Dhalgren

  "You mean," I said, "the dishwasher sticks his finger less and less far down the glass every day?"

  Tak laughed and nodded "Aren't you glad you know some one with some idea of technology? Rising water tables, lowering pressure. You could get paranoid over stuff like that if you don't know what you're doing."

  "Yeah," and I took the bottle and drank.

  And over the next fifteen seconds, the afternoon sky, dull as an aluminum pot bottom, darkened to full night.

  Five seconds into the darkening, Denny said, "Jesus, what-?" and stood up.

  There was a noise like a plane coming. It kept coming too, while I watched Denny's features go night blue.

  Lanya grabbed my arm, and I turned to see her blue face, and all around it, go black.

  If it was a plane, it was going to crash into us.

  I jerked my head around left and right and up (hit the back of my head on the wall) and down, trying to see.

  Another sound, under the roar, beside me: Tak standing?

  Something wet my hand on the tar-paper beside me. He must have kicked over the brandy.

  White light suddenly blotched the horizon, cut by the silhouette of a water tower.

  I didn't feel scared, but my heart was beating so slow and hard my chin jerked, each thump.

  Light wound up the sky.

  I could just see Tak standing now, beside me. His shadow sharpened on the tar-paper wall.

  The sound . . . curdled!

  creaking shutter or anything. I don't know what it was. Bolted to the wall was a plank on which they had carved their initials, names, phrases, some written in fancy combinations of colored magic markers, others scrawled in black pentel. Near the bottom, cut clearly with some small blade: June R. Danya says she'll have to find some abandoned drugstore or someplace to get birth-control pills now, in the next three months. Denny is worried about his little girl-friend. He says she was sick the last time he was over there," . . . with a fever, man. And every thing. She wouldn't hardly move, under the blankets." No one at the commune, or the bar, or the church-neither George nor Reverend Amy-know where they all went or even what really happened. But if someone would do that to the House, I just wonder about the nest. Was the blond girl they described June? I guess I hope so. The light split. Each arm zigged and zagged, separate, ragged-edged and magnesium bright. The right arm split again. The left one was almost directly above us.

  And Tak had no shadow at all. I stood up, helped Lanya to ...

  Some of the light flickered out. More came. And more.

  But what is ... ?" she whispered right at my ear, pointing. From the horizon, another light ribboned, ragged, across the sky.

  "Is it ... lightning?" Denny shouted.

  "It looks light lightning!" Tak shouted hack.

  Someone else said: " 'Cause George don't shine that bright!"

  Tak's bleached face twisted as if beat by rain. The air was dry. Then I noticed how cool it was.

  Nodes in the discharge were too bright to look at. Clouds-sable, lead, or steel-mounded about the sky, making canyons, cliffs, ravines, for lightning it was too slow, too wide, too big!

  Was that thunder? It roared like a jet squadron buzzing the city, and sometimes one would crash or something, and Lanya's face would

  Here one page, possibly two, is missing.

  as loud as I could: "Lanya! Denny!" If they answered, I couldn't hear; and I was hoarse from shouting. The street sign chattered in its holder-the wind had grown that strong.

  I took another half dozen steps, my bare foot on the curb, my boot in the gutter. Dust fits

  Don't remember who had the idea, but during the altercation, for a while I argued: "But what about Madame Brown? Besides, I like it here. What are we going to do when you're at school? Your bed's okay for a night, but we can't all sleep there that long."

  Lanya, after answering these sanely, said: "Look, try it. Denny wants to come. The nest can get along without you for a few days. Maybe it'll do your writing some good." Then she picked up the paper that had fallen behind the Harly, climbed over it, came out from under the loft, tip-toed with her head up and kissed me. And put the paper in her blouse pocket-bending over, it had pulled out all around her jeans.

  I pushed myself to the loft edge, swung my legs over, and dropped. "Okay."

  So Denny and I spent what I call three hit my face. My shadow staggered around me on the pavement, sharpening, blurring, tripling.

  People were coming down the street, while the darkness flared behind them.

  That slow, crazy lightning rolled under the sky.

  The group milled toward me; some dodged forward.

  One front figure supported another, who seemed hurt. I got it in my head it was the commune: John and Mildred leading, and something had happened to John. A brightening among the clouds-

  They were thirty feet nearer than I'd thought:

  George, looking around at the sky, big lips a wet cave around his teeth's glimmer, his pupils underringed with white, and glare flaking on his wet,

  days and she calls one ("You come in the evening, spent the night and the next day, then left the following morning! That's one full day, with tag ends." "That should at least count for two," I said. "It seemed like a long time ...") Which wasn't so bad but ... I don't know.

  The first night Madame Brown put supper together out of cans with Denny saying all through: "You wanna let me do something . . .? Are you sure I can't do nothin'. . . ? Here, I'lI do . . ." and finally did wash some pans and dishes.

  I asked, "What are you making?" but they didn't hear so I sat in the chair by the table alternately tapping the chair-back on the wall and the front legs on the floor; and drank two glasses of wine.

  Lanya came in and asked why I was so quiet.

  I said: "Mulling."

  "On a poem?" Madame Brown asked.

  We ate. After dinner we all sat around and drank more, me a little more than the others, but Madame Brown and I actually talked about some things: her work, what went on in a scorpion run ("You make it sound so healthy, I mean like a class trip, I'm not so sure that I like the idea as much now. It sounded very exciting before you told me anything about it."), the problems of doctors in the city, George. I like her. And she's smart as hell.

  Back in Lanya's room, I sat at the desk In the bay window, looking at my notebook. Lanya and Denny went to bed ("No, the light won't bother us."), and after about fifteen minutes, I joined them and we made cramped, languorous love which had this odd, let's-take-turns thing about it; but it was a trip. I nearly knocked over the big plant pot by the bed four times.

  I woke before the window had lightened, got up and prowled the house. In the kitchen, considered getting drunk. Made myself a cup of instant coffee instead, drank half, and prowled some more. Looked back into Lanya's room: Denny was asleep against the wall. Lanya was on her back, eyes opened. She smiled at me. veined temples, supported Reverend Tayler; she leaned forward (crying? laughing? cringing from the light? searching ï the ground?), her hair rough as shale, her knuckles and the backs of her nails darker than the skin between.

  The freckled, brick-haired Negress, among darker faces, walked behind them; with the blind-mute; and the blond Mexican.

  Someone was shouting, among others shouting: "You hear them planes? You hear all them planes?" (It couldn't have been planes.) "Them planes are awfully low! They gonna crash! You hear-" at which point the building face across the street cracked, all up and down, and bellied out so slow I wondered how. Cornices, coping stones, window

  I was naked. "Restless?"

  "Yeah." I came over, squatted by the bed, hugged her.

  "Go ahead. Pace some more. I need another couple of hours." She turned over. I took up the old notebook here, sat around cross-legged on the floor, contemplating writ-Ing down what had happened till then.

  Or a poem.

  Did neither.

  Looked in the top desk drawer-the wood looks like paper had been glued all over it and th
en as much pulled off as possible. She said some friends lugged it from a burned-out windshield warehouse a few blocks down the hill.

  I took out the poems she'd saved, spread them on the gritty wood, on every kind of paper, creased this way and that (red-tufted begonia stalks doffed), and tried to read them.

  Couldn't.

  Thought seriously of tearing them up.

  Didn't.

  But understood much about people who have.

  Looked back at Lanya; bare shoulders, the back of her neck, a fist sticking from under the pillow.

  Prowled some more.

  Got back into bed.

  Denny jerked his head up, blinking. He didn't know where he was. I rubbed the back of his neck and whispered, "It's okay, boy ..." He settled back down, nuzzling into Lanya's armpit. She turned away from him toward me.

  I woke alone.

  Leaves arched over me. I looked up through them. Blew once to see if they'd move, but they were too far. Closed my eyes.

  "Hey," Denny said. "You still asleep?"

  I opened my eyes. "Fuck you if I was."

  "I just walked Lanya over to school." He leaned against the edge of the doorway, holding his chains. "It's nice around here, huh?"

  I sat up on the side of the bed.

  "But there ain't too much to do ... it's nice of her to have us over here, I mean to stay a while, huh?"

  I nodded. frames, glass and brick hurled across the street.

  They screamed-I could hear it over the explosion because some were right around me-and ran against the near wall, taking me with them and I crashed into the people in front of me, wind knocked out of me by the people behind, screaming; someone reached over my shoulder for support, right by my ear, and nearly tore it off. More people (or something?) hit the people behind me, hard.

  Coughing and scrambling, I turned to push someone from behind me. Across the street, girders, scabby with brick and plaster, tessellated luminous dust. I staggered from the wall among the staggering crowd and stumbled into a big woman on her hands and knees, shaking her head.

  About two hours later he told me he was going out. I spent the rest of the morning staring at blank paper or prowling.

  Madame Brown, coming out of her office, saw me once and said: "You look strange. Is anything the matter?"

  "No."

  "Are you just bored?"

  "No," I said. "I'm not bored at all. I'm thinking a lot."

  "Can you leave off long enough for a lunch break?"

  "Sure." I hadn't had breakfast.

  Tunafish salad.

  Canned pears.

  ' We both had a couple of glasses of wine. She asked me for my character impressions of: Tak, Lanya, Denny, one of her patients I had met at the bar once; I told her and she thought what I said was interesting; told me hers, which I thought were interesting too, and they changed mine; so I told her the changes. Then the next patient came by and I went back to staring at my paper; prowling; staring.

  Which is what I was doing when Lanya and Denny came in. He'd gone back to the school to help out with the class.

  "Denny suggested we go on a class trip, outside to look at the city. We did. It turned out to be a fine idea. With two of us we didn't have any problem handling them. That was a good idea, Denny. It really was." Then she asked if I'd written anything.

  "Nope."

  "You look strange," she told me.

  Denny said: "No he don't. He just gets like that sometimes."

  Lanya Mmmmed. She knows me better than he does, I guess.

  Denny was really into being useful-a trait which, pleasant as he is, I've never seen In him before. I helped them do a couple of things for Madame Brown: explore the cellar, take one chair down, bring up a dresser she'd found on the street and managed to get to the back door.

  It was a nice evening.

  I tried to pull her up, but she got back down on her knees again.

  What she was trying to do, I realized, was roll a pile of number ten tomato-and pineapple-juice cans and crumpled cookie packages back into her overturned shopping bag. Her black coat spread around her over crumbs of brick.

  One can rolled against my foot. It was empty.

  She began to go down, even further, laying her cheek on the pavement, reaching among the jangling cans. I bent to pull her once more. Then someone, yanking her from the other side, shouted, "Come on!" (Cum ohn! the vowels, long and short, braying: the m soft as an n; the n loose as an r.) I looked up without letting go.

  It was George.

  I wondered if I was spoiling it by suggesting: "Maybe we should go back to the nest tonight?"

  Lanya said: "No. You should use some of this boring peace and quiet to work it."

  "I'm not bored," I said. And resolved to sit in front of a piece of paper for at least an hour. Which I did: wrote nothing. But my brain bubbled and bobbed and rotated in my skull like a boiling egg.

  When I finally went to bed I fell out like an old married man.

  One of them or the other got up in the night to take a leak, came back to bed brushing aside the plants and we balled, hard and a little loud I think.

  In the morning we all got up together.

  I noticed Lanya noticing me being quiet. She noticed my noticing and laughed.

  After coffee we all walked to the school. Denny asked to stick around for the class. Now I noticed her wondering if two days in a row was a good idea. But she said, "Sure," and I left them and went back to the house, stopping once to wonder if I should go back to the nest instead.

  Madame Brown and I had lunch again.

  "How are you enjoying your visit?"

  "Still thinking a lot," I told her. "But also think all the thinking is about to knock me out."

  "Your poetry?"

  "Haven't written a word. I guess it's just hard for me to write around here."

  "Lanya said you weren't writing too much at your place, either. She said she thought there were too many people around."

  "I don't think that's the reason."

  We talked some more.

  Then I came to a decision: "I'm going back to the nest. Tell Lanya and Denny when they get back, will you?"

  "All right." She looked at me dubiously over a soup spoon puddled with Cross & Black-well vichyssoise. "Don't you want to wait and tell them yourself when they get back?"

  I poured another glass of wine. "No."

  She came up between us, screaming: "Ahh-bhhhbtibh- An-nnnnn! Don't touch me! Ahhh-hhhhh h-don't touch me, nigger"! She staggered and reeled in our grip. I didn't see her look at either of us. "Ahhhhh-I saw what you done!- that poor little white girl what couldn't do nothin' against you! We saw it! We all saw it! She come lookin' for you, askin' all around, askin' everybody where you are all the time, and now you take her, take her like that, just take her like you done! And see what's happened! Now, see! Oh, God, oh help me, don't touch me, oh, God!"

  "Aw, come on!" George shouted again as once more she started to collapse. He pulled again; she came loose from my grip. The coat stung my hands. As I dodged away, she was still shrieking:

  "Them white people gonna get you, nigger! Them white men gonna kill us all 'cause of what you done today to that poor little white girl! You done smashed up the store windows, broke all the streetlights, climbed up and pulled the hands down from the clock! You been rapin* and lootin' and all them things! Oh, God, there's gonna be shootin' and burnin' and blood shed all over! They gonna shoot up everything in Jackson. Oh, God, oh, God, don't touch me!"

  "Will you shut up, woman, and pick up your damn junk," George said.

  When the next patient rang, I took my notebook and wandered (for five, funny minutes, midway, I thought I was lost) back to the nest.

  Tarzan and the apes, all over the steps, were pretty glad to see me. Priest, California, and Cathedral did a great back-slapping routine down the hall. Glass nodded, friendly but overtly noncommittal. And I had a clear thought: If I left, Glass, not Copperhead, would become leader.

/>   I climbed up into the loft, told Devastation's friend Mike to move his ass the hell over.

  "Oh, yeah, Kid. Sure, I'm sorry. I'll get down-"

  "You can stay," I said. "Just move over." Then I stretched out with my notebook under my shoulder and fell asleep, splat!

  Woke up logy but clutching for my pen. Took some blue paper to the back steps, put the pine plank across my knees and wrote and wrote and wrote.

  Went back into the kitchen for some water.

  Lanya and Denny were there.

  "Hi."

  "Oh, hi."

  Went back to the porch and wrote some more. Finally it was Which, when I looked back, seconds later, was what she was doing.

  George, ten feet off, squatted to haul up a slab of rubble that rained plaster from both sides, while another woman tugged at a figure struggling beneath. A handful of gravel hit my shoulder from somewhere and I ducked forward.

  Ahead of me, turning and turning in the silvered wreckage, Reverend Amy squinted up, fists moving about her ears, till her fingers jerked wide; the up-tilted face was scored with what I thought rage; but it swung again and I saw that the expression struggling with her features was nearer ecstasy.

  I climbed over fallen brick. The orchid rolled and bounced on my belly.

  The blind-mute was sitting on the curb near the hydrant. The blond Mexican and the brick-haired Negress squatted on either side. She held his hand, pressing her fist, the fingers rearranged and rearranged, at each contact, against his palm.

  I reached among my chains, found the projector ball, and fingered the bottom pip.

  The disk of blue light slid up the rubbly curb as I stepped to the sidewalk.

  They looked up, two with eyes scarlet as blood-bubbles.

  The mute's sockets (he poked his head about) were like empty cups dredged with shadow.