“Hey,” Eric said, “has Dynamite still got Al’s rubber?”
“Huh?” Shit asked. “Naw. Soon as we got home, I made him let me wear it. He helped me jerk off in it — it was kinda a mess. But it was the kind of mess I like. Then we took it across and gave it to Whiteboy, and let him chew on it awhile. Maybe we shoulda saved it and give it back to — ”
“Naw,” Eric said. “Naw. That’s okay.”
“Every once and a while, if a black guy comes along with a white boyfriend, Kyle’ll let ’em stay here, if they want — like me and Dynamite, or Black Bull and Whiteboy. But basically, it’s for black guys. Anyway, then we went home to bed.” Eric glanced down to see Shit had pushed his free hand into his own fly. “You know I busted the zipper on my pants about two months back: see, I’m tryin’ to find out how long it takes somebody besides fuckin’ Dynamite to notice. It’s like my experiment. But every once in a while my dick falls out. All by itself. Really.” Then, deliberately, he pulled himself free — it was three-quarters hard and slanted forward. “Like that.” He grinned. “But if he saw that, he’d think I did it on purpose.” Turning his head, Shit brushed Eric’s ear with his nose (only it was wet. Shit had licked him! Eric found himself with chills — and almost sneezed) to call back to Dynamite: “So what you wanna do with this guy?” He gave Eric another hug. Eric almost stumbled.
Catching up behind them in the hot sun, Dynamite said, “Come on, now, Shit! I told you. Put it away, till we get inside.” He’d shrugged off his shirt, hooked the soiled collar on one finger, and carried it back over a hairy shoulder.
“Why?” Shit grinned. “Ain’t nobody gonna see it but Black Bull — or Whiteboy.” He grinned at Eric: “Black Bull used to suck my dick when I was a little baby. That was when he was baby-sittin’ for me. ’Cause Dynamite tol’ him that’s how we did it — Mex an’ him.” He looked over at his dad. “That’s how they could always get me to stop cryin’ when I was a baby. Ain’t that right?”
“Yep,” Dynamite said. “It still makes him pretty happy.”
With pines behind it and fern banks beside it, the cabin sat a few yards up the slope. A single story with a flat roof, it was the same dark creosote as the boards inside Eric’s porch room at his mom’s. The roof extended to the front and out on one side. Looking at the blocky solidity, Eric thought: It’s like my porch room at Barb’s, turned inside out and blown up even bigger — more than twice the size of his mother’s entire trailer. Some chairs and cartons and — well — just junk stood on the roofed deck. A couple of windows and doors were on each wall.
They walked up the steps.
In the kitchen, Dynamite flung the empty peanut bag, which he’d carried crumpled in his fist, down in a full metal trash can just inside, its edges covered with a black plastic liner. (It was funny: so much stuff leaned against the walls and in the corners, inside it looked smaller than Barb’s!) Dynamite lay his shirt over the cluttered kitchen table’s edge, turned, fell into a chair, and leaned over to untie one work shoe, then the other. “You guys put that stuff in the vegetable bin in the bottom of the refrigerator. Don’t leave the corn out. You can set the onions and the potatoes on the table — if you can find room.” He glanced, frowned at the open toolbox and the stack of plates and the pile of wood. “Or on the floor right down there. Just don’t forget ’em.”
“Come on,” Shit said, taking one of the shopping bags from Eric. He opened the refrigerator door.
Sitting up, with the toe of one shoe Dynamite pushed off his other. Then, with his sock toe, he pushed off the first — which fell over on its side. (Every window in the room had a lot of stuff in front of it.) Something like curtains hung in front of the blinds in three of them: red, green, yellow, orange, and blue towels, threaded onto curtain rods. Eric grinned — it was colorful…
Shit had just closed the refrigerator and stood up, his hip and arm pressing into Eric — there was hardly room for all three to stand — when a black dog rushed from around a carton on the floor and began to jump up on Shit, equally eager to nose between his hand and lap. Without releasing Eric, Shit said, “Hey there, Tom. Well, hello, there! Uncle Tom — this is our new friend.” Bending over and pulling Eric with him, Shit rubbed the dog’s head with one hand, gripped his lower jaw and shook, so that the ears flapped, then rubbed the black shoulders. “Hey — this here is Eric. That’s a good dog — that’s a real good dog. Yeah, Eric, this here is Uncle Tom. Tom, this is Eric…You wanna see this sonofabitch hump my leg?” Tom’s tail beat one of the empty bags, knocking it over, where it roared under one of Shit’s sneakers as he stepped around.
“Jesus, Shit…!” Eric laughed. “All you like is nasty stuff!”
Grinning, Shit licked Eric’s nose, then ran his tongue up Eric’s right nostril. Pulling his tongue back in his mouth, he leaned away. “Un-huh. Yeah. Damn — it tastes as good as mine. I was wonderin’ about that all this morning.” On the floor, the dog waited, eager, expectant. “Come on…let’s go to bed.” He nodded over to where his father had moved a piece of board with a metal housing for a motor bolted to one end from off the sink and was washing his hands.
Eric tightened his own grip around Shit’s shoulder.
Two inches taller than Eric, Shit sort of shrugged, and a moment later, Eric realized, was squirming a little, as though in Eric’s grasp he couldn’t think that well. “Um…we wanted, you know, for you to be, um, so…” An unfocused smile filled Shit’s face, that made Eric warmly happy and which, despite this bawdiness, after seconds he recognized as embarrassment! “We was real anxious for you to be — ” Shit shrugged, but within the grip, not to get out of it. “You know, I mean — be okay, I guess…so, like…”
Standing up and moving to the sink, Dynamite glanced at Eric, then turned, shrugged, and made lean muscles, the thinner skin on the inner sides of his arms run with veins, faintly blue through his tan. He yawned and stretched. “We wanted you to like us.” Dynamite spoke it with the emotional sureness Shit had lacked. “So you’d wanna come back. Like Shit told you, it’s a real big bed and you guys can do what you want in it. It ain’t gonna bother me.” As they walked into the back room, Eric looked down at Dynamite’s feet — he’d stripped his socks off. Between his broad big toe and the toe over was a line of black at least a quarter inch wide. Black lines ran between the others, too.
Amber flypaper strips spiraled down from three of the bedroom’s corners. A large unmade bed, its covers pushed down to the foot, almost filled the room. Shit pointed to a smaller, made-up bed by the wall, covered with a green blanket. Boxes and what looked like a year’s junk, including a broken oar and part of an outboard motor sat on it. “That’s my bed,” Shit said. “We can use it if you want, but we’d have to clean it off first. Most of the time, though, I bunk in with my dad, unless I’m sick or got a cold or something. His is bigger and more comfortable. And he’s warm.”