Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  ". .. is he alive?" Thirteen called.

  Kidd took another breath. "Naw." He pulled at the arm, got a grip around the chest, which was all soft against him. His own shirt front soaked immediately. Blood dribbled along his forearm. Standing, he dragged the body back a step. A foot caught, pulled free; the leg fell back against his thigh-his thigh wet, warm, to the knee. Dragging it, limp, reaching for the rope, he thought: Is this what turns on blood and blade freaks? He thought of Tak, he thought of George, hunted in himself for any idle sexuality: he found it, disconcertingly, a small warmth above the loins that, as he bared his teeth and the rope slid through his sticky hand, went out. "Let me have another couple of feet!" Well, he had found it before in auto wrecks, in blue plush, in roots, in wet wood with the bark just stripped.

  Rope dropped over his shoulder; the voices eighteen floors up came again:

  Oh, Mom-

  Is he all right? Kidd, have you found him yet? Bobby? Bobby, can you hear me at all?

  Oh, Mom, you heard-

  Bobby, are you all right?

  He got the rope around the chest, got a clumsy knot done-like trying to do it with your hands in glue-that maybe would hold. Bobby sagged against Kidd's knees, heavy enough to make his bare foot slide backward. "Okay!" He tugged the rope.

  He could see it run across the sill above him, go taut, and slow. The weight lifted from against him. A sneaker dragged across his foot, thumped against the door, and swung away again, and raised, dripping on his cheek. He smeared at his face with the heel of his hand and stepped back.

  "Jesus Christ . . . !" from a girl at the doorway silenced everything but the wind and the reverberating voice:

  Bobby, Bobby, please, can you hear me at all?

  Another boy said: "Hey, wow . .. !"

  Then, Denny's nervous laugh: "Oh, man, that's a mess .. . !"

  Dragon Lady said, "All right, I'm untying him here- you get that rope down to the kid."

  Standing on the bottom of the shaft, his bare heel wedged against one caked girder that crossed the bumper plates, Kidd stared up. For a moment he thought the elevator car descended at him. But it was a trick of light from the flanking beasts, both of whom swayed and flickered at the edge of sight.

  The rope fell at him. He grabbed it with one hand, then the other. Someone pulled it; it rasped his coated palms. "Hey ... !" It went slack again.

  Dragon Lady leaned in, the rope wrapped around one fist. "You got it now?"

  "Yeah." Once more he shrugged it over his head, under his arms. "Got it."

  They tugged him up.

  When his head reached the sill, Denny and somebody else were on their knees, catching him around under the armpits. The sill scraped his chin, his chest.

  Smokey simply put her hand over her mouth and stepped back behind Thirteen.

  Kidd crawled over, got to his feet, moved a few steps forward. The others fell back.

  "God damn!" Dragon Lady shook her head, eyes wide, and rolled the rope against her thigh. "God . . . !"

  Denny, with a funny smile, stepped back, black-lined nails moving over his chest. "Wow, you really . . ." He shook back pale hair, seemed to be considering several things to say. "You look just about as bad as . . ." He glanced at the floor.

  "Uh . . ." Thirteen said, "we got some clothes up at the place. You wanna look through them for something? To change into, well, that's ... all right."

  "Oh, yeah . . ." Kidd looked down at blood, on himself, on the floor. It didn't run. It looked like jellied paste. "Thanks." He looked at the thing on the floor too, while wind and the woman's voice made torrents in the shaft. "I better get.. . him upstairs."

  Bobby's shirt had ripped across the back. The flesh that wasn't torn was purple.

  "You could make a sling, or something," Thirteen offered. "Hey, do we got any more of that canvas stuff?"

  Someone he didn't recognize said: "We threw it out."

  Kidd sucked his teeth, stopped, got his arms under Bobby's shoulders, tugged him over. One eye, open, had burst. The face, as though it had been made of clay, was flattened across one quarter.

  Thirteen, glancing up the shaft, said: "Dragon Lady, why you want to go hollering up at her about her kid's dead?"

  "Because," Dragon Lady said, "if / was his mother, I'd want to know!"

  "But suppose he was still-"

  "Man," Dragon Lady said, "that ain't like gettin' dumped out a two story window. That's seventeen, eighteen flights!"

  Kidd wedged his hand under the knees, stood, unsteadily, stepped back.

  "Watch it!" Denny grabbed Kidd's shoulder. "You don't want to go down there again, now, do you?"

  Kidd said: "Make the elevator go!" In his arms, the body was heavy, not so warm, and dripped less.

  "Huh?" from Dragon Lady, who was coiling up the rope. "Oh, yeah!" She swung into the car, did something else to the switches above the buttons.

  The door started to close. She stopped it with her forearm. (K-chunk.)

  Denny stepped back as Kidd carried Bobby inside.

  "Baby, Adam, you go on up with the others," Dragon Lady said from the back of the car.

  But Kidd, turning to face the door as it rolled to, could not tell which of the people standing behind Thirteen and Smokey she addressed: their light shields had been extinguished.

  A moment into darkness, he heard Dragon Lady's hand move among her chains; and the car filled with light. "So you can see what you're doing," the dragon said. "Here, I'll push the floor. Which one? Seventeen?"

  "Yeah." He nodded, stepped aside.

  The car rose.

  The dragon beside him, he realized, was bigger than the elevator. Since it was light, he would have expected walls and ceiling to cut off that side claw, the top of that head. The effect, however, was that those places in the blue, enameled walls and ceiling seemed transparent, and the claw and the head shone through. The apparition was reflected on four sides.

  Standing there, shifting the weight in his arms-Kidd had to shift it several times-he noticed the striations, like a muzzy image on some vertical television screen, raced to the left if he swayed right; if he swayed left, they raced right. Kidd said: "I don't think you should get out with me."

  The dragon said: "I wasn't planning to."

  He shifted the weight again, looked down at it, and thought: It smells ... it has a specific smell. And there was an annoying piece of paper-he glanced down over the knees; was it a match book?-stuck to his bare foot.

  Why, Kidd thought, why am I standing here with this armful of heavy, heavy meat, filthy with blood . . . ? Then something raked inside his face; his throat clamped, his eyes teared. Either fear or grief, it extinguished as quickly as the lust that had momentarily raked inside his loins.

  He blinked, again shifted his weight to the sandaled foot. The bare one stuck to the floor.

  Beside him the swayings and motions that might tell him Dragon Lady's thoughts were hidden in light.

  He shifted back the other way. His sandal stuck too.

  The car slowed; the door opened.

  Mrs Richards' fist rose to strike her chin. The gesture was a stronger version of June's.

  Mrs Richards stepped back, and back again.

  June caught her mother's arm.

  Mrs Richards closed her mouth and her eyes and began to shake. High brittle sobs suddenly crackled the silence.

  "You better take your mother upstairs," Kidd said and stepped, after his grotesque shadow, into the hall. ï

  June's head whipped back and forth between him and her mother, till an edge of shadow swept over his. It was not him she was staring at, but the bright apparition in the closing elevator.

  "I'll put him in the old apartment."

  "Bobby's . . . ?" June whispered, and smashed back against the wall to avoid him as he passed.

  "Yeah, he's dead."

  Behind him Mrs Richards' crying changed pitch.

  The other elevator door, against the rolled carpet, went K-chunk, K-chunk,
K-chunk . . .

  He shouldered into seventeen-B. Put the boy in his own . . . ? Kidd walked down the hall, turned into the bare room. One of Bobby's hands (the one with the chain, all stained) struck and struck his shin. All he had to do was look at what he lugged not to be sad.

  He tried not to drop it on the floor, lowered it, almost fell; and dropped it. He pulled at the bent leg; it . .. bent again, at the wrong place. So he stood up.

  Christ, the blood! He shook his head, and peeled his shirt from stomach and shoulders. Starting for the door, he unbuckled his pants and, holding them with one hand- they dropped to his thighs-stepped into the hall.

  Mrs Richards, standing in the middle of the hall, began to shake her head and cry again.

  He scowled and pulled his pants up. He'd been heading for the bathroom but, exposed to her astonished grief, he was thrown back to the moment of sexual response at the shaft bottom. Shit, he thought: "Ma'am, why don't you go upstairs. There's nothing you can do. Being here won't make you feel... any better. June ... ?"

  June half hid behind her mother.

  ". . . why don't you take her upstairs." Suddenly he didn't want to be there at all. "Look, I've got to go get some-something." Holding his pants closed, he went past them into the living room, picked up his notebook and, holding it in front of his lap, stalked out the door.

  Thirteen said, "I guess she's taking it pretty rough," and stepped back to let him in. "Shit." Dragon Lady glanced at the ceiling.

  The sound of crying, high and stifled, dripped into the room like something molten.

  "Why don't she shet up!" Dragon Lady said.

  "Look, man-" Thirteen started.

  "I know, I know. Somebody just asked me if I wanted a glass of wine. Well I sure as shit do. Baby? Adam? You bringing that damn wine?"

  "You said," Kidd began, "you had some clothes?"

  "Oh yeah. Sure. Come on in."

  Denny, who was resting a glass jug on the crook of his arm, said, "I think he wants to use the bathroom."

  "Yeah, you want to wash up. Tub's a mess, but you can use it if you want. What's the matter?"

  "Nothing." But Denny's last sentence had caused gooseflesh more unpleasant than either grief or terror. "Yeah, I better wash up."

  "Down the hall. It don't have no fuckin' windows. I'll get a lantern." Thirteen lifted one from a nail in the wall.

  Kidd followed him into the john.

  In the swaying lantern light, he saw a line of rust along the middle of the tub to the drain. The enamel had flaked here and there from black patches. "We had to put a fucked-up scorpion in here a couple of nights back -name was Pepper-and he'd put something in his arm he shouldn't have. Put him in the bathtub with his spurs on, and he tried to kick holes in it." Lantern high in one hand, Thirteen bent and picked up a screw from the tub bottom, looked at it, shrugged. "Use any of those towels you want. We don't got no washcloths." He put the lantern down on the back of the toilet.

  Kidd put the notebook on the seat-top, turned on the water and picked up the soap: Flakes of rust had dried into it.

  With a grey towel (torn) he swabbed the bottom of the tub. There was no stopper, so he rolled it up and plugged the drain, then got in before the water had covered the bottom.

  "Do you want something to drink?" a girl called through the door.

  "Yeah."

  While he sat, scrubbing at his face, he could hear the crying upstairs. He wondered if she were moving from room to room.

  The girl came into the bathroom with a white cup in her hands. She wore jeans, was heavy, and had a cheerful face that was trying to look very serious. "Here you are. That poor boy." She bent down, spilling curly hair from her shoulder and put the cup on the tub edge. She had loose, heavy breasts under a blue sweatshirt. "That must have been awful!"

  Her voice was breathy, and he thought she probably giggled a lot. The thought of her giggling made him smile. "It wasn't nice."

  "You live upstairs?" she asked.

  Perhaps she was seventeen. "I just work there. You know if you keep on staring at me like that, I'm gonna get all excited."

  She giggled.

  He leaned back in the tub. "See, I told you."

  "Oh . . ." She gestured mock frustration, left-she had to push past Denny who stood in the door now. He gave a sharp, short laugh. "You really got yourself messed up, huh, kid?"

  "Yeah, well. I guess we couldn't leave him down there."

  "I guess not." Denny came in and sat on the toilet cover, picked up the notebook. "Hey, kid? This yours?"

  He nodded, only realizing now that Denny's "kid" had neither capital K or extra d. Kidd grinned and picked up the mug. (Around him the water ran brown. The match book from his foot floated under the spigot.) When he sipped, his mouth burned. "Shit, what is this?"

  "Whisky," Denny said, looking up. "You want wine, we got wine. But I thought maybe you'd want something good and strong, I mean after . . ." His hair swung in pale blades.

  "That's fine."

  "You write all this?"

  "Yeah. Leave it alone."

  "Oh." Quickly Denny put it on the floor between his boots. He rubbed two fingers on his naked chest a while. Then he glanced up and said, "She's really going on, huh? I guess that's cause she's his momma?"

  Kidd nodded and ground his knuckles in the soap. "I got all that junk off my face?"

  "Nope. On the side, under your chin."

  He lathered there. The lantern showed the suds gone tan. Denny gestured. "What you got a hard-on for?"

  "Your scrawny ass hanging over the back of your pants."

  "Yeah?" Denny grinned. "Be the best piece you ever had."

  But when Kidd sloshed the lather off his face, Denny was still looking at it. "How'd your run go?" Kidd asked.

  "With Nightmare?"

  "Yeah."

  "It was a fuck-up." Denny shrugged. "We didn't get nothing. Time before was really good. Next time be good too."

  "What you guys run after?" Kidd drank some more, and rubbed the rusty soap on his stomach.

  "You all that interested in scorpion shit?"

  Kidd shrugged. The soap bobbed away.

  Denny nodded. "You interested, you ask Dragon Lady."

  "Not that interested." He retrieved it, pushed it between his toes.r

  "You ask her, she'll tell you if she thinks you wanna know. Dragon Lady, she likes you." Suddenly Denny stood. "So does Nightmare. I'll be back in a second."

  Kidd took another drink, and fell to scrubbing again. His nails were lined-ruined rim and bitten cuticle-with brown. He dunked his head, rubbed it, lifted it; dark streaks wormed from the drippings.

  "Here you go, kid." Denny came back in with an armful of clothing and sat down again on the toilet. "Now we got this pair of pants; and this pair-naw, that's pretty raunchy. I guess these'll fit you. Nice belt, too. I dunno who left all this shit. You think there'd be a shirt in here, you know."

  "I thought scorpions didn't wear shirts." Kidd stood up in the loud water to soap his groin.

  Denny glanced at him once more. "Shit, I better keep my ass out of your way. You want a black leather vest? That'd look good on you, kid, you know? Scorpions just wear vests, usually. You seen the one I got?"

  "How old are you?"

  "Eh . . . sixteen," followed with a questioning glance.

  Fifteen, Kidd decided. "I'm practically a dozen years older than you. Stop calling me kid."

  "Huh? You are?"

  "Yeah. Now throw me that other towel." As he caught it, the door crashed back. Dragon Lady lurched in, dark face twisted, stained teeth bared, shaking a fist with one finger up. "Look, when you go back upstairs, you tell that bitch to cut it out, you hear? It's driving me up the fuckin' wall! God damn, I know it's her kid, but- well, Jesus Christ, she been whining up there a fuckin' hour!" She looked at the ceiling and bellowed: "I mean, go out and take a walk, lady!"

  "Dragon Lady . . ." Denny's interruption seemed to take in none of the scorpion's rage.


  "We dragged the cocksucker up there for her! She keep it up, I'm gonna go up there and beat the shit out of her, if you don't quiet her down!"

  Anger and the cold air: his erection, anyway, was gone: "The walls are thin." He rubbed himself with the bunched towel.

  "Dragon Lady?"

  "What do you want?"

  "The . . . Kid was asking about the run."

  Kidd sensed the hesitant disobedience was some acquiescence to previous commitment. But he could not be sure whether the newly implied capital was respectful or mocking.

  "Yeah?" Dragon Lady's anger was quickly exhausted.

  "Look, lemme out of here and see what I can do upstairs," Kidd said. "We'll talk about it some other time." He wished Mrs Richards would quiet too.

  "Oh, yeah. Sure. Try and shut her up, huh?" Dragon Lady backed out again.

  "You don't want the vest?" Denny still pawed in the heap.

  The crying suddenly rose in pitch. Outside, Dragon Lady said, "God damn!"

  "Yeah, I want the fucking vest." Kidd stepped from the tub, reached down, and drained the whisky. Twin warmths of agreement and alcohol turned through him.

  Denny, still sitting, was bent almost double, as he sorted the clothing. His belt loops tugged his jeans below his buttocks' crevice.

  Kidd sucked his teeth again and toweled his groin. "What's she here for, anyway?"

  "Dragon Lady?" Denny glanced up, unbending.

  "Yeah."

  "You remember when you were here last time, Nightmare was collecting us for the run?" Denny shrugged and fell back to sorting. "Well, she's bringing us back, I guess."

  "Oh."

  The door opened again. The girl stood there, with a plastic cup this time. "Oh," she said. "I didn't know you were . . ." That was to Denny who didn't look up. So she said to Kidd, "Denny told me I should bring you another glass after fifteen minutes. Did you finish the first one?"

  "You don't give a fuck whether he finished it or not," Denny said, still bent over. "Just give it to him."

  "I'm finished."

  She blinked rapidly, while they exchanged mug for cup. Then, without glancing at Denny, she left. Kidd drank some more, then put the cup on the tub edge| "Thanks."