Dhalgren

June looked confused. Then she called: 'I'll help you with the coffee, Mom.'

'That's all right, dear.' Mrs Richards came in with a tray, a pot, and cups. 'If you want to bring in a cup for yourself. Darling?' She sat the tray down. 'Aren't you drinking too much coffee?'

'Oh, Mother!' June marched into the kitchen and returned with a cup.

He liked putting his hands around the warming porcelain while the coffee went in.

'I did something, you know, perhaps I ought not to have.' Mrs Richards finished pouring and spoke carefully. 'Here, I'll bring it to you.'

He sipped and wished it wasn't instant. His mind went off to some nameless spot on the California coast, carpeted with rust-colored redwood scraps and the smell of boiled coffee while a white sun made a silver pin cushion in the tree tops, and fog wrapped up the gaunt trunks—

'Here.' Mrs Richards returned and sat. 'I hope you don't mind.'

June, he saw, was trying to hold her cup the same way he did.

'What is it?' On blue bordered stationery, in black, calligraphic letters, Mrs Richards had written out his poem.

'I've probably made all sorts of mistakes, I know.'

He finished reading it and looked up, confused. 'How'd you do that?'

'It stayed with me, very clearly.'

'All of it?'

'It's only eight lines, isn't it? It sticks very persistently in the mind. Especially considering it doesn't rhyme. Did I make any terrible mistakes?'

'You left out a comma.' He slid the paper to her and pointed.

She looked. 'Oh, of course.'

'You just remembered it, like that?'

'I couldn't get it out of my mind. I haven't done anything awful, have I?'

'Um… it looks very nice.' He tried to fix the warmth inside him, but it was neither embarrassment, nor pride, nor fear, so stayed un-named.

'You may have it.' She sat back. 'Just stick it in your notebook. I made two copies, you see — I'm going to keep one for myself. Forever.' Her voice broke just a little: 'That's why I was so worried when I thought you weren't coming back. You really go and sleep out in the park, just like that, all alone?'

He nodded. 'There're other people there.'

'Oh, yes. I've heard about them. From Edna. That's… amazing. You know you haven't told me yet, is it all right that I remembered your poem; and wrote it down?'

'Eh… yeah.' He smiled, and wished desperately she would correct that comma. 'Thanks. You know, we can start moving stuff up today. You got everything all ready down here?'

'We can?' She sounded pensive. 'You mean you've got it all ready.'

'I guess I should have come back last night and told you we could start today on the moving.'

'Arthur—' who stood at the door, tie loose—'Kidd says we can move today. By the time you come home, dear, we'll all be upstairs.'

'Good. You really are working!' When Mr Richards reached the table, Mrs Richards had his cup poured. Standing, he lifted it. The cup's reflection dropped away in the mahogany, stayed vague while he drank, then suddenly swam up like a white fish in a brown pool to meet the china rim that clacked on it. 'Gotta run. Why don't you get Bobby to give you a hand with the little stuff? Exercise'll do him some good.'

'Beds, and things like that…' Mrs Richards shook her head. 'I really wonder if we shouldn't get somebody else, to help.'

'I can get everything up there,' Kidd said. 'I'll just take the beds apart.'

'Well, if you're sure.'

'Sure he can,' Mr Richards said. 'Well, I'm on my way. Good-bye.' In his fingers, the knot rose up between his collar wings, wobbled into place. He turned and left the room. 'The front door slammed.

Kidd watched the amber rim make nervous tides on the china, then drank the black sea. 'I better go on upstairs and get last-minute things cleaned up. You can start putting things out. I'll be down in about fifteen minutes.' He clinked his cup in his saucer, and went out.

'Where is it?' June called from the door.

He closed the broom closet on the mop and pail. 'Over there, leaning against the wall.'

When he came in, she was staring at the white roll in its red rubber band; her fist floated inches under her chin. 'You're sure that's a picture of…'

'George,' he said, 'Harrison. Look at it.'

She picked up the roll.

On the floor he saw the stack of her father's computer magazines she had brought up as excuse.

She rolled the rubber band toward the end, but stopped. 'Where did you get it?'

'You wouldn't believe me if I told you. They got them all over.' He wanted to avoid the specific answer. 'There's a woman minister who just gives him away.' He sighed. 'At a church.'

'Have you seen… him, again?'

'No. Aren't you gonna open it?'

'I'm afraid to.'

The simplicity with which she said it surprised and moved him. The fog outside the windows was almost solid. He watched: she stood, head slightly bent, and still.

'Does Madame Brown know about you and George—'

Her 'No!' was so quick and soft (her head whirled) he stiffened.

'She goes to that bar too. She knows him,' he said. 'That's why I was wondering.'

'Oh…' so less intense.

'She was in there the night you stopped me to ask about him.'

'Then it's good I didn't go in. She might have… seen.' June closed her eyes, too long for blinking. 'If she had seen me, that would have been just…'

Her blonde energies were to him terrible but dwindling things. 'Why — I still don't understand — are you so hung up on him? I mean, I know about what… happened. And I mean, that doesn't matter to me. But I…' He felt his question confused among hesitations, and stopped it.

She looked vulnerable and afraid. 'I don't… know. You wouldn't understand—' then even vulnerability fell away—'if I told you. They named that… moon after him!'

He pretended not to stare. 'Enough other people are after him too, I guess. That's why they have those, huh? Open it.'

She shook her head with small, quick movements. 'But they don't know…' Unable to look at him longer, she looked down at the roll. 'I know more than they do.'

'Hey,' he asked to fill the discomforting silence, 'what did happen between you?'

'Go read about it in the Times.' She looked up.

He searched for the belligerence he'd heard: her raised features held none of it.

'The night the… black people had the riot? I was out, just walking around. There was lightning. And that immense thundering. I didn't know what had happened. And then it… I didn't even see the man with the camera until— It's just like it showed in the paper!'

'Oh,' which gave her none of what she'd requested.

She walked toward the door. Just before she reached it, she finished removing the rubber band and unrolled the poster.

'Is that him?' he asked, thinking it would be friendly rhetoric but hearing a real request.

The movement of the back of her head as she looked here and there became nodding. She glanced back. 'Why… did they make… these?'

'I guess some other people felt the same way about him you do. I was talking, last night, with some friends. This girl I stay with: she's maybe a few years older than you are. And this guy. He's an engineer, like your father. We were talking, in a bar, about whether I should give that to you.'