Dhalgren

  He nodded back. He didn't seem to be able to start, though, so he ate another spoonful.

  "Come here," I told him.

  Still shoeless, he stepped over a confusion of feet-the Widow's dull black Wellingtons: Cathedral's floppy brown suedes. I put my hand on his shoulder. "You like Dollar, don't you?"

  Fireball said: "He's a pretty funny little guy. But he's really okay, huh?" The scrawny, rusty-haired coon had a sleepy half-smile. His eyes looked like circles cut from our sky, tossed into the evenly milky coffee of his face.

  "Good," I told him. "You look out for him. You make sure he doesn't get into any trouble around here, you hear?"

  The smile wavered-

  "Somebody's got to. And I'm tired of it. So you do it now. You hear me?"

  -and fell.

  He nodded.

  "Good." With both hands I took off one of my chains, put it over his head, and hung my fists on his chest. I pulled one down, while the other raised, my knuckles slid-

  is so surprising that after it's over I have to go back through it a dozen times in my head to savor it and try and figure out what it was like because I was too busy being astounded while it was happening."

  "Really? That's marvelous!" She was silent the next quarter of a block. Then she said: "He's not going to leave. At least not for a while. Though you may be right about who leaves first, whenever that happens . . . if ever."

  "What do you see?"

  "That you are a whole lot of real person. And so, for that matter, am I. Someone who's had as little of that as Denny has just isn't going to run out before he's had a lot more."

  "Sounds good," I said. "Hope it works. I like you two. I want you with me. Just don't let me start taking either of one of you for granted!"

  "Not, dear heart, if I can help it." ing on his skin. Then I ran it the other way. "This'll go with the one you already took for yourself, right?"

  Fireball blinked at me.

  "It's yours." I let go.

  "That mean I'm a member . . . ?"

  Raven, on the floor, propped his head on his elbow. 'That's the way we play, sweetheart." He laughed, rolled over (into Cathedral who just grunted), and closed his eyes.

  Fireball looked back at me. The sleepy smile returned. "Okay," he said. "Hey, thanks, Kid. Okay . . ."

  "You look out for that crazy, pimple-faced white bastard."

  "Okay," he repeated. "I will." Then he ate another spoonful out of his cup.

  I went onto the porch.

  Risa was sitting outside on a crate under a tree, reading. (Brass Orchids? I craned to see. Yeah.) Rubbing two fingers in the dusty corner of the screenless frame, I watched her, wondering if I should go down and ask her about what I was thinking, finally decided: Fuck it, if you're gonna do it, do it.

  I went down the steps-the door clacked behind me- and crossed the yard. "Hey . . ." I squatted beside her, elbows and hands (wondering how can they get that dirty in just a day) a double bridge, knee to knee. "I wanted to know, I mean, about last night."

  She looked up.

  "You enjoyed that, huh? I mean, you were into it. Because some of the-one of the women seemed a little upset by it. So I wanted to ... know."

  She'd slapped her hand over the page like she didn't want me to see it. Which was odd. Her heavy legs shifted. She looked uncomfortable. I waited, thinking: Well, she's probably just not a very verbal person, or maybe she just can't get answers to questions like that together, just like that; or maybe it's a stupid question, or just an embarrassing one. I mean she could have always said: Look, asshole, why do you think I was doing it if I didn't like it? Also, I felt silly pretending, even to myself, I was speaking for Lady of Spain when, of course, I was speaking for me.

  "I mean," I said, "I was curious: if you felt any one had . . . well, forced you?"

  The top two buttons of her blue shirt were open. Her brown skin was creased between her neck and shoulder. Last night, her eyes, half closed, had seemed so large. Now, wide, they looked small. What she said (a lot more together than I'd expected) was: "That was mine," and opened and closed her mouth to say something else, but ended up repeating: "That was all mine. You just can't have any part of that. That's all. It was . . . mine!"

  "I mean-" I was surprised-but I just shrugged: "I just wanted to know if you . . . enjoyed it?"

  She said: "You go find out yourself, if you want it!" Then, like she was jerking from an anticipated blow, her eyes slipped back to the page. Her fist slipped back to her lap.

  I stood up, my mind jutting off on: Do I want to get gang-banged myself? Well, all right, consider. Considering, I walked across the yard. One: I don't like to take it up the ass because when I've tried, it's almost always hurt like hell. Maybe half a dozen times, it turned out not to be painful, just indifferent (one of these was two days ago with Denny and Lanya, and the emotional thing there, anyway, was nice). But, Two: I've had my own dick up the asses of enough guys who were obviously feeling no pain, and a lot of pleasure. And I've been in line and taken my turn in a guy's ass like with Risa's cunt last night. So (Three:) if Risa's right, maybe there's something wrong with me that every-well almost every-time a cat has tried to shove his dick into me, it fucking stings . . . ? Anyway, if nothing else, she had said something that had made me think, which is one way I decided if people are intelligent.

  As I went up the steps, Copperhead's head came out of the door; passed by me, went over, squatted by her (like he'd seen me do? Presumably not.) and put his freckled hand on the knee of her jeans. They bent close, conferring. She said something that made him laugh. (She didn't look too happy though.) I stepped through the screen door onto the porch, glanced out the window again.

  As Copperhead stood, Lady of Spain (with Filament, just behind her), passed now on the other side of the fence, stopped with three fingers hooked over the chipped boards and asked-I could hear her chains click the wood but not really what she said-Risa something like, How was she feeling?

  Risa twisted a little, frowned, and said: "My back is sore." Spitt was on the porch, standing by the sink, his arms folded. "She's something, huh?" He looked resentful as hell.

  I glanced out at Risa, looked back at Spitt." He was shaking his head. "How many times she get fucked? Sixty? Seventy-five times?"

  "Aw, man," I told him. "You crazy? Would you believe sixteen, seventeen? Maybe twenty?"

  "Huh?"

  "There were only seven, eight of us doing anything. And half of us only went once."

  Spitt thought a few seconds. "But, Jesus Christ . . . Look at her! She's just sitting there, reading your damn book like that!"

  "Spitt," I said, "balling a couple of dozen people in one night is merely a prerequisite for understanding anything worth knowing." I mean I have done that. "That's just the way it is."

  Spitt didn't seem to think that was funny, so I went back into the kitchen and left him looking. Somebody (Spitt?) had washed a lot of the dishes.

  This is the last full blank page left.

  Re-reading, I note the entries only ghost chronological order. Not only have I filled up all the free pages, but all the half and quarter pages left around the poems or at the ends of other entries. A few places where my handwriting is fairly large, I can write between lines. I'll have to do a lot more writing in the margins. Maybe I'll try writing cross-ways over pages filled up already.

  Sometimes I cannot tell who wrote what. That is upsetting. With some sections, I can remember the place and time I wrote them, but have no memory of the incidents described. Similarly, other sections refur to things I recall happening to me, but know just as well I never wrote out. Then there are pages that, today, I interpret one way with the clear recollection of having interpreted them another at the last re-reading.

  Most annoying is when I recall an entry, go hunting through, and find it or half of it not there: I've read some pages so many tunes they've pulled loose from the wire spiral. Some of these I've caught before they ripped completely free, folded some or t
hem up and put them inside the front cover. Carrying the book around, though, I must have let them slip out. The first pages- poems and journal notes-are all gone, as well as pages here and there through the rest.

  More will go, too.

  I work the paper strips, edged with torn perforations, out of the spiral with my pencil point. And write more. Looking at the last page, I can't tell if it's the same one that was there a month ago or not.

  was nearly too bazaar for comment:

  Stopped into Teddy's. It was so early I wondered why it was open. Maybe five people there, among them-Jack. He sat on the last stool, hands (skin grey, cuticles wedged with black, crowns scimitared with it, half moons shadowed under cracked skin) flat on the counter. His hair feathered the rim of his ear (in the twisted cartilage: white flakes. On the trumpet's floor: dry amber) and went without change into sideburns that join around his chin in scrubby beard. His neck was grey-with one clean smear (where he'd been rubbing himself?). His lids were thickened, coral rimmed, and lashless. The short sleeve of his shirt: torn on the seam over white flesh. Above the backs of his shoes, his socks, both heels torn, curled from ridged, black callous. The fly flap on his slacks was broken. The brass teeth rollar-coastered over his lap and under his belt-the buckle tongue had snapped: he'd tied the belt-ends together. "You wanna buy me a beer?" he asked. "First night I got to town, I brought you and your girl friend a beer."

  "Just ask for what you want," I said.

  The bartender glanced over, pushed a rolled sleeve higher; from under his thick fingers the tattooed leopard stalked the jungle of his arm.

  "I'd buy it myself," Jack said. "But, you know, I've been pretty down and out. You buy me a beer, man, and I'll do the same for you, soon as I get myself back on my feet."

  I said to the bartender: "How come you won't serve him?"

  The bartender put his knuckles on the counter and swayed. "All he gotta do is ask for what he wants." He looked around at the other customers.

  "Give us a couple of beers," I said.

  "Right up." The open bottles clacked the boards in front of us.

  "There you go." I took a swallow from mine.

  Jack's bottle sat between his thumbs. He looked at it, then moved his fingers a little to the left.

  What he'd done was adjust the spaces so that the bottle was centered between his hands.

  The bartender glanced again, pursed his lips-about as close as he would let himself get to shaking his head-and moved away, fist over fist.

  "You don't have to pay here," I said.

  "If I could pay," Jack said, "I really would; I mean, if I had it, I'd buy it myself. I'm not a skinflint, man. I'm really generous when I got it."

  I considered a moment. Then I said: "Just a second." I reached in my pants pocket.

  The dollar bill, in a moist knot, came up between my third and fourth finger. It was so crumpled, at first I thought I'd just found some dirty paper I'd stuck there (a discarded poem?). I spread it on the counter. One corner, from sweat and rubbing, was worn away down to the frame of the "1".

  While Jack looked at it, I wondered what Lanya would do with hers; or Denny with his.

  Jack raised his head, slowly. The corner of his mouth . was cracked and sore. "You can have a pretty rough time in this city, you know?" His hands were still flat. Foam bubbled up his bottle neck and over, puddling at the base. "I just don't understand it, man. I don't. I mean, I've done everything I could think of, you know? But it just don't look like I can make it here no how. Since I been here-?" He turned to me. Bubbles banked and broke against his fingers. "I been nice to people! They got all different kinds of people here, too. I mean I ain't never seen all kinds of different people like this here before. I've been nice and tried to listen, and learn how to do, you know? Learn my way around. 'Cause it is different here . . . But I just don't know." His eyes went above and behind me.

  I looked back.

  Jack was looking at Bunny's empty cage. The black velvet curtain at the back swung as though someone had just brushed by on the other side. "Like that big nigger that they got his picture up, all over the place with his God damn dick hangin' out all over. I just don't see that. I mean I don't got nothin' against it. But, man, if they gonna do shit like that, why don't they put some pictures of some pussy up too! You know? If they gonna do one, don't you think it's right they should do the other?"

  "Sure," I said.

  "I mean, maybe somebody like me, or you-you got a girl friend-is interested in something else, huh? When I first got here, I knew things weren't gonna be like every where else. I was real nice to people; and people was nice to me too. Tak? The guy I met with you, here? Now he's a pretty all right person. And when I was staying with him, I tried to be nice. He wants to suck on my dick, I'd say: 'Go ahead, man, suck on my fuckin dick.' And, man, I ain't never done nothin' like that before . . . I mean not serious, like he was, you know? Now, I done it. I ain't sorry I done it. I don't got nothin' against it. But it is just not what I like all that much, you understand? I want a girl, with tits and a pussy. Is that so strange? You understand that?"

  "Sure," I said. "I understand."

  Jack pushed the corner of his mouth out with his tongue, trying to break the scab. "I guess he Understood too. Tak, I mean. He's still nice to me. He talks to me when he sees me, you know? He asks me how I'm doin', stuff like that . . . Man, I just wish I'd see some pictures of some nice pussy up there, beside all that dick. I mean that’s what I'm interested in; it would just make me feel better."

  I drank some beer. "Make me feel better too."

  "You been to that commune place-you know, in the park?" Jack looked at the wrinkled bill. "Tak took me down there. And I guess it was pretty nice, you know. I was talking to this one girl, who's one of the ones who runs it-"

  "Milly?"

  "Yeah. Mildred. And she's goin' on and on about my deserting from the army, and all about how good they all feel about deserters, and I guess she's tryin' to be nice too-but after a while, I mean after a couple of fuckin' hours of that, I had to say: Lady, how you. sittin' there tellin' me how bad the fuckin' army is when you ain't never been in the fuckin' army and I just been there for a God damn year and a half! She don't know nothin' about why I run out of the fuckin' army. And she don't even care." His eyes wandered to his hands, the bottle, the puddled counter, the bill, his hands . . . "I mean, she didn't know a thing . . ." He drew breath and looked up at me. "I met Frank at the commune . . . the guy who's supposed to be a poet? He'd been in the army; and he deserted. He knew what I was trying to tell her. For a while there, him and me, we were pretty close. I can't talk as good as he can, and he knows all about a lot of stuff I don't. But we went around a lot together. He took me to that House where all the girls live. You been there?"

  "No."

  "Well, it's really something, man. Some of them girls are pretty nice-some are pretty strange, too. And the guys that come around there . . . well, some of those girls go for some pretty freaky guys. I guess some of them, the girls, even liked me. But only the freaky ones that I just wasn't interested in. I wanted to get me one, sort of little- they got some big women over there!-and pretty. And soft And smart. Now to me being smart in a girl is very important. If I could get me a girl who could talk about things and understand things half as good as Frank could, I'd be happy. And they got some smart girls over there too. In fact, I don't think none of 'em is stupid. Just a lot of them is pretty freaky, though. There was some there just like I wanted. And I could of used a girl friend! I mean I talked to them. And they talked to me. But I couldn't get anywhere. Frank could. He could get laid from Wednesday to next Thursday and start all over tomorrow. I wanted to get laid, but I wanted more than that, too. Now I know people around here is different from me; but that means I'm different from them, too. Only I guess if you're too different, nobody wants anything to do with you. I mean they don't care shit." His hands jerked in the puddle, to the bottle's base. He frowned for a while, and I thought he was f
inished. But he said: "You hear about the nigger- this black guy who used to come in here: the one who got shot off top of the Second City Bank building?"

  I nodded.

  "Do you know what they think-" Jack turned on his stool, one hand going to spread across the chest of his shirt-"John, Mildred, all them people over in the commune in the park-that / was the one who done it! And they tellin' all sorts of other people, too! They tellin' that to all them girls who live in that House together! 'Cause I'm white, and I'm from the south, and I don't know how to argue good and explain that they are fuckin' crazy-they are fuckin' crazy if they think I done something like that!" He looked as surprised in the telling as I was in the hear- ing. "I ... I had a gun, you know?" His hand closed to a loose fist that slid, stopping and starting, down his shirt, leaving a wet stain.

  I nodded.

  "I always had a gun at home. They should have guns out there in the park with all the nuts wandering around in this city. And all they got to do is walk into a store and take one-like I did. They got people comin' around to the park all the God damn time, to take food away from 'em? And some of the people who come got guns. Get up on a damn building and shoot a damn nigger?" His hand, loose in his lap, twitched. "Jesus Christ, I wouldn't do nothin' like that! But I go around the park, man, and I hear them talking. I mean I heard people takin'; then they'd turn around, and they seen me and shut up! Frank won't have nothin' to do with me no more. I mean he'd say hello or somethin' when I'd speak first and then walk away to do something else. But five times-five times I'd start over to find out just what'n hell was goin' on and he walks away soon as he see me comin'. I mean it's like they're afraid of me; only they got me so scared, I'm afraid to go back. Shit, I don't even believe Frank thinks I done it. Frank's a nice guy. He just don't want the others to think he's havin' anything to do with me. And I don't know what to do with that. I just don't know. I thought for a while, right after I first met him, Frank was like Tak. I know he goes after girls. But he writes that poetry and stuff and, sort of, well. . . if he liked me, I guessed maybe that was part of it. 'Cause I damn well couldn't see no other reason: he's smarter'n me, older'n me, and he's got about everything he wants. When all this stuff started, I thought maybe because I'd never done anything with him, like with Tak, that was . . . well, was why he was bein' so damn mean. That pretty stupid, huh? But this place puts ideas like that into your head. I told him, right out; I said, 'Anything you wanna do- Anything at all . . . !' I wished he'd been gay, man. I wished he'd liked me like that. Because then, after bein' with Tak and all, even though I ain't, I'd kind of known what to do. You know?" He looked at me, shook his head, looked at the bottle. "You know what I mean?" He took his hand out his lap and put it back in the puddle.