Dhalgren (109 page)

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 finished. 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
I
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 hearing. "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 talkin'; 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.

"Go on," I said. "You've got it too simple. But go on."

His jaw moved a few times, but he didn't speak.

"How come you don't come down to see us?" I asked.

"You get hungry, come on down to the nest. Tak'll bring you there if you ask him. Left over flower-power, in all this pollution, was never my thing either." I was wondering about him and the department store people but I didn't say anything.

"Well, you guys…" Jack turned a little from side to side. (Thinking: His palms are now glued to the wood, but he doesn't want to be noticed trying to tug them loose.) "You guys… I just don't know. All you got down there is niggers anyway, don't you? After what I done—what they said I done, what's a bunch of bad niggers gonna do when I come walkin' in? You guys play a little too rough… robbin' people in the street. And killin' people." He blinked inflamed lids. "I don't mean, personal. You're a nice guy. And you're their chief, huh…? But that's what I heard, you know? And I don't wanna get into shit like that. I don't got nothin' against it, but…" He frowned, shaking his head. "People talk. And people talk. People talk, tryin' to make you into something you ain't. And after a while, you almost don't know what you done and what you didn't do your own self. People talkin' about me, about what I done, that day when the sky was lit across with that funny kind of light, and that nigger they got in the pictures was after that white girl and the colored people had a riot and tore the hands off the church clock down in Jackson; they say cause I climbed up on the roof and shot the nigger, from the roof, I'm responsible for the riot, for the whole thing, for everything that happened here. Just for shootin' a damn nigger…" His lips, lined with brown, touched, parted, touched: "I
had
a gun. I didn't shoot…" He spoke slowly. "I didn't shoot that black man. I mean, I even met him three or four time. Right in this bar. With Tak. He was a nice man. I shot him…? I didn't shoot…" Suddenly he knuckled at his lips' scabbed corner. "I went down there. I did that. To check the place out. And
with
my gun! You climb up the steps behind the Second City Bank building and get up the rest of the way by the fireladder. You can hunker

I don't remember ever getting corrected in high school or college for writing who instead of whom. But except to be funny, I've never said whom in my life. Which makes me think there are two other words: who and who'—the apostrophe standing for the syncopated m. I've been using who' in this notebook for maybe a week, but it still looks funny. So I'll cut it out.

down behind the cornice and aim out over the whole damn street. Man, if you could shoot at all, you could pick off anyone! An' I shoot pretty good…" He looked at me, narrowing his thickened lids. "You think I done it?"

'That depends," I said. "Did you check it out before or after he got shot?"

Something happened on Jack's unshaven face: the skin between his eyebrows wrinkled, the skin below his jaw slackened. Something happened behind it too. "Oh God," he said as flatly as, once, I heard a man say "elevator". "Oh God…" He turned back to the bar. "They all want it to be so bad, they gonna make it be no matter what I done or not. They gonna make it be. Just by wantin' it."

"I know," I told him.

"What can I do? I don't know what to do."

"You have to know who you are," I said. "No matter what they say."

He didn't look at me. "You know who
you
are?"

After a second I said: "About two thirds of it; so I guess at least I'm on my way. Maybe I'm pretty lucky." I finished my beer. "You come down to the nest. Whenever you want. Just don't bring your gun."

"I wish," Jack said after a few seconds, "I could just get me some kind of job. A job where I could make some good money. Then I could get me a girl friend; then I could buy my own drinks. I don't like to sit in a bar and hustle nice guys for drinks."

"When I first got to town," I told him, "I had a job, moving furniture. Five bucks an hour. You'd've dug it. It was made for you."

But he was looking at the dollar bill.

Since the frustration was making me mean, I decided it was time to go. I stepped from the bar.

"Hey, Kid?"

"What?"

"Ain't you gonna take your change?" He put his middle finger on the wrinkled dollar and slid it over the wet wood.

I thought a second. "Why don't you keep it?"

"Aw, no, man—Naw, I don't like to take no handouts. I need a job; make some good money; pay my own way."

"You take this hand-out," I said. "You need it."

"Well, thanks, man…?" His finger, holding the paper to the counter, slid it back. "Thanks a lot! I'm good for it, too. You'll get it back, once I get some money. You're a pretty nice guy."

Comments anyway: I want to help. And feel help would be impossible. Almost. Which is simply almost forgetting how much help I've had.

I hope he comes to the nest.

Off his head about everything else, he's right on about the pussy. Despite George, and a city concecrated by twin moons, I know there must be some greater, female diety (for whom George
is
only consort) a sin yet to name her (as that sun is never, named); we have all glimpsed her, sulking in the forest of her knowledge—every tree a tree of that knowledge—and there is nothing but to praise

This afternoon Lady of Spain and Filament staggered through the front door in volcanic laughter, lurched up the hall supporting each other—

"Hey," I said. "What happened with you?"

Filament faced me, pursed her lips, inflated her cheeks, widened her eyes, and rattled her chains before her breasts, miming something I did not understand. Her cheeks exploded with more laughter. Lady of Spain, dragging Filament's arm, hauled her away.

Dollar pushed around me, grinning. "Hey!" he called, "What happened? Did you do it?"

Filament turned and repeated the mime.

Dollar—I'm not
sure
it meant more to him than it did to me—crashed back against the wall, holding his stomach and howling: "Oh, wow…! You mean…? Really…? Wow…!" and followed them up the hall, his laugh shriller than either of theirs.

Then Tarzan stepped in from the service porch and said: "Look, ladies, people are sleeping in the back room, huh?" There are twelve tones of voice in which you can say that: three of them would have gotten him an apology with muffled giggles. He chose, at random, from the other nine.

"Fuck off, man!" Dollar said, straightening. "It's their nest too!" His had actually been the only laugh with edge to wake.

"Now look!" Tarzan said.

Sex between nest members is rare enough—I can think of six, no seven exceptions, including me and Denny—to make me wonder if basically I don't have here an exandrous and/or exogynous totem group. Most sex comes walking in, invited or not—and even-