Dhalgren

ever walked up Jackson Avenue?'

'I've crossed it.'

'Well, take a good look around it, talk to the people who live there before you go on to me about any of that George Harrison horseshit.'

'Paul here doesn't approve of George.' Tak nodded deeply.

'I don't approve or disapprove.' Fenster clinked his bottle on the wood. 'Sadism simply isn't my bag. And I don't hold with anybody committing rape on anybody. But if you want to associate with him, that's your problem, not mine. I think making all that to-do over it is the worst sort of red-herring.'

'If you're back down on Jackson, then you got him for a nextdoor neighbor; so you're more or less stuck with associating with him, huh? I just have to be friendly in the bar.' Suddenly Tak slapped the table edge: 'You know what the problem is, Paul? George is nicer than you.'

'Huh?'

'No, I mean: I know you both, I like you both. But I like George more.'

'Hell, man, I seen those posters Reverend Amy's giving out. I know what you guys in here like—'

'No,' Tak said. 'No, you're missing the point.'

'Like hell I am— Hey, you know?' Fenster turned to Kidd. 'Have you ever read those articles, the ones in the issue about the riot, and the other issue with the interview?'

'Huh? No, but I heard about them.'

'Tak hasn't read them either.'

'I've heard enough about them,' Tak echoed.

'But here's the point. Everybody's heard about the articles. But since I've been here, I've only talked to one person who actually says he read them.'

'Who?' Tak asked.

'George Harrison.' Fenster sat back and looked satisfied.

Kidd tilted his brandy. 'I met somebody who read them.'

'Yeah?' Fenster asked. 'Who?'

'The girl he screwed. And her family. Only they didn't recognize her in the pictures.' From something that happened on Fenster's face without destroying the smile, Kidd decided maybe Fenster wasn't so bad after all.

'You met her?'

'Yeah.' Kidd drank. 'You probably will too. Everybody keeps telling me how small the city is. Hey, Tak, thanks for the drink.' He started to stand.

Tak said, 'You sure you're all right, Kidd?'

'Yeah. I feel better.' He nodded at Fenster, then walked, relieved, to the bar.

When Jack said, 'Hey, how you doing?' Kidd started. His relief, the shallowest of things, vanished.

'Hello,' he said. 'Fine. How you been?'

'I been fine.' Jack's shirt was wrinkled, his eyes red, his cheeks unshaven. He looked very happy. 'I just been fine. How are you? And your girl friend?'

'I'm fine,' Kidd repeated, nodding. 'She's fine.'

Jack laughed. 'That's great. Yeah, that's really great. Say, I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Frank.' Jack stepped back.

'Hello.' With a high, bald forehead and neck-length hair, Frank had apparently decided to grow a beard perhaps a week ago: I give them to you crossed, I take them uncrossed… yes, that was who it was. Only he had put on a green shirt with milky snaps instead of buttons; and washed his hands.

'This,' Jack explained to Frank, 'is the friend of Tak's I was telling you about who writes the poems. Only I can't remember his name.'

'Kidd,' Kidd said.

'Yeah, they call him the Kid.' Jack continued his explanation. 'Kid, this is Frank. Frank was in the army, and he writes poems too. I was telling him all about you, before. Wasn't I?'

'Yeah, I've seen you around the park.' Frank nodded. 'Jack was telling me you were a poet?'

Kidd shrugged. 'Yeah. A little.'

'We been drinking,' Jack continued his explanation, 'all afternoon.'

'And it's night now.' Frank grinned.

'This God-damn city. If you wanna stay drunk, it sure is the place to come. You can buy drinks at the God- damn bars and you don't have to pay no money. Or anything. And anyplace you go, people always got stuff to smoke or to drink. Jesus.' He burped. 'I gotta go water the garden. Be back in a minute.' He stepped away and headed for the john.

Kidd felt a wave of disorientation, but the phrases he'd prepared before broke through: 'You been looking out for nature boy?'

'He's sort of looking out for me,' Frank said. 'We're both army deserters. Him, a little more recently. Only I think Jack's getting homesick.'

Kidd swallowed. 'For the army?' And felt better.

Frank nodded. 'I'm not. I left about six months ago. Happy I'm here. I'm getting a chance to write again, and it's a pretty together place.'

'You,' and at the reiteration he felt toward Frank sudden, surprising, and total distrust, 'write poems?' So he smiled.

Frank smiled back and nodded over his glass: 'Well, I've been sort of lucky about getting things published, really. The book was just an accident. One of the west coast little magazines puts out good editions of people who contribute. I was lucky enough to get selected.'

'You mean you have a book?'

'No copies in Bellona.' Frank nodded. 'Like I said, even that was an accident.'

'You been writing a long time, then.'

'Since I was fifteen or sixteen. I started in high school; and most of what you write back then is crap.'

'How old are you now?'

'Twenty-five.'

'Then you've been one for a long time. A poet. I mean it's your job, your profession.'

Frank laughed. 'You can't make a living at it. I taught for a year at San Francisco State, till I went into the army. I like to think of it as a profession, though.'

Kidd nodded. 'You got a lot of poems in magazines and things?'

'Three in the New Yorker about a year ago. Some people think that's my crowning achievement. Two in Poetry, Chicago, before that. There're a few others. But those are the ones I'm proud of.'

'Yeah, I used to read that magazine a lot.'

'You did?'

'It's the one that used to have the little curlicue horse a long time ago? Now it just has funny pictures on it. I read it every month in the library, at school. For years.'

Frank laughed. 'Then you're doing better than am.'

'I've seen the New Yorker,' Kidd said. 'But I neve read it.'

Frank's expression changed slightly and noncomittally.

'And I've never published any poems at all,' Kidd said. 'Anyplace. I've only been a poet a little while, couple of weeks. Since I came here. You probably know lot more about it than I do.'

'About getting things published?'

'That too. I mean about writing them, though. It's hard.'

'Yes, I guess it can be.'

'It's about the God-damned hardest thing I've eve done.'

Frank laughed and rubbed his young beard. 'Sometimes. You've… only been writing — poems, for a few weeks? What made you start?'

'I don't know. What made you?'

'I suppose,' and Frank nodded again, 'I had to.'

'Do you—' Kidd paused a moment, considering the theft—'do you find Bellona stimulating, making you