Dhalgren

A Mac with a double van belched twenty feet behind him, sagged to a stop twenty feet ahead. He hadn't even been thumbing. He sprinted toward the opening door, hauled himself up, slammed it. The driver, tall, blond, and acned, looking blank, released the clutch.

He was going to say thanks, but coughed. Maybe the driver wanted somebody to rap at? Why else stop for someone just walking the road!

He didn't feel like rapping. But you have to say something:

'What you loading?'

'Artichokes.'

Approaching lights spilled pit to pit in the driver's face.

They shook on down the highway.

He could think of nothing more, except: I was just making love to this woman, see, and you'll never guess… No, the Daphne bit would not pass—

It was he who wanted to talk! The driver was content to dispense with phatic thanks and chatter. Western independence? He had hitched this sector of country enough to decide it was all manic terror.

He leaned his head back. He wanted to talk and had nothing to say.

Fear past, the archness of it forced the architecture of a smile his lips fought.

He saw the ranked highway lights twenty minutes later and sat forward to see the turnoff. He glanced at the driver who was just glancing away. The brakes wheezed and the cab slowed by lurches.

They stopped. The driver sucked in the sides of his mined cheeks, looked over, still blank.

He nodded, sort of smiled, fumbled the door, dropped to the road; the door slammed and the truck started while he was still preparing thanks; he had to duck the van corner.

The vehicle grumbled down the turnoff.

We only spoke a line apiece.

What an odd ritual exchange to exhaust communication. (Is that terror?) What amazing and engaging rituals are we practicing now? (He stood on the road side, laughing.) What torque and tension in the mouth to laugh so in this windy, windy, windy…

Underpass and overpass knotted here. He walked… proudly? Yes, proudly by the low wall.

Across the water the city flickered.

On its dockfront, down half a mile, flames roiled smoke on the sky and reflections on the river. Here, not one car came off the bridge. Not one went on.

This toll booth, like the rank of booths, was dark. He stepped inside: front pane shattered, stool overturned, no drawer in the register — a third of the keys stuck down; a few bent. Some were missing their heads. Smashed by a mace, a mallet, a fist? He dragged his fingers across them, listened to them click, then stepped from the glass-flecked, rubber mat, over the sill to the pavement.

Metal steps led up to the pedestrian walkway. But since there was no traffic, he sauntered across two empty lanes — a metal grid sunk in the blacktop gleamed where tires had polished it — to amble the broken white line, sandaled foot one side, bare foot the other. Girders wheeled by him, left and right. Beyond, the burning city squatted on weak, inverted images of its fires.

He gazed across the wale of night water, all wind-runneled, and sniffed for burning. A gust parted the hair at the back of his neck; smoke was moving off the river.

'Hey, you!'

He looked up at the surprising flashlight. 'Huh…?' At the walkway rail, another and another punctured the dark.

'You going into Bellona?'

'That's right.' Squinting, he tried to smile. One, and another, the lights moved a few steps, stopped. He said: 'You're… leaving?'

'Yeah. You know it's restricted in there.'

He nodded. 'But I haven't seen any soldiers or police or anything. I just hitch-hiked down.'

'How were the rides?'

'All I saw was two trucks for the last twenty miles. The second one gave me a lift.'

'What about the traffic going out?'

He shrugged. 'But I guess girls shouldn't have too hard a time, though. I mean, if a car passes, you'll probably get a ride. Where you heading?'

'Two of us want to get to New York. Judy wants to go to San Francisco.'

'I just want to get some place,' a whiny voice came down. 'I've got a fever! I should be in bed. I was in bed for the last three days.'

He said: 'You've got a ways to go, either direction.'

'Nothing's happened to San Francisco—?'

'— or New York?'

'No.' He tried to see behind the lights. 'The papers don't even talk about what's happening here, any more.'

'But, Jesus! What about the television? Or the radio—'

'Stupid, none of it works out here. So how are they gonna know?'

'But— Oh, wow…!'

He said: 'The nearer you get, it's just less and less people. And the ones you meet are… funnier. What's it like inside?'

One laughed.

Another said: 'It's pretty rough.'

The one who'd spoken first said: 'But like you say, girls have an easier time.'

They laughed.

He did too. 'Is there anything you can tell me? I mean that might be helpful? Since I'm going in?'

'Yeah. Some men came by, shot up the house we were living in, tore up the place, then burned us out.'

'She was making this sculpture,' the whiny voice explained; 'this big sculpture. Of a lion. Out of junk metal and stuff. It was beautiful…! But she had to leave it.'

'Wow,' he said. 'Is it like that?'

One short, hard laugh: 'Yeah. We got it real easy.'

'Tell him about Calkins? Or the scorpions?'

'He'll learn about them.' Another laugh. 'What can you say?'

'You want a weapon to take in with you?'

That made him afraid again. 'Do I need one?'

But they were talking among themselves:

'You're gonna give him that?'

'Yeah, why not? I don't want it with me any more.'

'Well, okay. It's yours.'

Metal sounded on chain, while one asked: 'Where you from?' The flashlights turned away, ghosting the group. One in profile near the rail was momentarily lighted enough to see she was very young, very black, and very pregnant.

'Up from the south.'

'You don't sound like you're from the south,' one said who did.

'I'm not from the south. But I was just in Mexico.'

'Oh, hey!' That was the pregnant one. 'Where were you? I know Mexico.'

The exchange of half a dozen towns ended in disappointed silence.

'Here's your weapon.'

Flashlights followed the flicker in the air, the clatter on the gridded blacktop.

With the beams on the ground (and not in his eyes), he could make out half a dozen women on the catwalk.

'What—' A car motor thrummed at the end of the bridge; but there were no headlights when he glanced. The sound died on some turnoff—'is it?'