Dhalgren

The three reached the sidewalk—now they turned away—huddled. Flames—or a dog—barked. A smoky tarpaulin rolled between them.

Kid stepped back, expecting fumes.

But some gust shredded the billow, tossing off dark fluff. And they were gone, down some burning alley.

Kid turned and hurried forward.

“Hey!” a familiarly mauled voice ahead called. “Is that you…Kid?”

Kid slowed closer.

Shifting bronzes slicked the black face. Uncertain light made it look (Kid had never thought this before) like there was grey in that snarled wool. The temples were hollow, as on a very thin man, Kid thought; but not like somebody with that jaw, those arms (one sleeve had been cut from the shoulder of the green shirt, leaving a frayed rim: The other was just rolled up tight so the veins lay on the blocked flesh like black twine). “What you doing out here, boy? Ain’t this—” and made no gesture, but swayed (the orange construction boots wide in the wet net) so that his whole body indicated the holocaust—“something?” George got his thumbs under his belt to tug at his canvas pants and laughed. “We all been down at the Reverend’s prayer meeting. Now look at it.” Black fingers hit Kid’s shoulder, clamped. “Look at it, will you?”

Kid turned, staring.

“They burned the whole damn thing up tonight.”

“What in the…I mean how did it…?”

George tugged Kid’s shoulder. A few feet ahead, the paving sank under a puddle like a hole in hellroof. “Niggers done set the whole of Jackson to burning, don’t it look like?” They walked. “Ain’t got no water now, when the pipe broke. Shit.”

Kid’s bare foot struck a tepid pool; it shook like goldleaf.

“You scared?” George’s fingers were hard, hot, and tight. “Nothing going to hurt you. Look at that burn, burn up like a motherfucker; it’s beautiful, huh? Like walking on the sun.” He looked at Kid, his arm straightening and bending each step. “The moon get its light from the sun.” He smiled on big, yellow teeth in gums mottled pink and grey like a dog’s. “Get its light from the sun and shine all night.” His lids narrowed on eyes, blood-webbed and tan. “It burn and it burn and it don’t never stop. It send the folk all down ru

Kid’s lips were hot. He closed his mouth, his teeth, closed his lips again because they had come open. “There was this old black woman,” Kid said. They passed a smoking (or was it steaming?) grate. “She broke into the school to steal food. She said there wasn’t anymore food in—”

The street sign said:

CUMBERLAND PARK

They passed around. The other extension of the L-shaped sign said:

JACKSON AVENUE

George nodded heavily.

Twenty yards ahead, a ton of fire fell onto the sidewalk.

“What…” Kid began, “What are you doing here?” while he tried again to reconstruct the steps coming: D-t had said—

“There may…” George’s face lined over, straining at reason. “There may be people in there. We got to go help them.”

“Oh,” Kid said with the thought: He’s crazy, which is like (with the afterthought) the pot calling the kettle a rusty son of a bitch.

They walked through the sun.

George was still laughing.

“What…?” Kid asked, expecting no answer.

George said: “You ain’t scared?”

“I think,” Kid said, “if somebody jumped out right now and went boo, I would shit.”

“Watch it!” George pushed Kid away, but Kid wasn’t sure from which piece of rubbish about them.

I just may live to be an old man, and live through the process called dying, then I won’t be living anymore, no matter what revelations I do or do not go through here, Kid thought and grew cold. Artichokes. He looked up; fire ripsawed the night.

“You think we going to get out of this alive?” George still gri

What, Kid wondered, has June got to do with this moment in this man’s life? The fire and her hair are two different golds. And yet she circles…! Kid’s eyes went round. “There—!” He pointed. “It isn’t burning down that way! We can go—”

“Boy, there may be people in here, burning up alive!”

“You think there’re people?”

“Well, we ain’t going to know unless we look.”

“Okay,” Kid said because there was nothing else to do.

A charred six by six lay across the gutter. Kid stepped over it.

On the cobbles, puddles lay under it, alive and molten.

Water, Kid thought as they walked between two, is molten ice. It was that hot.

“Hey, George! George?…You hear something up there?”

“Where?”

VII The Anathēmata: a plague journal

[WE DO NOT KNOW who typed this transcript, nor if every relevant entry was included, nor, indeed, the criteria for relevance. Previous publication of Brass Orchids possibly weighted the decision not to include their various drafts here. (The fate of the second collection we can only surmise.) Generous enough with alternate words, marks of omission and correction, the transcriber still leaves his accuracy in question: Nowhere in the transcript is there a formal key.]

it into her shoulder and tore /it/ out.

Dragon Lady let go all her breath in some way still not a scream. Nightmare danced back across the kitchen twisting his orchid, (jerking a little); as though/I think I think he was trying to under stand what he’d done. Dragon Lady threw herself at him, cutting for his face and kicking. (I kept thinking Thinking: There’s an art to these weapons I don’t begin to understand.)

He fought himself away, bleeding from the jaw and neck.

She flung herself again. I thought she was trying to was going to /would/ be impale[d].

Her white jeans were bloody to the knee. A good deal of the blood was his.

Copperhead, like a in delayed reaction, said, “Hey…” with a voice I’d never heard: he was scared to death.

Raven, Thruppence, and D-t hit the doorway [and] one another/ anothe[r], peering, over each one another’s shoulders. (Thinking: I used to break up Dollar’s scuffles, but I would no more get into this than chop off my thumb.)

Nightmare flailed backward out the screen door, II his forearm/ going/ making a cracked the on the jamb.

Horsing around in the yard with Nightmare, Raven, Filament, and Glass, tripped and scratched my calf on the edge of the steps. Later, Lanya came into the loft and saw me. “Hey,” she said. “You should put something on that. Don’t play with it that way. You’ve practically rubbed it raw. You don’t want it to get infected.”

Everybody poured after them—somebody knocked something off the sink. I heard a garbage bag fall and tear under someone’s boots. Two of the little boys (Woodard and Stevie) were holding hands and butting their shoulders against each other, Rose, the youngest (seven?), and brightest girl was right up there trying to see with everybody else. She went through the door with me.

Dragon [Lady] was snappinged her own bladed fist back and forth as though her arm were a whip. (Her elbow dripped. Nightmare spun away: gravel chattered against the bottom step. Drops splatted the ground.

The sky gleamed dull as zinc.

I looked up at the alley—thinking: You can’t /even/ see the end, when Thirteen came hurrying out of the mist. He stopped twenty feet away, Smokey and Lady of Spain behind collided with him.

Dragon Lady staggered, swayed—I thought she’d tripped.

But she shook her head, hard, gave a tiny cry, turned; and fled down up the street.

Smokey collided with Thirteen. Lady of Spain stepped back.