The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  | 472 |

  On Powell Street, the big guy leaned against the phone booth talking, his cigarette smoking into space. That was Brady. The hot stale machine wind of the subway came up from the grating and kissed him. —If it goes up above what we can handle, we call the cops, he was saying. But you can’t get contractors to do anything these days. So I think we’d better try to handle it. The whole Kloncilium backs me on that.

  After this, we’re going back, right? said a fat Brady’s Boy. I can’t take this no more. I got asthma, you know.

  Here’s the cops, said Rodrigo. Afternoon, officer.

  Howdy, said a policeman. Where are you folks headed?

  We’ve tracked the Queen to the Royal Motel right now, officer. We’re going to see if we can make a citizens’ arrest.

  Well, well, the Royal Motel, mused the cop. We’ve had killings there over trick pads and dope. We call it the Homicide Hilton. Ninety percent of that is black stuff. Don’t quote me on that. So you’re gonna try to sweep her in, huh?

  Well, we plan for a full Brady Search whenever Mr. Brady gives the go-ahead, explained the slapper, who was always considerate of Brady’s words and breath. —The night before, we decide where we want to go. In the morning, well, we get up, go outside, and see what’s there. Personally, I’m in the Empowerment Group. Our job is to go out and take the street girls away from the pimps, to empower ’em, you see.

  Oh, dial down your bullshit extruder, the cop said.

  Excuse me, officer? Excuse me! This is Mr. Brady’s righthand man you’re talking to! Officer, I’m a professional.

  Yeah, yeah. Well, good luck, boys. Hope you bring her in. She’s got a couple outstanding warrants.

  On Mission and Seventeenth by the graffiti SAD KING HEROIN a Mexican kid was puking something as translucent as Asian rice noodles while his mother tranquilly held his hand. The Brady’s Boys filed past.

  Hey, put me through to a Hydra, would you? Brady was shouting on his cell phone. Or gimme a Kleagle if you want; I just need somebody to bounce ideas off of.

  Two sad, pimpled, miniskirted women showed thigh in a doorway. One said: That Domino, some days she’ll act as smooth as a bumblebee. But other days she’s just an asshole. I’m takin’ it to the Queen. I tole the Queen . . .

  Look, baby, you ain’t tellin’ the Queen nothin’, said the other. You think the Queen got any trust left in you? Like that time you was rippin’ us all off, holdin’ out . . .

  Oh, shit, said the first woman. Oh, shit. Here come them fuckin’ vigs. Go tell the Queen!

  You tell the Queen. You’re the one that keeps goin’ on about takin’ it to the Queen. I need to get well. I need to make money. I tole you already, I sez . . .

  You think Maj is in trouble?

  Ain’t no trouble she can’t get out of, yawned the other woman. Man, I feel sleepy. An’ I’m sick. An’ my crabs be itchin’.

  | 473 |

  The vigs grabbed the crazy whore, who cried out: ’Cause I’m completely innocent. I just like to get my rock really fast and get away from you. Everybody says it’s only because of my confidence that the police don’t see me move oh so fast.

  Slapper, should we let her go?

  Yeah, bust her loose.

  Get out and never come back! Keep going! Keep going!

  See, this one’s a crackhead, a vig said to the starry-eyed reporter. You can tell from the reaction you get when you watch ’em. Now we’ll get up and move, an’ she’ll—

  You want me down on the sidewalk or you want me up here? said the crazy whore. I know how to spread my legs. My pussy is worth a million electrical dollars.

  | 474 |

  I hear you call the shots around here, said the slapper.

  Not me, said Justin. Queen does that.

  Aw, don’t give me your shit. You’re a shot-caller, right?

  That’s right.

  And I’m the slapper. Now what happens when a slapper meets a shot-caller?

  The Queen appeared with the noise of a cat leaping down from the wall, a soft rapid double-bounce.

  | 475 |

  It ain’t hot today, but it sure does feel hot, said the Queen.

  She stood with somebody’s unbuttoned flowerprint dress thrown around her nakedness like a robe, with her arms crossed over her breasts and the edges of the fabric falling away from each other just below so that her slightly protruding belly showed with light glowing from her navel as from a stained glass window and her crotch-moss clamped up tightly underneath and then the softness of her varicose thighs peculiarly soft and vulnerable as she stood so unmoving with her head thrown a little back and her frizzed hair slicked down across her skull and her eyes so huge and bitter far beyond suspicion and so sad.

  Okay, you guys, said Rodrigo. We’re gonna catch this Queen of the Scumbags now. That’s her over there. I have a positive ID from Mr. Brady. Post me, boys. Let’s go, you guys!

  My cousins and aunts and them, they used to call us you guys, said the Queen. My sister and I, we’d always say: We’re not guys!

  Shut up, bitch!

  I just blended in, said the Queen in a dreamy voice, but they told me that I sounded a little proper.

  | 476 |

  We read in the Book of Nirgal how in the epoch after Moses, when the Chosen People swept into Canaan, slaughtering all whose foreheads bore the mark of Cain, they presently reached an unknown vermillion land of purple shrubs and broad low W-shaped gullies. And they prayed that they would succeed in throwing down all the idols and enslaving the idol-worshippers, and their prayer was heard by the great God. Then a dark man sixty cubits high came toward them, striding across the dirt as red as Mars, and whenever he put down his heel the ground shook. And the man called out: My Queen bids me ask who you are, and of which tribe you come, and for what reason you enter her domains. —But the Chosen People were not afraid, and without replying to him, their great captains gave the signal, so that multitudes of archers shot him full of arrows, and he died. Then the Chosen People came on across the yellow grass, watching for lurkers beneath the dark grey-green shrubs. But there was no one. Now presently they breached a wall hewn of great blocks of marble chiseled with inscriptions in an unknown language, and saw the old pale yellow arches of the Queen’s city, incised with roses and sheaves in abundance, but the city was ruined and silent. Their great captains were greatly troubled, for they could feel the breath of the enemy on their necks. They descended sunken stairs and discovered only cool dry cisterns. (Later, anthropologists would find red shards with scribbly black decorations like pubic hair, and a plump-teated mother-goddess figure fashioned out of clay.) The sand was overgrown with flowers, and beneath it wormed many dark tunnels and galleries, but never did they find inhabitants or treasure. And they knew not what to do. So again they prayed to their God. And God said: I have commanded you to be great, and therefore to usher in the jackals to howl in this place. But the heart is not yet dead. You must ravish the heart. —Then God went away. So the great captains conferred, and one among them who was wise besought them to search for the temple of the idols. Then in the center of the silent city they saw a high place with a brass door, and they broke the door down. Listening, they heard no sound. The darkness was as rich and moist as the inside of a winebarrel. Their great captains called for torches. Then searching in a dark-roofed labyrinth of timegraven arches and columns upon which the Canaanites had carved flowers and snakes, grapes and thistles, they found a wet stone passage which they called the Throat. Descending this, and shielding their torches as best they could from the cold dripping water, they found swallow-caves in the rock, as if carved out with spoons, and the swallows flew affrightedly about their heads. The swallows had no eyes, and the eggs in their nests were written on in the same unknown language. And the Chosen People were afraid, but their great captains called upon them to remain pure in their wrath, and hearken to their God. So they went on, and beneath their feet the rock burst open, and there ran a skinny brown stream. On the walls
of the Throat their enemies had painted reddish faces then figures in blue-ocher outlines, and finally a blue female silhouette outlined in red ocher with a penis added. And the great captains cried out that this man-woman was unpleasing to God, and so they scratched it away. The roof was blackened with charcoal handprints, which they considered to be a mockery of their God, but they could not obliterate them, so they left them. So they descended the Throat, and as they went down, so fell a new fear upon them, because they saw marks of high water on the greyish-plated reddish walls. But their great captains exhorted them on, until at last they reached a cavern surmounted by a stone dais upon which had been painted many insect-legged figures within yellowish-white concentric circles, and upon this dais there stood an altar, and upon this altar there sat an Ethiopian woman weeping. And when they asked her why she wept, she would not answer. (Domino later swore to Bernadette, who was the only person she ever talked to about that night, and even Bernadette only heard her open her lips on the subject one time, one sad and early time before that fierce woman had entirely imprisoned herself within her new plaster mask of queenly dignity, that upon being taken away the Queen had swept the air with a raking, despairing gesture, then turned to her captors and said: I trusted these people. I had nobody else. And I still don’t. —But Bernadette had been there, too, and all she heard was the Brady’s Boys asking her yes or no questions; the Queen answered very quietly yes or no.) Then the great captains bade the archers nock their arrows, and they came forward with their trumpets, but one captain who pitied the woman held up his hand, and he strode to her and asked who she was. And still she did not answer. Then he asked her: Are you the Queen of this city? And the Ethiopian woman replied: I am. Then the captain said: Who is your God? And the Ethiopian woman said: Love. And the captain said: Who is your father? And she said: Cain. Then the captain turned away from her, and told the other captains what she had said, laying an accusation against her. And they judged and determined that she was a Canaanite harlot, fit only for death. And according to their customs, and according to the wisdom of the God who had led them to Canaan, to this city in Canaan, and down the very Throat of Canaan, they blared their trumpets and then the archers shot a hundred arrows into her breast. And as she died she cried out: I am Love. When she no longer spoke or moved, then they cut her into many pieces with their swords, as her iniquity deserved, and left her lying in her own blood for the vermin to eat. Then they returned the way they had come, and when they came back into the temple with the brass door they pulled it all down out of loyalty to their God, so that none could ever find the entrance to the Throat again. And the number of that multitude which came into that city was seven hundred thousand. And they took possession of that place, and lifted their faces most gladly to Heaven.

  | 477 |

  Actually, there was a woman I ran into last night, Mr. Cortez was saying on the phone when the tall man walked in. Mr. Cortez would soon go home to his wife and six children, with San Francisco shining white below him on the J Church streetcar line, and palms and clouds accompanying him all the way to dinner. The tall man folded his arms. Mr. Cortez winked and raised the peace sign, continuing: Her husband employed a guy and the guy didn’t work out, so they got into a little scuffle and both got taken to jail and she was really distraught and tearing her hair out. —Well, buddy. I have to go. There’s a client.

  He replaced the headpiece’s hard strange double breasts in the cradle, stood up smiling, and cried: Justin, my man! How’s life?

  Passing, said the tall man. Did Lily ever pay you off?

  Yes, she settled her account if that’s what you mean. Case closed. How’s she doing?

  Dead.

  Dead? Well, uh, I—so who’s in the clutches of 850 Bryant today? Domino? No. Let me guess. Strawberry?

  Beatrice.

  Beatrice D. Lorenzo, as I recollect, said the bail bondsman, delighted with himself. Let me call Room 201. Just Beatrice, huh?

  And the Queen.

  The Queen! cried Mr. Cortez in amazement. She’s never gotten touched!

  Tell me about it, said the tall man.

  A cop carrying an envelope, his pistol loose against his hip, wandered slowly up to his doubleparked black-and-white, waving to the meter maid who would long since have ticketed anyone of another occupation. Then he looked over at the tall man and the bondsman, cheerily calling: Hey, Mr. Cortez, what’s up?

  Peace, brother, said Mr. Cortez.

  Look, guy, said the tall man. We got a serious situation here.

  What’s her real name?

  Africa.

  Africa what?

  Just Africa. Maybe Africa Johnston. Just Africa, I s’pose.

  Mr. Cortez made a telephone call, shaking his head.—They have Beatrice, he said. But the Queen, well, they don’t know anything about her.

  | 478 |

  And all that night the ripples of desperation widened with the Queen’s girls scattering in the rain, long naked legs in high heels rushing or slowly gliding into the rain; and Tyler sat in the driver’s seat hopelessly trying to figure out what to do next as rain descended his windshield so that the parking garage sign slowly vanished under the white ovals.

  * * *

  •BOOK XXXIII•

  * * *

  Kitty’s Soliloquy

  •

  * * *

  If you do not presently meet the standard, now is the time to take action.

  “Getting Ready for the Physical Ability Test” (San Francisco police recruitment pamphlet), 1998

  * * *

  •

  | 479 |

  I remember somewhere in the Bible it says that dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off an evil odor. I memorized that ’cause that just about sums it up. An’ it also says: He who digs a pit will fall in it. Makes me so depressed. Makes me wanna kill myself. I’ve been fallin’ so long it’s like I can’t never see the sun, maybe ’cause I do my work at night time, but maybe that’s bullshit since I can also remember too much light that I be tryin’ to hide from like a bug. At least that lady I bought the sofa from, back when I still had a house, when I got evicted I got my money back, ’cause I went to her house an’ stole it, just for my own self-respect. Now I don’t got shit. I look like a fool. Know what end I shoot for? All ends, honey. Front an’ back an’ up an’ down. I know I got more at stake. I may act poor but I was born rich. God will make diamonds fall from Heaven. Do I believe that? I don’t even know. I’m tryin’ to act like a big shot but I’m just a sole survivor. I don’t wanna have to do anything crappy like pick up a nigger. But I do. What the fuck. My own grandmother was a nigger. I got nigger blood. Here I am, stuck with obstacles. Oh, I had riches. I had fruit inside me. I guess I was seven months along an’ then this drunk fucker tried to play with me. I wasn’t really his, but he didn’t accept that, so my baby died. Is that why I’m driven to drink? Why shouldn’t I be? I got receipts; I’m legal; I’m a certified washup. Sometimes I do what I gotta do but I ain’t no street woman. I do it ’cause I wanna find a gentleman to save me, an’ they know it. But they get on my damn nerves. Always want me to give ’em hits. I work hard for my medicine. I need it as much as they do. Everytime I go over to them for friendship, I have to fuck up my cunt an’ smoke up my money just for them. I got one john, I was living with him an’ his girlfriend. But I always had to fuck them both, day an’ night, just to get a little weed. He always wants me to party with him an’ her, suck on his . . . I don’t like that. All of them, they always want me suckin’ on his dick. An’ his girlfriend, even though I eat her stinkin’ pussy she gets jealous. After the fact, she wants to argue with me. An’ I say, look, honey, I’m just a toy. I got no plan of my own. I’m just a rapeseed tryin’ to grow any old way. I’m just a tumbleweed, rollin’ an’ rollin’ through the desert, tryin’ to get away, but there ain’t no away. This is drivin’ me crazy. I be wantin’ to kick back an’ relax, find my patch of shade, enjoy gettin’ high all by my lonesome. But most times I
can’t. I try to get friends. They tell me come by, I come by with my own cunt, ready to work. I do it ’cause they drive me crazy an’ I give up. They don’t care, an’ they always be stoppin’ me, in between me an’ my pleasure. They say: Someone’s at the door. It’s like someone’s come to hunt me down. But ain’t never nobody there. It’s just their way to kick me out, when they done come already on my face or between my tits or in my ass or on my belly or in my sweet little cunt that works so hard for me an’ gets so tired. An’ most times I can’t never even wash, because just when I want to wash off their jizz or piss or whatever, they say: Kitty, someone’s at the door. They kick me out. That’s why I got no friends I can trust. They all smoke. They all freaky-dealin’ with me an’ with each other. Me now, I just wanna relax. Why do we always got to have that freaky thing goin’? I’m serious. I want to get the fuck out of here. But Heaven won’t take me an’ I’m not sure Hell is any better than here.

  I remember when we lived in L.A., I used to be with a man that used to scare all the men in the streets. They called him the six o’clock man, ’cause by six o’clock he’d always have been in at least one fight. Oh, he used to beat me so bad. Thanks to him I even got shot in the back. Some drive-by shooting was goin’ on because everybody wanted to ex* him; he was so hated. It was on the freeway, an’ then this gangstermobile pulled up an’ fired one gunshot into our car. It hit me down under my shoulderblades. I started feelin’—oh, how can I even tell you? I don’t wanna discuss it. Well, I passed out. My six o’clock man wouldn’t let me go to the hospital ’cause he said that was snitching. So I laid on my tummy for about two weeks an’ then I . . . Sometimes it still hurts. That was about three years back. An’ one night he put a Mark on me so if I run away he could always find me an’ catch me. See it here, on my forehead? It’s invisible in the wrong light, but it says I’m his. It says that I’m just his kitty, an’ he can sell me or punish me or kick me out. When he got behind, he traded me so he could catch up. He traded me to a nigger that every day woke me up by spittin’ in my face an’ yellin’: Hey, white trash! I was too scared of him even to scream. But one morning when he had drunk himself to sleep I ran out. I always knew I was gonna do it. But by night time my Mark was burnin’ red on my forehead like a whole city on fire, an’ it felt like a big ironworks or something like that where it gets so hot that metal turns red like blood an’ burns you so bad you can’t even live. An’ so the six o’clock man found me easy. All he had to do was look out the window. I was like some fire runnin’ an’ runnin’. I thought I was gonna die. His face was like darkness eatin’ me. But there was a sweep just then, an’ for once the cops helped me. So I got away from him. An’ I went out an’ worked my little cunt ’till I had enough to run run run, an’ I came up here, all the time prayin’ to God because I believe in Him. Believe in God, baby, ’cause he keeps us pure an’ he keeps us safe. (No, I don’t go to church but I believe.)