Ridge Road, Chapter 18 · New Year’s Morning

Walt went home at ten on New Year’s Eve because he had to open the yard office in the morning, holiday or not. He said so twice at the door, with his cane hooked over his arm and the last of the black-eyed peas in a margarine tub.

“Nine o’clock,” he said. “I’ll have the coffee on. Royce takes his with nothing in it, and he’ll tell you about it if you put something in it.”

“We’ll be there,” Sam said.

Walt looked at him a while on the porch. He didn’t ask. He’d said at Christmas he wasn’t going to, and he was a man who did what he said.

“Happy New Year, Ortega.” He nodded past Sam into the kitchen. “Doyle.”

“Brennick.”

Across the street Mrs. Pruitt’s porch light was on, the way Hank had set it before Christmas, and it would stay on now till the bulb went. Walt went down the steps one at a time and got into his Buick, and they watched his taillights to the corner.

Sam had made up his mind on Sunday, sitting in the cab of the Pete at a fuel island in Joplin with a pencil and the back of a receipt. Both doors had come out good on paper. Then he’d pictured Marlene with his name on the title and nobody else’s, and it felt right. Then he’d pictured her running alone out of the yard on some Monday, not in the same company as the green Pete, Walt sending them out on two different boards, and it felt like the motel in Laramie with the road shut. He’d folded the receipt and put it in his wallet, and it was still there.

He hadn’t told anybody. The envelope with the eleven pages was in the inside pocket of his canvas jacket, on the hook by the door, and it had been there since Sunday night.

At a quarter to twelve they were on the couch with the television on low, and Hank put his hand on Sam’s knee.

“Don’t tell me tonight,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“I know. I’m saying it so I don’t ask.” Hank kept his eyes on the screen. “The paper says New Year’s Day. Royce gets his answer at the same time I get mine. That’s fair to him. I’d like it to be fair to him.”

“It will be.”

Downtown the fireworks started early, cracking off the bank buildings, and somebody on the next street banged a pot lid. The ball had come down in New York forty-five minutes ago, on the television, and neither of them had said anything about it. Hank turned the set off.

“Happy New Year, Sam.”

“Happy New Year.”

Hank kissed him slow, on the couch, with the pot lid still going outside. When he pulled back Sam kept a hand on his beard.

“I want to go to bed,” Sam said. “And I want you. I’ve been wanting you since the peas.”

“The peas.”

“You were stirring them. You had your sleeves up.” Sam stood and held out his hand. “Come on.”

---

The back bedroom was cold at the edges and warm in the middle where the heat register blew. Hank turned on the yellow lamp by the cedar box. The green sheets were turned down on both sides.

Sam pulled his sweater over his head and dropped it on the chair. He undid his jeans and stepped out of them, and his boxers, and stood there in his socks while Hank got his own shirt open one snap at a time.

“I want to sit on you,” Sam said. “You up against the headboard, like the night of Walt’s chili. Only I want to lean back this time and see all of you. I want to see your face the whole time.”

“All right.”

“And I want you to come first. In me. Then I want your leg.”

Hank stopped with his shirt half off.

“My leg.”

“Past Denver. You put me on your thigh in your jeans and let me ride it till I was nearly there, and then you pulled me off it. Down here first, you said.” Sam felt his face go hot and kept going. “I never got to finish on it. I want to. No jeans this time, and after you’ve been in me.”

Hank looked at him a long time.

“Say that again.”

“I want to come on your leg, Hank.”

“Yeah,” Hank said. His voice had gone rough. “I’d like that. Same word as always. If you say wait, I stop, wherever I am.”

“Wait,” Sam said. “I know.”

Hank got the shirt off and the jeans, and sat back against the headboard with two pillows behind him. He reached into the nightstand drawer and set out a rubber from the Walmart box and the Petro tube of water-based lube on top of the drawer, side by side, the way he always did. His cock lay heavy against his thigh, half up, and it kept filling while Sam looked at it.

Sam climbed onto the bed on his knees and straddled him, one knee each side of his hips. He sat down on Hank’s thighs and kissed him. Hank’s beard was soft from the shower. His hands came up and spread over Sam’s back, wide, and pulled him in until their chests were flat together and Sam could feel the hair on Hank’s belly against his cock.

“You’re cold,” Hank said into his mouth.

“Warm me up then.”

Hank rubbed his palms up and down Sam’s back, slow, and then down over his ass, and squeezed. Sam rocked forward on his thighs and ground against his belly. They kissed a long time like that. Hank’s cock came up hard between them and stood against Sam’s, and every time Sam rocked they slid together.

“Get the tube,” Sam said.

Hank got it. He squeezed some into his fingers and reached around and stroked it down Sam’s crack, cool, and Sam hissed and pushed back into his hand.

“Cold.”

“It’ll warm up.” Hank circled his hole with two fingers and pressed, not in yet, just pressing. “Lean on me.”

Sam put his forehead on Hank’s shoulder and leaned. Hank pushed one finger in, slow, and stopped, and Sam breathed against his neck. Hank worked it in and out and then added a second, and Sam’s hips started moving on their own, down onto the fingers and up off them.

“That’s it,” Hank said. “Open up for me. I can feel you letting go.”

“Talk to me.”

“You’re hot inside. You’re squeezing my fingers every time I go in, like you don’t want them to leave.” Hank curled them and Sam jerked against him. “There. That spot. I’m going to rub that with my cock in a minute and you’re going to sit on it till you can’t.”

“Hank.”

“Three now. Can you take three.”

“Yes. Do it.”

Hank gave him three. Sam moaned out loud into Hank’s shoulder and stayed there, breathing, rocking down slow onto them while Hank went on talking to him low. He said Sam looked good with his knees spread on the green sheets, and that he’d been thinking about this since lunch. Sam’s cock dripped onto Hank’s belly and Hank didn’t touch it once.

“I’m ready,” Sam said. “Put the rubber on.”

Hank pulled his fingers out. Sam sat back on his thighs and tore the rubber open himself and rolled it down Hank’s cock, slow, down to the base, and slicked it with more from the tube until it shone in the lamplight. Hank watched his hands do it.

“You’re good at that now,” Hank said.

“I’ve had practice.”

Sam came up on his knees, reached behind himself and held Hank’s cock steady, and lowered down onto it.

The head pushed in, thick, and stopped. Sam held there with his mouth open. Hank’s hands came up to his hips and held them, not pulling, just there.

“Easy. No hurry. You’ve got all night.”

Sam let himself down another inch. The stretch burned and then gave, and he went down and down, slow, until he was sitting on Hank’s hips with all of him inside, and he let out a long noise that was half a laugh.

“Oh, fuck. Hank. You’re all the way up in me.”

“I know. I can feel you all around me.” Hank’s hands spread on his hips. “Look at my face. You said you wanted my face.”

Sam looked. Hank’s face was red under the beard, and his eyes were on Sam’s and didn’t move. Hank drew his knees up behind him. Sam leaned back until his shoulders met them, put a hand on each of Hank’s knees, and started to ride him like that, sitting up and open, so Hank could see all of him and he could see all of Hank.

He went slow first, up a few inches and down, rolling his hips at the bottom. The headboard knocked the wall on every roll. Hank’s hands rode his hips up and down and squeezed every time he came down.

“Like that,” Hank said. “Roll it. Grind on me.”

Sam ground down on him, slow and dirty. He sat down flush and circled his hips, and Hank’s cock moved inside him and rubbed the spot, and Sam’s thighs started to shake.

“God. It’s right on it. Every time I sit down it’s right on it.”

“Then keep sitting down. Work that spot on my cock.”

Hank slid one hand up off his hip and laid it flat on his chest, over his heart, and left it there.

“You still good?”

“I’m good. Don’t slow down on me.”

“I’m not slowing down. I want to feel your heart going while you do it.” Hank pressed his palm in. “Pounding. Every time you sit on me it jumps.”

“Because you’re in me.”

“Say it louder.”

“Because you’re in me, Hank.” Sam was half laughing and half groaning. “The whole street can hear it now.”

“Good. Mrs. Pruitt left her light on for it.”

Sam picked up the pace. He came up higher, until only the head of Hank was in him, and dropped back down, and the slap of his ass on Hank’s thighs filled the room. His cock bounced in the air between them and dripped on Hank’s belly. Hank’s breath was coming hard through his nose.

“Christ, Sam,” Hank said. “You’re so damn good on me. Faster. Ride it faster.”

Sam rode faster. The headboard banged. He dug his fingers into Hank’s knees and fucked himself down on Hank, up and down, and Hank started to push up into him on every drop, meeting him, and the two of them got loud. Sam heard himself yelling Hank’s name. Hank was swearing at him, low and steady, telling him he was beautiful and that he was going to come in him.

“Do it,” Sam said. “Come first. I want to watch it. Come in me, Hank.”

“Keep going. Don’t stop moving.”

“I won’t stop.”

Hank’s fingers dug into his hips. His face went tight. Sam drove down onto him three times, four, and Hank’s head went back against the headboard and his mouth opened, and he looked right at Sam and said his name, and came. Sam felt it. He felt Hank’s cock jump inside him, again and again, swelling against the spot, and Hank shook all over and pulled Sam down onto him and held him there while he finished.

“Sam. Oh God. Sam.”

He kept his eyes on Sam’s through every pulse of it, the way Sam had asked.

Sam sat on him and watched every second of it. His own cock was so hard it hurt, standing up red and leaking between them, and nobody touched it.

Hank was breathing like he’d run up a hill.

“Come here,” he said. “Up. I owe you a leg.”

Sam lifted off him slow, and Hank’s cock slipped out, and Sam groaned at the empty. Hank took hold of the rubber and pulled it off and tied it and dropped it on the floor by the bed. Then he let his right leg down flat on the green sheets, took Sam by the hips and walked him over onto it, until Sam knelt over that big thigh and settled down onto it skin to skin, his cock lying hot along the top of it.

“Hank, you sure.”

“I’ve owed you this since the buffalo.”

Hank’s hands settled on his hips and stayed there, not pushing. “Go on. Ride it. All the way this time.”

Sam rocked. Hank’s thigh was coarse and warm under him and hard as a fender underneath. He was still slick and open from Hank, and he rode it in long slow strokes, his cock sliding along the thigh up toward Hank’s hip and back, the grey fur rasping him on every pass until he was shaking with it. A high, cracked sound came out of him.

“That’s it,” Hank said. “Use it. Nobody’s pulling you off this time.”

“You stopped me last time.”

“I was a fool past Denver. I’m not going to be a fool on New Year’s.” Hank’s hands steered his hips and never went lower. “Go on. Let me watch you get there.”

Sam braced one hand flat on Hank’s chest and rode the thigh faster, grinding down, and Hank bunched the muscle up hard against him each time he pushed forward. Sam was leaving Hank’s leg slick and shining. The bed creaked under them. He was loud and past words, and he didn’t care who across the street had a light on.

“Hank. Hank, I’m going to come, I can’t hold it.”

“Then don’t. Do it on me.”

Sam came. He ground down hard and shouted and came across Hank’s thigh and up into the grey hair of his belly in long hard pulses, his whole body jerking, and Hank held his hips steady and watched every one of them, until Sam was shaking and pushing at his shoulder because it was too much.

Hank let him go. Sam slid down and lay on top of him with his face in Hank’s neck, and neither of them said anything for a long time.

The pot lid on the next street had stopped. Somewhere a dog was barking at the last of the fireworks.

“Happy New Year,” Hank said finally.

Sam laughed into his neck. “You said that already.”

“I’m saying it again. It’s better now.”

Hank pulled the green sheet up over both of them and put one big hand in Sam’s hair and left it there.

“Get some sleep, sweetheart,” he said. “You’ve got a man to see about a truck.”

---

Mrs. Pruitt was on her porch at half past eight in a quilted housecoat with a coffee cup, under her light that didn’t go off anymore. She lifted the cup when they came down the steps.

“Happy New Year, Hank. Happy New Year, Sam.”

“Happy New Year, Mrs. Pruitt.”

“I heard the fireworks,” she said. “Some of them sounded closer than downtown.” She drank her coffee and didn’t smile. “Walt called me at seven to see was I up. He wanted to know did I know anything. I told him I’m old, but I’m not a spy.”

Hank took a long time scraping the Camry’s windshield.

The yard at a quarter to nine on New Year’s morning was mostly empty. The sky was clear and hard and blue, and the gravel crunched with ice under their boots. A few trucks sat idling with nobody in them, waiting on the second of January.

The green Pete was where it always was, at the end of the second row with its long hood pointed at the gate. Three spaces down, Marlene sat in the low sun with her chrome polished and her red paint shining. TIBBS HAULING, BROKEN ARROW OK on the door.

Royce Tibbs was standing beside her with a thermos under his arm and his feed cap pulled down. He was wearing the brown Carhartt. He’d shaved.

Up in the depot window, Walt lifted his coffee cup, then set it down and went for his cane.

“Morning,” Royce said when they got close. He coughed into his fist. “That’s the cold.”

“Morning, Mr. Tibbs.”

“Royce. I keep telling you.” He looked at Sam and then at Hank and then back at Sam. “I told my wife I’d be home by ten either way. She’s making pancakes. She said if you say no, I’m still getting pancakes, so don’t worry about my feelings.”

Walt came down the office steps with his cane and a cardboard tray of coffees, and handed them around. Royce’s was black. Walt looked at Sam and didn’t say a word, and stood with his weight on the cane next to Hank.

Sam took the envelope out of his jacket. He held it in both hands.

“Royce,” he said. “I want to buy her. In my name. Your paper, the way you said, fair price and slow. I’ll sign whatever paper you have drawn up and I’ll pay you every month on the first, and if I’m going to be late I’ll call you the week before. My name on the title. Sam Ortega.”

Royce nodded slowly. He didn’t smile, but something in his face let go.

“All right,” he said. “All right, then.”

“I’m not done,” Sam said.

He turned to Hank.

Hank was standing very still with the coffee in his hand. He hadn’t drunk any of it.

“I’m signing this too,” Sam said, and held up the envelope. “Today, here. And then I’m leasing Marlene to the company. My truck, my name on her title, running under Doyle and Ortega. One insurance policy and one set of books, and Walt dispatching the both of us.” He took a breath. “You said I’d have to pick a door. I sat in Joplin with a pencil on Sunday and I couldn’t find a reason to. I want both. I want my name on something nobody gave me, and I want it on yours. If that’s allowed.”

Hank looked at him for a long time.

“Your note said I could,” Sam said. “Marlene under this name or mine, you pick. I’m picking mine. And then I’m handing her to us.”

“It’s allowed,” Hank said. His voice wasn’t steady. “That’s allowed.”

“Pen,” Sam said.

Royce had one. Of course Royce had one. It was a blue ballpoint from a feed store in Broken Arrow, and he held it out without a word.

Sam spread the eleven pages on the Pete’s hood, in the sun, on the warm metal over the engine. He turned to the last page where Hank had signed in December and the notary had stamped it, and his own line was empty under Hank’s name. He signed it. Samuel Ortega. He put the date next to it, January 1, and his hand was shaking a little on the one, and he didn’t care.

“Notary’s shut till Monday,” Walt said.

“Then the lady on Brookside stamps mine Monday,” Sam said. “It’s signed.”

Then he turned to Hank and handed him the pen.

“Your turn to ask,” Sam said. “You never asked me out loud. You wrote it. Ask me.”

Hank set his coffee down on the bumper. He looked at the signed page and then at Sam.

“Will you be my partner,” Hank said.

He said it plain, the same way he’d written it, and he still didn’t make it sound like a question, and it was one.

“Yes,” Sam said. “I just signed it. Yes.”

Hank put his arms around him in the middle of the yard and held on. He held on long enough that Royce coughed and looked at Marlene’s tires, and Walt looked up at the sky.

When Hank let go he went to the Pete’s cab and climbed up and came back down with a flat brown paper sleeve from a sign shop on Admiral.

“I had these cut the day after the lawyer,” he said. “If you’d said no, they were going in the trash and I wasn’t going to tell you.”

Inside was a strip of white vinyl letters on backing paper. & ORTEGA.

Sam stood looking at them.

“Go on,” Royce said. “I want to see it before I go get my pancakes.”

Sam peeled the backing. Hank held the strip level against the Pete’s door while Sam pressed the letters on one at a time with his thumb, smoothing them out on the cold green paint, right after DOYLE. When he stepped back it read DOYLE & ORTEGA TRANSPORT, TULSA OK, in plain white letters, and the & sat a little high, and nobody was going to fix it.

“Crooked,” Walt said.

“It’s fine,” Hank said.

“It’s crooked, Doyle. I’m just saying. I’ve been looking at that door through a window for nine years. I’d know.”

Royce laughed and coughed and laughed again. He took a ring of keys out of his Carhartt pocket and worked one off it and held it out to Sam.

“The other one’s in the ashtray,” he said. “Title I’ll sign over at the tag agent Monday, if you’ll meet me. I don’t care what goes on the door. Paint over Tibbs whenever you want. I only ask you keep calling her Marlene. My wife’ll want to know you did.”

“I’ll keep calling her Marlene.”

“And leave the crossword books.” Royce looked at the cab. “She did those. All in ink. Throw them out someday if you want, but not this year.”

“They stay,” Sam said.

Royce shook his hand, and then Hank’s, and then Walt’s, and stood a moment with his hand flat on Marlene’s red fender. Then he walked out to his pickup at the gate without looking back, and drove off toward Broken Arrow and his pancakes.

---

Walt finished his coffee and crushed the cup.

“Two trucks,” he said. “I’ve been watching one of you go out that gate for nine years. Guess I can watch two.”

“You’ll have to dispatch the both of us,” Sam said. “Same company. You’ll have to make us take the loads you want us to take.”

“I already do that.” Walt looked at Hank. “He just thinks it’s his idea.”

Hank put his hand in his jacket pocket. He brought out the old brass key on its bit of red string, with the faded Doyle Transport tag. He’d never put it on his ring. Sam knew it had been on the back-bedroom dresser beside the cedar box since November.

Hank held it out to Walt.

Walt didn’t take it. He looked at it in Hank’s open hand.

“Doyle,” he said. “You know what I told you about keys.”

“I know,” Hank said. “So this time I’m asking.” He took a breath. “Saturdays, Walt. Every one you want, and Sunday mornings if you’ll stay. And any other day you feel like coming over and telling me my bulb’s the wrong color. Will you keep a key to the house.”

Walt was quiet a long time.

“Now that,” he said, “is a question.”

“It’s a question.”

Walt looked at Sam.

“Ortega.”

“I want you to have it,” Sam said. “It’s your bedroom too. You sleep on the right.”

Walt took the key. He closed his hand around it and the red string hung down between his fingers, and he put it in the breast pocket of his shirt, behind the pens, and buttoned the pocket.

“Yes,” he said. “Saturdays. I’ll bring the chili.”

“You always bring the chili.”

“Then I’ll keep bringing it.” He turned and started back toward the office with his cane, slow on the ice, and called over his shoulder. “Load out of here Tuesday morning, Henderson and back, two trucks. That gives you Monday for the tag agent and the insurance man. I’ll put it on the board tonight. Don’t make me call you twice.”

They watched him climb the steps one at a time and go in. A minute later he was in the depot window again, a shape behind the glass with a fresh cup in his hand.

Hank and Sam stood between the two trucks. The Pete with its long hood pointed at the gate, and the new crooked letters drying on the door. Marlene three spaces down, red in the sun, with Royce’s second key in her ashtray.

Sam rubbed his thumb over his ring finger the way he used to. The pale stripe was gone. He hadn’t noticed it go. Sometime in the fall, out on I-80 or in Laramie or in this yard in the dark, the skin had caught up with the rest of his hand.

“What,” Hank said.

“Nothing. I’m cold.”

“Get in the truck then.” Hank looked at him. “Which one.”

“Mine,” Sam said. “I want to hear her idle. Then yours. We’ve got all day.”

The Tulsa yard at nine-twenty on New Year’s morning smelled like diesel and frost. Up in the depot window Walt lifted his cup. Hank lifted two fingers. Sam lifted his whole hand, and then he climbed up into Marlene, three points of contact the way they taught you, and turned the key.