Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  Down below a crease at Mex’s navel, the stocky guy’s amber ankles held apart the infinity sign his jeans made, without drawers. Broad nosed, wide-jawed, hair black and smooth, Eric’s cock rounding his mouth, Mex grinned up with his pitted face. Forward of his foreskin, a ridge of whitish yellow encircled Mex’s own cock head—which Eric could see down between the thick thighs below his chin each time the Mexican’s mouth slid back. With the taste of Dynamite’s cheese and urine and the memory of Jay’s, Eric felt the simple sight of Mex’s turning him on as much as the yearning in the man’s raised eyes. Eric’s cock slid in and out Mex’s mouth. Left of them, the stall wall was thick with blue paint. In it were three ordinary sized glory holes. To the right, another Eric hadn’t seen was wide enough for a whole head!

  Beside Eric and, belly to belly with him, both of them turned only a little to the side, now bearded Jay slid his own cock into Mex’s face alongside Eric’s. Eric felt it rubbing, to the side and slightly below, his own.

  As he often did, Eric thought: Why did I have to end up cut? It would be great to look like all these guys here; or Mike—

  Wetness and heat increased around the flesh thrusting from Eric’s groin.

  “Hey, Mex. Here’s that sumpin’ special—”

  Jay was urinating!

  Eric could feel the Mexican swallowing around his cock, while he sucked them both.

  And Dynamite had wedged up against Eric to hug him from behind. One of the drivers chuckled. “Dere go de white guys again, makin’ some damned spic or a damned nigger do all the real work!” On one side, the boatman pressed against him, while, at his other, Shit slid in. (Eric thought: Well, Shit’s a nigger. God, I wished to hell I was. Maybe they’d like me more…) Again Eric reached to grip barefoot Shit’s thickly veined dick. His green shirt still hanging open, Shit put one arm tight around Eric’s shoulder, staring down like an examining demigod. Looking with him, Eric saw that one of Shit’s bare feet was over one of Mex’s.

  In the cave of Mex’s mouth, boiling—it felt like—around Eric’s cock, dripping from Eric’s testicles, running down the barrel-solid Mexican’s chin and chest between Mex’s own black denims, dripping on Mex’s own fist, running over Eric and Mex’s cocks, the boatman’s piss was…well, hot and incredible!

  Between himself and Jay, beneath the hair, were crickets, fish, frogs, shells, shooting stars, scalloped leaves, waves spuming, clouds billowing, vine tendriling, atoms exploding, squid spewing.

  Flames, red and yellow, flared over Jay’s arm.

  Eric came—

  —and grabbed Mex’s head, leaning forward. Like beads of buckshot, Mex’s semen—warm—struck the bottom of Eric’s (and probably the boatman’s) testicles. Of course they didn’t hurt—but they hit harder than Eric would have expected.

  Jay pushed back, Dynamite loosened his grip, and Mex sat up, now, on the shitter’s enamel rim…

  Mex’d reached up and rubbed Jay’s big ball.

  Grinning, his cock a rod against his jeans, with his cream-and-coffee wool, Shit reached down where Mex’s wet fist had returned to his dick. As Mex relaxed his grip, Shit pushed a thick forefinger under Mex’s loose skin and, with the skin riding over the forejoint, circled the head. Mex made a sound like, “Urrgghh…!” opening his lips around the dicks in his mouth—piss and something thicker spilled his pitted chin—while Shit pulled his forefinger free with its flaky load, and, standing now, pushed it into Eric’s mouth.

  Eric sucked the stuff off, surprised—

  —while the Mexican looked equally surprised…and pleased.

  Shit stood, dug in his own nose with the same finger, sucked it, then pushed that into Eric’s mouth, too. “I make even more of that stuff than he do.” Shit nodded down at Mex with considered seriousness. “I mean, if you really like it. But mine all got rubbed off up his ass—” With his other wide, blunt thumb, he pointed at Dynamite (again fixing his bib)—“when you first come in. Otherwise, you coulda’ had mine.” His arm went on around Eric, and he hugged him again—and again thrust his tongue into Eric’s face. While he was doing it, the boatman whispered something into Shit’s ear.

  Shit halted long enough to ask, “Huh?”

  “Go on,” the boatman said. “Do it again…go on, now. Like you did before. Do it.”

  “…Huh?” Shit repeated, frowning. Then he raised that same, heavy forefinger to prod once more in a nostril, turning it one way and the other. Eric has already seen that, where the nails were supposed to be, far back from his nubs, the flesh was gnawed into deep and broken pits. When the loaded forefinger came loose, again Eric opened his mouth.

  Grinning, Shit pushed it inside.

  “See…” The boatman smiled. “Sex is like cards, Shit, ’specially in this place. Remember. Lead from your strength.”

  Shit grinned at him—

  “Yeah, you always tell me that.”

  —while on the expanded articulations of Jay’s colorful arms, Eric saw:

  A web beneath an elbow—violet along the strands’ tops, dark red to black below—the darker flesh at the center gnarled as a walnut, threads decked with drops of dew: inked on each less-than-quarter-inch sphere, a curved reflection of a window that might have been in the parlor where the work had once been done but was not in Turpens’ john. Seahorses, scorpions, moths, and spiders scurried under blond fur. Over a green and blue shrimp, with red highlights from a nearby fire, yellow hair swirled. Barbed wire made a doubled strand, the barbs themselves where one was twisted and cut before it sank through a skull’s socket, emerged from the darkness on the other side of the bone’s ragged nose hole. Through foam, cloud, and hair, a squid leapt from the sea with straining tentacles, two longer and broader than the rest, to challenge a dragon, diving from its cloud, astonishment on both non-human faces. In the same montage, giving the effect of something much, much closer—or much, much larger—a frog clung to a rock in the spume, inked with every bubble, splash, and splatter. It gazed up, where stars shot, yellow, green, and red, beyond curling cumulus, scalloped leaves, breaking waves, tendrils coiled below enfolded buds and bursting atoms. Toward his wide shoulders, red and yellow and orange fires entwined star-dusted galaxies and twisted vegetation, as though the world the boatman’s biceps pictured was burning.

  Shit’s salty forefinger in Eric’s mouth and the ruined nail’s roughness in its callused bed prodded desire’s central heat—

  “Now, remember,” Jay said. “You got your ride waitin’ for you. You better get on.”

  “Yeah.” Eric started to turn away, as from a moment of preternatural awareness. Dynamite nudged Shit’s bare foot with his work shoe—Shit was prodding again in his nose with a thick middle finger. This time, though, Shit ate it himself, as unconcerned as Eric might have been, alone, exploring an empty Atlanta alley.

  That unconcern, finally, was the most erotically loaded thing Eric had seen in the crowded john.

  One of the drivers laughed, possibly at something else, while again more electricity pulsed through Eric. “Hey, thanks.” That was to Mex, who smiled at him, nodded.

  Would he see the black kid again?

  Approvingly, Jay nodded. “Come on.” The boatman’s hand tightened on Eric’s shoulder, then tugged. “You don’t wanna get in no trouble—”

  Wondering if he’d ever get closer to Al’s black markings (and, he thought, I didn’t get to tongue fuck yet with Mex…), Eric glanced at the tattooed boatman, to realize, as they pushed from the john door, now he could see all Jay’s smaller pictures.

  * * *

  [1] EIGHTEEN MINUTES AND nine seconds after going in through the saloon-style doors, the hempen giant (with his arm fur, belly hair, and tattoos) came out, red shirt opened, jeans closed, his Turpens cap folded in his back pocket. Beside him, Eric tugged up his zipper.

  In the hall, Jay chuckled.

  When they reached the turn, ahead Eric could see the inside window—and the inside door—of Turpens Parts & Notions.

  “Um…I
gotta go.” Eric didn’t move but rocked a little, as if half paralyzed. “This was great. Really. I hope I…see you again—” Fascination held him.

  “Awww—” At once the boatman’s arm swung around Eric’s shoulder for a surprising hug. He tugged. One of Eric’s sneakers left the floor. “I’d count on it, if I was you. Diamond Harbor ain’t that big, son. Mex ain’t gonna believe this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if maybe we got us another puppy.”

  Steadying himself, Eric found his hand plowing the hair on Jay’s belly. Jesus, the guy was hard—and warm. “Hey…but, see, I need to get a cap. Real quick.”

  Jay released him. “Go on, then.” Eric got his balance.

  Eric grinned. “My name’s Eric. Eric Jeffers. And you’re…? I’m sorry—I forgot…”

  “I’m still Jay MacAmon. Just like Dynamite told you. Like I say, Mex and me run the scow out to Gilead Island. Don’t worry. We’ll see you in the Harbor. Look for me or a barefoot spic. We’re about as easy to find as fish scales on a fisherman’s feet—though there ain’t even too many of those ’round here no more. So are the garbage men—the one walkin’ ’round with no shoes half the time is Shit.” He winked an amber eye. “Morgan. That’s his regular name. But I guess you know that.”

  He hadn’t. “Yeah…” Eric said. “Okay. Sure. But I need that cap.”

  Jay nodded—and Eric turned, ran up the hall to the glass door, and pushed inside.

  * * *

  [2] BRAVES, MARLINS, CARDINALS, Senators, Orioles, Rangers, Astros, Yankees, Pirates, Red Sox—ball caps hung on the backboard’s hooks. (I just got loads from five of them eight guys—some good cheesy ones, too. That ain’t bad for fifteen minutes. And one’s still in my pocket…) Eric took down an orange one—Turpens, with its departing eagle—and walked toward the counter.

  The unshaven counterman wore a cowboy shirt. His hair was salt and pepper gray. (I even ate snot from that black kid…Wow! That was a first! Shit’s nose was even wider than Mike’s. I wonder if I’ll ever get my tongue up that…) Between his dark and light blue lapels, a rug of black covered his chest.

  Eric passed a dummy in camouflage fatigues. “How much is this?”

  “Baseball caps is nine fifty. That’s just five. Not too many guys get the Turpens ones.” Thrust from blue snap cuffs, on six inches of wrist, at the ends of long, long arms, a high-veined fist, with big knuckles, opened flat on the counter glass.

  Eric reached in his pocket—and for a heart-thudding moment thought his wallet was gone. Then he felt his KY tube, below the folded paper Bottom had given him and Dynamite had written on. With a deeper prod, his fingers stubbed leather.

  Someone said, “What took you so long?”

  Eric turned sharply to see Mike. “Hey—I went as fast as I could.”

  “Actually,” Mike said, “you did pretty well. You said twenty—and it’s just that now. I came in to try the AC—’cause I don’t like to leave it on in the car when I’m not drivin’. Uses up the battery.”

  “That’s the God’s honest truth,” the counterman said. “You with the kid, here?”

  Without looking at Mike, Eric said: “This is my dad.”

  “His step dad,” Mike corrected. (Why did he do that? Eric wondered. He wished Mike would let them figure it out.) “I’m taking the boy to stay with his mama, at Diamond Harbor.”

  “Oh,” the older man said. “Yeah. The Harbor’s a nice place—now that it’s summer. Nobody’s around the rest of the time, though. Even this summer’s pretty slow. Ain’t hardly no fishin’ boats at the marina. Runcible ain’t doin’ too well, either, with all them new tourist cabins they built goin’ beggin’. Five dollars twenty-eight cents—with tax. That orange is a good color for you, son. Hell, ’cause you’re gettin’ a Turpens one, I’ll forget the twenty-eight cents. Just gimme five.”

  He smiled at Mike, then at Eric.

  By a corner, Eric pulled the bill with Lincoln’s picture from his wallet. “Thanks.”

  Someone else said, “Hello, there, Abbott.”

  Eric looked over.

  And started.

  He looked at Mike, who’d begun paging through a catalog on the counter.

  With his jaw clenched, Eric tried to make himself relax.

  The guy in the yellow shirt—and the handkerchief—strolled up. On his neck was Al’s purple hickey, like wrestling crayfish.

  As Eric took the cap, the register man said, “Hi, Ted. What can I do for you?”

  Eric felt as if he were plunging down some well with sparkling walls.

  “Nothin’—I’m good. I came in to use the facilities and say hello, that’s all. This is a scorcher, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is.” Rangy Abbott looked at Eric. “You want that in a bag, son?”

  “Thanks,” Eric said. “No. That’s okay.” He opened his mouth, took a very slow, very long breath.

  Ted said to Mike and Eric, “You guys picked a hot day to travel.” He did not look at Eric, and Eric’s heart got faster, then began to settle.

  Mike said, “Mmm,” pushed over a page of pictures, pushed over another, then turned away.

  Jesus, Eric thought. He ain’t gonna say nothin’. I gotta stop this…

  Ted said, “’Bye.”

  But Eric’s throat was so tight, the Good-bye, sir, he tried to get out would not sound.

  Orange cap still in his hand—his thumb sweaty on its stiff material—Eric followed his dad.

  (Maybe Ted had been so intent on Al’s cock, he hadn’t recognized…?)

  With Mike slowing at piles of CB radios and racks of manuals and sparkplug boxes, they walked to the door.

  As Eric pushed out behind his father into sweltering day, across the lot a blue pickup backed from its parking place. On the sagging tailgate, in silver gaffers’ tape, someone had spelled out:

  DYNAMITE

  REFUSE

  As it swung around, Eric made out where someone had filled in “Shit &,” with a broad black Sharpie, probably like the ones in Eric’s backpack behind the seat on the Chevy’s floor mat.

  “Shit &” slanted up over the “D” in DYNAMITE. (“Shit & Dynamite Refuse”—the truck read!) Eric breathed—and, because Mike wasn’t looking, let himself grin.

  The pickup rolled forward, but not toward the highway feed: it pulled to another exit in the diamond-wire fence and was gone on some local road.

  “Hey! Eric—the car’s over here!”

  “Oh, yeah…” Mike hadn’t noticed anything. Eric started walking again. But, then, often Mike didn’t.

  * * *

  [3] GETTING INTO THE car was like climbing into hot oiled cotton. Mike turned the ignition. As they started forward, he switched on the Chevy’s air conditioning. From under the dashboard cold air hit Eric’s pants, flattening the faintly dirtied denim to Eric’s shins.

  “Hey…” Mike said. “That guy back there wasn’t…botherin’ you, was he?”

  More sharply than he’d intended, Eric turned to his dad. “What?” He’d been wondering whether to brush at the cloth on his knees or to leave them so as not to attract Mike’s attention.

  “I mean in the restroom or anything. Lookin’ at you funny, maybe.”

  Eric made himself relax. “What guy?”

  By stubby white posts with white cable strung between, they rolled onto the highway’s service road.

  “The guy in the store. He had a birthmark or somethin’ on his neck…”

  It wasn’t like falling into that well. “The guy behind the counter? He wasn’t even in the restroom.” But it was like leaning over its glittering edge.

  “Not him. The other one—I saw him go into the place just ahead of you, the same time you went in. The one who stopped to talk to us at the counter when we were comin’ out—?”

  “Him?” Eric asked. “He could have been. I was in the stall…with the door closed. So I didn’t see. Which probably means he didn’t see me…unless he was lookin’ funny at my…sneakers.”

  “Oh,” Mike
said. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Eric put his new cap on the dashboard, then lifted his butt to dig in his pocket. (A memory of when the KY cap had once come loose, lubricant messing his pants…) His middle fingers passed something splodgy: Al’s knotted rubber. Glancing to make sure Mike was looking at the road, Eric pulled his hand free to touch his fingertips to his lips. They were dry: it hadn’t ruptured. With the same hand, again Eric reached in his pocket to push the KY down. Again, it had almost slipped free—

  Beside his wallet, he felt Bottom’s paper.

  Working it loose, he tugged the paper out and—with a deep breath—unfolded it. His rectum was vaguely sore, but with what, long ago, he’d learned to think of as a good soreness. And damp.

  “What’s that?” Mike asked.

  “Something Bill said I should read when I got to Diamond Harbor.”

  “What’s it say?”

  Eric opened it again, to see Gothic letters—like the ones on the sign: A Georgia Institution…“He must have printed it out on his computer. This mornin’.” Haltingly, Eric read it out loud:

  “‘He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man—Dr. Samuel Johnson.’”

  Mike said, “I heard that one before.”

  In ordinary type, Bill’s message went on (and Eric read):

  “‘But note the good doctor said “beast,” not “animal.” For he who forgets the animal he is, has taken the first step toward becoming a beast.’” Eric looked up, frowning. The afternoon’s image that briefly returned was Jay MacAmon’s uncle, slamming his fist into the teeth of a tall twelve-year-old with wet jeans…

  “That’s some funny stuff.” Mike moved the wheel. “But Bottom’s a funny guy.” Mike was thinking about Kelly-Ann, who, yeah, could be an animal…“He’s okay, but he’s…strange. You know, you should stay away from guys like that, Eric—Bill; or the one who was talkin’ to us in the store, hear me? I met a couple of ’em in the pokey. Most guys don’t even bother bein’ polite to ’em. It just encourages ’em. And they’re never gonna do you no good.”