The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  All right, said the cop to Tyler. Get out of here. You other two, come on down to the car.

  | 581 |

  He returned to Coffee Camp at sunset, the river now molten gold and bearing the cool black reflection-shadows of bridge-pilings and trees, like tarnish or a char. He didn’t know anybody and didn’t want to. He hid himself under a bush and slept . . .

  | 582 |

  It’s not too late, the next preacher said.

  Tyler grinned. He said: In my line of work—

  Your line of work! That’s a good one, you dirty old bum!

  . . . You try to establish what the relationship is with the person. If there’s any connection at all, you figure that’s biased. If it’s something like a police officer that happens by the scene, you don’t question it. If it’s a union guy, let’s see, a UPS driver sees a UPS guy get hurt, well, they’re both Teamsters, get it? It’s kind of like kissing cousins. You have to figure somebody like that’s biased. It’s like when Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 6.14, Do not be mismated with unbelievers. Unbelievers, they’re like non-union guys, see. They’re undercutting the Teamsters. Or when the guy that wrote Genesis kept putting down Cain. How did he know that Cain bumped off Abel? It says they were alone, so that scribbler wasn’t there. Now, I grant that in a civil case the preponderance of the evidence is enough, but we’re talking about damnation here! That’s a criminal case. Talk about preaching to the converted! That’s why no private detective can accept the Bible. It reeks of conflict of interest.

  The preacher said: I pity you.

  Tyler said: So do I.

  He hopped a string of grainer cars which, slow and solemn, like Irene brushing back her hair, bore him away.

  | 583 |

  For my soul is full of troubles, runs the Book of Psalms, and my life draws near to Sheol.* Domino could say that—oh, she certainly could, for it was quite a job keeping other street-whores under her thumb—and so could John in his office, and so could the bail bondsman who’d misplaced some cash, to say nothing of the reporter for the alternative newspaper in Sacramento who could not get any more advances on his paycheck; and the same complaint might plausibly have been uttered in the slow exhausted gravel-speech of the Wheelchair Men, or in faster parlance by members of the newspaper-fascinated coffee-house crew on Valencia Street: the rain-wetted, cigar-smoking old poet, the thoughtful leather-vested women who licked chocolate-covered spoons to the dreamiest possible music while they gazed across the street at the word HEALTH which formed part of an arch upon a miraculously shining window; hemmed in by the hissing of rain and the sucking sounds of raincoat-sleeves, they polished their troubles to a sheen as of wet window-glass—boyfriend troubles and girlfriend troubles, troubles of money, troubles of pain; how could you say that the woes of the elite were not just as cruel as Domino’s? What hurts hurts. —Make me look happy, rentable Strawberry said to the artist. I’m always sad, so draw a smile on my face. Please? —And John progressed likewise toward Sheol, angry and sad even though his stocks had split twice; and Irene, leaving behind a diamond wedding ring, killed herself to become mistress of the dirt. All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb, but you are cast out, away from your sepulchre like a loathed untimely birth.† It is the occupation of politicians to deny this ubiquity, nay, universality of corroded hearts, to discount the barren laboriousness of all paths. Reduce corporate taxes, they say, or redistribute the wealth of the parasitic class to the desperate class, and then all who matter can cross the Jordan together and enter into a new land of happiness whose prior inhabitants will dissolve into sea-colored ghosts of dust. Pain may be divided, but no Euclid or Leibniz has yet proven that it can be subtracted. Thus Tyler’s do-nothing’s logic, which led him from Coffee Camp to the quiet of two tents on the riverbank, then onto the rails, to Roseville, Olivehurst, Portland, Barstow, Victorville (burning tracks, brown Santa Fe cars, blue and yellow cars), to Waldo’s desert and Slab City and the Drops; then finally beneath the white pillars of the Miami freeway to the opened hydrant from which homeless nestlings drank—both drink and drinkers eternally approachable like a whore or like God, unnatural spring which flowed down the sidewalk just as the grapevines of rejoicing creep across the vineyard. Water of drunkenness, water of tears, water of coffee-making and handwashing, water that carries away the taint of sweat and excrement down to Sheol, where someday all of us must lie, at one with our filth at last; water of death, poured kindly out to wash and purify the body of his dead Queen, scrubbing the lines and calluses of her hard-working hands before the wailers set her deep into the ground, beyond reach of vigilantes, johns, whores, cares and destruction—she was destroyed, had vanished from the land—water which joins us all, slain and slayers, entering us through our organs of speech, departing from us as poison; water is grateful to the troubled; water quenches the anguish of Irene or Domino: the jackal and the rose must both have water. My Queen is no more! he said to himself, wandering, remnant of himself, from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New Orleans, and then by stages of walking, freight-hopping and hitchhiking to Tampa and finally Miami where beneath the white freeway pillars the hydrant flowed.

  On account of that now perpetual fountain’s likeness to a whore and to God, the city fathers, so called, kept resolving between intervals of other desolate business to shut it down, but the mayor of the white outcasts had replied without affected defiance to their sentries and messengers the squad car men that if they sealed off the hydrant, his constituency would have to take their water where they could find it—a fact of nature which the officers recognized and relayed back to the city fathers as such: Vagabonds, goldbricks, self-destroyers, sojourners, fugitives, crooks, whores, panhandlers, fruit loops and banana boats need to drink, too! Why not make it easy on all three sides—namely, on the leaders, on the led like John, Irene, Tyler himself, and the coffeehouse and Coffee Camp people, and on those who drank from fire hydrants? That was how the white mayor told the story, but whether the city fathers had ever (to use a tired civic metaphor) played ball or even been apprised of the hydrant’s continual flow, to say nothing of the homeless mayor’s very existence, the mayor had no basis for saying, although his foundationlessness in no wise impeded his orations, he being almost as greedy of reputed omniscience as he was of cash, which was why he charged every toll he could whenever a new constituent wandered under the freeway pillars to his Caucasian island, whose boards of different colors and sizes had been nailed up under (predominantly) mayoral control to make walls of rough cubes enflanking a line of laundry, an American flag hanging out to dry; and above that island the stretched-elastic sounds of wind and blind traffic comprised the chorus to the mayor’s endless act. The freeway was so high above him that the palm trees which God had permitted in the long thin rectangles of light were as blades of grass; from far away there was only the freeway, beneath which lurked a handful of tiny square silhouettes: the mayor’s box-houses. The mayor kept a little pistol up his ass, so everybody said; at least he kept it somewhere inside his bluejeans, ready to reify his authority as needed. Let’s say that a new couple, good and white, showed up beneath the freeway, admitting that they might stay for more than a night or two: the mayor was willing to rent them a plywood shanty for fifty dollars a month, television hookup included because he knew how to drain images most reliably and illegally from among the cables which buzzed overhead among the roaring cars. The mayor did not pull out his pistol then. He explained that if you were accepted into the community you’d be protected. The main rule was the American rule: to respect the property of others. The mayor gave you two chances. The first time you were caught stealing, out came the pistol as needed; then everybody beat you up, you made restitution, and it blew over. The second time, they pulled down your house and you were never allowed back. But obey the social contract, act a white islander’s part, and you had friends. The niggers on their far too adjacent island were too much like animals to be represented by any mayor, the mayor said. Over the
re it was the law of the jungle for jungle bunnies. Now, some niggers were all right, and then they were worthy of being called black people. If a black man or a black woman was proved by repeated fair dealing to be such, why, that person was welcome to live on the white island because we weren’t racists. That mattress on the island’s edge, for instance, was Stanley’s. Stanley was the mayor’s best friend. Anita was another worthy black lady who lived with her white man in a palatial packing crate for which they paid the mayor the unofficial rate of thirty dollars a month. Down by the portable toilet, whose shit and used toilet paper now reached to shoulder height, lived Ellen. Ellen was a slut (explained the mayor to visiting Chamber of Commerce dignitaries), a black nigger slut, but she gave good head, so he let her stay. Sometimes she shorted on her rent when her customers went on vacation or whatever it was that they did, but the white mayor was willing to work with her; he had heart, you see. And Ellen obeyed the other rules. In her two years on the island, she had never stolen from anybody. What was more, she lived both tranquilly and literally in the shadow of the toilet. Not every white woman would have been satisfied to breathe that stench! Her religiousness was of the quiet kind. The mayor didn’t go for religion much himself. Sometimes the Catholic relief volunteers showed up with food and clothes for those who prayed, so he’d pray along, but with his fingers crossed, so to speak; he was thinking of giving up that luxurious hypocrisy since rents, haircuts and protection were actually bringing in so much money that he was getting rich. He didn’t need the christlike bastards! Now, if somebody wanted to swallow their crap, he had nothing against it. It was a free country, an American country. If Ellen could bear to live there breathing in the smell of rotten turds all day and all night, why, she could scarf up Jesus, too, for all he cared. Near the river was the island where the Spics lived—Nicaraguans, Cubans, Haitians, Mexicans, the whole lot—and most of them were religious. Ellen sometimes went over to sing hymns with them. That was no skin off the mayor’s nose.

  The palm sapling in the middle of the sidewalk, figment of an oasis, appeared to be doing well. Soiled underpants and plastic bags lay scattered in the weeds.

  I have been all over the U.S., the mayor said to Stanley. I have never seen white people get the respect we deserve. But we need a few blacks. Some blacks, they’re an extra set of eyes.

  And I’m your eyes, huh? said Stanley, amused. Charles, you’re more full of shit than that shithouse next to Ellen’s place.

  Stanley, you’re a goddamned black nigger.

  That’s the best kind. Gimme a swig of that beer.

  You disgust me, you fucking low-life nigger, said the mayor. Here. Take the whole can. You think I want to drink out of any can you’ve nigger-lipped?

  Come the black revolution, Mr. Mayor, you know what we’re gonna do to you?

  Spraypaint me black so I can keep being mayor. How’s that? Then I’m going to raise the rent on all my white people and give you your kickback, you fucking nigger. How’s that?

  All right, said Stanley. Now you listen. From now on, every time you call me nigger, you got to give me a beer. Is that fair or is that square?

  The mayor belched and rubbed his head.

  Hey, said Stanley. I’m talking to you, Charles. I mean it. Are you my friend or not?

  My head hurts, said the mayor.

  What do you always got to be calling me nigger for? I don’t go out of my way to insult you. Most of the time I don’t pay you any mind, but today for some reason you’re getting to me, so would you lay off?

  I’m sorry, Stan, said the mayor. Case closed. Now you lay off. I’ve got a bad headache.

  They sat there for a while drinking and breathing in smog, and then the mayor said: Hey, Stan.

  What?

  Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a goddamned ugly stupid monkeybrained black black nigger?

  Stanley stood up and tried to punch the mayor in the face but the mayor blocked it and shot a hard brawny punch into Stanley’s chest which knocked him down onto the concrete. Stanley lay there groaning.

  Jesus, Stan, said the mayor, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit so hard. You okay?

  I hit my head, said Stanley. I’m gonna have a lump the size of a robin’s egg. What did you have to keep calling me names for?

  Listen, Stanley, I’m sorry. I mean it. I was an asshole.

  I’m not so young, you know, Stanley said.

  All right, the mayor said. Please let me help you up.

  Charles, I want you to know something, Stanley said. People been calling me nigger when I was still inside my Mama’s ass. I really don’t like it. I want you to listen to me, Charles. If you call me nigger one more time today, I’m not gonna say nothing, but when I get a chance I’m gonna hit you over the head or stab you. Tomorrow I don’t say nothing about. Tomorrow nobody can hold you to, you ornery old cracker fool.

  You’re bleeding on the back of your head, the mayor told him. I’m going to bandage you up.

  Did you hear what I said, Charles?

  I heard, and I’ve already told you twice that I’m sorry, which I wouldn’t say to anybody else. You know I have a short fuse.

  Oh, fuck it, said Stanley, getting to his feet. I’m the one with the bleeding head and he’s the one with the short fuse.

  The mayor looked around to see if anybody was listening, but the place was empty except for one drunk who, attended by the friendly goggling faces of parking meters, snored in a lair of cardboard plates and newspaper sheets draped over ridges of garbage, with his shoes off and his stinking stockinged feet inside an old lampshade. The mayor wasn’t worried abut him. His other constituents were sleeping, screwing, shitting, whoring, scoring, snorting, shooting or most likely panhandling. The mayor himself never left camp. That was why he was the mayor. He ran security.

  It must have been three o’clock now, because the blue truck with the white cross on it pulled up to the brown-skinned island.

  Oh, shit, the mayor said, treasuring this distraction. —Our guys go out and they work all day and they’re tired, and then those Spics set up the loudspeaker in Spanish. Guys in the holy circle getting saved.

  My head hurts worse than yours, said Stanley. Gimme another beer.

  I only have but one more.

  Give it to me, Charles.

  The mayor turned red and clenched his teeth. Then he slammed the beer down on the arm of Stanley’s chair.

  Why, thank you, Mr. Mayor. You’re gonna make a nice cocktail waitress someday. Beer could be colder, though.

  The mayor rose and stalked away, swearing.

  A dirty man whose beard was almost as long and ragged as his backpack came slowly ambling toward the white island. Stanley sat watching him regally, a beer in his hand. The man came closer. Now the man could see the shelters, some of wood, some of cardboard roofed with plastic. The mayor’s house was roofed with an American flag.

  The mayor came hurrying back from the toilet. He looked the stranger up and down. He said: You a cop? You a cop?

  Nope, said the stranger.

  A woman stuck her head out of her cardboard box and perorated: Hey, the police’s attitude toward the homeless sucks. They catch your ID to check on warrants and they don’t return it. I’m monogamous, but I’m homeless so I must be a whore or a crack addict . . .

  So sue me, said the stranger. I said I’m not a cop.

  Nobody bothers anybody down here, the woman went on eagerly, because this is the white end. We used to live in the black end. We got robbed three times a day. Anything they think might be useful to trade or sell, they gotta take. And Charles over there, he’s the mayor. He’s the one that saved us from the blacks.

  When the woman’s head first appeared, the mayor had wondered whether she might have heard his argument with Stanley, and he was afraid, but her comments appeased his scuttling eyes, so that he smiled.

  You look familiar, the stranger said to her. You know Dan Smooth?

  Oh, him? said the woman. He raped my daughter a
n’ only gimme forty bucks . . .

  To no one in particular the stranger said: You mind if I set my bedroll here for a night or two?

  Where are you from? said the mayor.

  California.

  If you want bare ground, that’s free, said the mayor. If you want a house, you’ll have to pay me rent.

  How about a house with a yard and a white picket fence? said the stranger.

  Are you trying to pull my chain? said the mayor. Stanley! Hey, Stanley! Security!

  I’ll just take the yard, the stranger said. I’ll just spread out my roll right there. Any thieves in these parts?

  Watch out for those niggers over there, said the mayor. But this guy’s all right. This guy’s my buddy. This is Stanley.

  What’s your name, man? said Stanley.

  Henry. Henry Tyler.

  Not just any black can move in here, Henry, continued the mayor with relish. We had problems when we first went here, so we came out with baseball bats.

  Pleased to meet you, Henry, said Stanley.

  Tyler shook his hand.

  These people in this little area are the only ones I asociate with, the mayor explained. And I advise you to do the same. As soon as you cross that street there, they’ll come after you. Just addicts over there, Henry. Anything they can do, they will do.

  Okay, said Tyler. What are the rules here?

  Now, everybody here, they’re all fixing to follow either Plan A or Plan B, said Stanley, looking Tyler up and down with shrewd eyes. Which one is it for you?

  I don’t know what you’re talking about, said Tyler wearily.

  Plan A or Plan B. You can either go to jail, turn your life around and get back to what you need, or you can stay here. What’s your goal, Hank? What’s your aspiration?

  Plan P, said Tyler. I could use some pussy. You people have a problem with that?