The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  How long have you been out here? said Tyler.

  Shoot, said the angry man in disgust. We’re havin’ a hell of a time out here, on account of some bad people. I was attacked by two persons with clubs, and I defended myself with a baseball bat. They attempted to murder me. One woman out there, she instigated the whole thing. They knocked me unconscious. They beat my head in. I get up, defend myself, police show up, and my attackers tell the police I’m just some drunken maniac. The D.A. takes their side of it. And then the bureaucrats take us down. Since it never goes to trial, I never get my say. They make me come down to court, and then they keep changing the court dates. Once I spent the whole day in court so they could tell me in thirty seconds to come back on another day, and while I was there I had to keep my dog chained up out here all day, and because he wasn’t used to being chained up, he strangled to death. I feel I’m beat down.

  I’m his only source of income, his mother said. I get my widow’s pension. It’s hard for me to maintain. I promised I’d help him out for four or five months. And every time we go to court, I have to worry about gasoline, gasoline. The trip to court and back costs about fifteen dollars.

  Where is all them court papers, Mom? said the angry man.

  He spread them out on the hood of one of his dead cars and began to reread them obsessively. Then he looked up at Tyler and said: My plan was to be out of here before the summer hit.

  How long have you been here? said Tyler.

  Last time we went to court in the truck, his mother said. An officer pulled us over for a cracked windshield and Idaho plates. So they slapped that fine on top of that.

  It’s like they’re keepin’ us broke, the angry man said.

  How did you end up here? said Tyler.

  Well, we came here originally around Thanksgiving, the old mother said. We left twice. Somebody told me about Slab City, and there are some good things about this place, but I hope we get out of here before it gets too hot. I’m afraid this heat will kill me. Put a wet towel on me, is the only thing that will keep me cool. And then this happens, with those people trying to murder my son.

  What made you pick the Drops over the slabs? asked Tyler.

  Privacy, the man said. And on the slabs, it’s hard to find any trees to live under. Them snowbirds are already in the good spots.

  Hey, said Tyler urgently. Have you seen a little black gal who, uh—

  By the mother’s trailer lurked a skinny woman who watched Tyler with a sort of weary gingerliness. Finally, as the angry man returned to his court papers, Tyler strolled over to her and asked her how she was.

  The skinny girl looked shyly down. —What we’re doin’ is mopin’ around. I used to have an apple ranch . . .

  How long’s it been for you? he said.

  I been here about fourteen months now. My boyfriend brought me here but then he took off on me. He’d already got us kicked out of the place we’d stayed in town, this condemned apartment run by a black con artist. When my boyfriend took off, he ripped off the best of my food stamps, ninety goddamn dollars’ worth.

  Yeah, they keep on kickin’ you in the teeth when you’re down, the angry man said, anxious to resume talking about himself. He showed Tyler a nunchuck that his would-be murderers had left—two pieces of steel pipe connected by a chain.

  Well, said Tyler to the skinny woman, how about you? Have you ever met a black woman named Africa who—

  She shook her head. —I don’t guess I got any enemies.

  I just hope you can get things together, the angry man’s mother said to her very gently.

  Tyler cleared his throat and said: If I gave you five dollars could you tell me if you ever saw Africa?

  Pretty much out here there’s no economy, said the angry man. I buy junk cars and sell parts. I want a good pickup, just a good pickup. I used to be a mechanic, but ain’t no work around here anyway. I’m in a pit of lions, armed with a flyswatter.

  My best friend died in my arms, the skinny woman went on in a whisper. My boyfriend shot her in the back in our house, right through the back door. I carried her off next door and she wanted me to hold her. I still have some bad dreams . . .

  And then what happened? said Tyler.

  They went to shoot my boyfriend, I think, and the gun misfired and then they arrested him.

  Things happen all the same though, the angry man’s mother said wisely.

  I have a headache, said the skinny woman.

  What’s for dinner? said the angry man to himself. Got some hamburger, I think. Don’t know how the cheese will hold up. Soon it’ll be cooler.

  Well, said Tyler starting to feel oppressed, maybe I’ll move on. What are you folks going to do now?

  Relax during the night, the angry man said. Enjoy the coolness and get the labor stuff done. I’m tryin’ to get this swamp cooler to work . . .

  Tyler peeled off his last twenty and gave it to the mother. —Maybe this’ll buy you enough gas to get your son to court and back.

  The angry man looked at him with big owl eyes and said: I could sure use some help, too.

  Tyler sighed.

  The angry man sat there for a while and then said hopelessly: Guess I’ll go into Mom’s trailer and try to swat off all the flies.

  | 575 |

  As for Tyler, he continued on his extended trace. Ten minutes’ footwork further out into the Drops he met a thin, bespectacled, beatific man with scraggly long hair who walked steadily in the hundred and fifteen degree heat, swinging his black-greased hands, his bare torso tanned almost to negritude.

  Everybody’s friendly out here, he said. Everybody works together. Even when the snowbirds come in, we are not like a big city. We don’t get involved in other people’s business. I leave my place unlocked. And if you don’t cause trouble, you don’t get trouble. You don’t have to worry about someone come up the road behind you and shoot . . .

  Tyler nodded.

  I been workin’, the man said. I do mechanic work. Sometimes the guys at the shop invite me inside where it’s cool, but I always say no. You get into air conditioning and then when you come out you gonna have a heat stroke. Anybody could be walkin’ out here and it could hit you all at once.

  Yeah, it feels pretty warm, said Tyler.

  Name’s Clyde.

  Henry.

  You find you a spot out here, you can make it. But if you don’t got tough skin, you ain’t gonna make it. I been here seven years.

  You must get lots of thinking done around here, said Tyler.

  Yep. I think about my past, and about my dead wife and about how to make a nickel; I’m always hustlin’ . . .

  I think pretty about much the same, Tyler admitted.

  Clyde gave him a loving gaze. I can see that you do, he said.

  I’m looking for someone, Tyler began hopelessly, a black lady, well, a small, slender black gal who . . .

  I hope you find her, said Clyde.

  You think she could be living here?

  You got some women that live by theirselves, and one black guy, but no black gals that I know of.

  How about past the Drops?

  You can go nine miles down that road and then it cuts off to the right and then it goes on to Calpatria, but half a mile down from here the people stop. There’s not over seventy of us, including Slab city and all the kids . . .

  And what about the other way?

  Drop Eleven is the last, said Clyde, sincerely sorry for him, and at that moment Tyler felt that the man’s kindness was as immense as the scarlet heart on the white breast of Salvation Mountain.

  What’s her name? said Clyde. The name of the gal you’re tryin’ to find.

  Oh, he mumbled, Africa was her name, but she . . . Maybe now the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen would be good enough, because Africa must be dead.

  Well, why don’t you sleep on it, said Clyde. If you was to ask your homeless, what does it take to get what you need, I bet they’ll all answer, an argument and a wait. But here, I could go
to anyplace here and get me a ride, food and a cold drink. And it’s not so hard to get you a nickel or two. We haul scrap iron to get by.

  Now the hot trees and trailers glowed in the sand as the sun began to set. A tire stood on end, now jet black like its own shadow, everything private and set back in the trees. A few silhouettes crept silently out on the sand. He knew that when morning came, scorching and dry, there’d be nobody.

  Later he sat out by Salvation Mountain, with the Milky Way spread out as rich as a stain upon the sky; and stars, stars, stars! Salvation Mountain was like a groundsloth, a hunkered down elephant or maybe a snail barely poking its head out of its shell, all whitish and jigsawed in the night.

  | 576 |

  A train, dark against the darkness, barely discernible, comprised a mere shifting of the night which hissed and clicked to itself.

  | 577 |

  He drifted through Coffee Camp one night in midsummer and there were no campfires, the river silver and still, with the trestle bridge’s reflection floating on it like a fallen ladder, barely trembling, as if disturbed a little by the faint harsh voices. Across the river, a spear of city light exposed an immense bat which then vanished back into its element. The next day he walked up and down the river, but the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen was long gone. He was getting so bored with disappearances.

  | 578 |

  I bear the Mark of Cain, he said wearily to the next missionary.

  You do not, the missionary replied. You are a white man. You are no Negro. I quote to you from Brigham Young, the second prophet of my church: Cain slew his brother, and the Lord put a mark on him, which is a flat nose and black skin.

  My Queen was black, said Tyler. Therefore, so am I.

  You can’t be Negro just by wishing it, man!

  Oh, yes I can.

  | 579 |

  Up above the freeway where the razor-wire was, they’d cut a hole in the fence with their wirecutters. The railroad or the city had patched that one up, so they’d cut another hole. That was how life worked.

  Got change for a five? a woman said.

  Nope, said Tyler. Where are you headed?

  I don’t answer any questions, the woman snarled. That rule comes from moi.

  Oh, well, then I won’t answer any questions, either, said Tyler. How’s that for a deal?

  The woman whispered into her boyfriend’s ear, who said to Tyler: I oughta gut you.

  A deal’s a deal, said Tyler serenely.

  The couple glared at him. Then they moved down the fence to meet their crack pusher out of earshot.

  Tyler sat under the lone shade tree until mid-morning, when he was joined by a black man puffed up with balloon tricks. He could tie a balloon like a pretzel, bite off a piece of it, and somehow insert the piece into the balloon without popping anything. Then he put a cigarette lighter in his mouth, and before Tyler knew it, the cigarette lighter was inside the balloon, too! The result was called a pregnant giraffe. When the black man started to hit him up for money, Tyler ducked through the hole and clambered up the embankment, discovering a long lost hobo camp containing a rusty tin can of ashes, a frying pan with no handle, now filled with leaves, a piece of angle-iron which had served as a griddle, dirty paper plates, a plastic spoon, a scrap of cardboard which had probably been used for hitchhiking since it said TRINITY, a filthy pair of pants, and many bottlecaps, to say nothing of used condoms baked and hardened to the semblance of bottle caps, everything beaten into the gravel by some seemingly irrevocable process. Far down below, near the Salvation Army, he heard sirens. Trains shuttled back and forth. He gazed at the segmented grey horizon of gravel cars and grainers, with the ruined Globe Mill in the background, and he longed to get out of this world, just to go.

  He heard the crackheads smashing bottles and screeching.

  Far away, a figure crossed the shimmering gravel and broken glass with what seemed to be incredible slowness, finally reached the hole in the fence, and kept on moving. Tyler waited. His new companion was a drunk in possession of many tattoos and two little puppies. The man had a kindly, laughing face. Tyler liked him right away.

  Drink? said the drunk, passing him a half-drunk quart of beer.

  Thanks, said Tyler. He drank. The beer tasted cool and good.

  My name’s Tyler, he said.

  George, said the drunk. He took the beer back, gulped it down to nothing, and said: I’m not doin’ shit without my morning wakeup.

  I get it, said Tyler.

  You catching out?

  Yep.

  You’re gonna need lots of water. And fruit . . .

  I’ve got two gallons.

  For two or three days, if you’re careful, you can parley that into nothing.

  Where are you from, George?

  I grew up on a dairy farm and got sick of it. I don’t know how many tits passed through my hands.

  A yellow locomotive flashed between the grainer cars and paused at their head. Tyler rose, ready to make his leap, but just then the yard bulls came in their white car. He sat back down again next to George. The hot morning shimmered above the gravel like a swarm of midges.

  Not half bad, laughed George, up here on top of the world . . .

  He felt that George was a good and sincere person, tranquil, beneficent, maybe even enlightened far beyond the false Irene—a drunken Buddha. He smiled.

  The sun beat down upon their necks and shoulders and knees. It was not yet ten. He studied the cars: Golden West, Cotton King, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific. The yard bulls drove back and forth, their pale car standing out against the dark freight cars whose pale grafittit was comprised either of exaggeratedly outlined capital letters or else of hooky loopy scrawls. A concrete barrier read: STINKY BOBBY “97”.

  George most regally pointed and said: You don’t wanna ride no flatbed. Them motherfuckers gonna bounce you right off.

  Railroad men in white helmets came carrying shovels, marching wearily across the sky. The railroad bulls whizzed near.

  Oh, he’s picking up his cell phone, said George. We’d better duck back through that fence.

  The balloon magician being long gone, George and Tyler shared undisputed possession of their shade tree, waiting for the bulls to go away.

  See, if it has two locomotives like that, or three, you’re gonna have a good run, said George. That car’s goin’ somewhere. Get on that car.

  When the coast is clear, said Tyler.

  A skinny bald man in a grey pickup drove right up to the hole in the fence and said: I’m looking for Seed. Skinny blonde girl who ran away from me. Man, am I fuckin’ pissed!

  I’m looking for Africa myself, said Tyler. But if I see any blondes, I’ll send them your way.

  Yeah, right. As if they’d come!

  The bald man laughed grimly, put the pickup in reverse, and drove off.

  Now across the embankment came a man in a loud shirt, holding a paper sack of beer. In the most lordly and self-satisfied way, he ambled up onto the coupling between two grainer cars and leaped on down. Just then George jumped up and yelled to the man: Get off them fuckin’ tracks! Police!

  Then Tyler knew that GOD NEVER FAILS, as is written on Salvation Mountain.

  | 580 |

  Well, well, who do we have here on my railroad? the cop said, grinning.

  George, Tyler, and the man in the Hawaiian shirt all loudly laughed.

  Right, smirked the cop. Get your hands out of your pcokets, all of you. Put ’em where I can see ’em. Now all of you line up in front of me.

  You have on the loudest shirt I ever saw, said the cop. My wife wouldn’t let me be caught dead wearing a shirt like that. I have grounds to bust you just for wearing that shirt.

  The man in the Hawaiian shirt was quick to laugh at this joke.

  Now what about you? said the cop to Tyler. Did you snitch on anybody?

  No, officer, said Tyler.

  Did you snitch on me, partner? he said to George.

  George was silent.
<
br />   Who snitched me off? said the cop. I have good hearing. I know one of you two did it. That’s against the law, folks. Who was it?

  George hunched and grinned and said: Guilty.

  What? smiled the cop, grinning like a shark, spreading squeaky clean terror. Tyler could almost see him as the high school football bully he might have recently been, kicking people to make his friends laugh, confident, always on the winning side.

  So you snitched me off, teased the cop merrily. As long as you snitch me off and don’t tell on your buddies, you’re legal, right? Or did I get it wrong, you scum?

  They all laughed hilariously.

  The cop paced up and down.

  What’s in the backpack? said the cop to Tyler.

  Food and water, officer.

  Any canned food?

  Yes, officer.

  Well, why don’t you try eating a can of sardines in front of me so that I can bust it across your face? the cop jested.

  Tyler managed a smile.

  And you, snitch, said the cop to George. Nice tattoos. What joint were you in?

  San Quentin and Soledad, officer, said George ingratiatingly.

  Hands on your head, snitch. You in the loud shirt, you ever been arrested?

  Yes, officer.

  For what?

  Drunk and disorderly.

  All right. I’m going to arrest you again. You were on the tracks. Or maybe I’ll just cite you. It all depends on my mood. As for you, snitch, I told you snitching off a cop is an offense—and he rattled off the number of the criminal code. —I sound just like a Bible, don’t I?

  Sounds good to me, officer, everyone hastily agreed.

  Now the cop caressed his pistol, which for some reason made Tyler think of old Missouri the Hobo talking about a weapon he’d seen once in his Nam days, called Puff the Magic Dragon: They could put a 40-millimeter round every couple of inches in the space of a fuckin’ football field in two minutes! —Tyler kept as still and quiet as he could.