The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  So you’re saying you’re train buffs, said the railroad bull.

  I guess you could call us that. Train enthusiasts.

  We’ll need to see your identification now, said the first bull.

  Tyler took out his driver’s license, and the second bull took it and began writing up a report.

  You’re homeless, right? said the first bull to the old hobo.

  Homeless, well, I don’t know about that, officer. I got my own little plot of ground.

  Where are you from?

  Georgia, originally. But I been out here in California for about thirty some-odd years.

  You have any ID?

  Well, I have this food bank card but it’s expired.

  The second bull took the card, studied it, and announced: This card is expired.

  Yeah, that’s what I said, the hobo replied. I’m expired. I done expired four years ago now. And this fellow here, we needed you to figure out if he casts a shadder or what.

  He’s drunk, said the second bull.

  The first bull, spying around wisely, saw the paper bag with the bottle of Wild Turkey in it. —Whose is this? he said.

  Tyler and Irene kept quiet. After a long silence the hobo said: It ain’t mine.

  Sure looks pretty fresh, said the bull. And the cap is off. —Expertly he kicked it over, and every drop sank down into the gravel. The hobo licked his lips more sadly than ever. And the railroad bull smiled.

  How about you, miss? said the railroad bull to Irene. You live with him?

  We’re just friends, said Tyler quickly, not wanting to implicate Irene in his own filthiness. Do you have any ID, honey?

  Irene stood up and took her billfold out from under Tyler’s coat. She opened it. Tyler suddenly began to get a sinking feeling in his chest, confirmed by the whistle and glimmer of an oncoming locomotive. Irene withdrew her California driver’s license and gave it to Tyler, who passed it over to the second bull.

  This ID card is expired also, the bull said.

  Well, sonny, now you know, the hobo said to Tyler. The gummint test is more reliable than mirrors and shadders. ’Cordin’ to the gummint test, you ain’t dead. She and I, we flunked the test. But the gummint said you’re still alive. You still gotta pay taxes to the gummint.

  Pardon me, officer, said Tyler. I was wondering if my ID was expired.

  Nope, said the railroad bull.

  All right then, said Tyler to Irene. I was pretending about you, but you’re—

  Please please don’t say it, said Irene. I’m not here for that. It hurts me to hear that said.

  The locomotive screamed loudly. The train roared and clanked through the yard while everyone waited patiently. Tyler counted cars until he was nauseated. He never saw a single open doorway. The train trembled angrily, perspiring diesel-fumes. Then it was gone.

  Don’t they ever stop here anymore? he asked the bulls.

  Why don’t you ask your friend there, chuckled the bull who’d kicked over the hobo’s Wild Turkey.

  In silence, the other bull handed back everyone’s identification cards.

  We’re going to have to ask you to move on, said the first bull. Technically, you know, you shouldn’t be on Union Pacific property.

  I understand, officer. How about just letting us watch the next train go by? said Tyler.

  All right, the bull said. But you’ll have to move up to the right of those power poles. That way you’ll be off railroad property.

  All right, said Tyler. Thank you, officer.

  Thank you, officer, said the hobo obsequiously.

  Irene, glaring nobly at the two bulls, gathered up her belongings in silence.

  Now what? she said when they reached the power poles.

  What are you asking me for, sweetheart? I thought you were supposed to be telling me what to do.

  Oh, that’s rich, the hobo said. You’re such an idiot. You don’t even know if you’re dead or alive.

  Knock it off, said Tyler. If you’re so enlightened, how come you can’t stop being an alcoholic even after you’re dead?

  Irene smiled sadly.

  After a long time, the long, wheeled wall of waiting boxcars across the track suddenly clanked. Then hissing screams of steam were uttered. The engineer was testing the breaks. In a moment, the train would depart. Anxiously the three sojourners looked both ways, and found the railroad bulls gone or at least out of sight. Tyler and Irene ran across the gravel-clattering open space, knowing that the engineer could see them and hoping that he did not care. Just in time they threw themselves up into the sunstruck interior of a boxcar: yellowed old paint with brown scratches and black rust-islands all indescribably beautiful like taffy with caramelized sugar. As for the hobo, he first rabbited himself into a grainer car, then changed his mind and leaped into Tyler and Irene’s almost perambulating cave. —I still move pretty good, he chuckled. I ain’t got no complaints. —Tyler sat beside Irene on his bedroll, with his arm around her waist.

  The train began to move. The whole world paraded past! And Tyler realized that this was the ultimate extended trace.

  Look! said the hobo raptly, raising his arm in a Roman salute. The new courthouse! —He had civic pride.

  When she was alive, Irene, who thanks to a dangerously well hidden addiction to unrealistic expectations had never known much happiness anyhow, excepting the anticipatory kind, had developed a stomach ulcer in her first half-year of marriage—fitting emblem of that marriage: painful, bloody wound. She vomited blood in secret. She didn’t want to tell John. She pitied herself, seeking out Tyler’s pity in an oblique manner obscured by layers of affection. And he’d obliged; he’d pitied her and worried about her.

  I love you so much, she said then.

  I love you, too, he said. You have to go to the doctor or you’ll croak.

  Maybe that would be the best solution.

  But where would I be? he cried out.

  I love you so much, she said.

  And where would Tyler have been? Why, right here! And right here was not so bad . . . The ceiling was corroded beach-white and sky-blue around the edges, metal semblance of some tropical heaven. And yet Irene’s expressionlessness as she stared out the open door stirred up in him an unpleasant thrill of eeriness, which rapidly sank to dreariness, as if he had hopped a freight train which was surely going all the way to Elko but which after crossing the river then backed up, turned, and went west across the I Street bridge to end in some dead switching yard in West Sacramento where, after having been slammed back and forth for a long time, he suddenly felt deadness: his locomotives had abandoned him; he was to be left amidst gravel and mosquitoes all night and maybe all the next day or even all week; his water would last two days, so he’d better come out, put his bedroll on his back, and start walking to God knows where, maybe to the Land of Nod. Irene did not care for him at all.

  I love you so much, he said experimentally.

  What’s the use of loving a dead person? she bitterly replied.

  I don’t see what use has to do with anything.

  How do you feel now, Henry?

  I feel—well, tortured and confused, but I know that my unhappiness isn’t yours.

  Irene was silent.

  Well, he said finally, do you still love me?

  I don’t remember. You didn’t call me back to love you. You just prayed that I’d come and be your angel.

  That’s rich, the hobo said. You’re both just a couple of chumps.

  They reached Coffee Camp and crossed the American River, then backed up near Loaves and Fishes, and the old mill towered grimly out the open door. Tyler and Irene passed rusty wire, sunlight, bowing trees, the stylized outline of a woman white on a grey siding. Irene wanted to lean out to see everything, but he gripped her arm, he said because that was how you did things when you were pulling a surveillance job, but really because he did not want her to fly away.

  A glossy black locomotive bore toward them. It said TRUCKEE. The paint shone and glistened w
ith a mirror finish, reflecting golden blobs of sunlight. Then came the long mahogany passenger cars. Irene gasped with pleasure. Through one of the windows Tyler glimpsed playing cards laid out by a sherry decanter.

  Did you see that? cried the hobo. That was a blast from the past. That train sure don’t cast no shadder.

  What do you care? said Tyler. You’re a blast from the past yourself.

  The tarnished pigeonholes of an old mail car rattled by, gaping its many lips of canvas mail sacks.

  My Daddy told me they used to dump a mailbag every five seconds an’ sort it out, the hobo said.

  Oh, come on, said Irene.

  No, darlin’, I swear it. My Daddy didn’t never lie to me.

  Irene smiled. —I know what’s on that mailcar, Henry, she said.

  What’s that? Tyler said.

  All the letters I never sent you, and all the letters you wrote me that I never answered.

  Maybe you’re right, he said, and just then an envelope blew out the window and into the open boxcar where Irene, laughing, snatched it up and opened it. It said: Irene, please. I want to live inside your heart, to know you, care for you, and sleep within your arms. I want to drink your spit. I want to make you happy. I think about you every day. —Irene giggled and showed it to the hobo, who said: I don’t give a fuck. —Tyler was red with humiliation and rage.

  Oh, are you angry? said Irene. I’m sorry. I forgot that people who aren’t dead yet still have secrets to hide.

  Just forget it, he muttered.

  Henry?

  What?

  Will you really forget it? I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. You’re just so funny sometimes. Oh, look!

  The dining car was going by, showing off bone china and sterling silver for Irene.

  A fire-red caboose made Irene smile happily, and then the train was gone.

  We all shoulda caught that train, the hobo said. Train like that only comes along every hundred years. That’s the train bound straight for Jesus and his angels.

  Glad I missed it, then, said Tyler. I don’t know about you.

  Where were all the passengers? said Irene.

  How should I know? You’re the angel. You’re supposed to have all the answers.

  That was a nasty thing to say.

  I’m sorry, Irene. I didn’t mean it that way.

  Another strange train rushed past. First he could see the cow-catcher of the locomotive with its vertical ribs like teeth, the great number 1 inscribed on a circular window and also on a metal breast—was this the fabled Governor Stanford train back from the days when X Street was still walled with trees? He narrowed his eyes, frowning at the smoking-car, which resembled a mummy’s sarcophagus, all golden, golden, inset with nested beads, webs, zigzags and narrow figures in fields of burnished gold-leaf within blue and red boxes.

  Irene said: I told you there’s no use loving a dead person.

  Was there any use loving you when you were alive?

  Sometimes you’re so mean. Maybe I was mean, too. Do you want me to go? I could just go right now. Maybe that’s what I should do. Is that what you want?

  No, said Tyler.

  I’m going to go anyway. We’re all going to go now. We’re almost there. Listen, Henry. You need to think really hard now. There’s an answer, I promise. But it has to come from you. If you figure it out now, you’ll be saved.

  Can you give me a hint?

  There’s no time for hints, Henry! Look, there it is! I’ll tell you this much—it has to do with love . . .

  Then they were in sight of the vanishing point where train tracks became metal rivers veined by the shadows of cottonwood trees just as women’s breasts are veined so richly by blood vessels in infrared photography.

  Loving you?

  What did I tell you about loving a dead person? That’s all you talk about. Oh, Henry, if you end up being damned I’m going to cry.

  Loving Jesus? he said wearily. I refuse to do that. He killed my Queen . . .

  Henry, Jesus isn’t what you think. He doesn’t hate you. He’s not against you. But—

  You know what, Irene? I don’t like this guessing game. If what you say is accurate, which means that you know but won’t tell me, then you don’t love me.

  You truly believe that, Henry? That means you don’t trust me. That means you don’t love me . . . Oh, and now it’s too late.

  At the exact vanishing point, a fish leaped. Then Irene, the hobo and the train all vanished, and Tyler drowned in sadness.

  | 588 |

  Time went by, a good long time, and of course he never found the Queen or either of the two Irenes. By then he wasn’t even really trying. In that strange half-season when winter has been outgrown but spring continues grey and bleak we find him standing under the freeway on Alaskan Way South, leaning against a concrete pillar with his hands in his pockets, his skull a reliquary of broken golden beads and tarnished copper thoughts as he looked out at the long grey strata of sky, land and sea in Puget Sound. He was cold and wet, his wool hat wet; he had ten dollars in his pocket, so he wandered up to a sporting goods store to buy another hat but the clerk, Middle Eastern and excitable, shouted: Get out, bum! —That night it rained heavily, almost overpowering the groans and farts of the other men in the shelter, and the next morning it was sunny, windy and cold. He sat on the granite perimeter of a garden strip which abutted the Federal Office Building on Marion and Western, and gazed up beyond the gently swinging traffic lights at the long tight rope of concrete which bisected the world, and a black prostitute in bright white jeans drifted by, smoking a cigarette, peering down at the sidewalk in hopes of miraculous treasure.

  Sunlight suddenly struck the concrete ribbon, and transformed the rare people bestriding it into angels. Now it was very sunny and bright throughout the whole world, and Tyler with his wool cap and grubby little duffel bag rose up to become part of the sun.

  The sun dazzled the pavement between a bowlegged panhandler’s thighs. Tyler nodded. The man nodded back. He was as old as a Northern Electric train from 1914.

  How ya doin’? said Tyler.

  Bad, said the other, as Tyler had expected. That was what they always said.

  Well, why’s that? cried Tyler in cheery amazement.

  Don’t feel too good.

  Uh huh.

  You got any cigs?

  I don’t smoke.

  Any change?

  Lemme see, said Tyler, his fingers ostentatiously snailing through his pockets. What’s the cheapest place to stay around here?

  The cheapest or the cheapest?

  The cheapest.

  Pioneer Square.

  Tyler went there. That night there was another storm. Seattle’s skyscrapers wriggled and swayed in the rain like hollowed out tree trunks eaten by phosphorescent worms.

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

  Merry Christmas, a man said, slipping a twenty-dollar bill into Tyler’s cup.

  Is it Christmas already? he said. That’s Christ’s day. I can’t accept that money, sir. I’m a Canaanite. Well, what the hell. I guess I can use it. I never did have principles.

  Merry Christmas, the man said again, insistently.

  You’re welcome, said Tyler.

  The man sighed and walked away. Then Tyler felt sad and guilty, and decided to catch out to Sacramento to become however peripheral a part of one of those superdark foggy blue nights when the light inside was as bright as lemon peels in drinks and all the whores were singing along with the jukebox as if they were opera stars, and the whores caressed each other, rubbed each other’s necks, and talked about getting the hell out of here, know what I’m saying? and the light outside was Tyler’s light, the rainy streetlight radiance of Canaanites and sad lean men the color of cigarette smoke. So he departed Seattle’s long sagging alleys whose dumpsters sparkled with fresh rain, black puddles in its blackness and the smell of piss. Sensing that the Celestial Vice Cop was tailing him with intent to reduce him into a thinl
y shrieking ghost like Irene or a silent ghost like his eternally adored Queen, all the way to Roseville he boxcar-flew like one of the many sick lost seagulls one sees in inland places, squeaking feebly in the creosote wind of the Union Pacific yard as the grass bowed and chittered, and he breathed locomotive-clouds as he hid from bulls and preachers behind barbed wire. Over by the auction yard he found a syringe stuck in a crack in a telephone pole, but left it because it was some other wanderer’s treasure. He came to a little grey man who hunched rapidly along between the tracks. When Tyler asked where the vanishing point was, the man said he’d never heard of it. When Tyler asked him where to camp, he said he had no idea. He asked about Irene and the Queen, and the man would not reply. So Tyler thanked the man, who said nothing. An instant later, the man had completely disappeared. Later, when the Reno bound freight began to move, Tyler saw him poke his head out of the back of a grainer car. Tyler himself went west. Thunder crawled over the tracks, pounding him with light and icy drops. He jumped off the train in the yard just south of Coffee Camp which was now sodden and almost deserted, only one hardy speed freak couple living in a dome tent, the others all gone to shelters; the river was flooding; the paths were underwater . . .

  Sometimes he speculated that the Queen and Irene were actually one—that is to say, a double-sided incarnation of Something Else—but on a certain cold and tule-fogged morning he awoke still clinging to his Queen and shouted: I hate Irene! and felt eased of half his pustulent love. So he shouted it again and again. Unripened raspberries sometimes wilted on the vine, the leaves riotous red like an alcoholic’s cheeks. I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! I hate Irene! On the fifth anniversary of Irene’s suicide he hopped a train all the way down to Los Angeles to try to find her grave but Forest Lawn now held so many new dead people that he wasn’t sure where it was, and as he tramped around in his dirty clothes and boots trying to find it a security car pulled up, and two guards politely drove him out. (After they had dropped him a good distance away, one guard said to the other: God, that guy stinks worse than any stiff!) As long as he could, he stared back over his shoulder at the columned pseudoclassical white palace that said FOREST LAWN. I hate Irene! Then he kept going down toward San Bernardino, everything bluish grey below him, the mountains like swirls of smoke. There were bands of pressure in his head. The mountains gradually became clearer, and his headache went away. But Irene had blackjacked him, and his head would never be right again. Fifty-odd miles out from Palm Springs he took refuge in a huge freight yard which paralleled the freeway, its grainers and boxcars forming a new horizon with smoggy mountains behind the Burlington Northern. But soon he was hot and out of water. He began to walk down the hot black ribbon of track which lanced on into the desert past the whirling windmills, and by sunset, his throat swelling up with thirst, was standing beneath a big yellow billboard that said HELP US CATCH KILLERS, the desert foaming and boiling with creosote bush and rabbitbrush and sand as pale as steamed milk dolloped on coffee. The heat took his thoughts away from Irene with her vague smile and her bright trivialities. His neck steamed and his brain boiled. Sweat ran from his eyes like tears. He inhaled the hot dry air, moving carefully. A cicada chattered like some distant generator. Then he saw a Mexican lying in the sand. He turned the man over and said: How are you doing? —Not too good, said the Mexican. Too hot. I got sun poison . . . —Yeah, me, too, Tyler laughed. I figure we both got that years ago. —but then darkness fell down on them to save them, and a long cool train came hollering by to carry them all the way to Indio where before dawn they were drinking their fill from the restroom of a gas station. He never saw the Mexican again. I hate Irene! he shouted. Then everything became white and bright, like coming up out of the ocean into the light—so much light!