Dhalgren

“Hey, where you going?” Nightmare said.

“Thanks for the meal,” Faust mumbled to Thirteen without stopping.

“Hey, motherfucker, so long!” Nightmare bellowed into the wake of ice.

The door swung open for Faust.

“Good bye!” Nightmare flipped his arm: the door slammed; the flung spoon clattered the picture frame.

The picture swung.

Nightmare laughed. Ice flushed away in the blowtorch of his hilarity.

Thirteen, first dubiously, then in full-throated hoarseness, laughed with him.

“Toss me back my fuckin’ spoon!” Nightmare howled between landslides of laughter.

It came back underhand from Thirteen. “Now what’s the old man all upset about, huh Smokey? He’s crazy, ain’t he?” and looked over his shoulder as Smokey nodded corroboration.

Nightmare had caught his spoon and now leaned toward Kidd. “He’s all fucked up in the head, you know? Cause he thinks I messed up the bitch.” He pointed the spoon at the form under the blanket. “I didn’t mess her up. She got caught fightin’ fair. I wasn’t even around. Shit.” He swiped food into his mouth. “You know—” grains fell: to his wrist, to his jeans, to the scarred parquet—“some of these sons of bitches didn’t want no bitches whatsoever in the business.” He down-stabbed the air with his spoon. “Keep ’em away! Keep ’em out of here! They just go

A heavy girl, in a blue sweatshirt, standing by the ma

“Hey, De

De

“I should throw this motherfucker at you!” Nightmare jerked the plate back to his shoulder. Kidd jerked aside. But Nightmare returned the plate to his lap, and laughed loudly and wetly.

De

“People are very fu

Kidd glanced around the room again; everyone in the room looked white.

Nightmare saw him glance and lifted a finger: “Now don’t get your idea from this. Thirteen here runs the Lily White Rest Home for Depraved and Indigent A-heads; but the true brotherhood is of a much deeper hue.”

“God damn, Nightmare,” Thirteen said from the door. “Why are you always going on like that? We get spades here. There was—” he began to snap his tattooed fingers—“what’s-his-name…?”

Nightmare waved in the air. “Tokens! Mere tokens.” The nails on his beefy fingers were overlong and crested black as an auto mechanic’s. “’Cause I’m white,” he said out of the side of his mouth to Kidd, “these racist bastards here will let me come around to look for replacement troops. Well, motherfuckers, I’d come around here even if I was black as George! And I’ll keep coming around till both moons fall out of the sky and the sun comes up backwards!” He looked at Kidd directly. “But we’re getting a few, too—though these shitheads would give up a nut before they’d admit that just a few of them even like it better living over there and being scorpions than hanging around this behavioral sink!” His hand, which was still up before him, returned to hold the edge of his plate, about to slide off. “Yes, the ladies had to beat some heads.” He glanced back at the figure behind them in the blankets: “And some of the ladies, indeed, got their heads beat. Well, I had to beat some heads too, to attain my present status—and though I am now quite satisfied with my current position in the community, I would not be surprised if my head eventually took some beating too.” He turned back, dark hair falling in tangles from his shoulder, and made a face. “Sisterhood…Brotherhood very powerful stuff, man!” Grimacing, he shook his head. “Very powerful. Hey—?” once again at De

“I du

Nightmare laughed again, looked around the room. “He’s go

“Yeah,” De

“Now you see; these motherfuckers all think I want to be the daisy in a field of black orchids—” (lower:) “though we have two or three of those; and no problems with ’em. But since I been boss-man, I take whoever wants in and knows their business.” He nodded to Kidd. “I’d even take you, and you ain’t no nigger…what?” He leaned back, narrowed his eyes, and raised a hand like an artist at a picture: “A half-blood American Indian on your…father’s side? ’Course, the light’s a little dim…”

Kidd gri

Nightmare gri

A frustrated laugh came from across the room. Thirteen said: “Nightmare, why are you always down on us like that? You got us out as racists, and chauvinist pigs, and speed freaks to boot. We ain’t had no speed around here for I don’t know how long.”

Nightmare bounced on the bed with delight, the back of his wrist against his forehead, miming a distressed belle. “Me!” in falsetto. “Me?” even higher. “Me, down on speed? I’m just waiting for you racist, chauvinist pigs to get some more!”

Smokey said: “That blond Spanish guy hasn’t been around with any for a long time…I sort of wonder where he went.”

Somebody else said: “He probably burned the whole city.”

Thirteen began laughing again, moved across the room, laughing. Others moved too.

Nightmare turned back to Kidd. “How’d you like that idea, goin’ on a scorpion run?” It must have struck him as fu

Why why “Why? You got yours on around your neck,” nd your neck our eck ck. He hadn’t been aware that his shirt was half open.