Dhalgren

'I wouldn't be surprised. Sometimes he asks them for protection.'

'Hey!' He pulled loose; she swung around. In shadow, her eyes, glaring up, were empty as the lions'. He tried to fix his tongue at protest, but she merely stepped to his side. They walked again, together, not touching, through the dark.

'In here.'

'In where?'

'Here!' She turned him with a hand on his arm.

And opened a door he hadn't realized was beside them. Someone in flickering silhouette said, 'Oh, it's you. What's the matter?'

'Look at him,' Lanya said. 'Scorpions.'

'Oh.' Leather jacket, cap… and leather pants: long fingers pulled closed the door. 'Take him inside. But don't make a big thing, huh?'

'Thanks, Teddy.'

There were voices from the end of the hall. The flakes of light on nail-thin Teddy's attire came from candles in iron candelabras.

He followed her.

At the end of the bar a woman's howl shattered to laughter. Three of the men around her, laughing, shed away like bright, black petals: four-fifths present wore leather, amidst scattered denim jackets. The woman had fallen into converse with a tall man in a puffy purple sweater. The candlelight put henna in her hair and blacked her eyes.

Another woman holding on to a drink with both hands, in workman's greens and construction boots, stepped unsteadily between them, recognized Lanya and intoned: 'Honey, now where have you been all week? Oh, you don't know how the class of this place has gone down. The boys are about to run me ragged,' and went, unsteadily, off.

Lanya led him through the leather crush. A surge of people toward the bar pushed them against one of the booth tables.

'Hey, babes—' Lanya leaned on her fists—'can we sit here a minute?'

'Lanya—? Sure,' Tak said, then recognized him. 'Jesus, Kid! What the hell happened to you?' He pushed over in the seat. 'Come on. Sit down!'

'Yeah…' He sat.

Lanya was edging off between people:

'Tak, Kidd — I'll be right back!'

He put the notebook and the paper on the wooden table, drew his hands through the shadows the candles dropped from the iron webs, drew his bare foot through sawdust.

Tak, from looking after Lanya, turned back. 'You got beat up?' The visor still masked his upper face.

He nodded at Tak's eyeless question.

Tak's lips pressed beneath the visor's shadow. He shook his head. 'Scorpions?'

'Yeah.'

The young man across the table had his hands in his lap.

'What'd they get from you?' Tak asked.

'Nothing.'

'What did they think they were going to get?'

'I don't know. Shit. They just wanted to beat up on somebody, I guess.'

Tak shook his head. 'No. That doesn't sound right. Not scorpions. Everybody's too busy trying to survive around here just to go beating up on people for fun.'

'I was up at the Calkins place, trying to look over the wall. Lanya said he keeps the bastards patrolling the damn walls.'

'Now there.' Loufer shook a finger across the table. 'That's like I was telling you, Jack. It's a strange place, maybe stranger than any you've ever been. But it still has its rules. You just have to find them out.'

'Shit,' he repeated, indignant at everybody's questioning of the incident. 'They beat hell out of me.'

'Looks like they did.' Tak turned across the table. 'Jack, want you to meet the Kid, here. Jack just pulled into town this afternoon. The Kid got in yesterday.'

Jack pushed himself forward and reached out to shake.

'Hi.' He shook Jack's small, sunburned hand.

'Jack here is a deserter from the army.'

At which Jack glanced at Tak with dismay, then covered it with an embarrassed smile. 'Ah… hello,' he said with a voice out of Arkansas. His short-sleeve sport-shirt was very pressed. Army shorn, his skull showed to the temple. 'Yeah, I'm a God-damn deserter, like he says.'

'That's nice,' then realized how flip that sounded and was also embarrassed.

'Tak here has been trying to tell me about how to get along in this place,' Jack offered: he had either not taken offense, or just not heard. 'Tak's a lot smarter than I am, you know. It's pretty funny here, huh?'

He nodded.

'I was gonna go to Canada. But somebody told me about Bellona. Said it was a pretty swinging place, you know? So I thought I'd stop off here. On the way.' Now he looked around the bar. The woman howled again: the purple angora had abandoned her. The howl moved predictably once more toward laughter and she sat, alone, shaking her dark red hair over her drink. 'I ain't ever seen a place quite like this. Have you?' Jack offered the conversation back to him.

'Oh, I bet you ain't,' Tak intercepted. 'Now the Kid here, you know, he's my age? You probably would have thought he was younger than you are. Jack here is twenty. Now seriously, how old would you say the Kid here is?'

'Uh… oh, I don't know.' Jack said, and looked confused.

(He wanted to look at the engineer's shadowed face again, but not yet.)

'Where the hell did you run off to this morning, anyway?'

A dog barked, somewhere in the bar.

About to turn and answer Tak, he looked toward the noise. Claws scrabbled; then, bursting between the legs of the people next to them, the black muzzle and shoulders!

He snatched his arm up from the barking.

At the same time, Lanya arrived: 'Hey, come on, girl!'

Others had turned to watch the beast bark up at their table.

'Come on. Quiet down.' Lanya's hand strayed on the shaking head, played on the black snout. 'Be quiet! Quiet, now.' The dog tried to pull its head away. She grabbed its lower jaw and shook it gently. 'What you making so much noise about? Shhhhh, you hear me? Shhhh!' The dog turned its brown eyes from the table, to Lanya, back to the table. Bright pricks from the candles slid on the black pupils. It licked her hand. 'There now. Be quiet.' In the other was a wad of wet paper towels. She sat down, put them on the table: they trickled on the wood.

Jack's hands were back in his lap.

Tak pushed up his cap; the shadow uncovered his large, blue eyes. He shook his head, and sucked his teeth in general disapproval.

'Come on, now,' Lanya said once more to the dog.

It waited beside the table, panting.

He reached out toward the dark head. The panting stopped. He passed his fingers over the rough hair, the wiry brows. The dog turned to lick the ham of his thumb. 'Yeah,' he said. 'You just be quiet.'

'Is Muriel bothering you people?' Purple Angora sucked a sighing breath. 'I tell her—' he gestured toward the woman at the bar—'she shouldn't bring her in here. Muriel is just not that well trained. She gets so excited. But she will bring her in here every night. I hope she hasn't annoyed you.'

Lanya reached again to rough the dog's head. 'She's an old dear! She didn't bother anybody.'

'Well, thank you.' Purple Angora bent to drag Muriel back to the bar by the collar. Once he glanced back, frowned at them—

'See if you can wipe some of that stuff off your face,' Lanya said, wrinkling hers.