Samuel Delany - Dhalgren

Copperhead's laugh was louder and harsher than the other's, rising and dying, as though responding to nuances of the performance no one else could catch.

Raven still draped around Tarzan, they staggered on. Raven's expression was now haunted and grim. Tarzan, hands hanging from his pockets and elbows swinging, smiled at the pavement over which they lurched, happily centered in so much attention.

The next day was:

Sunday — January 1st, 1979

(Headline:)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

"You sure you don't want to come?" Kid asked Pepper. Kid's face still stung from shaving.

"Naw." Pepper shuffled nervously before the bathroom door. "Naw, I don't like stuff like that. All them people I don't know. You just go on, tell me about it when you come back. I got some wine, from the liquor store."

"Okay," Kid took his hand from Pepper's shoulder.

Copperhead came out of the bathroom. "Hey, you sure we don't got to dress up?"

"You wear your chains," Kid said, "your lights, and your vest, and you're dressed."

"Okay," Copperhead said. "If you say so. Man, Nightmare sure looks something out there in them red velvet pants. Like a God-damn spade!"

Kid's concession to festive dress, beside washing and shaving, had been to hang his brass orchid from a neck chain. As he walked up the hall-a water drop ran his bare ankle — the Ripper stopped him to whisper: "You really gonna let that boy go up there like that?" which was the third time someone had said something about Baby, who had arrived ten minutes ago, naked as promised (and dirty as ever), with Nightmare, Dragon Lady, and Adam.

"Sure am."

"Oh, man, I gotta see this. I was gonna stay home, you know? But I got to go to this one just to watch."

"He doesn't have anything you don't except a foreskin," Kid said. "Can't you be cool, huh?"

"Oh, sure!" The Ripper beat down the doubt with his wide, black hand, "Sure." He laughed and went on.

In the front room, Nightmare turned around and said something to Kid, mauled beyond comprehensibility by laughter. The others laughed too. His thick braid glistened with dressing. To his leather vest, neck chains, chained cycle boots, and garrison, the velvet loaned a scarlet panache.

"Nightmare," Siam (who only wore a small bandage now) was saying, "you're wearing those pants so low your ass has got cleavage, man!"

"Shit!" Nightmare caressed his great shoulder, "they like to see my muscles!" There was only a trace of the shoulder scar.

Kid glanced down at his own, listening to the laughter.

Dragon Lady, legs crossed, sat on the couch: White levi's, white boots, a silver lame turtleneck, and over it a white levi jacket, sleeves torn off. Her usual chains (a trip to the hardware store?) had been replaced by silver — or at any rate, stainless steel. Her nails were painted platinum. When she threw her head back to laugh, on her big, stained teeth, sweat glistened just below her rough hair. She looked easy, elegant, and terrifying.

Adam, brown and glum looking, sat on the couch arm in his baggy pants and sneakers.

Baby sat on the floor in front of him, one dirty foot on top of the other, arms wrapped around his knobbly knees, a grubby hand on each grubby elbow, smiling like a happy, blond rat.

"Hey! Hey, come on! Now listen to this!" Blonder than Tarzan (who stood, oddly sullen, by the kitchen door), blond as Bunny, Revelation, perched on the back of the chair, turned over the Times and pulled aside his chains. He wore twice as many as anyone else, all brass and copper: "…'late in the afternoon yesterday, stalked through the streets of Jackson, terrorizing residents.' How you like that? So you guys were out terrorizing the spades yesterday? Huh?" His skin was the luminous pink some pale flesh becomes either in great cold or great heat. "…'committing acts of vandalism, the damage for which there is no way to assess, the rowdy band of black and white youths, necks hung with the chains that we have come to associate with the scorpions'—"

"We didn't terrorize nobody!" Denny (black shirt, silver fringe, beneath his vests and chains) sat with his back against the wall. "There wasn't nobody on the God-damn street!"

"That's cause they were all terrorized," Revelation explained. "Don't you see?"

"…'breaking into the Second City Bank'—?"

"Shit," Thruppence said (who had borrowed one of Denny's shirts) "we didn't do nothing yesterday."

"We robbed a fuckin' bank!" Filament (who had commandeered another) countered. "What do you mean we didn't do nothing? We robbed a whole God-damn bank!" She clasped her hands before her chin and looked delighted.

"A fuckin' bank?" Nightmare said. "Man, you're into some heavy stuff."

Spider, the youngest, blackest, and tallest scorpion in Kid's nest, leaned against the wall, rubbing the chains on his stomach, echoing Adam.

"…'It is nearly impossible, given our situation in Bellona, to identify any individuals in such an incident. Our reports are all from people behind locked doors and closed shutters'…"

"I can see all them motherfuckers now," Dollar said, too loud even for this merriment, "starin' at us out the peepholes. Just a-starin'. God damn!"

"…'Their number has been estimated anywhere from forty to preposterous figures in the high hundreds'…"

"You mean," Copperhead demanded with lip-thinning satisfaction, "twenty of us made enough noise so that they thought we was in the high hundreds?" He stood, triumvirate with Spitt and Glass; all three, staunch to dictum, had made no change in dress.

Glass wore his black vinyl vest.

Spitt wore his projector and his scar and his turquoise buckle.

Between Spitt and Copperhead, Kid saw the little girl in the maroon jeans. Her blue blouse was very clean but unironed. She kept raising her hand to flatten the collar, glancing down at herself, and rubbing her collar again. For the first time she seemed pretty. Kid tried to remember what his reaction had been to her before and what had changed it.

"…'in the high hundreds'," Revelation repeated, " 'which we would like to think'—"

"Maybe they ain't talking about you?" Dragon Lady suggested.

"Sure they're talking about us!" Priest insisted.

"We're the only ones who robbed a bank yesterday, I God-damn guess!"

"—'to think preposterous!' " which made Revelation laugh so hard he crumpled the paper.

"We gonna go to this fuckin' party tonight?" Cathedral demanded, catching both door jambs and swinging his bulk into the room. He swung back. The optic strand glittered around his brown neck, creased twice with fat. "What we waiting for?"

Kid grinned, nodded — was astonished at the silence. "Come on!"

They poured after him, laughing and shouting once more, out the front door and down the steps.

Pepper moved aside quickly.

"Change your mind yet?" Kid asked.

Pepper grinned his ruined grin. "Naw, I just don't feel like it, you know? I don't go for that stuff." His eyes flicked from Kid's.

Kid looked too.

From the bottom of the steps, among the milling scorpions, Tarzan watched; with a look of disgust he shook his head, turned away.

"Hey, don't let Tarzan stop you from coming," Kid said, suddenly angry. "I'll put the horsemen—" he nodded toward Copperhead and company—"on him so fast he won't be able to remember—" he started to say: His name— "what he thought it was he didn't like about you."

"Naw," Pepper said. "Naw, that ain't it. I'd just be all … Look, I thought I'd get me some wine, see. And maybe go over and say hello to Bunny. I ain't seen Bunny in a God-damn long time. She crazy, you know? She really a nut. But she's a good guy."

"Okay." Kid grinned back. "You do that."

"Uh…" Pepper said after him, "you have a nice time at the party…"