Dhalgren (31 page)

"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, ghter grew, laughter: "Stop it! Stop it will you?" in Mr Richards' harsh voice. "Just stop it." op it, ghter grew ew.

"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, something like laught er aughter sobb ter bing er.

"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 naiveté. 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."

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… 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!"