Ridge Road, Chapter 4 · Salina

Hank took the Salina exit at twenty to two and drove right past the Love’s without slowing down.

Sam watched it go by in the mirror. They went on up the frontage road to the north end of town, where the asphalt was patched and the signs were faded, and turned into the gravel lot behind a diner called the Sunflower. A gas pump stood by itself near the road with a plastic bag tied over the handle. At the side of the building a small awning shaded a door, and a hand-lettered card in the window said BUS.

Hank parked the Pete along the back fence, nose out, shut her down, and pulled the key. The cab ticked. The wind came across a field of cut soybeans and moved the dust on the hood.

“Two-fifteen,” Hank said. “That’s thirty-five minutes.”

“I know. It’s on your visor.”

“I figured you’d found it.” He looked straight ahead through the windshield, both hands still on the wheel. “Walt tell you to?”

“He texted me to look. He said not to make a thing of it.” Sam turned in the seat. His mouth was dry. “So I’m not making a thing of it. I’m making a lot of coffee, in my head, and I’m sitting here.”

The corner of Hank’s mouth twitched and went flat again. He took his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket, looked at them, and put them back.

“Nine years ago, about this time of year,” he said, “we were leaving Denver with a load, Walt driving, and it had snowed early. He stepped down off the trailer at the Aurora yard to put chains on and his knee went out from under him. You could hear it. The doctor in Denver told him he was done climbing in and out of a cab twelve hours a day, that if he kept it up he’d be walking with a cane by sixty. We drove back anyway. He wouldn’t fly and I wouldn’t let him drive. He lay in the bunk with a bag of ice from Burger King and told me the yard in Tulsa had two jobs open, dispatch and the gate, and that he’d take dispatch if I’d take the gate.”

“You,” Sam said. “At the gate.”

“That’s about what I said.” Hank’s voice stayed flat. “I’d had my own truck eleven years by then. The truck was paid for, and I couldn’t sit at a gate watching other men drive out. I told him I couldn’t. I told him he ought to take the job, and he did, and I never once said the rest.”

“What’s the rest?”

“That I wanted him to stay.” Hank took one hand off the wheel and laid it on his thigh. “I couldn’t ask a man with a ruined knee to keep riding. And I couldn’t come off the road. So I did nothing, and he waited for me to do something, and we pulled into this lot that morning with him sitting up front and his bag between his boots. The bus didn’t go until two-fifteen, so we sat right here for hours. He said he’d take it the last stretch because his knee was killing him and he wanted to lie flat. That was all he said. When it came in, I carried his bag to the door.”

Sam looked at the little awning, the card in the window.

“And then you kissed him.”

“I kissed him.” He said it to the soybeans. “First time in eleven years. It was the wrong time to start.”

“Hank.”

“Let me finish.” He sounded tired and not unkind. “Walt’s in that window every morning when I pull into the yard. Nine years. He lifts his cup at me and I lift two fingers back. We’ve never said another word about it. Some of that’s on him. Most of it’s mine.”

The wind rocked the truck a little. A pickup went by on the frontage road with a dog sitting up in the bed.

“So that’s what you tell them,” Sam said.

“That’s what I tell them. Every co-driver, on the way back. I park here and I tell them the whole thing, and I say I won’t ask you to stay. The bus goes at two-fifteen. I’ll carry your bag to the door.” Hank rubbed his beard with the flat of his hand. “I figured if I laid it out that plain and they stayed anyway, they’d be staying for the right reason. Nobody could say I’d trapped them into it on a feeling.”

“And two of them took the bus.”

“One said he didn’t want to be second to a man in a window. The other said I was still in love with Walt and didn’t have the sense to go get him, and he was right on both counts.” Hank turned his head and finally looked at him. “The third one stayed a month and quit anyway. He wasn’t wrong either.”

Sam sat there for a while with his knees pressed together and his hands between them. Part of him wanted to be furious, and he went looking for it and couldn’t find any. Walt had said it on the phone, almost word for word: he sets you a test and watches, because he can’t make himself ask.

“I get why you waited to tell me before,” he said at last. “You said you did it the other way once. You took one of them to bed first.”

“The one I didn’t like.” Hank’s jaw moved. “He heard the story after, and he felt used, and he had every reason. I wasn’t going to do that to you.”

“But you told me before it counted.” Sam’s own voice surprised him, steadier than he’d expected. “So I’m going to ask you something. Do you want me to take that bus?”

Hank didn’t answer.

“I’m asking,” Sam said. “You don’t have to, that’s your whole rule. I’ll ask. Do you want me on that two-fifteen?”

“No.”

It came out of Hank very quietly, like something he’d been carrying so long that he’d forgotten how it weighed. He looked down at his hand on his thigh.

“I want you in the truck,” he said. “I want you in the passenger seat tomorrow, and the day after, and I want to watch you learn the Eisenhower tunnel and get scared of it. That’s the whole thing. I just don’t know how to put it in a form where you can say no.”

“You can put it in the form where I say yes.”

Hank barked a laugh, short and astonished. It shook his belly. He wiped his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, quickly.

---

A woman in an apron came out the side door of the diner with a trash bag and stopped when she saw the Peterbilt. She was sixty or so, with her glasses on a chain, and she looked at the truck for a long moment, then at the two shapes in the cab. She lifted her hand to Hank, once. Hank lifted two fingers off the wheel.

“Dolores,” he said. “She’s been working that counter since before I started coming. She’s watched me sit in this lot with four different men. She brought Walt a slice of pie that day and he couldn’t eat it.”

“Does she know?”

“She knows what everybody in a diner knows and doesn’t say.” Hank watched her go back in. “She’s never once asked me where he went.”

The bus came in at two-twelve, a silver Greyhound with a dented fender and a tired driver. It sighed to a stop at the side door. Three people got off, a woman with a suitcase and two soldiers with duffels, and they stood there blinking in the light. Two people got on. A man in a tan jacket carried a plastic bag of something to the step and handed it to the driver, who laughed.

Neither of them said a word. Sam watched the doors close. He felt Hank’s hand beside his on the seat between them, not touching, a few inches away, rigid, the fingers spread flat as if he were pressing on something that wanted to get up.

At two-fifteen the bus pulled out, past the diner, around the gas pump, onto the road toward Wichita, and was gone.

Hank’s hand was shaking again. Sam put his own on top of it.

“That’s the one you carried the bag to,” he said.

“That’s it.”

“I’m still here.”

“I see that.” Hank turned his hand over under Sam’s and closed it around his fingers. “Sam. Stay. On the truck. With me.” The words came out in pieces, each one set down separately, like freight. “That’s the first time I’ve said it to anybody. You can tell Walt.”

Sam’s eyes filled all at once and he laughed at himself. “I’m going to tell him. I’m going to text him right now.”

“After.”

“After what?”

“You asked me in Colorado.” Hank’s voice had changed. It went lower, and there was a rasp in it that Sam felt in the pit of his stomach. “I told you to ask me in Kansas. This is Kansas.”

Sam’s heart gave a hard, clumsy beat. “We’re in Kansas.”

“We are. Say it, if you want it. I’ll hear every word.”

“I want you to fuck me.” It came out in a rush, and he didn’t stop it. “I’ve never had that, not once, not with anybody, and I’ve been thinking about it since the shower in Hays. I want you inside me. I want it to be you, and I want it now, and I want to know it’s real.”

Hank closed his eyes for a second.

“You’ll tell me if it hurts.”

“I’ll tell you.”

“And if you want me to stop, I stop. Doesn’t matter where I am.”

“I know. I’m saying yes.” Sam swallowed. “Yes, Hank.”

Hank started the little auxiliary unit for the air, and the cab hummed. He pulled the sun shade down over the windshield and checked the door locks with the flat of his hand, one side and then the other, like a man closing up a shop he loved. Then he looked at Sam in the half-light and the line of his shoulders eased.

“Last thing,” he said. “I’m fifty-one and I haven’t done this with a man I cared about in nine years. If I’m slow, or if I go quiet on you, that’s nerves talking.”

“I’m thirty-six and I’ve never done it at all,” Sam said, “so I’m going to be a lot of noise. It’s nerves too.”

“Good. I like the noise.”

He got up out of the driver’s seat, which took some doing in that space, drew the canvas curtain back, and held out his hand. Sam took it.

---

The sleeper was dim and warm and smelled like him. Hank sat on the edge of the lower bunk and stood Sam between his knees and kissed his belly through the quarter-zip. He worked it up inch by inch and over Sam’s head. He undid Sam’s jeans next, slowly, his knuckles brushing the soft skin below the navel, and said “Up,” and Sam toed off the pinching boots and stepped out of the denim with Hank’s big hands on his hips, steadying him.

“Lie down. On your back. Head on the pillow.”

Sam lay down. Hank took his time getting out of his own clothes. He hung the flannel on the hook and dragged the undershirt over his head so the grey chest hair sprang free, and Sam watched his cock fill out thick against his thigh, the foreskin drawing back as it did. Then he leaned down and kissed Sam with no hurry at all, his beard soft now, and Sam felt him smile.

“I’m going to take a long while,” Hank said against his mouth. “I want you ready. If you get tired of waiting, tell me.”

“I won’t get tired.”

“We’ll see.”

He started with his mouth. He kissed down Sam’s chest and bit one nipple, then the other, and went lower and took Sam’s cock into the heat of his mouth and sucked him slowly, rolling his tongue under the head, until Sam’s heels were digging into the mattress and he was making a high stupid noise through his nose.

“Hank. Hank, I’m going to…”

“Not yet.” Hank let him slide out, wet and shining. His voice was thick. “You’re going to want to keep some of that.”

The cap clicked. Sam heard it and felt his stomach drop with the best kind of fear. Hank warmed the lube between his fingers first, rubbing it until it stopped being cold, and then pushed Sam’s thigh up and out with his clean hand.

“Water-based,” he said. “Same as Limon. Breathe for me.”

One finger traced the ring of muscle, slow circles that made Sam’s cock jump against his belly. Then pressure, and a slow slick push, and the first knuckle went in. It was odd. It was warm, and much more than he’d expected, and he felt himself clench around it.

“Easy. Let it in.” Hank’s other hand stroked his thigh. “Push out a little, like you’re letting go of something. That’s it. That’s right. Good, sweetheart.”

“It’s weird,” Sam gasped. “It’s really weird, it’s—”

“Hurt?”

“No. Good. I think good. Keep going.”

The finger slid in to the base and stopped, and Hank waited. Sam felt every pulse in it. Then it began to move, a lazy curl, and a spot inside him lit up like a struck match and he cried out and nearly came off the bed.

“Found it.” Hank sounded pleased. “That’s the spot. Walt told me once I had the hands for it. Said I’d be a hell of a mechanic if I ever quit trucking.” He did it again, a slow press. “Tell me what you feel.”

“Like I’m going to come without you touching me.” Sam’s voice cracked. “Like every time you do that, something tightens in my balls and I’m going to lose it. Hank, please, more.”

Hank gave him a second finger with lube dripping down his wrist, and then, when Sam had stopped clamping and started pushing back, a third. He moved them in and out, turning, spreading them until the stretch burned and then eased, and he talked the whole time, low and rough.

“Three fingers in you and you’re still pushing back for more. You take it like you’ve been waiting years for somebody to ask. I’ve been thinking about this since the first day, when I drove the rest of the way to Hays with the sounds you were making in the bunk in my ears.” The fingers pressed that spot again and Sam shouted. “I want to put my cock where my fingers are. I want you wet and open and begging, and I want to feel you take all of me. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” Sam groaned. “God. Yes. Please. Put it in.”

Hank pulled his hand away and took a foil packet from the shelf over the bunk. “Rubber, same as the lube. That all right with you?”

“Yes. Please, yes.”

He tore it with his teeth and rolled the condom down himself. He slicked it with the rest of the lube, and the sound of it, the slow wet stroke of his own fist, made Sam’s mouth go dry. Then he slid a pillow under Sam’s hips, tipped them up, and settled between his thighs.

“Eyes on me,” he said. “I want them on me for this.”

Sam looked. The head of Hank’s cock pressed against him, hot and blunt, and a long shudder went up his spine.

“Slow breath.” Hank’s thumb stroked his hip. “I’ll go slow. Stop me if you need to.”

He pushed. The ring gave and the head slid in, thick and stretching, and Sam lost his breath in one hard rush. It burned for a second, a wide hot ache, and his hands clawed at the blanket.

“Stop?” Hank said instantly, holding still.

“No. No, don’t stop. Just wait.”

“I’m waiting.”

They stayed like that, joined at the thinnest point, with Hank’s whole body trembling above him from the effort of holding back. Sam breathed. The burn faded to a fullness, and the fullness slowly started to feel good in a way he couldn’t have explained to anyone, and he found himself rocking his hips up the slightest bit.

“There you go,” Hank whispered. “Take it as you want it. You set the pace.”

Sam pushed down onto him bit by bit, and Hank let him, grunting at every inch, until at last the heavy belly rested against his own and he felt the coarse hair of Hank’s groin pressed against his skin.

“That’s the whole length,” Hank said hoarsely. “Right to the base, sweetheart. You took it.”

“It’s everywhere in me.” Sam was crying and didn’t care. “You’re inside me. Oh God, you’re actually in me. Hank, move. Please. I need you to move.”

Hank moved. He pulled back slowly and sank in again, a long deep stroke, and Sam’s back arched off the pillow. He did it again, and again, slow and thick and perfectly steady, each time sliding home against the spot his fingers had found, until Sam couldn’t stop talking.

“More. A little more. Oh fuck, yes, just like that.”

Hank gave him more, a notch at a time, and Sam heard himself say things he had never said out loud to anyone: that he could feel Hank’s balls slapping against him, that he wanted it rougher, that he wanted to be sore tomorrow and think of this every time he shifted in the seat. Hank answered each one in the same low voice. He said Sam’s ass was gripping him like it never wanted to let go. He said tonight, in the silent first hour of Sam’s shift, he would be able to smell himself on Sam’s skin from the passenger seat, and that he’d ride all the way to Tulsa with his dick hard just from knowing.

“You like my cock?”

“I love it. You go so far in me I forget my own name.”

“That’s where I am.” Hank’s hand slid down and pressed flat on Sam’s belly, just above the navel, over the mark he’d left at Limon, gone yellow at the edges now. “Right here. I can feel it from the outside, too.” He thrust. “Does it feel like being somebody’s?”

“It feels like yours.”

“Then say it.”

“I’m yours.” Sam sobbed it. “I’m yours, Hank. Fuck me. Use me. I want you to come inside me.”

Hank groaned, a deep broken sound, and began to fuck him in earnest. The whole cab rocked on its springs with them, and the slap of their bodies was loud in the small space. Sam wrapped both legs around Hank’s waist and held on, and Hank bent and caught his mouth and kissed him roughly, grunting into it.

“So good. So tight. You grip me like you mean it.” He lifted Sam’s leg onto his shoulder and the angle changed, and the next thrust drove straight into the spot, and Sam’s whole body lit up. “There. Right there. You’re going to come. Let go.”

“I can’t… without a hand…”

“You can.” Hank held his hips and pounded into him. “You’re going to come on my cock, just from this, and I’m going to watch. Do it. Come now.”

The pleasure folded Sam up from the inside. His cock jerked untouched against his stomach and he came, shouting Hank’s name, striping his own chest with long hot pulses while his body locked tight around the thick cock in him. Hank swore and drove through it, fast and deep, and then his rhythm broke.

“Christ, Sam, I’m…”

“Come in me. Come in me, come on.”

Hank slammed home and stayed there, shaking, and shouted into the side of Sam’s neck. His whole big body shook. Sam felt him pulse through the condom, the heat, and held him with arms and legs and everything he had until the last shudder let go.

They lay in a heap while the little air unit hummed. Hank’s weight pressed Sam into the mattress and his beard was damp against Sam’s throat.

“Okay?” Hank mumbled, after a long while.

“Better than okay.” Sam ran his hand up the back of that broad neck. “Don’t pull out yet. Give me a second.”

“I’ll give you ten.”

He gave him twenty. Then he eased out carefully and tied off the condom, and wiped Sam’s chest with the flannel off the hook, which Sam would have protested if he’d had the breath. He lay back down and Sam curled into the crook of his arm, the way he had in Limon, and Hank’s hand settled in his hair.

---

The phone buzzed twice on the dash and stopped.

Sam reached out an arm, which took a lot of effort, and got hold of it.

Walt: Your truck has been parked at the Sunflower for an hour and fifty minutes. The bus went through at 2:15. Well?

He read it out loud. Hank, eyes closed, said, “Tell him I said mind his own business.”

Sam typed with one thumb.

He asked.

He watched the dots appear and disappear and appear again. Hank’s chest rose and fell under his cheek. Finally the reply came, in three pieces, each landing a few seconds after the last.

Well, I’ll be damned.

Ortega, I owe you a steak. Two.

Tell him Tuesday, at the yard. I’ve got something of his I’ve been keeping nine years. He’ll want it back.

Sam read the last one twice. Then he put the phone down on his chest and looked up at the underside of the top bunk, and Hank, who had one eye open, was looking at it too.

“What’s he got?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said slowly. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

“What?”

Hank’s arm tightened around him. The engine was cold and the air unit hummed and out past the fence the wind went on moving over the soybean field, steady, as if it had somewhere to be.

“Ask me Tuesday,” he said, “in the yard, with him standing there.”

“That’s three days.”

“Then it’ll keep three days.” He kissed the top of Sam’s head. “I’m calling the rest of the day. Rule four, I say when we stop. Close your eyes, sweetheart. We roll after dark, and you’re driving.”