I stood up.

He grinned at me, put his hand on the back of my neck again. “Where you learn that?” With his other hand, he brushed his knuckles across my cheek. “You really look good down there, white boy.”

I took his cock in my hand.

It was still half hard. He laughed. “This nigger’s ol’ pig-sticker ain’t never less than a quarter stiff.” He pulled me down to sit with him on the bottom step. He closed his hand around mine around his dick. He moved his face up right in front of mine so that I could smell the wine; I kept glancing at the crazy scar that made its valley down beside his black lip. His hand behind my neck kept my face right against his. The other dug between my legs.

From behind us:

“Man, let me get at the bitch now!”

“Aw, come on. Shit, man, you already been there!”

Maria’s high, hiccupping giggle rode on a wallow of bass laughter, till a husky hysteria cut through it all:

“I’m gonna fuck ’er! I’m gonna fuck ’er, man! I’m gonna fuck ’er now!”

The nigger opened his mouth over mine and dug in my throat with his tongue, breathing through his nose. I could feel the stubble on his chin and cheek against mine.

He got my fly open and his hand inside. He was fingering around for my asshole, and every once in a while he’d come up and twist on my cock. I held onto his shoulders, because he was almost pushing me off the edge of the step, under the banister.

Thinking I was going to fall, I came.

He took his tongue out my mouth, brought his hand up between us. His nails were dirty and his knuckles were black like the ground in the woods when it hasn’t rained in a long time and it’s begun to crack. His fingers were strung with mucus. After looking at it a moment, he said: “Get it, boy. It’s yours.”

I held his wrist and licked his thumb and the back of his hand.

But it was already cold.

“With that dick on you and the way that yellow hair of yours is all curly, you could have some nigger in you—one of them quadroon, octroon kids. Yeah, I can see it in your nose, there. And your mouth, a little.” (A lot of niggers, their palms and their soles are lighter than the rest of them. But not his. I licked the insides of his fingers.) “You gonna remember Nigg for a long time, ain’t you, cocksucker? Tell you what. Ah’m gonna stick my black dick up your ass an’ we gonna tongue some more. Then I’m gonna make you suck the shit off it. An’ I’m gonna bust my nut again.…” His scummy hand kept working down between my legs. My top button pulled loose from the worn hole. (I wanted to chew the bottom of his foot.) He began to push my pants down. “Shit, come on and sit on this nigger dick … white boy!”