Dhalgren

The black hand went down against the coverall. The green wrinkled. “So you don’t like it here?”

“Yeah,” Kid said. “I like it…don’t you?”

Harrison nodded, his cheek filled with his tongue. “You ever come over in the Jackson?” The tongue flicked the lips.

“I’ve walked through.”

“You know any black people live over there?”

“No. Well, Paul Fenster…”

“Oh, yeah.”

“But I don’t know where he lives.”

“You come over there and see me sometime, huh?”

“Huh?” Kid was not sure he had caught any of the last words bundled in that voice with a nap longer than velvet.

“I say ‘You come pay a visit on me.’”

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks.” Kid was bewildered. Searching that, he found two questions about things that rhymed which flooding embarrassment blocked. So he narrowed his eyes instead.

“Kid—” she called from the stairs behind him. Then, in a completely different voice: “George—hi there, babes!”

Kid turned. “Hey—!”

George called over him, “Hey there—” and then with a narrowing expression: “Say this ain’t your old man, is it? The guy I been hearing all that talk about over in the bar—well, say! Now the last time I seen your old lady, you know I tell her to bring you down and pay a visit to me, you hear?”

Lanya came down the steps; George walked toward them.

“Now see,” Lanya said, “I haven’t seen you since the park.”

“If I got to invite you twice, I guess I got to invite you twice,” George said, starting up. “Got to go see me the Reverend now, though. One of you drag the other on down, now.” George nodded toward Kid.

“Um…thanks,” Kid said, nodded back.

“See you around,” George said.

“Sure,” said Lanya.

They passed.

George’s response was a falsetto, “Ooooooooo,” which broke and became trundling laughter. Laughter rolled beneath the ceiling like smoke. George mounted into it.

At the bottom of the stairs Lanya said, “Where’ve you been?” and blinked four or five times more than he thought she would have, in silence.

“I…I couldn’t find you this morning. I looked for you. I couldn’t find you. At the commune, or down at the bar. What happened? Where did everybody go?”

Her eyes questioned. Her lips moved on one another, did not open.

“You want some coffee?” he asked out of discomfort, turned and went into the kitchen. “I’ll go get you some coffee. It’s all ready, inside.”

At the urn, he picked up a cup, pulled the lever. “Did you see Tak too? How’d you know I was here?” Amber bubbles burst at the rim; black liquid steamed. “Here you—” he turned and was surprised that she was right behind him.

“Thank you.” She took the cup. Steam flushed before her lowered eyes. “I saw Tak.” She sipped. “He said you might be here. And that Mr. Newboy was looking for you.”

“He just left. He had my book. The galleys, for the poems. The type’s all set.”

She nodded. “Tell me what you’ve been doing.”

“It was a pretty fu

“You ate here?” She looked by both his shoulders. “That’s good.”

“What did you do?”

She was wearing a white blouse, clean but unironed, that he had not seen before. As she walked beneath the bulb, he saw her jeans were new enough to show the crease. “You pick up some clothes this afternoon?” He followed her into the bare auditorium.

“Yesterday. I found them in a closet of the place where I’m staying now.”

“You have been busy, huh? You found a house an’ all?”

“About three days ago.”

“Jesus,” Kid said, “when did you get time to do that? I didn’t think I let you alone long enough to go to the damn bathroom, much less find a house—”

“Kid…” She turned on the word to lean against the sofa arm. In the hall, shrill echoes returned. “Kid,” much more softly, “I haven’t seen you in five days!”

“Huh?” The heel on the floor and the heel in his boot prickled. Prickling rose up his legs, spread about his thighs. “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean?” She spoke clumsily, breaking through three tones of voice. “Where have you been?” Retreating from the clumsiness, her voice was left only with hurt. “Why did you go away? What did you do all this time?”

Little things clawed between his buttocks, mounted rib by rib, perched on his shoulder to nip at his neck so he had to drop his chin. Lines of perspiration suddenly cooled. “You’re kidding with me, aren’t you? Like with the moons?”

She looked puzzled.

“The night when the moons first came out, and later we were talking about them; you pretended that there had just been one, and that I had been seeing things. You’re fooling with me like that now?”

“No!” She shook her head, stopped it in the middle of a shake. “Oh, no…”

His cheeks felt like pincushions.

“Kid, what happened since the last time you saw me?”

“We woke up, when those sons of bitches were standing around us, right?”

She nodded.

“Then you went away, and I…well, I hung around for a little while, and then I went down to the john to wash up. I guess I took an awful long time. I should have hurried…But there was this guy there, Pepper, a scorpion.” The prickling had left his feet: it felt as though he were being poured full of cold water. It rose behind his knees. “Pepper and me, we went down to the camp site, only it had been abandoned.”

“John and Milly didn’t move the commune till the day after I saw you last; they thought it would be safer.”

“Then we went to Teddy’s to look for you. Only it wasn’t open yet. And I had a lot of wine with Bu

She nodded. “Yes, he gave it to me…the day before yesterday!”

“No,” he said. “Because I gave it to him this morning.” The water reached his loins, poured into his scrotum; his scrotum shriveled. “Then I went out, and ended up at that department store downtown. That’s where I met the other guys, and we broke into the place. There were people living in there. We got out. But they shot one of the guys. We just got him out of there, on the God-damn bus that happened to be coming along!”

“That happened two nights ago, Kid! Some of the scorpions came into the bar and wanted to know if anybody knew where they could get a doctor. Madame Brown went with them, but she came back in about ten minutes. Everybody was talking about it all yesterday.”

“He was bleeding and moaning on the floor of the bus!” The water roared around in Kid’s chest, then filled the column of his neck, fountained inside his head. “I got off the bus, and I came—” He choked, and for a moment thought he would drown.“—came here.” The water reached his eyes (and the work bulb grew knitting needles of light); he brushed it away, before more of it rolled down his face, no longer cold, but hot.

He kept rubbing at his eyes with the other: coffee had slopped over.

He raised his cup and sucked the bitter liquid from his skin.

“O, give that here!” She took his cup from him and put them both down on the sofa arm. “I’m not fooling you!”

His hand, lost with nothing to hold, hung like something torn from among roots and still clumped with earth.