William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Crutches’s comrades were squatting and smoking.

One of them pointed. Brady’s Boys were patrolling past.

Vigs! Better let the Queen know, whispered Crutches with a wink.

I saw one right over there, a vig was saying. Right behind the sheriff’s office.

And I seen you, too, said Crutches to himself. You can’t slip nothin’ by me.

Ready to do it again? said the first vig.

Okay, his colleague replied. Here’s an easy one. Leviticus 18.3.

Let’s skip the Egypt part. That’s irrelevant. God says to Moses: You shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.

Good, but you forgot to say Amen. Now Leviticus 20.23.

And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I am casting out before you; for they did all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. Amen.

Sighing, Crutches got up, gripping one of his eponymous instruments of locomotion in each armpit while the dog waited patiently, then slowly grated, dragged and clattered his weary way down to the Turk Street parking garage, outside of which Strawberry was trolling for sex work. As Crutches wheezed and cackled Aintcha an eyeful now? the dog with surprising initiative lunged forward, almost pulling the homeless man down, and licked her miniskirt.

Aw, ain’t that sweet, the whore said. He wants to kiss me.

Hey, Killer, cut that out! Listen, Strawberry. Tell your Big Bitch there’s new vigs in town. They got like uniforms and everything. It looks bad. I told Maj before, I…

Okay, Crutches, I’ll tell her. She’s already heard. But I gotta go now. I’m kinda busy right now, okay?

Any luck?

Oh, my regular shoulda showed up half an hour ago. I was hoping to do that one quick flatback and…

An’ tell her I don’t want no reward or anything, but…

But you didn’t tell us just out of the goodness of your goddamned heart, right?

Amen, sister! Sure has been one tough month. And they got these red jerseys, well, maybe vermillion you might call it, with the letters B.B. embroidered on the front. They say it means Brady’s Boys…

All right, Crutches, thanks. I appreciate it. Now lemme do my job.

I guess I’ll never see it. I guess you streetcrawling bitches won’t send one goddamned rock my way. Do I get cynical? Sometimes I don’t feel like doing my job.

Now, did anyone see my little encounter with the man across the street? said Rodrigo.

Yes, we posted you.

That man is scum. That man’s a Queen’s man. Put him in the database. His name’s Crutches. He talked back to me. He practically threatened me. But I got the last word. Remember that, troops. The last word must be yours. Sometimes you gotta draw your line in the sand. Form up, form up!

Rodrigo paced like a tiger and went up to the flag-wavers who were ignoring him, and he cried: Hey, why aren’t you training with us to stamp out dirt?

A teen approached, and soon Rodrigo was shaking his hand, saying: Good to meet you, man!

The tall gangbanger types would smile, wad Rodrigo’s leaflets up and toss them. Rodrigo kept smiling. — You gotta be loud, he told his shyest soldiers. You’re Brady’s Boys.

Can I take a picture of you with my little girl? a grandmother said.

Sure, lady. Right over here. Post me, boys.

Someone threw a bottle on the sidewalk, and a Brady’s Boy rolled it carefully away with the toe of his boot…

Shyly and halfheartedly, a Brady’s Boy got out a leaflet and handed it to the small, slender black woman.

Mm hm, said the Queen.

And, ma’am, if you’d care to help us with a small d-d-donation… said the boy.

What is it you’re tryin’ to do, honey? Put the hookers out of business?

That’s right, ma’am.

What do you have against hookers?

We have n-n-n-nothing against them, ma’am. We want to help them. They’re all abused…

You mean raped.

Th-th-that’s right, ma’am.

Here’s a dollar, said the Queen. You seem like a nice boy. Have you ever been with a prostitute?

No, ma’am. Excuse me. Ma’am?

Yes.

Wh-wh-where are you from, ma’am?

And you ask everybody that, don’t you?

Yes, ma’am, said the boy, remembering his squad leader’s instructions: Royce, you gotta smile at ’em, say hi, how ya doin’? Then you’re gonna ask ’em: Are you interested in getting involved?

Well, I’m from the South, said the Queen.

A-a-ah, said the boy uncertainly. That’s good.

Yeah, but now it changed a whole lot since I been there last time, it seems.

Like how?

Like it’s raggedy now. The house I was raised in, that’s gone. Just an empty lot. I was hopin’ to see the house I was raised in.

The boy had run entirely out of utterances. Returning the leaflet to his hand, the Queen returned to Justin’s side, sighing: The younger generation…

Marching proudly back on down the parade path, the boy reached HQ: a small, grimy storefront on Golden Gate just past Polk, where beneath a wall of plastic cartons filled with empty beer cans his colleagues were being videotaped by Channel Seven News. He was afraid, and ran to go get doughnuts.

Hey, at that Tenderloin street fair there were about fifty of the Queen’s guys bothering us, a guy with a long greasy ponytail was telling Channel Seven. — Really badmouthing us, you know. They’re always armed. But I’m right there, where my family is. I’m a Brady’s Boy, and I’m ready for ’em.

I have a very bad background, one of the vigs, big-armed, bearded, and sideburned, was explaining to a starry-eyed reporter. See, I used to sell heroin, crack, cocaine. I even got my own sister addicted so I could pimp her out and make money to buy more powder. I turned her into a devil worshiper. Oh, Lord Jesus, can you believe my sin? She was worshiping at the altar of the Black Queen, ma’am, you know, the Queen of the Wh — the Prostitutes. But Mr. Brady gave me like a window. He let me look through that window and I saw the promised land. He turned me around. So I’m grateful to him and his organization.

What about your sister?

She just completed a recovery program. She’s married, with four lovely kids.

Clean green jackets hung on hangers in the niche under the loft. The vigs sat on dirty sofas. Some were bounty hunters, good people who helped tight-smiling Mr. Cortez get ninety-six percent of his bail-skippers back (whoever cosigned the bail form had to reimburse Mr. Cortez for the bounty hunters’ fees). Others were saved persons, zealots, saints, careerists, thugs, depressives, world-fixers, henchmen, ideologues, devotees, compassionate Buddhas, sadists. Maybe it didn’t matter what they were. By the trash can, trays of half-eaten turkey lay on the table by the microwave; the homeless delegation hadn’t come for it yet. This was HQ; this was the throne-hall of judgment.

For the benefit of the starry-eyed reporter, the vig held up a fuzzy toy leopard — a gratitude-offering from a girl he’d rescued from the Queen last week. (Actually, Brady’s slapper had bought it at Macy’s.)

Rodrigo, would you tell us all the story behind this leopard?

Yes, ma’am. This young lady, she was at Turk and Jones, which I don’t mind telling you is kind of a bad corner, and, well, you know, she was working, and then this pimp she’d tried to run away from started bothering her, because she wasn’t bringing in money for the Queen no more; she was on her own, so that pimp was under instructions to punish her and bring her back into the fold. The Queen’s murdered young girls for less. Justin’s this pimp’s name. He’s got a record as long as the Bay Bridge. Well, I politely asked him to leave her alone, ’cause I could see she was scared, and he pulled a knife on me, so I socked him good and then called for backup. A couple of my buddies was witnesses. We held him until the cops got there, and we helped the girl press charges for assault. Now the Queen don’t mess with her no more.