Dhalgren

We can go—'

'Boy, there may be people in here, burning up alive!'

'You think there're people?'

'Well, we ain't going to know unless we look.'

'Okay,' Kid said because there was nothing else to do.

A charred six by six lay across the gutter. Kid stepped over it.

On the cobbles, puddles lay under it, alive and molten.

Water, Kid thought as they walked between two, is molten ice. It was that hot.

'Hey, George! George?… You hear something up there?'

'Where?'

VII: The Anathёmata: a plague journal

[We do not know who typed this transcript, nor if every relevant entry was included, nor, indeed, the criteria for relevance. Previous publication of Brass Orchids possibly weighted the decision not to include their various drafts here. (The fate of the second collection we can only surmise.) Generous enough with alternate words, marks of omission and correction, the transcriber still leaves his accuracy in question: Nowhere in the transcript is there a formal key.]

it into her shoulder and tore /it/ out.

Dragon Lady let go all her breath in some way still not a scream. Nightmare danced back across the kitchen twisting his orchid, (jerking a little); as though/I think I think he was trying to under stand what he'd done. Dragon Lady threw herself at him, cutting for his face and kicking. (I kept thinking Thinking: There's an art to these Weapons I don't begin to understand.)

He fought himself away, bleeding from the jaw and neck.

She flung herself again. I thought she was trying to was going to /would/ be impale[d].

Her white jeans were bloody to the knee. A good deal of the blood was his.

Copperhead, like a in delayed reaction, said, 'Hey…' with a voice I'd never heard: he was scared to death.

Raven, Thruppence, and D-t hit the doorway [and] one another/ anothe[r], peering, over each one another's shoulders. (Thinking:! used to break up Dollar's scuffles, but I would no more get into this than chop off my thumb.)

Nightmare flailed backward out the screen door, H his forearm/ going/ making a cracked the on the jamb.

Everybody poured after them — somebody knocked something off the sink. I heard a garbage bag fall and tear under someone's boots. Two of the little boys (Woodard and Stevie) were holding hands and butting their shoulders against each other, Rose, the youngest (seven?), and brightest girl, was right up there up trying to see with everybody else. She went through the door with me.

Horsing around in the yard with Nightmare, Raven, Filament, and Glass, tripped and scratched my calf on the edge of the steps. Later, Lanya came into the loft and saw me. 'Hey,' she said. 'You should put something on that. Don't play with it that way. You've practically rubbed it raw. You don't want it to get infected.'

Dragon [Lady] was snappinged her own bladed fist back and forth as though her arm were a whip. (Her elbow dripped. Nightmare spun away: gravel chattered against the bottom step. Drops splatted the ground.

The sky gleamed dull as zinc.

I looked up the alley — thinking: You can't /even/ see the end, when Thirteen came hurrying out of the mist. He stopped twenty feet away, Smokey and Lady of Spain behind collided with him.

Dragon Lady staggered, swayed — I thought she'd tripped.

But she shook her head, hard, gave a tiny cry, turned; and fled down up the street.

Smokey collided with Thirteen. Lady of Spain stepped back.

Nightmare stood, panting, both arms going wide and around, getting back his breath.

Among his chains, the optical one caught light. At first I thought it was lengthening… Broken, it slipped across his stomach and tinkled coiled made a tinkling/puddle between his feet/ beside his boot /against his boot where the sole had pulled off the upper. Not seeing, he lurched away. The chain slipped half over the curb.

Thirteen caught his arm him, 'You're all right…?' and staggered with him.

Behind me the door creaked; two people had gone back in.

'You come on with me,' Thirteen said, 'now you just come on.'

Back in the living room, California was looking at the wall by the door. He'd pulled all his hair in front of his shoulder and was sort of hanging on it 'Jesus Christ,' he said. 'Will you look at that. I mean, Jesus Christ That's where she splattered when she went through.' He started to touch one of the dime-sized spots, already dried brown dry, but shook his went back to hanging on his hair. '/I mean,/Jesus.'

Raven, Copperhead; and Cathedral came in frowning at the constellations of her blood, but kept on going

'You see the way she went at that motherfucker,' Pepper said somewhere out in the hall. 'I thought she was gonna kill him. I wouldn't blame her, man. I wouldn't blame her one bit the way that motherfucker done. Did you see the way they were going after each other, man? I never seen anything like that before in my life. I really thought we was gonna have chopped meat for dinner the way he lit into her with those that orchid, man, I really thought…'

I went back [into] the kitchen.

Rose was looking out the screening, a brown fist up beside her face chin. I went up behind her and looked too. The other four children were outside.

Sammy was standing at the place where the curb cracked away into the street. With the toe of his sneaker, he touched the coil of Nightmare's chain.

Stevie, who'was sitting on the steps, stood up.

Sammy started to pick up the chain.

Stevie said, 'Don't you touch that, nigger!'

Marceline laughed, but I don't think at that.

Sammy looked up and looked embarrassed, went to pick up a board lying out in the street, and played by himself.

I touched Rose on the shoulder and she jumped.

'Don't you want to play with the other kids outside?'

She just blinked. (Somebody should do something about the black spade confusion of her hair — cut it short, I guess.) Then She went out and sat on the steps as far away from the others as she could get

Only Stevie and Marceline are really friends. Woodard (who is sort of mustard colored, both his skin and his