Dhalgren

  "No," Lanya said. "That's not me. I'd rather do some of the taking myself."

  The black hand turned up its lighter palm. One shoulder shrugged. "Then you and me-" George began to chuckle-"we just gonna have to stay like we is; friends. 'Cause any other way, we just wouldn't get along. Now I been liking it like that a long time, honey. And when you like it that way, when you do it that way, then you think about it; and you learn about it. And one of the things you learn is which women likes it that way too. Now you can't tell all the time, without askin'; and some like it more than others. But you learn." George's eyes narrowed again. "Now you really want to know what it was like, with her and me?"

  Lanya nodded. (Kidd's chin tapped a leaf that swung down and up to tap it back.) "I asked."

  "There it was, you see-" George's shoulders hunched -"all dark in the middle of the day and lightning rolling easy and slow overhead and the flames licking up and the smoke licking down and people screaming, running, rioting, bricks falling in the street and glass breaking behind me-I turned to see: And there she was, just staring. At me. People going past her every which way, and her the only still one on the street, looking like she was about to eat the back of her own hand, all pressed up against her mouth like that, and from the way she was looking at me, I-knew! I knew what she wanted and I knew how she wanted it. And I knew I wanted it too." One hand was back in George's pocket. "Now I'll tell you, that ain't something you know all that often. But when you do, you can either say 'Shit man,' and walk away. Or, 'I know what I know!' Now, you an' me, we wouldn't get along." The chuckle ran out into a sound too low to hear. George breathed. "But her and me, we got along!" He suddenly turned, took a step, and halted as though his great body had been-struck. "Shit, we got along!" He turned back. "I ain't got along with nobody that well since I was twenty-eight years old and that's been more than ten years! We was in this alley, and there was this light flashing on and off, on and off; and people would run in, run out, and we just didn't care! Or maybe that made it better, that there wasn't nothing they could do, or that they wanted to do." Suddenly he looked down, laughed: "I remember one old woman with a shopping bag full of empty old tin cans come running in and seen us and started shouting bloody murder and running in and out, and screaming 'Get off that poor little white girl, nigger! You do that, they gonna kill us, they gonna kill us for sure!'" George shook his head. "The light, I guess, was this guy taking his pictures; I don't know if I really seen him or not. He wasn't there when I, finished. I stood up, see, and she was lying there, still reachin' for it, you know?" Once more he shook his head, laughed once more: both meant something different from when he'd done them moments before. "Like I say, she weren't no more than seventeen. And she got hit and she got punched and she got thrown around and she was yelling and screaming, 'No, no, oh, don't, oh please don't.' So I guess it was rape. Right? But when we finished-" George nodded-"she was reaching for it. She wanted some more, awful bad." He tapped the air with a concluding forefinger. "Now that's a very interesting kind of rape. It's the kind they always have in the movies. It's the kind your lawyer friend was trying to make this other thing into. And when it gets to the law courts, it's a pretty rare kind. But it's the one they all afraid of-especially between little-bitty white girls and big, black niggers."

  "Well," Lanya said, "it still sounds a little strange. Okay, it's not my thing. But what do you think, say, about the guy I was telling you about, who did that to my friend?"

  "I think," George said, "I know a little bit more about him than you do. And I think if he'd maybe come talked to somebody like me first, we could have maybe worked somethin' out where he didn't have to go and get himself and some little girl in trouble. About him or the girl, I don't think nothing; I don't know them. But I think what you told me about is very," and George dropped his chin, "very, very sad."

  Lanya took a breath. "I'm just still wondering about the girl. I mean the one you were with ... Do you even know her name?"

  "Well, after I was finished, we did not exactly introduce ourselves." Suddenly George scowled. "Look, you try and understand this. I don't give a shit about the bitch! I really don't. And suppose I did? Suppose, afterward, I'd done said, 'Oh, hey baby, that was so fine, let's you and me get married and live all happily ever after so we can just take care of one another every night!' What she gonna say? 'You crazy, nigger!' I mean a couple of times I tried that, and it don't work. That ain't her thing. That ain't mine. She ain't interested in me neither. She interested in what she thinks about me. And that's fine by me. She know my name-it was in the paper. I gave it to them for free, too. I told them I ain't ashamed of nothing I done, I like it like that, and I'm gonna do it again, any time, any place. And believe me, that's all she wants to know!" George's scowl relaxed. "Afterward, people was gossiping around and saying her name was June or something like that. You say your old man know her? What he say about her?"

  "About," Lanya said, "what you just did." She pressed her lips, considering. Then she said, "She's looking for you, George. I saw her once, come up to ask my old man after you. She wants to find you again."

  George's laugh launched high as Madame Brown's and, with his rocking head, tumbled down into its easy bass. "Yeah . . . ! Yeah, she looking for me! She just circling and circling around me, getting in closer and closer-" George's forefinger circled on the air, spiraled in-"just circling and circling, closer and closer, like the moon around the sun!"

  Something (though Kidd was not sure what it was) struck Lanya as funny and she laughed too. "George, you've got your images mixed up! You're supposed to be the moon; not her. Besides, the moon doesn't circle around the sun!"

  "Well," George said, "maybe it usually don't, but this is Bellona, and you ain't got no way to tell what's gonna happen here!" His laugh grew, fell away; he came out of it with a serious expression. "You see, I been around, I know some things. How old are you? Twenty-three?"

  "On the head," Lanya said. "You should be guessing in a fair."

  "Well I'm old enough to be your daddy-"

  "You're old enough to be June's daddy too." Lanya said. "Do you have any children?"

  "I got five of them I know about," George said, "and one of them off a white woman, too, young lady. Green-eyed, mustard-headed-" George screwed his face -"ugly little motherfucker! Well, maybe he ain't so ugly. And I got one of them as old now as her momma was when I first stuck it to her, too." George cocked his head the other way. "And that ain't nowhere near old as the little girl we was talking about. None of the five of them is here in Bellona. But I tell you, if I was to see that oldest girl of mine, standing on the corner, looking at me like that little white girl was looking-I don't care if she my kin or not, I'd do the same fuckin' thing. Now you believe it!"

  "George," Lanya said, "you are incorrigible!"

  "Well, sometimes you look pretty funny yourself, Miss Anne! Look-" George got back his explanatory tone-"what it is, is that women wants it just exactly like men do. Only nobody wants to think about that, you know? At least not in the movies. They pretends it don't exist, or they pretends it's something so horrible, making all sorts of death and destruction and needless tragedy and everybody getting killed, that it might just as well not exist-which is the same thing, you see?"

  "Yes," Lanya said, "I'd noticed. George, people are scared of women doing anything to get what they want, sex or anything else. Christ, you men are presumptuous bastards. If I was telling you how blacks really are the way you're telling me about women, you'd organize a sit-in!"

  "Well," George said, "I just didn't know if you went to the movies that much so's you'd know."

  After a moment, Lanya asked: "What do you think's gonna happen when you two finally do meet again, George?"

  George's eyebrows, darker crescents on an iron-black face (the tarnished light erased all browns and reds), rose. "Well, she gonna get closer, and closer, just circling-" one hand traced its spiral while the other waited for it at the spiral's center-"and circling, and closer and
closer, till-" George's cupped palms smashed; Kidd blinked; his back muscles cramped-"Blam! And the sky gonna go dark and the lightning gonna go roll over the night, wide as a river and slow as the sea, and buildings gonna come toppling and fire and water both gonna shoot in the air, and people gonna be running and screaming in the streets!" George winked, nodded. "Gonna be just like last time."

  "I think," Lanya said, "you've got your images mixed again." She came away from the wall and ambled a few steps across the stone. "You're doing just what the movies are doing-making it into something terrible and frightening."

  "That's the problem-like I say: You see I like it like the movies. But when we get together again, we just gonna be doing our thing. You all is the ones who gonna be so frightened the city gonna start to fall down around your head." George's head went to the side. He grinned. "See?"

  "Not quite." Lanya grinned back. "But let it ride. Okay, what are you gonna do afterward?"

  "Same as before, I guess. Blam! and excuse me, ma'am, and then be on my way. And then it starts all over . . ." Once more that oblique expression came to George's face. "You say your old man ... is she all right? I mean is she okay and all?"

  "Yeah," Lanya said. "I guess so."

  George nodded. "Yeah . . . somebody told me back in the bar you done got yourself a new boy friend. That's nice."

  Where, Kidd wondered, was Milly?

  "Things get around." Lanya smiled, and Kidd had an image of her suddenly snatching her harmonica to fling up some fusillade of notes to hide her embarrassment. Only she didn't look embarrassed. (He remembered wanting to overhear Lanya and Milly discussing him; the prospect of a discussion of him with George left him vaguely uncomfortable.) Fingers hooked over her pocket rim, Lanya was toying with her harmonica. "Yeah. I don't know if I'd say I got him; how about getting?"

  "Well, you sure get yourself some winners! That last one . .." George shook his head.

  "What did you think of Phil, George?" The subject, almost as uncomfortably, had changed.

  "I thought he was crazy!" George said. "I thought he was a stuckup, up-tight, tight-assed asshole- Smart? Oh, he was smart as a whip. But I'm still glad to see you shut of him." George paused; his brows wrinkled. "Though I guess maybe you ain't . .. ?"

  "I don't know." Lanya's lowered eyes suddenly rose. "But that's easier to say if you got a new one, isn't it?"

  "Well-" George's laugh came out surprising and immense-"I guess it is. Say, when you gonna bring your old man on down to Jackson and say hello?"

  "Well, thanks," Lanya said. "Maybe we'll come down ... if we don't see you in the bar, first."

  "Gotta check your new old man out," George said. "First, see, I thought maybe you'd got involved with one of them faggot fellas up at Teddy's. God damn, sometimes I think there ain't nobody in the city no more ain't a faggot but me."

  "Is that a standard male, "heterosexual fantasy?" Lanya asked. "I mean, to be the only straight man around when all the others are gay?"

  "I ain't got nothing against faggots," George said. "You seen them pictures them boys made of me? Something, huh? Some of my best friends is-"

  "George!" Lanya held up her hand, her face in mock pain. "Come on, don't say it!"

  "Look-" George's gestures became sweepingly gallant-"I just like to make sure all my friends is taken care of. If you wasn't getting none, see, I was gonna volunteer to make an exception in my standard methods of procedure and fit you in my list. We got to watch out for our friends? Now, don't we?"

  "That's sweet of you," Lanya said. "But I'm royally taken care of in that department."

  And Kidd, gloriously happy, put his other knee on the ground and sat back. A thought, circling below articulation, suddenly surfaced, dripping words: They know each other . . . were the first that fell off it; more followed, obscuring clear thought with lapped, resonant rings. He remembered the poster. It was the same man, with the same, dark, rough face (the face was laughing now), the same body (the khaki coverall was mostly too loose but now and again, when a leg moved so or a shoulder turned, it seemed about to tear at arm or thigh), that he'd seen reproduced, bared, black, and bronze-lit.

  "Well, then-" George made a slate-wiping motion -"everything's fine! You two come on down. I'd like to meet this guy. You pick 'em pretty interesting."

  "Okay." Lanya said: "Well, I guess I'm gonna be on my way. Just stopped in to say hello."

  Now, Kidd thought, now Milly is going to jump out and . . . ?

  "Okay. I see you," George said. "Maybe later in the bar."

  Now . ..?

  "So long." Lanya turned around and started down the steps.

  George shook his head, went back to the wall- glanced after her once-picked up the newspaper and while he shook it out, speared two fingers at his breast pocket for his glasses. He got them on the third try.

  Harmonica notes twisted up like silver wires in the haze.

  Kidd waited half a dozen breaths, realizing finally he had misjudged Lanya's and Milly'S intentions. Milly had, apparently, chickened out. Again he wondered from what. Backing into thicker brush, he stood with cramping thighs and, ignoring them, circled the court. The ground sloped, sharply. This time, if he could overtake her on the path, he would not hide-

  The music wound in the smoke toward some exotic cadence that, when achieved, slid it into a new key where the melody defined itself along burbling triplets till another cadence, in six measures, took it home.

  He came out on the side of the steps. Small branches tugged his hips and shoulders, swished away.

  Lanya, at the bottom of the flight, ambled onto the path, dragging her music after like a silver cape.

  And she had almost completed the song. (He had never heard her play it through.) Its coda hauled up the end in one of those folk suspensions that juxtapose two un- related chords to hold a note from one above the other and make chaos of it. Starting down the steps behind her, he got chills, not from fear or confusion, but from the music's moment which sheered through mouse-grey mist glimmering in the leafy corridor.

  He tried to walk silently, twice stopped entirely, not to break the melody before its end.

  He was on the bottom step. She was fifteen feet ahead.

  The melody ended.

  He hurried.

  She turned, lips together for some word that began with "m." Then her eyes widened: "Kidd-?" and she smiled. "What are you doing here-?" and took his hand.

  "I was spying on you," he said, "and George."

  She raised an eyebrow. "You were?"

  "Yeah." They walked together. "I liked your song."

  "Oh ..."

  He glanced over.

  She was more embarrassed, he realized, by his overhearing the music than the conversation. While he was wondering what to offer her to atone, she managed to say:

  "Thank you," softly, "though."

  He squeezed her hand.

  She squeezed his.

  Shoulder to shoulder, they walked up the path, while Kidd's mind turned and sorted and wondered what hers turned and sorted. He asked, suddenly: "The person you were telling George about, who got raped-was that Milly?"

  Lanya looked up, surprised. "No ... or let's say that I'd rather not say."

  "Huh? What does that mean, no or you'd rather not say?"

  Lanya shrugged. "I just mean Milly probably wouldn't want me to say, one way or the other."

  Kidd frowned. "That doesn't make sense."

  Lanya laughed, without letting it out, so that it was only an expression, a breath through her nose, her head shaking. She shrugged again.

  "Look, just give me a simple answer, was she or-?"

  "Now you look," Lanya said: "You're a very sweet man, and I know you're not doing it on purpose, it's just the habit men get into of trying to undermine anything that goes on between two women. But stop it."

  He was confused.

  She asked: "Okay,"

  Confused, he agreed. "Okay."

  They wandered on. The song, etched on
memory, filigreed, in memory, the silent, present trees. The sky had deepened to a color that could be called blue, in leaf-shaped flakes among them.

  Confused, he was still happy.

  At the commune clearing, Milly, with Jommy at the furnace, turned, saw them, and ran over. "Lanya, Kidd-" and to Lanya: "Did you tell him?"

  Lanya said: "No. I didn't, yet..."

  "Oh, Kidd, I'm afraid-" Milly took another breath; she had been running more than just from the furnace. "I'm afraid I was spying on the two of you most of the way back here." She laughed. "You see, we decided I was going to hide in the bushes and overhear Lanya and George-"

  "Huh?" Kidd said.

  Lanya said: "He's not so bad after all-"

  "Kidd?" Milly said. "Oh-you mean George! No, of

  course he isn't . . ." Back to Kidd: " was going to come

  out and join Lanya again on the path back from the

  Weather Tower-" then it wasn't the monastery; but he'd

  pretty well decided it couldn't have been-"when I saw

  you pop out on the steps, thirty seconds before I was

  going to!"

  He said to Lanya: "Then you were expecting . . . ?" The half-dozen questions in his mind were halved again when Milly said:

  "I couldn't keep close enough to hear everything you

  were saying. If I had, I would have made too much noise.

  I just cut straight through and caught the paths on the

  snake-turns. Oh, Lanya, it is a lovely song! Really, you've

  got to play it for other people. See, you can play it all

  the way through. I told you you could. You knew / was

  listening, and you got through it. Just don't let people

  embarrass you . . . Kidd-?" Milly frowned. "You look

  so confused, Kidd!" Suddenly she hugged him; red hair

  brushed dry against his face. He nearly stumbled. "Really,