Dhalgren

She shook her head with small, quick movements. “But they don’t know…” Unable to look at him longer, she looked down at the roll. “I know more than they do.”

“Hey,” he asked to fill the discomforting silence, “what did happen between you?”

“Go read about it in the Times.” She looked up.

He searched for the belligerence he’d heard: her raised features held none of it.

“The night the…black people had the riot? I was out, just walking around. There was lightning. And that immense thundering. I didn’t know what had happened. And then it…I didn’t even see the man with the camera until—It’s just like it showed in the paper!”

“Oh,” which gave her none of what she’d requested.

She walked toward the door. Just before she reached it, she finished removing the rubber band and unrolled the poster.

“Is that him?” he asked, thinking it would be friendly rhetoric but hearing a real request.

The movement of the back of her head as she looked here and there became nodding. She glanced back. “Why…did they make…these?”

“I guess some other people felt the same way about him you do. I was talking, last night, with some friends. This girl I stay with: she’s maybe a few years older than you are. And this guy. He’s an engineer, like your father. We were talking, in a bar, about whether I should give that to you.”

Her face began to worry on itself.

“I didn’t tell them your name or anything. They took it very seriously, you know? More seriously than I did, at first. They didn’t laugh at you or anything.”

“…What did they say?”

“That it was up to me, because I knew you. That some bad things could happen, or some good things. You like it?”

She looked again. “I think it’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”

He was angry, and swallowed to hold it. “Tear it up and throw it down the elevator shaft, then…if you want.” He waited and wondered if her shaking head was confusion or denial. “I’d keep it if I were you.”

“Hey, what’s that?” From the way Bobby ran into the room, Kidd thought he would burst through the poster like a clown through a paper hoop.

June crashed the edges together. “It’s a picture!” The white backing wrinkled against her thighs.

“What’s it a picture of?”

“It isn’t anything you’d be interested in!”

“D’you find it up here in a closet?” Bobby asked Kidd, walking into the room. “I bet it’s a naked lady. I’ve seen pictures of naked ladies in school before.”

June sucked her teeth. “Oh, really!”

“Come on. Let me see.”

“No.” June tried to roll the paper. Bobby peered, and she whipped around. “It isn’t yours!”

“Oh, I don’t want to see your old naked lady anyway. Hey, you really got the place cleaned up, Kidd. We go

“Yeah.”

“We got an awful lot of stuff in our house.” Bobby looked dubious.

“We’ll make it.”

June finished rolling the crinkled poster, picked up her magazines, and started down the hall to the back of the apartment.

“I’m just go

At the hall’s end a door closed loudly.

“Come on,” Kidd said. “Leave your sister alone. Let’s go downstairs and move some furniture.”

“Naw!” Bobby complained, though he started to the door with Kidd. “She’d tell on me if she caught me with a picture of a naked lady.”

They went out.

“You tell on her,” Kidd said, “they’ll take it away and you’ll never see it.”

“Is it a naked lady?” Bobby asked, wonderingly.

“Nope. It’s not.” Kidd rang the elevator bell.

“What is it?”

“A naked man.”

“Aw, come on!” Bobby began to laugh as the elevator doors rolled open and stepped forward.

“Hey, boy! This one!” Kidd grabbed Bobby’s shoulder.

The wind hissed.

“Oh, wow!” Bobby stepped back, then shrugged from Kidd’s grip on his shoulder. “Hey, I almost…!” He shook his head.

“You better watch yourself. Come on.”

They stepped into the other elevator.

The door pulled darkness around them.

Bobby, still breathing hard, pushed “17.”

“Does June always tell on you?”

“Sure, she does…well, not always.”

“What’s the last thing she didn’t tell on you about?”

“What do you want to know for?”

“Just curious.”

The door opened. Bobby, revealed beside him, had one hand around his chained wrist, stroking the clumsy beads.

“I can’t decide,” Mrs. Richards a

“I want my old room!”

“What do you mean, dear? We’re moving into a new apartment.”

“It’s just the same as this one; only backward. And it’s blue. I want my old room.”

“Of course, darling. What room did you think you were going to have?”

“I just wanted to make sure.” Bobby marched off down the hall. “I’ll start putting my stuff together.”

“Thank you, dear.”

“I’ll start with the couch and the beds and things, Mrs. Richards. They’re the hardest; but once they’re up, you’ll really be moved in, just about, you know?”

“All right. But the beds, they’re so big!”

“I’ll take them apart. You got a hammer and screwdriver?”

“Well, all right. I guess if you’re going to get them upstairs, you have to. I’m just feeling guilty that I didn’t organize this thing any better. Now you want a screwdriver. And a hammer. You’re sure you’ll be able to put them back together?”

Mrs. Richards was pulling off the bedding as he came back from the kitchen with the tools. “You see, ma’am,” he explained, hoisting off the mattress, “these big beds, the frames just come off the headboards.” Even so, as soon as he got to work, he realized five full-sized beds, to dismantle, move, and reassemble, would take at least two hours.

He’d been working for one when (Mrs. Richards herself had already made several trips) he heard Bobby and June out in the front room. He put down his screwdriver as Bobby said: “You didn’t tell on me about this…and Eddie; so I won’t tell about your old picture.”

Kidd walked out of the bedroom and stopped by the living room door.

June, her back to him, was reaching into the sideboard. Silver clashed in her hands. She turned with the bunched, heavy spoons and forks.

“Only,” Bobby continued by the bookshelf, “you shouldn’t have taken yours off.” This and yours apparently referred to the optic chain that bound his wrist; he was holding his arm up to show his sister. “Eddie took his off, and you remember what happened.”

“I was just scared,” June protested. “Because of all that other stuff. If you hadn’t stolen that one from Eddie, he wouldn’t have—”

“I didn’t steal it!”

“He didn’t give it to you, did he?”

“I didn’t steal it,” Bobby insisted. “If you say I stole it, I’ll tell them about your bad picture—”

“It isn’t bad!”

“Of course it’s bad; if it wasn’t bad, you’d let me see it.”

“Hey,” Kidd said.

Both children looked.

“Eddie’s your brother, isn’t he? What happened to Eddie, anyway.”

Both looked at each other.

The silverware recommenced clanking.

Bobby moved his palm over his beaded wrist.

“Okay,” Kidd said. “I guess it isn’t really any of my business.”

“He went away,” June said.

“He ran away from home,” Bobby said. “Only—”

“—he came back a couple of times,” June said. “And did terrible things. It wouldn’t have been so hard on Mommy if he hadn’t kept coming back like that.”

“Daddy said he was go

“Bobby!”

“Well, he did. And Mommy screamed—”

“Look, it isn’t any of my business,” Kidd concluded. “Once we have all the kitchen stuff upstairs, your mother can start getting ready for di