Dhalgren

canvas. A crack in another zagged edge to edge.

Kid pulled the frayed ceiling cord, then held on to the bar across the back of the seat before him till the bus, a block later and somewhat to his surprise, stopped. He jumped off the back treadle to the curb and turned; through the dirty window, he saw the couple who had not looked at him when he'd gotten on, stopped looking at him now. The bus left.

He was standing diagonally across from the five, six, seven, eight story department store. Uneasily, he backed into a doorway. (People with guns, hey?) He felt for his orchid — looked at it. It was a very silly weapon. People shooting out the windows? Several, higher up, were open. Several more were broken. Across the street a gutter grill waved a steamy plume. Why, he thought, get out here? Maybe the people in there have all gone and he could just cross the street and — the skin of his back and belly shriveled. Why had he gotten off here? It had been in response to some un-named embryo feeling, and he had leapt out of the bus, following it to term. But now it was born; and was terror.

Cross the street, motherfucker, he told himself. You get up close to the building and they can't see you out the windows. This way somebody can just aim out and pick you off if they got a penchant for it. He told himself some other things too.

A minute later, he walked to the opposite corner, a sidestep for the fire hydrant, stopped with his hand against the beige stone, breathing long, slow breaths and listening to his heart. The building took up all the block. There were no show windows down the side alley. Save from the front door, there was no place from the store he could be seen. He looked across the avenue. (From what letters still remained on that broken glass, it must have been a travel agency. And down there…? Some kind of office building, perhaps? Burn marks lapped great carbon tongues around the lower stories.) The street looked so wide — but that was because there were no cars at either curb.

He started down the alley, running his hand on the stone and occasionally glancing up for the imaginary gunman to lean out a window and blast straight down.

There's nobody in there, he thought.

There's nobody coming up behind me—

At the end of the block something — moved? No, it was a shadow between two parked trucks.

'Hey,' somebody said directly across the alley in a voice just under normal. 'What the fuck you think you doin', huh?'

He bruised his shoulder on the wall, then came away, rubbing it.

A thick shoulder pushed from behind a metal door across the alley. 'Don't get excited.' Half of Nightmare's face emerged. Kid could see half the mouth speaking: 'But when I count three, you get your ass over here so fast I wanna see smoke. One. Two…' The visible eye rose to look somewhere up the department store wall, looked back down. 'Three.'

Nightmare caught Kid's arm, and the memory of traversed pavement was battered out by bruises on his back, knee, and jaw—'Hey, man, you don't have to—' as Nightmare snatched him through the quarter-opened doorway.

He was in four-fifths darkness with a lot of people breathing.

'God damn,' Nightmare said. 'I mean Jesus Christ.'

He said, 'You don't have to break my head,' softer than he'd started to.

Somebody very black in a vinyl vest, laughed loudly. For a moment he thought it was Dragon Lady, but it was a man.

Nightmare made some disgusted sound. The laugh cut off.

Nightmare's scarred shoulder (it was the first thing Kid saw as his eyes cleared of the dark) hid half of Denny's face as the door had hidden half of Nightmare's. The other faces were darker. 'You don't think so?' Nightmare still held Kid's arm. With his other hand, he grabbed Kid's hair—'Hey!' — and marched him around 180 degrees: Kid's face came up against wire, behind some dirty glass, and behind that was—

'Now look up there.'

Kid focused outside the dirty window on the second story of the department store.

'You lookin' good?'

— was a window where gold letters arched: New Fashions. And behind them, a man, with a rifle in one hand, scratched his thin neck under the too large collar of his blue sports shirt, then ambled on.

'Now what' — with sweetness—'the hell are you doing here?' Nightmare yanked Kid's head back from the window before he let go. 'Come on. Tell me now.'

'I just—' pain sat in him blankly as anxiety—'was coming by and—' Pain subsided.

'I should break your head open, you know?'

'Hey, man, you—'

'Shut up, Copperhead,' Nightmare said.

The big, bearded, redhead spade leaned in the corner. ' — you don't have to do that,' he finished. 'I'll do it for you, if you want.' He nodded at Kid in damped recognition. 'Give 'im to me.'

'Fuck off.' Nightmare waved a peremptory fist. 'You just come by, huh? We been planning this three months and you just come by?'

'Well, Pepper told me you guys were maybe down here—'

Nightmare sucked some more. 'We been planning—'

'I got him,' Denny said. 'Let him go with us. He won't hurt nothing. I'll tell him what to do.'

Nightmare glanced questioningly over his shoulder.

'Sure,' Denny insisted.

In his corner, Copperhead turned his stick up behind his arm.

'He can go with my group,' Denny repeated. 'He won't get in the way.'

Kid thought, unsure: Three against two.

Once more Nightmare flung round his fist; and growled.

'Come on,' Denny said. 'You come with me.'

'You don't let him mess up anything!' Nightmare admonished with his chin.

'Yeah. The Kid'll be okay.'

'He'd better be.'

'He's a good guy, Nightmare. Come on, you said he was a good guy yourself.'

Nightmare growled once more.

Kid stepped by him, tried and failed not to look at Copperhead. Copperhead blinked and started to smile. Kid decided it was worth his life to fail at anything among them again.

Denny clapped Kid's arm. 'Let's go.' He looked around and, louder: 'You guys, let's go.'

Some dozen (safer…) clustered; and they were walking through another door, following Denny. The hall of some sort of warehouse? Maybe the back corridor of another store? He looked at the faces around him. The real black guy in vinyl looked up from Kid's orchid, blinked, looked away; he wore one too, but in a leather strap.

'Here,' Denny said, primarily to Kid. 'We just wait here. You follow us when we go. Don't worry.'

They stopped before another door. A window on one side showed the Emboriky's sandy wall.

Denny looked over the scorpions with him.

Kid thought: They top Pepper, I guess.

Denny folded his arms, leaned beside the window, occasionally looked out.

Like Copperhead's little blond brother.

They have a plan, Kid thought, caught in it

I am not thinking of Lanya.

One on wet leather, one on grit, his feet tingled. How did I get here? Did I choose to come? I want to control these people. (The tingling reached his head, subsided.) I chose. Observe and go, easy with them. He would ask Denny the details of the plan — began to tingle; so didn't. Observe? But his mind twisted in. Well. What did he think? Nightmare, with all his unreciprocity, he liked. Copperhead was efficient and detestable, a combination intriguing because, in his experience, it was unusual. Denny? Astounded, he realized: Denny had given him the clothes he wore, had first lopped the obtrusive d from his name, and now had him in custody. He squinted at two of the black guys leaning by the window (Denny glanced at Kid, at the floor, out the