Dhalgren

a tuft of stuffing caught on his beard) and took them to the school.

I pushed the door open and herded them inside. Lanya was doing something with the tape-recorder and looked up, more startled than I'd thought she'd be.

'Nobody else here, yet?' I asked.

'Christ, you surprised me.' She pushed the fast (forward? reverse?) button. Things clacked, crackled, and spun.

'I brought the kids.'

Rose went and immediately sat on a chair in the corner. Woodard wandered toward the table.

Marceline said to Stevie, 'You cut that out,' only I wasn't sure /at/ what [he'd done].

'The other kids will be in soon,' Lanya said.

I said: 'Good. What you have to do is when the parents come for the kids in the afternoon, you have to farm these here out to them.'

Lanya stood up fully and faced me. 'God damn!'

'I can't keep them,' I said. 'I told you that.'

She pulled her lips thin and looked angry.

I was surprised that I had been expecting her to be just that way about it.

'What am I going to do with — Yeah, I know what you said.'

Stevie said sharply: 'You better keep your hands off that, nigger!'

Woodard turned off the from the tape recorder, holding a spool of tape gingerly, blinking apple green eyes below his brush of mustard wool. He smiled uncertainly.

Rose began to cry. The knuckles of her fist pressed together. Her chin bobbed, sobbing, and tears tracked from the inner and outer corners of both eyes.

Sammy, move/ standing by the far wall, moved/turned/ the toe of his sneaker over/on/ the floor and blinked.

The following letter is paper-clipped to the top and side of the page on which the next entry begins. The envelope, stuck beneath, has left its outline on the stationery:

How absurd—

— to apologize for an uncommitted injury. But I shall not have been at your party tonight — if Lansang delivers this. There is nothing less sympathetic than the vulgar pleading extenuating circumstances for their vulgarity. There is nothing more distressing to a man who admires formal honesty than to discover he can only offer 'personal reasons' as honest explanation for his breach of form.

But, for personal reasons, I will not have attended your party when you read this. I am distressed.

I have been rude.

And I have often imagined that to be the most terrible admission I might ever have to make.

Forgive me.

It is not much consolation that the powerful are most successful as patrons when least in evidence. I am concerned with what I presumptuously consider my City. I have always felt every society must have its art; and for that art to have ultimate use, it must be free of intimidation from the centers of power.

Therefore I have not read your poems. Nor will I.

Were I less gregarious, or Bellona more populous, I could be content to read them and never meet you. But I am a very social being, and Bellona is the social size it is.

We will meet

And I eagerly await your second collection, whenever it should be ready. Its publication, hopefully, will be as expeditious as publication of your first.

My friend, I am fascinated by the mechanics of power. Who in his right mind would want the problems and responsibilities of the nation's president? Lord, I would! I would! But one cannot be president with a Jewish grandmother. A millionaire family with connections at Harvard helps. A moderately wealthy one with strong emotional ties to Wooster (paint-thinner manufacturers in Cleveland) can be a downright nuisance.

Shall I twist the knife?

A degree in corporate law from Yale is one thing; one in patents from N.Y.U., (cum laude, 1960, and still two tries at the New York bar. Personal reasons again…? The pain!) is something else again.

I ramble.

More than likely I shall not be at the house for a while.

Until we do meet, I remain,

Sincerely, Roger Calkins 

RC;wd

too dark to see.

So got up, stretched, put down my plank, went inside — and was suddenly bellowing and yelling and laughing, and everybody was pouring in to see what was going on: 'Night run!' I told them. 'We're gonna make a night run!' Which we did — to the building with the stained glass windows (the lions of the city, a particolored flicker from our lights) with Lanya along, mouse quiet; and there was a funny almost-fight with three men on the street. But after they got as nasty as they dared, I guess it struck them how stpud [stupid?] they were being; a couple of times they got pushed into a wall, though.

At the nest, Denny filled up a bottle from the pail on the stove; I took it on the porch and wrote some more.

Lanya came to squat behind me, hands on my Shoulders, cheek on my cheek. [']You're really up/ going/ aren't you? Maybe staying at my place wasn't such a bad idea?'

I heard Denny say: 'He's asleep.'

I opened one eye against my arm. The other stared With the other I could see the top of the doorway. Then her Then steps below / and somebody moving something to get by / were Lanya['s] I lay waiting for the circle of her hair to dawn at the loft's edge. 

'You aren't sleeping.' She grinned and came on over. 'I got all the kids stored away.' 

'Good,' I said. 'Why were you so pissed off at me when I brought them in that morning?' 

'What?' 

I raised my head out of my arm and asked again. 

'Oh.' She turned around on the edge and slid her butt against my side. 'I'm just lazy — almost, but not quite, as lazy as you. And I don't like imposing on people.' She put her hand in the sleeve hole of my vest. 'Besides, I thought you should have kept them.' Her fingers, cool, were touched the chain.

'You did?'

She nodded. 

That upset me. 'I really misunderstood you.' 

'I know you did. I read what you wrote I said about it in the kitchen / about / when D-t brought in the article.'