Ridge Road, Chapter 15 · Something in the Lot

The depot window was the only lit thing in the yard at twenty to seven on Monday morning. Sam saw it from the gate, a yellow square in the dark with Walt’s shape in it, and then the shape moved, and by the time Sam had parked the Camry and crossed the gravel Walt was out the side door in a sheepskin coat with his cane, breathing steam.

“You came by yourself,” Walt said.

“You told me to.”

“I know what I told you. I’m saying it out loud so later nobody says I didn’t check.” Walt turned up his collar. “Ten minutes. It’s in the back row. Watch the ice by the fuel island, it got me Friday.”

They went down the row of parked trailers, past the wash bay, past Hank’s empty spot with the grease stain shaped like Florida. The yard lights buzzed. Somebody’s reefer unit was running two rows over, a steady drone. At the far end, under the last light, by itself, there was a truck Sam had never seen.

It was a red Kenworth W900, long hood, an older one, with a sleeper and a lot of chrome that somebody had kept polished. The paint had a little road rash on the front bumper. On the door, in small gold letters, it said TIBBS HAULING, BROKEN ARROW OK.

Sam stopped.

“Royce Tibbs,” Walt said. “Sixty-six. He’s run that truck twelve years out of this yard. His heart did something it shouldn’t have in October and his wife put her foot down, and she’s right. He’s done.” Walt leaned on the cane. “He doesn’t want to sell it to a dealer. He wants it to go to somebody who’ll drive it. He came up to the depot window last week and asked did I know anybody, and I said I might.”

“Me,” Sam said.

“You. You’ve got your CDL and your hazmat and three months of Doyle, and I’ll tell you, three months of Doyle is worth two years of anybody else’s school. Royce would carry the paper on part of it. He’d want a fair price and he’d take it slow.” Walt shrugged. “That’s between you and him. I’m not in it.”

Sam walked around the front of the Kenworth. The hood was cold when he touched it, beaded with frost. He could see himself in the chrome of the bumper, small and bent.

“Why without Hank?” he said.

Walt didn’t answer right away. A truck pulled in at the gate behind them, air brakes hissing.

“Because he’d make it about him,” Walt said finally. “He wouldn’t mean to. He’d stand here with his hands in his jacket and not say a word, and you’d read his face, and you’d say no to this truck before you’d even looked at it, so he wouldn’t have to feel anything. I know because I did it. Eleven years. I never looked at a single thing he couldn’t see from his own seat.”

“So you want me to leave him.”

“No. I want you to stay with him knowing you didn’t have to.” Walt looked at him hard. “There’s a difference, Ortega. He asked you to stay in Salina. He asked you again with that box. You said yes both times. Good. But you said yes with no door open. I’m showing you there’s a door. That’s all this is. Tell him tonight. All of it, me included.”

Sam stood with his hand on the cold hood.

“When does Royce need to know?”

“New Year’s Day. He’d like it to be in a yard and running by January.”

Sam nodded. Then he looked at Walt. “You’re scared I’ll take it.”

Walt laughed, short. “I’m scared of the both of you. I’m fifty-five and I just got a side of a bed back. If you take that truck I’ll be at that depot window watching two of you go out the gate instead of one.” He turned on the cane. “Go on. Your shift. And Ortega.”

“Yeah.”

“Next Saturday still stands. If you’ll have me.”

“It stands,” Sam said.

---

Hank pulled the Pete in at seven-fifteen, lifted two fingers at the depot window the way he always did, and Walt lifted his cup the way he always did. If anything was different about either of them Sam couldn’t see it.

They had a load of restaurant chairs going to a distributor in Oklahoma City and back empty, an easy turn, two hours down the Turner Turnpike and two hours back. Hank drove down. The first hour nobody talked, because that was the rule, and Sam was glad of it. He sat in the right seat and watched the pastures go by brown and frozen and saw the red Kenworth every time he closed his eyes.

At the Stroud service plaza Hank pulled in for coffee and came back with two cups and a bag of the little powdered donuts Sam liked and handed it over without a word.

“Thanks,” Sam said.

“You’re quiet.”

“First hour.”

“First hour was an hour ago.” Hank put the truck in gear. “You can tell me tonight. Whatever it is. I can wait till tonight.”

Sam looked at him. Hank kept his eyes on the on-ramp.

“How do you know there’s something?”

“You ate a donut and didn’t say anything about it. You always say something about the donuts.” Hank merged. “Tonight’s fine.”

At the distributor’s dock in Oklahoma City a forklift driver with a Santa hat on over his ball cap unloaded them in forty minutes and wished them a merry Christmas, and Sam realized it was the fourteenth of December and he hadn’t bought a single thing for anybody. On the way back Sam drove. He kept it at sixty-five in the right lane and passed nobody, and Hank slept in the passenger seat with his arms folded and his chin on his chest, and Sam drove past the Broken Arrow exit and looked at the sign for a long time.

---

He didn’t tell Hank at the yard. He told him at the house at eight that night, after an Oklahoma City turn and back, sitting at the kitchen table under the patched ceiling with two plates of eggs and fried bologna neither of them was eating.

He told him all of it. The depot window. The ten minutes. The red W900 and Royce Tibbs and his heart and his wife, the paper, New Year’s Day. What Walt had said about doors. He made himself say the part about Hank making it about himself, word for word, looking at him.

Hank listened with his forearms on the table. He didn’t interrupt once. When Sam was done Hank sat back, and folded his arms over his belly, and looked at the window over the sink, where the yellow porch light came through the curtain.

“He went around me,” Hank said.

“He did.”

“He could’ve told me first.”

“He said you’d make it about you.” Sam’s heart was going. “Are you?”

Hank was quiet for a long time.

“Yeah,” he said. “Right now I am. I’m sitting here thinking, here we go. The bus. The lot in Salina. I knew it’d come and here it is in a red Kenworth.” He rubbed his face with one big hand. “And I’m jealous of Walt for being the one who showed you. And I’m mad he’s right. That’s three things and I can’t pick one.”

“I haven’t said yes to it.”

“I know you haven’t.”

“I haven’t said no either.”

“I know that too.” Hank put his hands flat on the table. “Listen to me. If you want that truck, you buy that truck. I’ll help you look it over. I’ll crawl under it with a flashlight and tell Royce Tibbs every single thing that’s wrong with it so he takes ten percent off. I’d rather lose you to a W900 than keep you because you never saw the door.” He swallowed. “That’s what Walt was telling you. He’s telling you what I should’ve told him.”

Sam got up out of his chair. He went around the table and stood beside Hank, and Hank turned in his chair and put his face against Sam’s stomach and his arms around his waist, and held on. Sam put both hands in his grey hair.

“I’m scared,” Hank said into his shirt. “I’m going to say that once.”

“I know. So am I.”

“What are you scared of?”

“That I’ll want it,” Sam said. “And that I’ll want you more. And I won’t know which one I’m picking until I’ve picked it.”

Hank breathed against him for a while.

“Then we’ve got till New Year’s,” Hank said. “Nobody has to know tonight.”

“No.”

Hank tipped his head back and looked up at him. “Then come to bed. I want my hands on you. I want to know you’re here.”

“Wait’s still the word,” Sam said. “If either of us gets in our head.”

“Wait’s still the word.”

---

In the back bedroom Hank turned the lamp on by the cedar box and then didn’t move toward the bed. He stood in the middle of the floor and let Sam undress him, the flannel and the white tee under it, the belt, the jeans, Sam crouching to pull the boots off one at a time and set them by the dresser. When Sam stood up Hank was naked and half hard and looking at him with a face Sam hadn’t seen before. Open. Almost shy.

“Your turn,” Hank said.

Sam undressed fast. Hank caught his wrist before he could get to the bed.

“Slow. I want to look.”

So Sam stood there in the lamp light and let him look, and Hank looked at all of it, the soft belly, the grey at his temples, his cock filling up under Hank’s eyes until it stood out hard from his body. Hank reached out and ran one rough thumb up the underside of it, base to head, and Sam’s breath went.

“I’m keeping that,” Hank said, low. “Whatever you pick. I’m keeping that sound.”

He lay down on his back on the green sheets, in the middle, his head on both pillows, his big hairy belly rising and falling. His cock lay thick and heavy up his stomach. He reached over to the nightstand and found the box and the tube, the water-based one from the Petro, and rolled a rubber on and slicked himself, and held the tube out to Sam.

“Get yourself ready,” Hank said. “I want to watch you do that too.”

Sam knelt on the bed beside Hank’s hip and squeezed the cold gel onto his fingers and reached behind himself. He’d never done it with Hank watching like this, nothing to hide behind. He pushed one finger in and gasped and Hank’s hand closed on his thigh.

“More,” Hank said. “You know how much you need.”

Sam worked a second finger in and twisted, his forehead dropping, his mouth open. He could feel Hank’s eyes on his face and on his hand. When he looked down Hank’s cock had jumped up off his belly, shining in the rubber.

“Three,” Hank said. “You’re going to need three.”

Sam pushed a third finger in beside the others and moaned out loud, his thighs trembling. Hank sat up on one elbow and reached around and laid his own hand over the back of Sam’s, and pressed, so Sam’s fingers went deeper, and held them there.

“You’re ready for me,” Hank said. “Look what that does to me.”

“I’m ready. Hank, I’m so ready.”

“Not yet. Do it slow for me one more time.”

Sam did it slow. He pulled his fingers out to the tips and pushed them back in while Hank’s hand rode on his, guiding the rhythm, and his cock bobbed in front of him, dripping on the green sheet. He was making noises he couldn’t stop. Hank let him go only when Sam was shaking all over.

“Now turn around,” Hank said. “Get on me facing the door. I want to see you take me from back here.”

Sam looked at him.

“New,” Sam said.

“New. You said once you wanted to drive. Drive.”

Sam swung a leg over. He knelt astride Hank’s hips facing the foot of the bed and the dresser and the lamp, with his back to Hank, and reached between his own legs and found Hank’s cock and held it. It was thick and hot through the rubber. He lifted up on his knees and set the head against himself and stopped there, breathing.

“Take your time,” Hank said behind him. His hands came up and rested on Sam’s hips, just resting. “All the time you want. You’re the one driving.”

Sam sank down.

The head pushed into him and stretched him and he groaned, long, his hands going down flat on Hank’s thighs for balance. He held still. Then he let himself down a little more, and more, until he was sitting on Hank all the way and Hank was so deep in him Sam’s whole body shook with it.

“Oh God,” Sam said. “Oh God, it’s different like this. It’s so deep.”

“I can see it,” Hank said, rough. “I can see me going in you. Jesus, Sam. There’s the mirror.”

There was a mirror over the dresser. Sam lifted his head and saw it. Saw himself in the yellow lamplight, naked, flushed down his chest, kneeling over Hank with his cock standing straight up and leaking, Hank’s big body under him, Hank’s grey head on the pillows and his eyes fixed on where they were joined.

Sam started to move.

He rose up slow on his knees until only the head was in him, and came back down, slow, and the drag of it made him cry out. He did it again. He found the angle by leaning forward a little with his hands on Hank’s knees, and then the thick head hit the spot on every slide down, and Sam started to ride him in earnest, his ass coming down on Hank’s hips with a wet slap, again and again.

“Fuck. Fuck, Hank. You feel so good. You feel so good in me.”

“That’s it. Drive it. Drive it hard.”

“I am. I am. God, I’m so full of you.”

“Then show me. Lean up. Let me see it come all the way out.”

Sam leaned up on his knees until only the head of Hank’s cock was left inside him, and held it there, trembling, and Hank groaned behind him at the sight. Then Sam dropped. He took it all at once and they both shouted, and Sam did it again, and again, lifting high and dropping hard until the headboard knocked the wall.

Hank’s hands tightened on his hips. Not pulling, just holding, his thumbs pressed into the small of Sam’s back. Sam watched himself in the mirror bounce on Hank’s cock and couldn’t believe it was him. He looked flushed and happy and he was loud, louder than he’d been in this house, the old frame of the bed creaking under them in long complaints.

“Say my name,” Hank said. “Say whose cock that is.”

“Yours. Hank. It’s yours. God, it’s yours.”

“And whose are you.”

Sam came down hard and stayed down and ground on him, circling his hips, and said it to the mirror. “Yours. Right now. Tonight. Yours.”

Hank let out a low, raw sound under him. His hips came up off the bed and drove into Sam from below, and Sam yelped and fell forward onto his hands on Hank’s shins, and Hank fucked up into him in short hard thrusts while Sam knelt there taking it, his mouth open, his cock swinging under him.

Then Hank stopped.

“Wait,” Hank said.

Sam froze. He was breathing so hard he could hear it.

“Hank?”

“I’m all right.” Hank’s voice was strange. His hands stayed on Sam’s hips. “I’m all right. I just want to see your face. I can’t do this with nothing but your back tonight. I thought I could.”

Sam’s throat closed up. “Okay. What do you want?”

“Stay on me. Don’t get off. Just hold still.”

Sam held still, sitting on him, full of him. Behind him he felt the bed shift as Hank pushed up on his elbows, and then on his hands, and then sat all the way up against the headboard with Sam still in his lap, still facing away. Hank’s chest came up hot against Sam’s back. His beard was against Sam’s shoulder. His arms came around Sam’s middle and locked there.

“Now look up,” Hank said in his ear.

Sam looked up. In the mirror over the dresser he could see both of them now, Hank’s face right behind his own, grey beard against his neck, Hank’s eyes in the glass looking straight back into his.

“There,” Hank said. “That’s my Sam.”

“Here I am.”

“Okay. Okay. Now go.”

Sam put his feet flat on the mattress on either side of Hank’s thighs and his hands back on Hank’s knees and moved. Short rolls of his hips, down and forward, grinding back into Hank’s lap, and Hank held him tight around the middle and pushed up to meet him, slow, deep, never looking away from the mirror. It was close and slow and it went on a long time. Sam watched Hank watch him. Hank’s mouth was open against his shoulder. Every time Sam rolled down, Hank’s breath caught in his ear.

“I can feel you shaking,” Hank said. “All down your back. Christ, you’re tight on me like this.”

“It’s so good. It’s you behind me and I can see you.”

“Keep looking at me.”

“I am. I won’t stop.”

Hank’s hands stayed where they were, locked around his middle, and Sam’s cock stood out alone between his thighs, bobbing with every roll, leaking a string onto the sheet. Nobody touched it. Hank tipped his hips and the next push up caught the spot square, and Sam gasped out loud.

“There,” Hank said into his ear. “Keep it there. Stay on it.”

Sam stayed on it. He ground down in small hard circles, chasing that one place, his hands clawing at Hank’s knees, and in the mirror his own face came apart, mouth open, eyes wide on Hank’s.

“Hank. I’m going to. Nobody’s even touching me and I’m going to.”

“Then go. Watch me in the glass and go. Shoot all over yourself.”

Sam came. It tore out of him on a downstroke with Hank’s cock deep in him, and he shot up his own belly and chest in hot pulses, untouched, crying out, grinding down into Hank’s lap while the mirror showed him every second of it. He clenched so hard around Hank that Hank swore and locked his arms around him and thrust up three, four times more, and came with his face pressed into Sam’s shoulder and his mouth open on a long groan, shaking under Sam, holding him, holding on.

Sam sagged back against his chest, sticky and shaking, and didn’t care.

For a long time neither of them moved. The lamp buzzed on the dresser. Out on Lewis somebody’s dog barked twice and quit.

“You said wait,” Sam said finally, into Hank’s neck.

“I did.”

“First time you’ve ever said it.”

“First time I needed it.” Hank’s hand came up and lay flat on Sam’s back. “Thank you for stopping.”

“You always stop for me.”

“I know.” He was quiet. “That’s why I knew it’d work.”

Later, after Hank had dealt with the rubber and they’d wiped each other off with a towel and gotten back under the sheets, Hank lay on his back with Sam on his chest and said, to the ceiling:

“Whatever you pick, sweetheart. I mean it. I’ll be under that Kenworth with a flashlight either way.”

---

Saturday Walt came at six with no chili. He had a sack from the barbecue place on Eleventh and a pie from the grocery store still in its plastic, and he set them on the kitchen counter and turned around and looked at them both before he took his coat off.

“Well,” Walt said. “Did he tell you, Doyle?”

“He told me.”

“You mad?”

“I was. Monday.” Hank took the coat off Walt’s shoulders and hung it on the hook by the door. “You should’ve come to me first.”

“I know it.”

“You were right not to.”

Walt stood very still. Then he nodded, once.

“I’m sorry I went around you,” Walt said. “I’m not sorry he saw it.”

“I know. Sit down. The brisket’s getting cold.”

They ate brisket and burnt ends and sliced pickles off butcher paper at the kitchen table, and when they’d eaten, Walt asked, plainly, what Sam was thinking. Sam told him the truth. He didn’t know. He’d driven past the yard twice that week to look at it from the street. He’d called Royce Tibbs on Thursday and listened to him talk about the truck for forty minutes, the clutch and the turbo and the year he blew a tire outside Joplin, and liked him.

“He told me his wife named it,” Sam said. “The truck. She calls it Marlene. He said I don’t have to keep calling it that, but she’d like to know if I did.”

Walt laughed. “Marlene Tibbs. I’ve been looking at Marlene out the depot window twelve years and nobody told me she had a name.”

“He said the bunk’s long enough for a big man to lie straight.” Sam didn’t look at Hank when he said it. “He said it twice.”

Hank cut himself another piece of pie and didn’t say anything, but his ears went red.

“Royce Tibbs has never been subtle a day in his life,” Walt said. “His wife used to ride with him summers. She’d sit up in that cab with her feet on the dash doing crosswords. I’d see her go out the gate in August with a sun hat on.” He turned his coffee cup. “Two people in one cab for twelve summers, and he still asks her before he changes the radio station. You could do worse than a truck that’s had that in it.”

“You’re selling it,” Hank said.

“I’m describing it, Doyle. I’m allowed to describe a truck.”

“You’re selling it.”

“Maybe a little.” Walt looked at Sam. “I’ll stop.”

“You don’t have to stop,” Sam said. “I’d rather hear it from you than wonder.”

Hank put his fork down.

“I’ll tell you what I’m jealous of,” Hank said, and both of them looked at him. “Since we say it in this kitchen now. I’m jealous of a parked Kenworth with a woman’s name. That’s where I’m at this week. I wanted that on the table so nobody thinks I’m being quiet for some deeper reason.”

Walt laughed so hard he had to put his cup down. After a second Sam did too, and then Hank did, finally, shaking his head at himself.

“He wants me to drive it Tuesday,” Sam said. “Around the yard and out to the turnpike.”

“You should,” Walt said.

“I want Hank in the right seat.”

Hank looked up from the pie.

“If you’ll come,” Sam said. “I don’t want to drive it the first time without you in it. I want to see what it’s like with you there. I want to see your face.”

Hank didn’t say anything for a while. Walt looked at his plate.

“I’ll come,” Hank said.

---

Later, in the back bedroom, Walt lay on the right side in his shirt and slacks with his shoes on the floor and his cane against the nightstand, and Sam lay in the dip, and Hank lay in the middle with an arm out under each of them. Nobody took anything off. Walt reached across Hank’s chest and found Sam’s hand and held it, and Sam held his back, and that was all.

“I’m glad it’s out,” Walt said to the dark. “The truck.”

“So am I,” Sam said.

Hank turned his head and kissed Walt, short and plain, and then turned the other way and kissed Sam, longer.

“Tuesday,” Hank said. “Nine o’clock. I’ll bring the flashlight.”