Dhalgren

told me hers, which I thought were interesting too, and they changed mine; so I told her the changes. Then the next patient came by and I went back to staring at my paper; prowling; staring. 

Which is what I was doing when Lanya and Denny came in. He'd gone back to the school to help out with the class. 

'Denny suggested we go on a class trip, outside to look at the city. We did. It turned out to be a fine idea. With two of us we didn't have any problem handling them. That was a good idea, Denny. It really was.' Then she asked if I'd written anything. 

'Nope.' 

'You look strange,' she told me. 

Denny said: 'No he don't. He just gets like that sometimes.' 

Lanya Mmmmed. She knows me better than he does, I guess. 

Denny was really into being useful — a trait which, pleasant as he is, I've never seen in him before. I helped them do a couple of things for Madame Brown: explore the cellar, take one chair down, bring up a dresser she'd found on the street and managed to get to the back door. 

It was a >nice evening. 

I wondered if I was spoiling it by sug-

I tried to pull her up, but she got back down on her knees again.

What she was trying to do, I realized, was roll a pile of number ten tomato- and pineapple-juice cans and crumpled cookie packages back into her overturned shopping bag. Her black coat spread around her over crumbs of brick.

One can rolled against my foot. It was empty.

She began to go down, even further, laying her cheek on the pavement, reaching among the jangling cans. I bent to pull her once more. Then someone, yanking her from the other side, shouted, 'Come on!' (Cum ohn! the vowels, long and short, braying: the m soft as an n; the n loose as an r.) I looked up without letting go.

It was George.

gesting: 'Maybe we should go back to the nest tonight?' 

Lanya said: 'No. You should use some of this boring peace and quiet to work it.' 

'I'm not bored,' I said. And resolved to sit in front of a piece of paper for at least an hour. Which I did: wrote nothing. But my brain bubbled and bobbed and rotated in my skull like a boiling egg. 

When I finally went to bed I fell out like an old married man. 

One of them or the other got up in the night to take a leak, came back to bed brushing aside the plants and we balled, hard and a little loud I think. 

In the morning we all got up together. 

I noticed Lanya noticing me being quiet. She noticed my noticing and laughed. 

After coffee we all walked to the school. Denny asked to stick around for the class. Now I noticed her wondering if two days in a row was a good idea. But she said, 'Sure,' and I left them and went back to the house, stopping once to wonder if I should go back to the nest instead. 

Madame Brown and I had lunch again. 

'How are you enjoying your visit?' 

'Still thinking a lot,' I told her. 'But also think all the thinking is about to knock me out.' 

'Your poetry?' 

'Haven't written a word. I guess it's just hard for me to write around here.' 

'Lanya said you weren't writing too much at your place, either. She said she thought there were too many people around.' 

'I don't think that's the reason.' 

We talked some more. 

Then I came to a decision: 'I'm going back to the nest. Tell Lanya and Denny when they get back, will you?' 

'All right.' She looked at me dubiously over a soup spoon puddled with Cross & Blackwell vischysoise. 'Don't you want to wait and tell them yourself when they get back?' 

I poured another glass of wine. 'No.' 

When the next patient rang, I took my notebook and wandered (for five, funny min-

She came up between us, screaming: 'Ahhhhhhhhhh — Annnnnn! Don't touch me! Ahhhhhhhhh—don't touch me, nigger'! She staggered and reeled in our grip. I didn't see her look at either of us. 'Ahhhhh — I saw what you done! — that poor little white girl what couldn't do nothin' against you! We saw it! We all saw it! She come lookin' for you, askin' all around, askin' everybody where you are all the time, and now you take her, take her like that, just take her like you done! And see what's happened! Now, see! Oh, God, oh help me, don't touch me, oh, God!'

'Aw, come on!' George shouted again as once more she started to collapse. He pulled again; she came loose from my grip. The coat stung my hands. As I dodged away, she was still shrieking:

'Them white people gonna get you, nigger! Them white men gonna kill us all 'cause of what you done today to that poor little white girl! You done smashed up the store windows, broke all the streetlights, climbed up and pulled the hands down from the clock! You been rapin' and lootin' and all them things! Oh, God, there's gonna be shootin' and burnin' and blood shed all over! They gonna shoot up everything in Jackson. Oh, God, oh, God, don't touch me!'

'Will you shut up, woman, and pick up your damn junk,' George said.

utes, midway, I thought I was lost) back to the nest. 

Tarzan and the apes, all over the steps, were pretty glad to see me. Priest, California, and Cathedral did a great back-slapping routine down the hall. Glass nodded, friendly but overtly non-commital. And I had a clear thought: If I left, Glass, not Copperhead, would become leader. 

I climbed up into the loft, told Devastation's friend Mike to move his ass the hell over. 

'Oh, yeah, Kid. Sure, I'm sorry. I'll get down—' 

'You can stay,' I said. 'Just move over.' Then I stretched out with my notebook under my shoulder and fell asleep, splat! 

Woke up loggy but clutching for my pen. Took some blue paper to the back steps, put the pine plank across my knees and wrote and wrote and wrote. 

Went back into the kitchen for some water. 

Lanya and Denny were there. 

'Hi.' 

'Oh, hi.' 

Went back to the porch and wrote some more. Finally it was

Which, when I looked back, seconds later, was what she was doing.

George, ten feet off, squatted to haul up a slab of rubble that rained plaster from both sides, while another woman tugged at a figure struggling beneath. A handful of gravel hit my shoulder from somewhere and I ducked forward.

Ahead of me, turning and turning in the silvered wreckage, Reverend Amy squinted up, fists moving about her ears, till her fingers jerked wide; the up-tilted face was scored with what I thought rage; but it swung again and I