Dhalgren

SHORTAGE THREATENS

The date said Tuesday, February 12, 1995. 'What the hell is that?'

She looked concerned. 'Well, there's not very many people around who know how to keep things running. And we've all been expecting the water to become a real problem any day. You have no idea how much they used when they were trying to put out the fires.'

'I mean the 1995?'

'Oh. That's just Calkins.' On the picnic table sat a carton of canned goods. 'I think it's amazing we have a newspaper at all.' She sat on the bench and looked at him expectantly. 'The dates are just his little joke.'

'Oh.' He sat beside her. 'Do you have tents here? Anything for shelter?' still thinking: 1995?

'Well, we're pretty outdoors oriented.' She looked around, while he tried to feel the city beyond the leafy, fire-lit grotto. 'Of course, Tak — he's promised to give John some simple blueprints. For cabins. John wants Tak to head the whole project. He feels it would be good for him. You know, Tak is so strange. He feels, somehow, we won't accept him. At least I think he does. He has this very important image of himself as a loner. He wants to give us the plans — he's an engineer, you know — and let us carry them out. But the value of something like that isn't just the house — or shack — that results. It should be a creative, internal thing for the builder. Don't you think?'

For something to do, he held his teeth together, hard.

'You're sure you're not hungry?'

'Oh. No.'

'You're not tired? You can get in a few hours if you want. Work doesn't start till after breakfast. I can get you a blanket, if you'd like.'

'No.'

In the firelight, he thought he might count twenty-five years in her firm, clear face. 'I'm not hungry. I'm not sleepy. I didn't even know Tak was bringing me here.'

'It's a very nice place. It really is. The community of feeling is so warm, if nothing else.' Probably only twenty.

The harmonica player played again.

Someone in an olive-drab cocoon twisted beyond the fire.

Mildred's tennis sneaker was a foot from the nearest sleeper's canvas covered head.

'I wish you wouldn't wear that.' She laughed.

He opened his big fingers under metal.

'I mean, if you want to stay here. Maybe then you wouldn't have to wear it.'

'I don't have to wear it,' and decided to keep it on.

The harmonica squawked.

He looked up.

From the trees, light brighter than the fire and green lay leafy shadows over sleeping bags and blanket rolls. Then ballooning claws and barbed, translucent tail collapsed:

'Hey, you got that shit ready for us?'

A lot of chains hung around his neck. He had a wide scab (with smaller ones below it) on the bowl of his shoulder, like a bad fall on cement. Chains wound around one boot: he jingled when he walked. 'Come on, come on. Bring me the fuckin' junk!' He stopped by the fireplace. Flames burnished his large arms, his small face. A front tooth was broken. 'Is that it?' He gestured bluntly toward the picnic table, brushed tangled, black hair, half braided, from his shoulder, and came on.

'Hello!' Mildred said, with the most amazing smile. 'Nightmare! How have you been?'

The scorpion looked down at her, wet lip high off his broken tooth, and said, slowly, 'Shit,' which could have meant a lot of things. He wedged between them— 'Get out of the—' saw the orchid—'fucking way, huh?' and lugged the carton of canned goods off the table edge against his belly, where ripe, wrinkled jeans had sagged so low you could see stomach hair thicken toward pubic. He looked down over his thick arm at the weapon, closed his mouth, shook his head. 'Shit,' again, and: 'What the fuck you staring at?' Between the flaps of Nightmare's cut-down vest, prisms, mirrors, and lenses glittered among dark cycle chain, bright stainless links, and hardware-store brass.

'Nothing.'

Nightmare sucked his teeth in disgust, turned, and stumbled on a sleeping bag. 'Move, damn it!'

A head shook loose from canvas; it was an older man, who started digging under the glasses he'd probably worn to sleep, then gazed after the scorpion lumbering off among the trees.

He saw things move behind Milly's face, was momentarily sure she was going to call good-bye. Her tennis shoe dragged the ground.

Down her lower leg was a scratch.

He frowned.

She said: 'That was Nightmare. Do you know about the scorpions?'

'Tak told me some.'

'It's amazing how well you can get along with people if you're just nice. Of course their idea of being nice back is a little odd. They used to volunteer to beat up people for us. They kept wanting John to find somebody for them to work over — somebody who was annoying us, of course. Only nobody was.' She hunched her shoulders.

'I guess,' he offered from the faulted structure of his smile, 'you have trouble with them sometimes?'

'Sometimes.' Her smile was perfect. 'I just wish John had been here. John's very good with them. I think Nightmare is a little afraid of John, you know? We do a lot for them. Share our food with them. I think they get a lot from us. If they'd just acknowledge their need, though, they'd be so much easier to help.'

The harmonica was silent: the bare-breasted girl had gone from her blanket

'How'd you get that scratch?'

'Just an accident. With John.' She shrugged. 'From one of those, actually.' She nodded toward his orchid. 'It isn't anything.'

He leaned to touch it, looked at her: she hadn't moved. So he lay his forefinger on her shin, moved it down. The scab line ran under his callous like a tiny rasp.

She frowned. 'It really isn't anything.' Framed in heavy red, it was a gentle frown. 'What's that?' She pointed. 'Around your wrist.'

His cuff had pulled up when he'd leaned.

He shrugged. Confusion was like struggling to find the proper way to sit inside his skin. 'Something I found.' He wondered if she heard the question mark on his sentence, small as a period.

Her eyebrow's movement said she had: which amused him.

The optical glass flamed over his knobby wrist.

'Where do you get it? I've seen several people wear that… kind of chain.'

He nodded. 'I just found it.'

'Where?' Her gentle smile urged.

'Where did you get your scratch?'

Still smiling, she returned a bewildered look.

He had expected it. And he mistrusted it. 'I…' and the thought resolved some internal cadence: 'want to know about you!' He was suddenly and astonishingly happy. 'Have you been here long? Where are you from? Mildred? Mildred what? Why did you come here? How long are you going to stay? Do you like Japanese food? Poetry?' He laughed. 'Silence? Water? Someone saying your name?'

'Um…' He saw she was immensely pleased. 'Mildred Fabian, and people do call me Milly, like Tak does. John just feels he has to be formal when new people come around. I was here at State University. But I come from Ohio… Euclid, Ohio?'

He nodded again.

'But State's got such a damned good Poly-sci department. Had, anyway. So I came here. And…' She dropped