Dhalgren

his fork. 'Wasn't that something this afternoon? I mean, wasn't that too much!' He filled his mouth and spoke on, scattering little pieces. 'We heard about you chasing out the niggers! Hey—' he gestured to Dragon Lady who sat against the wall—'we heard about what he did to those niggers.'

'Shit,' Dragon Lady said dryly, and looked at Kid only from the corner of her eye. 'I don't care what he do to any God-damn niggers.'

'I didn't even know they were in the house,' Kid said.

Dragon Lady took another mouthful. 'Shit,' she repeated, and pried with her spoon tip through what was on her plate.

'Give 'em something to eat,' Nightmare yelled toward the kitchen.

'Baby!' Dragon Lady bellowed; her shoulders shook; nobody stopped doing anything. 'Adam!' She flung the words up like grenades. 'Bring some more food out for 'em!'

'Here you go!' Baby, still naked, pushed between the people at the door, leading (dangerously) with steaming plates.

'This is yours.'

Kid ignored the dirty thumb denting what must have been a hash of canned vegetables (he pulled the fork out from where it had been buried: corn, peas, okra, fell off) and (he tasted the first mouthful) meat. (Spam?) Baby gave the other plate to Denny. He returned to serve Cathedral, Jack the Ripper, Devastation, all sitting about silently.

Copperhead, not served yet, watched from the couch, and grinned and nodded when Kid looked at him.

'Here you go.' Adam shoved a plate at Copperhead. He took it, saluted Kid with a fork with twisted tines, then dropped his shoulders and shoveled.

Denny's girl friend (should I find out her name?) with a coffee cup of the hash, came out of the kitchen, crossed to sit right by Denny on the floor and made a big thing of not looking at Kid. The girl in the pea jacket, next to Copperhead on the couch, occasionally picked food from Copperhead's plate with a spoon: Copperhead more or less ignored her.

'You had a party?' Nightmare exclaimed in answer to a question Kid hadn't heard asked. 'We ran! Adam, Baby, the Lady, and me! I was so scared I didn't think I was gonna make it. Shit, I'm still scared.'

The last laughter to trail away was Dragon Lady's gusty chuckle.

'We were in the park.' Nightmare waved his fork above his head; more people sat down. 'Baby, Adam, Dragon Lady, and me. You know the old weather tower in the park?'

(What, Kid wondered, had George been doing in the brazen light of the noon?What had June?)

'When it began, I mean after it began — first we thought that whole side of the city was on fire — after we could see what it was—' he shook his head at somebody who started a comment—'no, no, I don't know what the fuck it was. Don't ask me. After we could see it, we went up the steps to watch. Didn't we?'

Dragon Lady sat, smiling and shaking her head, which, when she noticed the shift of attention, changed to nodding: the smile stayed.

'We just climbed up there and watched the whole thing. Go up. And go down.' Nightmare whistled. 'Jesus Christ!'

We live, Kid thought; and die in different cities.

'You were out there in it,' the scorpion in vinyl asked, watching, 'until it was all over?'

Copperhead protested: 'We watched it going down—'

'All over?' But Nightmare's mouth hung open, mocking his interlocutor. 'What's all over?'

Adam rubbed the chains on his chest: the rest were still.

'You think it's all over?' Nightmare demanded.

The blond girl in the pea jacket held her spoon in both hands tightly between her knees. 'When it went down,' she said, 'it was just like regular day again… here. And then it was light for four or five hours till it was time to get dark.' She looked back over her shoulder at the black glass; the brass lion on the windowsill watched the night from beneath his bulbless stalk.

Dragon Lady's laughter built in the silence.

'Shit.' Nightmare filled his mouth again and yelled at his plate: 'You don't know if the sun is ever gonna come up again! We could all be burned up to death by tomorrow. Or frozen. What were you saying, Baby, about maybe the earth got pushed off its orbit or something like that, maybe into the sun, or out past it—'

'I didn't say that.' Baby looked down at himself, pimply chest, uncircumcised genitals, bowed knees, dirty feet; his nakedness for the first time was out of place. 'I wasn't sayin' it that serious-'

'There'd be an earthquake if that happened.' Brown Adam, with his Philadelphia accent, held his chains in his fist. 'I told you that. A big earthquake, or a tidal wave; both maybe. Nothing like that's happened. And there'd have fo be if the earth got pushed somewhere—'

'So maybe—' Nightmare looked up—'in ten minutes there's gonna be a big fuckin' earthquake!'

Then the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling dropped to quarter dimness.

Kid tried to swallow his heart; it threatened to burst and fill his mouth with blood.

Someone was crying again.

Kid looked to see if it was Denny. But it was another scorpion (Spider?) on the other side of Nightmare. Denny's face, even in the yellowish half-dark, was cut with blades of shadow from his hair.

'Oh, come on!' Smokey edged from behind Thirteen's shoulder: 'Look, it used to do that four or five times a day when we stayed here.'

In the kitchen something hummed: the light returned to full brightness.

Nightmare ate doggedly.

No one else did.

'You guys make up any more of this shit?' Nightmare nodded toward Adam and Baby. 'It's good.' Then looked around. 'You don't know if it's over or not.'

'I could use some more,' Dragon Lady said.

Baby came forward with his hands out for their plates.

'The mistake—' Kid surprised himself by speaking, took a mouthful to stop, but went on anyway—'isn't thinking that it's finished.' I'm imitating Nightmare, he thought, then realized, no, I'm doing what Nightmare did for the same reason. 'The mistake is thinking it began this afternoon.'

'Right on, motherfucker!' Nightmare shook his fork for emphasis.

Kid took another mouthful, and thought: I may throw up. And then thought: No, I'm too hungry.

'We got some more out there in the big pot,' Adam was saying. 'Why don't you guys go out and get it till it's all gone.'

A shadow made Kid look up from the last of his eating.

Adam stood there, hand out for Kid's plate, about (Kid realized) to burst out crying too. Kid gave it to him.

Nightmare, Dragon Lady, and me get served first, Kid reflected as Baby brought his seconds. Well, Copperhead seemed at ease.

Finished, Kid put his fork on the floor and stood up.

'Hey, where're you going?' Copperhead asked, no belligerence, all bewilderment.

'Taking a walk.'

On the bottom step of the house, he noted two streetlights in the distance. Burn up at any minute? Or freeze at the advent of an ice age, twenty minutes to completion? The air was the same excruciatingly bland temperature it had been night after night after night. The door opened behind him: Denny looked out.

'I want to go over and see Lanya's place,' Kid said, turning. 'You want to show me the way?'

'I… I can't,' Denny said. 'She's upset. And she wants to talk… to me.'

'Fuck you, cocksucker.' Kid started down the block. 'See you later.' (He wasn't angry at all.) That was pretty good. Halfway to the corner, however, he realized Denny would be the only way to find Lanya's new place. (Then he was.)