Dhalgren

They received him with scolding affection. But more vivid was the scalding energy he could not release. Wanting to cry, he had been silent, chewed on his knuckles, the heels of his palms, his cuticles, and what was left of his nails.

These memories intact solved little as those riddled with gaps. Still, he raised from them, reassured.

He hunted over them for his name. Once, perhaps, his mother calling, from across a street…

No.

And memory was discarded:

How can I say that that is my prize possession? (They do not fade, neither those buildings or these.) Rather what we know as real is burned away at invisible heat. What we are concerned with is more insubstantial. I do not know. It is as simple as that. For the hundredth time, I do not know and cannot remember. I do not want to be sick again. I do not want to be sick.

This lithic grin…?

Not on the lions he'd walked between last night with Tak.

Vaguely he thought he'd been wandering toward the river. But somehow chance, or bodily memory, had returned him to the park.

Inside the entrance was ashy grass; dimmed trees forested the crest.

He turned his forefinger in his nostril, put it in his mouth for the salt, then laughed and pressed his palm on the stone jaw; moved his hand. Stain passed between his fingers. The sky — he'd laughed, flung up his head — did not look infinitely far; a soft ceiling, rather, at some deceptive twenty, a hundred twenty feet. Oh, yes, laughter was good. His eyes filled with the blurry sky and tears; he moved his hand on the pitted jaw. When he took his palm from the dense braille, he was breathing hard.

No gushing breeze over this grass. His breath was thin, hoarse, suggestive of phlegm and obstacles and veins. Still, he'd laughed.

The sculptor had dug holes for eyes too deep to spot bottom.

He dug his finger in his nose again, sucked it, gnawed it; a gusty chuckle, and he turned through the leonine gate. It's easy, he thought, to put sounds with either white (maybe the pure tone of an audio generator; and the other, its opposite, that was called white noise), black (large gongs, larger bells), or the primary colors (the variety of the orchestra). Pale grey is silence.

A good wind could wake this city. As he wandered in, buildings dropped behind him below the park wall. (He wondered what ill one had put it to sleep.) The trees waited.

This park stretches on wracks of silence.

In his mind were some dozen visions of the city. He jogged, jaggedly, among them. His body felt hip heavy. His tongue lay down like a worm in his mouth. Breath in the cavity imitated wind; he listened to the air in his nose since that was all there was to listen to.

In its cage, his fist wilted, loose as a heavy flower.

Mornings after sex usually gave him that I've-been-eating-the-lotus-again, that Oh-all-soft-and-drifty, that hang-over-inside-out where pain is all in the world and the body tingly and good. Delayed? But here it was. The commune? Debating whether to hunt them or avoid them, he found the water fountain.

He spat blood-laced, amber clots. Water tugged them from the pebbly basin. The next were greenish and still gum bloody. He frothed the water, bitter with what was under his tongue, through his teeth and spat and spat till he spat clear. His lips tingled. Yeah, and felt better.

He left the fountain, gazing on grey, his belly cooler, blades whispering at his jeans. Across the damask of doubt and hesitation was unexpected joy like silver.

Something… He'd survived.

He pranced on the hill, happily oblivious to heart and bowels and the rest of the obstreperous machinery. This soft, this ecstatic grey, he swung through, in lop-looped chain, tasting the sweet smoke, buoyed on dusty grass.

The long, metallic note bent, broke to another. Someone was playing the harmonica — silver? Artichokes? Curiosity curved through, pressed down his mouth at both corners.

Like some color outside this grey range, music spilled the trees. He slowed and walked wonderingly into them. His feet came down in hushing puddles of grass. He frowned left and right and was very happy. The notes knotted with the upper branches.

In a tree? No… on a hill. He followed around the boulders that became a rise. The music came down from it. He looked up among leaf-grey and twig-grey. Picture: the harp leaving the lips, and the breath (leaving the lips) become laughter. 'Hello,' she called, laughing.

'Hello,' he said and couldn't see her.

'Were you wandering around all night?'

He shrugged. 'Sort of.'

'Me too.'

While he realized he had no idea of her distance, she laughed again and that turned back into music. She played oddly, but well. He stepped off the path.

Waving his right hand (caged), grasping saplings with his left (free), he staggered on the slope. 'Hey… I' because he slipped, and she halted.

He caught up balance, and climbed.

She played again.

He stopped when the first leaves pulled from her.

She raised her apple eyes — apple green. Head down, she kept her lips at the metal organ.

Roots, thick as her arms, held the ground around her. Her back was against a heavy trunk. Leaves hid her all one side.

She wore her shirt. Her breasts were still nice.

His throat tightened. He felt both bowels and heart now; and all the little pains that defined his skin. It's stupid to be afraid… of trees. Still, he wished he had encountered her among stones. He took another step, arms wide for the slant, and she was free of foliage — except for one brown leaf leaning against her tennis shoe.

'Hi…'

A blanket lay beside her. The cuffs of her jeans were frayed. This shirt, he realized, didn't have buttons (silver eyelets on the cloth). But now it was half laced. He looked at the place between the strands. Yes, very nice.

'You didn't like the group last night?' She gestured with her chin to some vague part of the park.

He shrugged. 'Not if they're going to wake me up and put me to work.'

'They wouldn't have, if you'd pretended to be asleep. They don't really get too much done.'

'Shit.' He laughed and stepped up. 'I didn't think so.'

She hung her arms over her knees. 'But they're good people.'

He looked at her cheek, her ear, her hair.

'Finding your way around Bellona is a little funny at first. And they've been here a while. Take them with a grain of salt, keep your eyes open, and they'll teach you a lot.'

'How long have you been with them?' thinking, I'm towering over her, only she looks at me as though I'm too short to tower.

'Oh, my place is over here. I just drop in on them every few days… like Tak. But I've just been around a few weeks, though. Pretty busy weeks.' She looked out through the leaves. When he sat down on the log, she smiled. 'You got in last night?'

He nodded. 'Pretty busy night.'

Something inside her face fought a grin.

'What's… your name?'

'Lanya Colson. Your name is Kidd, isn't it?'

'No, my name isn't Kidd! I don't know what my name is. I haven't been able to remember my name since… I don't know.' He frowned. 'Do you think that's crazy?'

She raised her eyebrows, brought her hands together (he remembered the remains of polish; so she must have redone them this morning: her nails were green as her eyes) to turn the harmonica.

'The Kid is what Iron Wolf tried to name me. And the girl in the commune tried to put on the other 'd'. But it