The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  | 571 |

  We’re about to get a burst of high winds, Waldo said, looking at his watch. He wore nothing but shoes, underpants and a baseball cap. —Over there, he said, that just looks like a burned-out bus, but that’s actually my command post, where I watch for all the maurauders. All the electronic things we can’t talk about, the things that go whirly-whirly and that talk to you, those are the things that are there.

  Tyler had been through this patch of desert six months ago, so he remembered the vans, the broken down truck, the missile nosecone, the mattresses and sofas all monumental against the flatness like some dry Mexican necropolis of flowers and spindly gravestones, their neighbors being pyrites and granite and sedimentery rock. Waldo definitely possessed more couches and shoes and everything now. Especially he owned more vehicular hulks. Soon the Park Service would be bound to notice, and then Waldo would lose everything. Waldo, who was autistic, sweet, longhaired, gray bearded, skinny and old, would then wilt and maybe even die. On the other hand, maybe Waldo would just die right here before anything else happened. He’d been burglarized a week ago. He would be as easy to kill as Irene’s child.

  The sun heated a broken sink and a rusty cylindrical tank all the way to hurtfulness. Waldo said: When it gets around a hundred twenty-five or so, when it gets iffy, you got to follow the shade around, cancel any patrols that are necessary. Take special options, with doughnuts and flying saucers in radiators, and drink lots of ice water, and no unnecessary movement.

  Waldo splashed ice water over himself. He did not offer Tyler any. He never offered any guest a drink cold or otherwise. That was his way. He was not selfish, only different.

  Where do you get that ice from? asked Tyler.

  I get those who have transpo or whatever, Waldo said. I put up signs and signals, and they keep watch on me.

  Then that frail, gentle man turned away, gazing toward the Salton Sea, which was not visible from here, his thought-radiations perhaps travelling as far as Bombay Beach, which would appear less deserted than it actually was once night came—a few streetlights came on, and two or three trailer- or house-lights shone on every block, struggling with electric automatism against the smell of the Salton Sea and all the dry, broken things. Or who knew? Maybe Waldo’s thoughts were already all the way to Mars.

  Waldo, Tyler asked him earnestly, recalling what the wise tramp had said, have you ever learned anything from the stars?

  Oh, we beam in. We maintain transmission.

  Who’s we?

  Oh, yeah, we got a badger out there. He’s a wild one, but we get along fine even though base regs say absolutely no pets or furry critters.

  Well, I want to screen out everything but pure transmissions, Tyler said. Can you make me a bullshit detector?

  Let’s take this concept here, Waldo replied thoughtfully, raising a propeller from the dirt. I use it to track wind speed against time factor. This is all multi-purpose. This might be the building block. Got all kinds of fans, he added with satisfaction. If it’s ugly, paint it. If it doesn’t work, make it spin.

  Well, Tyler asked, can I buy it from you? There’s too much bullshit in this world. I need to know where it is.

  Couldn’t sell it myself, said Waldo. It’s one of the project groups. One of the off-budget type groups.

  And I’d like an anti-loneliness device, said Tyler.

  Waldo spun a propeller, thinking deeply. —Well, it sounds simple but that’s actually as deep and wide as an aircraft carrier.

  How much would it cost me?

  I’d probably give you a variety of options, and then you can dial in. I’m rated for microprocessors and basic machine language.

  Here’s five dollars, said Tyler. Maybe you could give me a prototype next time I come through.

  Waldo took the money and stared at it. Then he put it in his shirt pocket. Flies crawled on the underside of his cap.

  Could I see your command post?

  Yeah, all right, said Waldo, hopping on his bicycle and slowly pedaling, brown like a Missouri Pacific boxcar and almost naked, with a load of bottled juice in his saddle-baskets. Tyler walked behind, overseen by the low blue mountains with their tan ridge of boulders, and then the hot wind rattling sheet metal against the van with boarded up windows. That most infallible of all guardians, the nosecone, never blinked.

  On the edge of a low wash lay a dead bus whose windows were blacked out by more boards, in regulation style, and whose skin had been painted a sort of crude camouflage. —It’s been here the longest time, Waldo boasted, but you don’t see it. Now this just looks like a trailer, but this is actually a deployment of the Marine Corps group. Any recono pod in strange places, we monitor that. We see what drug deals and what activities he’s committing and where he’s fencing his goods.

  On the inside of the rusty door was handwritten: EMERGENCY FIRE EXIT. On the walls: TRUE LOVE and DANGER—RESTRICTED.

  Waldo explained: We threw out the useless love-sex books and replaced ’em with technical books you can use, books on electronic circuits and how-to books . . .

  The interior of the van was almost cool. On the counter lay a packet of breakfast powder, circuit boards, rusty gears, a meat thermometer, and alertness aid tablets. On the floor was a cooler full of ice.

  This is part of our conceptual dream group where we lay down the hardware like our gear rotor, said Waldo. We cover the whole range.

  He raised a kaleidoscope and said: This is called our cold fusion power. Aim it right at this reflector; that thing’ll give you an eye burn.

  On the counter Tyler saw a palm-sized metal disk which Waldo had painted beautifully green, white and flesh-pink, all pastel-blended. —What is it? he said.

  They got some good drugs, they think they’re gonna fly that. That used to be one of our saucers, a remotely powered three-man toroidal anti-magnetic jewel lift system. They developed that back in the early 40s and 50s, during the Philadelphia Experiment. Me, I don’t believe in none of that stuff. I believe in the theoretical technology.

  All right, said Tyler. If you have the technology to do that, and even make me an anti-loneliness device, maybe you can help me with a project that will make the anti-loneliness device obsolete. See, I want to find my Queen even though it’s no use because she’s dead.

  Lots of queens out there.

  I mean the Queen of the Whores.

  Well, said Waldo, hitching up his underpants, so what you’re requisitioning is a way to help you track a whore type critter. Well, we can build kites for faggots and all them critters, but it’s just an image that’ll dance around; it’s just a piece of plastic. Well, it works really well if you want to piss off your old lady . . .

  | 572 |

  In Niland, California, which as the crow flies was not very far from where Waldo lived, but if a man walked straight it would be a pretty hot and lethal march, there was a cafe whose long wood-veneer counter had been worn into dark brown spots in front of each stool. Stuffed fish, birds and deer-heads hung on the walls from the long gone days before the Salton Sea turned poison. The proprieter, who was eighty-eight years old, said: It’s a shame, though, what they’ve done to the Salton Sea. Hurts the whole Imperial Valley. Probably cost us a hundred and fifty thousand a year in sales.

  Tyler nodded wearily, drinking his root beer float, and the waitress came and added more root beer for free. The glass was huge and there was about a quarter-pint of vanilla ice cream in there, so cold and good that for the first time since the sun had come out he felt that he could think.

  When I come here in 1956, this was winter tomato country, the proprieter was saying. In ’65 they took the duty off at the border. Then we couldn’t compete against the Mexican tomatoes. That just killed our tomato growers.

  Tyler said: Did you ever see a skinny little black woman named Africa? I expect she’s long dead now.

  Doesn’t ring a bell, the proprieter said. But there’s so many transients at Slab City up the road, just about a three-mile piece . .
.

  You look pretty hard up, the waitress whispered. Don’t worry about that float. I’ll charge it to me.

  Thanks, he said.

  What’s that? said the proprieter, cupping his ear.

  Oh, shut up, the waitress said. She turned back to Tyler and said to him: You gonna stay at Slab City? she said.

  That depends, ma’am, he said.

  (The proprieter, deaf and bored, had gone back to reading his newspaper.)

  My parents brought me out there from when I was in fourth grade until I was fourteen years old and got a boyfriend and could get away from it, she said.

  Doesn’t sound as if you enjoyed it too much.

  In the winter you’d wake up with frozen feet. In the summer those slabs would be scorching. And scorpions and ants and everything. Strange, strange people. I hated every minute of it.

  On the refrigerator case, near the row of decals of a longtime Ducks Unlimited donor, hung a handwritten sign in English and Spanish which read: I WOULD LIKE TO BUY A BOX OF FLAME GRAPES.

  Boy, it’s slow, the waitress said. The day goes so slow when you just sit. You want a refill?

  That would be mighty kind, he said. He hunched himself smaller, hoping that he did not stink too much.

  Tyler went into the men’s room and filled up his water bag. The advertisement on the vending machine for adult novelties read: IF SHE IS A MOANER THIS WILL MAKE HER A SCREAMER. IF SHE IS A SCREAMER THIS WILL GET YOU ARRESTED. When the waitress wasn’t looking, he paid for his root beer float, left a tip and went out. He still had twenty-two dollars in his pocket.

  In the vast gravel lot, a painted sign said: SALVATION MOUNTAIN 3 MI.

  He turned down that road and started walking away from Niland, where this store was closed and that store was boarded up and the Mexican restaurant closed at two in the afternoon, and every now and then one saw a notice to buy a great business opportunity—not that Niland didn’t still have some life left: just ask the old café proprieter and the waitress, who were still hanging on . . . It was now nine in the morning and very hot. A train oozed slowly by, bearing immense blue Hanjin crates. He wondered what might be inside. Whatever it was, it must not be for him. Swallowing dust, he walked on, knowing that somewhere near the horizon his destiny might be dryly slithering down the wide paths and roads of Slab City. Not a single car passed him on his trudge. The Salton Sea stewed and stank unseen at his back. Ahead lay the dusty-blue Chocolate Mountains; and after a weary two miles or so he began to see Salvation Mountain gleaming whitely like a bunch of melted candle-wax. The landscape in which it stood (in company with its tamarisk tree and its two trucks which said REPENT) could have been Hebrew, but the mountain itself resembled an aquatic amusement park, because its bulk of desert dirt had been painted in white and blue streaks to resemble water. The mountain itself, with all its colored slogans bulging like breasts, was composed of dirt, hay bales, and colored latex paint which felt smooth and cool under his hand. On the mountain’s chest, a scarlet heart, tricked out in white adobe letters, said to him: JESUS, I’M A SINNER. COME UPON MY BODY AND INTO MY HEART. He ascended to the summit-cross, and in place of inspiration discovered more dogged artifice, where a long dry ridge marked the watermark of a lake which had vanished four centuries before, and hay bales and paint cans were discreetly laid, ready for the next good work. Irene would have loved it here. She’d been a good Christian girl. That was why Tyler respected the preacher’s mad sincerity. He had started building back in 1984, but after three years the Mountain collapsed, so he started all over again. Tyler stood there for a while, alone on the hot flat sand below Salvation Mountain except for one cicada which produced the only sound. He thought: If only I could build a mountain for her, or a . . . —But he could not decide what he wanted to build.

  | 573 |

  Past Salvation Mountain the road went on toward the Chocolate Range, but before it had gone very far there was another sign which said SLAB CITY—WELCOME. Turning right, he entered a grid of dirt streets, desert scrub in between. Past the rusty red bus you had to go deeper into that maze of wide empty roads in the low brush, with trailers lurking between on the half-broken low concrete flatforms, trailers with tarps, singles with mailboxes, until you came to a trailer with a sticker that said AWOL, and on the slab beside it, under a tree-shaded tarp, an old man sat at a manual typewriter which didn’t work, thinking about composing a letter. His white poodle lay beside him, guarding the cartridge box and other gear against death as the old man explained to Tyler:

  Now the left side over there, they call that Poverty Flat. On the right, that’s called High Rent Area. Actually, the names are reversed, just to keep people amused. In the High Rent Area, people live kind of hand to mouth.

  We got a club in here called the Slab City Singles. I founded it fifteen years ago and I’ve been coming every year for fourteen years, ever since I lost my wife. But Slab City itself has been around much longer than that. Back in World War II, General Patton had these kind of camps all over the desert. After they moved out, the Navy moved in and then the Marines took over. That slab over there, that was a hospital. Then they shut the whole thing down and sold it. My slab, that was the officers’ latrine. And this lot here, that’s the parade ground.

  (One of the old man’s thermometers said 105° and the other said 120°.)

  We still don’t have too many rules, the old man said. With all that nice shade and everything, I can’t stop others from moving in. Anyone can drive in and park. This is America. That guy over there, he’s dying to move in.

  Tyler inquired: Have you seen a skinny little black lady named Africa? I wanted to live and die with her.

  They don’t allow a man and a woman not married to live in the same rig, but we talked it over and decided to let ’em. And we got eight of ’em now, married couples, and we set up an auxilliary.

  I get it, said Tyler.

  This little gal and I, we play trionomoes, said the old man. This little gal here, she weighs only sixty-five pounds. And she used to drive a big truck! he said proudly.

  Well, the little gal said (she was tattooed with the word MOTHER), I’d rather be where it’s cooler. I’d rather be in Oakdale where I come from. I used to have a home. I had to buy this trailer because of my health. I’ve been here for four years. I’m stuck here this summer because my motor home needs work and I can’t afford it.

  Clearing his throat, Tyler said: Or have you seen a pregnant Korean lady named Irene?

  | 574 |

  The tracked and trodden sand on either side of the trestle bridge at Coffee Camp might not have been so different from the sand of Slab City, but in Slab City there was more sand and less of everything else, long wide dazzling avenues of sand down which no one passed, so that he recalled a typical oddball comment uttered by Waldo, who’d heard of Slab City even through his ringing autism, though he’d never been there, and said to Tyler: They don’t move around in the daytime, man. Just like vampires. —Already the white shimmer of Salvation Mountain like cake icing or wax running down the ridge lay out of sight because Salvation Mountain was actually not very high and at Slab City the hot sandy plain had begun a downward slope which steepened a little near the canal’s edge where Slab City gave way to the Drops, or as some called it, the outback, where the true squatters lived. The place felt wild and strange to him.

  Past the cross by an immense flat slab, past the perimeter of tires laid down upon the sand in a long strange black line of symbolic menace, he swung round one camp’s snarling dogs, and at the next camp under some shade-trees he met an angry man.