Dhalgren

Thirteen caught his arm him, "You're all right…?" and staggered with him.

Behind me the door creaked; two people had gone back in.

"You come on with me," Thirteen said, "now you just come on."

Back in the living room, California was looking at the wall by the door. He'd pulled all his hair in front of his shoulder and was sort of hanging on it "Jesus Christ," he said. "Will you look at that. I mean, Jesus Christ That's where she splattered when she went through." He started to touch one of the dime-sized spots, already dried brown dry, but shook his went back to hanging on his hair. "/I mean,/Jesus."

Raven, Copperhead; and Cathedral came in frowning at the constellations of her blood, but kept on going

"You see the way she went at that motherfucker," Pepper said somewhere out in the hall. "I thought she was gonna kill him. I wouldn't blame her, man. I wouldn't blame her one bit the way that motherfucker done. Did you see the way they were going after each other, man? I never seen anything like that before in my life. I really thought we was gonna have chopped meat for dinner the way he lit into her with those that orchid, man, I really thought…"

I went back [into] the kitchen.

Rose was looking out the screening, a brown fist up beside her face chin. I went up behind her and looked too. The other four children were outside.

Sammy was standing at the place where the curb cracked away into the street. With the toe of his sneaker, he touched the coil of Nightmare's chain.

Stevie, who'was sitting on the steps, stood up.

Sammy started to pick up the chain.

Stevie said, "Don't you touch that, nigger!"

Marceline laughed, but I don't think at that.

Sammy looked up and looked embarrassed, went to pick up a board lying out in the street, and played by himself.

I touched Rose on the shoulder and she jumped.

"Don't you want to play with the other kids outside?"

She just blinked. (Somebody should do something about the black spade confusion of her hair — cut it short, I guess.) Then She went out and sat on the steps as far away from the others as she could get

Only Stevie and Marceline are really friends. Woodard (who is sort of mustard colored, both his skin and his wooly top) merely hangs around them.

I feel sorry for them all.

Later that evening, I using a piece of pine plank for a writing hoard, I /went out to/ sitting on the steps /and/ was working on playing in my a poem. I had been there perhaps two hours when I noticed the chain /was/ had been removed gone.

I sat a few minutes more. Then I went inside.

Just after Denny went out this morning, Lanya brought hack my notebook — this one. The first thing I did was look inside the front cover. "What about the new poems?" I asked.

"Since they're all on loose sheets I decided I'd keep them in my desk drawer. If you want them…?"

"No," I told her. "That8['?]s probably better. They'd just fall out."

"Did you see the article /in the Times/ about you and the children?" [s]he asked when we went out into the back yard.

"No," I said.

So she told me.

It made me feel strange.

Once we went back /up/ into /into the loft/ to get something. She found a piece of paper down tween /between/ the wall and the mattress. "Are you finished with this one?"

I looked at it. "I guess so. It isn't complete, really. But I'm not interested in it any more."

"I'll just take it back to my place and keep it with the others," and she put it in her [-?] shirt pocket; then she jumped down, cried out when [she?] landed, "Owwww!"

I thought she'd twisted her ankle.

But it wasn't serious.

We went into the kitchen; she looked into the coffee pail on the stove and frowned at the mess.

D-t came in with a paper. "Hey, man, that's something, huh?" He had it folded back to the article.

It was on page three.

"What I want to know," Lanya said, looking through the living room door at Stevie and Woodard (Tarzan was trying to ride them across the floor like a horsie), "is what you're going to do with them."

I was leaning against I was leaning against the refrigerator door with my fingers hooked arounding at the rubber flange that goes around the inside of the door. "It doesn't even mention George." I was pullinged. "It makes it sound like I saved them all by myself. It was George's God-damn idea. I was just along—"

Rose walked in, banging the screen, and stared at Lanya on her way to the next room. Lanya smiled: Rose didn't and kept walking. At the doorway she stopped, looked at Tarzan and the boys, sighed, turned around, went back—bang! — onto the front steps.

Sammy was playing in the middle of the street and did not look at her.

D-t moved the junk aside on the table (Marceline in the room with Tarzan was calling out, "Let me! Let me…! Come on, let me!") and sat on the up-ended milk crate to read the article to us. The crate was so low the table top hit him just below the tit. /He read the part about: "…/ during the holocaust, broke into a wooden frame house adjoining a grocery store already in flames and let out five youngsters trapped in the second floor rear bedroom. It is reported the bedroom door had been clumsily secured by the back of a chair beneath the door knob—"

"It wasn't a chair," I said. "Somebody had taken a fucking piano bench and turned it on its end. The God-damn music had fallen out all over the hall rug. Why. doesn't it mention George?"

"Sound[s?] like you had a reporter standing right there Watching you," D-t said.

I said' "There wasn't anybody," I said. A piece of rubber pulled free, only I dropped it and couldn't see where it had fallen between the refrigerator and the sink. "Just George."

"The[n] how did they know to write about it?" Lanya asked.

"I don't know," I said. "George actually got the door open. All I did was yank at the legs. The bench came open and all the music fell out On the rug. The top of the bench was still jammed up in there."

"Maybe George met a reporter later that evening," Lanya said. "He could have told the papers, Kid."

"…'The children are reported to be safe, but we do not know'…"

"Of course it doesn't sound like George to cut himself out." Lanya sighed and made a funny movement with her hand, grinding her palm on the greyn[?] formica. "Oh, Kid…"

Inside Tarzan neighed loudly and Woodard's hiccuppy laugh shrilled above it, covered in turn by Marceline's squeal.

"The real question—" Lanya looked up—"is what are you going to do with them. Are you going to keep them here[?]"

"You're out of your fucking head—" I said.

D-t said, "The guys like them—"

"How many days ago was it?" I said. "How many days ago, Nightmare and dragon [sic] Lady almost murdered each other? Look!" I went to the living room door. "There's blood all over the fucking God-damn wall—!"

Fist against his chin, Stevie was looking at me.

Tarzan had sat back on his heels and, concertedly, wasn't.

"Ride me!" Marceline said. "You rode Woodard before. Now you ride me!"

"Yeah," Woodard said. "You ride her now."