Chapter 5
During the next few days, yellow sheets of paper with the de Sade quote still crumpled on the black-and-white tile, he tried to resume the story about "Alex" and the unnamed boy, but the mood had been broken, the thread of the plot raveled and irreparable, gone forever. A feeling of frustration and isolation took over and he experimented, mentally, with solutions) Go into town, get plastered at some crummy bar; inflict inane intellectual conversation on himself at the home of one of his artisan friends bored by their ding dong pot fantasies; pick, up some Spanish-American kid trying to forget Jimby, suck the kid's cock until insensible; cut out and fuck the famous trial?
He rode Tazel several times, constantly searching for another rider on another horse, even went to the hilltop meadow. Grass had dried to a brittle carpet with colder November weather, the wild flowers vanished. As if this scene, like others in his head, was a weed hallucination or a peyote phantom, he began to wonder if he'd actually had sex with the boy in this stark place. When had it happened? And whenever he drove the Ford past the Maes' houses, instinctively he glanced at the portal, but he never saw that slim, boyish figure.
Frustration building to a crushing crescendo, the only answer seemed to be the peyote, and the dull excitation of his hand. One day, he jerked off five times until, exhausted and bombed out of his skull, he fell onto the rumpled bed, slept for twenty-four hours.
The following late afternoon, after a breakfast that had him vomiting, and a stomach which gave him fits, he decided to call Caruthers, tell the lawyer he was going back to California. He shuffled as far as the wall, and leaned against the phone, gasping with the effort. With the change of weather, the trailer was cooler and he shivered, glanced out the window at a pewter-gray sky, clouds swarming from plains far to the east. As he lifted the phone, heavy in his hand, he heard a soft knock on the screen.
"Who's that?" he asked listlessly.
The screen door opened; Scott Michaels stepped into the room.
Replacing the phone on its hook, Evan smiled, ambled to the frig, took out a beer, used the opener, handed the can to him, sat wearily at the table. "Okay. What new threat you bringing from the Maes?" He glanced at pale, freckled skin. "Before you spill it, let me tell you something. I'm splitting. Go tell those sonsovbitches they can have their Goddamn land and welcome to it!"
The red-haired man stared at him, raised the can, drank deeply, licked foam from his lips. "Why, Evan?"
"Shit!" he exploded angrily. "What the fuck difference does it make why? I'm pissed-off, finished!"
Scott sat on the opposite side of the table, drew a cigarette from his shirt pocket, lighted it with his gold Ronson. "I told you, Evan, I like you, want you and me to be friends. And I don't have many friends in this town."
Evan sighed. "Okay," he muttered rather unnerved by this humble appeal. He thought. He's the only decent human in the whole bunch! and he suddenly remembered Scott's telling him about his wife inheriting the vast Maes' properties. "Appreciate your offer but, under the circumstances, why try to persuade me to remain? Doesn't make any sense."
The blue eyes were astonished. "I don't understand."
"I'm being a shit and admit it, Scott." He tried grinning, added, "Excuse my cynicism, but you gotta agree these past weeks have not been conducive to an optimistic view, right? Those two prick bullies have finally scared me off."
"You shouldn't let them do that."
"Why the fuck not?"
"If you do, it will give Hilario -- and Rosabel -- more reason for continuing their bloody fight against Anglos. Do you want the Spanish-Americans to run every Anglo out of New Mexico?"
"I used to believe in causes, but no longer. To hell with the bloody battle and to hell with Spanish-Americans."
Scott's warm hand reached across the table, touched his. "Please don't give it to them, please don't."
The red-haired man was almost in tears and Evan found it embarrassing but he muttered, "Okay," held the hand firmly, as he thought. This guy needs someone. What can I offer, for chrissakes, aside from the obvious? No sweat there -- sex with him would be nice and gentle. Is that what I want -- someone to be gentle? He said, "If I stay, the harassment, the shots in the dark, all the shit will continue. Those two, Hilario and Valentine, won't give up, and you know it."
"No, they won't stop." The blue eyes stared into his. "Antonia and I... well you see, Rosabel has never let me be part of the family, because I'm an Anglo. Beneath Antonia's easy-going exterior she has a very determined nature, much like her mother's, and she always gets what she wants, do you see? Otherwise, she and I would never have been able to marry, and her brothers' hatred of me began when they suspected their sister planned to give ownership of the land to me after Nemecio and Rosabel die. I've been an object of their harassment and their vengeance just as you are. We must stick together, Evan."
"And this is why you don't want me to leave?"
"Partly, and because I want you and me to be friends." Scott raised the beer can to his lips, drank, then turned around to switch on the small radio on the counter behind him as he'd done the other time they sat talking at the table. He made the same remark as music swelled loudly in the room. "Don't be frightened but someone might be listening outside." A guitar and tenor voice sang.
Evan stood up shakily as peyote from the night before whirled in his head, shuffled to the screen door. The sky had blackened and low clouds obscured the pinon trees. "Nobody out there. Think those are snow clouds?"
Standing beside him, Scott said, "This time of year it's possible in New Mexico." The arm around Evan's shoulders quivered slightly. "Do you mind me doing this?"
Pale, freckled skin, curly reddish hair, a pleasant breath, came in close to Evan's face; warm lips touched his briefly, then, as he opened them, pressed more firmly. The kiss was tender and they clung to each other. As Evan began to move slowly towards the bedroom and rumpled bed, his arms still around the big man, their mouths still clamped together, Scott murmured, "Here... not the bed, I want you here."
Fingers moved over Evan's ragged Levi's, caressed the large bulge, fumbled with his fly. The red-haired man panted hoarsely as Evan lowered the fly to permit the lingers to touch warm skin, lift it from the opening, clamp roughly over the cock, stiff and erect now, as lips still pressed to his murmured, "I need to, I need you..."
The Levi's slid to the trailer floor and Scott sank on his knees, arms wound around Evan's hips, face buried in the cock and pubic hair. Evan fondled the long red hair on that head, stroked it back from a sweaty forehead as a feeling of gentleness surged through him, a feeling he'd rarely experienced. Sex had been always violently brutal in the past, even with Jimby whom he thought he loved, a kind of battle between two panting bodies for possession of each other. A hot mouth opened over the cock, slipped, wet with saliva, and a tongue laved it. Scott's pale-blue eyes stared up at him as he permitted the cock to slide from his lips. "Christ, Evan, I've wanted to do this ever since I first saw you."
He leaned, kissed the shaggy reddish-brown hair, and the mouth returned to suck again as Scott jerked his body in very close. Dropping slowly to his knees, cock still held in that warm mouth, Evan curled over to place his head between Scott's legs, the cord fabric of the man's pants rough on his cheek. A hard object moved under the material with a faint odor of horses, and, opening the zipper, the large, hot prick sprang from the cords. He sucked it, its taste was vigorously male, and, sighing, he felt Scott's body quiver, heard his muttered voice, "Evan, Jesus, Evan..."
The smell of that cock in his nose, the bitter taste of it, stimulated him to open his lips over a hairy sac and large balls, to suck rapidly, Scott still muttering around the cock in his throat. The big man's body arched upward, knees springing apart and the enormous sausage of cockflesh shoved further in Evan's mouth. Its size was the largest he'd ever sucked, swelled to an even bigger mass, its bloated head filling him and stretching his lips painfully. He couldn't breathe, a furry pad of reddish pubes clogging his nostrils, yet exciting. Shoving the body away from his face, he stared at that huge prick, a saliva-slick cockhead near his eyes, pearly drops of pre-coital fluid dripping from it. A seminal cord bulged from an underbelly covered with tendrils of damp hair to the enlarged, moistly pink head, and tiny blue veins threaded the pale white skin of the cockshaft. This object was powerfully masculine, the "symbol" of his manuscript: Male fertility, the pole of something upon which to engorge oneself. Tasting again the raunchy, bitterly virile flavor of the cock, he plunged it back in his mouth.
Warm lips sucking him, a hot tongue licking him sent tremors through every muscle and combined with the feeling of that immense, throbbing cock filling him, or so it seemed to do as he tried to swallow it. He quivered on the floor, legs jerking back and forth, his belly heaving, his mouth drooling saliva. This must be, he thought, the most erotic sex act he'd ever performed, regardless of passion or pain or any other sensation he'd found necessary in the past. There was enough masculine, sensual power in the huge cock, those hairy balls touching his forehead, to satisfy him, which was surprising. He attempted to brutally ram his midsection forward, to bury his cock deeper in those sucking lips, tried to impose pain on the red-haired man but drew back, suddenly, as his own cock slid wetly, flopped on Scott's chin.
"Would you like me better if I'm more brutal? Is that what you want?" Scott whispered in a low voice.
Is pain and violence just a pattern? Why is it necessary to me? he wondered as, almost fiercely, and as if to refute the thought, he gripped the huge prick with both hands, rammed it deep in his mouth, gulping until it once more spread his ups wide. And now, they both moved silently in the rhythms of love, except for the sound of slobbery lips on flesh, a swishing noise of naked bodies squirming an the black-and-white tile floor.
He caressed and squeezed cheeks of a naked ass as Scott's body throbbed against his face, the heavy cock becoming larger as he licked it, felt a mouth suck his balls and lips slip on his underbelly and seminal cord. That raunchy, hot leathery, horse-smell sent his mind whirling with erotic pleasure as violent and brutal as the pleasure he thought he needed. The sensations caused by the wet mouth on his cock were sending him into ecstasies he didn't think possible. Using every effort and skill he knew to satisfy this man, Evan slid the large dick from his lips, and licked it from its hairy base to the tip of its slimy head with his tongue, hearing Scott moan as a face plunged between his legs and a mouth engulfed his spasming cock once more.
A thick tongue, laying the expanded head of his cock, wrapping down the shaft and curling about its base, slid up to stroke quivering skin of the head again. Evan jerked off the floor, hips tensed and straining, fell back. Knees clamped hard to the sweating face in his groin, he rammed his cock deeper in that wet throat, heard gurgling noises, moans of hot pleasure, and lips enclosing it held it like warm vise as he fucked them.
He opened his eyes, stared at an enormous shaft of dusky skin protruding from his lips, curly reddish hairs, the heavy balls squirming in a crinkled sac as Scott's legs sprang apart; saw the joining of powerfully muscled legs to a groin, paler skin filmed with sweat, tendrils of hair clinging damply to a brown pucker. The cockshaft, jerked from his lips with Scott's hips rearing up, slid out until its bulbous, slimy-red head appeared oozing opaque drops of pre-coital fluid. Eagerly, Evan extended his tongue, wrapped it around the cock, slid his lips back over it, heard loud grunts of pleasure.
Dazzling and tantalizing stimulation, like a hot river, grew in his belly, with the sucking mouth on his cock, and opening his throat muscles wide, he swallowed Scott's prick whole to its pubes, felt engorged, filled. His own balls contracting to his underbelly, pressed painfully to his full seminal cord, he jerked knees apart, buried his face between humid thighs and wiry pubic hair, felt his semen rise in his cockshaft as if flame shot from his balls to the end of his dick. He gulped around the immense rod splitting his lips, waited as if suspended between Heaven and hell, gasped as a fountain rose, clamped the saliva-drenched cock hard.
The cock in Evan's lips jerked on the roof of his mouth, overflowing with hot come. He swallowed greedily and, at the same moment, his own ejaculating sent shivers over him. The interior of the trailer had grown cold.
Scott's eyes stared down at him, his lips smiling. The lips touched his face, then the man murmured, "Na need for us to pretend love, Evan, but I'll always remember how gentle you were." He crawled to his knees, got to his feet, bent forward to raise the cord pants. Evan knelt, pressed his lips to the hairy, dangling balls and cheeks of a muscular ass; as he did, he heard an odd scraping noise on the trailer steps outside and, rather annoyed by this interruption, jerked his head around to stare at the screen.
Striding to the door as he fastened the cords at his waist, Scott pushed the screen open, sniffed the air. "Snow," he muttered. The rectangle of the door was black; in the tar distance, stars glittered.
Evan walked to him, placed his arm around the red haired man's shoulders. "Was there anyone out there?" then, laughing, he added, "Hell, who'd be listening, for chrissakes?" Though he tried to make a joke of the situation, he knew, somehow, there had been someone outside the trailer a moment before. Nemecio? Rosabel? Hilario?
Pale-blue eyes stared at him for a moment, then Scott muttered, "You stay in here. I'll go out there, see who it was," and he went down the steps silently, disappeared around the back of the trailer.
He stood for a moment, listening, heard the footsteps crunch on dry earth, then Evan found the ragged Levi's, got into them and his moccasins, stood by the table staring down. The gold Ronson lighter was stilt there with the two empty beer cans.
As he thought about Scott, vaguely aware of a growing affection for this man, the sound of a rifle shot seemed to burst his eardrums and, whirling, he raced for the screen door. The blast reverberating in his head, he stared wildly into shadows each side of the trailer, then ran to the rutted road that led to the Maes' houses. As he saw the sprawled shape, a darker patch of shadow in the road, he stopped running, walked more slowly.
Scott Michaels' body lay on its back, legs spread-eagled. Hairs on the back of Evan's neck rose as he bent down. Oh, Jesus! The shot had been fired at close range. What was left of Scott's head was a bloody mass of mangled bone and flesh. Kneeling, he fumbled for a hand, gripped it for a pulse beat held his breath. There was no pulse. Dropping the hand, he got to his feet stared around him. From the Maes' houses he heard the faint rhythms of Spanish music and someone laughed. Overhead, the New Mexican sky was the same nebulous cloud of milky stars and skudding clouds as it had been the night he'd walked to those houses. Who killed him? Whoever was listening outside the trailer? and he shivered. On the county road, a car roared past at high speed, careened around a corner, vanished. Aside from this remote sound, the silence around him was complete, as if he stood there alone under these stars, that threatening, cavernous sky, the last living human in a void.
Did one of those sonsovbitches kill Scott to shut his mouth? Had someone overheard him offer to testify at the trial? and he thought, Run, oh Christ, run like hell! As he turned to walk quickly back to the trailer, a tall shadow stepped from darker shadows of the pinon trees towards him! Hilario's voice snarled, "Don't move, you damn pervert! I'll plug your fucking balls!" Evan froze. The Spanish-American ambled to him, rifle pointed, shouted, "Okay, Val, bring the truck!"
He wondered how he'd not noticed the truck further up the road, but knew with the horror of finding Scott's mangled body he'd have noticed nothing else. The car backed rapidly, swerved to a stop. Hilario prodded him with the rifle. "Get in there."
"You killed him." As he glanced at two faces in reflected light from the dashboard, he saw Hilario frown. "Shut up!" the man snarled. "We ain't talkin' about the dude and he don't matter, anyways. I didn't shoot the bastard!" Gleaming, black eyes stared into his, then shifted to Valentine behind the steering wheel. "The Pecos cabin, like I said."
Evan shivered, said, "You must be more stupid than I thought Hilario. You can't kill me and get away with it. What's the point of this trip?"
The rifle butt was jammed into his ribs. "The point of this trip is to make you sign a paper admitting you stole the land you claim is yours, deed it to me, okay, Anglo?"
"Now I know you murdered your brother-in-law, what wilt you tell Rosabel and old Nemecio? What will you tell Jimby?"
"Lay off that kid!" and the rifle was rammed hard again. "And, Goddamnit, I said I didn't shoot him!" The black eyes were now puzzled as if trying to solve a difficult problem, then Hilario added, sullenly, "I don't know who killed the bastard and care less, see?" He was thoughtful for a moment, his black eyes shifting quickly from one window to the other. "One thing I can tell you, you pervert Anglo, he wasn't shot with no rifle. A shotgun blew his fucking head off!"
As the truck swerved off the county road onto a four-lane highway, Valentine muttered, "Antonia?"
"Why would she kill him?" his brother said in a surprised voice; his bravado and boastful arrogance seemed to have drained from him. "Why would she?" he whispered.
In the dim, reflected light Valentine's features were very pale. "Mama?"
"You shut up!" Hilario stormed, "I oughta knock your Goddamn head off for saying stuff like that! Goddamnit, you drive and keep your yap shut!" Turning his anger on Evan, he slammed the rifle butt into his forehead; the road, bright tunnel of light, dimmed before his eyes, faded slowly away as Evan slid forward.
"Jesus, Holy Mother!" Valentine moaned, "now you've done it!" The truck swerved dangerously near a deep ditch and, grabbing the wheel, Hilario shouted, "Okay, I'm doing the driving from now on, get your ass over here, you weak-assed bastard!"
As Valentine shifted his body across the transmission and Evan's slack knees, Evan mumbled, lapsed into silence. Valentine grabbed his wrists, began rubbing them frantically as he muttered, "If he dies, Hil, you and me are up shit creek."
Images behind Evan's closed eyes move and swarm, reshape from swirling masses of opaque gauze. This place is a pleasant place. In the distance, vague outlines in a milky haze, he sees figures move, wonders if they might be angels, this place Heaven, and his interior systems laugh at this thought, his subconscious startled by his laughter.
Now, he sees there are three figures moving over mossy banks of flowers towards him. One is Alex, the hero of his manuscript and his imaginary self just as he'd described on the typewriter -- muscularly naked, tail, with a jet-black head of curly hair, the same jet fuzzing a broad stretch of shoulders, a mound of the same glittering jet at a crotch and spectacularly large, heavy-hanging cock which dangles as he moves. The figure is now clear in his vision and his subconscious sighs.
The second figure, the nameless boy of the manuscript is, also, exactly as he'd described -- lithe, slenderly muscular, deltoids capping shoulders, a manly chest formation, blond scraggly hair falling forward over a pale forehead, that loose-limbed walk like a rangy cowboy, the same sensuous blue eyes. The boy's cock, although not large, is erect as it flaps on each thigh as he glides, edges of his body outlined by blue light and, mentally, Evan's subconscious sighs once more. The third figure is Jimby.
There seems to be no language or means of communication and no necessity for any of these formalities in this strange place. The three glowing figures merely signal to him soundlessly and, he understands instantly. They sit on a mossy slope which, in some old fashion, changes to coarse grasses and dry flowers of another place three pairs of eyes, seeming to fire his innards as they stare at him, say mutely: You are wrong... we are not what you interpret us to be... we do not need love because there is no such thing in the first place! Pain and spiritual agony are everything. Believe in us and we will make you famous! We shall teach you to endure pain which will send you into sublime ecstasies. Sex should be used for release of body fluids, permit one to exude all evil and be cleansed. Why should there be more?
Arms, like slippery tentacles, entwine him, pull him down; a hot, visceral heat seems to surround him. Staring at broad bands of leather which bind hint flesh puffing around the straps painfully, his body tenses, expectant, as furry wet tongues lick, send warm shivers through him, burrow into his asshole, and teeth gnaw his erect cockflesh. As he opens lips to shout, not from pain but joy, a mammoth cock is rammed in his mouth, fetid, pungent-smelling, head slimed with come. Although his eyes seem to be closed, he sees it clearly -- the inflamed head a giant red knob, drops of gism running down the cockshaft like a milky fountain, tiny blue worms which slither in and out of the skin. He laps at the gism, recoils with the sting on his tongue and, at the same instant, a second huge cockshaft, slick with jelly, plugs his rectum; he is blocked, orally and anally, from an outside world, whatever that "world" might be. As if he were an undulating, amorphous mound of self-contained matter, unable to communicate either agony or joy, he ties there blubbering, as he oozes from every pore.
The enormous, hard flesh plugging his ass rams brutally, the cock spreading his lips overflows, shooting a wet blob of sperm into a clamped throat and he swallows, gurgling and puking, chokes on his own vomit. His ass is now sticky with come, which dribbles between his legs, burns his skin. As he tries to open his mouth wider for a soundless scream, fingers tear his flesh, clutch his balls; ripping the sac. He arches his body back, stares above him.
The third figure -- is it Jimby? -- standing over him seems to have enlarged, became monstrous, to fill space. In his hand he holds a coil of leather, raises it. The strand crackles, descends to cut his flesh, is lifted, brought down once more and his body seems to break in two pieces. The whip, crackling again, smashes onto his bloody skin and tensed erection, causing him to writhe with the pain and sensations flooding him; he rolls, legs spread wide, cock arching from his streaked stomach, exposes all of his nakedness to receive the punishment.
Jimby squats beside him, claws at the hard-on now spurting ruby blood and it splatters his face. The mouths of the other bodies gnaw his ass, chew his pucker, pain in his stomach is intense; he can't breath as hot needles pierce his erect nipples. Squirming ecstatically, he wallows in a thick, bloody fluid, seems to swoon, but hears a voice speak for the first time in this mysterious place.
"He ain't dead!" Hilario's voice snarled as he swerved the truck into another road. "Christ, are you stupid."
Very faintly, Evan heard a second voice say, "Okay, Hil, better thank the Blessed Virgin he isn't. Now you've had your fun, take him back."
And he wonders. Back where?
With the question in his mind, he seemed to be in the trailer, lay supine on the black-and-white tiles. Hilario stood over him, a foot crushing his chest, the symbol of virile macho mastery.
And, as before, he quivered with anticipation, wondered what would happen to him now, stared up at black eyes, that mammoth wet cock pointing down, the hairy sac and heavy balls, and, as before, the rough voice floated down.
"I ain't gonna kill you, just make you understand who's bass. You Anglos claim you got more brains than we Spanish-Americans right? So you oughta know two guys can't be king of the hill at the same time." Hilario laughed, leaned over, hot breath on his cheek.
Hot breath and black staring eyes came closer as the naked body leaned further, a large hairy sac and heavily swaying balls hung between massive thighs, the long length of warm cock dangling. "Let me tell you somethin', and, for a dummy like me, it may be a surprise. I don't hate you. Why the fuck should I? I ain't like Mama and her Goddamn Entidad, all that shit you dig? You don't mean nothing? But my land... my people's land... means everything!"
Squatting beside him, the thick fleshy cock like a dusky-brown snake on the tiles, Hilario touched his belly, ran the palm of his hand to damp pubes.
"By God, you Anglos are dumb sonsovbitches. You and me, Lambert, could'a been good buddies, but your Goddamn superiority wouldn't let you." The black eyes staring at him seemed to change to an admiring took as the large, hairy hand grabbed his cock lolling limp on his belly, raised it in a fist.
"I guess I could'a even loved you, man." Hilario's voice was puzzled, surprised; then, laughing, he added, "But I guess you think you're too good for a Spanish-American, don't you?"
The fist clamped more roughly, closed like a steel vise. He quivered, tried to speak, eyes rolling, wanted to tell him, "No, I'm not too good... no, I'm not superior... yes, I do love you," but his throat, clogged with saliva, would not permit him to utter a sound.
Blood congealed in the head of his cock, enlarged the swollen shaft, he felt his balls react to the exciting pain, slide snugly to his underbelly, pause as if waiting breathlessly to discharge pent-up sperm gathered there. His need for a complete and powerful ejaculation forced him to grip the hand on his cock, jerk it up and down furiously, legs sprung apart, lips drooling. He closed his eyes to savor the erotic moment, renew his wild imaginings, hoped Hilario would hit him, make him submit to some bestial act. He would do anything!
As agony returned more familiar, more exciting, more needed than the oddly affectionate words Hilario had spoken, the hate-love, master-slave syndrome taking over, he sat up, stared into black eyes close to his face, shouted, "Step on me... oh, God...! Shut up and just step on me!"