Dhalgren

And over the next fifteen seconds, the afternoon sky, dull as an aluminum pot bottom, darkened to full night.

Five seconds into the darkening, De

There was a noise like a plane coming. It kept coming too, while I watched De

Lanya grabbed my arm, and I turned to see her blue face, and all around it, go black.

If it was a plane, it was going to crash into us.

I jerked my head around left and right and up (hit the back of my head on the wall) and down, trying to see.

Another sound, under the roar, beside me: Tak standing?

Something wet my hand on the tarpaper beside me. He must have kicked over the brandy.

White light suddenly blotched the horizon, cut by the silhouette of a water tower.

I didn’t feel scared, but my heart was beating so slow and hard my chin jerked, each thump.

Light wound up the sky.

I could just see Tak standing now, beside me. His shadow sharpened on the tarpaper wall.

The sound…curdled!

The light split. Each arm zigged and zagged, separate, ragged-edged and magnesium bright. The right arm split again. The left one was almost directly above us.

And Tak had no shadow at all. I stood up, helped Lanya to…

Some of the light flickered out. More came. And more.

“But what is…?” she whispered right at my ear, pointing. From the horizon, another light ribboned, ragged, across the sky.

“Is it…lightning?” De

“It looks like lightning!” Tak shouted back.

Someone else said: “’Cause George don’t shine that bright!”

Tak’s bleached face twisted as if beat by rain. The air was dry. Then I noticed how cool it was.

Nodes in the discharge were too bright to look at. Clouds—sable, lead, or steel—mounded about the sky, making canyons, cliffs, ravines; for lightning it was too slow, too wide, too big!

Was that thunder? It roared like a jet squadron buzzing the city, and sometimes one would crash or something, and Lanya’s face would

Here one page, possibly two, is missing.

Don’t remember who had the idea, but during the altercation, for a while I argued: “But what about Madame Brown? Besides, I like it here. What are we going to do when you’re at school? Your bed’s okay for a night, but we can’t sleep there that long.”

Lanya, after answering these sanely, said: “Look, try it. De

I pushed myself to the loft edge, swung my legs over, and dropped. “Okay.”

So De

The first night Madame Brown put supper together out of cans with De

I asked, “What are you making?” but they didn’t hear so I sat in the chair by the table alternately tapping the chair-back on the wall and the front legs on the floor; and drank two glasses of wine.

Lanya came in and asked why I was so quiet.

I said: “Mulling.”

“On a poem?” Madame Brown asked.

We ate. After di

Back in Lanya’s room, I sat at the desk in the bay window, looking at my notebook. Lanya and De

I woke before the window had lightened, got up and prowled the house. In the kitchen, considered getting drunk. Made myself a cup of instant coffee instead, drank half, and prowled some more. Looked back into Lanya’s room: De

I was naked.

“Restless?”

“Yeah.” I came over, squatted by the bed, hugged her.

“Go ahead. Pace some more. I need another couple of hours.” She turned over. I took up the old notebook here, sat around cross-legged on the floor, contemplating writing down what had happened till then.

Or a poem.

Did neither.

Looked in the top desk drawer—the wood looks like paper had been glued all over it and then as much pulled off as possible. She said some friends lugged it from a burned-out windshield warehouse a few blocks down the hill.

I took out the poems she’d saved, spread them on the gritty wood, on every kind of paper, creased this way and that (red-tufted begonia stalks doffed), and tried to read them.

Couldn’t.

Thought seriously of tearing them up.

Didn’t.

But understood much about people who have.

Looked back at Lanya; bare shoulders, the back of her neck, a fist sticking from under the pillow.

Prowled some more.

Got back into bed.

De

I woke alone.

Leaves arched over me. I looked up through them. Blew once to see if they’d move, but they were too far. Closed my eyes.

“Hey,” De

I opened my eyes. “Fuck you if I was.”

“I just walked Lanya over to school.” He leaned against the edge of the doorway, holding his chains. “It’s nice around here, huh?”

I sat up on the side of the bed.

“But there ain’t too much to do…it’s nice of her to have us over here, I mean to stay a while, huh?”

I nodded.

About two hours later he told me he was going out. I spent the rest of the morning staring at blank paper—or prowling.

Madame Brown, coming out of her office, saw me once and said: “You look strange. Is anything the matter?”

“No.”

“Are you just bored?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not bored at all. I’m thinking a lot.”

“Can you leave off long enough for a lunch break?”

“Sure.” I hadn’t had breakfast.

Tuna fish salad.

Ca

We both had a couple of glasses of wine. She asked me for my character impressions of: Tak, Lanya, De

Which is what I was doing when Lanya and De

“De