Dhalgren

He looked up, with hunched shoulders.

Smoke rolled about the building top, eight stories above.

'What you doing, huh?'

He lowered his hands.

The voice was rasp rough, sounded near drunk.

He called: 'Nothing!' and wished his heart would still. 'Just walking around.'

Behind scarves of smoke, someone stood at the cornice. 'What you been up to this evening?'

'Nothing, I said.' He took a breath: 'I just got here, over the bridge. About a half hour ago.'

'Where'd you get the orchid?'

'Huh?' He raised his hand again. The street lamp dribbled light down a blade. 'This?'

'Yeah.'

'Some women gave it to me. When I was crossing the bridge.'

'I saw you looking around the corner at the hubbub. I couldn't tell from up here — was it scorpions?'

'Huh?'

'I said, was it scorpions?'

'It was a bunch of people trying to break into a store, I think. They had a dog with them.'

After silence, gravelly laughter grew. 'You really haven't been here long, kid?'

'I—' and realized the repetition—'just got here.'

'You out to go exploring by yourself? Or you want company for a bit.'

The guy's eyes, he reflected, must be awfully good. 'Company… I guess.'

'I'll be there in a minute.'

He didn't see the figure go; there was too much smoke. And after he'd watched several doorways for several minutes, he figured the man had changed his mind.

'Here you go,' from the one he'd set aside for ducking.

'Name is Loufer. Tak Loufer. You know what that means, Loufer? Red Wolf; or Fire Wolf.'

'Or Iron Wolf.' He squinted. 'Hello.'

'Iron Wolf? Well, yeah…' The man emerged, dim on the top step. 'Don't know if I like that one so much. Red Wolf. That's my favorite.' He was a very big man.

He came down two more steps; his engineer's boots, hitting the boards, sounded like dropped sandbags. Wrinkled black jeans were half stuffed into the boot tops. The worn cycle jacket was scarred with zippers. Gold stubble on chin and jaw snagged the street light. Chest and belly, bare between flapping zipper teeth, were a tangle of brass hair. The fingers were massive, matted—'What's your name?' — but clean, with neat and cared-for nails.

'Um… well, I'll tell you: I don't know.' It sounded funny, so he laughed. 'I don't know.'

Loufer stopped, a step above the sidewalk, and laughed too. 'Why the hell don't you?' The visor of his leather cap blocked his upper face with shadow.

He shrugged. 'I just don't. I haven't for… a while now.'

Loufer came down the last step, to the pavement 'Well, Tak Loufer's met people here with stranger stories than that. You some kind of nut, or something? You been in a mental hospital, maybe?'

'Yes…' He saw that Loufer had expected a No.

Tak's head cocked. The shadow raised to show the rims of Negro-wide nostrils above an extremely Caucasian mouth. The jaw looked like rocks in hay-stubble.

'Just for a year. About six or seven years ago.'

Loufer shrugged. 'I was in jail for three months… about six or seven years ago. But that's as close as I come. So you're a no-name kid? What are you, seventeen? Eighteen? No, I bet you're even—'

'Twenty-seven.'

Tak's head cocked the other way. Light topped his cheek bones. 'Neurotic fatigue, do it every time. You notice that about people with serious depression, the kind that sleep all day? Hospital type cases, I mean. They always look ten years younger than they are.'

He nodded.

'I'm going to call you Kid, then. That'll do you for a name. You can be — The Kid, hey?'

Three gifts, he thought: armor, weapon, title (like the prisms, lenses, mirrors on the chain itself). 'Okay…' with the sudden conviction this third would cost, by far, the most. Reject it, something warned: 'Only I'm not a kid. Really; I'm twenty-seven. People always think I'm younger than I am. I just got a baby face, that's all. I've even got some white hair, if you want to see—'

'Look, Kid—' with his middle fingers, Tak pushed up his visor—'we're the same age.' His eyes were large, deep, and blue. The hair above his ears, no longer than the week's beard, suggested a severe crew under the cap. 'Any sights you particularly want to see around here? Anything you heard about? I like to play guide. What do you hear about us, outside, anyway? What do people say about us here in the city?'

'Not much.'

'Guess they wouldn't.' Tak looked away. 'You just wander in by accident, or did you come on purpose?'

'Purpose.'

'Good Kid! Like a man with a purpose. Come on up here. This street turns into Broadway soon as it leaves the waterfront.'

'What is there to see?'

Loufer gave a grunt that did for a laugh. 'Depends on what sights are out.' Though he had the beginning of a gut, the ridges under the belly hair were muscle deep. 'If we're really lucky, maybe—' the ashy leather, swinging as Loufer turned, winked over a circular brass buckle that held together a two-inch-wide garrison—'we won't run into anything at all! Come on.' They walked.

'…kid. The Kid…'

'Huh?' asked Loufer.

'I'm thinking about that name.'

'Will it do?'

'I don't know.'

Loufer laughed. 'I'm not going to press for it, Kid. But I think it's yours.'

His own chuckle was part denial, part friendly.

Loufer's grunt in answer echoed the friendly.

They walked beneath low smoke.

There is something delicate about this Iron Wolf, with his face like a pug-nosed, Germanic gorilla. It is neither his speech nor his carriage, which have their roughness, but the way in which he assumes them, as though the surface where speech and carriage are flush were somehow inflamed.

'Hey, Tak?'

'Yeah?'

'How long have you been here?'

'If you told me today's date, I could figure it out. But I've let it go. It's been a while.' After a moment, Loufer asked, in a strange, less blustery voice: 'Do you know what day it is?'

'No, I…' The strangeness scared him. 'I don't.' He shook his head while his mind rushed away toward some other subject. 'What do you do? I mean, what did you work at?'

Tak snorted. 'Industrial engineering.'

'Were you working here, before… all this?'

'Near here. About twelve miles down, at Helmsford. There used to be a plant that jarred peanut butter. We were converting it into a vitamin C factory. What do you do—? Naw, you don't look like you do too much in the line of work.' Loufer grinned. 'Right?'

He nodded. It was reassuring to be judged by appearances, when the judge was both accurate and friendly. And, anyway, the rush had stopped.

'I was staying down in Helmsford,' Loufer went on. 'But I used to drive up to the city a lot. Bellona used to be a pretty good town.' Tak glanced at a doorway too dark to see if it was open or shut. 'Maybe it still is, you know? But one day I drove up here. And it was like this.'