Dhalgren

  She was frowning. "I think you have that absolutely ass backward. But if it makes you, in your own delightfully naive way, polite and charming, I guess . . ." She put her head down again, and sighed. "But I wouldn't be surprised if there turned out to be one or two people who came up to my party in Nova Scotia who were also down in Texas a few years later at... yours."

  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 j 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?"

  "I don't know." He moved her to the side. 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 . . . 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 breath. She took many small ones. Wind wandered back and cooled his running shoulders.

  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 pincers 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 Denny between one bony, brown shoulder and a fleshy black one.

  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 want 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 wanna talk."

  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 then 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 Lan
ya'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.

  Nightmare's fists stopped, one on Lanya's belly, one on her breast: he watched her.

  She watched back, her jaw flexing. She took her hand from Kidd's knee, put both fists around the chain, up near her neck, and ran them down, so that her left one pushed Nightmare's high one away. "Take it off," she said. "I told you once, I don't want it."

  A thin, dark woman in the circle, bare breast pushing aside her vest flap and chains, shifted her weight. Someone else coughed.

  "What about him?" Nightmare said and didn't look at Kidd. "What you gonna do when we take him? This one's comin' with us, Lady."

  "What do you guys . . . ?" Kidd stopped. Anger, fascination, and a third feeling he couldn't name braided together from his brain base into his belly and below.

  "Take it off," Lanya said. "I don't want it."

  "Why?"

  "I just want to stick to my guns. I don't that often." Then she gave a funny laugh. "Beside, your costume designer's cruddy."

  Nightmare snorted. A few people in the circle laughed too. "What about yours?" somebody else said. But Nightmare lifted the chain. Scraps of her hair fell from the links.

  Then the scorpion swiveled, boot toes tearing grass. "Here." The chain went over Kidd's head. Nightmare's eyes were traced with coral. His vest had apparently come apart at one, scarred shoulder and was laced now with rawhide.

  Nightmare began to pull the chain.

  Cold links slid down Kidd's right nipple. Nightmare's fist came up against his left breast, warm and rough. "Okay?" Nightmare squinted. There was something wrong with his eyes' focus, Kidd realized, irrelevantly.

  "What am I supposed to do with it?" Kidd said. "What is all this supposed to mean?"

  "Don't mean nothin'." Nightmare let go. "You can take it and throw it in Holland Lake if you want." Then he rocked back and stood. "I'd keep it if I were you."

  The circle broke.

  Nightmare at their head, big shoulders rocking, big arms swinging, the scorpions filed away. A few glanced back. Ten feet off, a girl who could have been white or black, and a tall black boy began to laugh loudly. Then, as though inflated too fast to follow, an iguana ballooned luminously, translucent in the grey-light. Then a peacock. Then a spider. The scorpions wandered into the trees.

  "What the fuck," Kidd asked, "was that about?" He felt his neck where there were three chains now: the optic, the projector, and this new one-the heaviest.

  "Nightmare gets it in his head sometimes that he wants certain people ..."

  The timbre of her voice made him look.

  ". . . get certain people into his nest." Scrabbling in the blanket, she came up with her harmonica, put it down and scrabbled some more.

  "He wanted you before, huh? What's with Phil?"

  "I told you, he was my boy friend for a while before I met you."

  "What was he like?"

  "He was a black guy, sort of bright; sort of nice, sort of square. He was here checking out scenes, about like you are . . ." Her voice muffled for the last words. He looked again: her head was coming out the top of her shirt while she tugged the bottom down over her shaking breasts. "He couldn't really make Calkins' thing that well. He couldn't make Nightmare's either."

  The edge of the blanket was tented with the orchid beneath. Reaching for it, Kidd noticed nearly an acre of charred grass across the meadow. Smoke wisped along the edges. That hadn't been there. He frowned. It hadn't.

  "People liked him down at the commune, I guess. But he was one of those people you get tired of pretty quick." He heard the fly of her jeans rasp. "Nightmare's funny. It's sweet of him to ask, I suppose, but I'm just not the joining kind. With anyone."

  Kidd slid his hand into the orchid's harness, clicked it closed. The burning smell was very strong. He spread his chewed and enlarged knuckles, flexed his scarred and blunted fingers-

  -tickling his shoulder.

  He sprang up, whirling, and crouched.

  The leaf rolled down his shoulder fluttered against his knee, spun on to the ground. Gasping, and with thudding heart, he looked up the leaning trunk, over the great bole at the stump of some thick, major branch, at bare branches and branches hung with ragged tan, at crossed twigs like shatter lines on the sky.

  Moisture sprung on his body and he grew cold.

  "Lanya . . . ?"

  He looked around at the clearing, and then back at the blanket. She hadn't had time to put her sneakers on!

  But her sneakers were gone.

  He circled the tree, frowning, looking out at the charred grass and the other trees, looking back at this one.

  With orchid and chains, he was suddenly far more aware of his nakedness than when he had awakened with Lanya at the center of the scorpion ring.

  She's gone back down to the commune, he thought. But why off just like that? He tried to recall the funny quality that had been in her voice. Anger? But that's silly. He touched the chain Nightmare had placed around his neck. That's silly.

  But he stood there a long time.

  Then-and his whole body moved with a different rhythm now-he stepped toward the tree, stepped again; stepped a third time, and the side of his foot pressed a root. He leaned forward, his knee against the bark, his thigh, his belly, his chest, his cheek. He closed his eyes and stretched his chained arm high as he could and pressed his fingers on the trunk. He breathed deep for the woody smell and pushed his body into the leaning curve: Bark was rough against the juncture at penis and scrotum, rough on the bone of his ankle, the back of his jaw.

  Water was running out the corners of both his eyes. He opened them slightly, but closed them quickly against distortions.

  With his weaponed hand-the urge came and went, like a flash bulb's pulsing after-image, to jam the orchid pholem deep-gently he moved his blades across the bark.

  Turning his hand this way and that; listening to the variated raspings, again and again he stroked the tree.

  When he pushed away, the bark clung to his chest hair, his crotch hair. His ankle stung. So did his jaw. He rubbed his palm across his face to feel the mottled imprint; could see it along the flesh of his inner arm, stopping at the loops of chain to continue on the other side.

  He went back to the blanket and pulled his vest from the folds. His feelings sat oddly between embarrassment and the greatest relief. Unused to either, the juxtaposition confused him. Still wondering where she'd gone, he pulled up his pants, then sat to strap on (wondering why he still bothered) his one sandal.

  He began to search the blanket. He looked under the folds, lifted it to see beneath, frowned and finally searched the whole area.

  After fifteen frustrating minutes, he gave up and started down the slope. It was only when he reached the. door of the park rest rooms (it had been locked before but someone had broken it open so that the hasp still dangled by one screw) he remembered he had already given the notebook, last night, to Newboy.

  The pipes yowled, started to knock.

  A trickle spilled the porcelain, crawled like a glass worm through the light lozenges from the window high in the concrete. He put his orchid in the next sink and scrubbed hard at his hands, wrists, and forearms, then bent to drink. He washed some more till his bladder warmed.

  He urinated into the drain in the middle of the floor. Under his stream the loose grate chattered.

  At the sink he wet his fists and ground them in his armpits. Again and again he wiped his neck. He filled his cupped hands, sloshed his face, and cupped them to fill again. Bark crumbs flecked him, neck to knee. He brushed them, rubbed them, washed them away. (Pants and vest were across another sink.) He
put his foot in the bowl. Water ran between the ligaments. He rubbed; the porcelain streaked black and grey. Laboriously, fingers tingling, he washed away all the dirt except what callous had taken permanently. He wet and rubbed his legs to the thigh, then began the other foot. With dripping hands he kneaded his genitals; they shriveled at cold water.

  Once the trickle gave out.

  A minute later, the pipes recommenced yowling. The stream, slightly stronger, started once more.

  Water gathered in the hair behind his testicles, dribbled his legs. He ran his hands over his head. His hair was greasy. With his hand's edge, he squeegeed as much as possible from arms, legs, and sides. The muddy puddle where he stood reached the drain: plonk-plonk, plonk-plonk, plonk-plonk.

  Someone around in the stalls coughed.

  The labored ablutions had dissolved all verbal thought. But his brain was super-saturated with the stuff of thinking. The cough-repeated, and followed by a clearing throat-set thought forming. Someone very old and ill?

  He used his left pant leg to blot dry groin, belly, and back. He dressed, put the orchid in his belt, and even went outside to walk his feet dry. He put on his sandal, came back in-he had made a mess, he realized-and went around the dividing wall hiding the Johns. Not old, the guy certainly looked sick. Cowboy boots, turned in, rested on their sides. One sole, pulled free, showed toes crusty as Kidd's own before washing. Sitting on the toilet ring, head against the empty paper dispenser, face strung with ropey hair, bare ribs and wrinkled belly hung with chain-among them a spherical shield projector. "You okay?" Kidd asked. "You look like you're-"

  "Unnnn. . . ." The white scorpion moved his head and, though he sat both feet on the floor, swayed like a drunken cyclist on a high wire. "Naw. Naw, I'm not sick . . ." The long nose cut the shaking hair. Beside the nose a rimmed eye blinked its purple lid. "Who . . . who you?"

  "Who're you?" Kidd countered. "Pepper. I'm Pepper. I ain't sick." He put his head back against the dispenser. "I just don't feel well."

  Kidd felt a small, sharp sadness; as well, an urge to laugh. "What's the matter?"

  Pepper suddenly shook the hair from his eyes and was almost still. "Who you run with?" Kidd frowned.

  "Ain't you a scorpion?" Pepper gestured with a hand whose nails were graphite spikes. "Guess you run with Dragon Lady."