Dhalgren

One end looped a plume of ferns.

He reached for it; his body blocked the light from the brazier below: glimmer ceased.

He felt another apprehension than that of the unexpected seen before, or accidentally revealed behind. He searched himself for some physical sign that would make it real: quickening breath, slowing heart. But what he apprehended was insubstantial as a disjunction of the soul. He picked the chain up; one end chuckled and flickered down the stone. He turned with it to catch the orange glimmer.

Prisms.

Some of them, anyway.

Others were round.

He ran the chain across his hand. Some of the round ones were transparent. Where they crossed the spaces between his fingers, the light distorted. He lifted the chain to gaze through one of the lenses. But it was opaque. Tilting it, he saw pass, dim and inches distant in the circle, his own eye, quivering in the quivering glass.

Everything was quiet.

He pulled the chain across his hand. The random arrangement went almost nine feet. Actually, three lengths were attached. Each of the three ends looped on itself. On the largest loop was a small metal tag.

He stooped for more light.

The centimeter of brass (the links bradded into the 7 optical bits were brass) was inscribed: producto do Brazil.

He thought: What the hell kind of Portuguese is that?

He crouched a moment longer looking along the glittering lines.

He tried to pull it all together for his jean pocket, but the three tangled yards spilled his palms. Standing, he found the largest loop and lowered his head. Points and edges nipped his neck. He got the tiny rings together under his chin and fingered (Thinking: Like damned clubs) the catch closed.

He looked at the chain in loops of light between his feet. He picked up the shortest end from his thigh. The loop there was smaller.

He waited, held his breath even — then wrapped the length twice around his upper arm, twice around his lower, and fastened the catch at his wrist. He flattened his palm on the links and baubles hard as plastic or metal. Chest hair tickled the creasing between joint and joint.

He passed the longest end around his back: the bits lay out cold kisses on his shoulder blades. Then across his chest; his back once more; his belly. Holding the length in one hand (it still hung down on the stone), he unfastened his belt with the other.

Pants around his ankles, he wound the final length once around his hips; and then around his right thigh; again around; and again. He fastened the last catch at his ankle. Pulling up his trousers, he went to the ledge, buckled them, and turned to climb down.

He was aware of the bindings. But, chest flat on the stone, they were merely lines and did not cut.

This time he went to where the crevice was only a foot wide and stepped far of the lip. The cave mouth was a lambda of moon mist, edged with leaf-lace.

The rocks licked his soles. Once, when his mind wandered, it was brought back by his foot in cold water; and the links were warm around his body. He halted to feel for more heat; but the chain was only neutral weight.

He stepped out onto moss.

His shirt lay across a bush, his sandal, sole up, beneath.

He slipped his arms into the wool sleeves: his right wrist glittered from the cuff. He buckled his sandal: the ground moistened his knee.

He stood, looked around, and narrowed his eyes on the shadows. 'Hey…?' He turned left, turned right, and scratched his collar-bone with his wide thumb. 'Hey, where…?' Turning right, turning left, he wished he could interpret scuffs and broken brush. She wouldn't have wandered down the way they'd come…

He left the cave mouth and entered the shingled black. Could she have gone along here? he wondered three steps in. But went forward.

He recognized the road for moonlight the same moment his sandaled foot jabbed into mud. His bare one swung to the graveled shoulder. He staggered out on the asphalt, one foot sliding on flooded leather, took a hissing breath, and gazed around.

Left, the road sloped up between the trees. He started right. Downward would take him toward the city.

On one side was forest. On the other, he realized after a dozen slippery jogs, it was only a hedge of trees. Trees dropped away with another dozen. Behind, the grass whispered and shushed him.

She was standing at the meadow's center.

He brought his feet — one strapped and muddy, one bare and dusty — together; suddenly felt his heart beating; heard his surprised breath shush the grass back. He stepped across the ditch to ill-mowed stubble.

She's too tall, he thought, nearing.

Hair lifted from her shoulders; grass whispered again.

She had been taller than he was, but not like… 'Hey, I got the…!' She was holding her arms over her head. Was she standing on some stumpy pedestal? 'Hey…?'

She twisted from the waist: 'What the hell are you doing here?'

At first he thought she was splattered with mud all up her thigh. 'I thought you…?' But it was brown as dried blood.

She gazed down at him with batting eyes.

Mud? Blood? It was the wrong color for either.

'Go away!'

He took another, entranced step.

'What are you doing here? Go away!'

Were the blotches under her breasts scabs? 'Look, I got it! Now, can't you tell me my…?'

Leaves were clutched in her raised hands. Her hands were raised so high! Leaves dropped about her shoulders. Her long, long fingers shook, and brittle darkness covered one flank. Her pale belly jerked with a breath.

'No!' She bent away when he tried to touch her; and stayed bent. One arm, branched and branching ten feet over him, pulled a web of shadow — across the grass.

'You…!' was the word he tried; breath was all that came.

He looked up among the twigs of her ears. Leaves shucked from her eyebrows. Her mouth was a thick, twisted bole, as though some footwide branch had been lopped off by lightning. Her eyes — his mouth opened as he craned to see them — disappeared, first one, up there, then the other, way over there: scabby lids sealed.

He backed through stiff grass.

A leaf crashed his temple like a charred moth.

Rough fingers bludgeoning his lips, he stumbled, turned, ran to the road, glanced once more where the twisted trunk raked five branches at the moon, loped until he had to walk, walked — gasping — until he could think. Then he ran some more.

2

It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now. In the long country, cut with rain, somehow there is nowhere to begin. Loping and limping in the ruts, it would be easier not to think about what she did (was done to her, done to her, done), trying instead to reconstruct what it is at a distance. Oh, but it would not be so terrible had one calf not borne (if I'd looked close, it would have been a chain of tiny wounds with moments of flesh between; I've done that myself with a swipe in a garden past a rose) that scratch.

The asphalt spilled him onto the highway's shoulder. The paving's chipped edges filed visions off his eyes. A roar came toward him he heard only as it passed. He glanced back: the truck's red, rear eyes sank together. He walked for another hour, saw no other vehicle.