Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Shit asked, “What happened? You okay?”

  “Wasn’t nothin’.” Eric tugged tight the double knot he’d made: his wrist throbbed. “You know, it’s funny. I was thinking about the old Slide—before they tore it down.”

  “We had a lotta fun at that place.” Shit said. His hand moved over Eric’s shoulder, down Eric’s bare back. “Yeah, Kyle shouldn’t a sold it. For a while, everyone was sayin’ how he was gonna build another one, with an even bigger piss trough in it.”

  “You know why that was, don’t you?”

  “What you mean?”

  “Why it had to go. A couple of months after they pulled it down, I read an article about it in the Foundation Newsletter. That’s was the year they passed the laws all over the country that gay marriages were okay. So suddenly all over the south, they began diggin’ up these old hygiene standards for gay bars and places like that—and there wasn’t no way to get The Slide past about half of ’em. Remember, that’s what they shut down the Opera over the first time. It was all around the same time.”

  “It was?” Shit’s fingers made scratching motions with their blunt, hard nubs on his back. That, he had often thought, is almost better than full-out sex.

  “And you don’t remember, do you? Well, they decided they’d just save themselves a headache and tear the whole thing down.”

  “Was people gettin’ sick there, or somethin’? I never heard of nothin’ like that.”

  “Naw—but the laws was about excrement and human waste. It didn’t say nothin’ about whether it was infected or not. You remember how Dr. Greene was always tellin’ us there was nothin’ wrong with waste as long as it didn’t have no germs in it or nothin’.”

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “I remember.” He hooked his hand over Eric’s shoulder. “But we did have an awful lot of good times there.”

  “And it’s funny.” Eric sighed. “I can’t remember none of ’em.”

  “I remember,” Shit said, after seconds, his hand flattening and moving further over Eric’s back. “I remember one night when you and me and Bull and Dynamite all went there—to The Slide. And Bull kept tellin’ you to get the fuck down in the pee trough, ’cause he had to take a piss, and he was already leakin’ in his jeans. I felt him—and he was. Whiteboy was out on loan to some black friend of Bull’s that night and came in later. But I remember the three of us standin’ in a row along the back bar, Bull drinkin’ his club soda, me suckin’ on my Coke, and Dynamite with his beer—Bull on one side of me and Dynamite on the other. Bull didn’t got no shirt on, and he keeps sayin’ to me, ‘Go on, Shit—piss in your brother’s face, now. Go on—I just done it’—and I’ll be damned if I didn’t feel him grab my goddam dick up underneath there, and as soon as I let go, you started drinkin’ it right down.”

  “I guess I would.”

  “Dynamite let go too, and all three of us started tellin’ each other the dirtiest things we could think of or make up, probably, and, you know, when Bull got to talkin’ about how he shoved his hand up this guys asshole and how he fucked some guy with diarrhea, who shit all over him like some goddamn cow in a barn; and once, down there, you sucked off me and Dynamite both together, with both our dicks in your mouth at once, while we was both pissin’—it got all over you. Then Bull grabbed my hand, under the bar and tells me, ‘Hey, I’m gonna piss in your hand, boy—and your brother down there’s gonna drink it when it goes rollin’ off the other side. And, holdin’ my hand up under his big ol’ balls, that’s what he done, and I could feel you holdin’ the back of my wrist and your mouth on the side of my palm, drinkin’, while it ran across, and suddenly, well, I…”

  Eric said, “What?”

  “Suddenly I…I don’t know.”

  Eric frowned. “What you mean?”

  “I mean, you remember any of that?”

  “Um…I don’t know. Kind of…maybe. That’s the sorta thing we was always doin’ there, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Shit nodded.

  “But…no, I don’t remember that one specific time.”

  “But I do,” Shit said. “Cause, all of a sudden, I fell in love with you.”

  “Huh?” Eric said. He repeated: “What you mean?”

  “I fell in love with you—again, I guess. I always loved you, from the first time at Turpens I put my arms around you and stuck my goddam tongue down your throat. Back then I was thinkin’ I better not hold onto you as much as I wanted to ’cause I had to give everybody else a chance. But when you was under the bar, there, at The Slide, and I couldn’t even see you, and you was holdin’ my hand and drinkin’ that sweaty nigger’s piss out my palm, I realized you was the most important thing in the motherfuckin’ world.” Shit stepped around, away from Eric, then moved forward. “You know how I like to fuck everybody. And how I really like it when people fuck with you and other guys so’s I can watch—but I wasn’t watchin’. I watched Bull jerk that thick black dick he had right off in your face. Damn, that looked so good. I was just…thinkin’ about it. And all of a sudden it was like it all went up another floor. I reached down and pulled you out from under there, and you came on up, staggerin’ into me, and piss all in your hair and runnin’ down your belly, and cum all in your ear and your eye, and I put my arms around you and hugged you so tight. I hugged you so tight…so tight! And you was wet from head to toe. And you smelled so good. And you was all salty. And you hugged me back. And Bull started laughin’—at the same time, my daddy said, ‘Hey, what’s a matter? What you doin’?’ And since my dick was out my pants, I said, “I’m peein’ all over this cocksucker. What you think?’ And then I did it. Holdin’ you there and pissin’ on you. And the music is goin’, and people are walkin’ around and some of them are cuttin’ up and dancin’ and laughin’. And Dynamite is just grinnin’ at us—and so is Bull. You remember that—me holdin’ you there at the bar? You got one foot in the trough and one on the floor, and I’m huggin’ you so…damned tight.”

  In the darkness, Eric frowned. “I don’t, Shit. I mean…well, you was always grabbin’ me and huggin’ me. And holdin’ on to me. And I always, hell, knew, I guess, it meant you was…feelin’ somethin’ strong. Yeah, and I loved it. But I don’t remember any…one particular time. At least, not at The Slide.”

  “Damn…” Shit said.

  Beside Shit’s shoulder the faintest orange lit the world’s rim—out on the water—for what seemed only inches of the horizon’s slash.

  Shit’s face was a carbon silhouette against it. He put his hand on Eric’s chest, moved it to Eric’s shoulder. When Eric looked down at Shit’s hand, he could see a coppery light on Shit’s knuckles…and the imbricated darknesses of Cassandra’s greens and blues, her squid’s arms and her dragon’s wings, above and below the skulls circling his own upper arm muscle.

  A voice—Shit’s voice, so wonderfully familiar—came from the black face with words Eric had never heard him say; or, anyway, had never heard him say together in just that order. “God, I love you so much. And I don’t think you ever knowed it.” The voice, out of the featureless shape of his face, sounded distressed and confused. “Probably ’cause…you was so busy lovin’ me. You know, I could always tell my daddy how much I loved you—and he was just as glad, because he knew we loved him back. That’s the main thing I miss most about him. Bein’ able to tell him about how much I loved you. But I didn’t know lovin’ someone was gonna be so…goddam lonely. ’Cause you don’t remember it, none.”

  Shit’s hand had gone to Eric’s far shoulder. Eric put his hand up and squeezed. “Shit, that’s just because we’re two different people. That’s all. Hey, I remember the first day you took me over there—to The Slide. And how we met Danny Turpens, the one who took up with Big Man. And Jos—the other one who worked there—”

  “Was that his name?”

  “Un-huh. And even how Dusty had told Dynamite about Danny the first time I went to the Opera. ’Cause I know, by the time we started goin’ there with Bull and Mex and Whiteboy and
Red and Jay, Jos wasn’t there no more. And even Danny didn’t stay that long. I remember that—”

  “Me, too.” And enough sunlight had come through so Eric could see generic features, if not expressions on Shit silhouetted face. “So you do remember that.”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Eric said. “I remember it like somethin’ somebody told me about us doin’, rather than somethin’ I actually did myself—” Eric turned to grip the rail with both hands. He rocked with the boat. “I remember how, after we would come in, if we wasn’t draggin’ somebody else with us, you and me would fuck till the sun came up.” As he looked down, stained pale salmon now, froth billowed beside the boat. “I remember suckin’ your dick till I thought the damn thing was gonna come off in my mouth.”

  “Well,” Shit said, “yeah. I remember that, too. That’s when it would really get good. I guess that’s somethin’.”

  Ahead, the mainland boat dock seemed to come loose from the gray black into blue-gray, growing visible.

  “And, of course, I remember after they tore The Slide up. And we went with Mama Grace to get his curtains—his drapes—before he gave me my book and we took him to Savannah. But I…swear, I don’t remember a single time between ’em, where we went into the place and just stood around and enjoyed it.”

  Wonderingly, Shit said, “You really don’t…?”

  “I know I was there—what, a hundred times?” Eric asked. “Three hundred times? But I can’t remember nothin’ specific.”

  “You know what it could be.” Shit turned to look out at the water. “Maybe, when you’re gettin’ a whole lot of what you love a lot, it’s hard to hold on to.” He glanced at Eric. “It could be like Bull told me, back when my daddy died. I just needed to piss on you more.”

  “Well, that could be.” Eric was surprised—and found himself thrilling at the thought. “Maybe…I guess.”

  A gull mewed and, overhead, turned toward the coast.

  * * *

  [83] AND WONDER DECADES—even ones some fail to notice at the time—also join the past. Indeed, we’ve already slipped a year or so into another not quite so wondrous.

  * * *

  [84] ERIC DROVE ALONG the nighttime highway, through the half-dark. It was a July night, so it couldn’t have been too long after his birthday, but ten years later, though the night itself stayed with him, to save himself he couldn’t remember which birthday it had been. He was driving back to Diamond Harbor from one of the little towns around. Probably he was driving the car for one of the women on Gilead, but which one, he couldn’t recall either…

  Shit hadn’t come—prying him out of the area, even for a few miles, a few hours, was a major undertaking and long ago Eric had given up on it. Truth was, Eric didn’t relish such journeys, either. They got Shit too upset—then Eric would get upset. The easy way to avoid both was not to go. But, this time, he’d gone.

  Out the windshield, the sky was deep blue and streaked with wriggles of white, suggesting an overcast early evening in imitation of the end of day. He’d been thinking about the touch screen at the Credit Union—which he used for a decade. Then they’d switched to a point screen—one that rose anywhere on the counter you stopped and looked at. And you didn’t need an ID number. It would read your eye, and you could ask it for what you wanted it to do—and you needed very little money anyway because your ID card held all that information. So they’d used that for the last ten years. But, as he’d been saying to Shit that morning, their ten years at the Opera seemed three times as long as their recent decade on the island—which felt like a mere six months.

  This time-flying business was kind of weird, when you stopped and really thought about it. How did you judge the duration of anything—at least if it lasted for months or years? The fact is if something was going to happen, say, two years from now—that just wasn’t a lot of time anymore. Hell, the fact was, neither was five or ten.

  Eric looked out the side window, where, between the dark banks of brush and vegetation in silhouette against the water, was a lake. It was a lucid blue, like a broad mirror at night. Across the water, he saw four, five broad stone stanchions, rising twelve, fifteen feet above the surface. As he pulled away, he realized it must have at one time supported some kind of bridge, long fallen down.

  It was quite beautiful, he thought, as droplets began to spatter the glass outside. And now the reflected lights from the other side of the highway filled up the great insect eye the pane of glass had become in the sprinkle, with lights from the restaurants and moving billboard images and window displays along the wetter and wetter highway.

  This is a beautiful night, Eric thought. And Shit is cursed—or is it blessed—with the detailed beauty within the circle of Diamond Harbor and environs and no more of the great world than that. And, Lord, that is beautiful. But every once and a while, I am allowed to see just a bit more of what glimmers and casts its reflections and images beyond it.

  He took in a deep breath.

  But I know how large the world is…

  Or maybe I don’t know anything.

  Yes, I’m speeding along down the highway, racing through time, he thought, like that boy racing up the stairs in an old mansion that, for practical purposes, no longer exists…

  * * *

  [85] FROM THE MARQUEE’S lowest rim—painted with ivory and gold enamel—water fell to the bricks paving the area before the pilasters and plaster curlicues and faces and flutes and flowers that fixed the Opera House’s façade to another century, an art and artifice entirely other.

  Across the broken pavement, under the porticoes of the derelict Seaside Gardens building, from ages twenty to fifty or sixty, a dozen or so black men stood together, talking. Some were shirtless. Some were barefoot—though not necessarily the same ones. The rain had ended. It was a sunny ten-minutes to ten on a muggy July morning.

  From down the street, someone else was coming up—another black fellow in sneakers and jeans, and with a blue T-shirt that had been ripped at the neck, all the way down the front, so that it hung open like a very loose vest. He hurried up by the ply-wooded up display window of the Seaside Gardens to talk briefly with them. Then he took off quickly across the street. As he reached the Opera House ticket booth, he slowed. “Mr. Haskell…?”

  No one answered.

  He called again, “Mr. Haskell?”

  The curved glass of the ticket booth gleamed with the morning’s reflection. You walk up to the place, buy a ticket, and go in—and because of the glare, still not be sure who was inside the thing. “Mr. Haskell, we been figurin’ because of the rain this mornin’, Mr. Jeffers maybe wasn’t gonna do his Spring Feed-All.” Under the ragged shirt, fastened over his bare chest, he wore a single strap with its heavy wire catch fixed to his ancient bib coveralls. Down the side was a rip, held provisionally shut by two safety pins, between which the material flapped enough to show the dark skin along hip and the top of his thigh.

  The glare-distorted figure moved, becoming no clearer. “Rube, how many years you been comin’ to the Opera here so you could sit in the first row on the left and pull on your pecker?”

  “Huh?” The smile was both bewildered and embarrassed. “I dunno…”

  “Well, it ought to be enough years to know by now it takes more than a little rain to keep Mr. Jeffers from making his chili. Besides, it’s supposed to be clear for the rest of the day. He’s just gonna get started a little late, once Mex gets here to give him a hand.”

  “Oh,” Rube said. “What’s he doin’ now?”

  “What you think he’s doin’?”

  “He’s inside…readin’ his book?”

  “Hey. Now—that sounds like the Rube I know. See, that’s the Rube who sits at the end of the first row in the orchestra and shoots his load all over the bottom of the screen, fifteen, twenty feet away.”

  “Hey, Mr. Haskell, I don’t do that stuff no more—”

  “I know you don’t. Now-a-days you always got yourself stashed down back of Lar
ry or Dr. Greene’s tonsils, where that fuckin’ blunderbuss you got belongs.”

  “Yeah.” Rube grinned. “Somethin’ like that. You know, Mr. Jeffers does it good, too.”

  “Yeah, I know just how good he does it. He likes to take care of some of you on your wake up call.”

  Rube nodded. “It’s nice you let us sleep here, too. If you want, I can get up there with a pail and steel wool and wash that off the damned screen. After all, I put most of it up there—me and Al, anyway.”

  “Naw.” Behind glare and glass, the figure shifted. “That’s okay. It’s off to the side. With these kinds o’ movies, it don’t get in nobody’s way. Besides, I kinda like havin’ it up there. It gives the older guys somethin’ to reminisce about, when some of them could hit that thing, too. The kids who come sneakin’ in through the back door on Saturday, it gives ’em something to aim for—in a manner of speakin’; see if they can at least get close.”

  “That sounds like something Mr. Jeffers would say.” Rube grinned.

  From behind the booth’s curved glass, Shit said, “It is something Mr. Jeffers said.”

  Inside there was a clanking and grumbling. “Aw, man,” Rube said. “Here it comes. Maybe I should go in and lend a hand…?”

  “Don’t worry,” Shit said—and he moved behind the glare. The door in the booth’s side opened. Shit stepped out. “They got it under control.” He closed it behind him, took out some keys and locked it, then went inside. And, as if timed, Jay’s pickup rolled up, and Mex got out. He walked to the back, reached over, and lifted out an orange burlap sack of Spanish onions, set it down near the back wheel, stood up again, and reached over for a brown paper bag full of mostly green peppers.

  As Eric followed the stove from out of the lobby, pushing it laboriously forward by the handle, Mex stood up: “I brought the electric chopper, like you wanted. We got most of the fixing, here. Jay, say to wish you the best—He wasn’t quite up to coming, this year.”