Dhalgren

'In a pickup,' Tom explained. 'We were up in Montana, running down this way… till we run out of gas.' A cowboy truck driver, he wanted to be friendly.

'And that's Red,' from Tom.

So I locked thumbs with Red (hair like rusted Brillo), who blinked sleepy, ice-grey eyes in a face dark as mocha — another mustard-skinned spade, and this one, for all his hunched shoulders, good-looking as the devil.

From the corner someone said: 'Hello, Kid,' and Tak, arms folded, stood up from the plank wall where he was leaning. He pushed his cap up and came forward, face visible from the pink crease on his forehead where his cap had been, down to bis gold chin. 'I'm making my rounds again. I brought these guys here over to the commune and they felt about like you did. So I thought we'd drop in on Thirteen and say hello.'

'A good excuse to smoke some dope,' Thirteen said. 'Now ain't that a good excuse?'

'Sure,' Tom said. 'Any excuse is a good excuse as far as I'm concerned.',

Smokey, who I hadn't seen go, came back with the jar.

Thirteen took it, raised it in his tattooed hand. 'Now you'd think,' he said, 'with a water pipe like this, I'd at least put some kind of water in it, huh?'

'Or creme de menthe,' Smokey said. 'That's what you're always talking about.'

'Yeah. You ever smoke hash through a water pipe filled with creme de menthe?' Thirteen asked. 'That's really something.'

Mak, still at the window, gestured toward the bed. 'You got a bottle of… what's that? Mountain Red?'

'Naw,' Thirteen said. 'That ain't the same thing.'

Thirteen's cheeks hollowed; the jar filled with smoke.

'You got any speed?' Tom asked.

'Oh, man—' Thirteen coughed and handed Red the jar. 'You can't keep anything like that around here more'n five minutes. We don't get much anyway. Once somebody brought in a whole pillow case full, man! A whole pillow case with a plastic lining full of all sorts of speed. This Mexican guy.'

'Was he Mexican?' Smokey asked. 'He was thick-set, blond…'

'He talked like a Mexican,' Thirteen said. 'I mean that was a Mexican accent he was speaking. It wasn't no Spanish-from-Spain accent. Or Puerto Rican. They sound different.'

I nodded.

'Anyway,' Thirteen said, 'it was gone like that!' He grinned back across his shoulder; 'She was maybe five pounds lighter. But that's the only way you'd of known it was here. How we went through all that shit so fast — man!'

'You must have every kind of — Oh, thanks.' Mak took the pipe from Red, sucked, and said: 'It's out.'

'Here, just a minute.' Thirteen struck another match.

'You must have every kind of junkie in this city,' Mak said.

Smokey, with the jar now, was handing it to Copperhead, who said: 'I don't think I've ever seen a skaghead in Bellona, you know?'

'I have,' I said.

Glass laughed.

Tak said: 'We don't have much dope here. No money, no dope. To speak of, I mean.'

'I think—' Thirteen said. 'Wouldn't you say, Kid? I mean, you could say this about most of your guys, huh? Most people here have taken a lot of dope. But we don't got too many people here who need it If you know what I mean.'

'That sounds pretty good,' Mak said.

'I mean if you need it,' Thirteen said, 'there just ain't no place to get it. I've put everything in my arm, or up my nose, or down my belly I could, just about, one time or another. Liked all of it, too. But I don't need anything, you know? Of course—' he reached over and took the jar from me—'I do enjoy my toke.'

Everybody laughed.

Me too.

And all the smoke loosed out my nose and stung.

'Now did you ever think what a specialized city Bellona is?' Tak was saying. He had come in front of the bed, fists in his scuffed pockets, holding the leather off his hairy stomach. The red quilt lining was torn in two places. 'I mean Bellona's got a lot of some things and none of a lot of others. I used to know a guy who could not go to sleep unless he had a radio playing. He can't live in Bellona. There are people who have to have movies to go to; or they get twitchy. They can't live in Bellona. Some people must have chewing gum to survive. I've found stale candy bars, Life-Savers, Tums; but all the chewing gum is gone from all the candy-stores' racks. Gum chewers can't live in Bellona. Not to mention cigarettes, cigars, pipes: the tobacco in the vending machines went stale a couple of weeks after we got cut off and I guess the cartons and packaged shag was the first thing the scavengers cleared out. You never see a smoker in Bellona.'

'Some people need sun, clear nights, cool breezes, warm days—' I said.

'They can't live in Bellona,' Tak went on. 'In Helmsford, I knew people who never walked further than from the front door to the car. They can't live in Bellona. Oh, we have a pretty complicated social structure: aristocrats, beggars—'

'Bourgeoisie,' I said.

'— and Bohemians. But we have no economy. The illusion of an ordered social matrix is complete, but it's spitted through on all these cross-cultural attelets. It is a vulnerable city. It is a saprophytic city — It's about the pleasantest place I've ever lived.' He grinned around at Tom, Red, Mak. 'I'm curious to see whether you guys will like it enough to settle down, make it your home, become part of the community.'

The jar circled Tak for the third time; he swayed at the center.

'Here.' Tom, still leaning on the sill, held it out. 'You didn't get any.'

'Never touch the stuff.' Tak waved the sides of his jacket. 'No, I'm a poor, anti-social juice-head. Not a man of my times at all. Gets me in trouble, too.'

Somebody suggested we go back to the nest. Tak, his three discoveries pretty well parked at Thirteen's curb, decided to drift-after Thirteen, in a flurry of patriarchal politesse, broke out his jug (same as ours; he must be rifling the same busted plate glass window on the street sometimes marked Lafayette, sometimes marked Jessie). The late afternoon got lost in the day's momentum.

'Why don't we go back to the nest,' somebody suggested again. Which, again, everybody thought was a good idea.

Where Lady of Spain, with Raven, I guess it was, had gotten a big fire going in the yard and all sorts of canned shit, scalloped tops bent back, bubbling on the cinder-blocks, their labels blacked and bronzed by the flames. The tree trunks glimmered; and the fence; and the triangle of glass in the second floor window of the house beyond.

We stood around, listening to the fire. Red, still bare foot and shirtless, squatted, staring at the coals, the back of his jeans tugged way the hell down his ass. Circling his hips three times — he wore it down below the waist of his jeans so you couldn't see it normally — was the optic chain.

Just then he glanced back at me over his shoulder, surprised; maybe he thought I was staring at his crack.

'God damn, I burned fuckin' hell out of myself—!' Jack the Ripper shook his hand furiously on the other side of the fire, hopped and whirled. Fire glistened in his mud and sputum eyes.

I looked down at the beads across my chest, my stomach, around my arm; could feel them around my leg. I looked up and saw Red was looking too; then his eyes went down to the place below bis hip's blade pushing above the beltless loops. And up at me again. His hands, out for balance, were bloated the way some winos' get. He started to speak.

I said: 'I don't want to hear it. I don't want to know where you got it. I don't want you to ask me where I got mine. Fuck you, man. I just don't want to hear—' catching my voice lowering and a fury rising neither he nor I understood.