Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  He laughed. "I just went upstairs and finished my work. Then I went back to the park. I mean, you don't have to feed me. I do the work. You pay me for it, what you told Mrs Brown you would. That'll be okay."

  "Of course," she said from the kitchen.

  He went into the dining room and sat. "Coffee, I mean. And a sandwich, and letting me use your bathroom and stuff. That's nice. I appreciate it. But you shouldn't put yourself out." He was talking too loud. More softly: "You see?"

  June, in pink slacks and robin's-egg sweater, a bird appliquéd near the neck, came to the door.

  "Hey . . ." he said, quietly. "I have something for you. Upstairs, in nineteen."

  "What-" then caught herself and mouthed: "What is it?"

  He grinned and pointed up with his thumb. June looked confused. Then she called: "I'll help you with the coffee, Mom."

  "That's all right, dear." Mrs Richards came in with a tray, a pot, and cups. "If you want to bring in a cup for yourself. Darling?" She sat the tray down. "Aren't you drinking too much coffee?"

  "Oh, Mother!" June marched into the kitchen and returned with a cup.

  He liked putting his hands around the warming porcelain while the coffee went in.

  "I did something, you know, perhaps I ought not to have." Mrs Richards finished pouring and spoke carefully. "Here, I'll bring it to you."

  He sipped and wished it wasn't instant. His mind went off to some nameless spot on the California coast, carpeted with rust-colored redwood scraps and the smell of boiled coffee while a white sun made a silver pin cushion in the tree tops, and fog wrapped up the gaunt trunks-

  "Here." Mrs Richards returned and sat. "I hope you don't mind."

  June, he saw, was trying to hold her cup the same way he did.

  "What is it?" On blue bordered stationery, in black, calligraphic letters, Mrs Richards had written out his poem.

  "I've probably made all sorts of mistakes, I know."

  He finished reading it and looked up, confused. "How'd you do that?"

  "It stayed with me, very clearly."

  "All of it?"

  "It's only eight lines, isn't it? It sticks very persistently in the mind. Especially considering it doesn't rhyme. Did I make any terrible mistakes?"

  "You left out a comma." He slid the paper to her and pointed.

  She looked. "Oh, of course."

  "You just remembered it, like that?"

  "I couldn't get it out of my mind. I haven't done anything awful, have I?"

  "Um .ï . . it looks very nice." He tried to fix the warmth inside him, but it was neither embarrassment, nor pride, nor fear, so stayed un-named.

  "You may have it." She sat back. "Just stick it in your notebook. I made two copies, you see-I'm going to keep one for myself. Forever." Her voice broke just a little: "That's why I was so worried when I thought you weren't coming back. You really go and sleep out in the park, just like that, all alone?"

  He nodded. "There're other people there."

  "Oh, yes. I've heard about them. From Edna. That's . . . amazing. You know you haven't told me yet, is it all right that I remembered your poem; and wrote it down?"

  "Eh . . . yeah." He smiled, and wished desperately she would correct that comma. "Thanks. You know, we can start moving stuff up today. You got everything all ready down here?"

  "We can?" She sounded pensive. "You mean you've got it all ready."

  "I guess I should have come back last night and told you we could start today on the moving." '

  "Arthur-" who stood at the door, tie loose-"Kidd says we can move today. By the time you come home, dear, we'll all be upstairs."

  "Good. You really are working!" When Mr Richards reached the table, Mrs Richards had his cup poured. Standing, he lifted it. The cup's reflection dropped away in the mahogany, stayed vague while he drank, then suddenly swam up like a white fish in a brown pool to meet the china rim that clacked on it. "Gotta run. Why don't you get Bobby to give you a hand with the little stuff? Exercise'll do him some good."

  "Beds, and things like that . . ." Mrs Richards shook her head. "I really wonder if we shouldn't get somebody else, to help."

  "I can get everything up there," Kidd said. "I'll just take the beds apart."

  "Well, if you're sure."

  "Sure he can," Mr Richards said. "Well, I'm on my way. Good-bye." In his fingers, the knot rose up between his collar wings, wobbled into place. He turned and left the room. "The front door slammed.

  Kidd watched the amber rim make nervous tides on the china, then drank the black sea. "I better go on upstairs and get last-minute things cleaned up. You can start putting things out. I'll be down in about fifteen minutes." He clinked his cup in his saucer, and went out.

  "Where is it?" June called from the door.

  He closed the broom closet on the mop and pail. "Over there, leaning against the wall."

  When he came in, she was staring at the white roll in its red rubber band; her fist floated inches under her chin. "You're sure that's a picture of . . ."

  "George," he said, "Harrison. Look at it."

  She picked up the roll.

  On the floor he saw the stack of her father's computer magazines she had brought up as excuse.

  She rolled the rubber band toward the end, but stopped. "Where did you get it?"

  "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. They got them all over." He wanted to avoid the specific answer. "There's a woman minister who just gives him away." He sighed. "At a church."

  "Have you seen . . . him, again?"

  "No. Aren't you gonna open it?"

  "I'm afraid to."

  The simplicity with which she said it surprised and moved him. The fog outside the windows was almost solid. He watched: she stood, head slightly bent, and still.

  "Does Madame Brown know about you and George-"

  Her "No!" was so quick and soft (her head whirled) he stiffened.

  "She goes to that bar too. She knows him," he said. "That's why I was wondering."

  "Oh . . ." so less intense.

  "She was in there the night you stopped me to ask about him."

  "Then it's good I didn't go in. She might have . . . seen." June closed her eyes, too long for blinking. "If she had seen me, that would have been just. . ."

  Her blonde energies were to him terrible but dwindling things. "Why-I still don't understand-are you so hung up on him? I mean, I know about what . . . happened. And I mean, that doesn't matter to me. But I ..." He felt his question confused among hesitations, and stopped it.

  She looked vulnerable and afraid. "I don't . . . know. You wouldn't understand-" then even vulnerability fell away-"if I told you. They named that . . . moon after him!"

  He pretended not to stare. "Enough other people are after him too, I guess. That's why they have those, huh? Open it."

  She shook her head with small, quick movements. "But they don't know . . ." Unable to look at him longer, she looked down at the roll. "I know more than they do."

  "Hey," he asked to fill the discomforting silence, "what did happen between you?"

  "Go read about it in the Times." She looked up.

  He searched for the belligerence he'd heard: her raised features held none of it.

  "The night the . . . black people had the riot? I was out, just walking around. There was lightning. And that immense thundering. I didn't know what had happened. And then it ... I didn't even see the man with the camera until- It's just like it showed in the paper!"

  "Oh," which gave her none of what she'd requested.

  She walked toward the door. Just before she reached it, she finished removing the rubber band and unrolled the poster.

  "Is that him?" he asked, thinking it would be friendly rhetoric but hearing a real request.

  The movement of the back of her head as she looked here and there became nodding. She glanced back. "Why . . . did they make . .. these?"

  "I guess some other people felt the same way about him you do. I was talking, last nig
ht, with some friends. This girl I stay with: she's maybe a few years older than you are. And this guy. He's an engineer, like your father. We were talking, in a bar, about whether I should give that to you."

  Her face began worry on itself.

  "I didn't tell them your name or anything. They took it very seriously, you know? More seriously than I did, at first. They didn't laugh at you or anything."

  ". .. What did they say?"

  "That it was up to me, because I knew you. That some bad things could happen, or some good things. You like it?"

  She looked again. "I think it's the most horrible thing I've ever seen."

  He was angry, and swallowed to hold it. "Tear it up and throw it down the elevator shaft, then . . . if you want." He waited and wondered if her shaking head was confusion or denial. "I'd keep it if I were you."

  "Hey, what's that?" From the way Bobby ran into the room, Kidd thought he would burst through the poster like a clown through a paper hoop.

  June crashed the edges together. "It's a picture!" The white backing wrinkled against her thighs.

  "What's it a picture of?"

  "It isn't anything you'd be interested in!"

  "D'you find it up here in a closet?" Bobby asked Kidd, walking into the room. "I bet it's a naked lady. I've seen pictures of naked ladies in school before."

  June sucked her teeth. "Oh, really!"

  "Come on. Let me see."

  "No." June tried to roll the paper. Bobby peered, and she whipped around. "It isn't yours!"

  "Oh, I don't want to see your old naked lady anyway. Hey, you really got the place cleaned up, Kidd. We gotta carry everything up here?"

  "Yeah."

  "We got an awful lot of stuff in our house." Bobby looked dubious.

  "We'll make it."

  June finished rolling the crinkled poster, picked up her magazines, and started down the hall to the back of the apartment.

  "I'm just gonna sneak in and look at it when you're not there!" Bobby called.

  At the hall's end a door closed loudly.

  "Come on," Kidd said. "Leave your sister alone. Let's go downstairs and move some furniture."

  "Naw!" Bobby complained, though he started to the door with Kidd. "She'd tell on me if she caught me with a picture of a naked lady."

  They went out.

  "You tell on her," Kidd said, "they'll take it away and you'll never see it."

  "Is it a naked lady?" Bobby asked, wonderingly.

  "Nope. It's not." Kidd rang the elevator bell.

  "What is it?"

  "A naked man."

  "Aw, come on!" Bobby began to laugh as the elevator doors rolled open and stepped forward.

  "Hey, boy! This one!" Kidd grabbed Bobby's shoulder. The wind hissed.

  "Oh, wow!" Bobby stepped back, then shrugged from Kidd's grip on his shoulder. "Hey, I almost ... !" He shook his head.

  "You better watch yourself. Come on."

  They stepped into the other elevator.

  The door pulled darkness around them.

  Bobby, still breathing hard, pushed "17".

  "Does June always tell on you?"

  "Sure, she does .. . well, not always."

  "What's the last thing she didn't tell on you about?"

  "What do you want to know for?"

  "Just curious."

  The door opened. Bobby, revealed beside him, had one hand around his chained wrist, stroking the clumsy beads.

  "I can't decide," Mrs Richards announced when they walked in, "whether we should take the big things up first or the little things. I really haven't arranged this very well in my head. I assumed because we were moving inside the building, it wouldn't be any trouble."

  "I want my old room!"

  "What do you mean, dear? We're moving into a new apartment."

  "It's just the same as this one; only backward. And it's blue. I want my old room."

  "Of course, darling. What room did you think you were going to have?"

  "I just wanted to make sure." Bobby marched off down the hall. "I'll start putting my stuff together."

  "Thank you, dear."

  "I'll start with the couch and the beds and things, Mrs Richards. They're the hardest; but once they're up, you'll really be moved in, just about, you know?" '

  "All right. But the beds, they're so big!"

  "I'll take them apart. You got a hammer and screwdriver?"

  "Well, all right. I guess if you're going to get them upstairs, you have to. I'm just feeling guilty that I didn't organize this thing any better. Now you want a screwdriver. And a hammer. You're sure you'll be able to put them back together?"

  Mrs Richards was pulling off the bedding as he came back from the kitchen with the tools. "You see, ma'am," he explained, hoisting off the mattress, "these big beds, the frames just come off the headboards." Even so, as soon as he got to work, he realized five full-sized beds, to dismantle, move, and reassemble, would take at least two hours.

  He'd been working for one when (Mrs Richards herself had already made several trips) he heard Bobby and June out in the front room. He put down his screwdriver as Bobby said: "You didn't tell on me about this . . . and Eddie; so I won't tell about your old picture."

  Kidd walked out of the bedroom and stopped by the living room door.

  June, her back to him, was reaching into the sideboard. Silverware clashed in her hands. She turned with the bunched, heavy spoons and forks.

  "Only," Bobby continued by the bookshelf, "you shouldn't have taken yours off." This and yours apparently referred to the optic chain that bound his wrist; he was holding his arm up to show his sister. "Eddie took his off, and you remember what happened."

  "I was just scared," June protested. "Because of all that other stuff. If you hadn't stolen that one from Eddie, he wouldn't have-"

  "I didn't steal it!"

  "He didn't give it to you, did he?"

  "I didn't steal it," Bobby insisted. "If you say I stole it, I'll tell them about your bad picture-"

  "It isn't bad!"

  "Of course it's bad; if it wasn't bad, you'd let me see it."

  "Hey," Kidd said.

  Both children looked.

  "Eddie's your brother, isn't he? What happened to Eddie, anyway."

  Both looked at each other.

  The silverware recommenced clanking.

  Bobby moved his palm over his beaded wrist.

  "Okay," Kidd said. "I guess it isn't really any of my business."

  "He went away," June said.

  "He ran away from home," Bobby said. "Only-"

  "-he came back a couple of times," June said. "And did terrible things. It wouldn't have been so hard on Mommy if he hadn't kept coming back like that."

  "Daddy said he was gonna kill him if he ever came back like that again-"

  "Bobby!"

  "Well, he did. And Mommy screamed-"

  "Look, it isn't any of my business," Kidd concluded. "Once we have all the kitchen stuff upstairs, your mother can start getting ready for dinner-in your new apartment." Which sounded perfectly inane. He wondered where Eddie was-

  "We don't know," Bobby said in a way that, once, in the mental hospital, when someone did the same thing, made Kidd go around for ten hours thinking all the other patients could read his mind, "where Eddie is now. He said he was going to another city. I wanted to go with him. But I was scared."

  June looked more and more uncomfortable.

  "Come on," Kidd said, "take the silverware. And Bobby, you start on those books. We'll have everything up but the rugs by the time your father gets home."

  He got most of the disassembled stuff into the hall, a couple of times thinking that the thumping, banging, and scraping might be causing as much unrest in Thirteen's place as any running in the halls or banging on the doors had caused in the Richards'.

  He loaded springs and headboards into the elevator -the empty shaft, whose door apparently opened at whatever floor the car beside it stopped, hissed blandly by his side
.

  The ride up in the dark, with only bed springs, the orange number "19" before him, and his own harsh breath, was oddly calming.

  "They should have the padding in the elevators when people are moving furniture," Mrs Richards, waiting for him in the upper hall, admonished. "Well, there's no one to get it out for us. There's nothing we can do."

  In the new apartment (an hour later), he had reassembled the frames and, going from room to room, put the springs on-he was sitting on the last spring, staring at the folded mattress on the floor when Mrs Richards came in carrying a small night-table against her chest, its legs stuck forward like four horns. "You know, I didn't believe you were actually going to get them up here?" she exclaimed. "You really have been working like a madman! You should take a rest, I think."

  He said, "Yeah, I'm resting," and smiled.

  She put the table down, and he noticed her distraught expression. For a moment he thought she'd taken offense at his flip answer. But she said: "They were back, just a moment ago. Downstairs. Running in the halls, making that terrible noise!"

  Kidd frowned.

  "I am so happy to be out of there . . ." Mrs Richards shook her head, and for a moment he thought she was going to cry. "I'm so happy! Really, I was practically afraid to take this-" her fingers swayed on the night table's carved corner-"out of there. And carry it up here. But we've done it. We've moved! We've . . . done it!"

  He looked about the room, at the folded mattress, at the night table, at the dresser out from the wall. And the rugs were still downstairs.

  "I guess we have . . ." He frowned. "Just about."

  A bubble grew at the caldron's rim, reflecting both their faces, one front, one profile, tiny and distant.

  Tommy's spoon handle, circling the soup, passed: the bubble broke.

  Kidd, still panting, asked, "You seen Lanya?"

  "Sure." Tommy's face was wider ear to ear than from chin to forehead. "She was right over there talking to Milly-hey, before you run off again! Will you two be back for dinner?" He rested the spoon on a black pipe, crusted with burnt grease, sticking from the cinderblocks.

  "I guess so. I took off before the lady at my job could get a chance to feed me."

  Soup ran down the granular grey, bubbled and popped. "Good." Grinning, Tommy went back to stirring. His khaki shirt sleeve, rolled loosely up his thin arm, swung: the shirt was about three sizes too big. "It'll be ready about time it gets dark. Lanya knows, but I guess I gotta tell you again: Now come and eat, any time you want, you hear? John and Milly won't mind . . ."