Dhalgren

'God-damn thick-headed niggers!' George's breath lurched in sharply. 'I told them not to let them crazy people in here with no guns! What the hell they think I put them out there for… unless they done snuck in some other way—'

'That's what they were saying,' Kid said. 'They must of snuck in. And—'

George started to stand.

Kid caught his shoulder and pulled him back down, his mind gone bright with recognition of what was inside of it: ' — and George! What I told you—' the sweat started to dry, and as his back cooled under his vest, he knew why it had come—'about June, killing her brother…?'

George's eyes, the corners blood-heavy, the pupils fading almost evenly into the stained-ivory whites, came close to Kid's.

'…it wasn't true. I mean, she did it. But you see, I don't know whether she did it because of you or not. After he was killed, that's when she told me he was going to tell, about the poster of you I gave her. She said it was an accident. She said he was going to tell, and then, just by accident… So I don't know. You see…?'

'You real worried about that, ain't you?' George straightened. His arm still hung on Kid's shoulder, the glass bottle moving, as George breathed, against Kid's chains. 'Well that's why she looking for me, not you. 'Cause I don't care about that one way or the other. You so busy blamin' or forgivin', you gonna drive her crazy. Me, see, I don't care if she innocent as a little white bunny rabbit in a brand new hutch, or if she done killed her brother, her mother, her daddy, and the President of the United States, cut up the bodies, and danced naked in the blood. What's it to me? What's it to her—? Another white man out of the way, that's all. She might worry about it a bit more than I do, but not much. And, finally, it's just gonna make both our lives easier — maybe even yours. When she come to me, I do her just the same, both ways. You say she looking? Well, I'm here, man, I'm still here. Hey—!' which was called out across the crowd. George waved the bottle high. 'We all getting tired out, now. I think we got to all think about going home.'

The blades clicked on Kid's chest, turned. Kid said: 'You want us to go up and get 'em down for you, George? We'll take them out of the balcony.'

George looked back at Kid, hesitated with narrowed eyes. 'We get my boys up there to cover them. Then we get some people to take them away. My boys let them get in. So they can get them out. I know you guys is pretty handy with them bunch of thorns hanging around your necks, but they got equalizers, and if all men is created equal, we might as well keep it that way. Party's been going on too long, anyway. We all gonna go home now, So you can oblige me by moving out too, okay?'

Kid grinned, aped an over-polite bow—

'Much obliged to you, there,' George said. 'For all your trouble' — and laughed. Kid looked at the cactus in its wooden tub: for a moment he considered throwing himself against it to embrace the spiked, fleshy trunk; which was so ridiculous he merely turned and walked away. They will meet, he thought, by sun, by moons, by laughter or lightning. Why I sweat is because I do not know what will happen to me, then. What will happen to me…

Glass fell in beside him. After about six steps, Glass said: 'What would you have done if he'd said, 'Why, sure, man! Go on up there and bring the motherfuckers down'?'

'Probably—' Kid dodged a drunk who was going to fall three steps beyond them—'pissed all over myself.'

'Maybe.' Glass laughed. 'But then, you'd probably of tried to go up there and get 'em down, too.'

'I don't think they'd have been much trouble.' Kid said. 'I hope.'

The white man coming toward them, shouldering through the blacks and smiling, was Captain Michael Kamp. 'Well, hello, there. Now I didn't think I was going to see you again. I mean, not this evening.' His smile took in Glass.

'Hello, sir,' Kid said. 'Good to see you again. But I think the party's breaking up. They got some problem upstairs. Nothing serious. But there just might be some shooting. And it's awfully easy pickings from up there.' Kamp's eyes followed Kid's up to the balcony and came back, confused and half again as wide. Kid said, 'Oh. This is my friend Glass. Glass, this is Captain Kamp.'

'Hello, sir.' Glass put out his hand. 'Glad to meet you.'

Kamp had to remember to shake. 'What is… I mean?'

'Come on,' Kid said. 'Let's move over this way.'

'What's going on now?' Kamp followed them. 'Now, well… Roger gave me a list of places to hit this evening. I'm afraid I'm one of those guys who likes to drink booze and chase women-the Navy's favorite kind. While that bar is all very interesting — a very interesting bunch—' he nodded—'really, I thought I might do better, at least on the second part of that, some place else. Like here.' He looked up at the balcony again, while a sudden mass of people moved noisily toward the door and out. 'They got some pretty women, too…' Another bunch followed them. 'What is it?' Kamp asked.

'Some crazy white folks with guns,' Kid said. 'They aren't doing anything but making people nervous. But they shouldn't be up there, anyway.'

'Didn't I hear somebody saying something about people getting shot in the street this afternoon?'

'Yeah,' Glass said, and grimaced.

'Oh,' Kamp said, because he could apparently think of nothing else. 'Roger said they didn't even let white people in this place. What are they doing here?'

Kid frowned a moment at Kamp. 'Well, some of us get by.'

'Oh,' Kamp said again. 'Well, sure. I mean…'

'You from the moon, ain't you,' Glass said. 'That's pretty interesting.'

Kamp started to say something, but a voice — it was the Reverend's — coming through the half-silence that followed the exodus:

'…of the crossing taken again is not the value of the crossing? Oh, my poor, inaccurate hands and eyes! Don't you know that once you have transgressed that boundary, every atom, the interior of every point of reality, has shifted its relation to every other you've left behind, shaken and jangled within the field of time, so that if you cross back, you return to a very different space than the one you left? You have crossed the river to come to this city? Do you really think you can cross back to a world where a blue sky goes violet in the evening, buttered over with the light of a single, silver moon? Or that after a breath of dark, presaged by a false, familiar dawn, a little disk of fire will spurt, spitting light, over trees and sparse clouds, women, men, and works of hand? But you do! Of course you do! How else are we to retain the inflationary coinage and cheap paper money of sanity and solipsism? Oh, it is common knowledge, the name of that so secondary moon that intruded itself upon our so ordinary night. But the arcane and unspoken name of what rose on this so extraordinary day, for which George is only consort, that alone will free you of this city! Pray with me! Pray! Pray that this city is the one, pure, logical space from which, without being a poet or a god, we can all actually leave if — what?' Someone reached up to her: the Reverend looked down. 'What did…?' It was George. The Reverend bent. For a moment she started to look up, did not, and hastily climbed from her platform. Her small head was lost among the heads around her.

'Well, I guess it's about time for me to be getting up to Roger's then.' Kamp looked around. 'Though they have some pretty nice-looking ladies around, I must admit.'

'Guess it's time for us all to get going,' Kid said, and noticed Kamp did not move. He tried to glance in the direction Kamp looked, wondering which lady his eyes had come to rest on, found only the blank, barred window.

Kamp said: 'Um… Getting up to Roger's in the dark…' He shifted his weight, put his one hand in his slacks pocket. 'I don't really enjoy the idea.' He shifted back. 'Say, you guys want a job?'

'Huh?'

'Give you five bucks if you walk me up to the house — you know where it is?'

Kid nodded.

'I mean, you guys are in the protection business, aren't you? I'd just as soon have some, walking around this town at night.'

'Yeah?'

'Walking around the streets in the dark, in a city with no police, you don't know what you're going to find…