William Vollmann - The Atlas

You want some love? a whore said.

Too much love is my problem, he said.

All right, honey. Well, we don't have to call it love.

He looked up at her and she was not very pretty but she was very determined and he remembered how one Japanese term for a courtesan meant ruining a castle.

I don't know who she is, but if you want I'll be her, the whore said. Just tell me how to be her and I'll be her for you. I need my fix real bad.

Can you be a train? he said. I left her on the Greyhound but if you were a train you could carry me home to her.

The whore got down on her hands and knees on the sidewalk and whistled like a train. She began to crawl toward him. He stood up, and the sound of his heels upon the hard night sidewalk echoed like light. Laughing, she snatched at his ankles. Gently he took her hands away and sat down on her back. — All aboard! she cried. Her eyes became headlights. The train thudded very slowly between the gravel shoulders and fences and across the trestle bridge to morning, only slightly rusty, that put the brown river behind.

Soon now he'd knock at the door of the cool house where she'd be waiting to leap into his arms. He sat on one of the long wooden benches, which was warm and moist with so many people's sweat, and listened to the echoes that clashed beneath the high vaulted ceiling like belltower vultures, harsh and flat and desperate in the heat. Soon he'd be drinking her spit. Soon he'd be holding her in his arms listening to the moon. He wiped his sleeve across his forehead. It was breathlessly hot. Little girls in matching dark plaid dresses whose squares were as wide and solid as flagstones — evidently some school uniform — wandered, eating onion chips and drinking sodas. A slender-legged Japanese girl with a severe black braid knelt on the marble, watching black boys play cards on the next bench. The boys had their uniform, too — white shirts and bluejeans. They were eating ice cream cones. — Cheat! one shouted. — No I didn't, wept the Japanese girl. You play!

As he looked around the station, he saw more and more of these children who wore the mark of the beast. Plaid dresses and white shirts multiplied like bacteria beneath the lens of his recognizance. The old ladies who leaned on their luggage carts, gossipping, shaking their heads so that their steering-wheel-sized earrings shook; these souls too seemed to be a part of the school, because he saw them wearily enumerating children with their forefingers. "A man in a pork-pie hat whom he'd been sure had nothing to do with it suddenly smiled in a sinister way; a boy in a white shirt had run up between the man's knees. The man turned away. Could he himself be the only one who did not belong? A white girl and a Latina girl sat on the floor, kicking like horses, playing finger games among their plaids. Suddenly they stared at him over their shoulders. They began to whisper. A black boy in a white shirt ran to them, darted his head anxiously, then tore away in brand-new sneakers to a sweating lady who sat dragging a handkerchief across her broad brown cheeks. The lady frowned. She cupped her hand, waiting for him to expectorate his tidings like chewing gum. He muttered into her palm. The lady gazed sharply at the girls. Then she blew on a whistle. At once, everyone in the waiting room got up and streamed through the exit without looking back.

He sat alone.

A blonde girl in a black plaid dress came out of the ladies' room. — You're not with them, Mister? she said.

No.

Really?

How could I be? Am I wearing a white shirt?

Who do you belong to?

Nobody. How about you?

Nobody.

Mister, you wanna be with me? 'Cause I'm not with anybody.

He thought of the woman who was waiting for him. She wanted to have his baby but was unable to get pregnant. Maybe she'd want to have this girl.

He looked into her face. — Do you want to be my child or to have my child?

I don't care, the girl whined. I just gotta be with somebody.

Then you have to take off your uniform. Otherwise how can I trust you?

You wanna be with me or don't you? You don't want to be with me.

Wailing, the little blonde girl dug her fingers into her eyes. Then she ran to the farthest corner of the waiting room and pressed her face against the wall.

They called his train. He got up and left her there. When he passed down into the cool tunnel that led to the train tracks, there was no one. The ceiling vibrated from the buses and trains overhead. He walked on, passing ramps which terminated in triangles of scorching sunlight.

He got on the train and it was full. He walked backward through car after car, past the dining car where they were serving the last shot of gin they had, and finally reached a car of middle-aged people who somehow looked alike. One seat was empty, but when he asked if he could take it the sighing lady said: That's for our darling. Have you seen her?

No.

She's a little blonde girl in a black plaid dress. I don't know what's happened to her. We can't think without her. We can't laugh without her. Look at us! Every hour without her makes us a year older. I can't compose myself, young man. You see, she was at the center of things.

The leering twitching grayhaired mumbler ahead of him kept seizing his sleeve and whispering: Is this the good bus? Yes, he said finally. It's the good bus because I'm going to ride it to the woman I love.

But is it the good bus? fretted the man. I mean the bus to Nome, Alaska. Now Anchorage is a slow town at night. That's why I'm going on the good bus to Nome, Alaska. Is this the good bus?

I'm going to the South Pole, he replied. It won't be easy to get there on a bus; you have to drive onto a big iceberg.

Then I'll save up all the ice in my cocktails! the old man cried with a wink. .

Inside the dark and waiting Greyhound it was cold and stank of disinfectant. He looked down on the lunch hour world, experiencing the sense of progress that one gets when watching car after car roll down a one-way street. The driver came on, closed the door, locked his seatbelt, worked the wide wheel with one hairy arm, stopped at the red light, sucking his cheeks, then went forward. Office workers impelled themselves blindly into the mall.

The old mumbler, who sat behind him, craned and said: Is this the good bus?

If she takes me in her arms it'll be the good bus, he replied.

The bridge ahead with its tower above the row of roofless arches invited him across the graygreen river. A flock of birds flung themselves somewhere meaningless like a handful of wood chips.

We're in Alaska now, said the old man.

How do you know?

Because I smell her perfume.

She doesn't wear perfume.

That doesn't matter. You only love her. That's what they say. But I belong to her forever. And I'm telling you this: As soon as she takes you in her arms we'll be in Nome, Alaska. They told me that, too. Now I know this is the good bus. I'm going to sit here now and be quiet and hope and wait and pray until I see her running to meet you and kissing your mouth into Nome, Alaska.

The morning was overcast and cool like her touch as he passed the shop-windows that were just now sleepily raising their eyelids. He felt very rested, but also very hungry. The long brown scaled ribs of the first bench soared against his back. Behind him, other benches squatted in a queue. No one was in the waiting room but he. The fountain had been turned off. The ticket window was down. On its eight faces, which had been textured to resemble the sockets inhabited by pomegranate seeds, two luminescences like oval headlamps moved as his gaze moved. Perhaps they were the headlights of his high and silver train. He got up and went outside the station, watching the empty track. Suddenly the taste of her saliva came into his mouth.