me how come a sun-burned, brick-red nigger with no teeth can grin at me and tell me to suck his dick, and I get hard.”

  Shit glanced down to the left, then the right. “Probably it’s the freckles on my shoulders. Mama Grace used to say them freckles were some powerful stuff, when I used to fuck him, way back when—when I thought it was more masculine or somethin’ fuckin’ a real lady-like faggot, like Mama. Really, though, it’s ’cause he was fun and ’cause he was smart.” Shit worked his arm loose from between them. “Hey, you don’t gotta suck my dick right now.” He put it over Eric’s shoulder. “Let’s just sit here…” while Eric whispered, “Jesus…!”

  “What?”

  “That’s okay. Nothin’.” But it was the smell loosed from Shit’s underarm, like the vinegar on the fish-and-chips at the Coffee & Egg. He knew now what was making him erect.

  Shit took a deep breath. “Jesus, I miss my daddy sometimes. Hey, reach between my legs and hold my balls.”

  Eric reached. The warmth of Shit’s thigh moved up his arm. Eric’s fingers moved between grass and scrotal flesh. The flesh of Shit’s thick penis was soft against Eric’s wrist. Damn, Eric thought. I’m sittin’ here hard as a rock in my jeans, and he’s sittin’ here buck-naked with his balls in my hand and don’t even got a boner.

  They both looked down the sloping grass, out over the lake’s edge beside the farm’s fields that disappeared between the hills—like a black steel shield or a hole in the landscape.

  When the silence began to stretch out, Eric asked, “You think a lot about Dynamite?”

  “Huh?” Shit glanced over. “Naw. Not a lot. Why should I?”

  “’Cause you said you missed him. I thought maybe you was thinking about him when we were out to the island at that meetin’. I mean ’cause he’s buried back there.”

  “Naw,” Shit repeated. “I wasn’t thinkin’ about him, really. But I do miss ’im, sometimes.” The silence stretched out further, and, within it, Eric found himself relaxed and comfortable.

  Then Shit said, “Hey, Eric. I’m…sorry.”

  Eric frowned. “What you mean—sorry about what?”

  Shit shrugged. “You know…when Dynamite died. I was so busy grievin’ and feelin’ sorry for myself, an actin’ like a damn fool, I didn’t give you a chance to be sad and do your own grievin’ at all. You had to spend all your time worryin’ about me.” He looked down between his knees.

  “Aw, Shit—you don’t gotta tell me that.”

  “Naw—I was just actin’ like a big baby. Yeah, my daddy died. But, hell, he was as much your daddy, at least by the end, there, as he was mine.”

  “Shit—that’s just who you are. That’s all. I understand that. Damn, that’s one of the reasons I love you—”

  “I shouldn’t’ve been so selfish like that. And I’m sorry for it.” After moments, Shit looked over. “See, now you’re cryin’, there. I guess this is the first time I give you space to do it in. You cryin’ for Dynamite?”

  Eric could feel the tear running down his left cheek. But he was even more aware of the smile that had seized up the muscles of his face. “I guess I’m cryin’ for you and me…and Dynamite too, and all of us.”

  “Come on here and lemme hold you.” Shit reached for him and pulled Eric to him. Eric put his arms around him and held him in return. “And I ain’t gonna start fuckin’ on you—at least for a while.”

  They held each other. Eric was actually surprised that it didn’t move toward sex. He wouldn’t have minded, if it had.

  Finally Eric said, “Hey, Shit…?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want anything?”

  “Huh?”

  “Is there something that you really want to have—eventually, I mean? A big house, maybe—like Jay and Mex got Kyle’s? Or even a new one—that ain’t a’ old wreck on top of a theater almost over a hundred-fifty, two hundred years old? Or even a lot of money? Or maybe you wanna take a trip somewhere, on a big boat?”

  “Hell, no,” Shit said. “I don’t wanna go no place. I’m like Dynamite. I like it here. I got pretty much everything I want. I like workin’—sometimes cleanin’ up the theater is borin’, but it’s fun, too, jokin’ with the customers—and fuckin’ ’em. Hey, I bet, when we was garbage men, there was people we knew more about than anyone else in Runcible County, just ’cause we threw out their crap”—something Dynamite had said regularly, which Shit had taken to repeating. “And hell, at the Opera I get to fuck pretty much anybody I want—and you, too.”

  “You probably miss workin’ outside, though. I know you don’t like cleanin’ the balconies, cause they’re so high.”

  “Yeah, well…” Shit said. “The only problem is so many of the good fucks always go up to Nigger Heaven, where I don’t like to go.”

  “Hey—any time I see somebody up there who’s kinda your style, I tell ’im he’s gotta go downstairs and sit in the orchestra. We’re closin’ the top for cleanin’.”

  “Yeah, after you sucked on his dick for a while up there.” Shit grinned at Eric. They released each other. “But that works out pretty good. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with workin’ at the Opera House—you can fuck five, ten times a day, if you want.” Shit worked a little away. “Can you think of a better job?”

  “Naw. But…sometimes I wish we had one, though.”

  “Hey, I got you, don’t I—and for guys who like to fuck as much as we do, right now I don’t think there could be a job no better. Man, I like to fuck. And I like watchin’ you fuck, and you like watchin’ me. Between Turpens and the Opera, there’re probably more niggers to fuck than I can handle. And when I get too tired of all that, I got you.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “Sure it is! ’Cause I got so many choices, the one I keep comin’ back to—like three times a week—had better be somethin’ special. It sure turns me on, when I catch you tomcattin’ around, off on your side of the orchestra. Or down in the john.”

  Eric smiled at his knees, as Shit’s shoulder began to push oddly against Eric’s own. He glanced to see that Shit had dragged his foot back into his lap, lifted up, hunched over it, and was gnawing on a toenail.

  “Jesus, nigger,” Eric said. “You must got the biggest feet I ever seen. You gonna dislocate your ankle—or your jaw—or somethin’ with it all bent over like that.”

  “It ain’t dislocated yet.” Shit looked up and spit a fragment. “Hey, you know my dick’s pretty big, too. You go on, take your shoes off, now.”

  “What for?” Eric asked.

  “You know what for. Soon as I finish with mine, I wanna nose yours.”

  “Shit, you could be workin’ on them things for hours.” But he reached around to undo the laces from the hooks at the top of his work shoes. “I seen you and your dad sittin’ on the porch and chewin’ on them things all day long.”

  “I’m just tryin’ to get a couple of ’em right. Then I wanna bind with you.” The word—bond—had come from Jay, though Shit could never quite say it right. He was as liable to say ‘bounded’ or ‘binded.’ “Damn…there.” He moved to another toe.

  “Shit?”

  Shit grunted something that could have been What?

  “You ever scratch under
Jay’s nuts with your hair?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know—put your head under there and rub your hair on his balls? ’Cause you got that really good black-style hair, with that good texture—even if it is brown, or tan, or whatever. When they was itchin’ ’im, I mean.”

  “How you gonna do that?” Shit asked. “Show me what you mean.”

  Eric took in a breath. “Okay…like—this, I guess.”

  Because of the way he was leaning, while he worked on his toenails, one of Shit’s buttocks was pulled up.

  Eric put his head down to push it under, where Shit’s long scrotum dangled, heavy with his testicles and darker than his pubic hair. The side of Eric’s face flattened grass.

  “Oh, now I see what you mean…” Shit sounded like he was still gnawing. “Yeah, that’s real nice. Keep that up. I see what you mean now—like this.” Gas growled from between Shit’s buttocks. “Like that, you mean?”

  Despite the stench, Eric did not pull his head away. “Come on, now!”

  “Aw, you must wanna nose another one—and do some bindin’, too, huh?” He loosed another, louder, longer fart.

  “Shit, cut it out—I’m bonded with you so goddam tight already I sleep with my nose in your fuckin’ armpit every night—”

  “Yeah, when I ain’t sleepin’ with mine in yours.”

  Shit released his foot.

  “Owww!” Eric pulled back. “Don’t sit on my head.”

  Shit turned to take Eric’s shoulders in his hands. “I want you to sit on my fuckin’ dick, scumsucker! Hey, did Jay ever fart in your face when he had you out with him and Mex, treatin’ you like a dog when you was lickin’ out his asshole?”

  “Naw,” Eric admitted.

  “Well, see, now—then you ain’t done everything, jus’ ’cause you a big-city scumbucket. I done a few things that you ain’t done yet. I’m gonna eat out your fuckin’ asshole till it’s so sloppy you won’t know what’s goin’ into it or comin’ out of it. Then I’m gonna stick my dick in it and fuck you till you don’t know which end is up. Jay and Mex trained me pretty damned good, I mean, a lot better than—well, better than you! When they finished with me, fartin’ in my face didn’t mean nothin’ to me. But first I’m gonna sniff your feet and bound—”