The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  The liquor store man gave him an unexpectedly friendly nod as he locked up. Tyler grinned and waved.

  In the spacious coffee shop on Noe Street, two women in what looked like Catholic high school uniforms sat rapidly nodding, each girl’s hands tucked in her lap. The world was windy, clean and empty. —A woman on the steps of a Victorian was calling to a little boy who was getting into a car: Nicky, come here! Give me a big old hug! For a whole year Auntie won’t see you! Good boy! —But the child didn’t come back. He sat in the back seat, and a lady came around from the driver’s side and gently closed the door. Then she got in and slowly drove away.

  | 352 |

  He entered the Wonderbar and saw Domino, whose face now wore a profusion of sores like the red bulbs on the metal dance floor in Mexicali.

  How are you doing tonight, sweetheart? said Tyler, squeezing the girl’s hand.

  Oh, not too good, she said listlessly.

  What’s wrong?

  Just about everything.

  Same here, he said, but she, wandering through her own maze of misery, could hardly begin to find his.

  You know I care for you? You know the Queen loves you?

  Fuck off. I don’t know that and neither do you.

  A man came out from the urinal and slipped his arm around Domino. Tyler nodded pleasantly. The man glared and elbowed Tyler in the ribs.

  See you, Domino, said Tyler.

  Domino, her head hanging down, didn’t say anything.

  | 353 |

  He awoke with the taste of Irene’s cunt in his mouth.

  | 354 |

  I want a drink, said Domino, drunk.

  You see that man over there? inquired Loreena. He paid for his drink. And you see that man over there? He paid for his drink. That’s how it works.

  I don’t give a fuck. I want a drink.

  Loreena thrust out her chin and said: Would you stop that, please? It’s not getting you anywhere except onto my shit list. You know what I tell people like you?

  Bitch, I could smash your head right in.

  So you didn’t like the beginning of my little speech? Well then. I bet you won’t like the rest!

  But just then a john came to rescue Domino. He bought her three tequila sunrises all in a row. Then he placed a twenty-dollar bill on the counter in front of Domino.

  Enjoy that twenty, he said.

  Domino screwed up her drunken face and said: Whadya want for that twenty, a blow job? Fuck off. You can suck my big toe for twenty, you animal.

  Enjoy that twenty.

  I’m out of lime juice, muttered Loreena. Well, guess I can’t use a real lime.

  Loreena, I wanna go to the bathroom, Domino said. I’m ready.

  I’ll be right with you.

  So you won’t take my twenty?

  Look, replied the blonde. I’m not what you think. I’m a diamond in the rough and in the smooth and everyplace else. I’m a lethal weapon. And the only reason I’m letting you buy me drinks is ’cause my check didn’t come. A respectable person loaned me two hundred dollars but he was drunk and fucked up . . .

  A second john was watching them.

  Are you looking at me? asked the first john.

  No, I was looking at her.

  Well, she’s with me, the first john explained. She’s my wife. Don’t look at my wife like that.

  Hey, you old coot, if that’s your wife you’d better keep her on a leash! Your wife’s been giving me blow jobs every Friday night!

  Why, you—

  Wrestling, hugging, screaming, the two johns strove against each other like the rutting animals they were, while Domino laughed and laughed, with the dull clickings of a spent cigarette lighter, until her sides ached. It was shaping up to be an excellent evening; people were paying attention to her. But finally Loreena ran out from behind the bar with a cutting board, which she held high above the warriors’ heads, shouting: Now, stop it, boys! Stop it or I’m gonna whack you . . .

  Sheepishly, the men had already started pulling apart when Domino leaped down from her stool and screeched: You stop it! You stop it right now or I’m gonna call the cops!

  Shaking their heads, the two johns wandered out the back door.

  Well, said Domino, drumming her fingers on the bar with the triumphant click-click-click of black girls striding down Turk Street with their chins up, shading their doubledark sunglasses lenses with their hands, I think I deserve a free drink, Loreena.

  And why’s that?

  Beause I broke up that fight.

  You broke it up? cried the barmaid in amazement.

  That’s exactly right.

  Dear, you’re too friggin’ much. You take the prize. You’re so bad you’re good. Have an ever-lovin’ drink.

  | 355 |

  A man was pulling up his pants as he watched the magnificently dangling breasts whose lease had now expired. The mouth slowly began to drop open, like a rotten trestle giving way. Upon the lower lip a pretty silver pearl of drool gathered. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. The head slowly tilted on the neck; the neck was giving way, too.

  What now? the man said.

  Oh, go out there, and see if I can get lucky, the whore mumbled.

  Ah, said the man wisely, surreptitiously checking to make sure that she hadn’t lifted his wallet.

  Well, sighed the whore, I guess I should make my departure.

  She dragged her stained and stinking T-shirt back down over her head and let her calloused toes seal-dive back into the high heels. Then she stood up. The world rocked; she felt literally at sea. She bit her tongue sharply and tasted blood. That woke her up. She staggered toward the door.

  All right then, the man said.

  You too, the whore said.

  She opened the door and stepped out. The hallway was dark. She would have liked to stay longer because the man’s bed had been comfortable and the man was nice. He had given her a glass of water. But she had to make more money. Her feet hurt. She closed the door behind her and crept slowly down the hall. When she got to the stairs she held on tightly to the bannister and took her time. Now for the street door. She hobbled back into the night and in ten minutes had managed to achieve an entire block before two Brady’s Boys found her.

  | 356 |

  Sitting on a concrete bench beside a trash can, the Queen in somebody else’s ancient leather jacket and baseball cap drew one hand from shoulder to shoulder in an almost Catholic gesture of self-blessing, then hunched forward and began to smoke. Lines deepened around her lips when she inhaled. She held in that strange bluish air of hell, then turned her head sideways and breathed it out with a smile of pleasure. Against a granite wall behind her leaned the tall man with one foot up, his projecting knee like a wood-saw blade. He pressed his head back against the wall and yawned. Over a parking meter padded by his quilted jacket slouched Tyler with his cap pulled low, his chin on his palm as he picked his teeth. He stepped back three paces, folded his arms across his chest, stepped forward, narrowed his anxious, squinting eyes, and leaned his stomach against the parking meter.

  For the moment, vigilant uncertainty seemed to afford him the greatest integrity. He longed to think, to understand, to close his eyes and see some certain and loving image whose kiss would purify him. He stood against the parking meter, trying to decide whether he still loved the Queen, and what kind of love he’d been full of if it could be destroyed like this, and whether he ought to go away from her forever.

  Henry, she said, not looking at him.

  Yeah.

  C’mere.

  He came.

  Henry, I see what you’re thinkin’. Baby, you think I can’t see right into your heart?

  I know you can see, he whispered.

  S’pose I was what you used to think I was. You think I really could’ve been that?

  Closing his eyes, he thought for a long time. —Yeah, he said. You were perfect. Until you georgia’d Domino.

  Allrightie. You think your nightmares about Irene gonna c
ome back now?

  Yeah.

  I’m so sorry, honey. Queen’s so sorry for you. Henry, lemme ask you one more thing. If I was perfect then an’ I’m not perfect now, why might that be?

  I don’t know. Because—because you—

  God did it, she said with terrifyingly burning eyes. He sent His Son, our Enemy, down here to be on our level for a while. You think Jesus didn’t sweat an’ piss like everybody else? You think He didn’t get fearful an’ stupid like us?

  | 357 |

  Do you think that Christ could be here now? Irene had once asked him despairingly.

  What do you mean, honey?

  If I went down to that Loaves and Fishes place in Sacramento and put up a notice on the bulletin board saying if one of you homeless guys is Christ please come and meet me next Thursday, would Christ see it and come?

  Tyler cleared his throat. —Sure, Irene, but maybe He wouldn’t be your Christ.

  What do you mean? cried his sister-in-law in horror. What you’re saying goes against the Bible. There’s only one Christ, and He’s my God. He’s my Lord. I swear before you and before God I believe that.

  In that case, Tyler had said, all you have to do is learn to recognize your own Christ, or else trust God to bring Him to you.

  And now here he was, like an earthquake survivor pinioned and half crushed beneath some vaulted slab, unable to believe or disbelieve, unable to take his own advice.

  | 358 |

  The Queen said: It’s up to you to figure all this out. My girls, now, I gotta give ’em some happiness. But maybe I wanna give you somethin’ different. Somethin’ more secret than happiness. Do you believe that?

  A warm shadow passed across his heart, and he whispered: Yes.

  An’ you know why I did what I did to Domino? Justin, move away please.

  Why? said Tyler.

  Want some business, want some business, muttered the tall man across the street. Gonna sell you pussy, world. Gonna sell you dimes and keys. Gonna hotwire this car.

  She laid down her head on his shoulder. —You really wanna know why? ’Cause she kept insulting you. An’ I love you. I couldn’t take it no more. I don’t care half as much about anyone else.

  | 359 |

  Sitting astride him, tall and black, she gazed down at him with loving eyes. Yes, he was close to another pair of eyes, brown eyes which blinked and sometimes cried and sometimes even saw the soul-smell of another human being, smelled the feeling and heard the smell of skin, dust on skin, dirt and sand rubbing between bodies. And once again he believed; so he was innocent again; he had never sinned. He did not need to think anymore because what he and she called love (it must have been love) numbed everything else into irrelevance while his world decayed. How could he make his life right? Where would anything end? She led him into the Pleroma to show him the Four Darknesses of Cain and the Four Lights. And because he was a Canaanite now and forever, he preferred the Darknesses to the Lights. Cain was not so evil, he kept saying to himself. Cain at least killed his brother only out of jealousy, not as a sacrifice to God, Who called on Abraham to sacrifice his son, and Who sacrificed Jesus to Himself to consolidate Himself upon the world of Canaanites whose demonic dreams and desperations sent them wandering from one necessity to another until all volition had been scorched out of them, and they gave or thieved without sin. It was a sin when Cain killed Abel, but in his centuries of after-struggle across primeval continents all of a lichenous red color darkened by blue haze, he committed no further sin when he killed and robbed for his living, just as the false Irene was sinless, and Domino with her crazed lightning-flashes of intellect sought only to escape her own torment like a fish wriggling on a gill-hook, so wasn’t she sinless, too? Wasn’t the Queen perfect? (He didn’t think that merely because she loved him. He swore it.)

  You love me? she said.

  Yeah.

  You gonna let me hurt you?

  Sure. Yes, I will.

  Does it hurt now, baby, what I’m doin’ to you?

  I feel it, all right.

  Tell me to do it again.

  Do it again, Africa.

  Does it hurt?

  It kind of . . . —Oh! It hurts!

  Does it hurt?

  Yeah. I love you—

  Does it hurt?

  Oh—

  He thought less and less about Irene—less about his business also, and people who met Tyler at this stage frequently thought him abstracted, careworn, apprehensive, even sad. In truth he’d changed vastly, as he himself knew, although whether for worse or for better he really couldn’t say. The Queen absorbed him. He believed that he was learning intensely beautiful and secret things.

  * * *

  •BOOK XXIII•

  * * *

  Justin

  •

  * * *

  And he did plot with Cain and his followers from that time forth.

  Book of Mormon, Helaman 6.27

  * * *

  •

  | 360 |

  Heh, heh, heh! Justin got hit by a car!

  And the red ambulance light pulsed right through the window of Jonell’s Bar, where a man was saying: I’ll sell it to you for twenny dollars. (Around the corner, Chocolate didn’t hear. She was busy singing to the passing cars: This is your knot, this is my slot, do it on the dot, cash!)

  Lookit Justin there! Fool got hit by a car!

  Heh, heh, heh!

  Your cab’s here, said the old barmaid to a drunk.

  I didn’t call no cab.

  Oh, yes you did.

  I’m not leavin’.

  Oh, get out! —The barmaid tried to snatch his beer away, but he seized it and brandished it threateningly over her face.

  Heh, heh, heh!

  You see that wrestling thing on TV? laughed the twenty-dollar man. Now these two here, they’re gonna wrestle. Bets, anyone? I bet twenny dollars on Clarice!

  Heh, heh, heh! Ran right over Justin’s leg!

  Justin? Why, sure enough, it really is Justin. I always hated that goddamned pimp.

  Get out! Get out! screamed the barmaid.

  You need a hand, Clarice?

  Get him out!

  A big man came and began to gently push the drunk between the shoulderblades. The drunk wheeled round cursing and punching.

  Whoah, said the big man. I was just trying to give you a hand. Asshole! Sonofabitch! Oh, well.

  He’s just drunk, the twenty-dollar man soothed him.

  Yeah, I knew that, said the big man.

  The drunk staggered outside and waved his taxi away imperiously. The taxi driver grimaced, waiting for the one whom he was sure would be the real fare, the willing, generous customer of whom we all dream. Then the drunk caught sight of the cherry-colored ambulance lights. He shambled over to his fellow spectators and began to enjoy the ambulance’s screams. But somebody cut the siren, and he swore, disappointed.

  Oh, I’m all right, said the tall man, sitting regally in the back of the ambulance. Blood ran down his ankles. White men in white coats attended him most obsequiously, and the crowd gazed up at him through the open door. He was their entertainment.

  Who’s that nigger? said the drunk.

  Watch your mouth, a black man warned him. If you wasn’t such a lush I’d beat your whitebread ass.

  Perhaps that sallow drunk should have taken the hint. But he needed to feel confident in his life. It was only when he drank that he felt he could be anything. He felt this precisely because his perceptions had grown so constricted that he could no longer be cognizant of his limitations, like those old people who when sight, hearing and memory slip away make unflattering remarks in loud voices about others who are still present but out of their dwindling sensory range. How amazed they’d be, if they understood that the nasty man who’d long since vanished from their apprehension like last Thursday’s television show had just now heard them denounce his nastiness! For they’d meant no harm! Backstab gossip doesn’t harm anybody, does it? It’s only ste
am-letting, social sport, wit, liveliness, self-comfort like complaining over an arthritic wrist.

  The tall man, King for a day, extended his right arm to the crowd in a Roman salute. —How about if you just lie down right back here? a paramedic murmured, but the tall man angrily shrugged off his touch.

  I know who he is! the drunk suddenly shouted, proud of his immense knowledge. He’s a boxer! He’s what’s-his-name! He fought Mike Tyson! But did he win?

  The crowd started to snicker, and the drunk, pleased with the attention, went on: If they were both at their peak, then Tyson would win. But Tyson’s all fucked up. He’s dead and gone.

  I’m all right, said Justin.

  Oh, he thinks he’s all right, sneered the drunk. If he’s all right, then what’s with the men in the fucking white coats?

  I’m all right, Justin repeated happily.

  You think we were talking about you? shouted the drunk. We were talking about Mike Tyson. Who gives a rat’s ass about you? What kind of representative of the black people are you?

  Blame it on the fucking black, man. Just blame everything, said the man who’d threatened to kick the drunk’s ass. He blindsided the drunk with an imensely powerful punch which sent the drunk whirling down like Lucifer into hell. His head struck the pavement with a cracking noise. Then he lay still.

  You got room for one more? called a man to the ambulance crew, and the crowd laughed.

  The black man kicked the drunk’s head again and again, shouting: You fucking white nigger!

  Justin, doped up and cracked up, had witnessed none of this. He was sure that all the commotion had been applause. He could not remember when he had been so joyful. Last week when Maj had gone off on Domino and then with her face self-carved into an unfriendly mask commanded him to step across the street so that she could mutter more of her private things with that Henry Tyler, he’d felt insulted, almost cursed, and his rage at her, which was really jealousy, seeped upward into his chest, making him dread himself even through the scratched and smeary lenses of his fatalism, and that jealousy was actually grief because this Queen whom he’d so faithfully served treasured up no more love for him. He’d wanted to change and leave nothing of himself behind, not even his wrinkled skin. And now his glory grew as multi-hued as the bright clothes which hung at sidewalk sales on Mission Street; and his dignity ascended; words and glances licked him like incense-smoke, and he became theatrical to please the world. No goddamned medic was going to stop him. He had never experienced any inability to understand why Domino set fires, why Strawberry robbed him and cheated on him and then sneered the fact in his ear with her ugly trashy goadings until he had to break her jaw; every wild beast roared sometimes, and now it was his turn, especially because roaring temporarily expelled the immense physical pain of his two broken legs as well as the spiritual pain of betrayal by the Queen, pain which clung to him like ice cold iron whose bitterness could be dismissed only at the cost of torn skin. And now, piquant sauce for his dish of plenty, Strawberry herself came running up Jones Street, screaming: Justin, Justin, oh, my God, Justin! She leaped into the back of the ambulance, whose pebblechromed bumper dazzled her with its silver perfection, asked the paramedics if he was all right, held his hand. —I’ll buy you a soda at the hospital, she whispered tearfully.