Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  “Naw.” Eric chuckled. “That’s the kind you’d tell—.”

  Shit said, “You was there too, that night—with your damned dick seven inches down his throat while he was buckin’ and bouncin’ on me. You could’a told ’em about that!”

  “Well, probably half the guys there could have told about somethin’ close to it—but it didn’t seem like the time.”

  “I bet they were probably waitin’ on Danny to tell ’em about that kinda shit. That’s the kinda thing they’d expect from a damn drunk Turpens.”

  Eric frowned. “Danny wasn’t there. I thought maybe he’d show up, but he didn’t.” Eric put his hands in his pockets.

  “They were all waitin’ for the drunk white guy to tell the stories about the crazy little nigger. Otherwise, I guess they was gonna do without.”

  “You think that’s what it was?”

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “Probably—hey, I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Markum wasn’t there either.”

  “Well,” Shit said. “I ain’t surprised about that.”

  “In fact, it didn’t look like nobody from his family was there.”

  “Oh,” Shit said. “Well…that’s kinda what I meant. I figured somethin’ like that would happen, and I just didn’t wanna be there to see it.”

  Most of the lights in the lobby ceiling were out, so that the entrance to the theater was an indistinct hall of rococo half dark. “You know, his dad built him all that special stuff, that rubber bed with the rubber mattress and the rubber sheets, and the floor with the drains in it, with the hoses there so him and his friends could hose down the walls and stuff—like we used to do in there with him, after we’d fucked around; and the special rubber sealin’ around the doors and windows so the stench couldn’t get out—then he put in that fire door, closed it up, and probably never went in there again, I bet.” As happened regularly, Shit’s insights into what was actually going on among the long-time citizens of Runcible Country had surprised Eric. When Shit was right, Eric could feel lost in the confused margins of the social world.

  And as Shit still did, often, when Eric felt that way, Shit stepped forward and put his arms around Eric, and hugged his face into Eric’s neck, with his complex of smells from gasoline and sweat to Lysol. “Hey.” Shit’s voice was soft and rough in Eric’s ear. “You know who’s inside waitin’ for you?”

  “What? ...Who?” Eric asked.

  “The two little pigs,” Shit said. “You know who I mean. Grubby and Shooter.”

  “They are?” Eric rubbed Shit’s hard back. “What do they want? Dinner?” For the last three visits, when the two farm workers had come to the Opera on their day off, during the later afternoon when Myron took over the ticket selling for a couple of hours, they’d actually invited the two men to come up to the small apartment and sit at the kitchen table and eat whatever Eric was warming up that night—pork chops, chicken stew, once Horm’s corn, peppers, and bacon.

  “They want your fuckin’ dick!” Shit’s arms tightened. “They already had mine. I fucked ’em both twice, already. “

  “You took ’em downstairs?”

  “I did it right in the aisle, soon as they come in—first Grubby, then Shooter. Man, that nigger takes my dick with no spit or nothin’. By the time we finished, about ten guys was standin’ around, watchin’ and playin’ with themselves.”

  “Are you goin’ through some kinda exhibitionist change of life or somethin’?” Eric felt good, standing there, holding his partner and being held. He liked the quarter-lit world where sex and affection both were accepted. There were a dozen guys at least who moved around the theater without ever putting their dicks in their pants. (Pretty much all the time that was Shooter; and half the time, Grubby.)

  When he spoke, Shit didn’t even move his face away:

  “Maybe…a little. I like showin’ some of these cocksuckers what I can do. When I finished, they went and sat in Gorgonzola Alley for a while—earned their keep, I guess. Then I went over there, called ’em out, and fucked ’em again. After that, they said they were gonna sit down in the first row and rest a while and wait for you to get back.”

  “They’re hungry…?” Eric said again.

  “What they’re waitin’ for,” Shit said, “is to fuck around with you and piss all over themselves when they’re doin’ it, ’cause they know you like to drink it.”

  “Oh,” Eric said. “Yeah, well—that, too, I guess.”

  “After that, come on and find me…and we can go upstairs and eat.”

  Neither one moved to release the other. “You know,” Eric said, “I had a thought. Both Grubby and Shooter are little fuckers. But they’re both big-handed guys, too. And both of ’em bite their damned nails bad as you and your daddy. I was thinkin’ about how the last few times, after we ate upstairs, we sat around and wasn’t talkin’ about much and the three of you was goin’ after them things, chippin’ and chompin’ like there was no tomorrow. And I was sort of sittin’ there, relaxin’ and watchin yall—and feelin’ all relaxed myself. And it occurred to me, this is just like we was back at the Dump, after dinner, with Dynamite. And I thought, maybe that’s why you liked it so much, ’cause it was homey in a nice and familiar way.”

  “Now, that’s interestin’,” Shit said. “But the truth is, nice as it was, I don’t think that thought ever passed through my head. You know what I really like about them two?”

  Eric moved his beard against Shit’s. “Naw—what?”

  Shit moved his head back—so Eric did the same—and looked at Eric with the wrinkles around his green, green eyes, and emphasized the next thing he said with nodding: “The fuckin’ stink on ’em!”

  “Huh?” Eric asked.

  “I can sit around them two and just…breathe, and be happy.” (Eric felt the shake of a muffled laugh in Shit’s body.) “You didn’t know that?”

  “Well,” Eric said, “I kinda suspected it. I mean, it don’t exactly bother me. It’s just old piss. But it don’t actually get me off.”

  “It don’t get me off, either. But it makes me think about gettin’ off. Come on.” Finally Shit released Eric. “Go on in, mess around with them for a while, then hunt me up and we’ll go upstairs and eat.”

  Together, they crossed the lobby to the doors into the theater space. As they went in, Shit’s arm fell and he turned to go up to the back of the theater. Looking around, his eyes not yet adjusted, Eric started down the side aisle to the front.

  As he reached the first row, in the end seat someone said, “Hey, Mr. Jeffers—I was wonderin’ when you was gonna get here. I gotta piss like a motherfucker.”

  “Hey, Shooter,” Eric said. “Can I set down there beside you…?”

  “Move my boots—you can put ’em on the floor. Grubby’s down there playin’ with my feet,” Shooter said. “He likes the way they get to smellin’ in them boots of mine…” (Somebody sitting on the floor moved.) “He was talkin’ about wantin’ to pee on you in the worst way…”

  “Goddamn, this nigger smells good—I like to sleep with these things right up in my face.” Down on the floor, Grubby laughed. “I been a sucker for niggers’ feet since I was a kid. I bet you ain’t never knowed no perverts like us before!”

  “Oh,” Eric said, “I’ve run into a couple. They’re pretty nice fellas, too—like you guys.” And because it was dark and—probably—they couldn’t see, Eric thrust a forefinger up his right nostril, twisted free a pretty big crust, pulled it loose, and ate it.

  *

  Three months later, for two weeks in row, Grubby and Shooter didn’t come to the theater. The third week, when they didn’t show up, Eric said, “Hey, I’m gonna run over to Dump Produce and pick up our vegetables.” As they stepped out of the theater, it was an overcast steel colored sky. “Just to make sure them boys are okay.”

  “Yeah,” Shit said, “I’ll go with you. You wanna wake up Myron and tell him to take the booth?”

  “Nope,” Eric said. “In the next hour
-and-a-half, two hours, the only person what’s gonna come by is one or two of the homeless fellas who were out last night—” Eric squinted up. A fine mist was settling from the air—“and they’ll know enough just to walk on in, find a chair somewhere, and go to sleep.”

  Shit sighed. “Yeah—probably.”

  At the Dump Produce fields, Horm and two other men were up already, moving crates around outside. “You guys are here early—hey, Shit! How you doin’, good lookin’? I was thinkin’ you done forgot all about the old man, here. My butt was getting’ a little itchy—know what I mean?”

  “I can’t imagine what you’re talkin’ about,” Shit said. “With all these young studs runnin’ around, I don’t see why you’d be thinkin’ about me at all.”

  One of the other men laughed and went back into the New Barn.

  Eric said, “Hey, Horm—you see them two kids who was workin’ here? Grubby and Shooter?”

  “What about ’em?”

  “Well, they ain’t been over at the Opera for a couple of weeks now. We was just wonderin’ if they was okay.”

  “To be honest, I don’t rightly know. They left here about two, three weeks back. You know how that type is. They blow on in, work a while, then blow on out with the wind. Naw, they been gone from here a while now.”

  “Oh…” Shit looked puzzled.

  Eric felt disappointed. “We was—” glancing over, behind Shit’s steady expression, he saw a stillness that spoke of the same feeling—“you know, just checking.”

  They got their shopping bag of corn, melons, greens, onions, and potatoes. When they started back, the truck windshield was covered in drops.

  As Eric was driving, he grinned at Shit and switched on the wipers, which cleared away their half circles. “You know, Shit—” Eric turned onto the highway, across from the white rimmed sign with the orange hand pump in the corner and the single barn in the background against the cornfields under a sunny sky with faint cloud streaks—“I think both of us just went and fell a little in love, it looks like.”

  “With them two idiots? Come on,” Shit said. “How we gonna be in love? We’re forty-four, forty-six. They ain’t even thirty yet, either one of ’em. I hope we got a little more sense than that.” But he put his arm up, took Eric’s shoulder, and squeezed.

  Eric turned back to the road. With the highway’s curve, the sign pulled beyond the edge of the rear view.

  That evening Eric made French fries, corn on the cob, and hamburgers. When dinner was over and they were sitting at the table, beyond the window now and again lightning burst silent between the rumblings before and after out in the dark, while Shit worked on his wide nubs. Finally he paused. “You know—it’s was nice havin’ somebody to sit around with again and bite on these damned things, getting’ ’em into some kinda shape.” He looked over at the stove. “I was even thinking about gettin’ Shooter—I mean, he was black after all—to apply for a cabin in the Dump. Since he was with the nigger, Grubby wouldn’t’a been no problem. They wasn’t addicted to nothin’, cept each other’s feet—and their own stink, like you and me. They’d’a let ’em in there in a minute. And we kinda like theirs and they kinda liked ours. Ain’t that a good start for some good Dump citizens? Hey, you made enough for four of us anyway. You wanna take those extra burgers and corn down to Nigger Heaven and see if anybody there wants a change from pizza?”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.” While Shit got up, picked up Eric’s plate and his own, and took them to the sink.

  * * *

  [71] IN THEIR FIFTH year at the Opera, Eric stepped out of the ticket booth to stand beside it. Across the gray street, empty gray houses and abandoned gray offices filled this end of town. Gold, gray, and ivory clouds moved down the sky. The street was windy. His shirt was sleeveless and unbuttoned. The breeze tugged it back one way, then turned and tugged it the other. Eric liked showing off his brightly inked arms (sometimes), the spiders and birds and dolphins and octopi that crowded the serpent and skulls circling them. (The day you came back here with that snake all coiled and colored in and twistin’ around your arm like it had crawled off Jay’s and onto yours, I stuck my hand in my pocket through the hole there and started pullin’ on my pecker till I came in my jeans, like I was a fuckin’ kid again. I did it three times that afternoon, just sneakin’ stares at you.”

  (Eric laughed. Yeah, I seen you, too. And you remember how the last time, you came halfway up the stairs and let me lick it off your hand, like your dad used to do with his?

  (Oh, yeah…Hey, that’s right. I done forgot about that part…

  (How come whenever you do something like your dad, you never remember it?) He leaned against the wooden edge of the shelf, into whose indentation, from inside, during that last morning hour, he’d pushed out only three yellow tickets with change (and taken four payments by debit). As usual, the street was deserted. Thinking about going back in, Eric dug in his nose with a forefinger, then put it in his mouth for salt—

  When, from up the street, somebody said, “Jesus, that’s fuckin’ disgusting, fellow!”

  Eric flinched, chagrin tingling his face, his shoulders. He turned.

  Ten feet off stood a young man in a half-length leather coat. His hair was black and wet looking. He seemed too pale to have spent the summer around Runcible. In blood-colored slacks and oxblood loafers, he looked up at the Opera marquee, then over the theater’s entire facade. Five years ago, primary colors had become a fashion choice for men, and while locals narrowed their eyes, they were even appearing on the Georgia coast.

  Since it was the only reason anyone ever stopped, Eric bit back his embarrassment and asked, “You want a ticket?”

  “What the fuck would I wanna go into a place like that for?” The narrow faced man blinked, shaking his head. “You don’t work here, do you?”

  “I’m the manager,” Eric said. “One of the managers,”

  “Aw, Jesus,” the man said. “Well…” He walked to a glass case between curved pilasters to examine the poster inside (one of the old plot-driven heterosexual porn films from the nineteen eighties, piped in electronically, that made up their main fare. This one was Barbara Broadcast), shook his head again, then wandered down the street.

  Eric watched for three more breaths—then turned back, opened the rounded door, mounted the steps, and climbed up on the gray stool with its spring back. First leaning over to pull the booth door closed, he reached up to turn on the fan above the glass’s upper rim. He took the long-sleeved shirt off the chair back and shrugged into it. There were still people who could get upset over extensive ink—or, at any rate, had to start asking all sorts of questions and proffering all sort of speculations as soon as they saw it. And Eric still was not that much of an extrovert.

  If it hadn’t been so embarrassing, he would have gone into the theater to tell Shit about the passing man.

  Dr. Greene was the only customer who came by during the next forty minutes. The black doctor bought his twenty-dollar ticket (the one dollar bill had been discontinued back in ’26, and the five dollar bill in ’29, though a few places down here still accepted the latter), said something like, “I’m just goin’ in for a while,” smiled, turned, and walked over and through the lobby’s glass doors. Ten minutes later a purple Mercedes pulled up across the street. Eric’s stool was high enough so that he could see the crows’ tracks the nearer wheel left on the street.

  The car’s rear door opened, and two men got out. The first wore dark green slacks and another black leather coat. For a moment, Eric thought the next man was his mother’s partner, Ron. About Ron’s size, he wore a similarly baggy suit. But, Eric saw then, he was white.

  The front door on the far side of the car opened, too, and another man got out—the black hair, the leather coat.

  Eric stiffened.

  It was the one who’d walked by earlier.

  The man came around in front of the headlights—in his red slacks—to join the other two. The headlights were on, the way p
eople drove in the rain. (Clearly, the baggy older one spent less time in air conditioning than the younger two. His suit and socks were bright yellow.) They walked toward the booth, the baggy-suited one in the middle.

  As they neared, the man in the yellow suit called, “Hey, in there! Can you hear me…?”

  Eric leaned over, unlatched the door, slid off the school, and stepped down. “What can I do for you?” He’d thought about staying inside. The curved glass had made the yellow-suited man look fatter than he was—and the others stronger. But you couldn’t hear too well from inside, and he suspected this would be more complicated than a ticket.

  “By midnight tomorrow,” the man in the suit said, “yall gonna close this place up. Pull down the gates. Put a ‘CLOSED’ sign in the ticket window. Yall live upstairs, right? In the apartment over the theater?”

  “Yes, sir,” Eric said. Then he frowned. “Hey—are you Mr. Johnston?”

  The man frowned back. “I ain’t met you—I don’t think.”

  “I saw you back at a town meetin’, ’bout fifteen or twenty years ago, in the Dump. You was havin’ a debate with Robert Kyle.”

  “Oh,” the man said. “Oh, yeah—starry-eyed coon with way, way too much money, who thinks there ain’t nothin’ more important than the lives of some crazy black faggots.” He grunted.

  Though he was surprised, Eric laughed. “If you are one—a black faggot, I mean—that can seem pretty important to you, actually.”

  Then, the glass theater doors swung out and, a hand each, momentarily, on door and jamb, Shit stepped onto the sidewalk. “Hey.” Both hands dropped to his sides; the glass closed behind him. “Rudy said you got some people out here stopped by to talk to you. What’s goin’ on—?”

  Eric said, “Mr. Johnston here says he wants us to close the Opera House again.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ I want yall to close it. Yall gonna close it—by tomorrow midnight—that’s Sunday. And it’s not openin’ Monday. Who’re you?” Then the man in the suit frowned. “Hey. You Haskell’s…kid?”