Dhalgren (30 page)

"Oh, thanks."

Faust took the other one.

"You ain't got no fork?" Denny asked.

"No." It was rice, it was onions, it had string beans in it, and corn. "Thanks." He looked up and took the fork. Water tracked on the white arm, shimmered in adolescent chest-hair, broken with acne.

Thirteen said, "You gotta give people
food,
you know? I mean, to be peaceable." Behind him, Smokey, plate just under her chin, ate eagerly.

It had meat in it too. Hash brought edges out from the grease that transformed the odor. He ate. And those were… nuts? No. Crisp potatoes. As the tastes staggered in his mouth, a muffled man's voice said something? something like, "Stop it! Now,
stop
it!" and a woman's wail rose toward the metallic.

He looked around, wondering which other room they were in.

Faust glanced at the ceiling.

So did Thirteen. "See what I'm talking about?" He sucked his teeth and shook his head. "They really go on up there."

The wail, which began to balk now toward sobbing, could have been either June or Mrs Richards. He had not realized before four for how alike their voices were.

Frowning, he ate more of the greasy rice (Bacon grease? Well, at any rate, bacon) and listened to forks tick tin.

Denny ate on one of the mattresses on the floor, back to Kidd: The marble knobs of vertebrae disappeared under the corn-colored hair which dried, lightened, curled.

Thirteen came from the kitchen at the rap on the door. "Hey, it's Nightmare!" Thirteen stepped back on his sudden shadow. "Sweetheart, you just made hash time! And have something to eat for dessert."

It and the blazing apparition in the doorway went out.

"Come on in." Thirteen stepped back again. "What can we do for you?"

The tickings had stopped.

"I'm looking—" Nightmare stepped forward, jingling—for motherfuckers who want to run." He pushed away the tangled braid from his shoulder; his hand stayed to massage the heavy muscle below the scratches, favoring that arm. "I'm not even gonna ask you, Thirteen. You're chicken shit." He nodded toward Faust. "Ain't she got out of the fuckin' bed yet?" Faust jammed another fork of rice somewhere into his beard and shook his head.

Thirteen stepped back to one side of the door, Smokey to the other.

Nightmare walked forward between them. His lips pulled from his broken tooth and his face creased with something like concern. Then he shook his head.

Kidd thought how many different meanings could reside in one gesture. The thought prickled through his stuttering ering ing mind. Nightmare—his eyes were the grey-green of wet, wet clay—looked at him. And blinked.

"You staring like you got toothpicks propping up your eyelids again," Nightmare said, grimacing. "Every time I seen you. Which is twice. I don't like that."

Confused, Kidd looked at his plate.

"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, motherfucker, 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 motherfucker 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, motherfuckers, 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
motherfuckers 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," nd your neck our eck ck. 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 ger suddenly turned to enly his ly 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.