Dhalgren

"We'll go together, Bobby. All of us."

  "Oh, Bobby," June said, "come on!"

  Bobby stalked through the living room, threw the paper at the coffee table, said, "Okay," and went into the kitchen. "I have to put the bread away first."

  "Well, put it away," Mrs Richards said. "Then we'll go."

  "I could only find half a loaf," Bobby called.

  "Did you ask for a whole one?" Mrs Richards called. "I'm sure if you asked them politely for a whole loaf, they would have tried to find one for-"

  "There wasn't anybody in the store."

  "Oh, Bobby-" "I left the money."

  "But you should have waited for somebody to come back. Suppose someone had seen you going out. They wouldn't have known you'd-"

  "I did wait. Why do you think I was gone so long. Hey, this has got mold in it."

  "Oh, nooo," Mrs Richards cried. "Not a lot," from the kitchen. "Just a little spot on one corner."

  "Does it go all the way through?" "It's on the second slice. And the third-" "Oh stop tearing in it!" Mrs Richards exclaimed, punched the cushion, stood, and followed her son into the kitchen. "Let me see."

  Perhaps it was the discomforting lucidity centered in the recapitulation: he said to June: "Last night, did you ever find-?"

  Cellophane rattled from the kitchen. By the door frame, June's eyes widened in recognition-finally. Her forefinger brushed her lips awkwardly for silence, brushed, and brushed again, till it wiped all meaning from the gesture. She blinked. The cellophane rattled.

  Bobby came out, sat in front of the coffee table, and pulled the paper onto his lap. When he saw his sister, he cocked his head, frowning, then looked back at the paper, while June's hand worked down the front of her sweater to her lap.

  "It's through," announced Mrs Richards. "All the way through. Well, it isn't very large. Beggars can't be choosers." She came into the living room. "We can cut it out, and all have sandwiches with little rings in them. We are all beggars till this thing gets straightened out, you know. Are you reading that again?"

  Mrs Richards put a fist against her hip. Bobby did not look up.

  "What is it talking about today?" in a gentler tone. The fist dropped. Bobby read on.

  He said, "That whole business last night, with the moons."

  "What?"

  June offered, "I ... I told you, Mother. Last night, when I went out-"

  "Oh, yes. And I told you, June, I didn't like that. I didn't like that at all. We'd better go upstairs. Bobby?" who only grunted.

  "Some people said they saw two moons in the sky." He stood up from his chair. "They named one of them George," and didn't watch June but the back of Bobby's head; and knew June reacted anyway.

  "Two moons in the sky?" Mrs Richards asked. "Now who said they saw that?"

  "Calkins doesn't say," Bobby mumbled.

  "The guy who wrote the article didn't see them," he told Mrs Richards.

  "Two moons?" Mrs Richards asked again. "June, when you came in, you didn't say anything about-"

  June had left the room.

  "June! June, we've got to go upstairs!"

  "Do I have to come too?" Bobby asked.

  "Yes, you have to!"

  Bobby folded the paper loudly.

  "June!" Mrs Richards called again.

  He followed mother and boy to the door, where June waited. While Mrs Richards opened first the upper, then the lower, at last the middle lock, June's eyes, perfectly round, swept his, implored, and closed.

  "There we are."

  All blinking for different reasons, they entered the hall. He followed till Mrs Richards announced, "Now," and continued, "I want you-what is your name?-to walk up in front."

  It was surprisingly easy to say, "Kidd," as he stepped around the children.

  "Pardon?" Mrs Richards asked.

  "Kidd. Like Captain Kidd."

  "Like Billy the Kid?" Bobby asked.

  "Yeah."

  "Neither of them were too terribly nice people," said June.

  "The Cisco Kid," Bobby said. Then, with raised eyebrows and small smile, droll as an adult of thirty: "Pow, pow ... ?"

  "Bobby, stop!"

  He walked with Mrs Richards. Her heels clunked; his sandal lisped, his bare foot hardly whispered.

  As they reached the elevators there was noise above. They looked at the stairwell door with its wire-webbed glass and EXIT in red letters across it Trundling footsteps grew louder-

  (His hand pressed against his leg, across one turn of chain.)

  -grew louder still, till shadows crossed the glass. The footsteps, dropping below, softened.

  Mrs Richards' hand, grey as twigs from fire, hung against the wall by the elevator bell. "Children," she said. "It must be children. They run up and down the stairs, in the hall, banging on the walls, the doors. They don't show themselves, you know. That's because they're afraid." Her voice, he realized, was hoarse with terror. "They're afraid of us. They, don't have to be. We're not going to hurt them. I just wish they wouldn't do that That's all. I just wish they wouldn't."

  Two separate elevators opened.

  From one a man said, "Oh," a little gruffly. "Honey. It's you. Scared me to death. Where're you going?"

  From the other came a faint wind, from a long way up or a long way down.

  "Arthur! Oh, Arthur, this is Kidd! Edna Brown sent him to help. We're taking him to see the new apartment"

  He shook the large, moist hand.

  "Pleased," Arthur Richards said. The closing door k-chunked his shoulder, retreated, then tried to close again.

  "Edna sent him over to help us with the cleaning and the moving."

  "Oh. Edna coming over later?"

  "She said she'd try this afternoon, Mr Richards."

  K-chunk.

  . "Good. Hey, let's get in this thing before it knocks me down." Mr Richards guffawed. His white collar made folds in his fleshy neck. His hair was so pale, possible white was lost in the gloom. "Sometimes I think this thing doesn't like me. Come in."

  K-chunk.

  They ducked before the door swung them into darkness.

  "19" hung, orange, on the black.

  "Arthur," Mrs Richards said in the humming dark, "they've been running in the hall, again. They came and beat on the door. Twice. Once this morning, and once right after Kidd came. Oh, I was so glad he was there!"

  "That's all right, honey," Mr Richards reassured. "That's why we're moving."

  "Management has just got to do something. You say you have been down to the office and told them?"

  "I've been down. I told them. They said they're having difficulty right through here. You've got to understand that, sweetheart. We're all having difficulty."

  June breathed beside him. She was the closest person to him in the elevator.

  "You'd know how upsetting it was if you ever heard it, Arthur. I don't see why you can't take a day off of work. Just so you'd know."

  "I'm sure it's upsetting."

  The door opened; in the hall he could see two ceiling globes were working.

  Mrs Richards looked across her husband's chest. "They wouldn't do it if Arthur was home."

  "Where do you work, Mr Richards?" he asked as they got out.

  "MSE . . . Maitland Systems Engineering. Honey, I wish I could take off from work. But things are even more confused there than they are here. This just isn't the time for it. Not now."

  Mrs Richards sighed and took out a key. "I know, dear. You're sure Management said it would be all right?"

  "I told you, honey, I got the key from them."

  "Well, they never answered my letter. They answered in two days when I wrote them last year about the plaster in June's bedroom." The key went in with a sound like gravel. "Anyway-" she looked across Mr Richards' chest again-"this is where we're going to move to."

  She strode into the pale blue room through rattling mountains of brown paper. "The lights," she said. "Try the lights."

  Mr Richards and June and Bobby waited in the doorway
.

  He stepped inside, flicked the switch.

  The ceiling light flared, went Pppp!, and out.

  June, behind him, let a small cry.

  "That's only the bulb. At least you have some power."

  "Oh, we can fix that," Mr Richards said and came inside. "Come on, kids. Get inside now."

  June and Bobby squeezed through shoulder to shoulder, but remained sentinel at the jambs.

  "What else has to go beside this paper?"

  "Well." Mrs Richards righted a cane bottom chair.

  "There're the other rooms, furniture and stuff." Brown

  paper roared about her shins. "All sorts of junk. And

  the dirt. And then of course, we'll have to move our

  things."

  Blinds, fallen from one fixture, dangled their crushed aluminum slats to the floor. "Just take those all down. It'll be a nice apartment when it's clean."

  "Did you know the people who lived here before?" "No," Mrs Richards said. "No. We didn't know them. Now all you have to do is clean these out." She walked into the kitchen and opened a broom closet. "Mop, pail, Spic-n'-span. Everything." She came back. "There's all sorts of things in the other rooms."

  "What were they doing with all this paper?" "I dunno," Bobby said uneasily from the doorway. Stepping into the lichenous leaves, his bare foot came down on wood, wire, glass: krak! He jerked his foot, kicking away paper.

  The break in the cover-glass went through both faces: framed in black wood, husband and wife, bearded and coiffed, posed in nineteen-hundred clothing. He picked it up from the papers. The loose glass ground.

  "What's that?" Mrs Richards asked, stepping around more overturned furniture.

  "I guess I broke it," trying to feel, without looking, if he had cut his foot.

  Between the parents, in matching sailor suits, a sister and her two brothers (one younger, one older) looked serious and uncomfortable. "It was just lying on the floor."

  Mrs Richards took it from him. The hanging-wire rattled on the cardboard backing. "Isn't that something. Who do you suppose they are?"

  "The people who lived here before-?" June stepped up, then laughed. "Oh, it couldn't be. It's so old!" "Daddy," Bobby said from the doorway. "Yes?"

  "I think Kidd wants to use the bathroom." June and Mrs Richards both turned. "I mean," Bobby said, "he's just been living in the park, and stuff; he's real dirty."

  Mrs Richards sucked her teeth and June only just did not say, "Oh, Bobby!"

  Mr Richards said, "Well . . ." smiling, and then, "Um . . ." and then, "Well . . . sure."

  "I am sort of scroungy," he admitted. "I could use a washup, after I finish work up here."

  "Sure," Mr Richards repeated, heartily. "I've got a razor you can use. Mary'll give you a towel. Sure."

  "In this room - " Mrs Richards had leaned the photograph against the wall and was trying to open a door now - "I don't know what they put in this room."

  He went to take the knob. Something scraped as he shoved the door in a few inches. A few inches more and he could peer: "Furniture, ma'am. I think the whole room is filled up with furniture."

  "Oh, dear . . ."

  "I can squeeze in there and get it out"

  "Are you sure - ?"

  "Why don't you all just go downstairs? I can get started on this. It's got to be neat and clean. It's a mess now. There's not too much you have to show me."

  "Well, I suppose . . ."

  "Come on, Mary. Let the boy get to work."

  He went back to the front room and began to push the paper over to one side of the room.

  "Bobby, come on back from there. I don't want you getting in trouble."

  The door closed: ... the boy? Well, he was used to having his age misjudged. (Where do they want me to put this crap!) He turned around and, with his sandal, stepped on something else. He kicked back paper: a kitchen fork.

  He put his notebook on the chair Mrs Richards had set right, and began to fold the wrapping paper to yard-square packets. Out there on the balcony, he could toss it over. Shit-colored angel flakes? And the furniture: crash! No, can't do that very well. Drag all that junk to the elevator, drop a traveling furnished room to the cellar. Punch around in the basement dark with it? Beating on the wall, thumping on the floor? Not that either. Put it all on one side of the room, sweep and scrub, then all to the other. Burn it in the middle? What does she expect?

  At any rate, in ten minutes, half the floor was clear. On the black (with white marbling) vinyl, he'd already uncovered a saucer filmed with dried coffee; Time with a wrinkled cover he recognized from several years back; some paint-crusted rags-

  The knock made him jump.

  June called, "It's just me ..."

  When he opened the door, she stepped in with a bottle of Coke in one hand, in the other a plate with a sandwich. The sandwich had a hole at one side. She thrust them out and said: "Please, don't say anything about last night, at the bar! Please I Please?"

  "I didn't say anything to your mother." He took plate and bottle. "I wasn't going to get you in trouble."

  "They don't know anything about that . . . ! The paper had the pictures, but they didn't have my name . . . though everybody knows it anyway!"

  "All right-"

  "They looked at them, Mother and Daddy. They looked at them and they didn't recognize me! Oh, I thought I was going to die ... I cried. Afterward. Oh ..." She swallowed. "Mother . . . sent that up to you. She thought you might be hungry. Please don't say anything?"

  "I won't," and was annoyed.

  "It was like you were playing with me. That was awful!"

  He took a drink. "Did you find him, George Harrison?" It was bubbly but tepid.

  She whispered, "No ..."

  "What did you want him for?"

  Her totally vulnerable look made him grin.

  He put the plate down on the chair, considering whether to accept what so resembled the once rejected; then he took the sandwich and tore through the hole with his teeth. Spam. And mayonnaise. "He was in there. You shouldn't've run off. He came out just a minute later." He swallowed. "Hey, you want a picture of him?"

  "Huh?"

  "I can get you a picture of him, if you want, not

  like they had in the newspaper." '

  "No. I don't want a picture of him. What kind of picture?"

  "Big full-color poster. Buck naked."

  "No!" She dropped her head. "You are playing with me. I wish you wouldn't. It's just awful."

  "Hey, I just.. ." He looked from sandwich to bottle. He wasn't hungry, but had eaten in complicity. Now he wished he hadn't. He said: "If you play by yourself, you're just going to lose. If I play with you, maybe you'll ... have a chance."

  Her hair swung; she looked up, with a confusion he paid her the compliment of assuming feigned.

  "Tomorrow I'll get you the-"

  "You were supposed to wait for me," Bobby said from the doorway. "Mom said we were supposed to come up here together . . . Gosh, you almost got this room clean."

  June made shoulder motions which Bobby did not exactly ignore; neither did he respond. Instead, he said, "You got that stuff around your neck. Like this." He held up his bright wristlet.

  "Yeah." He grinned. "Bet you won't tell me where you got yours."

  Bobby looked more surprised than he'd expected. "I told Mom and Daddy that I just found them."

  June said, petulantly, "You shouldn't wear them."

  Bobby put his hands behind his back and humphed, as though this were an exchange from a frequent argument

  "Why shouldn't he?"

  Bobby said, "She thinks terrible things happen if you wear them. She's scared. She took hers off."

  June glared at him.

  "You know what I think?" Bobby said. "I think even worse things happen to people who wear them for a while and then take them off!"

  "I didn't take it off."

  "You did!"

  "I didn't!"

  "You did!"

  "It
wasn't mine! And you shouldn't have said you found it. I bet really bad things happen to people who steal them."

  "I didn't steal it!"

  "You did!"

  "I didn't!"

  "You did!"

  "Oh . . . !" In sibling frustration she flung her hands out to end the antiphon.

  He took another bite of pulpy bread; swallowed it with warm Coke: bad idea. He put both down.

  "I'm going back!" Bobby said. "You better come too. We're supposed to be together." And marched out the door.

  . She waited. He watched.

  Her hand moved in the side folds of her skirt, started to come up. Then she raised her head.

  "Maybe you better-"

  "Oh, he's going to go exploring." Contempt?

  "Why do you want to find .. . George?"

  She blinked. A word lost itself in breath. "I ... I have to. I want to!" Her hands tried to raise, each one, in turn, holding the other down. "Do you know him?"

  "I've seen him."

  For all her light-eyed, ash-like blondness, her expression was incredibly intense. "You just . . . live out there?"

  "Yeah." He examined her face. "So far I haven't needed a ..." Intense, but it told him little. "... I haven't been here anywhere near as long as you have." He forced his shoulders down; they'd hunched to fend something he had not even consciously acknowledged an attack. "I hope you find him." It wasn't an attack; it was just that intensity. "But you've got a lot of competition."

  "What . . . ?" Her reaction to his realizing it was to suddenly lose all of it. "What do you want?" She sounded exhausted, looked as if she would repeat it with no voice at all. "Why ... did you come here?"

  "To clean up ... I don't know why. To play, maybe. Why don't you let me clean up? You better go back downstairs." He picked up another paper and folded it, growling and flapping, to manageable size.

  "Oh . . ." And suddenly she seemed just a very young girl again. "You're just . . ." She shrugged; and left.

  He finished the paper, put the revealed junk in the kitchen, up-righted more furniture, and thought about this family.

  They filled his mind while he finally shouldered into the packed room; he reached innumerable decisions about them which he lost to scraping chair legs, collapsing bridge tables, drawers that would not fit in their chiffoniers. One thought, however, remained surfaced for the time it took to move five pieces into the swept front room: Trying to stay sane under that sort of madness drives us nuts. He contemplated writing it in his note- book. But none of the words (and he had taken out his pen) weighed enough to pull his hand to the paper. The thought vanished in the gritting hinges of the writing board to a rolltop desk. Who had stuffed all this junk in here? (Drive? Pressure? Effort? ... but was exerting too much of it maneuvering a daybed, on its end, around a bureau.) With slick underarms and gritty neck, he toiled, contemplating hours and wages. But it was difficult to judge slipping time while shuffling and arranging so much hollow dialogue.