The Atlas

by William T. Vollmann

  How was work last night? he said.

  Oh, pretty slow. Eight hours of nothing. Then a fifty-dollar blow-job. That was a good one. Then three more hours of nothing, so I gave up and came back here.

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  She'd been renting herself out for thirty-five years now, years of nights like slow fat bubbles rising from the head of an electric eel, and one night after she had fixed so that she wouldn't need to vomit in his sink for hours ("getting well" was what the whores called putting the needle in), she sat beside him on his bed, and as a consolation prize for once more disturbing his sleep took him to the bottom of the murk where her story lived spiny and spidery like a snowcrab whose whitish spines glow faintly. The story began with her father's return, long after his second disappearance. The neighbors said that he'd come through the window one night in summer and that was how Mother got pregnant again, but neither she nor her litde sister had seen him that time if in fact he'd come at all.

  When the baby was born, he came back again and told the family that they were all to move to California. — Don't bring anything because you're starting a new life, he said. She was almost thirteen then.

  Mother didn't quite buy all that. She still told each of them to bring her best clothes and one casual suit. What that meant was two of her flour-sack dresses.

  When they got to California, Daddy was very nice. He was paying a lot of attention to her, which made her feel special. He brought them to his home in Daly City. He had a mistress who lived there, too, young, gorgeous, a college girl. He explained that Patsy was part of the family now. Her mother saw that she would have to resign herself to Patsy. She had the children. She'd do anything to make it work.

  Daddy made them strip naked. He said that he was the benevolent dictator. They had to hold his Bible in their hands before they were allowed to speak.

  When it was time to go to sleep, somehow she ended up in bed between Daddy and Patsy, with her little sister on the outside and Mother with the baby in the next room.

  She was ashamed to sleep naked like they did, so Daddy permitted her to put on her nightshirt, but no underwear. Then darkness winked. She lay still. Daddy's hand was on her leg, and it began to go higher. He told her that he was only preparing her for life. Still she did not understand his meaning. At that time she hardly knew how babies were made. She hadn't started menstruating yet, had only kissed one or two boys. Daddy explained to her that in many African societies it was the role of the father to deflower his daughter, so that the birth canal would be prepared for her husband when the time came. He was pulling her thighs apart now and she was screaming and Mother came running in. Daddy turned on the light. Daddy said: She disobeyed me. Her mother went to her and for a moment she still hoped and believed, and Mother said to her: It's for your own good. The light died, and Daddy was between her legs again. She screamed despairingly and Patsy was holding her down and Mother was holding her down. Before his face blotted even the darkness out, she saw the cattish satisfaction on Patsy's face.

  Confessing the blood that came out of her, Daddy said: I wasn't the first. I just finished what the other boys started. Their thirteen-year-old cocks were too small.

  When the old lady was telling him this, he wondered under how many roofs if they could be flung up like gravestones he'd see children struggling feebly in the darkness, and then the scarlet darkness inside screaming out into the night.

  When she turned fourteen Daddy sold her to an Ethiopian. He explained to her the advantages. She'd be an emancipated minor. She could do everything an adult could do except drink. The Ethiopian only wanted citizenship. She'd live with him in the same apartment building but she wouldn't have to sleep with him because she'd go on being Daddy's girl. He said to her so tenderly: I'd rather see you dead than fucking a nigger.

  One day she came home and stole all the money out of Patsy's wallet. She went to Berkeley and asked the first person she met to please let her stay at his house. He took her home and fucked her all night, then kicked her out. That was what seemed to happen every night. After awhile she learned to ask for money.

  Then I did that first shot of crank and that was it, the old lady said. That was it. I was totally sprung. I saw colors, and my shit didn't stink. Just one time. I was at a very low point in my esteem anyway.

  San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1993)

  In the middle of a rainy evening while he ate Chinese takeout the black woman lay naked, fat-breasted and snoring on his bed, her teeth gaping like a vampire's, her stockings still on, her hand seeming to twitch because it lay on her twitching belly, her hair down around her neck. Beside her sat the old lady on the nod, so peaceful and luminous-faced, dreamy, turning a cigarette in her hand, cross-legged, eyes closed. Suddenly she winked at him. She put a finger to her lips. Then she slid her middle finger all the way up the black woman's cunt, pulled it out, and began to suck. — The black woman opened one eye. — Not even at the bottom of my list! she scolded, and then they both laughed.

  It was drizzling very steadily outside. He was warm and sleepy. He lay down between them, and the old lady put his head so sweetly in her lap. Half asleep already, he imagined being her good Daddy now to undo everything and taking her to the beach. She sat on her towel with the soles of her feet tucked behind her, and she was watching the lotion sink into her arms. Just before her stood a red bucket filled with ocean. He had caught the water for her. The water waited inside the bucket, waited to be poured out, and if he and she should die, it would wait for a wind to blow the bucket over or for the red plastic to be cracked by time. She watched the ocean glisten on her fingers. The ocean shimmered faintly through the translucent bucket's sides.

  She took the yellow bucket and put an ocean inside it and poured it into the red bucket.

  The whore who'd been raped with the vacuum cleaner came in, smiling shyly, with a packet of white powder. — Excuse me, she whispered. I don't smell, do I? I'm sorry I haven't taken a shower today.

  THE BEST WAY

  TO DRINK BEER

  Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

  * * *

  Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada (1993)

  Outside the hotel window an Indian girl was saying: Pay me, and a white man said: It's in the car. I'll get it, I promise. No, don't come with me, bitch, you just stand there and wait. I'm going around the corner. I said you just stand there and wait! — Inside, an Indian girl—an Ojibway, this one—threw herself down on the bed, groaning. She'd been hit by a car when she was drunk. When they took her to the hospital she waited almost as long as the Indian girl outside the window, and then she said to the doctor: Excuse me! — What? said the doctor. — When are you gonna see me? — When I'm not busy, said the doctor shortly. — You're not busy now; you're just pokin' your nose in a bunch of goddamned papers! she shouted. What would you care if I just left? — You're right, yawned the doctor. I wouldn't care one bit. — So she got up and hobbled out and got drunk, permitting her leg to solve itself, which was why she'd staggered the dozen blocks to the hotel room so slowly, almost giving up; which was why she'd limped up the two flights of steps above the poolroom, squeezing the handrail until it groaned like her. Her face was yellow with pain, which was why she fell down on his bed while he bolted the door, and then she said: Turn out the fuckin' light.

  As he neared her, she grabbed him with a thick arm that was all muscle and ground his mouth against hers so that she could breathe into him her life of gin and beer and bad food, and she locked the crook of her elbow around his neck to pull him more irrevocably under her tongue while her other hand snatched one of his and put it on the crotch of her jeans. — Make love to me, she begged. Fuck me good. Just don't touch my leg.

  He was hers now and she inhaled sharply so that her breasts became as the upturned crescents of a buffalo's horns, and then she said: I broke up with my boyfriend. 'Cause he's jealous.

  You lonely? he said.

  Right now I'm having fun.

&
nbsp; After that she was moaning: Please make me come.

  Three hours later she sighed happily and said: You know what? I like your attitude. I like your goddamn attitude! I like the way you make love.

  I like the way you make love, too, he said. I like you.

  She kissed him. — If there was more guys like you I'd stay in town. It's so fuckin' depressing on the reserve. I didn't even go to my sister's funeral. Everybody cryin' and stuff. She died 'cause she drank too much.

  They lay there for awhile. She was naked from the knees up but she'd never taken off her bluejeans or shoes because of her leg. Her skin was not truly red except on her face and hands where she'd been changed by the sunlight. The rest of her was a pale yellow ocher. She pulled his face down and kissed him.

  I gotta go, she said.

  How soon will you forget me?

  I always remember everyone, she said.

  Then she said: You want to come with me now? Come walk with me?

  At that he felt a sudden uprush and was ready to go anywhere with her, but then his caution became the wise hard old yellow skull behind his face and his caution said: Where do you want to walk to?

  To get a bottle.

  He remembered how she'd been when he first picked her up on the sidewalk, stumbling, stinking-breathed, scarcely able to talk or listen, and for a moment he still wanted to go because if he drank with her he wouldn't care that she didn't care, but then the thought of it began to make him so tired and he said: How about if I buy you breakfast tomorrow and then we walk?

  She said: OK. I come tomorrow morning. I promise. I'll stand outside. I'll wait eight-o'-clock, nine-o'-clock, ten-o'-clock, eleven-o'-clock. I promise.

  You don't want to come up?

  No.

  OK. I'll come look for you at nine.

  She kissed him once more on the mouth, holding him so tight. Then he unlocked the door.

  How's your leg? he said.

  Better, she said. Better from all the exercise.

  And she smiled.

  She kissed his face one more time. Then she limped down the stairs.

  At nine-o'-clock the next morning she wasn't there, and at ten-o'-clock she wasn't there. At eleven-o'-clock he had to go. He thought: What does that say about her promises, and especially what does that say about the promise she made when she spread her legs without a rubber and I said: Do you have AIDS? and she shook her head very quickly without saying anything (she had my face mashed desperately against her neck) and I said: Do you promise? and she nodded . . . ?

  He was looking for the key to the toilet down the hall when an Indian knocked on his door for rolling papers. The Indian said: What do you think of this hotel?

  Not much, he said.

  Everybody wants a decent washroom, a kitchen . . . , the Indian said. I guess I'm here to punish myself. See, I'm from Alberta. I moved here to be with my wife. She was the most beautiful lady I've ever known. A fullblood, aye? Said she loved me. Then she left me, moved back to the reserve.

  I'm sorry to hear that, he replied. Somebody left me, too. Said she was coming back and she didn't.

  You got papers or not? said the Indian.

  Nope.

  Fuck it. Let's have a quick one downstairs.

  I need to catch a train out of this town.

  Fuck your train, the Indian said. There'll be another train tomorrow. Get a round with me, aye?

  Wide Indian girls were playing pool downstairs, some well, some poorly, some completely drunkenly, and the cue ball glistened like the whites of their eyes. — Fuck your train! his companion kept muttering with a scornful smile. They drank together steadily. His companion's cheeks glowed red like molten copper. Slowly his lips began to slide and melt and slobber into a smile. — Fuck my wife, he said happily. If you want you can fuck my wife.

  That bitterish liquid, the color of stale pond water, connected him to the Indian girls sitting in a dim nook by a pillar on that drizzly Saturday afternoon. A smiling Indian man with long braids approached the bar and someone said: C'mere, my friend, and led him out. Another Indian came in, with his head lowered, and the security man with his shaggy shoulder-length hair who paced with his hands clasped behind his back immediately went to him also and said: This way. — The Indian dropped his head still further. Then he went out the way he had come.

  His companion was drunk now. It surely wouldn't be long before the bartender or the security man got him.

  I'm Scottish, his companion said. Well, a little bit Scottish. Mainly I'm Ojibway. There's a lot of us Ojibways in Winnipeg. That's us, and I don't give a fuck about the others. Those Cree. If they call me brother I'll drink their bottle if they're payin'. I don't give a fuck about them. See that cocksucker over there? He's Cree. He went after my wife once, so that's how he got that scar. See that cunt over there? That's his wife. I fucked her. She's Cree. She's just a slut.

  Indian girls with mountainous shoulders, a tiny firefly of cigarette in each immense round face, kept drinking beers, the greenish bottles flashing like jewels against their blue-black bangs. A fat woman was snoring in the corner like a gray jay hiding under the snow, her head curled down on her back. The security man lifted her under the armpits and dragged her slowly, determinedly, out into the rain.

  His companion drank another beer and burped and laughed and said: I'm fifty-seven years old, so I outlived my mother's age. I drink a twelve-pack a day, so if I make it past sixty it'll be a miracle, aye? So what is what I say. I been in Winnipeg eleven years, and I've fucked every hooker in this town. A little pokey-pokey, you know. Too much love!

  The beer was blondish-brown like the roots of a crested wheatgrass, frizzy filaments spilling down into the dirt deeper than a tall man's height, bitter happiness foaming down into his balls. His companion was hunting hookers now like a Métis with his long rifle and red headband riding close on his pony, aiming at a wide-eyed buffalo. He stood up, began to stalk two women playing pool, and fell on his face. By the time he'd discovered how to plant his feet beneath him again, the bartender was beside him, pointing grimly to the doorway. The man began to walk out. Suddenly he turned and spread his swollen grayish cheeks like an Atlantic wolf-fish whose jaws sometimes open to show in faint anticipatory chewing motions its sharp yellow teeth, and the man's gold-ridged black pupils glared and bulged forward as he shouted: You gonna try an' fuck my wife again? That's my wife you fucked last night!