Ridge Road, Chapter 6 · The Back Bedroom

The house was smaller than Sam had pictured and cleaner than he had feared.

It sat on a corner lot off Lewis, a brick bungalow with a deep front porch and a screen door that had been patched twice with different grades of screen. The grass was cut and the gutters were clear. A yellow bulb hung over the front door, and Sam looked at it for a long moment from the Camry’s driver seat, because he knew now who else had looked at that bulb.

“It’s not much,” Hank said. He had unfolded himself from the passenger side and stood on the walk with a hardware store bag in each hand, shingles and tar and a roll of flashing bought on the way. “I’m gone two hundred nights a year. I keep it up. That’s all I do.”

“It’s a nice house.”

“It’s a house.” But he looked pleased, and rubbed the back of his neck.

He opened the front door with the brass key on its red string, which he had not put on his ring yet, and held the screen with his shoulder so Sam could go in first. The inside was as clean as the outside and almost as bare. A recliner faced a television, a kitchen table had two chairs pulled up to it, and down the hall were three doors. The front bedroom held a single bed made up tight enough to bounce a quarter. The bathroom smelled like Hank’s soap. The third door, at the end of the hall, was shut, and Hank walked past it with his eyes on the floor.

The kitchen was where the roof had been coming in. A brown stain the size of a hubcap bloomed on the ceiling over the stove, and a stockpot sat on the floor under it, half full of old rain.

“That’s the one,” Hank said. “Three years it’s been dripping.”

“Three years?”

“The patch won’t hold. It’s a bad patch.” He stood with his head tipped back, studying the stain. “Somebody put it on the spring before his knee went, and I never wanted to touch it.”

Sam didn’t say a word. He set down his bag, and Hank set down his, and for a moment they both looked up at the ceiling.

They slept that night in the front room, in the single bed, in a tangle that put Sam’s face in Hank’s chest hair and his knee somewhere it shouldn’t have been. Hank said it was a lousy bed. Sam said it was fine. At some point in the dark he heard the old house tick and settle around them, and understood it was the first sound it had made with two men in it in nine years.

---

Hank went up the ladder at seven, in the cold, in his old Carhartt, with a hammer on his belt and a thermos looped over one shoulder by its strap.

Sam stayed on the ground and ran the bundles up. It turned out that a fifty-one-year-old man built like a refrigerator could climb a ladder with a bundle of shingles on his shoulder and not make a sound, and also that watching him do it from underneath was a bad idea before eight in the morning. Hank got his boots set on the pitch, knelt on a folded tarp, and began to pry up the old patch with the flat bar. The nails came out with a squeal.

“Hold the ladder,” he called down.

“I’m holding it.”

“Hold it harder.”

Across the street a screen door banged, and a small white-haired woman in a quilted robe came out onto her porch with a coffee mug. She stood watching a good while. Then she raised the mug at the roof.

“Hank Doyle! Is that you up there?”

“It’s me, Mrs. Pruitt.”

“I haven’t seen you near a ladder since the Clinton administration!” Her voice carried the length of the block. “Who’s your friend?”

Hank looked down at Sam over the edge of the roof. The quiet in his face was one Sam had come to know, the pause before he said a thing that cost him.

“That’s Sam,” he called. “He’s with me.”

Mrs. Pruitt took this in with great seriousness. “Well, good,” she said. “It’s about time somebody was.” She raised her mug again and went back inside, and across the street a curtain moved in three different windows.

Sam laughed. He couldn’t help it, and then he had to hold the ladder with both hands because his eyes had gone hot.

“Don’t start,” Hank said from the roof.

“I’m not starting.”

“I can hear it in your voice.”

“That’s the wind.”

It took him three hours to strip and re-lay the patch, and Sam, who had only meant to hand up shingles, ended up on the roof for the last of it with a tar bucket and a pair of borrowed gloves. They worked side by side on the pitch with the whole neighborhood spread out below them, rooftops and bare pecan trees, with a water tower far off in the haze. Around eleven Hank sat back on his heels and took a long drink from the thermos.

“This was Walt’s house too,” he said. “I’d like you to hear me say it. Walt lived here, in this house, eleven years, from the first winter we hauled together until he took the dispatch job at the Tulsa yard. That back bedroom was his and mine.”

Sam kept his eyes on the shingle in his hands. “I figured.”

“I’d rather you hear it than guess.” Hank wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “He put that first patch on the spring before his knee went. He did a lousy job, because he hated heights. I told him so. He said he’d do it right next year.” He looked down the slope of the roof. “I’ve stood at the bottom of that ladder a dozen times in nine years and couldn’t climb it. I wanted it to stay the way he left it.”

“What changed?”

“I called him last night. After you were asleep, from the porch.” Hank’s mouth moved. “I said, I want to pull your patch, and I want to put Sam in the back room. He didn’t say anything for a good while. Then he said, ‘Thank God, Hank. I’ve been waiting nine years for you to ask my permission for something.'”

“He said that?”

“He laughed so hard I thought he’d drop the phone.” Hank picked up a shingle and turned it over in his big hands. “He said the roof was a bad patch and the mattress was a good mattress, and I should put new sheets on it. I told him I’d bought them already. He laughed again, and then he hung up on me.”

Sam sat very still. The wind ruffled the loose edge of the tarp.

“You asked him,” he said.

“I asked him.” Hank handed him the nail gun. “Now you finish this row, and I’ll watch you do it. You’ve got a good steady hand.”

---

By three o’clock it was done. Hank climbed down last, stiff in the knees, and stood in the kitchen with his face tipped up to a ceiling that had stopped dripping the minute the new patch went on. He had tar on both forearms and a smear of it across one cheekbone, and grit from the shingles caught in his grey beard. He kept flexing his hands, Sam noticed, like he’d put something heavy down and hadn’t worked out what to do with them.

“Dry,” Hank said.

“Dry.”

“It stopped. Listen to that.” There was wonder in it. “It never even slowed down, and then it just stopped.”

Sam crossed the kitchen and put both hands flat on the tar-streaked canvas of his coat. “Hank.”

“Yeah.”

“I want you to fuck me on your kitchen table.”

Hank’s eyes came down off the ceiling and fixed on him. A long breath went out of him, and when he spoke his voice had dropped half an octave. “Say it again.”

“I want you to fuck me on that table. In daylight. With the roof fixed.” Sam’s pulse was going in his ears. “I’m not sore. I checked this morning. I want to feel it all day tomorrow.”

“I’m filthy.”

“I know. I don’t care.”

“Then take your jeans off, sweetheart,” Hank said, “and sit up on the table.”

Sam did. The tabletop was cool under his bare thighs, scarred with old coffee rings and a burn mark shaped like Florida, and he sat on the edge of it with his feet hanging and his shirt rucked up while Hank shucked off his coat and stood between his knees. Hank’s hands were rough from the roof and they went over his ribs and belly and down the soft inside of each thigh, slow and not even close to done. Sam dragged the flannel open and got his fingers into the grey hair on Hank’s chest and pulled, and Hank groaned against his mouth.

“Lube’s in my bag,” Sam said, “and the rubbers are in the Walmart bag with the sheets.”

“I know where they are. I bought them.” Hank went and got both. He was gone a few seconds, and Sam spent every one of them looking at the broad back and the dusty seat of his jeans, and thinking that this man had stood in this kitchen for nine years with nobody to look at him like that.

Hank came back with the tube and a foil square and kissed him first, a long one, mouth opening against his, tasting of coffee and cold air. Then he undid his belt, pushed his jeans down over his hips, and took Sam’s hand and wrapped it around his cock. It was already thick and hot and a little damp at the tip. Sam stroked it once, slowly, and watched Hank’s eyes shut.

“Keep that up and I won’t last to the good part.”

“This is the good part.”

“The good part is when I’m in you.” Hank slicked two fingers and reached down between them. “Lean back on your elbows.”

Sam leaned back. The table creaked. Hank’s fingers slid into him easily, two at once, working in a slow circle, and Sam’s head dropped back as every muscle in his thighs went loose.

“Hear that?” Hank said, low. “That wet sound is you opening up. Four days ago you’d never had anything in there, and now you take two fingers like you’re hungry for them.”

“Four days ago I didn’t know what I was missing.”

“What are you missing now?”

“You,” Sam said, breathless. “Your cock. All of it. Stop making me say it twice.”

Hank’s laugh was a rough, pleased sound. He pulled his fingers out, tore the foil open with his teeth, rolled the rubber on, and slicked it with another palmful of the water-based lube. Then he pulled Sam to the very edge of the table by the backs of his knees, lifted both legs around his waist, and pushed in.

Sam made a noise he’d never heard himself make. It went through the kitchen like a dropped plate.

“Easy,” Hank breathed. “I’m right here. Tell me how it is.”

“Full. God, it’s so full.” Sam’s hands scrabbled at the tabletop. “Keep going. Don’t stop.”

Hank pressed in all the way, his belly flat to Sam’s stomach, his arms braced on either side of Sam’s hips, and held there. Sam could feel his heartbeat in his own throat. The old kitchen light caught the silver in Hank’s beard and the sweat on his temples, and his eyes never left Sam’s face.

“I’m in,” Hank said quietly. “Right to the end of you.”

He began to move. He kept it steady at first, long strokes that dragged the whole length of him out and back in, and each one scraped across the place that made Sam’s vision go white. The table rocked. The salt shaker walked to the edge and went over. Neither of them looked.

“Harder,” Sam said. “Please. I want you to hurt me a little.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Fuck me like you mean it.”

Hank put one big hand flat on Sam’s chest and the other under his hip, and the next stroke drove in so hard the breath left Sam in a shout. The next was harder. The wooden legs shrieked on the linoleum and Sam’s feet crossed at the small of Hank’s back and held him there, and the sounds coming out of him had stopped being words.

“That’s it,” Hank grunted. “I want to hear what I’m doing to you. Say it.”

“You’re so deep. Hank, you’re so deep, I can feel you in my stomach.” Sam’s cock was slapping his own belly, wet at the tip. “Fuck me. Fuck me, you big bastard, split me open on this table.”

“Louder. Let the whole street hear it. Mrs. Pruitt can have a listen.”

Sam barked out a laugh that turned into a moan halfway through, because Hank had shifted his angle and the next thrust hit dead center. “Oh, God. There. Right there. Stay exactly like that.”

“I’m not moving anywhere but here.” Hank held it, hips grinding in small tight circles, and Sam’s whole body shook on the wood. “That’s my cock, and it’s not going anywhere till you’ve soaked this table. Squeeze it. I want to feel your pulse around me.”

“I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come on your table.”

“Do it. Nobody’s touching you. Just me, inside you. Come.”

Sam shouted. His back arched off the wood, and the pleasure ripped out of him in long hot spurts that spattered his chest and splashed his chin, and Hank’s hand came up from his hip and held his jaw while he rode it out. Hank followed two thrusts later, with a groan that seemed to come up from the soles of his boots, his whole body locked and shuddering as he emptied himself deep into the rubber. His forehead came down on Sam’s chest. Neither of them moved.

“Table’s got a dent,” Hank said eventually, muffled.

“It had a burn mark shaped like Florida.”

“Now it’s got two things.”

---

They ate dinner at that table, eggs and bacon with burnt toast, with the salt shaker back where it belonged and the ceiling dry overhead. After the dishes, Hank ran the water in the little bathroom, and they stood under it together and washed off the tar with a bar of soap and a lot of patience. The tub had a curtain on a rod, and Hank’s elbows hit the tile every time he lifted his arms. Sam laughed so hard he nearly fell out of it.

When they came out into the hall in towels, the third door was still shut. Hank had the lube and the box of rubbers in one hand, picked up off the counter without his noticing. Sam took them out of his fingers, set them on the dresser inside the door, and said nothing about it.

Sam stopped in front of the door. Hank stopped beside him, a big wet shape smelling of soap, and neither of them said anything for a bit.

“I put sheets on it this morning,” Hank said. “Before the roof. Clean ones. I bought a set at the Walmart on Sheridan on the way in yesterday, because the old set was…” He cleared his throat. “I just didn’t want you sleeping in anything that was left there.”

“You bought new sheets.”

“Green ones. They didn’t have grey.” He rubbed his jaw. “You don’t have to. We can sleep in the front. I’d understand.”

Sam took out his phone and thumbed a text to Walt, standing there in his towel. He wasn’t sure why he did it. Maybe it was manners. He wrote, Hank wants me to sleep in the back bedroom. I’d like to know it’s all right with you, and he sent it before he could think better of it.

The answer came while Hank was still holding the doorknob.

It’s all right, Ortega. Best bed I ever owned, I bought it with my first dispatch check. Tell him the left side has a dip. That one’s mine and it’s yours now. Good night.

Sam showed Hank the screen. Hank read it, once, and his jaw worked. He opened the door.

The room was small and square, with one window, a dresser, and a bed with a plain wooden frame. The new sheets were a dark forest green, ironed flat, the corner turned down. It smelled of cedar and fresh laundry. Sam stood in the doorway in his towel and didn’t trust what his face was doing. Two men had lived in this room for eleven years, and it was being handed to him on purpose, with a text message and a set of green sheets, by a big man whose hands weren’t steady.

“Is it all right?” Hank asked quietly. “For you? Whatever he said, I want to know about you.”

“Yes,” Sam said. “I want to be in it. With you.”

“Come here.”

Sam let the towel fall. Hank let his drop, and they got into the bed, which smelled of cedar and the two of them. The dip on the left side took Hank’s weight and rolled Sam into him. They lay face to face with the lamp on and let the quiet run.

“You’re thinking,” Sam said finally.

“I haven’t slept in this room in nine years.”

“How is it?”

“Different.” Hank’s hand came up and cupped Sam’s cheek. “You’re in it.”

Sam kissed him. It started slow and went on that way, and Hank’s hand traveled from his face down the length of his back and settled on the curve of his hip. Then Hank rolled him onto his back and began to work his way down with his mouth, taking his time over the dark hair on Sam’s chest and the soft stomach, and tugging gently at the line of hair below his navel with his teeth.

“Hank, you don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t.” He looked up the length of Sam’s body with his beard dark against Sam’s skin. “I’ve been thinking about it since the roof. Let me.”

“Yes.”

He took Sam into his mouth slowly, all the way down, and Sam’s hips came off the green sheets without asking permission. Hank’s mouth was hot, and there was a lot of it. He worked with his tongue flat and his lips tight, a slow drag and a swallow, and every time Sam jerked he put a heavy forearm across his hips and held him down. The beard scratched the inside of Sam’s thighs. Wet noises filled the room, loud and unashamed, and Sam heard himself making the kind of sounds he used to think only other people made.

“Oh, God. Oh, that’s, you’re going to make me…”

Hank pulled off with a wet sound. “Not yet. I’m not done.” He licked a long stripe up the underside and sucked the head until Sam’s toes curled. “You taste like the shower. Soap and you. I could do this till morning.”

“Then I’ll never leave this bed.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Your mouth,” Sam said, and had to stop and gasp when Hank took him to the root again. “Your fucking mouth, Hank. Take it. Take all of it. I’m so hard it hurts.”

Hank groaned around him, and the sound went straight up Sam’s spine. He did it for a long time, until Sam’s thighs shook and his hands were wrenched into the pillow and the words coming out of his mouth were mostly Hank’s name. Just short of the edge, Hank stopped, wiped his beard on the back of his hand, and crawled up the bed to lie beside him.

“Tell me how you want it,” he said. “Tonight. In here.”

“On my side.” Sam found his breath. “With you behind me. Like this, the whole time. I want to feel you everywhere.”

“Slow?”

“As slow as you can stand.”

Hank was quiet a second. “I can stand a lot,” he said, and Sam felt him smile against his shoulder as he rolled him over, spooned in behind him, and reached for the lube.

The first touch was warm and slick. Sam breathed out and pushed back against the finger, and Hank’s chest rumbled against his spine. One finger, then two, and Hank worked them with a patience that made Sam’s whole body go liquid, until Sam was pushing back onto his hand and making small broken noises into the pillow.

“Do you want it?” Hank asked, close to his ear. “Say it, so I hear it.”

“I want it. Please. Rubber first.”

“I’ve got it.” Foil crackled. “Lift your knee up for me, sweetheart.”

Sam drew his top leg forward and up. Hank slid in behind him in one long slow glide, and the sound Sam made was the quietest he’d made all day and the most helpless. Hank’s chest was hot against his back. His arm came around under Sam’s neck, and his other hand lay flat on Sam’s belly, holding him close, and he stayed there, all the way in, and breathed.

“Okay?”

“Perfect,” Sam whispered. “Don’t move. Just let me feel it.”

They stayed like that. A car passed on Lewis and its headlights crawled across the ceiling. Inside Sam the heavy pulse of Hank’s cock beat in time with his own, and he clenched, helplessly, and Hank hissed.

“You do that again and I’m done.”

“Do you want me to?”

“God help me, yes.”

Sam did it again, on purpose, slow. Hank groaned into his hair and began to move, a gentle roll of the hips, in and out, shallow and then deeper, his hand sliding down from Sam’s belly to wrap around his cock. Sam gasped.

“You’re hard again.”

“I’m always hard around you. It’s embarrassing.”

“It’s not.” Hank’s voice was thick. “Do you know what it does to me, to feel you get hard when I’m inside you? Do you know how I’ve wanted somebody to want me like that?”

“I want you.” Sam turned his head and found his mouth, kissed him sloppily over his shoulder. “I want you so much. Fuck me. Give me all of it.”

The pace changed. Hank’s hips snapped now, deep and hard, and the old bed took it with a low wooden complaint. The headboard knocked the wall. Hank’s mouth was at his ear and the words came out in a stream, rough and unbroken. He told Sam how tight and hot he was, how he’d waited without knowing what for, how good it felt to be gripped like this, and then he said he was going to come so hard Sam would feel it every time he sat down tomorrow.

“Do it,” Sam gasped. “I want to feel you go off in me. Harder, Hank, please, harder.”

“Like this?”

“Yes. Yes, like that. Fuck, you’re gonna make me come, and I haven’t even…”

“Then come.” Hank’s hand tightened on his cock. Sam got his own hand over Hank’s and they stroked together, fast, and the room swam. “Come with me, sweetheart. Now.”

“Hank. Hank.”

He came first, in a long shuddering rush over their joined hands, crying out into the pillow, and Hank’s arm tightened across his chest like a bar. Hank’s rhythm broke. He buried his face in Sam’s shoulder and groaned out his name, one syllable and then another, and pulsed deep inside him with a force that Sam felt all the way to his teeth.

After that they lay in the tangle, breathing, with the lamp still on. The new sheets were wrecked. Hank got up eventually to deal with the rubber and come back with a washcloth, and he wiped Sam clean with it very gently, the way you’d handle something you’d stopped hoping to own.

“Stay in here,” he said, getting back under the blanket. “Tomorrow, the day after. Stay as long as you like.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know. I’m just saying it out loud.” Hank pulled him back against his chest. “I’m practicing.”

Sam laughed softly into the pillow. He was almost asleep when the phone buzzed on the nightstand, and he reached for it without thinking.

It was Walt, again. It was ten minutes to midnight.

Ortega. One more thing, and then I’ll let you sleep. The chili is a week from Sunday, at five. Come at three, without Hank. There’s a story about the first winter we had that house, and I want you to hear it from me with nobody there to correct my dates. Bring your appetite. And don’t tell him I said it.

Sam lay in the dark, holding the glowing screen, and felt the weight of Hank’s arm across him, and the warm slow breath in his hair. He turned the phone face down. Eleven years in this house, he thought. Whatever happened the first winter, it was in these walls.

He closed his eyes and slept, and the house ticked and settled around him.