Dynamite gave some instructions: “Follow this path dead on straight — it runs into a real road about hun’erd yards up — and take it on right down over a little trestle bridge onto the highway…” (Mike climbed into the Chevy.) “Take a right, and you’ll be on your way to the city.”
The window rolled down. “I think I got it.” Mike called out. The motor started.
Dragging a cloak of reflected leaves across the door and fenders, the Chevy drove off into the trees.
When, between Dynamite (who drove) and Shit (who sat by the door), Eric was in the pickup cab, hunting for something to say, suddenly he came out with: “All of you guys down here…smell so good! I mean at the truck stop — ”
Smiling at the windshield as he drove, Dynamite said: “Well, thank you, son.”
Something suddenly weighed on his foot. Eric glanced down.
His heart (and throat) thudded. Swallowing, Eric was actually dizzy.
Though he’d been too surprised by it to get an erection, Eric realized his response couldn’t have been more sexual if Shit had reached over and grasped his crotch:
Shit had put his wide grubby foot on Eric’s runner — Eric looked up at Shit, who smiled at him again over his missing teeth — as he had in Turpens restroom with barefoot Mex.
Eric glanced at Dynamite, who hadn’t seemed to notice — any more than Mike would have if Eric had been staring out the side window, picking his nose.
Finally Eric got out, “You guys…ain’t afraid of anything down here, are you?”
Shit actually laughed.
At the wheel, Dynamite said, “Well…we don’t wanna rub nobody’s nose in our business who ain’t really interested. But mostly there ain’t nothin’ to be afraid of.”
“Hell — ” Shit spread his knees, one pressing the door, one pressing Eric’s leg, while, with both hands, he gripped his groin — “soon as I go in there with this guy here, I pull his overalls down, let everybody see his furry ass, squat down and tongue out his shithole, stick a few fingers up there and wiggle ’em around. Then I dick the pig fucker. And while I’m dickin’ ’im good, I make these good nasty noises — Oh, shit! Oh, fuck…! He slippin’ that wet hot shit all over my damned dick. Actually, he’s pretty clean — but they don’t know that. And I don’t give ’im time to get too dirty! But in that place, they like anything that’s nasty. Oooooh, that’s one wet sloppy shit hole — so everybody in there’ll know how good it is. That gets everybody else turned on — you see, you need to do a little of that.” (At the wheel, Dynamite was smiling.) “’Cause when you got five or six people in there who’re on the shy side and don’t know each other too well, you can stand around for half-an-hour, an hour-an’-a half, waitin’ for someone to get up gumption enough to make the first move. So I throw myself right on in there — I don’t give a fuck! Mex and Jay are pretty much the same way, ain’t they?”
“Pretty much.” Dynamite pulled on the wheel, then let it straighten.
“I’ll go in there, squat down, and start suckin’ the dick of the oldest fucker at the pee trough. That way everybody knows they can get started. I mean, who wants to hang around that place and waste half-a-day twiddlin’ your curtains? Know what I mean?”
“Un-huh,” Eric said, surprised he did — though he wouldn’t have described it as his own way of entering a john. Still, he’d already begun to appreciate those who did.
“Ain’t no reason for it. At least — ” Shit closed his legs and moved a hand onto Eric’s thigh, glancing at him — “if you live in the Dump.”
Eric’s response was not directly sexual. But chills rolled down behind his shoulders, his back. He looked at Shit, then Dynamite. “I still got that paper you gave me back at the truck stop.”
“Good,” Dynamite said. “Hope you use it. Shit’d like that. So would I. It’d be nice to have a big strong feller like you givin’ us a hand. And it’s money — not a lot. But it’s better than nothin’. For the first three months, you get minimum. Not national minimum, either. Kyle Chamber of Commerce minimum: nine-fifty an hour. You keep it up for three months, and if it works out you’ll be on permanent salary. Then you’ll get the same as what Shit gets.”
“Yeah,” Shit said. “How much money am I makin’ now?”
“Twenty-seven. That’s assistant wages — but you stay on and you get cost-of-livin’ raises every eighteen months.”
“Hey,” Eric said. “That’s not bad.”
Looking intently, Shit dug a middle finger in an equatorially wide nostril, twisted it out, glanced at it, then sucked it. “They take your taxes out and send ’em in for you, and you don’t have to worry about none of that.” Again, Shit grinned — sheepishly at his thumb knuckles. “You know, half of what I’m talking here is bullshit.” Again looking at Eric, Shit lifted his butt a few inches — and farted, loudly. (Eric laughed. So did Dynamite.) “But the other half ain’t.”
At the brief smell, again Eric got an erection.
“Well, he won’t have to worry about that for a while — three months, anyway.” Dynamite said. “He may not like workin’ with us.”
“Oh.” Shit sounded disappointed. “Yeah. But I hope you do. Hey.” He glanced at Eric. “I pick out my boogers an’ eat them suckers. You do it, too. Huh?”
Eric blinked, surprised — not at somebody doing it so much as talking about it. He swallowed.
“I wouldn’t do it at the Lighthouse, though, where your mama works,” Shit went on, “or nothin’ like that.”
“That’s what I mean about rubbin’ folks noses in it.” Dynamite hauled on the wheel, while a sunlit patch moved over his thigh’s greyed and stained denim.
“Oh,” Eric said. He thought: I can’t say it. Then, with that hysteria again, he thought: I can’t not say it. “Yeah…Hey, I want…I always wanted a friend. I mean one who I…could do that with.” Something had propelled him beyond a limit where logic no longer obtained.
Dynamite drove as if he wasn’t listening — which, actually, imagining Mike, Eric found as hard to believe as he found the other.
Shit looked over, blinking his green eyes. “You do? Would you gimme some of yours? I’d suck your dick some more, like we was doin’ in the john. I was gonna do it some more back then. But I didn’t get a chance. You can eat mine, too, any time you wanna.”
“Fact is,” Dynamite added, “Shit talks about it, but he don’t do a whole lot of dick suckin’, either. He got to gee himself up for it.”
“I suck dick, if it’s somebody I like. You know that. I sucked on yours enough. I don’t like gettin’ teased about it afterward, that’s all — like them fuckin’ niggers in the Dump is always doin’.”
Still lookin’ ahead, Dynamite got a sly smile. “That must mean you don’t like me no more — ’cause you ain’t sucked mine in a while.”
“Sure, I like it,” Shit said. “But you jus’ like gettin’ fucked so much. And I love fuckin’ you. So we don’t hardly get to the suckin’ thing these days. That’s the only reason.” He looked at Eric. “But, yeah, for a hungry asshole like his, this pig fucker loves to get his dick sucked on, too. He fucks hisself with beer bottles, sometimes — you’ll see ’im. I think he’s happiest, though, when he’s the baloney in a goddam suckin’ and fuckin’ sandwich — like we was doin’ in the — ”
“Come on, Shit,” Dynamite said. “You don’t gotta go into all our business with ever’body you meet. Let him find out sumpin’ for hisself — ” He glanced over at Eric. “It don’t gotta be no beer bottle. You can use a couple of goddam fingers. That’s good enough to get me off. You do anything with this boy, and he gotta tell everybody in the goddam Dump about it.”