“What about Shit’s folks?” Eric asked. “Who’s his father…?”
“I believe, if I remember right, you already sucked ’im off,” Jay said, “back at Turpens.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dynamite. Shit’s Dynamite’s boy.”
“Huh? Dynamite — ? But I thought you said he was…You mean he’s not his nephew…? Dynamite, the guy whose ass Morgan — Shit — was fuckin’ when we came in, is…his dad?”
“Yep.” Bearded Jay nodded. “But you ain’t supposed to talk about that. Though God knows people around here do.” Frowning, he lowered his voice. “If anybody asks, you go on sayin’ you think Dynamite’s his uncle. Like everybody else. That’s how we do it. A fair number of local folk know. But that just mixes it up a little. I don’t know why, but people feel that’s better — even those what suspect somethin’ goin’ on. Besides — ” Jay stood up straighter, looking serious — “you don’t know nothin’ about them two foolin’ around with each other, anyway, do you?”
“Huh? Oh…oh, I see. Like goin’ to Turpens. Yeah…No. No, I don’t know nothin’ about that.”
“Good.”
“But — his own…dad? That’s awesome…! I don’t think I ever — What about his mama?” Eric was thinking of Barbara. “I mean, I know Shit…he’s black. They said his mother was colored — like my dad — yesterday. I mean…His eyes are green. And his skin’s the same color as mine, just about. I mean, his face looks like Dynamite’s, except his nose…and his hair — ’cause it’s yeller…or, I guess, brown. Tan — ”
“Mildred — that was her name. I don’t think either me or Dynamite ever knew for sure what her last name was. She was about half or a quarter black — so I guess Shit is, too. She run off six or seven months after Shit was born. The three of us — her, Dynamite, and me — used to whore down over in Turpens’ back lot. She come to the Harbor for about a year, a year-an’-a-half — she was twenty-five, maybe twenty-six. Me and Dynamite was just twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. A little older than Shit, now. She was around long enough for us both to fuck her a few times and decide we didn’t cotton to it. But we still kinda liked her, if you know what I mean. Till he came out, it was a toss-up whether the bastard was gonna be Dynamite’s or mine, ’cause we usually fucked her at the same time. She dropped Shit right there in spring — and took off with a Polack trucker she met in the parkin’ lot back out there on New Year’s Eve. By the fifth of January, she was gone — nobody done seen her since. Even while she was here, Dynamite — well, Dynamite and me, with a whole lotta help from Mex, once I hooked up with him — did more raisin’ of that little bastard than she did. I will say this, though — she breast fed him for four or five months, but once she got tired of that, she’d leave ’im with me or Dynamite for three or four days at a time. Takin’ care of that kid was what got Dynamite out of hustlin’ at the truck stop. Kyle helped, too. She could always make more than we could anyway, especially back when she was pregnant — for some reasons, straight guys seemed to like that. They’d pay extra for it. Her and Dynamite was never livin’ together or nothing like that. But she’d drop Morgan off and go to work. Only half the time she wouldn’t bother to pick ’im up. Hey, if I hadn’t been his daddy’s suck buddy since I was your age — ” again grinning, Jay pointed at the gap in his teeth with his sausage of a thumb — “I might think Shit was a mite excessive in his beatin’ off. But he comes by it honestly. Dynamite was always a ten-time-a-day feller hisself — ”
“I do it about that much.” Eric grinned. “Well, maybe…six or seven.”
“Good.” Jay snorted. “Then he won’t worry about you, neither. Looks like everybody wanted a taste of you — and everybody got one, too. They know not to hog you on your first visit. Kinda pass you around — truck stop manners.”
Gulls mewed overhead, then circled down around the dock, the lamppost, finally to fly off.
“Does your partner — Mex, really like that stuff? I mean you and guys…pissin’ in his mouth and all?”
“Fuckin’ loves it.” Jay looked across the dock where Mex had wandered and called out: “Doncha, you piss guzzlin’, asshole eatin’ spic? Get back over here!” Jay winked at Eric. “When he gets real turned on, yeah, he’ll eat my shit. Maybe we’ll let you come watch some day.”
Mex stood up, grinning, looked around the glittering waves, then turned to lumber, his thick legs slightly bowed, to where Jay stood at the dock head.
“I mean…how do you know he likes stuff like that?”
“’Cause we done slept rolled up in the same blankets for fifteen years now — ” again Jay dropped his big arm around Mex’s black jacketed shoulder — “my big smelly feet all up in his face and his big hard ones kickin’ around my beard all night…” Again he chuckled. “He likes the salt, too: you learn that about your partner. Besides, he tells me. You know, every day about an hour ’fore I swing out of bed, Mex gets a lip-lock on my pecker — and I let ’er run. That’s fuckin’ heaven. And that spic don’t spill a drop, neither. That’s the only reason I don’t stink like an ol’ pee pot, today. This damned spic here wipes the fuckin’ shit out my ass with his tongue and drinks my fuckin’ piss. Doncha, boy?” Again Jay gave Mex a one-armed hug.
Fleetingly, Eric thought of Frack pulling wide his black buttocks. Get yo’ face on in dere, now…cock beside his scrotum pendulating side to side like a trunk.
Grinning, Mex nodded.
“Hey — and I can call ’im any fuckin’ names I want to, too — in front of anyone I want. Don’t I, you shit-eatin’, wetback fuck-face? But you — ” Jay frowned at Eric — “say one bad word about ’im. Just one, I’m not kiddin’, less’n I say you can, and I’ll bust you in your fuckin’ head. You hear me? I call him names, see, to let him know he’s wanted — it makes ’im feel good. Let’s ’im know he’s got some real fuckin’ respect. ’Cause if you can’t let respect go sometimes, then it means you don’t have it to let go of in the first place. And I respect this cut-down cheesy motherfucker more than anyone in the goddam world — you understand me?”
“Un…yeah.” Eric nodded. “…I think so — ”
“Good. So you respect ’im too. Look here — ?” Again releasing Mex, Jay pulled out his denim shirt on one side and lifted it, to show a wedge of hair stuck flat over his lower belly above his broad belt — “That’s where Mex cum all over me before we got up to walk down to the boathouse this mornin’.” With one hand, he started unbuttoning the rest of it. “I ain’t gonna wash that off at all. I’m gonna wear it off. That’s what you call commitment. It’s a…gay pride thing.”
“Mmm…” Eric swallowed. Again, he’d begun to feel something in the conversation had moved over an edge that made him uncomfortable. Again, he tried to pull it back. “But you mean Shit and his…uncle really…really fuck around together in a public john? That’s…so awesome! I mean, with his own father — ”
“Uncle,” Jay corrected.
“Yeah — I meant uncle.”
Jay raised his palm to Mex’s pitted face. “Hey. Try some of this.” With Jay’s forefinger closing one of Mex’s nostril, then his thumb against the other, Mex snorted into Jay’s hand.
“See, he knows what to do. We learned that with Shit.” Jay grunted. “Here.” And the hard palm was against Eric’s mouth. Eric thrust out his tongue for the mucasoid and crusty slur. “That’s right, puppy. Me, Mex, and his uncle all done that for Shit, at least since he was a little feller; we don’t mind doin’ it for you, too. But you start blabberin’ to folks an’ we ain’t gonna give you no more.” Jay with his gap, Mex with his yellow-white teeth, both grinned at Eric. “It’s that salt thing, right? That’s good, ain’t it? That’s what Shit and the three other snot jockeys I knowed all done told me.” Suddenly the menace seemed gone. “Dynamite’ll give you his, once he gets to know you — and he’s sure you want it. Hey, you and Shit can trade that stuff back and forth all you like. I’ve tasted it, but I ain’t into scarfin’ it down like it was no major food group. But none of us don’t mind obligin’ you puppies.”