Dhalgren

He glanced at her again and chuckled.

Mist made mountains above the trees, made waves that broke, and fell and did not reach them.

His chest was damp from her cheek. She turned her head, tickling him with hair. A leaf, surprising as shale, struck his forehead and made him look up at the half-bare branches. “We shouldn’t be trying to do it like this. We’re dirty. It’s uncomfortable. Soon it’s going to get colder, or start raining, or something. Like you said, the commune is sort of a drag. You sit around and watch them waste whatever they have and then you finish up the leavings. We’ll get a place—”

“Like the Richards?” she asked, in a tired voice.

“No. No, not like that.”

“You think you’d like to put together something like Roger’s place?”

“It doesn’t have to be all that spectacular, huh? Just somewhere that was ours, you know? Maybe something like Tak’s got.”

“Mmmm” she said. Then once more she raised her head up on her chin. “You should go to bed with Tak again.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Because he’s a nice person. And he’d enjoy it.”

He shook his head. “Naw, he’s not my type. Besides, he catches them when they first get here. I don’t think he’s interested in anything more than the first taste, you know?”

“Oh.” She put her head down again.

“You trying to get rid of me,” he asked, “like you always think I’m trying to do with you?”

“No.” After a while she asked, “Does it ever bother you that you make it with both men and women?”

“When I was fifteen or sixteen it used to bug hell out of me. I guess I worried about it a lot. By the time I was twenty, though, I noticed that no matter how much worrying I did, it didn’t seem to have too much effect on who I ended up in bed with. So now I don’t worry. It’s more fun that way.”

“Oh,” she said. “Glib. But logical.”

“Why’d you ask?” He moved her to the side.

“I don’t know.” She reached down to touch his hip. Moved her hand across his hip. “I fooled around a few times in boarding school. With girls, I mean. Sometimes, you know, I felt maybe I was a little strange because I didn’t do it more. But I’ve just never been turned on to girls, sexually.”

“Your loss,” he said, and pulled her shoulder against his.

She turned to taste his neck, his chin, his lower lip. “What you were telling me happened…” she said between her tongue’s dartings “…at the Richards’ tonight…must have been…awful.”

“I’m not going back there.” He nipped her. “Ever. I’m not ever going back.”

“Good…”

Then, from a small movement down her body, he recognized some new thought had come to her mind. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“What is it?”

“It isn’t anything. I just remembered you told me you were twenty-seven years old.”

“That’s right.”

“But once I remember, just in passing, you mentioned you were born in nineteen forty-eight.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, that’s impossible. You’d have to be younger than…Hey, what’s the matter? You’re going all gooseflesh.”

As well, behind his rigid loins was a slab of pain. He pushed against her. The edge of the blanket, caught under them, rubbed across his shoulder as he rocked till she tugged them free, and made a sound, caught his neck. He held his hips up, probing. She moved her hands down his back, pushed him down, thrust up her tongue under his. He made love taking great, gasping breaths. She took many small ones. Wind wandered back and cooled his ru

After a laboring release, seething, he relaxed.

How jealous I am of those I have known afraid to sleep for dreaming. I fear those moments before sleep when words tear from the nervous matrix and, like sparks, light what responses they may. That fragmented vision, seductive with joy and terror, robs rest of itself. Gratefully sunk in nightmare, where at least the anxious brain freed from knowing its own decay can flesh those skeletal epiphanies with visual and aural coherence, if not rationale: better those landscapes where terror is experienced as terror and rage as rage than this, where either is merely a pain in the gut or a throb above the eye, where a nerve spasm in the shin crumbles a city of bone, where a twitch in the eyelid detonates both the sun and the heart.

“What are you staring at?” Lanya asked.

“Huh? Nothing. I was just thinking.”

Her hand moved on his chest. “About what?”

“About sleep…and I guess poetry. And being crazy.”

She made a small sound that meant “go on.”

“I don’t know. I was remembering. Being a kid and things.”

“That’s good.” She moved her hand, made that small sound again. “Go on…”

But with neither fear nor anguish, he felt he had nowhere to go.

He came out of sleep to lights and the stench of burning.

The luminous spider above him blinked off: the redhead lowered (and as he did, Kidd recognized him) one hand from the chains hanging to his belly. In the other, this time, was a slat from an orange crate.

An iridescent beetle disappeared from a sudden black face (also familiar) above a vinyl vest, shiny as his former carapace.

The arched pinchers of a scorpion collapsed: “Hey,” Nightmare said, “I think they’re about awake.”

Kidd’s arms were around Lanya. She moved her face against his neck; then moved it again, sharper, deliberate now, conscious.

Two dozen scorpions (most were black) stood in a ring against the grey morning.

Kidd recognized De

Then the redhead swung his stick.

Lanya shouted—he felt her jerk against his shoulder. She also caught the end of the slat.

She got to her knees, still holding the stick. Her eyes were wide; her cheek kept hollowing.

Kidd pushed up to his elbows.

The redhead started to move his end of the stick back and forth.

“Cut that shit, Copperhead.” Nightmare hit the stick with his knuckles.

“I just wanted to make sure they were awake,” the redhead said. “That was all I wanted to do. That’s all.” He pulled the stick.

Lanya let go.

Nightmare squatted slowly before her, resting his wrists on his torn knees, with heavy hands, drooping between, balanced by muscle-builder forearms.

“Man,” Lanya said, “if you’re trying to scare hell out of us, you’ve about succeeded.”

Kidd didn’t feel scared.

Lanya, sitting back On her heels, held her left arm with her right hand, moving her thumb over the knob of her elbow.

Kidd pushed the blanket from his legs and sat up cross-legged.

Naked in the chained circle, he figured, was better than half covered.

“I got better things to do than scare you, lady. I just wa

She took a breath, waiting.

“How’s he doin’?” Nightmare bobbed his head toward Kidd.

“What?”

“You doin’ pretty well with him?”

“Say what you want to say,” she said, and touched Kidd’s knee. She was scared; her fingers were icy.

Nightmare’s forehead, large pores and heavy creases, creased more. “The other one. You got rid of the other one, huh? That’s good.” He nodded.

“Phil…?”

“I didn’t have much use for…Phil? That was his name, huh?” Nightmare’s smile moved his lips more to the side than it curved them. “Guess you didn’t either. So you don’t have to worry now. What about it? I asked you before.” Suddenly he ducked his head and, from his thick neck—the half-braided hair falling from it—lifted a loop of chain.

It wasn’t the optical one.

Reaching forward, Nightmare placed it around Lanya’s neck. His fists hung from it like clock weights. The half-inch links creased her breasts at the nipples. One fist went up, one down.

“Hey, man…” Kidd said.

Copperhead flipped the stick against his hand, watching Kidd.

Kidd looked up: the leopard-freckled, bearded, and redheaded spade was taller and narrower than Nightmare and, for all Nightmare’s barbell muscles, looked stronger.