Dhalgren

The in-dark answered with wind.

All you know I know: careening astronauts and bank clerks glancing at the clock before lunch; actresses cowling at light-ringed mirrors and freight-elevator operators grinding a thumbful of grease on a steel handle; student

She lowered the notebook to stare at him, blinked green eyes. Hair wisps shook shadow splinters on her cheek. 'What's the matter with you?'

His face tensed toward a smile. 'That's just some… well, pretty weird stuff!'

'What's weird about it?' She closed the cover. 'You got the strangest look.'

'I don't… But…' His smile did not feel right. What was there to dislodge it lay at the third point of a triangle whose base vertices were recognition and incomprehension. 'Only it was so…' No, start again. 'But it was so … I know a lot about astronauts, I mean. I used to look up the satellite schedules and go out at night and watch for them. And I used to have a friend who was a bank clerk.'

'I knew somebody who used to work in a bank,' Milly said. Then, to the other girl: 'Didn't you ever?'

He said: 'And I used to have a job in a theater. It was on the second floor and we always had to carry things up in the freight elevator…' These memories were so simple to retrieve… 'I was thinking about him — the elevator operator — earlier tonight.'

They still looked puzzled.

'It was just very familiar.'

'Well, yeah…' She moved her thumb over the bright harmonica. 'I must have been on a freight elevator, at least once. Hell, I was in a school play and there were lights around the dressing room mirror. That doesn't make it weird.'

'But the part about the student riots. And the bodegas… I just came up from Mexico.'

'It doesn't say anything about student riots.'

'Yes it does. I was in a student riot once. I'll show you.' He reached for the book (she pulled back sharply from the orchid), spread his free hand on the page (she came forward again, her shoulder brushing his arm. He could see her breast inside her unbuttoned shirt. Yeah) and read aloud:

'…'thumbful of grease on a steel handle; student happenings with spaghetti filled Volkswagens, dawn in Seattle, automated evening in L.A.' ' He looked up, confused.

'You've been in Seattle and Los Angeles, morning and night, too?' Her green-eyed smile flickered beside the flames.

'No…' He shook his head.

'I have. It's still not weird.' Still flickering, she frowned at his frown. 'It's not about you. Unless you dropped it in the park … You didn't write it, did you?'

'No,' he said. 'No. I didn't.' Lost (it had been stronger and stranger than any deja vu), the feeling harassed him. 'But I could have sworn I knew…' The fire felt hottest through the hole at his knee; he reached down to scratch; blades snagged raveled threads. He snatched the orchid away: threads popped. Using his other hand, he mauled his patella with horny fingers.

Milly had taken the book, turned to a later page.

The green-eyed girl leaned over her shoulder:

'Read that part near the end, about the lightning and the explosions and the riot and all. Do you think he was writing about what happened here—to Bellona, I mean?'

'Read that part at the beginning, about the scorpions and the trapped children. What do you suppose he was writing about there?'

They bent together in firelight.

He felt discomfort and looked around the clearing.

Tak stepped over a sleeping bag and said to John: 'You people want me to work too hard. You just refuse to understand that work for its own sake is something I see no virtue in at all.'

'Aw, come on, Tak.' John beat his hand absently against his thigh as though he still held the rolled paper.

'I'll give you the plans. You can do what you want with them. Hey, Kid, how's it going?' Flames bruised Tak's bulky jaw, prised his pale eyes into the light, flickered on his leather visor. 'You doing all right?'

He swallowed, which clamped his teeth; so his nod was stiffer than he'd intended.

'Tak, you are going to head the shelter building project for us…?' John's glasses flashed.

'Shit,' Tak said, recalling Nightmare.

'Oh, Tak…' Milly shook her head.

'I've been arguing with him all night,' John said. 'Hey.' He looked over at the picnic table. 'Did Nightmare come by for the stuff?'

'Yep.' Brightly.

'How is he?'

She shrugged — less bright.

He heard the harmonica, looked:

Back on her blanket, the other girl bent over her mouth harp. Her hair was a casque of stained bronze around her lowered face. Her shirt had slipped from one sharp shoulder. Frowning, she beat the mouth holes on her palm once more. The notebook lay against her knee.

'Tak and me were up looking at the place I want to put the shelters. You know, up on the rocks?'

'You've changed the location again?' Milly asked.

'Yeah,' Tak said. 'He has. How do you like it around here, Kid? It's a good place, huh?'

'We'd be happy to have you,' John said. 'We're always happy to have new people. We have a lot of work to do; we need all the willing hands we can get.' His tapping palm clove to his thigh, stayed.

He grunted, to shake something loose in his throat. 'I think I'm going to wander on.'

'Oh…' Milly sounded disappointed.

'Come on. Stay for breakfast.' John sounded eager. 'Then try out one of our work projects. See which one you like. You know, those are some strange streets out there. You don't know what you're gonna find in 'em.'

'Thanks,' he said. 'I'm gonna go…'

'I'll take him back down to the avenue,' Tak said. 'Okay, so long, you guys.'

'If you change your mind,' Milly called (John was beating his leg again), 'you can always come back. You might want to in a couple of days. Just come. Well be glad to have you then, too.'

On the concrete path, he said to Tak: 'They're really good people, huh? I just guess I…' He shrugged.

Tak grunted: 'Yeah.'

'The scorpions — is that some sort of protection racket they make the people in the commune pay?'

'You could call it that. But then, they get protected.'

'Against anything else except scorpions?'

Tak grunted again, hoarsely.

He recognized it for laughter. 'I just don't want to get into anything like that. At least not on that side.'

'I'll take you back down to the avenue, Kid. It goes on up into the city. The stores right around here have been pretty well stripped of food. But you never know what you're gonna luck out on. Frankly, though, I think you'll do better in houses. But there you take your chances: somebody just may be waiting for you with a shotgun. Like I say, there's maybe a thousand left out of a city of two million: Only one out of a hundred homes should be occupied — not bad odds. Only I come near walking in on a couple of shotguns myself. Then you got your scorpions to worry about… John's group?' The hoarse, gravelly laughter had a drunken quality the rest of Tak's behavior belied. 'I like them. But I wouldn't want to stick around them too much either. I don't. But I give them a hand. And it's not a bad place to get your bearings from… for a day or two.'

'No. I guess not…' But it was a mulling 'no.'

Tak nodded in mute agreement

This park is alive with darknesses, textures of silence. Tak's boot heels tattoo the way. I can envision a dotted line left after him. And someone might pick the night up by its edge, tear it along the perforations, crumple