Dhalgren

  Harrison had the bottle now. His arm rose, his laughter fell-"Hey now, how you doing, Kid? This here is the Kid. The Kid wants to speak to me for a second-" then the arm fell around Kid's shoulder-"so I'll be with you in a second." The dark head lowered next to Kid's with an anticipatory swig, fixing attention.

  "Look," Kid said. "Outside, there was some guy talking about some people getting killed in the street by snipers from the roof this afternoon? Well, up in the balcony, you got about half a dozen white guys-two of them with guns. They're sitting there joking about picking people off. And they're particularly interested in which one is you. Now they probably aren't gonna pull anything, but I thought you ought to-"

  "Shit!" George hissed. He raised his eyes, but not his head. "They got three women and a dog with them-?"

  "Two . . ." Kid began. "No, three and a dog."

  "God-damn thick-headed niggers!" George's breath lurched in sharply. "I told them not to let them crazy people in here with no guns! What the hell they think I put them out there for . . . unless they done snuck in some other way-"

  "That's what they were saying," Kid said. "They must of snuck in. And-"

  George started to stand.

  Kid caught his shoulder and pulled him back down, his mind gone bright with recognition of what was inside of it: "-and George! What I told you-" the sweat started to dry, and as his back cooled under his vest, he knew why it had come-"about June, killing her brother... ?"

  George's eyes, the corners blood-heavy, the pupils fading almost evenly into the stained-ivory whites, came close to Kid's.

  "... it wasn't true. I mean, she did it. But you see, I don't know whether she did it because of you or not. After he was killed, that's when she told me he was going to tell, about the poster of you I gave her. She said it was an accident. She said he was going to tell, and then, just by accident ... So I don't know. You see . . . ?"

  "You real worried about that, ain't you?" George straightened. His arm still hung on Kid's shoulder, the glass bottle moving, as George breathed, against Kid's chains. "Well that's why she looking for me, not you. 'Cause I don't care about that one way or the other. You so busy blamin' or forgivin', you gonna drive her crazy. Me, see, I don't care if she innocent as a little white bunny rabbit in a brand new hutch, or if she done killed her brother, her mother, her daddy, and the President of the United States, cut up the bodies, and danced naked in the blood. What's it to me? What's it to her-? Another white man out of the way, that's all. She might worry about it a bit more than I do, but not much. And, finally, it's just gonna make both our lives easier-maybe even yours. When she come to me, I do her just the same, both ways. You say she looking? Well, I'm here, man, I'm still here. Hey-!" which was called out across the crowd. George waved the bottle high. "We all getting tired out, now. I think we got to all think about going home."

  The blades clicked on Kid's chest, turned. Kid said: "You want us to go up and get 'em down for you, George? We'll take them out of the balcony."

  George looked back at Kid, hesitated with narrowed eyes. "We get my boys up there to cover them. Then we get some people to take them away. My boys let them get in. So they can get them out. I know you guys is pretty handy with them bunch of thorns hanging around your necks, but they got equalizers, and if all men is created equal, we might as well keep it that way. Party's been going on too long, anyway. We all gonna go home now, So you can oblige me by moving out too, okay?"

  Kid grinned, aped an over-polite bow-

  "Much obliged to you, there," George said. "For all your trouble" -and laughed. Kid looked at the cactus in its wooden tub: for a moment he considered throwing himself against it to embrace the spiked, fleshy trunk; which was so ridiculous he merely turned and walked away. They will meet, he thought, by sun, by moons, by laughter or lightning. Why I sweat is because I do not know what will happen to me, then. What will happen to me ...

  Glass fell in beside him. After about six steps, Glass said: "What would you have done if he'd said, 'Why, sure, man! Go on up there and bring the mother-fuckers down'?"

  "Probably-" Kid dodged a drunk who was going to fall three steps beyond them-"pissed all over myself."

  "Maybe." Glass laughed. "But then, you'd probably of tried to go up there and get 'em down, too."

  "I don't think they'd have been much trouble." Kid said. "I hope."

  The white man coming toward them, shouldering through the blacks and smiling, was Captain Michael Kamp. "Well, hello, there. Now I didn't think I was going to see you again. I mean, not this evening." His smile took in Glass.

  "Hello, sir," Kid said. "Good to see you again. But I think the party's breaking up. They got some problem upstairs. Nothing serious. But there just might be some shooting. And it's awfully easy pickings from up there." Kamp's eyes followed Kid's up to the balcony and came back, confused and half again as wide. Kid said, "Oh. This is my friend Glass. Glass, this is Captain Kamp."

  "Hello, sir." Glass put out his hand. "Glad to meet you."

  Kamp had to remember to shake. "What is ... I mean?"

  "Come on," Kid said. "Let's move over this way."

  "What's going on now?" Kamp followed them. "Now, well . . . Roger gave me a list of places to hit this evening. I'm afraid I'm one of those guys who likes to drink booze and chase women-the Navy's favorite kind. While that bar is all very interesting-a very interesting bunch-" he nodded-"really, I thought I might do better, at least on the second part of that, some place else. Like here." He looked up at the balcony again, while a sudden mass of people moved noisily toward the door and out. "They got some pretty women, too . . ." Another bunch followed them. "What is it?" Kamp asked.

  "Some crazy white folks with guns," Kid said. "They aren't doing anything but making people nervous. But they shouldn't be up there, anyway."

  "Didn't I hear somebody saying something about people getting shot in the street this afternoon?"

  "Yeah," Glass said, and grimaced.

  "Oh," Kamp said, because he could apparently think of nothing else. "Roger said they didn't even let white people in this place. What are they doing here?"

  Kid frowned a moment at Kamp. "Well, some of us get by."

  "Oh," Kamp said again. "Well, sure. I mean . . ."

  "You from the moon, ain't you," Glass said. "That's pretty interesting."

  Kamp started to say something, but a voice-it was the Reverend's, coming through the half-silence that followed the exodus:

  ". . . of the crossing taken again is not the value of the crossing? Oh, my poor, inaccurate hands and eyes! Don't you know that once you have transgressed that boundary, every atom, the interior of every point of reality, has shifted its relation to every other you've left behind, shaken and jangled within the field of time, so that if you cross back, you return to a very different space than the one you left? You have crossed the river to come to this city? Do you really think you can cross back to a world where a blue sky goes violet in the evening, buttered over with the light of a single, silver moon? Or that after a breath of dark, presaged by a false, familiar dawn, a little disk of fire will spurt, spitting light, over trees and sparse clouds, women, men, and works of hand? But you do! Of course you do! How else are we to retain the inflationary coinage and cheap paper money of sanity and solipsism? Oh, it is common knowledge, the name of that so secondary moon that intruded itself upon our so ordinary night. But the arcane and unspoken name of what rose on this so extraordinary day, for which George is only consort, that alone will free you of this city! Pray with me! Pray! Pray that this city is the one, pure, logical space from which, without being a poet or a god, we can all actually leave if-what?" Someone reached up to her: the Reverend looked down. "What did . . . ?" It was George. The Reverend bent. For a moment she started to look up, did not, and hastily climbed from her platform. Her small head was lost among the heads around her.

  "Well, I guess it's about time for me to be getting up to Roger's then." Kamp looked around. "Though they have some prett
y nice-looking ladies around, I must admit."

  "Guess it's time for us all to get going," Kid said, and noticed Kamp did not move. He tried to glance in the direction Kamp looked, wondering which lady his eyes had come to rest on, found only the blank, barred window.

  Kamp said: "Um . . . Getting up to Roger's in the dark . . ." He shifted his weight, put his one hand in his slacks pocket. "I don't really enjoy the idea." He shifted back. "Say, you guys want a job?"

  "Huh?"

  "Give you five bucks if you walk me up to the house-you know where it is?"

  Kid nodded.

  "I mean, you guys are in the protection business, aren't you? I'd just as soon have some, walking around this town at night."

  "Yeah?"

  "Walking around the streets in the dark, in a city with no police, you don't know what you're going to find . . . both of you: I'll give you five apiece."

  "I'll go with you," Glass said.

  "We'll go," Kid said.

  "I really appreciate that, now, I really do. I don't want to rush you out. If you want to stay around and have a couple more drinks, fine. Just let me know when you're ready-"

  Glass looked at Kid with a sort of Is-he-crazy? look.

  So Kid said, "We'll go now," and thought: Is he that much more terrified of the dark than known danger?

  "Good," Kamp said. "Okay. Fine, now." He grinned and started for the crowded door.

  Glass's expression was still puzzled.

  "Yeah," Kid said. "He's for real. He's been to the moon."

  Glass laughed without opening his lips. "I'm for real too, man." And then he clapped his hands.

  Kamp looked back at them.

  Kid, followed by Glass, shouldered through the bunch milling loudly at the exit.

  In the hallway, Kamp asked, "Do you fellows- you're scorpions, now, right?-do you fellows have much trouble around here?"

  "Our share," Glass said.

  Kid thought: Glass always waits before he speaks as if it were my place to speak first.

  "I'm not the sort of man who usually runs from a fight," Kamp said, "But, now, you don't set yourself up. I'm not carrying a lot of money, but I want to get home with what I've got." (People before the door listened to a woman who, in the midst of her story, stopped to laugh torrentially.) "If I'm going to stay in Bellona for a while, maybe it would be a good idea to hire a bunch of you guys to hang around with me. Then again, maybe that would just be attracting attention. Now, I really do appreciate you coming with me."

  "We won't let anything happen to you," Kid said and wondered why.

  He contemplated telling Kamp his fear was silly; and realized his own nether consciousness had grown fearful.

  Glass settled his shoulders, and his chin, and his thumbs in his frayed pockets, like a black, drugstore cowboy.

  "You'll be okay," Kid reiterated.

  The woman recovered enough for the story's punchline, which was ". . . the sun! He said it was the Goddamn sun!" Black men and women rocked and howled.

  Kid laughed too; they circuited the group, into the dark.

  "Did you talk to George when you were inside?" Glass asked.

  "We sort of talked. He offered me one of his girl friends. But she just wasn't my type, now. Now if he'd offered me the other one . . ." Kamp chuckled.

  "What'd you think of him?" Kid asked.

  "He isn't so much. I mean, I don't know why everybody is so scared of him."

  "Scared?"

  "Roger's terrified," Kamp said. "Roger was the one who told me about him, of course. It's an interesting story, but it's strange. What do you think?"

  Kid shrugged. "What's there to say?"

  "A great deal, from what you hear."

  On the brick wall, beneath the pulsing streetlamp, George's posters, as shiny as if they had been varnished, overlapped like the immense and painted scales of a dragon, flank fading off and up into night. Glass looked at them as they passed. Kid and Kamp glanced at Glass.

  "From what I've gathered, now, everybody spends a great deal of time talking about him."

  "What did you two talk about, beside swapping pussy?" Kid asked.

  "He mentioned you, among other things."

  "Yeah? What did he say?"

  "He wanted to know if I'd met you. When I said I had, he wanted to know my opinion of you. Seems people are almost as interested in you as they are in him."

  That seemed like something to laugh at. Kid was surprised at Kamp's silence.

  Dark pulled over Kamp's face. "You know, there's something-well, I'm not a strictly religious man. But I mean, for instance, when we were up there and we read the bible to everybody on television, we meant it. There's something about naming a new moon, for somebody- somebody like that, and all that sort of stuff, now, it's against religion. I don't like it."

  Glass chuckled. "They ain't named the sun yet."

  Kamp, baffled by Glass's accent (by now Kid had set it somewhere near Shreveport), made him say that again.

  "Oh," Kamp said when he understood. "Oh, you mean this afternoon."

  "Yeah," Glass said. "I hope you don't think they gonna name it after you?" and chuckled on.

  "You think you could live up to that?" Kid asked.

  Kamp gestured in the dark. But they could not tell the curve of his arm, whether it were closed or open-handed, so lost the meaning. "You fellows know where we're going, now?"

  "We're going right," Glass said.

  Kid felt distinctly they were going wrong. But distrust of his distinct feelings had become second nature. He walked, waiting, beside them.

  "See," Glass said, surprising Kid from his reverie, maybe twenty minutes later, "This is that place between Brisbain North and Brisbain South. Told you we're going right."

  Two canyon walls collapsed inward upon one another, obliterating the time between.

  "What?" asked Kamp.

  "We're going right," Glass said. "Up to Mr Calkins'."

  Lamps on three consecutive corners worked.

  They squinted and blinked at one another after blocks of darkness.

  "I guess," Kamp said, jocularly, "it must be pretty hard for anybody to navigate after dark in the city."

  "You learn," Kid said.

  "What?"

  What sort of accent do I have? "I said 'You learn.'"

  "Oh."

  Ahead, black was punctured by a streetlamp at least five blocks off, flickering through branches of some otherwise invisible tree.

  "You fellows ever have any trouble on the street?"

  "Yeah," Kid said.

  "What part of the city," Kamp asked. "You know, I want to know what neighborhoods to stay out of. Was it over where we were? The colored area, Jackson?"

  "Right outside of Calkins'," Kid said.

  "Did you get robbed?"

  "No. I was just minding my own business. Then this bunch of guys jumped out and beat shit out of me. They didn't have anything better to do, I guess."

  "Did you ever find out who it was?"

  "Scorpions," Kid said. (Glass chuckled again.) "But that was before I started running."

  "Scorpions are about the only thing in Bellona you got to worry about," Glass said. "Unless it's some nut with a rifle in an upstairs window or on the roof who decides to pick you off."

  "-because he don't have anything better to do," Kid finished.

  Kamp took a breath in the dark. "You say the neighborhood up here, around Roger's, is really bad?"

  "About as bad as anyplace else," Kid said.

  "Well," Kamp reflected, "I guess it was a pretty good idea to get you guys to come up with me, now."

  He is using his fear to use me, Kid reflected, and said nothing. Ten dollars for the walk? Kid wondered how much this paralleled the genesis of the protection racket in the park commune. He put his fingertips in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, grinned at the night and thought: Is this how a dangerous scorpion walks? He swung his steps a bit wider.

  Kamp coughed, and said very little
for the next quarter-hour.

  . . . am a marauder in the internal city, tenuous as the dark shaken on itself with a footstep, eyeblink, heartbeat. Intrigued by the way his fear has given me purpose, I swagger down the labyrinth of least resistance. Where is the sound? There is a sound like glass and sand, or a finger turning in the channels of the ear. I acknowledge my own death with an electrified tongue, wanting to cry. These breaths I leave here disperse like apparitions of laughter I am too terrified to release.

  Which was the conclusion of the reverie he'd begun before: but could not remember its beginning.

  "Do you know how far along the wall here the gate is?" Kamp asked.

  "The wall makes your voice sound funny in the dark, don't it?" Glass said.

  "Won't we be able to see some light from the house?" Kamp asked.

  Kid asked, "They still got light?"

  They walked.

  "There," Kid said. "I see something-" stumbling at the curb edge. ". . . hey, watch-!" but did not fall. He recovered to Kamp's nervous laugh. He thinks, Kid thought, something almost jumped out at us. Only my eyes are bandaged in darkness. The rest of my body swerves in light.

  "Yes," Kamp said. "We're here."

  Between the newels, through the brass bars and shaggy pine, light slid into the crevices of Glass's face (sweating; Kid was surprised) and dusted Kamp's that was simply very pale.

  I thought I was the only one scared to death, Kid thought. My luck, on my dumb face it doesn't show.

  "Jose," Kamp called. "Jose, it's Mike Kamp. I'm back for the night." "Jose," Kamp explained somewhat inanely, "is the man Roger has on the gate."

  K-k-klank: the lock (remotely controlled?) opened and bars swung inches in.

  "Well," Kamp put his hands in his pockets. "I certainly want to thank you guys for-oh." His hands came out. "Here you go." He rifled through his wallet, held it up to his eyes. "Got to see what I have here, now . . ." He took out two bills.