Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  "I ain't gonna do anything about it," Nightmare went on. "I'm just telling you I don't like it, understand? I mean I like to make things clear."

  He looked up again.

  Nightmare laughed, a short, rough thing happening in his nose. "Okay, now. Which of you cocksuckers wants to run? Hey, Denny, wrap something around your neck and come on."

  "I ain't finished eatin'," Denny said from the floor.

  Nightmare grunted and stepped over him. Denny ducked.

  "Hey, is that shit any good?"

  Kidd hesitated in glistening sheets of clarity. Then he held out his plate and fork, and watched Nightmare warily decide to take the dare.

  The scorpion took the fork in his fist, swept through the mixture, spilling some, and, fork still in his mouth, chewed, with grains about his lips. Still chewing, he grinned. "Hey, that's okay." As he handed Kidd back the fork, Thirteen broke the tensions that, with the hash, had almost grown visible about the room.

  "Well, have a God-damn plate, will you? Here, Nightmare, I'll get you some. Hey-" he turned to Smokey-"take him some hash, while I get him something to eat."

  Nightmare sat down on the bed, between Faust and Kidd, leg against Kidd's leg, arm against Kidd's arm. The figure under the blanket behind them didn't move. Nightmare sucked the pipe. He let out, with his smoke, "Now you want to tell me what you lookin' for, kid, all the time?"

  "Man, he's higher than the World Trade Center's flagpole." Thirteen handed Nightmare a tin plate and a spoon. "I been pumping hash in him all evening. What you wanna do all this heavy shit to his head for?"

  Nightmare took the plate but waved Thirteen away with the spoon. "No, this is friendly. The kid and me, we know each-"

  Faust, finished with the last of his rice, suddenly put his plate on the floor, stood, picked up his paper, and marched toward the door.

  "Hey, where you going?" Nightmare said.

  "Thanks for the meal," Faust mumbled to Thirteen without stopping.

  "Hey, mother-fucker, so long!" Nightmare bellowed into the wake of ice.

  The door swung open for Faust.

  "Good bye!" Nightmare flipped his arm: the door slammed; the flung spoon clattered the picture frame.

  The picture swung.

  Nightmare laughed. Ice flushed away in the blowtorch of his hilarity.

  Thirteen, first dubiously, then in full-throated hoarseness, laughed with him.

  "Toss me back my fuckin' spoon!" Nightmare howled between landslides of laughter.

  It came back underhand from Thirteen. "Now what's the old man all upset about, huh Smokey? He's crazy, ain't he?" and looked over his shoulder as Smokey nodded corroboration.

  Nightmare had caught his spoon and now leaned toward Kidd. "He's all fucked up in the head, you know? Cause he thinks I messed up the bitch." He pointed the spoon at the form under the blanket. "I didn't mess her up. She got caught fightin' fair. I wasn't even around. Shit." He swiped food into his mouth. "You know-" grains fell-to his wrist, to his jeans, to the scarred parquet-"some of these sons of bitches didn't want no bitches whatsoever in the business?" He down stabbed the air with his spoon. "Keep 'em away! Keep 'em out of here! They just gonna mess up the works!" With a malicious grin he looked around the room at the people leaning on the walls, sitting on the mattresses, or on the other bunks. Three among the dozen of them were girls, Kidd saw: but the lamplight was harsh and full of shadow. Nightmare's clay-colored eyes came back and caught his. "Then some of the bitches got together and beat the shit out of a couple of brothers . . . !" He reared back, heavy arms shaking. More food spilled from his plate. "Well, since I was boss-man, I said come right on in, ladies, and do your thing! Shit, I been livin' off bitches since I was ten, so it ain't no news to me what they can do." He came forward again, his weight-lifter's shoulder flattened to Kidd's, and whispered conspiratorially: "When you knee 'em in the nuts, a bitch don't go down quite so fast, either." Which he thought was very funny and laughed again. "Good people to have on your side." He took another mouthful, and made another large gesture with his spoon; grains scattered. "Magnificent shit!" he said with his mouth full. "Magnificent! Which of you fine young ladies is responsible?" He swung his lowered head around, mimicking an exaggerated politeness.

  A heavy girl, in a blue sweatshirt, standing by the mannequin said, "It was one of the guys . . . Denny helped."

  "Hey, Denny!" Nightmare's small, boomerang chin jounced.

  Denny looked up, still eating.

  "I should throw this mother-fucker at you!" Nightmare jerked the plate back to his shoulder. Kidd jerked aside. But Nightmare returned the plate to his lap, and laughed loudly and wetly.

  Denny hadn't even flinched.

  "People are very funny," Nightmare pronounced, recovering, nodding over another mouthful. "The ladies had their problems." He thumped his thumb against his sternum among rattling links. "I had mine too-some of the brothers just weren't interested in having no white people involved no how."

  Kidd glanced around the room again; everyone in the room looked white.

  Nightmare saw him glance and lifted a finger: "Now don't get your idea from this. Thirteen here runs the Lily White Rest Home for Depraved and Indigent A-heads; but the true brotherhood is of a much deeper hue."

  "God damn, Nightmare," Thirteen said from the door. "Why are you always going on like that? We get spades here. There was-" he began to snap his tattooed fingers-"what's-his-name .. . ?"

  Nightmare waved in the air. "Tokens! Mere tokens." The nails on his beefy fingers were overlong and crested black as an auto mechanic's. " 'Cause I'm white," he said out of the side of his mouth to Kidd, "these racist bastards here will let me come around to look for replacement troops. Well, mother-fuckers, I'd come around here even if I was black as George! And I'll keep coming around till both moons fall out of the sky and the sun comes up backwards!" He looked at Kidd directly. "And we're getting a few, too-though these shitheads would give up a nut before they'd admit that just a few of them even like it better living over there and being scorpions than hanging around this behavioral sink!" His hand, which was still up before him, returned to hold the edge of his plate, about to slide off. "Yes, the ladies had to beat some heads." He glanced back at the figure behind them in the blankets: "And some of the ladies, indeed, got their heads beat. Well, I had to beat some heads too, to attain my present status-and though I am now quite satisfied with my current position in the community, I would not be surprised if my head eventually took some beating too." He turned back, dark hair falling in tangles from his shoulder, and made a face. "Sisterhood . . . Brotherhood . . . very powerful stuff, man!" Grimacing, he shook his head. "Very powerful. Hey-?" once again at Denny. "Denny, you gonna run? We need you tonight. You run it good, boy."

  "I dunno." Denny didn't turn. "Lemme finish my dinner, huh?"

  Nightmare laughed again, looked around the room. "He's gonna come. How you like that, the little bastard's gonna come! I don't think I'd even take any of the rest of you cocksuckers. Denny? It's a good run with us, ain't it? Go on, tell 'em."

  "Yeah," Denny said with his mouth full, then swallowed: "It's a good run, okay?"

  "Now you see; these mother-fuckers all think I want to be the daisy in a field of black orchids" (lower:)- "though we have two or three of those; and no problems with 'em. But since I been boss-man, I take whoever wants in and knows their business." He nodded to Kidd. "I'd even take you, and you ain't no nigger . . . what?" He leaned back, narrowed his eyes, and raised a hand like an artist at a picture: "A half-blood American Indian on your . . . father's side? 'Course, the light's a little dim . . ."

  Kidd grinned. "On my mother's."

  Nightmare grinned back, shrugged. "Well, you still got more meat on you than most of these sad-assed A-heads."

  A frustrated laugh came from across the room. Thirteen said: "Nightmare, why are you always down on us like that? You got us out as racists, and chauvinist pigs, and speed freaks to boot. We ain't had no speed around here for
I don't know how long."

  Nightmare bounced on the bed with delight, the back of his wrist against his forehead, miming a distressed belle. "Me!" in falsetto. "Me?" even higher. "Me, down on speed? I'm just waiting for you racist, chauvinist pigs to get some more!"

  Smokey said: "That blond Spanish guy hasn't been around with any for a long time ... I sort of wonder where he went."

  Somebody else said: "He probably burned the whole city."

  Thirteen began laughing again, moved across the room, laughing. Others moved too.

  Nightmare turned back to Kidd. "How'd you like that idea, goin' on a scorpion run?" It must have suddenly struck him as funny; he guffawed, snorting, shook his head, and brushed rice grains from his chin with his fist. "You'd picked yourself a nice shiny orchid last time I saw you. What would you do in a real garden party, huh, kid?" Two more spoonfuls and Nightmare's plate was empty. Holding it between both thumbs and forefingers, he opened his knees and dropped it. "You think about that, running. Maybe that's what you're looking for, huh? Let me tell you something." He fingered among the chains around his neck, held up the thin brass one with its round and triangular glasses, and shook it. "You're a fool to wear yours where anybody can see it, kid." Glass glittered, harsh in white lantern light.

  Why why "Why? You got yours on around your neck,". He hadn't been aware that his shirt was half open.

  "Just shut up and listen now. Smokey over there. I know she's got one. But you don't see her with it out and waving it, now?"

  "You know," Kidd said, "I figured two people who saw each other with . . . these: well, they'd sort of trust each other, you know? Because they'd . . . know something about each other," and wondered if Madame Brown had arrived upstairs for dinner.

  Nightmare frowned. "Say, he's got a brain, you know?" He glanced at Thirteen. "The kid ain't that stupid. But I'll tell you: You look at this and you know something about me. I look at that and I know something about you. Well, what are we gonna do with what we know, huh? I'll tell you what you'll do with it. You'll use it to put the longest, sharpest blade on that orchid of yours, soon as I ain't lookin, between that rib, and that rib." His finger suddenly suddenly turned to jab Kidd's his side. "And don't think for one second I wouldn't do the same thing to you. So I don't trust anybody I see with one at all." He pressed his lips to make a little pig's snout and nodded, mocking sagesse. "Hey, just look at Denny!"

  Finished with his food, Denny had walked over to the mannequin. He took up a heavy chain loop from it, draped dark links around his own neck.

  "I told you Denny'd run with me. Okay, man. You know when, you know where. Lemme get out of this freak hole. I gotta hunt some more." He stood and lumbered over the mattresses. "I knew you'd come through, Denny. Hey?" He frowned at Thirteen. "Do something with her," and gestured back toward the bed.

  "Yeah, sure, Nightmare." Thirteen opened the door for him. When he closed it, he looked back at Denny. Smokey at his shoulder blinked in anticipation.

  "Hey, man," Thirteen said slowly after seconds of silence, "are you still into that shit?"

  Denny put another chain around his neck. It rattled on the one already there.

  Thirteen swung up his hands and grunted. "Come on, Denny, I thought you were gonna stay out of all that. All right, all right. It's your ass."

  Upstairs a woman was laughing, and the laughter grew: "Stop it! Stop it will you?" in Mr Richards' harsh voice. "Just stop it."

  "Look, I'm gonna have to get back to work." Kidd stood up. "Thanks for the food, you know? And the dope. It's good stuff."

  Denny put on another loop, and Thirteen said, "Oh, yeah, sure." He seemed as disappointed at Kidd's leaving as Mrs Richards always was. "Come on down again and smoke some more dope. Don't mind Nightmare. He's crazy, that's all."

  "Sure." Kidd went to the door, opened it.

  The moan stopped him: hesitant, without vocal color, it came on behind. He started to turn, but his eyes stalled on the mirror. In it he could see practically the whole room:

  On the bed where he had been sitting, she had pushed herself up to her elbow. The blanket slipped down, and she turned a face, wet as Denny's from the bath. It was puffed, bruised. Though her temples trickled with fever, the sound, as she swayed, came from the driest tissue.

  She blinked on balls of scarlet glass.

  The door clapped behind him. After ten steps, he released his breath. Then he dragged back air, rasping with something like sobbing.

  "Excuse me."

  "Yes?"

  "Reverend Taylor?"

  "What can I do for you?"

  On the shelf behind the desk, tape-spools turned. Organ music gentled in the shadowed office. "I ... well, somebody told me I could get those pictures-posters here. Of George," he explained, "Harrison."

  "Oh yes, certainly." Her benign smile as she pushed herself away from the desk, made him, holding his notebook in the church foyer, absolutely uncomfortable. "Just reach over for the latch there and it'll open."

  He pushed through the waist high door. His bare foot left tile and hit carpet. He looked around the walls; but they were covered with shelves. The bulletin board was a shale of notices and pamphlets.

  The poster was down.

  "Now which picture would you like?" She opened the wide top drawer.

  He stepped up: it was filled with eight-by-ten photographs of the rough-featured black man. Reverend Taylor stood up and spread a disordered pile of pictures across more pictures. "We have six of these. They're very nice. I'm afraid I haven't got them arranged though. I just had to dump them in here. Let's see if I can pull out a complete set-"

  "Oh. I think maybe-"

  She paused, still smiling.

  The pictures in the drawer were all, full-head photos.

  "No." His embarrassment hove home. "You probably don't have the ones I was looking for, ma'am. Somebody told me he'd gotten one from you, and I guess . . . well, I'm sorry-"

  "But you said posters, didn't you?" She closed the drawer and her eyes, a comment on her own misunderstanding. "Of course, the posters!" She stepped around the desk and the toes of her shoes beat at the hem of her robe. "We have two, here. There's a third in preparation, since that article in Mr Calkins' paper about the moon."

  Behind the desk were portfolio-sized cardboard boxes. Reverend Taylor pulled one open. "Is this what you want?"

  "Really, I'm pretty sure you don't have-"

  Harrison, naked and half-erect, one hand cupping . his testicles, leaned against some thick tree. The lowest branches were heavy with leaves. Behind him, a black dog-it could have been Muriel-sat in the dead leaves, lolling an out-of-focus tongue. Sunset flung bronzes down through the browns and greens. "It was done with a backdrop, right down in the church basement," she said. "But I think it's rather good. Is that the one you want?" "No . . ." he said, too softly and too quickly.

  "Then it must be this one."

  She flipped over a handful to let him see.

  "Yeah-yes. That's it," and was still astounded with the memory.

  She peeled the poster from its identical twin and began to roll it up. "It had to be. Until the new one comes in-" as jacket, genitals, knees, boots and background purple rose into the white roll turning in dark fingers-"these are all we have. Here you go. I'll get you a rubber band." She stepped to the desk.

  "Hey," he said, putting belligerent stupidity in front of his disconcerted astonishment, "why do you-" He stopped because the idea came, interrupting his question, clearly and without ambiguity, to request the other poster as well. "-why do you have stuff like this here? I mean to give away."

  Only later did it occur to him that her ingenuous surprise must have been as calculated to disarm as his naivete. When she recovered from it, she said, "They're very popular. We like to be up to date, and posters are being used a lot ... they were done for us free, and I suppose that's the main reason. We've given out quite lots of the first one you saw. That one," she pointed to the one he held, "isn't in quite as much
demand."

  "Yeah?"

  She nodded.

  "What I mean is, why . . ."

  She picked up a rubber band from the desk and stretched her fingers inside it to slip it over his roll. The band pulled in the fingertips: he thought a moment of his orchid. With deliberation, as though she had reached a decision about him, she said, "The poor people in this city-and in Bellona that pretty well means the black people-have never had very much. Now they have even less." She looked at him with an expression he recognized as a request for something he could not even name. "We have to give them-" she reached forward-"something." The red rubber snapped on the tube. "We have to." She folded her hands. "The other day when I saw you, I just assumed you were black. I suppose because you're dark. Now I suspect you're not. Even so, you're still invited to come to our services." She smiled brightly again. "Will you make an effort?"

  "Oh. Yeah." He doffed the poster: He'd realized before he probably would not come to a service. Now he resolved never to return at all. "Sure. What do I owe you for-this." One hand, in his pocket, he fingered the crumpled bill.

  "It's free," she said. "Like everything else." He said, "Oh," But his hand stayed on the moist note.

  In the foyer he stepped around the dumpy black woman in the dark coat too heavy for the heat. She blinked at him suspiciously from under her black hat, pulled up her shopping bag, and continued toward the office door. Between what Nightmare had said earlier and what Reverend Taylor had just said, he found himself wondering, granted the handful he'd seen, just where all the black people in Bellona were. The poster under his arm, he hurried into the evening.

  "Hello!" Mrs Richards said, eyes both wide and sleepy. She held her bathrobe at the neck. "Come in, Kidd. Come in. I didn't know what happened to you yesterday. We were expecting you to come back down. And eat with us."

  "Oh. Well, when I got finished, I just thought . . ." He shrugged and entered. "You got coffee this morning?"

  She nodded and went off to the kitchen. He followed her, letting his notebook flap his leg. She said, "The way you left, I thought there might have been something wrong. I thought perhaps you weren't going to come back at all."