The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  With John’s Minox in one well-zipped jacket pocket and his pistol in the other (his armpit had gotten sore), he entered City Lights to seek out the ink-scented whiteness between the thighs of books, and just across from the register stopped to survey the tall, narrow surrealism shelf of paperbacks: The Heresiarch, Maldoror, Irène’s Cunt, My Last Sigh, The Tears of Eros, The Jade Cabinet . . . For sentimental reasons he opened Irène’s Cunt and read: Irène is like an arch above the sea. I have not drunk for a hundred days, and sighs quench my thirst. That made him feel almost happy—why, he could not have said. But he was well accustomed to situations in which not all the facts could be explained.

  In the checkerboard-floored poetry room where people sniffled and shuffled (the turning pages, surprisingly, were silent) he gazed out the window at the sparkling barbed-wire stars of neon rushing round the Hungry I outside (LOVE MATES, said the sign), accompanied by more neon, cars, and whistlers. A couple faced the wall of poetry, and the man said: Honey, one of the greatest, uh, Mexican writers is Carlos Fuentes. Have you read him? —The woman sighed. —I tried, she said.

  A young blonde clutched her throat as she wandered in silence from Bao Ninh to Edward Lurie; when she squatted down to touch the spine of Dreams of the Centaur he saw a single strand of grey hair in the back of her head. It seemed to him that if he only found the right book to suckle from, he would be saved.

  Another woman seated herself at one of the little round tables, pulled at her lower lip, and waited, or thought. Outside, a bus ground by. Someone uttered a quiet laugh. The shadows of browsers moved upon the floor.

  | 56 |

  With his hundred dollars’ worth of books in a paper bag he strolled up Columbus that hot night and found a new smoothie place with blue and pink tinted surrealist Rubenesque nudes on the walls, naked angels swimming in pastel clouds. A yawning old Chinese man passed the open window, and then, emerging strangely from the glare of a hotel sign, a drunk yelled: Smoothies, man! reached in, yanked a flower from a potted plant, and looped onward in the direction of City Lights, swinging the neck of his bottle with the same happy expressiveness of possession as the young lesbian a moment later who neared and vanished, twining her fingers ruthlessly in another girl’s hair.

  I don’t want anything sweet, Tyler said to himself. Let me get something that’s good for me.

  For a dollar twenty-five he ordered a urine-sample-like cup of wheatgrass juice, as emerald as ferric oxalate; it tasted, unsurprisingly, like liquid grass. —Well, I hope this does something, he thought.

  The beverage, thick and bubbly like spit, vastly bored him. He gulped it down quickly and went back to the car. No messages on his answering machine. A police van hunkered black and blocky at the corner, its antenna bent back timidly. He did not feel ready to sleep. Why not drive? Tonight the Broadway tunnel was bright and empty, only one stern cyclist with blinking red lights at his heels to share with Tyler that echoing dismalness. At Polk and Broadway a traffic jam compelled one driver to yell: Fuck, fuck, fuck! — Tyler made a face. Fillmore: hill and hill, and then twin light-lines with car-lights in between, black bay ahead, and then the lights of Marin—Tiburon or Sausalito? He suddenly wasn’t sure. On Lombard Street two men were grinning and heil Hitlering at passing cars. Chestnut: He stared back into the glowing red traffic eye . . . Without much reason he swung left on this street, passing the Horseshoe Tavern where John had once bought him drinks, and then a juice bar where he used to meet John and Irene; here was the bank machine on Pierce where Irene used to come before she went shopping; here was the Chestnut Street Grill, which John said was no good (Tyler had never tried it); Laurel’s toy store, Scott, Divisadero, then apartment buildings rising fog-colored in the dark . . . He was wasting his life.

  | 57 |

  His friend Mike Hernandez in Vice called his machine and said: Listen, chum, as far as I’m concerned, rumors of the Queen’s existence have been greatly exaggerated. Not much comes out of that parking garage except the odd D.U.I. Well, I guess it’s always good for the occasional blowjobbing or flatbacking bust, but there haven’t even been too many of those lately. Sometimes I catch ’em across the street. If there is a Queen, you know who might know about it, uh, what’s his name, uh, Dan Smooth; you don’t wanna—

  The machine beeped and cut Mike Hernandez off.

  Hernandez called again. —Right, well, as I was saying, we don’t use him if we don’t have to, but the guy knows a lot. Lemme see if I have his . . . Hell, kind of a mess here. You know who might—no, screw that, just try the Sacramento listings, although I sometimes see him drinking by himself in North Beach. Anyway, gotta go, buddy; good luck with it. Gimme a—

  The machine cut him off.

  John called his machine and said: Disregard my other message. I don’t need to talk to you after all.

  Brady called his machine and said: Listen, this is you know who; I forgot to say if you have any more of those surveillance reports, enclose those with your bill; I need ’em for my files.

  The red light winked slyly. Outside he heard the finger-on-picket-fence sound of a key in a car lock.

  The dental hygienist called his machine and said: Mr. Tyler, this is Marlene at Dr. Kinshaw’s office, and we have you scheduled for Tuesday for your six-month checkup and cleaning. Could you please call me if you have any problems in keeping that appointment? If not, I’ll look forward to seeing you on Tuesday at 10:30.

  Somebody called his machine and didn’t leave a message.

  Somebody did the same thing, again and again.

  | 58 |

  In the waxed faux-marble corridors of the municipal court building in Sacramento, double rows of reflected ceiling lights distorted themselves from circles into ovoids, and the jurors sworn, potential and alternate sat (the lucky early birds) or leaned against the walls, professional types complaining about how business was going to hell in their absence, while retirees declaimed about their children or the state of public schools today. A leggy woman looked around helplessly, then finally seated herself upon her briefcase, knees straining together as she sipped from a carton of chocolate milk. —I was raised a Catholic, and even I had second thoughts, the lady beside her said.

  The door to Department Forty opened, and inside Tyler saw the table where the greasy-haired defendant, a boy, sat slumped beside a maternal public defender. Beside them swaggered the bailiff with his hands on his hips. Ceiling lights reflected on the D.A.’s balding forehead. The D.A. looked very pleased with himself. It must be an open-and-shut case of rape or something of the sort, yes, something unsavory, because old Dan Smooth, dressed in his Sunday best, was still sitting in the hall, waiting to be called as an expert witness.

  Yeah, what’re you going to do for me, bub? he said. You’re Henry Tyler. Are you going to do for me what old John Tyler did for the Whigs?

  Got time to meet me for a drink later this afternoon, Mr. Smooth?

  Well, uh, Henry, I don’t know how long this shindig is going to last. And I did say what’re you going to do for me?

  I’ll pay for the drinks.

  Not good enough. Everybody wants to buy old Dan Smooth a drink. All the chippies are vying for the privilege of . . . What do I need your alcohol for?

  Mike Hernandez down in San Francisco tells me you’re a very honest and generous man, Tyler hazarded.

  He does, now, does he? Doesn’t sound like the Mike Hernandez I know, that skinny little . . .

  Daniel Clement Smooth, please, said the bailiff.

  Oh, they’re playing my song, said Smooth. I don’t mind telling you that I enjoy it. How about tomorrow? I’ll meet anyone, any time. I’m a democratic kind of guy.

  Can’t do it, Mr. Smooth—

  Call me Dan.

  All right, Dan. I have some business down in L.A.

  Mr. Smooth, if you don’t come into the courtroom right now there’s going to be a bench warrant issued, said the bailiff.

  All right, Henry, mumbled Smooth. I’ll be at Vesuvio’s
in North Beach on Friday round about eight o’clock . . .

  He adjusted his soiled necktie and followed the bailiff importantly inside, bearing a sheaf of photographs in a translucent plastic envelope.

  Tyler let out a weary breath.

  In the jury pool lounge some were sitting with their heads in their hands, some were reading, a few completing their voir dire questionnaires, and many were good-humoredly laughing, playing cards while bystanders called out advice. Tyler sat down among them for a moment and thought about Irene.

  | 59 |

  Vesuvio’s, eh? That fancy tourist place? It hardly seemed like a Dan Smooth kind of place. It definitely wasn’t a Tyler sort of place—unless Tyler were trying to impress, entertain, comfort or prey upon Irene. Its Sacramento analogue might be—what? Tyler’s thoughts were covered with mold, like the bluish-purple felt on the pool tables upstairs at the Blue Cue, John’s kind of place, where laughingly incompetent couples paid thirteen dollars an hour to bend and click, the women often saying shit in low voices when they missed, an Asian girl in a black, black miniskirt cleaning up after them, setting the balls back into the triangular form and shaking them, laying the cue ball exactly onto the dot, gathering up used drinks from the long metal bar which guarded an expanse of tall mirror. (Tyler’s kind of place was the Swiss Club, an ancient bar which smelled of cigarette smoke and whose air oozed globules of weak light splashed with booze.)

  Dan Smooth didn’t fool him. Dan Smooth was not and never would be the John type, the elegant or snotty professional type. Dan Smooth was the sleazy barfly type, the lowlife type, the Henry Tyler type.

  Tyler knew a pretty little exomphalous court clerk who’d once made eyes at him. Every now and then he called her up and asked her for favors. This time when he telephoned, he wanted to know whether he could take her to dinner. It was time for payment, he said. Actually he was hoping to find out more about Dan Smooth. But the girl explained that she had a boyfriend now.

  Okay, sweetheart, said Tyler, a little relieved. I’ll cross you off my list.

  He had a dream that he and Irene were married and had a child, a slender half-Asian girl whom Irene was teaching how to throw a frisbee for the dog.

  | 60 |

  It being only Tuesday, Tyler possessed sufficient time to drive down to Los Angeles and back before the appointed day with Dan Smooth. His mother, bored and irritated by her own physical frailty, preferred for the sake of that novelty disguised as familial love to peer anxiously into Tyler’s problems. In short, she did not want him to go away.

  I have a little job, he lied. It may be lucrative.

  Then shall I call you tonight, dear?

  No, I may be out on surveillance all night.

  Tell me, Henry, is your work dangerous?

  Not really, Mom. I try to avoid the dangerous stuff.

  Sit down, said Mrs. Tyler abruptly.

  The rust-colored blinds were always down in his mother’s living room, her car keys always on the piano stool. Tyler sighed and took a corner of the sofa. The car keys sparkled. —How are you feeling? he said.

  Not very well, replied his mother almost bitterly. And worrying about you makes it worse.

  I’m sorry, Mom, he said almost inaudibly. Tell me what I can do.

  I want you to make up with John.

  I don’t know how much use that would be, said Tyler. Nothing like that ever lasts between John and me. You know we’ve both tried.

  But this is different. You know that, my dear.

  Tyler was silent.

  Henry, said his mother, gazing at him with a sad stern expression which he’d never seen before, I want to ask you something. And I want you to answer me truthfully.

  I know what’s coming, her son answered with a crooked smile not unlike Domino’s.

  Henry.

  Yes, Mom.

  Did you and Irene . . . Henry, did you betray John? You understand what I’m asking.

  I understand pretty well, Mom.

  Well?

  Mom, your question humiliates me. I’ve been humiliated so much lately that I just don’t have much energy to . . . Can you see how it might hurt me to discuss it, Mom?

  Henry, I want to know. I need to know.

  It’s too late for that, said Tyler, rising.

  For God’s sake! cried Mrs. Tyler, but her son, hanging his head, had already closed the door behind him. A moment later, she heard the coughing ignition of his car.

  | 61 |

  Sacramento is River City, they say, because it spreads its poisons, sterilities and occasional charms at the confluence of two rivers, but to me it remains Railroad City even if only in my wishful thinking; now it’s Car City and Mall City above all, city of hellish replications of arcades, gas stations, convenience stores, city without a heart, a strangely empty place whose downtown, once sunk down to river level, has turned its nineteenth-century boardwalks and Chinese doss houses into underground passageways invaded mainly by homeless sojourners and addicts of antique bottles (Peet’s Crystal White, The Perfect Family Soap); here, if anywhere, one might think, there’d be “meaning” or “history,” but instead one finds only rat-droppings. Aboveground they don’t care. The big developers try to keep the homeless out of their vacant lots; the city bureaucrats fine the developers whenever the homeless do get in and damage the public’s chain-link fences; and come summer most citizens get paralyzed by the ghastly sun, sitting indoors with sweat running down their cheeks—time then to go shopping or away. Come winter comes the rain, which fails to clean those graffiti-whitened fences outside the dwindling boxcar yards. The railroad tramps survive or not, uttering their wet, hacking coughs. And the street pimps sometimes use the slang phrase to pull a train, which means to mount as many women as a man desires. Meanwhile, the trains themselves crawl on ever more weakly, hidden among blackberries with flies all around. It’s been written that Sacramento only became the capitol thanks to sleazy railroad politics, whose expedient calculus of charging for freight poundage times distance required that this so-called destination city be erected in the middle of nowhere, to maximize that distance. As the city grew, so would demand; so would poundage. It all paid off. The long exposures of antique cameras show us men in top hats shaking hands, men in brimmed caps (the workers) lounging on top of locomotives. Here’s an old poster for the Sacramento Valley Railroad Company, whose trains began to run in 1856; by 1865 the Central Pacific Railroad swallowed it, running big cylindrical-nosed locomotives down J Street, locomotives non-aerodynamically boilered and belled in the dirt with their low cow-catchers pointing ahead toward progress, pale hunks of kindling in the open cars just behind. (In a photograph, a pallid figure in railroad livery stands on a high sidestep, his expression washed out to a bleak blankness like that high-noon dirt street streaked and tracked. He’s nobody; he’s Cain.) But Central Pacific, for all its locomotives’ victory wails, lost out to Union Pacific at last. And so another business lay down to sleep. Union Pacific’s yellow passenger cars whose sides read SILVER STATE and MONTEREY and SALINAS VALLEY rolled back and forth between heaven, wherever that may be, and earth, which is Sacramento, pulled by glossy black locomotives. And in innocent complacency over their attainments, the Union Pacific tycoons thought to epitomize Railroad City forever. But now in the oldest grimiest honeycombs of this commercial hive I find dead hollow boxcars; I see bleached ties between rusty tracks. The dank muffled deadness inside empty boxcars swallows history’s echoes. Who cares about history anyway? This is America. Moreover, this is California. I just read in the Sacramento Bee this morning a caution to parents selecting schools for their children: If the library contains any textbook which proclaims: Someday we will put a man on the moon, that book is not only obsolete, but dangerously obsolete, like the wide spaces between buildings and tracks in the old days. How much more so Plato and Kepler, or the near-exterminated California Indians! Everything movable, liquid, alive like long singing trains must someday become immovable like the yellow, frozen wrinkled to
es in the Sacramento morgue, which are more lifeless still in juxtaposition to the humming fridge. (This place has the most amazing air flow capacity, a pathologist said to me once. The air pressure’s negative in relation to the rest of the building, you see, so there will be no odor whatsoever!) Yellow toes, and brown toes, hard and stiff, toes under clean white sheets; toes hard like ceramic or plastic, clean and stiff—that’s what we leave to our heirs before reentering the no longer track-streaked dirt we came from. Sacramento leaves its rusty railroads, inanely captioned by those who write for themselves alone. Here’s a message on a boxcar wall: CAIN WAS HERE. An old railroad bum coughs, with bronchitis in his throat. Beneath the scraped paint-layers of color on boxcars I find only cold metal, which someday must rust. Drooping palm trees, long tracks look out from rusty multi-wheeled altars. Sacramento, once I almost hated you for your ignorant plastic conformity, but your rusting boxcars remind me consolingly that all your ages are doomed. I imagine a more happy futurity when the two rivers will play around your toxic ruins, silently transmuting your follies back into dirt.