Dhalgren

remembered having walked over twice during the evening but couldn't remember where it led. 'Roger wanted to ask you — well, we both did… just a few things. I was going to wait for him. But I get the impression that people might start leaving soon. And if Roger didn't get back in time, I know he'd still want me to use the opportunity.'

Before two spotlights, fixed low to trees at opposite corners of the clearing, white wicker furniture cast black coils and curlicues on the grass.

'Nobody seems to have found their way here yet. Why don't we have a seat and get started?'

Denny sat beside Kid on the edge of the bench, leaning forward on his knees to look over at Bill, who took the paddle-backed lounge. Lanya stood a little ways away, leaning on a tree trunk, once brushing at her autumn-colored skirts to strike in them silver rain.

'I want to ask you a few questions about your gang — your nest. And then something about your work… your poetry. All right?'

Kid shrugged. He was excited and uncomfortable; but the two states, vivid as feelings, seemed to cancel any physical sign of either.

He looked at Lanya.

She had folded her arms and was listening rather like someone who had just passed by and stopped.

Denny was looking at the control box, wanting to play with it, but also wondering if this were the time.

Lanya hovered among various blues.

Bill ran his hand from the mike along the wire to the recorder, turned a knob, and looked up again. 'Tell me first, how do you feel having your book published? It's your first book, right?'

'Yeah. It's my first. I like it, all the commotion. I think it's stupid, but it's… fun. There aren't very many mistakes in it … I mean the ones the people who put the type together made.'

'Well, that's very good. You feel, then, the poems are as you wrote them; that you can take full responsibility for them?'

'Yeah.' Kid wondered why the muffled accusation did not make him more uncomfortable. Possibly because he'd been through it already in silence.

'I mean,' Bill went on, 'I remember Ernest Newboy telling us, one evening, about how hard you worked on the galleys. He was very struck by it. Did Mr Newboy help you much with the poems themselves? I mean, would you say he was an influence on your work?'

'No.' He does think, Kid thought, that I'm seventeen! He laughed, and the familiarity of the deception put him even more at ease. He moved back on the lounge and let his knees fall apart. So far it wasn't so bad.

Something moved at the corner of Kid's eye. Bill looked up too.

Revelation stood behind them with Milly, who he had not seen since they had surprised her in the bushes.

Denny went, 'Shhhhh,' took his finger from his lips and pointed to the recorder.

'Can you tell me—'

Kid looked back.

Bill coughed. ' — tell me something about the scorpions, about the way you live, and why you live that way?'

'What do you want to know?'

'Do you like it?'

'Sure.'

'Do you feel that this way of life offers you some protection, or makes it easier for you to survive in Bellona? I guess it's a pretty dangerous and unknown place, now.'

Kid shook his head. 'No… it isn't that dangerous, for us. And I'm getting to know it pretty well.'

'You all live together, in a sort of commune — nest, as you call it. Tell me, do you know the commune of young people that used to live in the park?'

Kidd nodded. 'Yeah. Sure.'

'Did you get along well with each other?'

'Pretty much.'

'But they're fairly peaceful; while your group believes in violence, is that right?'

'Well, violence—' Kid grinned—'that isn't something you believe in. That's something that happens. But I guess it happens more around us than around them.'

'Someone told me that, for a while, you were a member of this other commune; but apparently you preferred the scorpions.'

'Yeah.' Kid pressed his lips and nodded. '…well, no, actually. I was never a member of the other commune. I hung around; they fed me. But they never made me a part of it. The scorpions, now, soon as I got with them, they took me right in, made me a part. That's probably why I like it better. We had a couple of kids hanging around our place who should probably have ended up with the park people; but we fed them too. Then they drifted on. That's what you have to do.'

Bill nodded, his own lips pursed. 'There's been talk that some of the things you guys indulge in get pretty rough. People have been killed… or so one story goes.'

'People have been hurt,' Kid said. 'One guy was killed. But he wasn't a scorpion.'

'But the scorpions killed him…?'

Kid turned up his hands. 'What am I supposed to say now?' He grinned again.

Behind Bill, a dozen others had gathered. Another cough, behind Kid, made him realize another dozen had come up to listen.

Bill's eyes came back to Kid. 'Do you think, objectively, that the way you're living is… a good way?'

'I like it.' Kid felt his jaw with his wide fingertips and heard five-hour stubble rasp. 'But that's subjective. Objectively? It depends on what you think of the way the rest of the world is living.'

'What do you think of it?'

'Well, look at it,' Kid said. Then he coughed, which caused some general laughter, defining the audience he had not looked at yet as thirty, or even forty: scorpions and other guests.

Nightmare stepped into the clearing, said, 'Say, what's everybody—?' then got quiet and went to sit on the grass next to Dragon Lady.

'How would you describe life in the nest?'

'Fucking crowded!'

'Oh, man!' D-t slapped Tarzan's palm. 'He said fucking crowded!'

'Shut up, you two,' Raven said.

'And with all the crowding, and all the violence, you still manage to work — to write.'

'When I get a chance.'

Lanya laughed at that. She was the palest orange, flaking to palest pink and purple. Denny held the box between his knees; his arms were folded.

'A lot of people have commented on the, how shall I say, colorfulness of your poems, their vivid descriptive quality. Is there any connection between the violence and that?'

'Probably. But I don't know what it is.'

'Do your friends in the nest like your book?'

'I don't think most of the guys read too much.'

'Hey, man!' Nightmare called out. 'I ain't even in his fuckin' nest and I read every fuckin' one!' which caused someone else to call: 'Yeah, they're great! The Kid writes great,' and someone else: 'Sure, ain't you got this party for him?'

Kid leaned back and laughed and closed his eyes. His own laughter had begun in the calamity of shouts and calls.

'Come on,' Bill said loudly. 'Come on, now. I just want to ask the Kid a few more questions. Come on…'

Kid opened his eyes and found his lashes wet. Light around the garden glittered and streaked. He shook his head.

'I want to ask you, Kid—'

'Come on, be quiet!' Lady of Spain said. 'Come on, shut up, man! He's trying to ask the Kid some