Dhalgren

I nodded.

'Do you know what they think—' Jack turned on his stool, one hand going to spread across the chest of his shirt—'John, Mildred, all them people over in the commune in the park — that I was the one who done it! And they tellin' all sorts of other people, too! They tellin' that to all them girls who live in that House together! 'Cause I'm white, and I'm from the south, and I don't know how to argue good and explain that they are fuckin' crazy — they are fuckin' crazy if they think I done something like that!' He looked as surprised in the telling as I was in the hearing. 'I… I had a gun, you know?' His hand closed to a loose fist that slid, stopping and starting, down his shirt, leaving a wet stain.

I nodded.

'I always had a gun at home. They should have guns out there in the park with all the nuts wandering around in this city. And all they got to do is walk into a store and take one — like I did. They got people comin' around to the park all the God damn time, to take food away from 'em? And some of the people who come got guns. Get up on a damn building and shoot a damn nigger?' His hand, loose in his lap, twitched. 'Jesus Christ, I wouldn't do nothin' like that! But I go around the park, man, and I hear them talking. I mean I heard people talkin'; then they'd turn around, and they seen me and shut up! Frank won't have nothin' to do with me no more. I mean he'd say hello or somethin' when I'd speak first and then walk away to do something else. But five times — five times I'd start over to find out just what'n hell was goin' on and he walks away soon as he see me comin'. I mean it's like they're afraid of me; only they got me so scared, I'm afraid to go back. Shit, I don't even believe Frank thinks I done it. Frank's a nice guy. He just don't want the others to think he's havin' anything to do with me. And I don't know what to do with that. I just don't know. I thought for a while, right after I first met him, Frank was like Tak. I know he goes after girls. But he writes that poetry and stuff and, sort of, well… if he liked me, I guessed maybe that was part of it. 'Cause I damn well couldn't see no other reason: he's smarter'n me, older'n me, and he's got about everything he wants. When all this stuff started, I thought maybe because I'd never done anything with him, like with Tak, that was… well, was why he was bein' so damn mean. That pretty stupid, huh? But this place puts ideas like that into your head. I told him, right out; I said, 'Anything you wanna do — Anything at all…!' I wished he'd been gay, man. I wished he'd liked me like that. Because then, after bein' with Tak and all, even though I ain't, I'd kind of known what to do. You know?' He looked at me, shook his head, looked at the bottle. 'You know what I mean?' He took his hand out his lap and put it back in the puddle.

'Go on,' I said. 'You've got it too simple. But go on.'

His jaw moved a few times, but he didn't speak.

'How come you don't come down to see us?' I asked.

'You get hungry, come on down to the nest. Tak'll bring you there if you ask him. Left over flower-power, in all this pollution, was never my thing either.' I was wondering about him and the department store people but I didn't say anything.

'Well, you guys…' Jack turned a little from side to side. (Thinking: His palms are now glued to the wood, but he doesn't want to be noticed trying to tug them loose.) 'You guys… I just don't know. All you got down there is niggers anyway, don't you? After what I done — what they said I done, what's a bunch of bad niggers gonna do when I come walkin' in? You guys play a little too rough… robbin' people in the street. And killin' people.' He blinked inflamed lids. 'I don't mean, personal. You're a nice guy. And you're their chief, huh…? But that's what I heard, you know? And I don't wanna get into shit like that. I don't got nothin' against it, but…' He frowned, shaking his head. 'People talk. And people talk. People talk, tryin' to make you into something you ain't. And after a while, you almost don't know what you done and what you didn't do your own self. People talkin' about me, about what I done, that day when the sky was lit across with that funny kind of light, and that nigger they got in the pictures was after that white girl and the colored people had a riot and tore the hands off the church clock down in Jackson; they say cause I climbed up on the roof and shot the nigger, from the roof, I'm responsible for the riot, for the whole thing, for everything that happened here. Just for shootin' a damn nigger…' His lips, lined with brown, touched, parted, touched: 'I had a gun. I didn't shoot…' He spoke slowly. 'I didn't shoot that black man. I mean, I even met him three or four time. Right in this bar. With Tak. He was a nice man. I shot him…? I didn't shoot…' Suddenly he knuckled at his lips' scabbed corner. 'I went down there. I did that. To check the place out. And with my gun! You climb up the steps behind the Second City Bank building and get up the rest of the way by the fireladder. You can hunker

I don't remember ever getting corrected in high school or college for writing who instead of whom. But except to be funny, I've never said whom in my life. Which makes me think there are two other words: who and who'—the apostrophe standing for the syncopated m. I've been using who' in this notebook for maybe a week, but it still looks funny. So I'll cut it out.

down behind the cornice and aim out over the whole damn street. Man, if you could shoot at all, you could pick off anyone! An' I shoot pretty good…' He looked at me, narrowing his thickened lids. 'You think I done it?'

'That depends,' I said. 'Did you check it out before or after he got shot?'

Something happened on Jack's unshaven face: the skin between his eyebrows wrinkled, the skin below his jaw slackened. Something happened behind it too. 'Oh God,' he said as flatly as, once, I heard a man say 'elevator'. 'Oh God…' He turned back to the bar. 'They all want it to be so bad, they gonna make it be no matter what I done or not. They gonna make it be. Just by wantin' it.'

'I know,' I told him.

'What can I do? I don't know what to do.'

'You have to know who you are,' I said. 'No matter what they say.'

He didn't look at me. 'You know who you are?'

After a second I said: 'About two thirds of it; so I guess at least I'm on my way. Maybe I'm pretty lucky.' I finished my beer. 'You come down to the nest. Whenever you want. Just don't bring your gun.'

'I wish,' Jack said after a few seconds, 'I could just get me some kind of job. A job where I could make some good money. Then I could get me a girl friend; then I could buy my own drinks. I don't like to sit in a bar and hustle nice guys for drinks.'

'When I first got to town,' I told him, 'I had a job, moving furniture. Five bucks an hour. You'd've dug it. It was made for you.'

But he was looking at the dollar bill.

Since the frustration was making me mean, I decided it was time to go. I stepped from the bar.

'Hey, Kid?'

'What?'

'Ain't you gonna take your change?' He put his middle finger on the wrinkled dollar and slid it over the wet wood.

I thought a second. 'Why don't you keep it?'

'Aw, no, man — Naw, I don't like to take no handouts. I need a job; make some good money; pay my own way.'

'You take this hand-out,' I said. 'You need it.'

'Well, thanks, man…?' His finger, holding the paper to the counter, slid it back. 'Thanks a lot! I'm good for it, too. You'll get it back, once I get some money. You're a pretty nice guy.'

Comments anyway: I want to help. And feel help would be impossible. Almost. Which is simply almost forgetting how much help I've had.

I hope he comes to the nest.

Off his head about everything else, he's right on about the pussy. Despite George, and a city concecrated by twin moons, I know there must be some greater, female diety (for whom George is only consort) a sin yet to name her (as that sun is never, named); we have all glimpsed her, sulking in the forest of her knowledge — every tree a tree of that knowledge — and there is nothing but to praise

This afternoon Lady of Spain and Filament staggered through the front door in volcanic laughter, lurched up the hall supporting each other—

'Hey,' I said. 'What happened with you?'