Dhalgren

He climbed up the notched beam into the loft. De

“What?”

“Have I taken you guys on any runs, yet?”

“You forgetting things again?”

“You tell me if I have or not and I’ll tell you.”

“Just that one.”

“When?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Tell me, cocksucker!”

“When the…sun came up, and you ran everybody over to that house. Where Dollar killed Wally. That’s the only run you made, so far. I mean you didn’t plan it out like a run or anything. But that’s all.”

“Oh.”

“You remember that?”

“I remember.”

“Mmm.” De

“I guess I’m going to have to make another one soon.”

“Mmm,” De

Why do we make runs? Kid thought: Because if we didn’t, we’d be a little more crazy than we are now.

Eddy passed the door.

“Hey, Eddy?”

Eddy stopped. “What?”

“She gone?”

Eddy let out a breath. “Yeah.”

“And you’re go

“Man,” Eddy said, “I can’t do anything for them. And she’s…Well—”

“I know,” Kid said. “Hey, Eddy…don’t make anymore speeches. You’re a really bad press agent.”

“Huh?” Eddy stepped into the room. “Oh…yeah. Uh…Kid?”

Kid heard bolts roll across the floor. “Yeah?”

“Well…‘Eddy’, see, that’s what my sister and family call me. But the guys around here, they all call me Tarzan.”

“Tarzan?” It was a question, but with a lowering, not a rising, inflection.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

Eddy turned to leave.

“Hey, Tarzan?”

“What?”

“Sorry about your family.”

Eddy smiled, briefly and weakly. “Thanks.” He left.

Raven came in and said, “Aw, shit! Somebody kicked my fuckin’ screws all over the God-damn floor!” He sucked his teeth, squatted, and, out of sight from the edge of the loft, began to roll them back together.

I come. I go. Rather than going, though, I’ll stay. This cage seems too easy to flee. Is that what keeps us here? To leave the city: That is the thought that makes me weak in the small of the back and watery in the mind, so much so that it is easier not to remember it once the thought is past. Waiting for a word to push on these walls, with its brass hiss, there is no way to begin. Adjusting the frame to accommodate the day, I am swollen with terror at my inability to distinguish, at any action, what differentiates time after from time before.

“Hi, what are you putting together?” she asked.

“Just a piece of junk—” Raven said.

De

“Hi, babes. Is Kid up there?”

“Yeah, he’s right here.”

“Room for me?” Then her head came over the loft’s edge, and frowned. “…This one is harder to climb than the ladder on the other one.”

Kid pushed up to his knees to grab her shoulder. De

“Hey, I think I can do it more easily myself. Let’s see…” She scrunched her features. “Um…No, please. I’ll get it.” She pushed over the edge, almost slipping once. “There.” She took a breath. “Now all I have to worry about is getting down.”

“You came down to see us!”

“Sure,” she told De

“I thought,” De

“What are you wearing?”

“What I have on,” Kid said.

Lanya thought a minute. “Wash the pants first. Give them to me and I’ll run them through the machine. We have one that works in the basement of our building.”

“I only have one pair,” Kid said.

Lanya laughed, let go of their hands, and crawled to the back of the bed.

“I’ll shave, though.”

“I thought you decided to grow a beard.”

Raven, from the floor, called up, “I got a razor if you want to use it. Everybody else does.”

“I probably already have,” Kid said. “Thanks.”

“I taught all morning and afternoon,” Lanya said. “What did you do?”

De

“—little bastard—” Kid flexed his shoulder, which still hurt—“tried to chew my arm off—”

“—and so we put him out, but Copperhead and Glass and Spitt went out and got him anyway. He’s inside, pretty beat up.”

“We don’t do too much here,” Kid said. “Never guess who came to visit. She left just before you got here.”

“Who?”

“June Richards.”

“What on earth for?”

“Her brother’s here.”

“I thought he fell down an elevator shaft and broke his neck.”

De

“Her other brother,” Kid said. Then to De

“Yeah, I was just here. Remember?”

“Oh.”

“What did she want?”

“Family problems.”

“I thought you’d had enough of that family’s problems.”

“So did I.” Kid leaned forward and put his head in Lanya’s lap. “What do you think of our new nest here?”

“Shall I be brutal?”

“You don’t like it, huh?” De

“On my way from the front door, to the bathroom, and then back to here, I must have wondered seven distinct times how you could stand it!”

“God damn,” Kid said, “we roughed it for how long—?”

“That was outdoors, in the open air! And we spent most of our time by ourselves, away from other people anyway.”

“I don’t think she likes it here,” De

“You have fifty people in a space that won’t hold—”

“Twenty,” Kid said. “Maybe twenty-five.”

“—twenty-eight that I counted just now between the front steps, the kitchen, the living room, the service porch, the two back rooms—in a space that would be crowded with five or six! There is a pile of shit—human, I assume—by the side of the back steps, which is understandable considering you only have one bathroom. Which I was in, by the way, and that’s pretty unbelievable. How do you get these people fed? I mean, I was in the kitchen!”

“We eat pretty well,” De

“The lack of privacy would drive me up the wall!”

“You know,” Kid said, “that’s a fu

“Really?” Then she said, “If it was, how did it compare to this?”

“This is not the nicest time in my life. But there’ve been others a hell of a lot worse.”

“We got all sorts of good stuff to eat,” De