Dhalgren

  "We thought you'd gone to another city, Eddy!" She looked past his shoulder and back. "Oh . . . if Daddy and Mommy could see you here, in this, like this, they'd just . . . die ... they'd die . . ."

  "What do you want?"

  "To talk to you. To see you. To see if you were really . . . Somebody said they'd seen somebody who looked like-"

  "Just a second," Eddy said. "I gotta go to the-I mean I just woke up." He touched his sister's shoulders, then stepped past Kid into the hall. "I'll be right back . . ."

  California turned over on the mattress.

  Cathedral looked up from the book.

  June's eyes flicked about-the shadowed room, caught once on the poster, dodged it. "I liked your book very . . . I thought it was nice . . . the part you wrote about us when . . . no, no!" She said after a moment: "Eddy lives here with you . . . I mean how long has he . . ."

  Kid shrugged.

  "My mother likes your book too," she said after another moment. "She gave it to a few of . . ."

  When she didn't finish, he said: "Say hello for me."

  "I wouldn't dare!" After a second, she closed her mouth. "Oh, I couldn't

  It isn't worth getting angry, Kid thought. He leaned against the doorway edge. Angel, in the closet, looked out, said, "What . . . ?" got no answer, shrugged, and went back in. I don't answer because there is nothing to say. She turns and stares fixedly at some pile of bedding on the floor she does not really see, sure an answer is demanded of her. He could walk away and leave her to wait alone.

  "Watch it," Glass said behind him.

  Kid turned.

  "Got it." Spitt hefted Dollar's ankles up under his arms.

  "You just put him in there," Copperhead said. "He'll be all right."

  June had turned too. Kid was impressed how well, for her nervousness, she looked interested but not hysterical.

  Dollar's shoulder hit the door.

  "Back him up there, huh?" Glass lifted Dollar roughly by the arm, stepped over, and walked him through.

  ". . . you see that? You see how they done him? He was just hanging around outside, he didn't even run or nothing, when they came after him. Shit, they didn't do that much. Soon as Copperhead hit him the third time he crumpled right up like that. He ain't even got a bloody nose. His eye looks pretty bad, though . . ."

  Below the eye the puffy cheek was scraped. Dollar's arms flopped out on either side. His belt was opened.

  "I think he fakin'," Copperhead told Kid, scratching his head. "I think he just didn't want to get hit no more, and he's just fakin'. But he's fakin' pretty good."

  "He. didn't run when he saw you coming?" Kid asked.

  "Where was he gonna run?" Copperhead held his right fist in his left hand. The freckled knuckles were bleeding. "Put him down on that one."

  Kid looked, but couldn't see Glass's hands.

  Angel came out of the closet again, looked around, said, "Aw, Jesus Christ . . ." shook his head, and again went back inside.

  By the window, Cathedral, who had closed his book, opened it again.

  "They put him on Eddy's . . . ?" June began.

  The couple on the door shifted. The counterpoint of the naked scorpions' snoring went on without change.

  "Excuse me, huh?" With a glare Eddy stepped around Pepper. He walked to his mattress, squatted, and pulled a hank of chains out from under Dollar's shoulder. He looked up at Kid. "They got him?" He shook his head, picked up the blanket and pulled it up over Dollar's shoulders.

  That, Kid thought, is for her. The room was too hot for blankets.

  Putting on his chains, Eddy came back to the door. "What did you come here for?"

  "I don't know . . . I just don't know-I just don't understand how you can . . ."

  Spitt and Glass had gone. Copperhead looked at June, frowned at Kid, and left.

  "Come on," Kid said. "You people want to talk? Let's go out on the porch, huh? People are sleeping here, right?"

  Kid let them go first, and took up Eddy's rear.

  In the hall, the bathroom door was open; Filament -yes, that was the short-haired white woman's name, he suddenly remembered-was taking her morning crap, jeans around her shins, the Times folded across her knees.

  "In there," Eddy pointed over June's shoulder.

  June turned through the service porch door, and said, "Oh, I'm sor-"

  "Huh?" Raven's stream halted. "There's somebody using the bathroom," he explained, bewildered, to June's bewildered stare; and his urine chattered in the sink again.

  "Come on, come on," Kid herded them in. "He'll be finished in a minute."

  Raven shook himself, pushed himself back into his pants. "Yeah, I'm finished."

  This has been planned, Kid thought smugly. This couldn't just be happening.

  Raven left-

  "I'll shoo anybody else out," Kid said.

  -then ducked back in the door. "Hey, I meant to run some water in the sink, you know... ?"

  "Later," Kid said.

  "Okay." He left again.

  June was looking out the window. Eddy was watching her and pulling the hair at the back of his neck. "What did you want, huh?"

  June turned.

  "I figured," Eddy said, "you would all get out. I mean I thought Mom and Daddy would take you and Bobby to another . . . city. . ."

  "You didn't tell him," June asked, "about Bobby?"

  "I didn't know he was your brother until three minutes ago." Kid said. "June pushed Bobby down an elevator shaft and broke bis neck, accidentally. He's dead." And immediately George's face filled his mind, obliterating all other reactions.

  "Mother's very sick," June said. "She really isn't well at all. And I'm worried about Daddy. He goes out to work every day, you know; in spite of it all. But sometimes now he doesn't come home for three, or four days . . ."

  "Huh?" Eddy leaned back against the washing machine. "What . . . ?" which was not a reaction to what June was saying at all.

  "I'm so worried I don't . . . know what to do. I swear . . . !" Though her sentences were as halting as before, she spoke each fragment more firmly. "Since you've gone, it's all ... everything has just fallen apart. Everything, Eddy. Since you went, it's like . . . like the plug was pulled out and everything ran out. All of it."

  "Jesus Christ . . ." Eddy looked at the floor and shook his head. "Bobby . . . ?"

  She circles, Kid thought, she circles, magnificently banal, denying guilt or innocence: if only in her single-mindedness, she is heroic!

  Biting both lips, June shook her head. "Are you going to come home?"

  And, like an afterthought; She is only a seventeen-year-old, overprotected god. (Somewhere, George leered.)

  "Well," Eddy said, "what for ... ?" Then he said, "Bobby's dead? And Dad doesn't come there any more?"

  "Some," she said. "Oh, he comes back . . ."

  Eddy looked up. "What would I come back for?"

  "Oh, if you got some nice clothes, and a haircut and stuff, and told them you were sorry. . . ."

  "Sorry for what! He said he was going to kill me if I came back!"

  "But that's just because-"

  "They start it," Eddy said. "They start it every time I go back there and I can't stop it. I don't know how. That's why I went away . . ."

  "But if you said you were sorry for the way you

  acted-" I

  "Sorry for what? Yeah, I'm sorry that every time I go back there they start needling me until I blow up and then they blow up right back! I'm sorry Momma's sick, I'm sorry Dad's all upset. I'm sorry Bobby's dead." Eddy frowned, and after a second, he asked, "You killed him . . . ?"

  June began to cry, silently, eyes streaming.

  "Oh, hey, I'm . . . look, I didn't mean . . ." By his ï hips his hands closed and opened and closed with the motion Kid recognized as the one that had proceeded Copperhead's fury.

  "You could take us away . . . !" Her crying burst full. What Kid thought she said through it was ". . . from this horrible place!" But with her sobs sh
e was as difficult to understand as some Jackson black. Finally she clamped her mouth, rubbed her eyes, sniffed. "I just wish someone would . . . take me away!"

  "Why doesn't Dad go?"

  "He doesn't think Mother will. And . . . I don't even think he wants to."

  "You take them."

  "I'm just a girl," June said. "I can't do anything. I can't do anything at all!" She rubbed her forehead on the heels of her hands.

  (Eddy's hands turned over on his knees.) "They wouldn't go before?" Eddy said. "/ couldn't make them go!"

  June lifted her face from her palms. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, softly. "Oh, Eddy, please come home! What are you doing in a place like this? This is just. . . here . . . awful!"

  "What?"

  "I mean," she said, "what do you do here?"

  "Mm," Eddy shrugged, "we don't do too much. We all just live here, the scorpions. You know? We're all together. Here. That's all."

  "You don't," she began tentatively, "rob people on the street, and beat up people and take their money, and things like that . . . do you?"

  "Naw," Eddy said, indignation. "Naw, we don't do things like that. Why do you think we do things like that?"

  "That's what people say," June said. "Sometimes in the newspaper, it says things like that."

  "The newspaper says a lot of things that aren't true, you know? You know that. Besides, now the Kid's a friend of the guy who runs the paper, he's having a party for the Kid, and we're all going up there. So the paper will probably do a little better by us, huh?" -this last to Kid.

  Kid, by the door, with folded arms, shrugged.

  "What do you do, then?"

  "I don't know," Eddy said. "We make runs."

  "What's that?"

  "You know . . ." Eddy looked at Kid. "Kid is the boss here; he takes us out on runs."

  "What do you do on a ... run?"

  "The guys all get together and we ... go some place, check it out; get stuff, stuff we want, stuff we'd like to have."

  "Like food?"

  "Not food! You don't make food runs if you're a scorpion, unless things have really gotten up tight. You go for other things . . ."

  "Like what?"

  "Stuff."

  "And bring it back here?"

  "If it's something we want."

  "You don't look like you have very much here?" June said.

  "We don't need much."

  "Then what do you do on these runs?"

  "Well, we . . ." Eddy shrugged.

  "We break things," Kid said. "Mainly. And if there're people around who don't like it, we rough them up."

  "Is that what you do?" June asked Eddy.

  "Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes we do that. But most of the places we go, there isn't anybody there. The people you do find, they're so scared they usually split." He looked as though he was trying to remember something. "Oh, yeah. We keep things quiet if somebody has a problem and comes to us. That doesn't happen too much. People are scared of us. So they don't act up."

  "That's what other people call our protection business," Kid explained. "Only we don't protect anybody."

  "Yeah," Eddy attested.

  "But why . . . ?"

  "We'd do something else," Kid said, "if there was something else to do-"

  "-Cause it's . . ." Eddy began. "Look, I'm a scorpion and I like being a scorpion. It's better than anything else I've done. It's a tough, dangerous world out there, and we gotta survive . . . you know? People are scared of us, and maybe they shouldn't be. But it makes it easier. To survive. The reason I'm a scorpion is because when a bunch of us walk down a street, and somebody sees us, they think-" Eddy snapped his fingers-"yeah. We come along and we get the first pick of whatever is there; and if anybody tries to keep it from us, they better watch out. We're together, you see? For one another. If one scorpion gets in trouble, then the nest comes down and swarm! If something comes at the nest, then you'll have scorpions from all over. The guys here don't care who you are, where you come from, or what you do; they're for you . . . like a family. When you're a scorpion, you know you're part of something that's important, that means something, that makes people stop, and then think . . . You know . . . ?"

  In the silence, June looked confused.

  "Is that why you're a scorpion?" Kid stood in the doorway and shook his head. "Shit. . . Hey!"

  Her eyes snapped at him-

  "You haven't found George yet?"

  -and widened; her head vibrated, rather than shook in negation.

  "Keep looking." Kid tried to smile, succeeded, and found the effort honest. "You will."

  Walking down the hall, Kid pondered the probability that Eddy would leave with June. That would be pretty good. He looked in the back room to check Dollar. He was in the same position (as was everyone else) breathing roughly and evenly.

  In the loft room, Kid, with his bare toes, nudged Raven's knee. Raven was sitting crosslegged before a pile of bolts and screws. "You can go run the water in the sink now."

  "Huh?" Raven looked up. "Oh yeah, in a second."

  Kid kicked the knee again with his boot toe. "Will you go wash out the fuckin' sink!"

  "Okay, okay. It ain't gonna smell no more in another minute-!"

  "I'm not worried about the fuckin' smell. Just go on." Which was true.

  "Okay!" Raven got up and left the room.

  In sudden fury at the brother and sister, Kid wanted their talk interrupted and both of them out.

  He climbed up the notched beam into the loft. Denny, his feet up on the wall, glanced from the Escher propped on his chest, then turned another page. Kid sat with his back against the wall. "Hey?"

  "What?"

  "Have I taken you guys on any runs, yet?"

  "You forgetting things again?"

  "You tell me if I have or not and I'll tell you."

  "Just that one."

  "When?"

  "You don't remember?"

  "Tell me, cocksucker!"

  "When the . . . sun came up, and you ran everybody over to that house. Where Dollar killed Wally. That's the only run you made, so far. I mean you didn't plan it out like a run or anything. But that's all,"

  "Oh."

  "You remember that?"

  "I remember."

  "Mmm." Denny nodded and went back to his book.

  "I guess I'm going to have to make another one soon."

  "Mmm," Denny said again, but did not look up.

  Why do we make runs? Kid thought: Because if we didn't, we'd be a little more crazy than we are now.

  Eddy passed the door.

  "Hey, Eddy?"

  Eddy stopped. "What?"

  "She gone?"

  Eddy let out a breath. "Yeah."

  "And you're gonna stay here?"

  "Man," Eddy said, "I can't do anything for them. And she's . . . Well-"

  "I know," Kid said. "Hey, Eddy . . . don't make any more speeches. You're a really bad press agent."

  "Huh?" Eddy stepped into the room. "Oh . . . yeah. Uh . . . Kid?"

  Kid heard bolts roll across the floor. "Yeah?" . "Well . . . 'Eddy', see, that's what my sister and family call me. But the guys around here, they all call me Tarzan."

  "Tarzan?" It was a question, but with a lowering, not a rising inflection.

  "Yeah."

  "Okay."

  Eddy turned to leave.

  "Hey, Tarzan?"

  "What?"

  "Sorry about your family."

  Eddy smiled, briefly and weakly. "Thanks." He left.

  Raven came in and said, "Aw, shit! Somebody kicked my fuckin' screws all over the God-damn floor!" He sucked his teeth, squatted, and, out of sight from the edge of the loft, began to roll them back together.

  I come. I go. Rather than going, though, I'll stay. This cage seems too easy to flee. Is that what keeps us here? To leave the city: That is the thought that makes me weak in the small of the back and watery in the mind, so much so that it is easier not to remember it once the thought is past.
Waiting for a word to push on these walls, with its bass hiss, there is no way to begin. Adjusting the frame to accommodate the day, I am swollen with terror at my inability to distinguish, at any action, what differentiates time after from time before.

  "Hi, what are you putting together?" she asked.

  "Just a piece of junk-" Raven said.

  Denny clapped Escher closed, and rolled to lean over the edge. "Hey! Lanya!"

  "Hi, babes. Is Kid up there?"

  "Yeah, he's right here."

  "Room for me?" Then her head came over the loft's edge, and frowned. ". . . This one is harder to climb than the ladder on the other one."

  Kid pushed up to his knees to grab her shoulder. Denny was already at the edge to help.

  "Hey, I think I can do it more easily myself. Let's see . . ." She scrunched her features. "Urn . . . No, please. I'll get it." She pushed over the edge, almost slipping once. "There." She took a breath. "Now all I have to worry about is getting down."

  "You came down to see us!"

  "Sure," she told Denny, who now put both hands on her knee. "I told you I would, didn't I?" She took Kid's hand, and one of Denny's. "Tak told me you saw what's going to be my dress." She was wearing jeans and a tan blouse. "Just as well if it isn't too much of a surprise. Have you decided which shirt you're going to wear, Denny?"

  "I thought," Denny said, "I could bring all three and sort of change every once in a while."

  "What are you wearing?"

  "What I have on," Kid said.

  Lanya thought a minute. "Wash the pants first. Give them to me and I'll run them through the machine. We have one that works in the basement of our building." "I only have one pair," Kid said.

  Lanya laughed, let go of their hands, and crawled to the back of the bed.

  "I'll shave, though."

  "I thought you decided to grow a beard."

  Raven, from the floor called up, "I got a razor if you want to use it. Everybody else does."

  "I probably already have," Kid said. "Thanks."