Dhalgren

  Copperhead suddenly, knees wide, swung up to sit. Head low between his shoulders, he shook his hair. Freckled hands crossed on his darker genitals, he blinked at the room. His lids were puffy so that you just saw two slashes of gold; which turned toward Kid. Copperhead frowned, cocked his head; his mouth hung open, his lips, marked with a line Kid knew was dried blood (because his own gums bled when he slept), sagged from even, yellow teeth. The girl in the pea jacket moaned and tried to wedge between the cushion and the couch-back.

  Nightmare swung his hand at Kid. "That's him."

  "Sure looks like him." Dragon Lady's heavy lips pursed.

  Nightmare's thin ones grinned.

  "What you wearin' that thing around the house for?" Copperhead asked.

  Kid looked down at the orchid-on his hand. "It makes shaking my dick after I take a leak a real adventure." He took a breath, tried not to search out the memory, searched and found a blank.

  "Not to mention zipping up your fly," Copperhead said. "It's open." He turned to pull his pants out from under the blond girl, who squeaked and tried to roll into the upholstery again.

  "That's him?" Dragon Lady asked, mocking.

  Kid nodded. "It's me." He leaned back on the door jamb and dropped to a squat. "It's going to stay open for a while, too, I guess. I don't feel like castrating myself."

  "He's really funny." Nightmare pushed the end of his braid back over his shoulder. "He's a good kid. He doesn't make a lot of noise. But when he does something, it usually turns out pretty good."

  That's a good image to live up to, Kid decided; and decided not to say very much more. When had he put on the orchid . . . ? When . . . ? Copperhead looked unpleasant, yanked again: "Will you get off my fuckin' clothes? I wanna get dressed!"

  "Hey, will you guys bring in that coffee!" Dragon Lady hollered.

  Somebody half hidden by the couch raised her head from the crook of her arm, and dropped it. It was not Denny's girl.

  "They been talking a lot about you," Dragon Lady said. She frowned at Copperhead. "He ain't been saying nothing nice." She laughed.

  "I ain't been saying nothing." Copperhead fumbled at the snap on his fatigues. One of the thigh pouches was torn. There were holes in both knees. "I don't got nothing to say about the Kid."

  Nightmare hunkered a little. "Kid, what you got to say about Copperhead?"

  Kid shook his head. They want us to fall out and fight right here, he thought.

  Nightmare's laugh started wide, then pulled into gruff, belligerent, good nature.

  Somebody else raised his head from a pile of blankets, blinked sleepily, then grinned-"Hey!"-and stood, clumsily, scratching first at the sweaty hair across his forehead, then at the belly of his undershirt. His other arm was bandaged to the shoulder. "Hey, it's the Kid! You come on back here for a while?"

  "How you doing, Siam?" Kid hazarded. The brown, agonized face rocking back and forth on the bus floor had been . . . different? No, not that different . . .

  "Fine!" Siam ducked his head, grinning hugely. "I'm okay. I'm fine!" His good hand touched the bandage; the finger bounced down dirty cloth (Nightmare still kneaded the multiple-headed bulge of a shoulder that spoke of weightlifting sessions). Siam glanced at the others, got an uneasy look, grinned through the uneasiness, and squatted too, aping Kid.

  Dragon Lady called, "I want some God-damned coffee!"

  "They ain't got very many cups." The guy had two in each hand and three in his arms. His hair was a jangle of scrap gold; chest, chin and buttocks were all blebs and pustules, his toenails and fingernails filthy, and he was naked. "I don't think they got enough for everybody." He looked around.

  "Give one to Nightmare, Baby." Dragon Lady took one for herself.

  Denny walked in. He sat next to Kid, quietly, and leaned on his crossed legs: the knee of his jeans brushed the shin of Kid's.

  Nightmare took a cup and motioned Baby to give one to Denny. "And give the Kid one-"

  "-As long as there's one for me." Copperhead got on his second boot and stamped twice. He looked at Kid.

  "I guess Adam and me can share one." Baby frowned at the cups clutched to his chest.

  Kid took his cup and thought: if there weren't enough, I suppose we would have to fight.

  Copperhead got one. So did Siam.

  "Adam!" Dragon Lady called. "Baby done passed out (he glasses. What you doin' with the brew?"

  Adam came in, brown face veiled by steam. Steam rolled down over the chains on his chest. He had lots of thick, dark hair. "Here you go." He poured for Dragon Lady, and went on to Nightmare. His pants were too big, bunched under, or just sagging from the chain he used for a belt.

  Kid held his cup with both hands, feeling its heat.

  In the middle of the room, Baby was examining the last cup to see if a crack went all the way through.

  "A whole warehouse," Dragon Lady reiterated. "You can go down and get it yourself when you run out of what we brought you."

  "Shit." Adam squinted through the steam. "We got 'em a whole carton." He rubbed his chest; chains growled.

  "I don't make no food runs." Nightmare blew steam down over his hands. "You know I don't make no fuckin' food runs."

  "We got so many free loaders," Copperhead said at the coffee cup he held on his right knee, "you just may have to." Head still low, he looked at Kid again. "We get more of 'em every day."

  "You got some in there for you?" Dragon Lady finished saying to Adam, who checked the fuming pot and nodded. Then she looked at Copperhead and hooted: "You really down on the Kid, hey? Why you so down on him?"

  "Cause Copperhead's big and dumb," Nightmare said.

  "Now I like Copperhead. He's big, dumb, and mean. The Kid's small and smart. But I bet he's just as mean as Copperhead."

  "When I got shot," Siam said, "the Kid pulled me onto the bus. Kid ain't mean-"

  "Aw, fuck you!" Nightmare bellowed, and rolled sharply to his knees.

  Siam spilled coffee over his hand.

  Nightmare didn't.

  Siam put his cup down, shook his fingers, sucked at his knuckles.

  Nightmare guffawed, sipped and guffawed again.

  Copperhead blinked, rubbed his beard against his freckled wrist, and retreated even farther between his shoulders.

  Kid gripped his cup; his palm was uncomfortably hot. "Hey, Copperhead?" He flexed his nubs on burning porcelain. "Hey, Copperhead, why you think they're so anxious to get us after each other?"

  The redhead glowered from the couch.

  "I'm half Indian," Kid said. "And you're about . . . what? Half nigger?" He glanced at Dragon Lady, who looked back and forth between them, black eyes a glint in her dark face, as though she were holding a snicker. Nightmare, his skin, for all his muscles, translucent white, peered over his cup, and actually looked surprised.

  "So I guess they just figure it'll be easy, huh?"

  Copperhead's glower turned to puzzlement. Then suddenly it broke out in a laugh.

  "Yeah," Copperhead said. "Yeah, only-" He pointed a thumb at Nightmare, at Dragon Lady. "Easy, sure. Only half an Indian's a halfbreed or something, right? Half a nigger, anywhere around this part of the world, is still just plain old nigger." This laugh was a bark that threw back his head. But the building anger was loosed in contempt about the room.

  Dragon Lady's laugh got drowned in coffee, which chattered loudly below her lowered eyes.

  "Copperhead and me-" Kid jutted his arm forward for balance and rocked to standing-"we're on the same side, aren't we?" He stepped over someone asleep. "We better be, with you bastards around."

  "Man, he got your number, white boy," Dragon Lady said to Nightmare, chuckling.

  "Aw, shut up," Nightmare said.

  "He got both your numbers," Copperhead said, "Jesus Christ-" He began to dig his hand under the girl on the couch, pulled out his vest.

  Kid was about to look at Denny; but Denny's girl stepped into the far doorway.

  She looked very surprised.

 
Kid walked across the room. He saw Copperhead shrugging into his vest, watched him. So did Dragon Lady and Nightmare, each with differing smiles.

  "You want some coffee?" Kid asked.

  The girl took the cup he thrust and looked even more surprised. He pushed past, through the door.

  The sink and counter were heaped with dishes. The table was piled with garbage. A garbage bag underneath had broken.

  Outside the screen door, the sky heaved and twisted like a thing chained.

  Kid stopped on the littered linoleum and raised his hands to his face-

  He'd forgotten the blades.

  He pressed the heel of his other hand against one eye. Clean metal and dirty flesh-be brought his armed hand closer, till metal tickled his cheek.

  Beyond metal and skin and screening, and wooden roofs across the street, the sky ran and blistered and dribbled on itself.

  I will play, he thought, this game another hour. One more hour. Then I will go do something else. I'm tired. That's not complicated. I'm just tired.

  He ground one eye, till light spots superimposed blades, hand and sky.

  They were laughing in the other room.

  What do I want here?

  The boy? he thought to see it fall. I still like him, don't I? He bores me already (thinking: All that guarantees is that he still likes me).

  Lanya, Kid thought angrily, has gone away. Why. Because I'm impossible. And realized, astonished, what he wanted was her.

  Double laughter separated into a boy's and a girl's. When they stepped around him, hand in hand, she looked quickly away. Denny didn't.

  Kid felt his expression change, not sure to what. But it made Denny stop.

  "Get out of here," Denny said to the girl.

  She looked between them, puzzled and-eager? Then she fled back into the living room.

  After a second, Kid said, "Your girl friend doesn't like me very much."

  Denny's shoulders made some small, sharp motions. "You been pretty nice to her."

  "Like hell." Maybe, Kid thought, I should tell him to go away, like he told her. "Come here."

  Denny walked over.

  Kid reached in his pocket for Tak's battery. "Put this in for me?"

  Denny's face made motions small and strange as his shruggings. I make up rituals, Kid thought. They try to comprehend them; and forced the memory of Lanya's green eyes shut.

  Denny fingered the projector. (The chain tickled Kid's chest.) Biting his lower lip, Denny unsnapped the sphere. He pushed the battery between the clips with his thumb.

  Kid moved both caged and free fingers on the blades, and let his hand swing against Denny's pants. "You got a hard-on."

  "I know." Denny sucked in his lips and thumbed the projector case closed. It clicked. "Okay." Without looking up, he turned for the door.

  Kid put his thumb between his own legs and hooked his genitals forward against his pants. "Hey, turn around."

  Denny turned.

  "And smile."

  Denny laughed, and then tried to stop the laughter. Shaking his head, he said, "You're real crazy." Then he went out.

  "Jesus Christ!" Thirteen pushed in around the boy. "Hey, it's the Kid!" He turned and repeated to Smokey, like an after-image at his shoulder: "It's the Kid. Hey, Kid, they told me you were around here but I thought you split already. How you doing?"

  Kid nodded. The door closed behind them. There isn't room in this kitchen for all these people. Kid thought.

  "Glad to see you!" Thirteen nodded back. "Before you cut out. I mean . . ." He held the strap of his tank top from his shoulder. ".. . you cutting out?"

  "I don't know."

  "I mean, you stay as long as you want That's fine with me. They got all those God-damn freaks in here, I'm really glad to have somebody like you, you know?"

  "Thanks," Kid said and wondered what Thirteen wanted.

  "Um . . ." Thirteen said, obviously uncomfortable. "Urn . . . somebody told me you been fuckin' around with the kids, huh?"

  "Huh?"

  "I mean somebody heard you guys going at it in the loft. You know?" Thirteen grinned; and still looked uncomfortable. "I mean, how old are they, fifteen? Sixteen? I mean, I just sort of feel responsible for them, because they're not that old, you know?"

  "I wasn't fucking with them. They were fucking with me."

  "Yeah," Thirteen said and nodded. "They're too much, huh? I mean, I don't care what you do, man. It's not a moral thing." Suddenly he reached behind him and drew Smokey up under his arm. "I mean, Smokey here is, what are you, honey? Eighteen? And I mean, seventeen, eighteen, there ain't that much difference. I just don't want to see anybody hurt them, that's all."

  "I'm not out to hurt anybody."

  "Yeah, man. Sure." Thirteen nodded deeply. "I didn't think you were. It's just that, well . . . some people have, that's all. Come on inside, hey, and smoke some dope with me, hey? I mean, if you feel like it."

  Kid let his caged hand fall to the side.

  "I mean, maybe later, then, if you want to." Thirteen grinned again.

  "It's good you . . . don't want anybody to get hurt."

  Thirteen hesitated. "Thanks." Then he pulled Smokey a little closer, and they walked around Kid into the other room, while somebody outside the door said:

  "Hello. . . ?"

  She and her shadow on the screening were out of register.

  "Kid? That is you ... ?"

  The door opened-she and his memory of her were, too.

  She watched him with small things happening at her mouth that could have been preparation for either laughter or recrimination; and other small things happening in her green eyes.

  "Oh, hey-!" he said anyway, because something was worming in his chest. It rose to heat his face, left him grinning and squinting. "Hey, I'm glad you . . ." His arms went out. She and his memory of her (the screen door clacked) came together between them. Her cheek butted against his, her laughter roared happily at his ear. "Oh, hey, I'm glad you came!" His arms had whipped across her back-one slightly out (and quivering for wanting to close) for the orchid.

  She leaned away, "You sure?" and kissed him. "I'm glad too."

  He kissed her-harder, longer, losing himself in it (as his hand hung, lost in air and metal; he bunched his fingers, loosened them) till he felt the thing in her shirt pocket, cutting.

  He pulled back: Next to her harmonica was his pen.

  She said, because she saw him looking, "The bartender at Teddy's told me to give it to you. He said you dropped it there-" and then he kissed her (it still cut) again; but he held on.

  She pulled away, once more, wrinkling her nose. "Something smells good." Looking around, she went to the living-room door-he followed-leaned through with one hand on the white frame. "Hey, Nightmare-is there any more of that coffee?"

  "You want some, sweetheart?" which was from Dragon Lady. "Help yourself."

  Kid watched her cross the room, leaned back on the frame.

  She squatted to fill a cup-looked in it first; someone must have used it, but she shrugged-from the enamel pot. Once she glanced back at him, pushed hair from her forehead, grinned. She picked up the cup and returned. The warmth inside him still grew.

  On the couch, Denny's girl and Copperhead were going through some sort of toasting game, clicking brims and laughing.

  Nightmare was saying, "I can't hang around this place all day! Hey, Dragon Lady, you gonna come with me? I mean I can't hang around-"

  A woman stuck two brown arms from under a blanket, with quivering fists, waking.

  Dragon Lady and Adam were whispering about something, dark brown and light brown heads together. Adam rubbed his chains.

  Suddenly Baby "came up. Among the faint fuzz of a new mustache, his nose had run all over his upper lip. Clutched in scrawny, filthy-nailed fingers was a cut-glass bowl, caked at the edges with sugar. "You want some?" He gestured with his chin toward the tablespoon handle.

  "No thanks," Lanya said.

  Kid shook his head too. B
aby said, "Oh," and went away.

  Lanya held up the cup for Kid to sip. His hands came up to guide hers. A blade ticked the crock, so he took that one away, felt the ligaments in the back of her hand with the other.

  Coffee slapped bitter back across his tongue; he swallowed. Steam tickled his nostrils.

  She blew; she sipped; she said, "It's strong!"

  "Hey, Baby! Wait-come on back here, Adam!" Dragon Lady bawled, turning, jangling. "Come on, now!"

  Through some door, not the kitchen's, a lot of people came into the house.

  Lanya frowned, blinked.

  A lot of people came into the room. Coffee, chocolate, and tamarindo faces, hands, and shoulders swung by, turning, as chains from long or stocky necks swung under several hairdos of beachball dimensions. Two of the men were arguing, while a third, his arm supple as a blacksnake, waved and shouted to quell them: "Com'on, man! Come on, now, man! Come on-" A minimal half-dozen white faces were occluded or eclipsed before Kid could fix them. Most, blacks and others, Kid recognized from the Emboriky run. A dark mahogany guy in a black vinyl vest stopped by the couch to regale Copperhead, while a diffident white, vestless and a scorpion only from the chains (his belly and chest were scarred with a single, long pucker, still-scabbed and pink), stood by, waiting to speak. In trio, they seemed oddly ï familiar. The black in the vinyl was the one who'd been friendly to him in Denny's group in the department store.

  A hand the color of an old tire suddenly landed on Lanya's shoulder, another on Kid's; the close-cropped head bobbed between them; the long black body, under the swinging vest flaps and hanging chain loops, was sour with sweat, the breath, over small teeth and a heavy, hanging lip, sour with wine. "Shit . . ." drawled in two syllables.

  "Hey, Ripper," Lanya said, "get off!" Kid was surprised she knew his name.

  But Ripper-yes, it was Jack the Ripper-got off.

  A stocky white girl with a tattooed arm was talking to Nightmare when two more blacks joined the colloquy, loudly. Nightmare, louder, cut over: "Man, I can't hang around-"

  "Come on," Kid said to Lanya. "I want to talk to you."

  Lanya's eyes flicked from the room to Kid's face. "All right."