Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany Page B

palm.
    He looked at his free palm; scraped skin was streaked grey… He looked down the block. There were no vehicles anywhere on the street…
    No. Go back.
    Warm concrete under his foot. His sandal clacking. Slapping the wall; coming up. Seeing the doorway. Seeing the pipes…! They were on the left -hand side of the doorway. The blistered covering was bound with metal bands! On the thicker one, near the ceiling, hadn't there been some kind of valve? And had rushed past them, onto the concrete, nearly skewered himself; hit with his forearm—it was still sore. He was falling…
    He was turning; missed the curb, staggered, shook his head, looked up.
    The street sign on the corner lamppost said Broadway.
    "…goes up into the city and…" Someone had said that. Tak?
    But no…
    …seeing the light. Ran out the door. The hooks…
    The muscles in his face snarled on chin and cheekbones. Suddenly tears banked his eyes. He shook his head. Tears were on his cheek. He started walking again, sometimes looking at one hand, sometimes at the other. When he finally dropped his arms, blades hissed by one jean thigh—
    "No…"
    He said that out loud.
    And kept walking.
    Snatched his clothes from the floor, jammed his feet into his pants; stopped just outside the shack (leaning against the tar-paper wall) for his sandal. Around the skylight; one sleeve. Into the dark; the other. Running down steps—and he'd fallen once. Then the bottom flight; the warm corridor; coming up; slapping; he'd seen light before he'd reached the top, turned, and seen the day-bright doorway (the big pipe and the little pipe to one side), run forward, out on the porch, beat at the hooks; two trundled away as his bare foot went over. For one bright moment, he fell—
    He looked at his hands, one free, one caged; he looked at the rubble around him; he walked; he looked at his hands.
    A breath drained, roaring, between tight teeth. He took another.
    As he wandered blurred block after blurred block, he heard the dog again, this time a howl, that twisted, rose, wavered, and ceased.

II: The Ruins of Morning
     
    Here I am and am no I. This circle in all, this change changing in winterless, a dawn circle with an image of, an autumn change with a change of mist. Mistake two pictures, one and another. No. Only in seasons of short-light, only on dead afternoons. I will not be sick again. I will not. You are here.
    He retreated down the halls of memory, seething.
    Found, with final and banal comfort—Mother?
    Remembered the first time he realized she was two inches taller than his father, and that some people thought it unusual. Hair braided, Mother was tolerant severity, was easier to play with than his father, was trips to Albany, was laughter (was dead?) when they went for walks through the park, was dark as old wood. More often, she was admonitions not to wander away in the city, not to wander away in the trees.
    Father? A short man, yes; mostly in uniform; well, not that short—back in the force again; away a lot. Where was dad now? In one of three cities, in one of two states. Dad was silences, Dad was noises, Dad was absences that ended in presents.
    "Come on, we'll play with you later. Now leave us alone, will you?"
    Mom and Dad were words, lollying and jockeying in the small, sunny yard. He listened and did not listen. Mother and Father, they were a rhythm.
    He began to sing, "Annnnn nnn nnnnnnn nnn nnnn…" that had something of the fall of words around.
    "Now what are you going on like that for?"
    "Ain't seen your mom in two weeks. Be a good boy and take it somewhere else?"
    So without stopping he took his Annn nnn nnnnnn down the path beside the house where hedge-leaves slapped his lips and tickled them so that he took a breath and his sound snagged on laughter.
    ROAR and ROAR, ROAR: he looked up. The planes made ribs across the sky. The silver beads snagged sun. The window wall of his house blinded him so— "A nnn nnnnnnn…" —he made his noise and gave it