The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Sacramento.

  Oh. Well, what’re you gonna do? You got to run it somewhere else. Sac’s just got that evil feel to it. Just feels too negative to me.

  Tell me about it. I was born there.

  The tattooed man laughed, his eyes yellow like empty plastic cigarette lighters on railroad gravel.

  So where was you an’ that Mexican when you got busted?

  Boxcar, said Tyler.

  Normally, the boxcar’s the lousiest ride you can get. I can see you need advice. Now, the ones that know, they’re lookin’ for the grainers, those T-48s or whatever. There are holes in the back. You just pop right in like a prairie dog. And you got water? You don’t want to go without a bunch of water.

  Yeah, I have water, said Tyler. And when that runs out, I can just marry somebody and drink her spit.

  Ooh, said the tattooed man with a sort of sinister gentleness.

  So which track runs east?

  Normally, see, some people are hooked up with the people in the yard. There’s certain tracks set up already. So if I want to go to Salt Lake, these here are the tracks I can get on. You got another track there that’s gonna wind north. Let’s say you want to go to Washington . . .

  And suddenly Tyler felt an exultation that he hadn’t been able to own for so long now, a breezy thrill of freedom even as he stood there sweating with the evening sun burning his arms. He could go anywhere. He had nothing to guard and defend except his own body. He had fallen, but he had landed. Now he was happy and safe.

  The tattooed man read his eyes and said: There’s something about trainhoppers, anyway. All of us are transients on this earth. I’m a Buddhist. This is just taking it to the next level.

  And you feel free? Tyler couldn’t help asking.

  My whole concept is, what’s out there and rolls my way I have a right to. Like if I go into a supermarket and can walk out with a can of tomato soup in my pocket and they don’t catch me, I have a right to it. See what I’m sayin’? Because they’re bilking the world anyway. And when I steal from them, nobody gets hurt.

  Well, I guess I’ll be heading my way, Tyler said. Thank you.

  I been wanting to ride the rails myself, the tattooed man suddenly volunteered. I just can’t decide which direction to go . . .

  Behind the man’s wistfulness, behind his softspoken charm, Tyler had begun to sense a crocodile’s soul, intelligent and vicious, perhaps even lethal—held in check right now mainly by the inertia of this exceedingly hot day (certainly over a hundred degrees). If a cloud were to pass over the sun, so that the tattooed man’s reptilian blood could cool sufficiently to refresh his torpid brain, then Tyler might be in danger. This was only intuition, and very possibly wrong, like the intuition of so many street-whores who had been sure at first that Tyler was a cop; nonethless, he was afraid of the tattooed man.

  I’ll walk up with you, the tattooed man said with an insidious grin.

  Why, thank you, said Tyler, his heart pounding.

  This used to be the Greyhound bus station, right here where it says GOLF, the tattooed man was saying. I know where I’d catch out if I was riding. See that track there, with all those grainers? That’s where I’d catch out.

  All right, said Tyler plodding steadily toward the sleeping train.

  Watch out for the heat, laughed the tattooed man lazily, although they must be sweatin’ it more than ever, I mean those cops.

  Okay. See you when I look at you, said Tyler.

  And watch out for the Sidetrack types. You remember Sidetrack? He rode the rails and he befriended trainhoppers like you, and then in the night he slit their throats. Ha, ha, ha!

  I hope he enjoyed it, said Tyler wearily, looking for the perfect grainer to crawl into, one where the hole would be too small for him and the tattooed man together.

  Shit, he got caught right here, in this fuckin’ town. The fuckin’ S.P. bulls said he told them he was just cleanin’ up the lowlifes, the ripoff artists.

  You a friend of his? asked Tyler.

  No, but I know a woman who used to know him. You want to meet her?

  No, I think I’ll take this bus, said Tyler, clambering up up the ladder of a grainer whose oval womb, as he could see, was choked with juice bottles, wine bottles and crumpled newspapers. This train had been thoroughly hopped. Now he was high above the world. Safe and lofty, he waved to the tattooed man.

  Hey, I’m kind of broke, said the tattooed man. You mind helping me out?

  Here’s a buck, said Tyler, letting the paper note flutter down.

  That’ll work, said the tattooed man. Well, watch out, or somebody just might get you.

  Thanks for the warning, Sidetrack, replied Tyler with a harsh and ugly laugh . . .

  | 549 |

  It took a good three hours before the train began to slam and thud, and another hour or so before it went anywhere. When he finally felt the clittery-clatter in his bones, Tyler stuck his head out of the hole and saw in the hole of the facing car the head of an ancient black man. He waved, and the black man smiled at him.

  Somewhere in the desert before Salt Lake, the train stopped for an hour, and he woke up and looked out. The black man looked back at him.

  Where you bound, sonny? said the black man.

  Bound for heaven, sir, said Tyler.

  Just remember, child, you’re only stealin’ a ride. Nothin’ else. Don’t you harm anything on them cars. Don’t take nothin’. The railroad is good to us. It gives us our freedom. Don’t you take advantage of that.

  All right. Kind of a nice ride up here, don’t you think?

  The black man smiled. It was the smile of one who knew. He said to Tyler: If you ain’t seen America on a boxcar, you ain’t seen America.

  | 550 |

  Striding into Coffee Camp like a conqueror, he found at afternoon’s end the black woman, the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen, who had herself, as she said, just emerged from the long, long place between two trains where rectangular worlds of boxcar-shadow were separated by narrow bright zones of sunlight on the gravel, and she didn’t remember him. Midges crawled like flecks of living gold in the sun-barred air between vine covered trees. The sandy space where he’d slept at Donald and Dragonfly’s camp a month ago was already bursting with poison oak. Mosquitoes bit him silently. Above the black woman’s Jesus-singing, strange half-shadowed lattices of trumpet vines greenly glowed in the dusk. He could smell smoke and roasting hot dogs.

  I still feel good listening to you, he said.

  Who the fuck are you? she said.

  The one you told to go ride the trains to find my angel.

  And you done it, she said, softening. I can see you done it.

  He grinned, filled with pride.

  And you found your lovin’ angel, she said.

  Actually, I’m getting pretty sure I’ll never see her again. But if I keep looking, it gives me something to do.

  So you didn’t find her? That why you come back to Coffee Camp, with your tail between your legs? Maybe you just don’t believe.

  Maybe I never did, he said sadly.

  But she helped you, the black woman insisted, her sentences thrilling him like Union Pacific locomotives riding backward, ringing their bells. —You rode them trains when you thought you couldn’t do it. That’s good for you. That train wind baptizes all your sorrow away. Even just come and go, come and go, those trains takin’ you somewhere. Takin’ you to freedom.

  You feel like taking a walk with me, Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen?

  Honey, I’m not your queen and I’m not your angel but if you want to take a walk with me I’ll gladly welcome you home. Just a minute. Just a minute. Let my hide my stash in this hollow tree . . .

  On the concrete under the bridge, someone had painted a giant purple heart. He took her hand in his and touched it to the heart. She kissed him. Just then a yellow and red Union Pacific train flickered overhead, and night came and sun and colors were lost. He heard a woman’s screaming laugh.

>   That night the black woman was sleeping in another’s arms. His soul began to swing back to loneliness, like the bridge between Sacramento and West Sacramento pivoting on its cylindrical concrete base, turning counterclockwise to rejoin its own metal flesh, swinging like a door, its shadow following it upon the water, slow and slow; then suddenly no lacuna anymore; the rails now went all the way from West Sac to Old Sac; and a metal piece dropped and a white box hummed. The bridge swung again, adjusted again, until the raised rails dropped with a slam. Now anyone could walk like Jesus over the sunny green water.

  He wandered through midtown and reached that bridge one day; then he crossed it, standing where he’d stood on that night now months ago when he’d come in Dan Smooth’s car; and looking down and to the side, he perceived three who sat beneath the bridge with their hats on—a woman between two men, bleary-eyed railroad tramps swinging their arms at their sides. The Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen was the woman. She began to unzip one man’s fly and the man grunted, his breath full of beer.

  Not jealous, not sick at heart, not even empty, he slept in the bushes on the West Sacramento side that night, in an abandoned camp with plenty of pieces of cardboard. He smelled bad, and he had holes in his shirt. He wanted to bathe in the river, but it was too cold. The next morning he returned to the greasy ledge where the three had been, and found the black woman’s dress, slick and silky to his touch, probably rayon, with a dozen cigarette butts beside it, and above its collar, empty air. A drunk lay above him, cackling. Pawn of providence, the drunk threw down in place of the black woman’s missing head a woman’s wadded-up panties which were now stiff and dusty and the color of mud; and this sad ball duly landed on the ledge just above the collar of that blue dress which he remembered from yesterday. Then the drunk staggered down beside him and pissed on everything. Tyler walked on, continuing beneath the belly of that strange half-living armature for tramps and trains, the river lashing and sizzling against the embankment below. Overhead came the rumbling roar as the train crossed the river.

  | 551 |

  He learned how to scoop out for himself a hollow along the riverbank laid down with cardboard and jugs, and sometimes even with a couple of coats. Nine in the morning, and he could already tell that the day was going to be as hot as Mexicali, everyone sweating and lurking in the shade. A guy in a white sombrero and grey coveralls hitched up his belt. Hiding the railroad spike underneath his shirt, Tyler went to the shelter, got his ticket, played poker for cigarettes with an old goner named Red, stood in line for two hours, and got lunch.

  You have to deal with the total man, preached Reverend Bobby as they all ate. —Part of our Christianity has to deal with puttin’ food on a mon’s table. History has taught us that the church has sometimes gone overboard, like in the Inquisition days, and we have to strive for balance.

  In one ear and out the other! a man muttered, furtively, like a first-grader warned by the teacher not to talk.

  After lunch, Tyler went to Reverend Bobby and asked: Where did evil come from?

  Satan, mon.

  Did Satan invent the Mark of Cain?

  Those questions aren’t for the likes of you, said Reverend Bobby. You have your own problems to deal with. Don’t worry about technicalities.

  Somebody said I have the Mark of Cain on my forehead, Reverend. I was wondering if you could see anything right here . . .

  Good Lord, mon, that’s just a mosquito bite you’ve been scratchin’. That’s just—

  Reverend, do I bear the Mark of Cain or not?

  Do you believe you deserve to bear it?

  Yes.

  Then you bear it. Have you ever been baptized?

  When I was christened.

  That doesn’t count. You have to be baptized anew. What’s your name?

  Henry.

  Henry, are you prepared to receive the sacrament of holy baptism today?

  I don’t know, Tyler said. I guess I’m still trying to figure out what I ought to be.

  | 552 |

  A man was sitting beside a culvert, reading his Bible by lantern light whose brightness stained his hands and knees and forehead. Every moment or two, the man swept mosquitoes away from his face. Crickets sang around him, and moths visited his lantern in its harshly lit patch of sand. Far away, a boxcar door slammed. A dog was barking in the darkness. Above him, where the gulley ended, stretched a lightless field whose laborers had at twilight resembled blurred bushes. He was reading in the Book of Chronicles about the reign of the unclean Queen Athaliah, who was overwhelmed in the end by the soldiers, captains and trumpets of righteousness; and she tore her clothes and cried treason. Then Jehoiada the priest made a channel like a long train track between his rows of captains, and he commanded: Bring her out between the ranks; anyone who follows her is to be slain with the sword. And he who read knew then that he should have followed his Queen and died with her; and so he wept. And the captains dragged her to the Horse Gate, which was a safely unholy place, and executed her there. Then all the people did go to the House of Baal, and razed it. Baal’s altars and images they rent in pieces; and they slew Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars. He crushed the mosquitoes on his face, so far from her whom he had loved, distant even from Coffee Camp where upon the river which beneath the moon was as a pale blue stone the struts of the reflected bridge formed a rake’s teeth, which combed and devoured everything as Jehoiada the priest had done. Righteousness, malignant and sure of itself, rose up against the sky.

  He stood up. A barely discernible figure was approaching on the white road. Suddenly he believed that his Queen had once passed here, and he knelt to kiss the road.

  A light blossomed inside a bush, and he saw two tramps, sitting unspeaking. Dogs barked. The approaching figure, which he could now see was that of a woman with a water-jug in her hand, muttered wearily: Shut up! Shut the fuck up! —And, strangely, the dogs stopped.

  That gal got the power, one of the tramps said wisely.

  The woman passed and was lost. Tyler said to the tramp: What’s the secret of power? What do you know?

  You don’t got the right to know, the tramp said. Not yet.

  You don’t know me.

  When you got the right to know, you’ll know. Then you don’t got to ask. You want to know about power? Wait till you feel a cop’s boot in your face . . .

  Were you ever at Coffee Camp? Tyler asked him conversationally. That’s the place, you know, where sometimes the river smells like oranges.

  Yeah, yeah, you come out of California, the tramp said. You got it easy. Your kind throw their bike up on them boxcars. We call you rubber tramps. That’s why you don’t know about power yet. When you know, you ain’t gonna like it. You got to travel more. And I don’t just mean on earth. Look up there at them stars. More stars than skeeter-bugs. Look at that expanse up there where it’s all windy and fresh. What’s occurred to me, friend, is enormous changes over the expanse of time. I can’t even really express it. But I know what I feel.

  So you know about good power, too, said Tyler. That’s what I want to learn about. I already know about bad power, maybe as much or more than you.

  What are you talking to me for then? You ought to be talking to them stars. Then stars will tell you everything.

  Thank you, friend, said Tyler.

  He went back down into his hollow, where the mosquitoes were now not quite so greedy, and read his Bible. Then he closed the lantern-valve and looked up at the stars, longing to be alone and away from lurking humanity, from the crouchers and the sleepers, alone with ducks, crickets and stars.

  Points of light came down the gulley, moving like fireflies, and he wanted to believe that it was the stars talking to him. But the lights rushed and jerked too much. Gruff voices swore, and then he heard a man pissing in the sand. On the road, he heard the clatter of a shopping cart.

  | 553 |

  The next morning the two tramps were snoring under their bush, dead drunk, and another old fellow, unshaven
and lean, but with neatly slicked back hair and wearing new clothes and fine hiking boots (the reason he looked so good, as it turned out, was that he’d just gotten out of detox), sat up against a tree reading a thriller.

  You heard about FREDdy? he said to Tyler.

  Yeah, I heard.

  You heard how that goddamned machine took away three good men’s jobs. Now on the whole train they only have two men, the engineer and the conductor or whatever the hell he’s called. Well, sometimes they have an inspector, too, but he lies low so he can catch you. Eventually they’ll get rid of all the humans. They’ll have just computers and lasers.

  I’m surprised they don’t have a sensor on every boxcar, Tyler said. That way they could bust us all, no sweat.

  They tried that. Had the heat-seeking kind. But when them wheels get hot, they get so hot, why, them sensors get confused. Had to rip ’em all out.

  Uh huh, said Tyler, not quite believing it, sipping from his water bag.

  How long you been catching out, son?

  Just a couple of months. How about you?

  The very first time I ever hopped a train, I must have been about ten years old. That was back in Missouri. That’s why my handle’s Missouri. My kid brother and I, we jumped on, right by the crick that ran near our house, and we rode about three miles and then walked back, just to try it. Man, we was scared!

  Does your brother still ride the rails?

  I ain’t seen him in about ten years. I ain’t seen my two sisters in fourteen years. But I seen my other brother recently. He’s collecting SSI, just like me. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic. I see him whenever I go home. I go home about every two years, whenever I lose my birth certificate.

  Your folks still alive?

  I never knew my father. My mother died years ago. The hospital killed her, Missouri suddenly snarled, and gazed at Tyler expectantly, waiting to be asked to tell the whole sad story, but Tyler didn’t feel like it.