Eric’s throat felt blocked. The man stopped walking — and Eric stepped nearer the colorful arm. With one hand he gripped between his own legs. They stood just beyond the inner door to Parts & Notions.
For the last five years such imitation was how Eric had learned pretty much everything he knew about sex.
No one else was in the hall.
“See — ” the man glanced around — “I’m big enough now so that I can tell you anything I want about me — I’ll fuck your face, lick out your asshole, or piss in your ear — and all you can do is say, ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘No, sir,’ and hope I’m in a good mood. Suppose I told you, when I was a real little kid, what I liked to do more than anything was sit there in the school room, look out the window, and piss my jeans. First, it was all warm comin’ out — then, in the summer there, it’d get nice and cool. And it always gimme a hard-on. By the time I was thirteen, that’d make me shoot my load without even touchin’ myself. Course, half the time I smelled like a’ ol’ outhouse piss hole. When I was nine, they already done kicked me out three times — of school, I mean. Now, what you gonna do with that? Tell on me? Around here, anybody who could care already knows — and most of ’em don’t. Care, that is. And if I ain’t happy with the tone of voice you tellin’ it in, I’ll shove your head up your ass.” Again, the man grinned. “Damn, boy.” He glanced down. “Looks like your nuts is as itchy as mine.”
Eric got his breath. “We can…do stuff in there?” though he wasn’t sure where “there” was. “Somebody told me about this place.”
Mockingly, the man blinked at Eric. “Yeah, we got a good reputation around here. Hey, they got a stainless steel pee trough where we can spring us a leak. Or, if you can find one that still flushes, you can climb up on the rim, squat on one of them shitters — none of ’em got doors no more — and drop a big ol’ turd. That what you mean?” Between beard and hair, both curly, he winked an amber eye. “My partner’s in there now. Probably that’s what he’s doin’…if he ain’t suckin’ off some nigger what come in to relieve hisself whatever way he can. My partner, he’s a Mex — he don’t talk. Spanish or English. He signs.” The man made a gesture with his big hand: first a fist with the thumb on the side — which slid around to the front; then thumb and forefinger jutting. “ASL — good ol’ ’Merican Sign Language; and from a natural-born wet-back, too. We been comin’ down here together every couple a’ weeks for…well, close to fifteen years. And me a lot longer. It’s a nice place. We get a lot of black fellas, Injins, plain ol’ redneck trash…like me. Truckers and boat fellas — me and Mex work the scow out to Gilead Island.” With a thick forefinger, he reached up to dig deep in a nostril, scratching inside. “Everybody gets along, tries to be sociable. Understand what I’m sayin’?”
Eric asked, “Can I suck your…dick?” He blinked at the man’s thick grubby hand. “I do it good.”
“Damn…” Stepping closer, the boatman laughed. His hand fell from his face to Eric’s far shoulder, over the tanktop’s blue shoulder strap. Now he turned and began to walk the worn carpet again, squeezing Eric’s shoulder repeatedly. His smell had old sweat in it, diesel fuel, and underarm funk. “You sound pretty hot to trot.” Raising his foreknuckle against Eric’s far jaw, he rubbed.
Surprising himself, Eric turned his head to take the broad, blunt forefinger in his mouth.
It was salty.
The boatman glanced at Eric — and raised a yellow eyebrow. Other than that, he gave no sign someone was sucking the finger with which he’d been picking his nose. “We can probably do sumpin’ along them lines. But I got to warn you: ain’t me or Mex got the time — or the inclination — to be what you call clean dudes. When’s the last time you took you a shower?”
“Uh…this…mornin’.” The man’s hand muffled Eric’s voice.
“Yeah? Well, with me — ” he moved closer. Without getting stronger, the odor became disorienting, as though, at Eric’s next breath, it penetrated another level — “it’s more like a couple of weeks. And I wouldn’t waste time speculatin’ about Mex.” Then he was closer, hip, thigh, flank pressed into, and moving against, Eric. “Though we got one planned for tonight — if we get back to Gilead in time. I’ll wash him; he’ll wash me; probably piss all over each other. He likes that, and — ” he squinted, looking friendly — “I like it, too.” As was the finger in his mouth, the palm on Eric’s shoulder, either side Eric’s blue tank top, was as hard as wood, as rough as rock. “You know, spics and Injins and redneck guys from around here, we ain’t cut and skinned like you fellas up there in the city. We still got everything we come with, and inside that skin, boy, the fuckin’ cheese builds up sumpin’ terrible. Me, I don’t ever hardly remember to run a finger around in there and scrape that stuff out. Most of the time, I don’t have to, though, ’cause Mex’ll do it for me…with his tongue.” He made a face with a grin in it somewhere, behind bronze facial hair.
Eric came off the finger long enough to say, “I like cock cheese. A lot. Sure, with some guys who smoke, it tastes pretty foul — ”
“Yeah? That, too, huh?” The man chuckled again. “Well, at six-fifty a pack, that’s one thing with us you don’t got to worry about. It makes you smell funnier than you already do, gives you cancer, and runs all the good cocksuckers off.” The finger was up and waiting for Eric’s mouth when he turned back for it. “Naw — that’s one bad habit me an’ ol’ Mex ain’t even thinkin’ about.” The man’s hand slid further around Eric’s face, pushing two fingers into Eric’s mouth, moving them on Eric’s tongue. “We got enough others already.” He gave another grimace. “Hey, your fuck hole there feels pretty slick.”
Still sucking for traces of salt, Eric looked over at the boatman. Some of it was probably sweat —
Out in front the man held his other hand down, smiling at it — the one with the green and blue snake’s head, yellow fangs, red diamonds for eyes, and orange tongue. On bronzed skin, sun-bleached hair blurred the lines across his knuckles, clouded the serpent. Wide nubs bulged before the nails, outlined in black as with a ballpoint and gnawed well back of the quick. On the massive fingers, what was left of the nails were as wide as quarters (except the little, a nickel across) but, front to back, as narrow as half a dime. Thickened cuticle swallowed them. “Bitin’ on ’em the way we do, Mex and me — the both of us — is bad enough.” He turned his hand over, lifted his fist to his mouth, and began to chip at what remained on the broad flesh with his lower teeth. “That’s why I first got to be friends with Dynamite — when we was kids. ’Cause he did it even worse than me. So does Shit — but then, the boy comes by it honestly.”