William Vollmann - The Royal Family

The phone rang. He got up and opened the summer door whose screen the dog had almost finished chewing off and then the cool shuttered peace of his lovely house beat down upon him like a congregation of bats as he went back into the narrowest hallway where the phone was still ringing.

He said hello.

I just wanted to tell you, said the middle-aged lady, that I’ve found somebody else…

Where were the prizes then?

… They could be called perpetual children. That was the usual way to think of them, two-day piglets puny and shortfurred like monkeys. Some had almost reached adolescence, which hung over them big and shiny like an autumn sunset in northern Canada, crawling brightly, feebly along the ridgetops so that it must be obvious to anyone that darkness will be in sway within half an hour and yet at midnight the sun is still there; others were stammering two- and three-year-olds just on the threshold of complex speech. (Still others, of course, could not talk at all.) In many cases they were sick children. They received medication every day; they had to be guarded against the extra few minutes in the sun or the second chocolate bar that might bring on a seizure. Like children, they lived imprudent and unaware, and could not keep themselves from danger. When they were cruel to one another, their cruelty sometimes partook of craft. But original sin was in everyone’s children. So he kept saying to himself, but his authority over them could not be of as simple and absolute a character as the authority of an adult over a child. Because he hoped that some of them would eventually be able to take care of themselves, he allowed himself to be persuaded by them that this time their choice should be the deciding one, and today they could stay out of the swimming pool, even though he wished that they would go in again. — Well, he was equivocating; he would do the same with a child. (He had not yet seduced his niece.) The real reason that the relationship was problematic was that some of them had passed puberty and were aware of it. A few of them were attracted to him sexually, and sometimes he, despite himself, was attracted to them. Sexual desire, suppressed though of course it had to be (because the Chief Medical Officer was watching from the steel desk, his eyes dull, as if he’d been taking the drugs he prescribed), was the great enemy of the well-intentioned hierarchy. As flesh wanting flesh, he and they were equals; they could satisfy each other, and some were quite beautiful. Their hands squeezed his when he held them; their hair blew in the wind; the women touched their breasts and smiled at him… and then between those half-parted lips the tongue protruded again; the hand pulled away and began to scratch.

The Chief Medical Officer blew his nose, which was as red and glossy as the bloom-phallus of Indonesian sun-ginger. Wrist-angle, neck-angle, the weird glasses-gleam and boniness of life! — I believe in you, Dan! the Chief Medical Officer said. — Then the Chief Medical Officer gave him his charges, slack bodies to animate.

As the final recreational Thursday drew toward him like a grey station wagon cleaving the hot afternoon, he tore himself off his wailing dreams and began to arm, buying road maps on the sly, calling in a reservation on a travel bungalow across the state line. He was ready to give birth to his own brooding thoughts. Gliding over the slippery backs of days, he snatched handcuffs and tranquilizers, bought the right women’s clothes, honed his smile-flashes sharp to do love’s butchery again. Fortune’s child like us all, he hummed with power like an electric drill only because Fortune had plugged him in. — No, the tense feeling of travelling alone into darkness is no worse than usual, he said to himself. It’s just that I’ve gotten out of practice. — So they got in the sky-blue bus, counselors and inmates; they were going to the fair.

Win, win, win, win! the barkers shouted. Come on over! — The retarded ones cringed or laughed or shrieked for glee, gaping at the stuffed animals of every putrescent color which hung for prizes in love’s abbatoir; they were inside the fence now, tickets paid (a favor they’d never notice), hands stamped. — Group leaders! Group leaders! Pay attention, group leaders! We’ll meet here at five-thirty sharp! Have a wonderful, wonderful time—

One of his charges was absent with a seizure — all the better for him. The other speechless ones could be disposed of with blinding pieces of change — here, for instance, where the phony canoes slammed down the river slide like a horrible torture. Strap them in; no malingering now… Wipe the drool from their chins one last time, give them their meds a little early (a triple dose); slip the carnie man two twenties, presidential side up: Just keep them going round. I’ll be back in an hour… — As for the crowd, they were too busy pretending not to stare at the retards to notice him …

Fingers tight around her wrist. She turned to him full-face, ready to be led; he had the prize. Already the machine was starting up; over its roaring and clattering he could hear the speechless boys begin to bawl in fright. Well, they could bawl all they liked; not one would spill the beans—

Slipping his arm around her waist, he took her past the huddle of grey-clad security guards who lounged chuckling at the crackle of their own walkie-talkies, drinking Cokes, smoothing their greasy hair, glaring amiable at one another through ultradark sunglasses; no, they’d never remember him. He led her through the end of the afternoon swollen with light like some monster California orange, taking her where the heat and glare were fiercest, stalking through unknowing crowds, dodging her silently past girls throwing darts at balloons that resembled multicolored pustules (the girls hoped to win ugly pictures). She grunted softly and dug her feet in, twisting away from him to look back at the silver-studded ferris wheel whirring, gleaming fiercely in the sun. Then he saw that she was listening and sniffing for the scents of the other group leaders’ cargo of differently ableds; some were up there whirling and gaping; just beside it, a number were strapped screaming to the giant pendulum on the pirate ride, raining down puke… — Perhaps it was that that she sniffed and smelled. Did she remember their odors enough to miss them? — A barker was grasping air, wide-eyed, trying to grab him in. — Hey now let’s go now let’s play let’s PLAY! Try it! — She turned her deadly gaze upon the barker, who said: Hey I’m sorry. — He took her away, the barker forlorn and sheepish, and he bought her a butterfinger-flavored slushy which she messed all down her dress and sticky hands, stretching her arms out to him like the bewildered parents stumbling down the children’s rotating tunnel. He went and got electrocuted to win her a giant teddy bear which she went awwwwrr over and rubbed it up and down against her slushy-stained breasts while the yokels gawked, and then she retched, just a little yellow-brown tail sliding out of her mouth, and he wiped her on the bear and she started licking it back up, then she allowed the bear to fall to the cement puke-matted in the hot sun with flies already shooting down like bombers and her cheeks were blue and green where the bear’s dye had come off. They were getting very far ahead of her lines now; they were going so far into his country that she’d never be coming back. The other inmates were long lost, the pirate ride out of sight; at the place where you throw baseballs at beer bottles he found a water fountain and cleaned her face up a little; she slurped up the water and he let her drink until she was satisfied. Then he put her on a segment of a giant green caterpillar, riding beside her with his hand between her knees, and an old lady said to him: You’re disgusting, taking advantage of that retard like that, and she said: Worrrwww wor-rrww. The ride ended full circle and he led her off, stalking deeper and deeper into the fair. Two women were hitting each other with giant inflatable crayons. A man in a white barbeque cap scratched his stubble crosswise and watched her. He drowned her in pools of sunlight, leading her into unknown valleys where the barkers shouted: There he is! — She was hugging her horse now on the merry-go-round, cawing and almost falling off, so he grabbed from his companion steed, saving her as they whirled past SWIRL FRIES ten times a second; her mouth was open. She looked away, writhing her fingers…